While Earth represents a larger gravity well to escape I’d imagine given that Martian rocks have ended up on Earth that the opposite having happened is quite likely.
The surprise is that it’s only the second level chip (Standard, Pro, Max, Ultra) but that the M4 Pro outperforms both the M3 Max (there is no M3 Ultra at this point) and the M2 Ultra (a chip with almost twice as many cores as the M4 Pro).
I don't think your comment on being young and able-bodied follows. I certainly know people who can't drive due to their disabilities; I've never met someone who could drive but couldn't use some kind of personal mobility device (walker, scooter, wheelchair, etc.). Presumably medical care would be available via public transit, ambulances would be an obvious exception to a ban on cars, and your doctor's office would be in your neighborhood.
I suppose if you can't stand other people then living in a community would be an issue, but the majority of people tend to enjoy being around other people. Then densities required for being car-free aren't that high regardless.
I'm not really sure how such a place would be more susceptible to algorithms and bad landlords than anywhere else.
People around is great. People around in great density tends to breed problems instead. Your parent is probably thinking density. Like lots of 3 storey plus buildings with paper thin walls and ceilings. In dense urban development.
You can like people and community all you want but if that's all over the place you are gonna breed interpersonal issues. You have to be a very tolerant person to endure that.
And for the record, yes, not everyone likes non family people being that close. I am OK with my neighbors doing whatever they want if I can't hear their loud bass all afternoon and night time. But if it feels like their every weekend (or worse weeknight) is happening right in my bedroom then yeah I "can't stand people".
For one, which large cities in NA have any of that? They've got buildings that are not new all over.
Also, what is "new"? I've lived in buildings built in the last 10-15 years that were definitely still paper thin.
Heck we have several tens of meters between us and the neighbors house and we can hear them sometimes.
The other thing is for example balconies. There's not a thermal or insulated wall new building thing in the world that is gonna save you from your downstairs neighbor chain smoking on the balcony all hours of the day. You can't sit outside in the afternoon or on the weekend enjoying life. You can't sleep with the window open (fresh cool air required for proper sleep).
At least because you live in a city without cars you can have the window open during the night without noise pollution, right? We'll sorta because the neighborhood youth is out three stories below, gathering and having "fun" while you are trying to get the baby go to sleep before you yourself pass out from exhaustion. All the while annoying the elderly couple three balconies over with baby cries yourself.
For some years we lived in a rowhouse development about a mile outside the Washington, DC, beltway. It would be difficult to overstate the general shoddiness of the construction, which was from the early 1980s. But with the firewalls, we rarely heard the neighbors--we could just hear one household's TV from a corner of the basement. Now, there were a handful of times, averaging perhaps every other year, when somebody would have a loud late party.
So there are two solutions to the noise problem, better sound isolation or putting dwellings further apart. Why have you decided that one solution is an obvious winner over the other? I really think you need to inspect your own assumptions.
The examples they gave really can't be mitigated with insulation, unless you want to turn all these apartments into isolated bubbles, completely cut off from the environment. I mean you could probably do that, no balconies, no windows.
I think you would be surprised at how far sound can travel through steel and concrete.
As for putting dwelling further apart, that's why we have the suburbs.
You are conveniently ignoring the parts of my post that have no solution in sound insulation at all: fresh air in both window and balcony and smell (which in my example isn't just fish smell like in sibling posts but actually carcinogenic as well).
Look I don't mind if you want to live with those things. No issues at all. If you love it, go for it.
Just don't make me do it.
And yes I've lived in properly built concrete apartments where I did not hear my neighbors at all and I had no balcony and I was able to open my windows without issue. Not in NA and I had one of the very luckily located apartments out of like 100 in that building.
I've also lived in concrete apartments with a balcony and all the problems I described earlier. Never again as long as I can help it.
Why have you decided that the other is the winner?
When Boeing or Airbus announce a new airplane, they come up with all sorts of luxurious concepts that would make air travel less miserable if not enjoyable. We all know damn well that the airlines aren't going to do any of that except maybe for first class. Housing is the same. Cheap out on everything, pack 'em in, profit. Then when there's a big fire or it all falls down, close up and start again under a different name.
Consolidated reply to you and a few others: Speaking here as an older-than-average HNer caring for an elderly parent. Not all doctors are equal, if the local is a lemon, it is usually a distance to the next one. Then, there are specialists and worst-case, hospitals. Public transit is awful in the US and not nearly reliable or safe enough for medical transport, especially of the elderly. There are senior transport vans but they require scheduling, there are restrictions on which cities they go to, and there can be delays. I don't use rideshares but I'm betting that they're not geared towards riders that need extra time and maybe help getting all the way to the door and then into the house. All added stress for the senior citizen. Ambulances are ruinously expensive. I'm extremely happy that I can drive her where she needs to go.
Being around people and being on top of them are two entirely different situations. I lived in apartments until a late age when I could afford to put down roots. They were ill built, insulated, and ventilated then and getting worse. When remote neighbors made fish, I gagged all the same. Navigating cramped parking lots, dealing with stolen packages and mail, and having the musical choices of others thrust on me? I can do without that and a lot more.
We have family members that lived in a huge SoCal apartment complex for a few years. One is in a wheelchair and the development had some mandated ADA units. Every year they had to move to a new apartment within the complex to /minimize/ the rent increase. Minimize. They tried to negotiate with the faceless corporation that said no negotiations were possible. Pay to stay or pay a little less to move. They eventually left for NorCal where they could purchase a home.
These developments are put up by, whaddya whaddya, developers. They are cheaping out on quality so the units are smaller, the walls are thinner, and the ventilation just good enough to pass. Enshittification is everywhere. And, just like the new generation of malls, any public and semi-private spaces are governed by heavy restrictions on what can be done (not much) and what can't (quite a bit).
There's a YT channel, I forget the name, that had lots of vids on "It's better in Amsterdam" because the 30-something creator could bike to his grocer and cafe. Lots of repeated clips of the same bike going down the same flat path in good weather to a shop or restaurant. I'm for livable, walkable cities but I soon had enough and blocked the guy.
On the other hand, I live in Switzerland and I see the apartment buildings around (it's a village) with large balconies and terraces, only a couple of stories high and well insulated, with services for the elderly available around the clock, public transport close to home even at night, and they are built by, whaddya whaddya, developers. So please don't dismiss something just because it's not working in the States. It IS possible and it EXISTS already, whatever you block the messengers or not. And if you folks keep your eyes closed or keep saying "not possible here" you will never have it either. Never.
It's possible, like every molecule in the room suddenly collecting in one corner of it. Just highly unlikely. Public anything in the US is a four letter word thanks to decades of assaults. Value extraction from the many for a few is the sole goal.
Glad it worked in Switzerland. Our demographics, scale, and politics are just a tad different.
I think the idea is large pedestrian only paths, interruptible in rare occasions by emergency vehicles or for moving large things (perhaps car priority during very limited hours?)
If you watch film of early cars, people still happily walked amongst them. The problem isn't so much with cars themselves, but with increasingly impatient people; the intensifying rat race.
In some cases, your zip+4 is uniquely your address, too. My townhouse was a new development and after complaining for over a year that I wasn't able to sign up for Informed Delivery, I was assigned a new unused +4.
That said, most people don't use the +4 when getting directions or the like, it's just used for postal service.
Even then, to my understanding the USPS has for some time now not relied on zip codes at all. They have a really good address database, they match on that, and then stamp the mail with a routing barcode at the origin post office. The zip code is extra, mail flows just fine if you leave it off.
This is the solution as I recall (stolen from reddit post cited at bottom):
Step 1: Right click an open Picture-in-Picture window. In the context menu, select "More Actions" -> "Configure Special Window Settings...". This will populate most of the window settings for you.
Step 2: Click "Add Property..." and select "Window title". The newly added row's text field should read "Picture-in-Picture". Change the dropdown option from "Unimportant" to "Exact Match". (All PiP windows in Firefox use this title and by making it Exact Match the rule shouldn't affect any other Firefox windows.)
Step 3: Click "Add Property..." again and this time select "Keep above other windows". The dropdown in the newly added row should be set to "Apply Initially". Select the "Yes" radio button if it isn't already. (As a note, I think that didn't work for me as I have it set to "Force" rather than "Apply Initially")
Step 4: Click "OK". That's it. No more manually setting Keep Above every time you open a PiP.
Since doing the above it's just worked without issue, though it was annoying that it was broken in the first place.
Since you’re citing fiction, have you read the foundation series? The original inspiration for that book was The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, which is a history book (arguably the first modern history book).
Anyways, that just to say that people in post-Roman Empire Europe lived out the reality of lost knowledge. They lived with the remains of incredible art, architecture like the coliseum, public works like the aqueduct, etc. But they wouldn’t have known how to reproduce those works. How to make concrete, etc. was knowledge that was lost to them.
Generally young earth creationists don’t believe modern dating methods are accurate. Explanations for why they wouldn’t be accurate vary. But as an example, in my understanding carbon dating is based on a presumption that atmospheric ratios of stable and unstable carbon isotopes have remained constant over time. But how do we know that to be true?
Generally the different kinds of dating methods are also calibrated against one another, so then you get a feedback loop of false conclusions verifying other false conclusions. And then of course you get various points of data that could contradict dating methods. One that was mentioned to me recently is that a plane was found buried under several hundred feet of ice. Presumably if it wasn’t obviously an object from the last century it would have been dated to be much older. So goes the argument.
Anyway, I’m not an expert on dating things or young earth creationism but the
Tl;dr is that they don’t believe the dating method used to claim it’s 12,000 years old is accurate.
If it's legal they should do it because it's evidently profitable. If it's not legal then they shouldn't do it because it's illegal. Which is really the question at hand.
You're criticism seems to be grounded in a distaste for the kind of business being done (and I think it's quite fair to be critical of the business model based on cheap Chinese labor). But that's not really relevant to the question of did Amazon utilize anti-competitive behavior that violates the laws that govern how businesses are allowed to behave.
> If it's legal they should do it because it's evidently profitable.
Is it? The moaning from higher in the comment tree seems to disagree with that assertion.
Maybe it was once profitable, but it seems as Amazon's reputation for hosting tons of cheap resold goods gets worse, it's becoming significantly less so. I personally have known for years that it's possible to oftentimes find the gadgets sold for $15-20 on Amazon on AliExpress for a few bucks. This isn't exactly arcane information anymore.
> You're criticism seems to be grounded in a distaste for the kind of business being done (and I think it's quite fair to be critical of the business model based on cheap Chinese labor).
My criticism is that the same people who cry from the rooftops about how free commerce is essential and how they have a right to sell marked up goods under any name they like to people who can't trace their supply chain have zero basis to complain when consumers get wise to their shenanigains and go elsewhere. It's literally this kind of "business owner"'s fault that Amazon is becoming near unusable now. I'm not shocked one bit that Amazon is cracking the whip; their reputation is on the line and has been trending steadily down for years.
"Buyer beware" they chant. Until the buyers start bewaring, and then they start whining about unfair competition and high fees for their store that is entirely operated by a third party and literally cannot exist without it.
Amazon is no angel here either of course. They have monopolized the absolute shit out of online retail, one of the ways they did was offering reseller services and getting businesses on their platform in the first place. Neither "side" of this is right, per se. Both of them would send me as a customer up the proverbial river to make a single dollar. As far as I'm concerned, them fighting in court is strictly entertainment, apart from whatever precedents get set that might affect other businesses I actually give a shit about down the line.
But like, the businesses I give a shit about are like, local ones. Ones run by people, to serve people. Not ones pulling tag clouds from trending social media topics or buying ad space on instagram to sell an egg beater shaped like a cat for $35 that they got from a Chinese manufacturer for $5.50/10,000 and dropshipped to people. This is just that, with an extra step. And the entity that's the extra step is realizing how raw of a deal it is, and they want a heftier cut to put up with these middle men. And on that particular point I don't blame them one bit.
I do bike regularly in winter in a fairly cold city (it was -8 C today) and would disagree with this.
The only gear I’ve bought specifically for winter cycling as opposed to the rest of the year are glasses and a headband. I’d probably recommend a balaclava for someone without a beard. I bought fancy biking glasses, but $5 safety glasses would be passable.
Other than that I just wear the clothes fit for wherever I’m going. (Ie jeans, maybe long underwear, a couple layers, and a puffy coat).
The comfort part is subjective and I can’t invalidate your experience of course, but I personally find it at worst comparable to the first five to ten minutes of being in a car on a cold day before the car warms up. And on anything but the coldest days I often find I’m a quite comfortable temperature. Though it’s possible to over/under dress and then be hot or cold during the commute.
Not that people can’t drive in the winter if they want, but it often feels where I am that people just can’t conceive of the idea that biking in winter is a thing anyone would do. But there’s plenty of evidence that some percentage of people will choose to bike in winter if it’s viable (ie there’s good bike infrastructure).
The most uncomfortable part is touching the cold frame without gloves to carry it up into my condo. Because handling of keys with gloves is fumbly. OTOH I can just put them back on for the short while. Just forgotten it sometimes, or thinking, naa, not necessary.
While Earth represents a larger gravity well to escape I’d imagine given that Martian rocks have ended up on Earth that the opposite having happened is quite likely.