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Samsung is marketing Galaxy Z Flip phones as police bodycams
  • Unfortunately, bodycam videos often contain private info (nudity, PII, graphic scenes, etc), and need to be put through a censor before being made available to the public. So someone like a police chief has the power to cover something up pretty easily. An agency is only as honest as the ones with the power to control which videos make it out to the public.

    Nonetheless, I support putting those features on all officers too. Even if it's not perfect, it does improve things, and put a feeling of surveillance on the officers.

  • Capacitive controls could be the cause of a spate of VW ID.4 crashes
  • They know.

    Capacitive touch sensors are WAY cheaper than physical buttons, and aren't nearly as prone to mechanical flaws. Plus they can market them as "newer"!

    Car companies only care about your safety as much as it affects their bottom line. It's unfortunately commonplace for there to be known fatal flaws which occur infrequently enough that it's cheaper to just pay out the injured/killed victims than to issue a recall. Driving is inherently dangerous - any car companies that tried to fix everything would go bankrupt, or at least be squeezed out by those that don't.

    Now, if only there were a way to build the places we live so that we didn't need to take on the risk of driving so frequently...

  • Germany has too many solar panels, and it's pushed energy prices into negative territory
  • My guess is that in a climate like Germany's, solar isn't consistent enough to provide the steady baseline power that coal plants can.

    One of the complexities of power infrastructure is that demand must be met instantaneously and exactly. Coal and solar typically occupy different roles in a grid's power sources. Coal plants are slow to start, but very consistent, so they provide baseline power. Solar is virtually instantaneous, but inconsistent, so it's better suited to handle the daily fluctuations.

    So, in a place like Germany, even in abundance, solar can't realistically replace coal until we have a good way of storing power to act as a buffer. Of course, nuclear is a fantastic replacement for coal, but we all know how Germany's politicians feel about it...

  • Android's new anti-theft features
  • This is pretty cool! Wondering about a couple of these features though: locking setup after a forced reset and locking stolen devices which are offline for extended periods. Do these features activate when I determine the phone is stolen? Or do they happen automatically? This might make used phone sales a major PITA if the seller doesn't properly reset it first.

  • Android 15 really doesn't want you to turn off Bluetooth - Android Authority
  • I'm curious, what about Bluetooth makes it insecure? Is it that vendors create insecure implementations, like Android, or is it a human issue like connecting to things by default? I recall the Bluetooth spec being unbelievably complex and verbose, which obviously increases risk and makes it harder to audit, but it doesn't get many updates, and I don't recall seeing many issues with the spec itself. I mean it's not like it's fixing a CVE every quarter like with netty packages.

  • Scientists find a simple way to destroy 'forever chemicals' — by beheading them
  • Depending on their impact, it is often worthwhile to seek alternatives that are less effective or convenient, but also less dangerous. We've had materials in the past which were also deemed "essential", and yet we moved away from them.

    A lot of miracle substances tend to be extremely dangerous. There's nothing quite like asbestos when it comes to fire and heat resistance, but we can still make firefighters' clothes, or fireproof buildings, or brakes, even if it means they're heavier or harder to manufacture. R134 and especially R12 make fantastic refrigerants for car AC systems, but we phased those out in favor of substances that are more complex and costly to implement because of the calamitous effect they had on the ozone layer. Carbon tet is an incredible solvent and great at extinguishing fires too. But we don't use that anymore either.

    You could be right, maybe there is truly no way around PFOAs, but I'm just calling out a pattern here. And maybe there's no workaround right now that doesn't cause more harm, but with enough research and investment, we can get there in the future.

  • rule
  • Ok hear me out. I've lived in the US and in Europe, and while Celsius makes sense for all sorts of things (cooking, car engines, PC temps...), I think Fahrenheit actually makes a surprising amount of sense for climate, indoor and outdoor.

    While Celsius 0-100 is linked to the states of water, Fahrenheit is loosely a 0-100 on "how is this for a human to experience". 0°F is sorta the limit of "dang that's really cold" and 100°F is "dang that's really hot." And that's the whole reason we look at the weather report.

    0-100°F also has more individual degrees than -18-38°C, and when a couple degrees can make a big difference for indoor comfort (or the heating bill), I appreciate more granularity.

  • Google rule
  • Yep. Making a new thing is how you get promoted. Maintaining or improving an old thing is nearly useless, even at companies with competent managers.

    This is the same reason why a lot of companies have awful security practices. From the managers' perspectives, they're burning valuable engineer time on something that doesn't produce any tangible benefits besides reducing the possibility of a lawsuit. And that lawsuit is probably cheaper to just pay up, rather than pay for all that engineer effort.

  • My Grocery shopping was exactly $40.00
  • Buying 10 items would definitely make this way more likely, because we have a base-10 counting system.

    To simplify the problem, if you look at the cents digit, $0.09×10 items = $0.90. If you look at both cents digits, they were mostly $0.99. $0.99×10 items = $9.90.

    All you'd need in either case there is something to cost $0.10 more to get a nice even number.

  • We lost four men on the last expedition...
  • I'm cool with it in that state. But my concern here is that while it starts out innocent, if demand increases, it's only a matter of time until they start mining it and chartering more ships to transport it. Especially in an economy like Greenland's.

    This same pattern has been followed a thousand times in the past. Lots of instances of abusing our natural resources start out innocently.

  • InitialsDiceBearhttps://github.com/dicebear/dicebearhttps://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/„Initials” (https://github.com/dicebear/dicebear) by „DiceBear”, licensed under „CC0 1.0” (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)SQ
    sqibkw @lemmy.world
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