Even on Xbox you can still buy the games. You only need the subscription if you want to play online, but you can buy the lowest tier service without all the games.

You don't need a subscription as every game offered is still available for purchase separately.

Or rather rent, since digital purchases are not quite purchases, just a long term rental.

And this is happening while the old guard decided to start an elective war without an endgame. Sending oil prices through the roof, at a time when China was uniquely positioning itself for.

China has no oil resources - they've had to import oil, and Iran is one of their biggest suppliers (and China is Iran's biggest customer).

But at the same time, China was developing its renewable energy supplies from wind and solar, as well as becoming one of the largest vendors of solar panels. This is for energy independence. And on the flip side, the biggest pusher of electric vehicles - because EVs don't run on oil.

Whose economy is thus best to weather this oil chaos? China. Despite being cut off from Iran's oil, they're not really panicking over it - China doesn't have oil, but they have electricity and EVs. Other countries are taking notice - do they want to be dependent on oil producing nations, or will they want to be able to break free? Every country on the planet gets sunlight sometime, meaning it's possible to not be so oil dependent.

In other words, China might be the real winner in this conflict.

(Incidentally, Russia sent oil to Cuba - in case you forgot about them since it seems POTUS has ADHD).

There already is surveillance pricivng. Rents is one thing. Going to a dealership is another - when you do that "test drive", many unscrupulous dealers run your driver's license information through various databases in order to figure out your financial situation. That information is then later used to impact the negotiations on price.

The funny thing is, surveillance prices at the physical store is the least likely place it will happen - digital price tags or not. Because it's going to be an extremely complex and messy thing to actually implement. If two people are looking at the same item - what price would you show on the tag?

And if the price changes, people are going to start taking photos of the price tags when they pick up their items to make sure they're charged the right price on checkout. And that can be anywhere from a few minutes to hours later (yes, some people spend hours shopping), making such a thing not just impractical, but leave shoppers in an uproar over changing prices.

It's most likely only going to happen where it can happen - where the shopper can be shown a price in private. Like online shopping where it goes under "dynamic pricing". Or dealerships where they use your driver's license information to get more information about you (including a soft pull of your credit). Or where AI pricing agents help set landlords up with their rental rates.

So are astronauts going to get free iPhones rather than free Corvettes? :-)

Sadly, they're just getting a free lifetime supply of those Smuckers Uncrustables.

But did anyone verify the GPS coordinates of the videos and photos to make sure it wasn't some soundstage in Hollywood? Anyone make sure the GPS says it was taken where they said it was taken? /s

(Yes, I know GPS doesn't work that way, but now every photos and video is GPS tagged so if it was a soundstage in Hollywood it would work...)

I live in the UK on a post-war terrace*, which means no driveway. It also means that if I wanted to run an extension cord from my house to my car it would cross a public footpath, so there's no charging at home for me at all. Oh, and I work from home as well, so charging an EV would need to happen at the local supermarket (the 90p/60p option I mentioned in the other thread), in a small shopping park (the cheaper option I mentioned, which has been out of order for the past few weeks) or next to a coffee shop on a nearby industrial estate (which I didn't mention because they won't even tell you what they charge without downloading an app, so fuck 'em).

The simple solution - since you don't drive much, extension cord. Unplug it when you're finished - you don't need to keep your car plugged in 24/7 like your laptop. If you aren't on a busy path, you probably could get away with this for a while plugging your car in for an hour or two each day.

The more complex solution is ask your town council to see if you can get a permit to install an outlet by the street for charging. You'll have to pay for an electrician to run a line from your electrical box to the side of the street. Couch it in terms like renewables and being green.

Another solution, petition your electric utility to install a paid charger. It doesn't have to be a fast charger, but they may be amenable to installing a regular AC charger there. They just want to know if there's demand.

Final solution, there are some overhead arches being developed where you can use to hang an extension cord over a sidewalk. It's literally like a pole you put on your property that then carries a cord overhead like an overhead power line. The outlet dangles from it clear of the sidewalk when you want to charge, then you retract it when you're done so people don't steal your electricity.

The reason these solutions are happening is because there are lots of people in the exact same situation as you wanting to be able to own an EV.

Sometimes having a chat with the town council and the electric utility and you might discover they have programs or such

Large format projections beyond IMAX do exist, but the generally have very little hold. Most cinema formats have not held - many have been tested over the decades and most have done away.

Theatre owners will likely not invest in the equipment if there's no promising market - they've been promised a lot in the past and been stuck with equipment they bought and no longer used.

True IMAX using 18/70 (18 perf 70 mm) are rare - there are only 30 theatres in the world who can play that (it's a legacy format). Most lost the capability when IMAX moved to digital. The remaining 18/70 theatres will likely remain because there is interest in the format, and to recoup the investment. An 18/70 print costs around $100K and it's something the theatres keep, which is a rarity. Even in the days of 35mm, most theatres would rent the film instead of purchase them so at the end of the run they'd return them. And in the digital age, well, they don't own anything - the projectors have to get a license key every time they show a movie, and that key gets the theatre charged for the showing. They also have another key that unlocks the movie for a set time period.

Disney does have the marketing might to push their own IMAX system, but theatre owners will be watching - if it remains Disney only, they may only stick with IMAX as it's basically booked all the time, while a Disney system will only be used for the few Disney films released

IMAX requirements are harsh - but it's because they hold a standard. The screen must have a certain reflectivity to it (it's changed every 5 years). The sound is calibrated and adjusted - the theatre actually cannot change the volume. If they do adjust the volume, IMAX can remote change it back and the bulb life and brightness is carefully monitored. But that's also why they can charge a premium ticket price for it - you're getting a presentation that's designed to be the same and well presented and adjusted. I've been in way too many theatres where the sound is too loud and having too much bass I felt sick. The premium IMAX ones the bass gives you a nice kick when it needs to but is otherwise restrained. They take advantage of dynamic range.

Of course, I'm referring to real IMAX theatres, and not the moder prevalent "LieMAX" ones which are converted screens. Disney would have a far easier time competing with Liemax

It was remarkable because we had two different media that were not working for us.

You had floppy disks, where their 1440 kiB/1.44MB (yes, they mixed both IEC and SI units in one format) capacity was limiting. You also had CD-ROMs, which was a great way to mass-distribute large amounts of data, but only in a read only format. hard drives ranged from a couple hundred megabytes to a few gigabytes.

If you needed to move data, the lucky ones had networks, else you had to pack them on multiple floppies. And software taking 20+ floppies was becoming standard if you couldn't count on the user having a CD-ROM. CD burners were around, but were generally expensive and fairly niche devices with media being $20 a pop. And coasters were common.

Zip disks arrived at this time - the perfect transition medium to carry large amounts of data around without an obscenely large amount of disks.

They died not just because of their unreliability, but that burning CDs became a thing making it easy to move data around, and USB flash disks, while expensive, were getting to be a usable amount of storage as well.

Jaz drives had a fatal problem - they did not have an auto-park mechanism like hard drives had. If the power was lost to the drive, the heads will crash onto the platters. And the insertion/removal of the cartridges would often slightly damage the clutch that connects the spindle motor to the platters which result in the clutch falling apart and damaging the coupling even more. They only worked if you religiously ejected them prior to shutting down your PC.

Someone has to have physical control to get to that data

You make it seem like that's hard.

It's not hard - junkyards are common. After an accident, custody of the car may no longer be yours - between law enforcement and your insurance company, they may have legal possession of the physical vehicle.

Often times a lot of that data can be extracted without dismantling the car - the OBD II port often lets you get at the data.

All cars with ABS, for example, will have the last few seconds of the car telemetry (speed, throttle, brake, steering wheel, etc) recorded on it prior to activation in the ABS control unit. Basically every car has a hidden telemetric recorder - a black box - recording details on every drive. That records everything, and insurance companies are known for going after people who take it when they get possession.

I have an actual old car, and it doesn't store any data, what-so-ever, and doesn't report it to anyone.

The qualifier for "classic car" is around 25 years. This includes cars made at the turn of the millennium now which generally means fairly modern ones are "old cars" now.

Even 10 year old cars are fairly modern - may not be connected, but still often have a "black box" of data.

Things like an airbag controller have access to the entire wealth of car telemetry and all store the last few seconds of that data into memory prior to airbag activation.

Basically now any car with an OBD II port can be considered "old".

Well, data science isn't exactly new - big data was something that's been trying to be analyzed for well over a decade. AI hasn't really helped much in the area - it's helped digest it, but it hasn't been able to generate insights.

The only thing we've been able to do is generate a ton more data, and we're needing AI to crunch through it all, so a lot of the data science is getting the the information prepped for AI in a way useful for it.

But here, AI isn't replacing jobs, it's actually needed to manage the flood of data being collecting and the data scientist is needed to work along AI to get your insights.

As for engineering, there's lots that need work. Civil engineers are needed to beef up aging and failing infrastructure. Electrical engineers are needed especially for power systems (the grid is aging, and we're trying to push more for those AI data centers or for handling EVs and stuff). Mechanical engineers are needed to deal with all sorts of HVAC for data centers or for the upcoming automation for those onshoring projects.

The problem is generally the work is cyclical. Civil engineers is basically a government job and subject to the whims and politics of people in power. While power engineers are in high demand because the aging grid and the need to modernize, it's political power play because the stuff you want, the stuff you get, and the stuff you can use change at the drop of a hat, and you'll have to deal with the legacy of equipment that lasts decades. Or stuff installed two decades ago that was supposed to revolutionize things, and was installed as a test experiment, but cannot be upgraded but must be supported

FISA was passed in 1978, and was the worst thing to come out of the Carter Administration (which was actually pretty good about most other aspects of privacy so it's doubtful he envisioned the way it's subsequently metastasized.)

It was expanded post 9/11 to increase surveillance powers. Before it was foreign intelligence only. post 9/11 it included on American soil, if at least one end was foreign.

So before 9/11, it would apply to what the CIA could gather between say, a Canadian and a French person but not if either talked to an American. Post 9/11, it would include surveillance between that Canadian and an American, and the French person to an American.

And that American's conversation could be recorded freely without a warrant, because they were talking to someone foreign.

The Republican holdouts wanted it to become warranted - that to search that database, if it involved an American, it would require a warrant per normal legal rights on every other American out there. The surveillance would've happened, but to legally act on it would now require a warrant. The others wanted it returned back to the original version.

From now on, I'm only drinking soda in October.

You might be referring to Mexican Coke, but American Coke did go back to using cane sugar.

The problem is, though, Fructose isn't a stable sugar in acid - it breaks down to glucose. It takes about 2 weeks for it to do so, after which it gets much harder to tell if it used cane sugar or HFCS even with a mass spectrometer. There are tells, but you're starting to dig into the noise for that. It's about two weeks at room temperature - if you warm it up it speeds up, if you chill it it slows down.

By the time the bottle of coke was bottled at the factory, send to the distribution warehouse, sent to the retailer warehouse, sent to your store, it's been around a month. Nominally at room temperature since there's no need to keep it cold at all. If you're in the south, it'll convert even faster.

Now even though it converts to glucose, that doesn't mean there aren't other tells between cane sugar and HFCS - it's like using artificial vanilla vs. real vanilla extract. Vanillin is the main ingredient that gives vanilla its taste, but the real stuff has other things to it. Just like refined cane sugar still has other things beyond sucrose and glucose.

ACS Reactions (ACS - American Chemical Society - the chemistry association) did an interesting set of videos on it - first just seeing what the hubbub was about Mexican Coke. Then did a followup later on with a mass spectrometer and access to a case of freshly bottled cola from a local manufacturer using cane sugar for more analysis.

now explain how the term "enrich" applies to a CVE

It's basically parsing the CVE and adding more details. A CVE is basically like a bug report, often you'll get basic information. Enrichment is the process of fleshing out more details that were omitted because they weren't required, but adding information to make the bug more easily tracked for statistical and tracking information.

Enrichment by NIST is basically looking over the bugs and assigning the vulnerability IDs to them - there's a catalog of vulnerability types and it basically classifies them using a shorthand code. Things like is it remotely exploitable, authentication bypass, buffer overflow, potential code execution, SQL injection, root escalation, etc., A collection of these often makes up the CVE score - which generally maxes out at 9.8 unless there's something extra that warrants it being a full 10 (9.8 being remotely accessible, no authentication required, code execution, root escalation - like basically sending a specially crafted packet to it will get you to arbitrary code execution as root.

Basically a CVE is often just a basic bug report with version , the issue and a few other details when filed. Details may be hidden temporarily if there's no fix out, and enrichment makes the data more useful by adding metadata to flesh it out more. So if you search for vulnerabilities that were remote code execution, you'd find the bugs that involved it.

But this is a manual process and NIST is stopping doing it automatically (thanks budget cuts) for all but the worst bugs that end up on the KEV, or CISA lists.

I think NIST only does the ones that aren't on any CVE handlers - big projects - think companies like Microsoft, or Linux, handle CVEs themselves - they are allocated a block of identifiers and they're responsible for publishing them. They would enrich the reports themselves before releasing it. If there's no CVE agency handling the program or project involved, then it's handled by the general one (like curl was until it got hit with a 9.8 it couldn't get rid of or reclassify - all because a 32-bit int could overflow and hit a website more often than specified - basically it was setting a timeout and if it expired, curl would retry the connection. You could overflow it so instead of waiting nearly 60 years, you'd retry more often than that, leading to a DoS). Curl became their own authoritiy after that.

I think this was an artificial limit kept in place to ensure exFAT adoption, specifically to ensure manufacturers paid their licenses.

Except the guy (Dave Plummer) who wrote the dialog (back in the 90s) picked 32GB as a "big enough" limit that never was updated.

In other words, back then if you had a large enough drive, you were forced to use NTFS. exFAT came well after the dialog limit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

The problem is the UK energy market has a few oddities.

Like if they request you curtail your output, the government will pay you for the curtailed amount. And the UK grid has strain points where not enough power can make it, so a lot of renewable energy is often curtailed (at gas rates) because it can't be transmitted from the north where it's generated to the south, where it's used.

The goal is to reduce curtailment so instead of spending taxpayer money to tell people to cut back on generation, they could have people actually using it for useful things.

Like air conditioning or such.