I was under the impression that Digital IDs are not a picture you bring up and hand to LE - it’s a RFID token transfer that you tap to authenticate on a reader. That doesn’t mean that there won’t be LE officers who will bully people, or that people won’t be smart enough to recognize that the picture on their phone isn’t their ID, but that not how digital IDs (are supposed to) work.

Something you have, something you are, something you know. Are you willing to give up proper security for your cause?

The question I have is what can we do (in the marketplace of paying devs for indie projects) to prevent them from adding improvements and merely keep the projects compliant as new OSes swap out old libraries? Most of the really good, popular utilities have been ruined by bloat and, in the most successful cases, sale to corporations which instantly enshitify.

I’m an engineer. I use all of it. I use it whether I’m writing technically correct and accurate forensic reviews or doing math in my head (or on paper) to analyze a condition in real time or checking a complex finite element model to ensure that there are no improper assumptions or invalid boundary conditions. AI/ML is really useful for some things, and deadly for others.

Rote memorization may seem unnecessary, but a mental catalog - whether it be quotes, body parts and systems, equations of natural phenomena, or even manufactured parts and specifications - is the hallmark of someone who can work independently in a real time industry. It may not matter for some jobs, but it’s make or break in others.

On the contrary, it will raise the floor of required credentials. When everyone has a HS education, an undergrad degree is needed to stand out. Now that a bachelors is the de facto education level, a masters degree is necessary. If it gets easier to get a MS degree, we’ll be requiring a PhD for entry level positions.

Yet. Infrastructure on this scale moves slowly and the transparentness of pricing changes on short time lines in physical stores is hard to track. It exists in emergency economies - we call it price gouging - but that’s usually quite obvious. The idea of dynamic pricing has existed forever - hotels, airline flights, movie tickets, taxi rides, even electric rates. As technology advances it offers the opportunity to use the technology to shorten the time window for pricing changes more and more. An extra two tenths of a percent profit seems like a trivial amount. Amazon and Walmart combined for more than a trillion dollars in sales last year. 0.2% is a very non-trivial $2 Billion. If it becomes available, it will be exploited.

o7

Fly safe, cmdr

That was a nice term report by a precocious 5th grader or, more likely, an AI generated article.

“live and work and build and pay in that world in an ongoing basis”

There, that’s more what they’re envisioning.

I really do boycott Exxon - at least when it’s branded. In 35 years - since the Valdez spill - I’ve bought 1 gallon of gasoline from Exxon, and that was because I needed that much to get to another station without running out of fuel. It’s a trivial exclusion, though, as their drilling and refinery operations are so large that it’s likely I’m purchasing from them, or BP, (or Chevron). I don’t know of a major supplier who isn’t tainted by some part of the process. And I’m not rich enough to have the luxury of selection most of the time.

Exactly; I view them as the worst of the lot. But, like gasoline for my car and biometrics on my driver’s license and passport, I end up holding my nose because I know that - effectively - there is no clean, convenient way to circumvent them. And paypal - I use it for business transactions when I have to. Not because I like them, but because - for a business my size - there is no other way to take a payment remotely that doesn’t carry ridiculous fees and minimums.

Maybe PayPal in-house balances for payments where it’s accepted? That’s a pretty small network (by comparison) and, really, if PayPal is your least-evil option you may as well either suck off the other corporations or suffer the inconvenience of cash.

The look on her face is clearly one of disappointment. It’s funny because it encapsulates the ~~children fyrefest ~~ Willy Wonka Experience but I never doubted she was just trapped in the machine.

I can tell if China is worried about current Russia or a future US under Trump.

An iPhone and Chipotle. That dude is set.

They’d better not be playing all my free games before I get to them.

There’s quite a lot of interest - and action- inside the industry surrounding conversions. I’m on the structural side and have probably seen 3-4 articles in trade rags over the past quarter about strategies and opportunities in conversions. IT may not be feasible everywhere it for every budding, but the industry (including suppliers and designers) are interested enough that it’s part of the discussion on a regular basis.

Surge pricing to level demand is a potentially valid strategy when you’re trying to even optimize your off-peak manpower or have limited production capacity. Surge pricing to increase profits is going to be detrimental to their business.

I’ve edited my post for accuracy, it was genuinely an honest mis-remembering of the attack; thank you for the clarification.

Picking a fight with a superpower is generally a poor idea. Killing military members - even in Jordan - might be considered a bit beyond mere commerce.

Edit: I did misremember the attackers in Jordan and thought that was part of the Houthi organization. The Houthi’s are attacking US warship(s) in the area, but haven’t directly killed an US service members that we know of/yet. The Jordan attack was (now that I’ve checked again) by one of the groups operating under the Islamic Resistance in Iraq.

My only defense here is that all of these attacks on US and UK vessels (merchant and military) are in retribution for the US support of Israel. And, yes, there are a lot of groups backed by Iran and Iraq who are using the Israel-Hamas/Israel destruction of Gaza as an excuse to lash out at Western powers who (generally) provide support to Israel. My apologies for the error.