That’s not really how it works. The components of the scale require a certain amount of current especially if it’s digital in nature. As a battery approaches being drained, it produces less current. Less current can often power an analog device to a lesser degree, like lighting up an indicator light or LCD or even the IR LED light on a remote, just very dimly. But the tolerance of the weighing components is probably much less than the tolerance of the LCD panel or LED bulb. So many devices use an LCD or indicator LED bulb to show that the device isn’t necessarily broken, it just needs new batteries.

If it’s sitting in a drawer and getting drained, then it’s probably not turned off properly or it may be the type that turns on automatically when it gets pressed down and inside the drawer it’s getting activated. Instead try taking the batteries out of any device that sits around for a long time without use. It will prevent accidental draining and also reduction the likelihood that the batteries will leak after a time. I usually pop the batteries part way out or put them in a small bag that I attach to the device with tape or a twist tie. Just make sure they aren’t touching anything metal and that the poles aren’t touching each other. Batteries will lose charge over time, but with alkaline batteries, that’s usually years, not months. Rechargeables generally take much less time, though.

I’m not one to defend Trump…ever…but this one is ridiculous. He was talking about war and whether she would push for war if she had to go into combat. If anything, this investigation plays into Trump’s hands.

He’s just trying to sell the upgrade so people will throw away their old cars and buy new ones. But that already happened with the last version and it still can’t do it. This won’t be any different with him in charge. Put an engineer in charge, invest in the tech, and you might get there. But Tesla is not going to ever get there while it needs to sell every incremental advance in tech rather than spending time and money on lots of iterations of prototypes that don’t need to be mass produced.

Lifetime of the universe is infinitely less than infinite time. So they solved for the wrong problem. Of course it may take longer than the life of the universe, or it may happen in a year. That’s the whole point of the concepts of infinity and true randomness. Once you put a limit on time or a restriction on randomness, then the thought experiment is broken. You’ve totally changed the equation.

Unfortunately, a lot of women have been brainwashed to think that it’s only “the others” that they’re after and that they’re safe. Even Hispanic Women are still voting for Trump because “it’s only the illegals”. They don’t realize it’s not about that, it’s about creating a group that is “other” to blame. And once all the “illegals” are gone and things aren’t any better they’ll continue to the rest of the Hispanic people. Once their children need an abortion to save their lives, they’ll be the ones in the funeral homes.

You have to put on a show that you are sticking to those processes, on paper. But the fines for data breaches are generally way less than they save on not having a fully funded IT department and using security products that someone got a kickback for rather than the best product.

“Hacking” isn’t some magical, intensely creative process for geniuses loke on TV. For the most part, it’s usually just finding the really common things that IT departments don’t do because they are underfunded and treat IT people like replaceable cogs. There is software out there to exploit those deficiencies. So they are forced to do things like use default or obvious admin passwords because who knows who is going to be there tomorrow to fix something and without the proper tools to store credentials, there’s no way to properly secure things.

And when a security vulnerability is found, there’s a reason why many don’t bother informing the company before going to the media. Those companies pour tons of money into lawyers to avoid admitting the fault, often getting the innocent person who found the problem arrested, and never fix the actual issue. Just ask any pro whitehat security researcher not hired by the company all the things they have to do to protect themselves from being sued or arrested for “hacking” when they notice a problem.

And government technical auditors are a rarity because the regulators are underfunded. So they might go through some small list of things during regular audits, but they don’t know to check if a DBMS system that contains backups and is stored “in the cloud” is using a default password or other common hacking targets. Hackers don’t go after the primary infrastructure most of the time. It’s not necessary because there are so many sloppy processes or left over insecure projects that “the last guy” was working on or that got defunded before it was completed, but only the primary infrastructure gets audited usually because that’s all there is time and money for.

As for going somewhere else, there often aren’t other places to go and when there are they usually have the same problem because there’s very little reason for any of them to compete with each other. Most industries have consolidated so much that there are only a handful of parent companies left so it’s easy to collude just because their leaders are often all in the same room at conferences and such.

Yeah, considering how bad banks and other financial institutions are at IT security and the fact that there’s no incentive for a capitalist financial institution to fix that problem, it’s not a good idea.

$10k for a serviceable minivan or other vehicle that would work as a primary car for parents? What about the problem that most households need two incomes and very few can commute together due to different schedules and locations and adding even an extra hour or two of daycare in order to share a car is often as much as a second car payment.

As I said, $25k is probably plenty for a small sedan for a single person who only uses it for commuting and grocery shopping, but not likely for people with multiple children that a small sedan or coupe would not work, households with multiple income earners, households with teenagers who also need a car to work, or all the other scenarios where a single, small, used sedan that’s just good enough for a short daily commute is reasonable.

$550 in car payments for a houshold is not unreasonable for the vast majority of households and usually doesn’t equate to frivolous spending.

Right. That was what I was saying.

I didn’t get into that issue, but it’s a major one, and not just for people confined to a wheelchair who might be able to get assistance through government sponsored programs, but also people with certain types of PTSD, Autism, ADHD, anxiety issues, etc., (including lots of veterans) or people with vision issues or other disabilities that aren’t considered “enough” of a disability to get help, but make it difficult or impossible to drive.

Most Americans have less than $1,000 in savings. So any car for that amount is not going to survive long. So most Americans still get loans for used cars.

And with interest rates so high, a payment of $550 will only get you about $25K. That’s enough for a decent new small sedan, but if you have kids (especially if 3 or more), that’s probably the minimum needed to get a used minivan that will last a while.

Anything else is only going to last a few years at best before needing major repairs.

Millions? I don’t think so. There is no investment that would turn $30K or whatever into millions that was safe enough to work for the majority of people. But it would be a significant help.

That being said, for most people, the amount you’d spend to live in a place where a car isn’t needed or constantly paying for ride share or taxis greatly exceeds the amount you’d save by not having a car for the vast majority of people, and that’s not even getting into the ableism issue.

And sure we could get into buying a cheaper, used car or whatever, but in the long term the maintenance costs, having to buy another car sooner, and other financial risks to cars outside of warrantee over a lifetime will add up similarly unless you’re really lucky or can repair your own cars.

Yeah I switched to a new keyboard app. Seems like it needs some tweaking. Lol.

Yeah, the first time I played Magic the Gathering with a friend’s husband was in a 4 player Commander game. I had let kept less aggressive and made it look like I wasn’t too much of a threat, all the while holding a combo that could deal quite a few points of damage, but would sacrifice a lot to do it. I waited until just the right moment, the turn before I was about to be defeated by the last standing player who was doing really well. And I won. 😁

Sales tax is different. That pays for the infrastructure to get the goods to market, theoretically. Though admittedly that is not exactly true everywhere, the general idea of sales tax is for economic reasons, not residential.

And of course it’s not going to be 100%, but we’re talking about large portions of the population that were purposely excluded, e.g. women, slaves, etc., in the past, and currently lots of people of all genders and races who live in Puerto Rico, Guam, D.C, etc…

PR alone accounts for over 3 million adults, or about 1% of the US population, with little to no representation, most of them citizens. Wyoming only has about 580,000 people, or about 0.17% of the population, but controls 2% of the Senate, 0.23% of the house, and 0.56% of the presidential election.

If only there was reasonable competition, or basically anywhere else I could get certain things without paying a crap load for shipping small things. Even in large cities there just aren’t stores that sell certain things like electronics parts, high quality brand tools, etc. The big box stores just don’t carry a lot of stuff. Not to mention soaps that I use for sensitive skin which places like Walmart doesn’t carry, but the drug stores all got bought out and closed down and the few left now have mostly empty shelves, too. Without Amazon, I just can’t get a lot of things I need or want without traveling hundreds or thousands of miles, and I live in a major city.

Never existed in the US. Women, slaves, prisoners, permanent residents, etc… It’s always been in the hands of the rich. They just pretend to listen to the people. But as Trump has many times noted, the vote doesn’t matter. The state can send delegates with any instructions they want and the federal government can decide state delegates are not valid and exclude them. Most states have laws to follow the vote, but it’s not the federal government’s job to enforce those laws if they chose not to follow them. That would be for the people of that state to fight later.

But they don’t have a say in how the money is spent or whether the tax should exist. So it’s still the same issue whether it’s for a specific purpose or whether or not they benefit from it. It’s the freedom of choice that they still don’t have.

Most police forces in the US were infiltrated by fascist white supremacists long ago. It’s why even in very progressive places like Seattle, the police forces are under federal supervision for racism and so many POC are murdered all the time. It’s rarely worth calling them. Mostly I only report crime for insurance purposes.

The only issue with current systems is that the “AI” is tweaked to the specific game mechanics. You can easily enough build multiple algorithms for varying play styles and then have it adapt to counter the play style of the player. The problems is that the current way that many games are monetized is through expansions, gameplay tweaks, etc., as well as those being necessary when a game mechanic turns out to be really poorly implemented or just unpopular and the mechanics change. If the “AI” isn’t modified at the same time to rake advantage of the changes, then it becomes easy to beat. The other issue is that eventually a human can learn all of the play style algorithms and learn to counter them and then it becomes boring.

Unfortunately, generative “AI” is not a true learning model and thus not truly intelligent in any sense of the word. It requires that it is only “taught” with good information. So if it gets any data that includes even slight mistakes, it can end up making lots of those mistakes repeatedly. And if those mistakes aren’t corrected by a human, it doesn’t understand which things were mistakes and how they contributed to winning or losing. It can’t learn that they were mistakes or to not do them. It doesn’t truly understand how to decide something is wrong on its own, only that things are related and how often it should use those relationships over others. Which means manual training is required, which due to the sheer volume of information required to train a generative “AI”, is not possible in a complex game where the player has thousand of possible moves that each branch to thousands of possible combinations of moves, etc.

May, they’ll say it’s the lasers, just like the hurricanes. They’ll pretend it was intentional to create a bigger threat from “the others” that require them to all give up their rights in order to fight.