This page claims over 400,000 recordings but links to a listing of only 187,034 audio files. I'm guessing the discrepancy is the girth of the suit: IA agreed to take down the files that the plaintiffs could prove were theirs and no money changed hands.

This one in fact, saying that survey response rates for official UK data had collapsed from 35% to 5%.

Survey fatigue is one, but I think people are also more wary about having their opinions attached to data these days. At least for formal, official data anyway, obviously social media is still going strong. I think a factor is that people aren't sure how it's going to be used and if it could come back to them in some way.

I mean, some delays are good. An example of this is when Apple decided to leave only USB-C ports for everything on Macbook Pros, but in the newer generations, they added HDMI back and also an SD card reader.

Which is very welcome. Adding HDMI to a $2k machine costs nothing and can save your ass. If you're a speaker at a conference and need to connect your laptop, it's probably gonna be HDMI, certainly not USB-C.

The SD card is also welcome by photographers and videographers who make heavy use of SD cards.

Certainly two very valid use cases for people who own macs really, and that aren't a compromise for other users (they're not taking anything away by adding HDMI or SD).

USB-C promised a lot and it hasn't materialized. I wanted to hop into USB-C at the very beginning, about 8 years ago, and it's only become worse. USB-C may or may not have PD, Thunderbolt, DisplayPort, etc. Apple does it mostly right with "all ports supporting everything", PC manufacturers are hit and miss, and it seems to be mostly a laptop thing. I'm not sure about the current state of desktop motherboards but last time I checked, they didn't really support Thunderbolt or DP and they only included one single USB-C connector.

If you're a laptop user, many monitors include USB-PD to charge your laptop, and DP to send video to the monitor, plus a USB channel for USB-C. You basically use your monitor as a docking station, with a single, thin cable. It's very neat. But AFAIK, you can't do this with a desktop computer.

I don't understand why vertical-axis wind turbines are not more common: they take less horizontal space, you can potentially stack shorter pieces as high as you want (and use guy lines for stability), have various heights spin at various rates, etc... I'm no expert so I guess they have good reason for this race to gigantism, but it seems a bit like the dinosaurs...

I'm growing to hate social media. This last week I've been using a browser plugin to just block facebook, twitter and instagram due to the fact its just a sea of people hating and accusing each other of psychotic bullshit over the CK murder and like...... get a fucking grip americans.... Its just bad for the soul to be flooded with hyper partison aggravated political bullshit all day. So I've blocked it, and despite my inner idiot wanting to get on there and yell at people, I'll take the dopamine loss and just do something else. Like play the piano, or run the storyline on that new Dune Awakening expansion. Or go and drink rum with friends. Or fucking anything other than doomscroll on facebook again.

If AI kills social media , then maybe AI might just be good for something.

Some experiments show that light doesn't exist unless we look at it.

No experiments show that. Its just a strange interpretation of certain features of photons. But to be clear that doesnt mean "the photon is not real", rather it shows probabilistic properties under specific circumstances. Strange does not mean fake.

as for whether it 'experiences' time. Well thats a complex question. Due to time dilation , from *its* inertial frame, one would things happen pretty much instantly, it is effectively always at the end of its own time cone. But from an observers inertial frame, it would be travelling at precisely the speed of light (in a vacuum).

These are, I should note, entirely different things, and it would muddy the mind to mix these two ideas together.

I also have a battery heater so any time the block heater is plugged in it's also heating the battery. Starting at 40 below zero is much easier when the battery temperature is above freezing.

That's weird, because Tesla owners here say they lose half their range in the depths of winter. So much that they can no longer drive many routes the could drive in summer because a single charger out of service will leave them stranded in the middle of nowhere.

So this problem has been known for a long time and was pointed out well before the current EV push.

One day we will learn in school that empathy is bad. An out of date emotion that was only useful when we were a grazing herd.

Spoken like a true sociopath.

Without empathy we dont have society. Without empathy we don't have morality. Without empathy were little more than apes dashing each others brains out with rocks over territory.

What a stupid claim. Evolution gave us the mirror neuron for a goddamn reason.

"Python is one of the worst offenders when it comes to breaking changes"

Eh? the 2 -> 3 transition was well over a decade ago dude, and the API stability of python libraries has always been one of its selling points. Considering its rivals like JS and its never ending library updatge hell, thats a weird claim to make

Lean on your keyboard for long enough and you'll have a valid Perl program. You won't know what it does of course, but then how does that differ from any other Perl program?

Why have one authoritarian country have all the AI when 3 authoritarian countries can have all the AI.

(Sorry americans, but right now I'm counting you guys as an authoritarian country. With that said, if you guys arent using that constitution anymore, can we have it? )

Class 1 and 2 e-bikes limit assist to 20 mph, not 15. You can ride them faster than that, but you have to provide the power. 20 mph is well above what most recreational cyclists can maintain on a flat course, so if these classes arenâ(TM)t fast enough to be safe, neither is a regular bike. The performance is well within what is possible for a fit cyclist for short times , so their performance envelope is suitable for sharing bike and mixed use infrastructure like rail trails.

Class 3 bikes can assist riders to 28 mph. This is elite rider territory. There is no regulatory requirement ti equip the bike to handle those speeds safely, eg hydraulic brakes with adequate size rotors. E-bikes in this class are far more likely to pose injury risks to others. I think it makes a lot of sense to treat them as mopeds, requiring a drivers license for example.

One of my more bonkers moves as a 20something in the 1990s was busting a girlfriend out of a mental ward she was being held involventarily in. she was actually fine , but some asshole psych had her basically captive because apparently not complying with her turbo christian parents is madness.

So after an afternoon at the pub, me and a bunch of the boys just barged in and walked her out the front door with the "We are bigger and scarier and you have no power over us" glare.

The wild thing is ..... it worked. The cops didnt come for her, and to this day 30 years later she's never heard a thing from the ward. I've long suspected there was something very wrong going on in that hospital and they decided it better to just let her go than have the cops involved.

Thats usually where these sorts of accidents happen in my experience. I ride an escooter, and here in australia the speed limits 25km/h on an escooter. Thats a pretty good limit. At 25km/h most crashes are just ouchies. Scratches, bruises, but rarely anything more serious than that unless you collide with a car or human. If the cops catch you with a scooter going faster, they can confiscate it and under anti hooligan laws (originally designed to go after illegal drag racers) can confiscate and destroy the scooter. I think thats entirely reasonable. Break the law, get the penalty. cause -> effect.

The problem is all the scooter stops advertise these ridiculously souped up scooters that let you switch off the govenors and can get upwards of 70km/h. Even 35kmh your starting into broken bones territory. Get thrown face first over the handlebars at 70km/h, you'll be lucky if you come out of that a tetraplegic.

These vehicles are great. I spend less per year on electricity to run it than most electric cars will spend in a weekend. Its as close to carbon zero as you'll get without going full fred-flinstone and just relying on feet power. But these dickhead shops selling people 70km/h scooters with the govenors disabled and not teaching people even the basics in how to ride safely and road rules, its gonna get the whole damn lot banned.