Destination charges have nothing to do with the actual cost of delivering the vehicle. They're just another sneaky way for manufacturers to advertise an artificially low price which doesn't reflect what consumers actually pay.
> What free refill at a fast food have to do with homelessness?
The tweet implies that lack of RFID chips attracts homeless people who get free drinks.
So in a way the tweet actually justifies the RFID chip. Which kind of services wants to attract a mass of high-risk, low hygiene (during a pandemic) people who want some change while you're trying to order and have a meal before you go back to work?
You might expect free basic water, what we in the UK would call "tap water". But that's not one of the options - the picture shows Dasani, which is a product that's marketed as a premium water competing with mineral water. I wouldn't expect to walk into a restaurant and get free mineral water, regardless of my housing situation.
(In reality Dasani is just filtered tap water, and is infamous in the UK for ending up less pure than the tap water it started with and having to go through a huge product recall before they even released it. But, as silly as it is, it's still a paid product.)
Hmm, that's a good point. If it literally is just tap water with Dasani branding, it's like an implicit admission that Dasani in general is nothing more than tap water.
When I worked at McDonalds in Germany about 1988 ('company store', not franchised) it was tap water from the local utility, processed by systems in the basement for compensating local differences in PH, for having a consistent
endproduct regardless of location. That was true for all stores in the region, regardless of company store or franchised. By 'the book' that was the way how it was done worldwide, then. Don't know how it is today.
You think it's unlikely that water is packaged and shipped? What do you think bottled water is? Whether you think someone is cheating with tap water at the source is beside that point. Some do, some bigger brands don't as they have more to lose by cheating. But regardless, water gets packaged and shipped all the time.
Your regular variety grocery store Coca Cola is also 90%+ tap water, bottled and shipped. They're not mixing syrup at the store.
> You think it's unlikely that water is packaged and shipped?
You're refuting a different point than the one the parent comment made. They didn't claim that no water is ever shipped. They just claimed that these types of drinks machines don't work that way.
> What do you think bottled water is?
They weren't talking about bottled water, they were talking about this type of drink machine. Of course bottled water in a proper restaurant is shipped as such. It also usually arrives at your table in the bottle, partly so you know that it's not just tap water.
> Whether you think someone is cheating with tap water at the source is beside that point.
It's not besides the point at all. Actually it's completely central to the point. The comment chain you're replying to is precisely about whether people are being denied tap water, or some (supposedly) more premium product. If it's the latter, it completely invalidates the point of the original tweet.
Plus it's interesting in its own right. If the makers of Dasani admit that it's indistinguishable from tap water, then that's very relevant to people buying it at a store to take home and drink instead of the tap water they already had access to!
> Your regular variety grocery store Coca Cola is ...
Now that actually is beside the point. If bottled Coca Cola is the same as tap water + Coca Cola syrup + fizz, then that's not really a surprise to anyone buying Coca Cola in either form.
> You're refuting a different point than the one the parent comment made. They didn't claim that no water is ever shipped. They just claimed that these types of drinks machines don't work that way.
Really? And how do they work?
It's a drink dispenser, not a Mars spaceship. How complicated do you think it is to have one that mixes in syrup and tap water, and one that just serves from a container, like a regular water dispenser THAT'S LITERALLY IN EVERY OFFICE around the world?
> It's not besides the point at all. Actually it's completely central to the point. The comment chain you're replying to is precisely about whether people are being denied tap water, or some (supposedly) more premium product. If it's the latter, it completely invalidates the point of the original tweet.
No, if it's branded as a specific type of water, it's not tap water. You're reaching here for a conspiracy theory based on how "these types of drink machines work", despite evidence to the contrary.
Also no, a business doesn't owe tap water to anyone, either. So it's absolutely irrelevant wrt these RFID chips.
> > ... the parent comment ... just claimed that these types of drinks machines don't work that way.
> Really? And how do they work?
As you can see by earlier comments in the chain, they normally work by having separate containers of syrup for each type of drink that can be served, a single CO2 canister for carbonation, and being plumbed into the water mains. The drinks are mixed from those on demand. Soft drinks dispensed in pubs/bars work the same way, with one of those magic tap things on the end [1].
I already knew this before I posted my initial comment and someone corrected me, I had just forgotten and failed to join the dots. It's fairly common knowledge.
> How complicated do you think it is to have one ... one that just serves from a container
It's not complicated, it's just very inefficient, both in terms of getting those containers to the outlet, and in terms of staff swapping the containers all the time when they run out. That's why it's not normally done, so it would be a surprise if this one were any different.
> like a regular water dispenser THAT'S LITERALLY IN EVERY OFFICE around the world
Nowadays most office water machines are also plumbed in as it's far better for the environment. But the type you used to see typically had ~20L bottles on them, which wouldn't even serve 25 large US McDonalds drinks like the one shown in the picture (blimley those drinks are huge!). Hopefully it's obvious that it's not feasible for someone to come and change the water every 25 times someone uses the machine. The turnover of an office water cooler is typically tens or even hundreds of times less than a soda machine in a busy fast food outlet.
Those classic office water dispensers are also gravity fed, which is why the bottle is on top, and obviously that's not what's happening here. But I acknowledge it would be possible, in principle, to make a pumped version.
> No, if it's branded as a specific type of water, it's not tap water. You're reaching here for a conspiracy theory ...
You're showing a charming amount of faith in the Coca-Cola corporation here :-) Believing that they would sell tap water as Dasani is definitely not at conspiracy theory level.
That said, I never said I was 100% sure that they're doing that. Only that it would be extremely unusual for a machine like this to be connected to bottled water rather than mains. I'd love to see some evidence either way. Still, it would be so surprising that the burden of proof is really on the claim that it is using a bottled source.
> Also no, a business doesn't owe tap water to anyone, either. So it's absolutely irrelevant wrt these RFID chips.
I agree businesses don't owe tap water to non-customers. But most restaurants / take away outlets allow indefinite tap water to those that actually are paying customers, and I'd be pretty offended if I was at one that didn't (even if I didn't live in a country where it's a legal requirement). It would certainly be more surprising than a business that doesn't allow you indefinite amounts of e.g. Coca-Cola.
I was pleasantly surprised that in the UK the waiters proactively ask you if you want tap water with your meal. In Germany you have to explicitly ask for it and then often have to endure the waiter's annoyed reaction.
On the other hand I was unpleasantly surprised with the taste of tap water in the UK.
Seriously, giving folks water isn't going to make a noticable dent in the water bill, considering how much water is going to be used simply washing the restaurant during the day. The drink stations already have water there, and the ice machine often enough cools the beverages (so no extra cost).
It's not simply a matter of the water bill, but also what culture it promotes around their service, what customers (or "customers" in quotes) this attracts, how this affects other actual customers and so on.
McDonald's have bought or rented the place, own the equipment, pay their staff, and pay taxes. They did all this to offer a specific service. You can take that service or leave it. They're not a public free water dispensers, or social services, or whatever role people are trying to impose on them.
I am a person living in a house, and honestly could get water somewhere if I needed it. And if someone knocked on my door and said they needed a glass of water, I'd give it to them. I'll add that not all homeless folks look like your stereotypical homeless person that people think of, and I've seen folks get off work and be dirty and stinky... and they are allowed in all sorts of places (and do, indeed, come in, especially on lunch breaks)
I've given folks water when I worked in places that had such things, and most food places I've worked at - including McDonalds - gave folks water if they asked for it.
They aren't the only ones paying taxes, by the way.
Not everyone who needs water are homeless, and a good deal of homeless folks
No one builds a RFID system because one guy really needed water that one time, can we at least be serious here?
No one is discussing some hypothetical situation where someone knocks on your home, either.
We're talking about a problem that's systematic, at volume, and persistent over time, and therefore qualitative change for McDonald's and the environment they offer to customers.
McDonald's wanted to offer finite refills to paying customers. Their current system had a loophole with unintended consequences, so they closed that loophole.
If you want to help homeless people I guess go work at McDonald's and give homeless people water when they ask, and everything will be perfect. But let's see if your ideals stay intact after 10 cups of water. 100 cups of water. 1000 cups of water. A million cups of water.
It's very easy to say "oh I gave water to a dude once". I also gave water to a dude once, doesn't matter for McDonald's and people habitually coming back to leech a resource they provide that's not intended to be free in the first place.
But it's not only about paying for utilities. If you had a restaurant, would you want homeless people come in? We need to build public water fountains instead of expecting private enterprises to do charity.
I'm smart enough to know that homeless people aren't bad folks, and that homelessness doesn't mean scaring customers away or even mean uncleanliness. Landscapers and other folks that get stinky, dirty, and sweaty are welcomed in.
And I've "let" homeless folks into places I work before and given folks water. The McDonalds I've worked at did not charge for water. I'll also mention that water fountains aren't all that useful during winter.
Sure, but without knowledge of MCAS, what would a pilot do with an AOA warning?
They would still most likely get an airspeed disagree warning (standard) because AOA is a parameter in the airspeed calculation. Again, they wouldn't know that was why the stabilizer trim kept moving to nose down, because the MCAS system was not disclosed to pilots.
Maybe I missing something, but looks like a software update to make MCAS more robust. And if it bug, raise an alarm and flight-crew operating procedures should be (?) to deactivate MCAS and fly without ?
Could pilots actually fly the plane without MCAS ? It must feels like an entirely different aircraft.
> It must feels like an entirely different aircraft
No, if MCAS is disabled then the vast majority of the time it will fly just like normal. MCAS is only there to adjust flying characteristics when the wing is at a high angle of attack.
> only there to adjust flying characteristics when the wing is at a high angle of attack.
No, that's a Boeing talking point. It's there to prevent the aircraft from stalling, not to 'adjust flying characteristics.' The nose pitches up during high thrust, MCAS kicks in to to counter what the pilot is doing (stick and thrust) so the plane doesn't stall.
It's not there to prevent stalling, except in as much as pitching the plane too much does eventually result in stalling; however any pilot will have pushed the stick or trimmed long beforethat. It's there to make the plane behave exactly like an older model at a high angle of attack, to counteract the engines being further forward than those models.
All planes with low mounted engines (read: most current jet airliners) pitch up with increased thrust. It's not controversial, and pilots deal with it routinely. MCAS does not activate under normal flight conditions.
> MCAS does not activate under normal flight conditions.
This is entirely the problem. If MCAS operates, you're already doing something wrong. It was required in the first place because the likelihood of pilots doing something wrong is high. Now, instead of MCAS backing up the pilot's bad decision making, it might cut out at a critical moment.
We already know that Boeing revised (increased) the authority of MCAS without notifying the FAA because testing found the MCAS to be inadequate initially.
You can't simultaneously need MCAS and be okay with it being disabled intermittently. Those two things are directly at odds.
Yes, to my understanding the only issue a pilot would run into with MCAS disabled and neutral is decreasing control forces at high angles of attack. The FAA requires control forces to monotonically increase with angle. I say "only" but that probably makes for a very weird feeling airplane to fly; how dangerous that actually is for a trained pilot I can't answer for sure but my gut and experience tells me not very.
As far as Lakefield goes, this first generation is going to be a rough challenge for Intel – they are pitching a low performance product in a high-cost segment based on technology
Yeah, looks like the power of four atom core in an high end ultrabook is gonna be a though sale.
Honestly, I think it is fascinating that Samsung is selling a laptop where you choose between an 8-core heterogenous ARM chip and a 5-core heterogeneous x86 chip, both running Windows. With the built-in LTE, it seems like the ultimate niche computer.
A bit random but I'm hoping that Apple will be adding an LTE modem or at least offering it on their new ARM "Apple Silicon" devices. I wish they would do that as well as having something like "internet modes" so apps could check if they should try to use less bandwidth or can use as much as they want.
Frankly it's to us Canadians to start asking our lawmakers to force better pricing, at least in metro areas where the population density is similar to Europe.
LTE is plenty fast for most business tasks. I have an LTE modem in my laptop and can pull it out in a busy airport and get work done even online. At LTE speeds you probably don't even need Wifi except as a way to get on the local network.
> Each Snowmobile includes a network cable connected to a high-speed switch capable of supporting 1 Tb/second of data transfer spread across multiple 40 Gb/second connections. Assuming that your existing network can transfer data at that rate, you can fill a Snowmobile in about 10 days.
I was actually thinking of giving LibreBoot a try until all this drama broke. Now it just seems like the personal soapbox of a particular individual, which doesn't inspire a lot of confidence in its viability (especially given how ambitious it is).
Try coreboot, it supports more boards and is the actual upstream project. Libreboot is just a set of patches that removes support for boards that require Intel Management Engine and rips out microcode updates.
Was the transgender employee fired because she was transgender, or was she fired for some other reason? It is really hard to tell unless there is a court case on it.
If you remember Ellen Pao claimed she was fired because of her gender, and it went to court, and the only proof that they had for anything was that Pao was bullying others and being a bad employee with performance issues.
Transgender people need to be treated with respect and dignity, but if they don't perform well they will get fired like anyone else.
I don't like the drama either, but it happens from time to time.
Well, we don't really know all of the facts but it apparently wasn't a problem when she was hired, wasn't a problem when they highlighted her for Lady Ada Lovelace day, and it wasn't a problem that kept FSF from giving her a senior job title. FSF obviously isn't going to comment on the matter but Leah Rowe at one point claimed on the libreboot website that the employee that was let go had said that it was fine for Leah to raise cain over it but that was reverted not long after it was put up. Leah also claimed to be taking the high ground to avoid naming names and then promptly turned around and claimed that three individuals at FSF were misogynistic and that they should be fired immediately.
I don't have enough data to make anything but FUD from it.
There are many reasons that someone could change their mind and decide to take different actions than they have before. Either way it is clear that some form of 'bad blood' has arisen and that things are now divisive. Unfortunately I don't know who I can side with on this issue due to the lack of data.
In my mind, I really don't even see any reason to believe that there is significant bad blood between the actual employee that was fired and FSF. The only side of this story that we have is Leah's and she's already outed the ex-employee, slandered 3 people in every way she can, and either the fired employee changed her mind about supporting Leah's actions, or Leah made that up as well.
At the very least, I think we can conclude that the FSF and the fired employee are unhappy with Leah's actions.
People who've worked at the FSF say it is very progressive and open to transgenders. The idea that they would fire someone for being trans is just outrageous.
The claim isn't exactly that: "A transgender employee at the FSF was being harassed by a transphobic colleague for being trans. The trans person, not the bully, was then fired when they stood up for themselves, because it was seen as trouble making while the bully remained silent."
Your source for that is from Leah Rowe who has proven in this situation to be untrustworthy. Read the discussion on `gnu-prog-discuss`[0]. The employee being trans was not the issue.
Yes, my source for the claim is the author of the claim. And I cited it to point out that Leah Rowe doesn't claim that just being trans was the issue, but that it was the fact that the employee spoke up against the bullying.
It makes no sense. FSF treats employees better than most companies and are very open minded as well. It is very progressive and open to GLBT people, etc.
I think it is some sort of politics, like trying to attack Linus because he rejected some SJW's contributions to the Linux Kernel because it caused a Kernel panic and asked if she bothered to test the code before submitting it. Then he is accused of being sexist towards her because he used cuss words.
Didn't Linus say something along the lines of "I don't care about your gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or whatever else, except the code you submit"? That seems to be his attitude toward such things.
I love how "free software" rails against the anti-freedom of "open source software" and then fails to carry that libertarian spirit through letting people decide for themselves what to do with their own bodies and not judging them for it.
On the other hand, the problem with claiming "I'm being biased against!" is of course twofold: One, any noncisgendered-white-male employee can claim it even if the main problem was a lack of productivity. Two, when I feel unwelcome, my optimal response is to just leave instead of suing those I feel unwelcome from (with the added assumption that it is very hard to change people's preferences for other people, and that there's a certain amount of "dealing with the way things are right now instead of forcing them to be otherwise" acceptance available.)
Nobody likes drama queens, not employers and not employees. Just go, I say, and find a welcoming environment. You're not married to a software project.
Yeah, it's long past time to reconsider whether GNU's ideology is actually working - if you have an organization that's dedicated to "freedom" that's firing people because they receive too much harassment, something has gone wrong.
I've been of the opinion for many years that GNU is delivering something more like "freedom for people who are in our situation." There's the counterintuitive effect where moving things from hardware to firmware, i.e., enabling (at least in theory) the end user to change how their computing works, makes a system less "free" in the GNU definition, because the standard for measurement is how computers used to be. There's the fact that GNU has never prioritized the web platform (possibly because Stallman doesn't use a web browser, and instead emails URLs to a server that replies with a lynx -dump of the page, reading the response when he checks email the next day), and so, one, there's very little support for a freedom-respecting web browser, and two, there is basically no attempt at solving the JavaScript trap, on the grounds that not running JS is better. There's the complete lack of an ethos on cloud computing other than "Don't," despite the fact that GNU comes out of the university environment where all your computing was controlled by someone else, namely the university sysadmins.
So, ultimately, there's a long history of the GNU folks not anticipating ways in which people have their computing freedoms infringed and basically going "Well you're doing something wrong, stop doing that." It's sadly quite unsurprising that the same ideology means that when an employee is harassed in a way that the executives haven't personally experienced, they assume that the employee must be doing something wrong.
>Yeah, it's long past time to reconsider whether GNU's ideology is actually working - if you have an organization that's dedicated to "freedom" that's firing people because they receive too much harassment, something has gone wrong.
There is no proof has been disclosed indicating the person fired was for receiving too much harrassment and with the responses of the rest of libreboot devs I don't think such a thing happened at all.
>There's the fact that GNU has never prioritized the web platform (possibly because Stallman doesn't use a web browser, and instead emails URLs to a server that replies with a lynx -dump of the page, reading the response when he checks email the next day), and so, one, there's very little support for a freedom-respecting web browser,
> and two, there is basically no attempt at solving the JavaScript trap, on the grounds that not running JS is better. There's the complete lack of an ethos on cloud computing other than "Don't," despite the fact that GNU comes out of the university environment where all your computing was controlled by someone else, namely the university sysadmins.
> So, ultimately, there's a long history of the GNU folks not anticipating ways in which people have their computing freedoms infringed and basically going "Well you're doing something wrong, stop doing that."
RMS agrees with you! From his Reddit AMA a while back [1].
All in all, I think it is a mistake to defend people's rights with one hand tied behind our backs, using nothing except the individual option to say no to a deal. We should use democracy to organize and together impose limits on what the rich can do to the rest of us. That's what democracy was invented for!
> very little support for a freedom-respecting web browser
I mean 15-20% market share for Firefox doesn't really sound like much but it's much better than the 2% that Linux has.
> possibly because Stallman doesn't use a web browser
Not that it really matters in this discussion but that's not really true anymore. He supposedly uses Firefox with Tor.
> not running JS is better
He's not exactly wrong. Just from a security perspective alone, would you feel comfortable running random binaries downloaded from the internet? You're putting a lot of faith in your browser's sandbox. Outside of F/OSS libraries most JS on the web is proprietary. The LibreJS [2] project is something that's supposed to counteract this (and I support it on my site) but it's beyond niche even in tech circles.
