I was under the impression that Digital IDs are not a picture you bring up and hand to LE - it’s a RFID token transfer that you tap to authenticate on a reader. That doesn’t mean that there won’t be LE officers who will bully people, or that people won’t be smart enough to recognize that the picture on their phone isn’t their ID, but that not how digital IDs (are supposed to) work.

Something you have, something you are, something you know. Are you willing to give up proper security for your cause?

The question I have is what can we do (in the marketplace of paying devs for indie projects) to prevent them from adding improvements and merely keep the projects compliant as new OSes swap out old libraries? Most of the really good, popular utilities have been ruined by bloat and, in the most successful cases, sale to corporations which instantly enshitify.

I’m an engineer. I use all of it. I use it whether I’m writing technically correct and accurate forensic reviews or doing math in my head (or on paper) to analyze a condition in real time or checking a complex finite element model to ensure that there are no improper assumptions or invalid boundary conditions. AI/ML is really useful for some things, and deadly for others.

Rote memorization may seem unnecessary, but a mental catalog - whether it be quotes, body parts and systems, equations of natural phenomena, or even manufactured parts and specifications - is the hallmark of someone who can work independently in a real time industry. It may not matter for some jobs, but it’s make or break in others.

On the contrary, it will raise the floor of required credentials. When everyone has a HS education, an undergrad degree is needed to stand out. Now that a bachelors is the de facto education level, a masters degree is necessary. If it gets easier to get a MS degree, we’ll be requiring a PhD for entry level positions.

Yet. Infrastructure on this scale moves slowly and the transparentness of pricing changes on short time lines in physical stores is hard to track. It exists in emergency economies - we call it price gouging - but that’s usually quite obvious. The idea of dynamic pricing has existed forever - hotels, airline flights, movie tickets, taxi rides, even electric rates. As technology advances it offers the opportunity to use the technology to shorten the time window for pricing changes more and more. An extra two tenths of a percent profit seems like a trivial amount. Amazon and Walmart combined for more than a trillion dollars in sales last year. 0.2% is a very non-trivial $2 Billion. If it becomes available, it will be exploited.

o7

Fly safe, cmdr

That was a nice term report by a precocious 5th grader or, more likely, an AI generated article.

“live and work and build and pay in that world in an ongoing basis”

There, that’s more what they’re envisioning.

I really do boycott Exxon - at least when it’s branded. In 35 years - since the Valdez spill - I’ve bought 1 gallon of gasoline from Exxon, and that was because I needed that much to get to another station without running out of fuel. It’s a trivial exclusion, though, as their drilling and refinery operations are so large that it’s likely I’m purchasing from them, or BP, (or Chevron). I don’t know of a major supplier who isn’t tainted by some part of the process. And I’m not rich enough to have the luxury of selection most of the time.

Exactly; I view them as the worst of the lot. But, like gasoline for my car and biometrics on my driver’s license and passport, I end up holding my nose because I know that - effectively - there is no clean, convenient way to circumvent them. And paypal - I use it for business transactions when I have to. Not because I like them, but because - for a business my size - there is no other way to take a payment remotely that doesn’t carry ridiculous fees and minimums.

Maybe PayPal in-house balances for payments where it’s accepted? That’s a pretty small network (by comparison) and, really, if PayPal is your least-evil option you may as well either suck off the other corporations or suffer the inconvenience of cash.

They’d better not be playing all my free games before I get to them.

Surge pricing to level demand is a potentially valid strategy when you’re trying to even optimize your off-peak manpower or have limited production capacity. Surge pricing to increase profits is going to be detrimental to their business.

Funny - I’m going to be in Boston in three weeks. Unfortunately I think all my time is booked from the time my plane touches down to the time I head back to BOS.

Fascinating interview around the technology. As someone who is generally skeptical of wild “zero carbon” claims, this was interesting enough that I would definitely go out of my way to see the process in person, just to learn more about it.

One option would be to make the beam a flush condition. To get a 16’ span with rafters you’re going to be using at least 2x8s. That’s 7.25" deep. If you were set the top of the beam at the top of the rafters and hang them from the beam (simpson or USP hangers) that buys you some space. Now an 11.88" LVL would only stick down 5-5/8" below the bottom of the rafters. (okay, 5-3/4"-6" with the additional slope over the 5.25" of beam) I’m not saying that a 3 ply 11x88 LVL with a 2.1E, bearing in a BC6 cap on 6x6s would work for your application, but the height tolerance would seem to add up in your favor.

The advantage of LVLs are that

1. you can put them up 1 ply at a time
2. they hold nails/cut easily
3. the lumber yard will likely size them for you if you ask

The disadvantage is that the depth will be about 1/16th of the span when using 2-3 plies.

The advantage of steel is that an I beam (W shape is what you want, for “Wide Flange Beam”) will be about 2/3 the depth of an LVL. The disadvantages are

1. An engineer will likely charge you about $600-800 to size this beam, but will also tell you how to top connect it
2. It will be one piece (fwiw it will weigh about the same as the LVL)
3. You will have to buy a 40’ piece, or pay a premium to have it cut down from a 40’ piece. (stock lengths of steel are 20’/40’)

Note that nobody can properly answer your question from the data given (edit - just notice you mentioned 16’ rafters below). You would need to include the span of the rafters and (at least) your location to determine the snow loads and wind loads (edit: and seismic, though it’s unlikely to control for this design) for sizing the connections.

Disclaimer: I’m a structural engineer, but I’m not your structural engineer. For a long span like this I recommend contacting someone licensed in your jurisdiction to help you out.

Huh, I guess I’ve just adapted with the enshitification arc. It aways seems pretty clear when the publications are not specialized that the “reviews” are really just generated or copy/paste lists of devices with affiliate links - and are essentially just paid advertising (though paid by vendors and not manufacturers in this case). I will agree that it’s infuriating to have to sift through the ever-growing AI generated content to find something which has novel information.

T-mos general coverage outside of city centers and interstates is trash (they’re all pretty bad, but Tmo is very binary). I’d get it over xfinity, but it’s not even offered in my major university town due to coverage limitations. And it’s not like there aren’t big pipes nearby - the university consumes more than 100TB of data traffic a day; their Netflix traffic alone was so large just 3 years ago that they were on the edge of getting a co-located Netflix rack on campus.