Touchscreens appeal to a lot of knuckleheads, but mainly the main reason they're so popular is because manufacturers can do the wiring once, then change the UI as much as they want without having to redo it. In other words, it's cheaper for them. One thing touchscreens don't do is perform better than physical buttons and knobs.
Soft keys/knobs have that exact same benefit, and people are quite familiar with the idea since it's ubiquitous in ATM interfaces. You get the software-defined functions and labels, without the touch screen. Quite popular with audio mixing consoles and tons of other professional gear, too.
Everyone always brings up this "it's cheaper" argument and I get it from an "only financial" standpoint.
But when was the last time and when is the next time you're going to change the behaviour of the "up" button on the steering weel to something like "switch to backwards gear" instead of "volume up" (the newest Volvo EX30 has touch buttons only on the steering wheel).
This argument is so dumb. This argument does not count for any replacement of knobs-to-touch-button, because there will (almost) never exist a use case for changing the behaviour of the button.
So IMHO manufacturers take something that worked and still works, replace it with something less error prone, simply to justify flexibility nobody asked for and noone will ever actually use.
As someone who's worked in auto manufacturing, moving buttons around happens all the time for all sorts of reasons. Different trims can have different buttons in the same place for example, or different cars using the same consoles.
It's not every button on every vehicle, but I have definitely had that conversation before when the hardware design is due to be finished before the product team is done changing things.
Sorry - but 3.5 mm / 1/8“ jacks / plugs are crap. They are prone to kinds of contact issues / noise, are not sturdy enough to withstand lateral forces like their 6.3 mm / 1/4“ siblings. Their pull out force is either non existent or plug destroying. Unless they are of the rare threaded type I try to avoid them (just as barrel jacks). Better get a (mini-)XLR or Lemo connector…
There is no space to put big acoustic ports in the small gadgets, so they are replaced with usb-c instead. And I've had infinitely less number of problematic 3.5" ports than for example usb type-c ports across all gadgets I've ever owned. I.e. zero problematic 3.5" and so far two crapped out usb-c ports (I mean mechanically crapped, so they do function, but cables need to be shuffled around until contact is made and they are no longer held in place in the port).
I've got headphones with 1/4" connectors. I like the sets where the cord is detachable, each headphone has a jack, one is 1/4" one is 1/8", and the included cord has 1/4" on one end and 1/8" on the other. Then you can plug into whatever.
I'm not cool enough to have XLR on any of my devices.
I really want to use these advanced approaches more, and they make a lot of sense in the daily fantasy scene (this analysis was for tourney long EURO 2024 I think?), but for something like season long NFL, I am convinced it is mostly luck:
Hope your top 3 picks stay healthy
Hope your 3-4 "flyer" picks (the guys who are on a new team, rookies, etc.,) don't completely bust
Play the waiver wire (mid week pickups to fill in positions where needed) well
The one part where more skill/operations research is involved would be playing the matchups (top defense vs crap offense, WR1 vs rookie corner) but even then it's not a surefire recipe for success since there is so much variance (that top WR play might be nuked by a run oriented game). But it is playing smart so you should do it.
Almost every year my American football fantasy team is loaded with injuries. If your season is too long and close to the playoffs, teams will start benching star players so they don’t get hurt.
One of the worst parts for NFL are the divas who can’t control their off field behavior or emotions. I’m looking at you Antonio Brown.
Id love to see an analysis on skill v luck for nfl fantasy. Far too often do I see someone who does not watch football and does not make team changes win a league after drafting Tom Brady in the second round.
I used to be co-owner of an NFL fantasy prize league company (before Fanduel et al came along and put us and all of our competitors out of business). After a decade of seeing thousands of users create an manage teams for an entire season I'd say it's probably more skill than luck but luck plays a much bigger factor than people are willing to admit.
The biggest problem with leagues is everyone in the league remaining involved even when it's obvious they're out of the playoff race. This can lead to lopsided victories later in the season and change playoff seeding. This can be just as impactful as any injuries or bad weeks and the like. It was a constant challenge for us and is something the daily leagues don't have to worry about.
The fantasy playoffs are probably the most pure form of NFL fantasy leagues but that is also very dependent on who the opponents are for each of your players those last couple weeks and who is even avail to play given players being rested or injured later in the year.
In some ways this actually isn't a whole lot different than the actual NFL. That said we did seem to see the same people every year win more often than others, so it's not all luck.
Unsurprising if you have noticed the way (I am going with 10-15%, unsubstantiated speculation) of people drive these days:
-Running red lights
-Not stopping at stop signs
-Driving way too fast for the street/road they're on
-Passing when you're not supposed to (single/double yellows)
You can chalk it up to decreased enforcement. Maybe that will help. The tradeoff is potentially more high speed chases and increased police encounters.
Honestly, it's just a lack of decency and common courtesy. It's like people who litter or don't pick up their dog's poop. I don't know how you fix it. It's a symptom of a decaying society, that we cannot count on each other to do the simple things correctly.
I heard about this on NPR the other day and immediately thought of the Skyscraper Index. Self-fulfilling prophecy, financial divination or not statistically relevant?
Haven't finished reading this but I do wonder about the (still fairly common?) belief that Russia and China very much distrust and despise each other. They're much different than they were in the middle half of the 20th century when their animosity towards each other was based on who they though should be the vanguard of the communist-socialist Leninists-Marxist world revolution.
And if people still believe in this split, incorrectly, will that cause people to incorrectly analyze the situation? As a general principle Russia and China are each untrustworthy of other countries so perhaps they're playing the "keep your friends close but your enemies closer" card. And it's at this point I start to feel that my analysis is too circular, and that China will continue to assist Russia only so long as it suits them (the self interest argument that someone else posted about).
In the medium term, the named states all see benefit in moving the world back towards a multi-polar environment with regional spheres of influence and richer individual sovereignty. That's the common cause that sees them coordinate, cooperate, and simply borrow from the windows of opportunity that each opens.
Further out, many can of course anticipate conflict with their neighbors and peers, but those challenges arrive in their own day, in their own way, and only after American influence gets pushed out from their purported domains.
I knew U-boats operated off the Eastern US coast but I did not know they operated so much in the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean.
Tangential, I've been watching this documentary series called Battlefield (highly recommended) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21qqkC1cWvE and they mention later versions of U-boats had a 12,000+ mile range. So the Gulf of Mexico is within range especially if they sortied from France.
Also one of the fascinating parts from my own perspective. Apparently the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Caribbean from a history perspective, which I never read about, and kind of looks like the "Year of Fear" from a history perspective. ~350 ships of 2 million tons in less than a year. (WP says by 17 submarines)
The histogram zoom feature being one of the cooler UI portions of this. Something that places like MarineTraffic, FlightAware, and Windy could probably implement as a neat zoom for seeing boat traffic statistics in areas and such.
Also pretty cool for divers. Maybe not the old steel, yet a lot of these are in fairly shallow water, which would be pretty neat for diving excursions. Probably semi-dangerous, yet there's probably also humans willing to take the risk or sign a disclosure.
Is there some way to change the displays? The interface looks like it should be possible ("Show only", "Show sunk by"), yet clicking on times, clicking areas of the UI, only zoom/shrink, and bring up individual ships.
1) A blogger publishes an article warning about scammer/fraudster/terrorist known as person Person X. They publish on January 1 2024.
2) Person X wants to get this info out of the Google results.
3) Person X goes to one one of these reputation management companies. They copy verbatim the article and post it to Tumblr. Tumblr has a feature to back-date posts so they back-date their post to December 1 2023. This makes it appear like the content appeared before the blogger published their article.
4) The reputation management company then sends a DCMA takedown notice to Google with the Tumblr post as evidence that the blogger is infringing on their content. Google does their DCMA thing and de-indexes the blog post.
The blog poster's remedy is to appeal the takedown at which point Google would then re-list their post...at which point this process starts over again?
Stuff like this is incredibly frustrating. It's so simple yet effective because of how the DCMA compliance process is implemented.
That "sorry I assumed you already knew this" part of the answer is wild! So artificial but so real at the same time. I can't think of the word to describe that kind of behavior, it's not patronizing, it's like passive aggressive flattery?
When CEOs or college presidents or others go before Congress like this, is it because they were invited or is it because they are subpoenaed? If it's the former, it really feels like talking to Congress is like talking to the police ( without a lawyer); there is no upside and it's all downside. Member of Congress ask these loaded questions where even if the person wants to answer, they can't because the Congress person doesn't let them finish. Or the Congress person follows up with basically the same question but worded slightly differently and when the person inevitably answers slightly differently or tries to give a nuanced answer, it blows up in their face and the Congress person has these crazy out of context sound-bites to take home.
Switches Buttons Dials Knobs
and 3.5 mm jacks