The US and Europe has become acutely aware that too much semi-conductor manufacturing has been outsourced to China and other Asian nations and they’re trying to build some back domestically. So that’s the geopolitical reason for it.
How long before Nvdia buys them, or at least tries to. Nvidia tried to buy Arm but got stopped by the UK government.
Protectionism only works in the VERY short term. If the USA doesn’t pull its finger out of its ass and make affordable good EVs, then its automotive industry will crash and burn. Because the rest of the world unaffected by tariffs will be buying Chinese (or Korean / European) EVs and not American ones because they’ll be expensive and suck.
I hate local file search in Windows. So many times I’ve wonder why my machine is crawling and I go to the taskbar and discover Windows search indexer is killing my machine.
For the other stuff in Windows 11, I wonder if it knows I’m in Europe because I’ve not seen any egregious advertising - it has the default shit they set up for you like the MSN home page in Edge which is annoying but it can all be changed.
I have Windows 11 on a couple of machines and honestly it’s just Windows 10 with a somewhat slicker taskbar and control panel. Functionally it is almost identical. I’m sure there is a random bunch of changes on the periphery but it’s really not a compelling proposition if someone has Windows 10 and is happy with it.
When you have a narcissistic sociopath for a boss don’t expect job security. All these layoffs and his insane letter will do is cultivate toadying, fear, distrust, cliques and a culture of backstabbing within Tesla.
If they weeded out some of the shittier ideas they’d be one in nine or eight.
I saw the Marquess Brownlee review of this thing last night and I wonder why companies make this crap and who is fool enough to fund it. It’s obviously doomed to fail, as are most “smart” gadgets & devices. The best that can be said for it, is at least there is no subscription to use it and it’s not outrageously expensive but that’s damning it with faint praise.
The EFF has some info about the practice - https://www.eff.org/pages/list-printers-which-do-or-do-not-display-tracking-dots.
I imagine there are ways and means of obfuscating / anonymizing the dots such as blocking the printer from emitting them (e.g. an empty yellow cartridge that the printer perceives as full), modifying the firmware, using a burner printer, or using a mono laser jet.
As a side issue, most modern bank notes have a bunch of yellow circles integrated into the design on each side. They look random but they’re in a recognisable pattern called a constellation that enables devices like copiers / scanners to recognize when people are trying to copy money or other financial instruments like checks.
So you have a crap master. Compare the same master between compact disc and vinyl when making your judgments.
Absolutely you would for the reasons I mentioned. Vinyl is typically made from digital and the first step of mastering is altering it to remove sibilance, loudness and other things that either waste space, cause distortion or cause the needle to jump. It’s already lossy and then as it is printed and played, more loss and distortion happens. Even playing the record causes it to wear and for dust to accumulate. While it is completely possible for a badly mastered CD to sound worse than a well mastered LP, the reality is if they are from the same master and other biases are eliminated (i.e. A/B testing) then the CD is going to win out since it has a higher dynamic range and frequency.
I think that is disingenuous. It’s clear Musk has been a driving force in Tesla and to a lesser extent in SpaceX and Starlink. And while I hate the guy with a passion and think he is a massive prick who is an awful boss and who takes credit for other’s work, I have no doubt that if not for him EVs wouldn’t be a mainstream technology they are today. Just like with Apple and smart phones, Tesla did not invent the electric car but they made the first cars people actually wanted to buy.
Vinyl isn’t lossless. First they start with a master - either analogue or digital, then they strip out high/low frequency and compress the dynamic range to make it fit the format, not waste space or jump tracks. Also, the act of pressing discs introduces errors, and the playing equipment can introduce noise like wow, flutter, hisses and pops. I bet some record players, especially ones with USB connections or equalizers probably toss in some adc / dac conversion in there too depending on how they do their thing. There are losses end to end in other words.
CDs are also downsampled from studio tracks, but the format has a higher frequency and dynamic range so providing a CD and vinyl record were from the same master you are going to get a truer, better quality audio from the CD every single time. Also, since it’s digital (with error correction) you are getting EXACTLY what was put on the disc. You could rip it to FLAC or some other lossless format and it would be bit for bit identical.
Exactly, although CD isn’t so much “retro” as it is a high frequency, high dynamic range audio recording. The only reason vinyl sounds “warm” is because their dynamic range & frequency is compressed so the needle doesn’t bounce out of its groove.
While it’s possible for a CD to receive a terrible master, if the mastering across formats is the same and other biases are eliminated (i.e. proper A/B testing) then CD will be objectively better sounding every single time.
Hipsters paying 2-3x as much for a vinyl LP which objectively has worse audio quality than a CD.
I think we can give Musk credit for progressing technology - electric cars & space rocketry and some other things. But he is also an incredible asshole, has little regard for the people who work for him, has no inner filter and has some incredibly stupid hot takes.
Jobs basically had one job - be the screaming obnoxious asshole in charge who harangued the engineers until they came up with something to his liking. And then took the credit when they did. Basically just the Elon Musk of his day.
I use Twitter through a browser and ad blocker and the content is borderline dogshit as it is. I use it because inertia means the things I want to find are still represented there. But it can’t be long before some major accounts move elsewhere, or deprioritize their presence. I’m thinking mainly of news orgs, but NGOs and governments might move too.
I expect their logic is their review “curation” racket is a sideshow and the real money is selling information to agencies and sales companies.
Nvidia’s has a market cap 30x of Intel’s. So it could issue more stock to raise capital for a buyout. It’s not the company equity but the market cap that it needs to have money to purchase. Even a controlling stake of > 50% would give them defacto control. Of course governments & regulators would probably block it or force Nvidia to divest bits of itself, and that’s probably the greatest protection Intel has against such a scenario.
But if Intel weakens further, it may well be someone else tries to acquire it. I bet a lot of companies would love to snaffle it up. It’s kind of ironic that Intel used to be the big dog in the semiconductor space but even AMD is bigger than it these days and are potentially many others who’d like buy it out. In fact, for all we know Intel might be shedding all these jobs to make it look more attractive to potential buyers.