Well I guess it’s good they patented it, at least that means the others can’t do it.

I question why they would give their own games such a disadvantage, but whatever

It depends on the tax system, Europe and North America have it work differently.

When I buy supplies in Europe for the (Swiss) company I work for I often get the B2B website that does not display the VAT, but then in the final checkout step and on the invoice the VAT is definitely there.

I’ll try to explain the differences the best I know them:

In Europe everyone along the value creation chain pays the VAT to their suppliers and collect the VAT from their consumers, and in the end only the collected tax minus the tax paid out to suppliers goes to the government. So in effect everyone pay the tax on their part of the value creation.

(Example: You buy inputs for 100€ and pay an additional 10% tax (10€) to suppliers. You turn them into products worth 500€ and when selling them collect an additional 10% tax (50€) from buyers. Then you send 50 - 10 = 40€ to the government, which is also 10% of the 400€ value you created. The other 10€ reach the government from your suppliers and their suppliers)

In the USA the sales tax is only charged on the final sale as it goes to the consumer market. As long as you can prove you aren’t a final consumer you don’t pay the sales tax.

(Example: You buy inputs for $100 and pay no tax since you are not an end customer. You turn them into products worth $500 and when selling them to end customers you collect an additional 10% tax ($50). The entire $50 goes from you to the government.)

The economic effect should be roughly identical, but one system could be easer to game, the other more complex to administer.

Edit: Another thought, maybe the European System makes it easier for the EU because the revenues are automaticually distributed fairly according to where the value creation happened in an integrated economy system with multiple countries.

Hm now I’m wondering how the volumes compare, between what one truck carries and how much one gas station stores.

I just noticed I have no idea how large those burried tanks are.

So this is for truckers transporting gas and diesel.

Are they just trying to look good, or are they trying to minimally lower the price of those products before the midterms? Will it even have an effect? It’s not like the price is high due to the local distribution in the USA.

(Unlike Switzerland where the low water line of the Rhine has actually increased the price of importing the gas, beyond the high price on the world market.)

The way I see it is that the European style gives the government a monopoly on recording in public.

I’m not really sure how that follows, they too are bound by the laws protecting the privacy of those being filmed. For instance license plate readers are not legal and had to be taken back down in places where regional governments put them up. I’m quite glad of this recently as more and more bad news regarding Flock and Palantir comes out.

How does that work in Europe? You see someone committing a crime and you just keep your phone in your pocket? Because it’s against the law? “Excuse me, sir… May I have your permission to record you beating this person to death? Thanks!”

The weighing of legal interests applies in such cases. The violent person may have a legal interest in their informational self determination, but the victim has a legal interest in being aided against the violence, even if it’s only by the indirect measure of creating proof, and the public also has a legal interest in the prosecution of crime. The latter two are weighed more highly that the former.

It’s the same fundamental idea as the smashing of other’s car windows being illegal, but becoming legal if it is committed during aiding people in mortal danger.

Regarding police: Courts have determined that the public has a superior right in keeping police in check, compared to the right of privacy of the involved officers. And thus filming them during operations is allowed. On the other hand just filming them when nothing is happening, or if they are eating their bread rolls on break is not allowed, because then their privacy is the only issue at play.

It makes things a little more difficult to determine, I admit. But then I think we see police pushing their boundaries either way. We had a case go to the Federal Court (of Switzerland, we’re also a Federation) recently where the police were taken down a peg, after one of them blocked a camera claiming the bystander had to follow his order to stop filming even though she was not interfering with their operation and simply documenting.

Very American-coded take. In Europe you have the right to your personal data anywhere.

We don’t do “no expectation of privacy in public spaces”

How is this related to shark?

I reject the notion of calling this a data center. A single rack with 20 little pods is not a data center.

They just want to be a data center, because data centers are currently on investor minds.

Fresh version with more pixels

If you don’t like dark mode, you can take another one here: https://www.npr.org/2023/05/19/1177194215/tv-writer-david-simon-weighs-in-on-the-writers-guild-of-america-strike

In German there is this one poem made of contradictions:

Dunkel war’s, der Mond schien helle,
als ein Auto blizeschnelle
langsam um die runde Ecke bog.
Drinnen sassen stehend Leute,
schweigend ins Gespräch vertieft

And I foget the rest…

The model was broken by publishers, not consumers. Releasing early access without an actual roadmap or intention to ever release fully has become was too normal. So of course early access has lost its meaning

So if you take the stairs down you descend into the urethra? I don’t like this implication

People take that shit seriously. If I remember right discussion of it was even banned on the LessWrong forums because they considered it an information hazard.

Algorithm: a specific step-by-step procedure for solving a problem or accomplishing some end

Software is full of algorithms.

I know there is also the recent meaning where “algorithm” stands for recommender systems and algorithmic curation, but I expect lawmakers to be a little more precise in their wording.

That island takes up so much mindeshare for many millions of people. Of course someone would spoof their GPS position to propose a PokéStop or Gym there, just for the fun of it.

The “Lite” version is what gorhill made to at least work with Manifest v3 as well as possible, though he does not like that he is limited to Googles filtering framework with it.

https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/blob/master/platform/mv3/description/en.md

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32648131

the 2nd one is a scam that google never tried to remove

It’s a little more complicated. uBlock was the original name, gorhil handed it off when he felt the maintenance burden became too high. Then he forked it to make his own uBlock Origin version.

At some point later uBlock was bought up by the AdBlock people, who in turn were later bought by the AdBlock Plus people.

So it’s not a scam exactly, more like an inbred sideline of the royal family.

I hope the supreme court doesn’t backstab them yet again

any CompSci grad I’ve worked with couldn’t write code for shit

Damn, that sounds pretty bad.

We had tons of math and theoretical work too, but we also programmed a fair amount: We had to write a renderer in one class, a compiler in another, various Android apps in a third, and in one elective I took we wrote a micro kernel OS as well.

Density comes into it if we are measuring buoyancy. The weight of the displaced water is equal to the weight of the buoyant object, and the ratio of volume submerged vs above water should give a way to determine density, but I don’t have the precise method in my head right now.

However assuming all you want is the volume, you simply need to fully submerge the object (by applying enough downward force if its density is too low), and the displaced volume is equal to the objects volume. The displaced water will have to flow to the top of the container, so by measuring the rise in water level and multiplying with the base area of your container you can get it easily.

Just make sure you don’t accidentally also measure your hand if you’re pushing down the sphere.