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> used to be the fastest speed you could get at home

My 1200 baud from 1987 would beg to differ. Granted, that was for bulletin boards, not the WWW (which hadn't been invented yet).


I believe that this only exists for colour printers. The official reasoning was to trace people counterfeiting money.

The incremental cost of a musician giving away MP3 files of his/her music is also "nothing at all", but the vast majority of musicians would prefer it if they could afford to eat!

Just like with software developers, we want to find a way to compensate musicians, but that it proving a very intractable problem.


The issue comes when there are multiple people using the kitchen. Sometimes my wife runs the dishwasher when I'm not around, or vice versa. We usually rinse our dishes, so there is not always a lot of visible evidence.

The problem is when you have a dirty dish and assume that the dishwasher contents are dirty too (because usually we unload the dishwasher soon after it finishes). Then you put a dirty dish in, possibly making other dishes dirty. So you have to either hand-wash several dishes or re-wash the entire load.


Our dishwasher keeps its little screen on and blinking until you actually hit the on/off button, and we effectively use that as a cleanness indicator. We only turn it off after having cleaned out the dishwasher. So the off state always means dirty. On and full = clean, on and mostly empty = someone probably forgot to turn it off, easy to spot check.


Without government interference, someone who is stronger/more brutal than you can kill you and take your property, partner, and anything else they like. It is in the top 10 in the world for homicides.

Haiti is a horrifying place to live, for most people. The UN says that 85% of the capital is controlled by gangs, and they are spreading out into the rest of the country.


> Without government interference, someone who is stronger/more brutal than you can kill you and take your property, partner, and anything else they like.

I cannot understand how people can idealize anarchy. It is as if they read some cool novel and believe that a world without functioning government is going to be something comfortable and safe.


To be devil's advocate, a lot of peoples problems, especially in the US, is from the government. If you get a few years in jail for drug possession, or lose your license because some cop claimed you were high even though you haven't smoked in 12 hours, or they seize your cash or possessions over dubious civil forfeiture laws, or one of any number of other things, the government is your biggest problem and the simplest but naive solution is to eliminate government.

It isn't very forward thinking, but most people are mostly concerned with their immediate problems, not indirect problems that would take decades to culminate afterwards. US governmental problems are now, the problems of potential anarchy are a long ways down the road.


I think we could probably lighten up on zoning without going full mad max warlord anarchy in every way


Even with government interference, this is possible. That is why anyone with substantial wealth or influence should first focus on acquiring the necessary weapons and manpower to defend their property.

Having anything will automatically paint a target on anyone's back.


I'm sure you're aware we can address zoning and other regs that drive prices up, without going full Haiti. Replace Haiti with any country where people live on a tiny fraction of what we do in the US, and it still makes sense.


I believe that the frequency hopping technique is still used everywhere today, for things like wi-fi and Bluetooth.


I also have hearing loss in one ear. I have a hearing aid for that ear, and it dramatically improves my higher-frequency hearing on that side. My wife certainly appreciates it. If I start speaking loudly, she will often say, "Do you have your hearing aid in?", and either I forgot to wear it or the battery is dead (typically lasts about 16 hours).

One drawback is that I can't listen to Bluetooth music because it only comes through the one side. It's good enough for podcasts, through.

Mine is a Costco one (manufactured by Phonak, I believe). Nothing really fancy, but only $1,000 -- and the Ontario government covered half of that.

I kind of resisted getting a hearing aid for a long time -- even though I used to date an audiologist -- but it's a significant improvement to my quality of life.


I travelled from Australia to Malaysia to Canada (with a stopover in Dubai), and all the time I had 2 1/2 bottles of water (probably 1.5 litres) in my carry-on bag that I had forgotten. Something about a 46-hour journey, perhaps.

I went through 8 security gates, and no one ever stopped or questioned me about the water. And when I found it at my destination, I threw it out.


Airports in UK have started lifting the fluid limits, the new X-ray machines are much better at determining the contents.

So as airports upgrade those rules may finally be getting obsoleted.


Can't happen soon enough. My wife tried to bring home a nice little bottle of scotch from Edinburgh and security confiscated because they could not convince themselves that 10 dL <= 100 mL. And further, that since the bottle capacity was cast into the glass and not printed on the paper label, it was possible that the actual content was greater than 100 mL. When my wife tried to question the logic of that reasoning, the lead security guy more or less threatened to fuck over our entire trip home by detaining us for a while.

They did offer to ship the bottle to us at our expense, but the shipping fee was over a hundred pounds and it was cheaper to buy a much larger bottle of the same stuff from an importer.

I hope some day we can dispense with the security theater.


Hey man. 10dL = 1L


Yeah, I don't do metric by default, so I sometimes mixup the exact conversions, especially from memory. It was certainly cL, not dL. It was a bottle of this, which is not special, but a novelty souvenir my wife wanted to bring home: https://stagsbreath.co.uk/products/stags-breath-liqueur-10cl

She ended up just having a 70 cL bottle shipped to us and we wrote off the one stolen at Heathrow.


Plot twist: it was 10 deka-liters! (;->


That is good news!


Glad to see so many airports focusing on real threats instead of security theatre!


Weren't you thirsty, mate?


The Canadian government recently announced automated tax filing. I assume that you still file your exemptions because there is no way (I hope) they know what charities I am donating to!


I recall rebuilding an application with about 200,000 lines of Delphi Pascal code in about 2005. Took 2-3 seconds to compile and link, I think.


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