You are right in how wasteful it is, especially since it turned out a lot of those satellites don’t even make it to 4 years.

However there is zero risk of space trash with Starlink. They orbit so low, it’s basically within the atmosphere still. They need to constantly boost themselves, otherwise they fall down and burn up. So these satellites are coming down within years all on their own, even without any controlled disposal.

It’s insanely wasteful, but it keeps SpaceX in business launching every week, which is kind of the point. But at least there isn’t a Kessler syndrome waiting to happen.

Thanks for the suggestion. It’s my laptop from work, I have zero say in what software it runs, I don’t even have admin rights on it. None of my personal stuff runs Windows. But it might help other people on their own machines.

Please let them also remove all the XBox nonsense. The other day my laptop from work that runs Windows 11 Pro gave a big ass prompt if I didn’t want to try XBox Game Pass with the new Doom game. It’s basically an ad for games on a Pro machine, ridiculous.

Ah you are from the US? No then it probably won’t be available. The US is very slow to make changes in retail. You only recently got those digital price tags that update constantly, we’ve had those for 10 years or so. In Europe the hand scanner or app self scan thing is very common.

Yup, that’s the one.

I think where I live it’s a company that offers the whole thing white label to supermarket and other shops. The systems are very similar across a bunch of different stores, but the branding is specific to the store. So their logo, their colors. Not just on all the UIs (both the scanner and the checkout), but also the physical hardware colors.

The hand scanners all run Android, the other day I got one that said Google Play Services had crashed. The scanner itself is probably made by Zebra and then customized by the company providing the scan and checkout solution.

It has become super common around here, to the point where I’m annoyed when it isn’t an option and I have to use the self-checkout where you need to scan at the checkout.

No, the hand scanners aren’t connected to the kiosks. They are at the entrance, you pick them up, scan all you want to buy. Then at checkout you place the scanner into a kiosk, it knows what you bought and you can checkout as usual. Every once in a while a store employee takes the scanners and puts them into the holders in the entrance. Depending on the size of the store there can be up to a hundred of these scanners available.

Other stores do the same, except your phone is the scanner with an app you can download. It works basically the same way. Most stores that offer the app also offer the hand scanners, which I prefer.

For me personally, the self checkout is just a way better solution to the problem. It’s for me much faster and more efficient. It’s also easier for the store itself. The best kind of self checkout for me is where you can scan everything with a hand scanner or app whilst shopping. Then just pay at the self checkout and walk out. That way I just put the stuff in my bag directly, instead of from the shelf into the basket or cart. Then from the cart to the checkout and then from the checkout into my bag. It also spreads out the action of scanning the products, which means avoiding a slow and repetitive task scanning it all in 1 go. I’m also not blocking a checkout whilst scanning. I hate it when stores that offer the hand scanner have people scanning a whole cart full of stuff at the checkout. And then bagging it of course, which blocks a checkout for ages. Just go to the regular checkout if you want to do that, the cashier is faster than you are and you can focus on bagging exclusively.

However the lack of human contact is an issue. I’ve seen a lot of stores that offer self checkout recently make one or two lines available for chatting. It’s just the regular oldskool cashier, but they are relaxed about it and chat with the customer. This means people in a hurry or that don’t need contact right then can go fast through the self checkout. And people who like to chat can use the chatty checkout with a good old human being.

This for me is the best way to apply new tech, all of the benefits for all parties involved and hopefully none of the downsides.

Where I live the speed has recently been reduced from 30 mph to 15 mph in an effort to make the area more livable. Roads have been narrowed with more room for trees, sidewalks and bike paths. As well as artificial choke points and high speed bumps, all in an effort to improve life for the people living there. This is done alongside an effort to create larger high speed roads around the area and push cars to use those, which are the long way around but since they are higher speed still faster.

However fucking idiots driving these huge trucks can just go across the speed bumps at 45 mph and they rush all the choke point no matter if they have the right of way or not. When such a huge thing comes rushing at you, you move out of the way. They also regularly cut across parts where cars aren’t supposed to go. For example tight corners where the side walk is lower so larger delivery trucks and busses can still make the corner by cutting across the side walk a bit. Regular cars are supposed to just drive around them and in a regular car the kerb will make sure people don’t normally do that. The big trucks however use them all the time as they don’t even notice the kerb.

Since car brains experience the efforts to slow everything down as obstacles to overcome, more and more choose to drive these huge trucks and drive any speed and route they want. This actually goes against all the efforts to make the area better for pets, bicycles and people.

We desperately need max weight and size limits for cars.

And for the most part this is true. People who don’t do little calculation puzzles for fun often have trouble with basic arithmetic without getting a calculator (or likely the calculator app on the phone). I know when I’m doing something like wood working and I need to add and subtract some measurements, I use a calculator. I could do it without, but chances are I would make a simple mistake and mess up my work. It’s like a muscle, if you use it, it will become stronger. If you don’t use it, it becomes weaker.

However there is a huge difference between using a calculator for basic arithmetic and using AI. For one thing, the calculator doesn’t tell you what the sums are. It just tells you the result. You still need to understand each step, in order to enter it. So while you lose some mental capacity in doing the sums, you won’t lose the understanding of the concepts involved. Second of all, it is a highly specific tool, which does one thing and does it well. So the impact will always be limited to that part and it’s debatable if that part is useful or not. When learning maths I think it’s important to be able to do them without a calculator, to gain a better understanding. But as an adult once you grasp the basic concepts, I think it’s perfectly fine not to be able to do it without a calculator.

For AI it’s a bit different, it’s a very general tool which deals with all aspects of every day stuff. It also goes much further than being a simple tool. You can give it broad instructions and it will fill in the blanks on its own. It even goes so far as to introduce and teach new topics entirely, where the only thing a person knows is what the AI told them. This erodes basic thinking skills, like how does this fit into my world view, is this thing true or false and in what way?

Again the same concept applies, where the brain is a muscle which needs to be given a workout. When it comes to a calculator, the brain isn’t exercising the arithmetic part. When it comes to AI it involves almost all of our brain.

Oooh you are talking about motorbikes. In my mind a bike is the manual peddle bicycle kind and I was wondering what kind of bicycle has a solenoid.

I agree, but with a security device this is probably not the best idea. Any kinds of tampering physically would most likely trigger the alarm, sometimes in a way that can only be fixed by calling a tech. Software tampering if you do get it connected would probably have the same result.

We’ve had this at work once, they were doing some remodeling and somebody accidentally hit a sensor with a large machine. The sensor was destroyed and the alarm went off (even though it wasn’t even “on” at the time, as it was in the middle of a day). No codes on the panel could turn off the alarm, not even our super duper override code. We called support, they gave us a temporary override code and even that one didn’t work. They said with physical tampering a tech must come by on location to tell the system all is OK. We had to work for 4 hours that day with the most annoying alarm sounds in the background. The worker that hit the sensor was very embarrassed about it.

So about half of it is Intel? And that has nothing to do with AI, it’s because Intel is struggling bigtime right now.

Just so you know, operating spinning drives this way is a bad idea. If the platters are spinning and the drive tips over, the rotation of the drives resists the movement. This gyroscopic force is enough for the platters to touch the heads which are flying a tiny distance above the platter. Obviously this is a bad thing and will damage the drives.

A quick fix is to just lay them flat or fix both of them together so they have a more stable base to stand on. Putting it in an enclosure is even better.

I can read it, but for some reason I read it like a screenplay being read about some old-timey detective story.

Getting good data would be very hard, a dial indicator probably won’t work very well with 0.2mm layer height and smaller. Maybe a laser would work better, but the amount of noise would be pretty high since 3D prints usually aren’t as consistent to begin with.

A much better way this is done these days is an accelerometer on the print head. Then you can put the printer through a test program which wiggles the thing in different directions at different frequencies. The accelerometer can compare the expected result with the actual result and can pick out any weird oscillations or ringing of the machine. The data from this can then be applied when slicing, to compensate for the machine properties.

This is a pretty standard function on most high-end printers these days. And is even in reach for cheap machines, since you can buy USB accelerometers for this purpose. The downside of those is the USB cable skews the result a little bit, but if mounted permanently and the cable routing is done well it can work great.