What steps can be taken to mitigate this?

Be an employer of choice. What can you do to make people want to work with you, not out of necessity but because you are better than the alternatives. (Pro tip: if you’re paying the lowest rate you’re allowed to without braking the law you better be offering some other incentive)

This is something I’ve taken for granted as per app volume control is integrated into the OS on Motorola phones and I’ve been using mid range Motorolas since the Moto G 4 in 2016 (they offer a reasonable price, reasonable performance, microSD card and headphone jack).

Then I was setting up a Samsung tablet last weekend and was horrified to see I had to use the Samsung store to download Sound Assistant for something I had just assumed was a standard OS feature for close to a decade.

In Australia they give (from largest to smallest):

Ingredients

• Carbonated Water
• Colour (150d)
• Food Acids (338, 330)
• Sweeteners (951, 950)
• Flavour
• Caffeine

With the numbers corresponding to:

• 150d - soft-drink caramel
• 338 - phosphoric acid
• 330 - citric acid
• 951 - Aspartame
• 950 - Acesulfame potassium

Boltgun is pretty cool

You don’t “buy” music. You buy a license to listen to that music for as long as the license issuer still owns that particular song.

Unless dealing with the artist or studio directly the license issuer also won’t “own” the song but rather have a license to sell and distribute the title.

The real question is: did this comic usher Marvel Comics into on to new “plateau of greatness”?

Follow-up question: who is the big man? ??

Exactly, and the report uses the term “memetic” to distinguish from its frequent use to mean “image macro”. Unfortunately the article headline chose to confuse things.

"Advanced memetic engineering attacks could progressively undermine trust in financial markets and institutions, causing a steady, incremental impact on market stability rather than a sudden breakdown“
RAND Corporation, Technological and Economic Threats to the US Financial System, July 2024

The article body does a good job covering the topic, its a shame they chose such a clumsy headline.

I think I’ve heard that the USA federal gov is bigger than in the past, as in controlling more of an American’s life than in its history.

My first thought was that this is really two separate questions but then I realised a stat like this might answer both:

the number of public sector employees as a percentage of the total workforce.

1. If we view government’s role as intruding on our freedoms and controlling our lives (I don’t), then the more people they employ the more able they are to assert that control.
2. Its the ratio of the workforce that have their working hours dictated by government, its hard to be more controlling that that.

(Its not considering the non-working population, and with variations to lifespan, unemployment, etc that may be relevant … I don’t know.)

And international comparison is available here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_public_sector_size

For a 30 year historical comparison of US data see figure 1.1 here:

https://www.cbo.gov/publication/60235#_idTextAnchor012

(My reading of the chart is that while total employment has gone up the state and federal public sectors have been pretty flat over that period. This would mean the public sector is currently a slightly smaller proportion of the total workforce compared to earlier in the chart.)

“Piracy is a service problem.”

Yeah, I agree with that. I just found it disappointing that Sony could buy themselves a monopoly on anime in the western market and fail to provide a competent app for their own platform. Its a classic example of an own goal.

Its a fine line. I try to offer a (legal) ad free experience for my son as a matter of principal. But he asked to watch Naruto and it was only available on crunchyroll.

I signed up and the crunchyroll PlayStation app didn’t seem to have a functional search, recently played or favorites list. The best we could so was pick “all titles” and then scroll page by page alphabetically until we get to “N” then we had to remember which episode we were up to and the navigate to that season/episode. Then it would occasionally crash so we would have to repeat the process to resume playback. It probably only took a few minutes by it felt like an eternity of busy work. Needless to say we canceled that shitshow and torrented, if they are a major publisher and they can’t beat the convenience of casual privacy they are in trouble.

Personally its the convenience and UI that does it for me. I’m not using anything fancy but I have a USB HDD plugged into my home router this is accessible as an SFTP and UPnP media server any device on my network. It won’t transcode or anything but for >95% of content it will play fine on any PC/TV/phone/tablet in the house. The biggest issue is tracking viewing progress which can be an hassle is we do it manually instead of having Netflix/amazon/whatever track it for us. If crunchyroll can’t do that much then they don’t offer any advantage over their free alternatives and not worth an $x per month fee.

I would be happy to use a service that auto subscribes for a month when I play content but also auto cancels renewal.

I’m happy to pay for them when I use them but if I don’t happen to use one for a month it would be great to skip that bill.

But I guess each app would also have their own implementation.

The only consequences would be reputational. Don’t wait until the interview itself, let them know now that you will not be available for the interview.

Definitely cancel over just not showing up, preferably before the day of the interview. Circumstances may change, new positions may open up, you don’t owe them anything but you want to keep things amicable in case you are interested in the future.

The google servers have access to a lot more resources than our puny little phones.

For stuff like groceries I don’t even check the price at all.

For staples that are shelf stable and easy to store (shampoo/conditioner and laundry detergent are examples that come to mind) I will usually buy two if i happen to be buying when its their turn for the rotating discounts. I figure I’m going to be buying them anyway so I might as well bring down the average price.

And given that, most of the population lives in northern hemisphere, is there a body of dad jokes and culture tropes related to the fact that “we’re different”, or is it just too cringe and boring.

Nothing anyone wound mention but there are some ironic Christmas clothing like a shirt with Father Christmas with sunglasses and cooking a barbeque, or a rashie with a knitted sweater pattern.

We are also aware that if a foreign studio announces a game or movie with a season for their release window they probably mean the northern season. Our studios tend to just use a month instead.

Not really. Using % of forecast area as % chance of rain inherently gives equal weight to your position being anywhere within that area.

Yes, unless your location is a statistical outlier the two are the same.

If you happen to know you are on the lee side of a mountain that might change thinks but for most people they are one and the same.

In Australia BOM’s Australian Digital Forecast Database uses a 3x3 KM grid for Victoria and Tasmania or a 6x6 KM grid for the rest of the country.

I’m in a 6x6 area but thats fine for daily forcasts.They also offer forecasts for 3 hour windows for the next 72 hours which is great for medium term planning but to be honest its the rain radar that I use the most. They offer a rain radar that has a 90 minute history and a 90 minute forecast that has sufficient resolution that I can time my breaks at work to stay dry.

The hourly forecast is mostly useless because it’s not a chance % but a % of the area that will be raining.

Unless your precise location is a statistical outlier these will be the same thing?

I normally just have a price of fruit if its a time I would normally be eating anyway.

Something like an apple is easy, fast, and convenient.

Leftovers might also be an option if there is something like a sausage or chicken wing in the fritdge.

The problem wasn’t that the line I wanted wasn’t on the page—it’s that the whole document wasn’t being rendered at once, so my browser’s builtin search bar just couldn’t find it.

I feel like this has been the case for a while now. Luckily they offer other search tools so its a gotcha that you only have to hit once.

In edit mode they capture the crtl-f keystrokes and offer their own search and replace tool. An argument could be made that they should offer a custom search tool for read mode if they are going to break the browsers built in tooling.