NAK

Thanks for another example. The online comic "Pearls Before Swine" has lots of similar examples.

When I'm working in Japanese I try to watch as it reforms the sentences. The final decisions are usually made before I can finish reading the next sentence. However, since I am usually reading from published books, the language is not raw and should follow closely along the language standard. (But I am on volume ten of a series from an author who writes in a dialect.) In general, the mistakes I see do reflect my own pronunciation problems, especially at the beginning of words.

When I'm dictating in English my language should be much more challenging for the interpretation even though my pronunciation is more accurate. The kinds of mistakes and what I can learn from them are more linked to places where my thinking or wording is unclear.

Nice FP, but apparently my problem is that I believe there are such things as "reality" and "the truth"--even though I doubt we can ever understand them fully. The historical examples are especially interesting because so much of the "meaning" of "history" comes out of the interpretations, even in those cases where we are able to reach agreement on the series of events.

Those are scare quotes even though I don't expect the funny mods they deserve. FP was modded insightful when it deserves at least some funny for effect.

Interesting recent example in Polostan by the great Neal Stephenson.

Nice FP thread though no mention of advertising as the driving force. It's really a case of TANSTAAFL. Americans (but people in general) thought they were getting something for nothing, but the advertisers have always wanted docile and obedient customers. Well educated people may wonder about the truth of the ads or even learn how to ignore them.

I am quite aware of that, but it applies to "sufficiently" large objects. However I think your attitude is asinine and I do not care about your attempts to convince yourself that you are some sort of fount of wisdom. I regard this "discussion" as terminated.

Mostly the ACK, but I'm not fully convinced by your calming words. I can believe that the satellites are smart enough to stay in their assigned places but doubt they have radar capabilities to detect incoming debris, especially if the relative velocity is high. Deorbiting after damage seems quite unreliable and I think the profit motivation will inhibit preemptive deorbiting until it's too late (if some sort of cascade has started)...

In the form of an attempted joke, it's a tangled web we weave when in low earth orbit we try to park large numbers of satellites.

Several things I really like in there, but the main one is the 7-year thing. Maybe even a bit long for me, but the current two years definitely feels too short.

I'm skeptical about the "layman" replacement thing, especially when water resistance comes into the picture. Tools and adhesives?

I strongly approve of the idea though I think that much of this should be handled at the OS level. Can't speak for you, but the smartphones have already gone far beyond my requirements and I don't want to pay an arm and a leg every two years for fresh bells and whistles that I don't need, want, or use. Yes, sometimes I do adopt a new feature, but mostly I resent the time spent determining that I don't want to use various new features.

From my perspective, the main factor that forces phone replacement is the declining battery life (often associated with swelling batteries) and I've even spent half the value of an old phone to "refresh" it rather than buy a new one. That turned out to be a so-so investment, but it sounds like this European initiative might have helped out.

Returning to the original topic of managing the battery for extending the life, I think that largely depends on the usage pattern at a level that properly belongs to the OS. The goal should be to reduce charging cycles and only charge the phone as necessary. However to predict when it needs to be fully charged involves tracking both the usage of apps and average use patterns. And perhaps with a link to my calendar to (automatically?) recognize when the phone should be fully charged before I go on a longer trip than usual?

Another anecdote, but I speculate this pattern matches many people: I tend to charge the phone every day, but only to the 80% level. That option was only on my Samsung but has recently been added to my Chromebook... After more than a year it seems like the phone battery is holding up fairly well, though there are days when I return near 20%... (Definitely not planning to buy another Galaxy and mostly blaming myself for getting fooled again.) When I replaced my previous (Oppo) phone the swollen battery had reached the state where I was often looking for chances to recharge during the day.

As regards the AC blather... Well, perhaps it's just my getting old and becoming an even bigger fuddy duddy? There was a time when I hacked to the bottom of 8- and 16-bit OSes, but I shudder at the time involved in such hacking these years. In theory I'm paying my phone company to take care of that stuff (and Rakuten Mobile has negatively responded by basically terminating the problem reporting system (which is why I'm also considering a new phone company beyond a new phone)). (Locally it was mandated some years ago that you can take your phone number to a new phone company, and my primary phone number has followed me to four or five of them...)

Mod parent funny and grandparents whoops by reason of "needs better sequencing".

I acknowledged that space is big, but mostly I'm getting the impression that no one knows what the Kessler Syndrome is. Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

However if I was seriously concerned I'd be researching how well the satellites can maintain their positions and if they are smart enough and capable of deorbiting quickly if'n called to... Recently read The Galaxy, and the Ground Within by Becky Chambers. I'm pretty sure that was described as some kind of collisional cascade, but without mentioning Kessler.

Mod parent funny, but I bet it gets tagged as insightful instead. This business should be a public service, but...

However this is fundamentally a situation where the government should be blocking competition and the useful service should not be managed in search of profit. Yeah, I know space is big, but the lust for profit is definitely infinite and if profit is the main criterion, then at some point there are going to be too many satellites floating around and they are going to start bumping into each other. No one wants Kessler Syndrome.

Oh, wait. I forgot that with sufficient FinTech you can place suitable bets to profit from that, too. Also from betting on the collapse of democracy. And the prop bets! Just think of all the profits to be made on the right prop bets.

Oh wait some more. I just started thinking about some clever speculator making a huge bet on the collapse of the satellite communication system and then deliberately triggering the Kessler Syndrome. Talk about reaping the whirlwind of YUGE profits. It's not like anyone in their right mind would even think of doing such a thing, right? How could such a fool possibly get control over the right buttons to launch the trigger rocket?

Mod parent funny, but I think there is a deeper problem in the anti-freedom pro-greedom economic system that supports and even encourages any mergers that reduce competition. Slightly unusual in that this was a preemptive strike whereas the majority of anti-competitive mergers are in fire sales to obtain the loser's customer base.

I still think there is a solution through pro-freedom anti-monopoly tax policy. Basic idea would be a progressive tax on profits linked to dominance of any niche. Current version would involve at least three detection systems: (1) Do customers have enough choices from truly competing companies? (2) Can wannabe competitors get into the niche? (3) Can the employees find comparable jobs at competitors? Negative answers increase the tax rate with the obvious solution being for the monopolist to divide itself into competing daughter companies...

Joining the "me, too" branch, but I'll add some divergent anecdotal details and one extension area.

I was actually assassinated on Facebook at the end of 2022 and never found out who done it or what I was accused of doing wrong. Facebook is too evil to allow such questions? Or maybe my real crime was solving the waste-of-time problem by strictly limiting my Facebook time? Some years earlier I set a rule of five minutes/day and enforced it with two little timers. First one was the four-minute warning and I had to close the tab before the second one went off. That was enough for me to see top news from friends and maybe add a couple of short reactions. As noted by others, I lost touch with some old friends, but can't really say whether it affected my overall mental state much.

As regards Instagram, I looked at it a couple of times over the years and couldn't feel any attraction. Did read a book about Instagram later on and still can't understand why the entire idea has any appearance of success.

Yet I was surprised to see no mention of the cesspool formerly known as Twitter in the comments. [The new brand name is basically unsearchable?] I nuked my account on that one after Musk bought it and before the stink reached high heaven. Not sure why, but I've been looking at Mastodon and Bluesky since then... Bluesky is sort of useful as an early warning system for some comic website updates.