gila

I use Shotcut for more or less any video operations that require re-encoding. It's great for basic editing but also simple transcoding jobs too

In Australia our tobacco strategy was to effectively ban vapes and price cigarettes out of existence.

The impact to date has created two totally new black markets: one for vapes after people realised anyone could just hop on AliExpress to buy them in bulk and resell for a 2000% markup. They are banned for import, but nicotine is a colourless odourless liquid and there are no rapid tests for it, no capacity to do expensive GCMS testing on all the random freight entering the country from China (our biggest trading partner by far).

The other new black market is for "chop chop", the colloquial name for unprocessed tobacco illegally grown and sold by gangs for cheaper than regular cigarettes / RYO tobacco.

There's also been a big increase in violent robberies at tobacco outlets and even gang turf wars over sales of illegally imported or stolen cigarettes. The excise tax is so high that the gangs can extract enormous sales margin and still undercut the market.

Predictably (and contrary to the rest of the western world) tobacco use has gone up nationally over the past couple of years following a significant downtrend lasting several decades. I'm confident that this strategy, which has been bipartisan amongst our 2 major political parties, will be used as a future case study in why prohibition is fucking moronic. It has continuously demonstrated to be a net detriment to public health, in this case related to a totally preventable yet leading cause of premature death and public health spend.

There is literally no logic to it beyond Lovejoy's Law, except for some false manufactured statistics parroted by our leaders which blatantly ignore scientific consensus.

Summit fits image to screen horizontally, ideal layout for me

Wait, but they already launched it without Denuvo. So pirates can easily crack the launch version without it, and only paying customers need to deal with the antipiracy bullshit? Nice, they took a pro-piracy hyperbole and made it actually real.

The financial impact of this decision is entirely speculative at this stage. Unity's next quarterly earnings report won't be impacted by it. The market is attempting to price in losses that haven't yet occurred. We won't know how it affects stock price for awhile

Just to add context because this is a somewhat polarising headline, gamergate shit is back on the rise. Gamers generally aren't being considered potential extremists, only literal extremists that happen to consider their opinions as representative of gamers

Yeah we're deprioritising the platform you use, because it's niche. We have analytics, and they say your use case doesn't matter. Just accept it and keep paying us, like all those other times

If your doctor prescribes you something for smoking, get a new doctor. That said, crack is the worst for your teeth due to clenching, and tobacco is the worst for pretty much everything else imaginable. Smoking generally is the unhealthiest habit people have, but it's specifically due to inhaling the free radicals produced by combustion, not "a foreign substance" (we are all continuously breathing foreign substances). If you were just able to take out the combustion part somehow, you could- ah shit they're already marketing it to kids

The only thing I want it to do is use simple context when searching something for me. If I have a sports event in my calendar, tickets saved to my wallet, and I say "Hey Google, what time does the {team} match start today?", it currently gives me a garbage answer linking to a Reddit post where someone asked that a year ago or something. The ecosystem already understands the info I want in this situation, they have all the data points, theres no sophisticated logic required to connect them. But Google Assistant can't do it, making it pretty useless other than for setting alarms and stuff. If your question isn't on the list of discrete preprogrammed functions then it just searches what you asked, which for my case should actually be "'{team} fixtures" or something. So it's often faster to just search manually in the first instance rather than trying to learn the obfuscated scope of what Google assistant can actually do.

https://archive.is/96Woj

The company made “more than a dozen technical improvements” to AI Overviews ...

... making the feature rely less heavily on user-generated content from sites like Reddit

So it prefers the results that Google normally deprioritizes? I guess we have that in common

Reminder that teaching while drunk is perfectly legal in Florida

It's sad, but as a crypto user I'd be sketched out enough about using a centralised hot wallet app like Exodus in an official capacity, let alone entering my private key in something installed via a 3rd party app store. This probably happens on the Play Store a few times a week, and that's on a bigger platform with a full security review process. It's ultimately unavoidable.

This makes me sad. I had so much fun growing up learning about compression and encoding, ripping, tagging, spectral analysis. Listening to 24/96 vinyl FLACs on my parents old stereo with my pinky up. Hanging out with a bunch of 40-year olds on IRC. Good times, man

I think it's because of the original marketing for Pixel Pass. Google marketed it as being better value than other post-paid mobile phone plan arrangements in some way. It's just the same boilerplate terms under which a large proportion of mobile phones have been sold for decades in my country - so it was confusing when Google tried to sell me "a new way to buy a phone" where literally the only new thing about it was that you can get discounted Google services bundled. I wouldn't be surprised if people are getting pissed off about it now for not receiving value that was never actually offered.

Firefox blocks statcounter tracking by default. It's an inherently flawed metric, though Firefox is definitely in the minority still vs Chrome

I think we just need to move on from this methodology of data collection. Firefox is often cited as very unpopular because it blocks statcounter tracking by default, social networks have absorbed some search volume too. I do think it makes logical sense that people are dropping 11; I did so myself last year. But this data is likely bad, so it's pointless to try and extract a reason based on it.

Look for a dvdrip. At the time the episodes were originally aired they would pre on p2p sites as like 35mb .avi's in 240p, you don't want that

Affiliate marketing is what they're doing under "Hustler's university". Probably the same thing.

Pay for real-debrid and set up a kodi addon like Seren on a streaming box. You'll get an equivalent experience to paid/official streaming platforms without having to pay for them all, including browsing popular shows without having to download them ahead of time or manage a home server. It's still torrenting under the hood, just a lot more convenient

If Tiktok doesn't deserve to spy on Americans, is it the counterpoint that US big tech does?

You can rent a server with 32 slots and keep your progression playing with buddies. Better than the joining players having to restart their progression to play in co-op

This would make sense if Unity increased their fees, but it doesn't make sense to invent a new revenue stream based on a metric you can't even accurately measure. That's profit-seeking.

That statement just screams "I don't understand how the internet works"

The only reason we have $2k flagships is because they have more premium features which people with lots of disposable income would want to buy. But where are these features now? Provided you aren't shoving extra displays in your device for kicks, everything is ubiquitous (or you're just paying extra for a SaaS unlock). If Tensor G3 sucks like G2 sucks, that impacts all Pixel 8's, not just the A.

There's no more space in the market for an A model and a flagship model. In terms of being the appropriate option for the average person looking for a new phone (i.e what a flagship actually is in principle), the A model is the flagship now.

That's why the price is increasing - it's too popular, they've realised price is once again the driving factor behind most purchase decisions and are now acting to try and preserve the status quo of people buying needlessly expensive handsets for no reason.

Here's the link to the episodes on bilibili, my VPN doesn't have any China endpoint so they're blocked: https://www.bilibili.com/bangumi/play/ep748347

Had a look in my usual areas and found listings but no sources. Listings were only added recently though (11/30/23) so maybe international distribution is being organised.

Doesn't work on Twitch for me (using Firefox). I've had some success using 'Purple Adblock', but it works by connecting to a public proxy in an ad-free country for the duration of the ad - so it has issues during peak and can get you stuck in a loop

Epic allows devs to stay under the license terms for specific versions of the engine. If they started charging for installs, devs can just use the older engine versions and avoid the charges.

Any suggestions for 3rd party frontends which recommend videos algorithmically like when you're logged in?

I'm sure some will, the result will still be as intended though: a higher Metacritic score

The California attorney general already said CCPA can't be used to legally enforce DNT requests because it isn't specific enough. So I'm guessing this is a more specific mechanism that can be included in regulations like CCPA and GDPR in future. People protected by them are already meant to be able to opt out

It's a false dichotomy. We can't make it so only Google can spy on us, and conceding to Google has no impact on other malware. Besides, it's the largest advertising company in the world by a large margin, with a near monopoly on online advertising. It probably wouldn't even make a difference.

They didn't oversize the recommended video thumbnails in the old UI. Either they couldn't figure out what to do with the whitespace resulting from stacking recommended videos horizontally so they just made em bigger. Or they just want persistent ads in your peripheral vision (the first recommended video will always be an ad for users not blocking them)

Agreed, but overall a good move to address separate and much simpler issue of predatory pricing (for the customer)

Heading to mother's day lunch right now, set menu for $89 per person. Except it's a 10% surcharge on Sundays, the only day that mother's day is, so that price isnt really true at all.

This in Aus which I'd normally argue has better common-sense policies such as requiring sales tax in the menu price

It's a company whose primary business model is selling carbon credits. How could anyone even imagine that they have anything but unfair employment practices? They exist to exploit

Not really, but I think it probably starts with trying to be more aware of where the productivity blitz you're in the middle of is stress-induced, reflecting on what you're feeling in that moment, and trying to remember those feelings and internal reasonings at times when you want to be motivated but aren't feeling it.

For me it's a lot more helpful and impactful when it's a self-realisation vs. someone telling me the same thing, so it might sound silly or nebulous coming from someone else, but just have a go at practicing more mindfulness and go from there - eventually you'll be in the hardworking phase of the cycle while also being aware of that, while you're experiencing the feelings that cause you to be in that phase, and then later you can get to examining 'why'. It might not reverse the instincts you've learned over a lifetime, but it can help

"Dear" to someone you aren't familiar with has a slightly different purpose I think, it communicates that you're seeking the recipient's mutual participation in a social group by engaging with your communication. You acknowledge their position of being 'dear' to general society to positively reinforce their participation in it, specifically with regard to your letter.

These days it's fairly trivial to contact pretty much anyone about any matter. Being more connected we are continuously engaged, so it sounds funny/out of place to use in an everyday context. You could use it sarcastically to imply that the recipient is careless or doesn't like you (they need encouragement to engage in communication generally/personally with you).

But it would still be appropriate in a context where the recipient is hard to contact, like a public or official person with whom communication is sought after

I think a compromise on copyright could be a good middle ground in future. In the same way that I'm happy to wait for a game to go on sale before I buy and play it, I'd be happy to wait until a movie or series enters the public domain so I can consume it without paying. Obviously not for hundreds of years, or 56 years. But if Netflix/HBO etc shows and movies became free to watch after 6-7 years, most piracy traffic could be easily captured by legal platforms that are more convenient and accessible to more viewers. I struggle to see how it would not further relegate piracy to a niche activity done by very few, or be bad for the content producers in any significant way

I mean, look at their handle. It's not like this is the handle for Famezen, they've clearly already had their account removed before. Report function needs someone to use it for it to be able to work, right? On balance, Youtube's business model goes to assigning value to the action of viewing a video. Subsequently devaluing that metric by collaborating to sell it for a few pennies doesn't sound like a great plan.

Fact: The original proponent of chiropractic claimed he learned it from a ghost

From Wikipedia: "There is not sufficient data to establish the safety of chiropractic manipulations."

Demountables for us