It's a ton of money when comparing it to mainstream electronics, but I'd imagine that $300 single payment is a drop in the bucket for something medical. Anyone who needs it probably spends similar amounts or more adapting other everyday things for ease of use.

It's a niche probably low volume product that requires a good amount of hardware and software engineering.

I wonder how much Meta's image played a role in adoption of their service. Not that the likes of Microsoft/Google are great either, but subjectively I'd still rather let them in then Facebook.

Overall this seems like a sizable blow for Meta imo, considering they are heavily investing in being the platform for VR/AR. Productivity might be one of the important use cases, if it ever gets mainstream traction.

Very late reply (then again this sub sadly seems kind of dead):

Thanks for this review and glad to hear it is a good book. Guess I have to add it to my ever-growing backlog of books I should read if I ever find the time and mindset.

I only know Lea Ypi from possibly my favorite podcast, "Past Present Future", where she is an occasional guest and dialogue partner that definitely enhances it. And in this context she also joined the podcast for an excellent mini series about the history of freedom that recently finished. I can highly recommend it and assume it might pair well with the book.

I would change this slightly to:

the idea of future carbon capture is just social permission to keep using fossil fuels right now'

Because of this it is in my opinion actually harmful. And don't even start thinking about who gets to shoulder potential future costs vs todays profits.

I sure as hell didn't ask all of congress to come together to ban tiktok and send bombs to Israel, Ukraine, and Taiwan.

That argument seems flawed: In a democracy, even if the law was incorruptible, there would still be decisions that go against your beliefs. Simply because there are many people with different opinions.

A much better argument would be campaign donations or lobbying (at least in the form we currently have).

And even then they'll think of the most malicious way to comply:

Forced to change the connector to USB C? Better only give it USB 2.0 speeds on the regular and Plus model.

Forced to allow third party app stores? Better give it as many restrictions and limits as possible. I assume/hope they'll eventually be forced to open up more, but they'll fight it for as long as possible.

Agreed. As you said it's a similar situation as with reddit, where I decided to delete my comments.

My reasoning is that those contributions were given under the premise that everybody was sharing to help each other.

Now that premise has changed: the large tech companies are only taking and the platform providers are changing the rules aswell to profit from it.

So as a result I packed my things and left, in case of reddit to here.

That said I think both views are valid and I wouldn't fault those that think differently.

Wir haben leider noch immer keine Strandvilla.

Aber hier geht es ja weniger um direkte Zahlungen, sondern mehr um Interessenkonflikte und Abhängigkeiten. Treffender wäre also nicht der Unterschied zwischen Strandvilla haben ode nicht haben, sondern Job haben oder nicht.

Für die Journalisten ist halt Aktuallität/Exklusivität entscheidend im Konkurrenzkampf um die Aufmerksamkeit der meisten Leser. Ich gehe mal davon aus, dass dir der bessere Testbereicht wenig hilft, wenn du ihn 1-2 Wochen nach dem Verkaufsstart veröffentlichst. Bis dahin haben viele das Spiel schon gekauft, andere Tests angeschaut oder ihrem Lieblingsstreamer beim durchspielen zugeschaut.

Für den frühzeitigen Zugang ist man halt auf die Entwickler angewiesen. Und die wiederum haben ein klares Interesse daran, dass Hype für ihr Spiel aufgebaut wird. Wenn man also die letzten 2-3 Spiele stark kritisiert hat, dann werden sie halt lieber jemand anderes einladen. Gibt wahrscheinlich mehr als genug die gerne Einspringen.

I mean there definitely are some valuable metals in there, but I can't imagine that this is a competitive price to pay for them, especially since extraction wouldn't be easy. And some parts do have value, even if it ends up being the case that running the full cluster isn't economic anymore.

I do wonder who at this point could use all those processors (and Mainboards), but the ram might still be reasonable to use, maybe the cables, the cabinets themselves too. And I think the video also mentions that there are two managing servers. Those might be most likely to actually be useful for their original purpose.

Ian Cutress recently did a video on the topic here (I think he changed the title to reflect the end price of the auction), which does a bit of a breakdown. You for example also have to add shipping costs (from a certified company) to the price.

Pretty crazy to think that it is actually not sure whether spending less than 500k on a supercomputer is worth it. Goes to show how far technology has come.

I guess if everything sells you might make profit, but then it also comes with a lot of hassle and risk. And for actually using it, I imagine that electricity cost would be a huge factor.

I think the answer to this is both yes and no:

Yes, iphones have good build quality and especially in regards to software updates have been great, keeping even older models up to date. Whereas only recently some android manufacturers changed their update policies to support models for longer.

And No, because apple consistently has made it difficult and costly to repair phones, e.g. by pairing all kinds of parts to each other through software.

Agreed. And in a unique form factor like this with plenty of restrictions software and specific optimizations matter even more than usual.

As said, i am not really that knowledgable in the whole blockchain topic, so anyone feel free to correct me where i am wrong:

• Why should i trust those parents/friends (or doctors if present)? Presumably this would be a global system? So why should i trust a group of random people from idk Somalia? I probably don't even fully trust any institutions there. My understanding (simplyfied) is that with bitcoin the coins themself are mined by finding solutions to hard math problems that once found can be easily verified by anyone. So at the base you have something i myself can verify to be true. Whoever finds the right number first gets the coin and after that you only need to keep track of trades and this is where the blockchain helps.

• What data would be stored on this block chain? Honestly seems like a bit of a privacy nightmare. I wouldn't want all family history and identifiable information to be public, so it can serve as an ID.

• To go along with the point above, how would you verify that a specific certificate on the chain belongs to you? Similar to a password for a crypto wallet? So that it can be lost without ability to be recovered, that your parents have control over it from the start, and that people who gain access to it can abuse it? Basically all issues similar to the US social security number? Or by having a passport or similar do the job, which kind of defeats a lot of the purpose of that blockchain being the source of ID.

• It wouldn't be enough to make a birth/death certificate. You would still need a system to change/add information. Like what if somebody changes their names? Also not every child will be added from the start, so you will need to handle late additions (that e.g. make date of birth even more unsure). What if someone goes missing or dies and it isn't reported? Also a small number of people might also require new identities for security purposes (think victims of abuse), how do you handle the need for an institution having the ability to create such fictional new identities?

I could probably find more issues.

So imo truth ultimately has to come from somewhere in the real world. And at places that might benefit from some system that is seperated from institutions (because they are poor, authoritarian, oppressive or have unstable governments for example) will at the same time have more difficulties providing something you can trust.

And in reverse regions that might have an easier time like the EU don't really seem to need it. Also as far as electronic IDs go the EU is planning that with eIDAS 2.0 and the EUID. Don't think it invloves a blockchain at any stage.

Makes sense, but what do these companies produce? Seems to me that 50 million (especially when spread over multiple recipients) doesn't really go that far in the defense sector. At least if we are talking heavy equipment manufacturing or anything with complex technology.

I guess at a scale where this amount matters we are talking more basic products or something like small drones?

But the accuracy of this information would still depend on external institutions or persons that you have to trust, right? I have admittedly never dived too deep into the whole block chain topic, but that seems to go against the underlying idea.

To be fair there are still a bunch of other aspects that may prevent even full remote jobs to be outsourced to other countries. Among others: language skills, time zone differences, cultural differences, legal frameworks and probably many more.

To give an example for issues that may arise from these differences:

An employee might cost your german company triple the salary in Germany compared to India. On paper it seems like an easy choice, you just outsource and even if you have to pay 2 person to do the job you still save money. But suddenly you run into many problems:

• They will likely not speak German and maybe not even great English. This might be irrelevant for the actual work to be done. But do they exactly understand what the task is, can they give accurate feedback, can they make use of existing resources or do those need to be translated, can they communicate with the rest of the company or your customers?

• They work in different time zones. And while most remote work is probably time agnostic, meetings with other team members, departments or your customers suddenly become much harder to schedule.

• Their culture might be different. So e.g. they might not be as straight forward when running into problems and instead try to hide them, which will mean everything looks fine until the house of cards suddenly crumbles.

• Having employees in different countries means you will need to have different workflows for hr to deal with contracts, payrolls, retirement plans, health insurance and so on. Also how does the other country handle IP, patents and non compete clauses? Could the employee just walk away and start their own business or go to your competitor? Or in reverse can you ensure that they e.g. don't copy/paste code from somewhere else ignoring licenses.

Jetzt müssten die Sachen nur endlich mal günstiger werden.

Wenn ich mir die Zutatenlisten durchlesen, dann sind die Fleischersatz Produkte meistens zum großen Teil Wasser, Pflanzliches Protein (Soja, Erbsen etc), Rapsöl und bisschen Binde-/Geschmacksstoffe.

Eigentlich müssten die sportbillig sein, stattdessen kostet es das gleiche wie Rindfleisch vom anderen Ende der Welt.

Personally i am not extremely hyped, but assume it will deliver a solid movie.

I can appreciate the quality and craftmanship of the 2015 Mad Max: Fury road, but somehow despite that it just didn't quite click with me.

In regards of the stunts and so on i expect Fuirosa to deliver similarly. Where i am unsure (based on the trailer) is whether the casting can match Fury road. Feels like Tom Hardy has a ruggedness (?) to him that fits better into the Mad Max world compared to Chris Hemsworth.

Won't go out of my way to watch it in the cinema, but will probably stream it at some point.

Saw it yesterday night, so this are just some of my first impressions and it'll take some time to process and maybe a rewatch for any final verdict.

Coming from Alex Garland, who made some of my favorite movies of all time (Ex Machina and Dredd), and distributed by A24, who have an exceptional track record, my expectations were extremely high. In the end it didn't quite live up to them, but admittedly that might just be on me. Overall it is a very good movie.

To get to some of my thoughts:

• I had a hard time with Nick Offerman as authoritarian President, not because of his performance, but because in the moment i couldn't quite seperate him from his parks and rec performance (and the overall positive offscreen image i have from him in my mind). That isn't a fault of the movie and on me, but just an observation

• Another aspect that took me out of the movie was that in my opinion they weren't really dressed like i'd expect seasoned war reporter to be dressed (but that might be my mental image being wrong). Towards the start of the movie they still do it. Like in one of the first scenes with the bomb going off they have that bright reflective vest. Or in another scene they do wear this distinctive blue Press helmet. I think Lee also wears it in some of the flashbacks we get in the early hotel bathtub scene. But most of the time they just seem to walk around casually like civilians with only waving around their tiny press credential badges. Like when they directly approach the armed men at the mass grave. Or in the final act where the other journalist team seems to be in full gear, but they just wear a small vest, no helmet.

• They also seemed a bit too clean for me for being on the road in a country where normal life has broken down due to the civil war going on. Like always a fresh pair of fresh cloths, washed hair and clean hands etc.

• I think the action was done extremely well. And watching it in a large (relatively empty) theater the contrast between quiet moments and extremely loud gun shots was great. Not to say that the rest of the movie wasn't shot well in general.

I think between the high expectations and aspects that kind of took me out of the more realistic image i had in my mind, my initial impression after watching wasn't as hyped. But having slept over it my opinion of the movie has improved, and might continue to do so.