I wear my Garmin 24/7 and generally trust it. I wouldn't cancel plans because of what it said but I can definitely tell when it's showing me data that reinforces how I feel (good or bad).
Contrary to lots of other opinions here, I bought a 65" Samsung TV at the beginning of covid and I sincerely don't have any significant complaints. The remote is easy to use, launching apps is straightforward, connecting an ARC soundbar was no problem, nor was connecting a Chromecast and an Xbox, and it "just works". Every once in a blue moon (maybe twice a year-ish) I've had to power cycle it to fix a wifi connectivity issue, which may well just be a result of DHCP lease expiration on my network.
I have a modern Sony Bravia, too, which is running "Google TV" natively. On the plus side, the UI is just about identical to what you get with a Google TV dongle (which I also have, plugged into an old 32" monitor in front of my bike trainer), but it's also a really heavy interface that's also increasingly rich in ads. If your household is like mine, and holds subscriptions to a half dozen or more streaming services, some of which are bundled and some of which are either discounted or comped via entirely different subscriptions (mobile phone) or membership (credit card), it's really not helpful to have Google show me subscriptions I might want to add-on to my Google TV sub, nor do I appreciate seeing ads for content from things I don't subscribe to. Also, the Sony remote has about 50 buttons -- not a fan.
All things considered, I end up having to fiddle with the Sony TV far more frequently than the Samsung one, usually because of network or app issues.
We have an old Roku stick plugged into an old tv in a spare room, too, and it's almost intolerably slow. It's primary use case is to plug into our projector for backyard movies in nice weather, so I keep it around, but man is it dog slow.
That's what all Samsung televisions do, and there is no way to turn it off. They advertise on their own web page that they monitor the content viewed on their televisions for targeted advertising.
This isn't via some sort of metadata, they take screenshots at regular intervals and upload them to very insecure hosting.
I hope you never look at any "sensitive" content on your TV!
I don't really care because I only use the TV to access other streaming apps, and I know they already see everything I watch anyway. I don't have either cable TV or a cable-like alternative (YTTV, Roku Live, Sling, etc). Periodically I'll use it to cast something to, but it's usually my kid's soccer matches from a website on a laptop.
Fwiw, to the best of my awareness, I don't receive any advertising from my Samsung TV other than perhaps the strip of suggested things to watch (half of which are "continue watching" linked to watch history in the app I'm hovering over) that lives above the app list. This is wildly different from Google TV, which has a core value prop of embedding advertising right in your face.
It's called automatic content recognition (ACR). Most systems take low resolution (about 640x480 or 320x240) black and white screenshots at regular intervals, compress them do death, and upload that to big brother. That's more than enough to determine what specific kink or style of porn you're into, if you make the mistake of thinking that watching that kind of stuff in the privacy of your own home is private.
Rule #1 for Microsoft product strategy: if you can't yourselves figure out the SKUs and how they bundle together, the odds are good that your customers will overpay. It's worked for almost 50 years and there's no evidence that it will stop working. Azure is killing it and will continue to eat the enterprise even as AWS starts/continues to struggle.
The best solution is to offer accelerated math classes in public schools, in both elementary and middle. Mostly in middle school because elementary math can usually be handled through differentiated instruction by the teacher, unless the child is exceptionally advanced.
I really like the way my kid's middle school does it: accelerated 6th grade math covers the entirety of the 6th, 7th, and 8th grade standard math curriculum, which sets the kids up for algebra in 7th grade and geometry in 8th. Because the standard middle school math curriculum is essentially just advanced arithmetic, it's pretty straightforward to bundle this way. It also makes it easy to inject 7th graders who missed 6th grade accelerated math into the accelerated track if they pass the algebra qualifying test before 7th grade.
When I was growing up the G&T program started in 4th grade and cohorts from multiple schools were pulled into a school that ran the "gifted" program. Essentially all the kids were tracked from 4th grade through high school graduation and there was no real possibility for non-G&T kids to get into the "gifted" classes in middle school. In HS that just transitioned into APs and college dual-enrollment; by the time I graduated HS in '99, I had 22 credit hours of college classes banked, including dual-enrollment bio and calc 1 + 2, plus a bunch of humanities APs.
Today -- at least in our bay area public high school -- there's no tracking outside of math and the vast majority of classes can contain students in multiple grades. That absolutely was not the case when I was in school, and imho it's an improvement.
No, it wouldn't cost thousands. There are plenty of shops that specialize in prototypes and small pilot runs and there's nothing complicated about the design or material of this product.
mmmm... In this case, I don't think the "having a PhD is useless" is remotely close to what Sabine is saying, which is "academic science exploration and experimentation is broken". Yes, it's PhDs and career academics as core participants in the game, but there are plenty of valid reasons to pursue a PhD and then move into industry that are no incompatible with either 1) what Sabine is saying, and 2) the PhD experience in higher ed.
The current academic system certainly has a lot of flaws, but Sabine also has an axe to grind, so one should take what she says with a few grains of salt.
Do you know the nature of the axe that she grinds? It's important to determine the kind of salt pairing.
Often times people have grievances against systems because they aren't doing a good job achieving their aims or there's big injustice/corruption. Sometimes people take an ego wound from something and it causes them to be overly uncharitable or dishonest for revenge.
The meme that permeates from academia about publishing quantity being more important than quality has me believing it can't be all ego wound. There's problems there.
I don’t know what caused her to go down this path, but she has become more radical and sensationalist over the years, and her convictions about fundamental physics border on crackpottery IMO. I don’t see her engaging in good faith on all these topics.
That could be because she optimizes for views, willingly or not. There is a reason why a lot of podcasters and youtubers move toward more extreme and polarizing views, that's what attracts more viewers and creates more engagement. Same reason why places like twitter or facebook pushed the emotionally charged posts up... keeps the viewers engaged and locked.
sounds like the criticism still applies and is ever more relevant if you wish to understand that Trump voters, who by and large do not have college degrees, experience resentment when they hear academics are getting federal funds to do things that "sound cool" to support their "comfortable lifestyles."
Why is it right for people who didn't go to college to be forced to pay for physicists to do useless research?
Generally speaking, I'm with you. However, there is one use case that's exceptional: when you're with a large group where every sub-party will be ordering & paying separately. It can be a godsend to have phone ordering when 25-50 people descend on a restaurant all at once (my typical use case being kids sports teams + family members). It's absolutely not ideal for experiential dining where you're going for ambience as much as the cuisine, but it definitely expedites the ordering process and the ability to keep a tab open is a huge benefit.
I have a very close friend who's Chilean but grew up in Brasil after his family immigrated to escape Pinochet. Overall, Chile is exceptionally safe by South American standards, especially outside Santiago (which has all the perks and challenges of any large city).
It is very hot in Paraguay so I am waiting a while before I visit. Today I'm in Lima and eventually plan on visiting Salvador in Brazil. Asuncion has become one of the top destinations for digital nomads and I am curious what it is about this land locked country other than the very favorable tax laws that is attracting people.
Afaict, they're doing everything the easy way. I wouldn't be surprised if the CC bank doesn't allow a $0 option, but DOGE doesn't want to actually administratively cancel all cards, either, so they're left with this.
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