modern layouts with tons of wasted whitespace and lowercase buttons that have no obvious widget borders.
I don't care if it looks cluttered- I'd rather have one page that I have to stare at for a second and then learn it than 5 pages that I have to scroll through every time.
There was an episode of The Outer Limits (7x08 Think Like a Dinosaur) that dealt with this exact question.
In that episode, humans are maybe-given a teleportation tech that creates a perfect copy somewhere else, but the aliens need to trust that we will 'balance the equation' (destroy the original) every time. That's easy when the human in question is immobilized for transfer. Only one transfer goes wrong- the person being transferred is woken up before the transfer is confirmed, and then the transfer gets confirmed. So now you have the original human, who's already been copied, and the transfer operator still has to 'balance the equation'...
Actually it's pretty well understood.
The human body reacts to CO2 buildup with a 'gasping for air' sensation. Nitrogen however, not at all. The air we breathe is 80% nitrogen 20% oxygen, so we aren't sensitive to nitrogen at all. Breathing air with little oxygen is something well understood as it can happen to pilots of unpressurized aircraft. Here's a funny example of what happens when pressurization fails. Once ATC figures out he has hypoxia, they order him to descend to 11,000' (which is usually the point hypoxia starts to kick in) and he's fine. But while he's hypoxic, he happily admits he has no control over his airplane and is totally unbothered by that fact.
There's a thing called a hypoxia chamber- the oxygen % of the air is reduced (not eliminated) to simulate what it's like being at high altitude without pressurization. Always funny videos there, grown men with oxygen-starved brains playing with a children's puzzle trying to put the square block in the round hole.
Execution by 100% nitrogen is the most humane death I can think of. The gas is odorless, and as it takes effect the prisoner would experience a euphoric feeling before just falling asleep and dying a few minutes later.
That said, I'm sure they'll fuck this up somehow- most civilized people have concluded that execution is barbaric and unnecessary, so whoever builds the nitrogen gadget is probably not going to be the sharpest tool in the shed.
And that's what a botched execution would look like- if you shut off the nitrogen too soon or don't ensure a high enough nitrogen concentration, the prisoner will be left with brain damage but not dead.
Of course it is.
We have more energy consuming stuff than ever. But do you ever see NEW substations being built? NEW long range power lines? I don't.
Around here, the utility has a deal- they will sell you a top of the line $400 color touchscreen WiFi thermostat that talks to Alexa and displays the weather report and does a bunch of other shit, for $10 (not a typo). In exchange, you let them remotely shut off your AC if the grid gets overloaded.
Why do they do this? Because a few truckloads of thermostats (with a bulk discount) are a fuckton cheaper than actually upgrading the grid.
And so we hear about grid overload days and possible brownouts and incentives to shut stuff off as if this is the way it's supposed to be. But the reality is these problems only exist because utilities don't keep ahead of necessary upgrades. After all, why spend the money when there's shareholders to answer to?
Yes, this absolutely. But it's also one of the serious flaws of action films that show good/bad guys- you never see the aftermath.
Take this scene from Dark Knight. Batman is on his ARMED motorcycle thing, Joker's sitting there shooting at cars driven by innocent people. So at least 3-4 innocent people are now dead because Batman wouldn't take the shot.
But you don't see that- the cars windows are blacked out. You don't see the innocent people torn apart and splattered all over their cars. You don't see the little kid sitting in the back seat screaming as Mommy is torn to shreds by automatic rifle fire and the car crashes. You don't see the family that no longer has a mom or dad or son or daughter. And because you don't see that, our presentation of Batman's 'ethics' is fake.
Ask any one of those families if they'd trade the Joker's life to get their family member back. You won't find a single one that says 'I'm glad the Joker is alive, it was worth my daddy getting shot to avoid killing him'.
The fact is- Batman is selfish. He ALLOWS 3-4+ innocent people to die, to save his own conscience
Do you see him thinking about them in bed at night? The people he COULD have saved, that WOULD be alive if he just pulled the trigger? Of course not. Because the writers only show us half the story. They black out the car windows, so we don't see the consequences.
And if you're all 'Batman isn't a vigilante', well sure. But even for a civilian, there's rules of engagement. Even in the anti-gun state of California you're allowed to use deadly force to save the life of yourself or another from a violent psychopath posing an imminent threat. Especially after Joker shot up the first car and showed he was going to do it again.
Personal liability (piercing the corporate shield) is a really tough nut to crack. That'd also do some outsized harm- think kids college fund raided for settlement money.
That said, I'd be happy to make it a personal crime to, with knowledge of the law, instruct any worker to use a machine without safety equipment and water hookup, or to work without a mask. THAT should be a personal crime, like criminal charges. And you should have to, when hired for any such supervisory position, sign a one-piece thing that has that law laid out so you can't claim you didn't know the law.
Or just get a ZigBee hub and keep using the bulbs without the Hue hub
That was a fairly famous situation. The reporter was very anti-EV, and trashed the car's crappy range and said it ran out of power on him with no warning.
Tesla released the logs showing that it popped up low power warnings and suggested places to charge several times, all of which were ignored. When the car reported 0% it was then driven to a parking lot where it drove around in circles (the whole time, suggesting a nearby charger) until it finally shut down.
The reporter was then fired.
It's an interesting thought, but he misses the #1 problem with online subscriptions- sign-up friction.
If you could just push a button and instantly be charged something, an awful lot of people would do it.
But when you go from $0 to $0.01, you will lose 99% of people, because most people can't be bothered to fill out a form, put in their credit card number, etc. Even if the amount of money involved is absurdly small, it's not the price, it's the friction.
Now if he integrates the app with Apple Pay or Google Wallet that will help, a little. But only a little.
Not normal? Sure.
But it's also not normal to have a back injury that prevents you from sleeping.
So if you can use your sleep time to do something productive that helps you, that may not be normal (IE common) but it is a good idea.
This is not good news for Russia.
The TB2 drone is slow and not stealthy. It's relatively cheap compared to something like a Predator or Reaper, but still isn't anywhere near disposable. It's a sitting duck for any sort of serious air defense, and it's most effective when air defenses are little or none.
If UA is succeeding in harming RU's air defenses, that could signal a larger shift in the war. UA has had a very successful 'dial for bullets' campaign getting more and more modern munitions out of Western allies, and from what I've heard that is starting to include actual combat aircraft. If UA is dismantling RU's air defenses, and if UA gets modern aircraft of their own, there's a possibility that UA could end up claiming air superiority over much of their territory. And THAT is a game changer.
It seems unlikely on the face of it, as RU has a great many modern aircraft and pilots to match. But then again, since the start of the war, RU has gone from the 2nd best military in the world, to the 2nd best military in Ukraine, to (up until Prigozhin blinked) the 2nd best military in Russia. So maybe their reserves of functional combat aircraft are overstated.
Either way though, this is NOT good news for Russia.
What bugs me about this is THEY ARE ALL THE SAME! Flat rectangular phones with no buttons and few ports. Where is the innovation? Where is the experimentation? Where are the different form factors?
Go back to like 2003 and you had all kinds of variety in the market. Some phones had slide out keyboards, some had physical keyboards like blackberries, they were all kinds of different expansion ports and slots and interfaces, and occasionally something totally different like Compaq had a gadget that took different backpacks that bolted on the back to give it extra capability.
Skip 20 years ahead to today, and every phone is the exact same fucking form factor. And so we obsess over millimeters and megapixels and software. There's no innovation here. There's no variety here.
The only even slightly interesting development I see is the new flip and book phones, but that technology is being used in the most boring way possible. I want to phone the size of a Snickers bar where I pull the screen out of it from the side and it unrolls as far as I want it to. I want a phone that flips open like a laptop to reveal a keyboard. Or even simpler, I want a phone that's 4 mm thicker and has a battery that lasts all week. Give that phone a headphone jack and wireless charging, put a little rubber around it to make it indestructible, then you'll have something interesting.
Until that happens, you have like six manufacturers that are basically building the exact same product. Boring.