As somebody that’s a paying Kagi user and generally happy with the service, it is interesting seeing exactly where the tradeoffs are.

While I’d say Kagi pretty much universally returns better results for technical information or things like recipes where it deprioritizes search spam, it’s also pretty clear that there are other areas where the absence of targeting hurts results. Any type of localized results, e.g., searching for nearby restaurants or other businesses tends to be really hit or miss and I tend to fall back to Google there.

Of course, that’s because Kagi is avoiding targeting to the point where they don’t even use your general location to prioritize results. It’s an interesting balancing act and I’m not quite sure they’ve hit the sweet spot yet, at least for me personally, but I like the overall mission and the results for most searches so I’m happy with the overall experience currently.

Searches are supposed to be fast at giving you the answer you’re looking for. But that is antithetical to advertising.

And we have evidence that this is exactly why it happened, too:

https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-men-who-killed-google/

While I’d highly recommend giving either the article a read or the companion podcast a listen because Ed Zitron did some fantastic reporting on this, the tl;dr is that a couple of years ago, there was direct conflict between the search and advertising wings of Google over search query metrics.

The advertising teams wanted the metrics to go up to help juice ad numbers. The search team rightly understood that there were plenty of ways they could do so, but that it would make for a worse user experience. The advertising team won.

The head of the advertising team during this was a man named Prabhakar Raghavan. Roughly a year later, he became the head of Google Search. And the timing of all this lines up with when people started noting Google just getting worse and worse to actually use.

Oh, and the icing on the cake? Raghavan’s previous job? Head of Yahoo Search just before that business cratered to the point that Yahoo decided to just become a bing frontend.

Zitron is fond of saying that these people have names and it’s important that we know who’s making the decisions that are actively making the world of tech worse for everyone; I tend to agree.

Already happening. Required training hours were roughly doubled a couple of weeks ago effective Jan 1:

https://www.11alive.com/article/news/investigations/georgia-mandatory-law-enforcement-training-hours-for-new-recruits/85-c835bdef-3984-452b-acf0-88b22629f414

That said, this was a state trooper. GSP have long been known for a culture of cowboy recklessness and special treatment codified into law. They report up directly to the Governor and are explicitly excluded from many of the restrictions put on local police (the moniker God’s Special People has been around for decades for a reason). They are one of the few major agencies in the state that still refuses to use body cameras, for example.

Institutionally, it’s a group set up to be and that views itself as special enforcers that are above the restraints put on others. GSP is routinely involved in high speed pursuits that end in either a fatal accident or a shooting.

More training is always a good thing, but I’ll just say I was unsurprised a trooper was involved here.

Also worth noting: 2K is incredibly toxic and regular paint filter masks are useless for preventing it from getting into your lungs. It’s supposed to be used while wearing positive pressure ventilated PPE.

Probably not the best choice for redecoration on the move.

They had several cases along these lines involving several agencies, and I feel like people don’t understand the underlying legal idea - rule making power belongs to Congress. Federal agencies under the executive branch that have rule making powers receive those powers by Congress delegating it to them in a limited fashion through legislation.

Nitpick: rule making power does belong to executive agencies (at least until this SCOTUS decides to reverse Chevron deference). Law-making power resides solely with Congress.

What this means, as you suggest, is that Congress sets up statutory bounds within law, then the responsible executive agencies create rules interpreting them and defining how they’ll be enforced. Where cases like this one go wrong is when the agency oversteps the bounds of the law as passed by Congress. At that point, the agency has engaged in creating new law rather than rules, which is why the courts swat them down.

I agree with your overall gist, just feel that’s an important distinction to understand the situation.

That excellent quote of the text you provided spells out that any modifications to a gun that allows any more than a single shot is to be prohibited.

Incorrect.

It prohibits any conversion to a machine gun. The previous sentence has just defined a machine gun. The “by a single function of the trigger” language is what’s critical to this case and you’re completely ignoring it. When reading laws, you use words however they’re explicitly defined if a definition is provided, not how you think they should be defined or would be used in common speech.

Like I said, Gatling guns are pretty highly analogous. They produce what most people would consider automatic fire. They’ve also consistently been ruled to not meet the definition of a machine gun going back to at least the 1950s because they don’t meet that single function of the trigger requirement.

The solution is to change the text of the law.

However this supreme court said that the magic words ‘bump stock’ wasn’t in the legalisation. Words that didn’t even exist until 2003, or thereabouts. The court ignored the legislative text completely.

This is the text of the NFA that has defined what is a machine gun since 1934:

The term “machine gun” means any weapon which shoots, is designed to shoot, or can be readily restored to shoot, automatically more than one shot, without manual reloading, by a single function of the trigger. The term shall also include the frame or receiver of any such weapon, any part designed and intended solely and exclusively, or combination of parts designed and intended, for use in converting a weapon into a machinegun, and any combination of parts from which a machinegun can be assembled if such parts are in the possession or under the control of a person.

I’m not a fan of this SCOTUS, but the bump stock ruling was inline with decades of jurisprudence on the topic and the final opinion was fairly unsurprising as a result. It was honestly less of a gun law ruling and more of an executive regulatory procedure one.

A bump stock does not function by a single action of the trigger and does not meet the statutory definition as a result. The ATF rule banning them got struck down because Congress hadn’t authorized the ATF to regulate machine guns beyond that specific statutory definition.

Bump stocks are no more a machine gun than a Gatling gun is under the definition that has existed for nearly a century, and the legal status of the latter has been extremely clear for a very, very long time.

If the goal is to treat them as a regulated item, then Congress needs to pass legislation with language that covers them because saying it was already there is simply incorrect. There is a specificity to the language of the NFA that doesn’t cover any number of mechanisms. It’s been a deficiency of the law since 1934.

If you want to fix that, that first requires understanding exactly what needs fixing.

Canoo is supposedly going to make a pickup based on their electric van platform that looks really interesting:

https://www.canoo.com/pickup

The expanding bed is an absolutely killer feature IMO. Small footprint the vast majority of the time but expands out large enough to fit a 4x8 sheet of plywood when you need that. All the fold-out workbenches are a really cool touch too.

The whole thing feels like the Kei trucks people in other comments are mentioning but upsized and up-powered to be more feasible on US roads.

According to the affidavit, Prieto said: “The reason I say Atlanta. Why, why is Georgia such a f------up state now? When I was a kid that was one of the most conservative states in the country. Why is it not now? Because as the crime got worse in L.A., St. Louis, and all these other cities, all the [N-words] moved out of those [places] and moved to Atlanta. That’s why it isn’t so great anymore. And they’ve been there for a couple, several years.”

Yes, black people have only been around in significant numbers in Atlanta for a couple years.

Certified stable genius.

In a vacuum, sure, but it also completely tracks with Sam Altman’s behavior outside of OpenAI.

Employees at previous companies he’s run had expressed very similar concerns about Altman acting in dishonest and manipulative ways. At his most high profile gig before OpenAi, Paul Graham flew from London to San Francisco to personally (and quietly) fire him from Y Combinator because Altman had gone off the reservation there too. The guy has a track record of doing exactly the kind of thing Toner is claiming.

What we know publicly strongly suggests Altman is a serial manipulator. I’m inclined to believe Toner on the basis that it fits with what we otherwise know about the man. From what I can tell, the board wasn’t wrong; they lost because Altman’s core skill is being a power broker and he went nuclear when the board tried to do their job.

When I was a teenager in the early 2000s, typical retail price for a game was $50.

That’s equivalent to about $85 today.

The vast majority of the games I buy today are well under $50.

Like how Ferrari cars are designed for 20 year olds but only 80 year olds can afford to buy them.

I mean, making the comparison to motorsports just emphasizes how cheap gaming is as a hobby.

Autocross is as entry level as you can get and a typical ~$50 entry fee gets you maybe 10 minutes of seat time and it’s typical to need to drive 2-3 hours each way for an event. That’s before you start adding in things like the fact that a $1500 set of tires will last you a season or two at most, suspension and brake upgrades easily running a couple of thousand dollars, etc.

Start dipping into actual track time and fees jump to more like $250-750 plus around that much again for track insurance per event. And the upgrades needed for the car to hold up on track are even more expensive still. And this is all ignoring the purchase price of the car and potentially needing to trailer a dedicated track car.

I’ve almost certainly spent far less on PC gaming in the last 5 years combined than I have on motorsports in the past 3 months. I’m on the upper end of spending for most gamers and a dabbler at best when it comes to the cars.

The insanity of the GPU market since covid has put some upward pressure on things but A. the proliferation of great indie titles means you can get incredible value without breaking bank on the highest end equipment and B. even then, the money I spent literally tonight ordering just brake pads and rotors would buy you a 4070 all day long. And I went cheaper than I could have.

Gaming dollars go a long, long way. It’s a hobby that was affordable even when I was younger and broke. It’s still relatively affordable compared to many, many other hobbies.

Would think it depends on the terms.

If seized Russian assets are used as collateral, then I’d think a potential default by Ukraine would just result in the Russian funds being claimed.

If just a single Dem like Manchin votes for it with Republicans, it’ll pass.

Not how this works.

There has to be a vote to allow debate to start on the bill. This is not passage, just putting the bill in front of the entire chamber for consideration.

This requires 60 votes; the vote in February failed 50-49.

If it somehow made it to debate this time, there would still have to be a second vote on passage. It’s not at all unusual for senators to vote for advancing to debate and then vote down the actual bill for any number of reasons.

So, no. The most likely outcome is not the bill passing; by far the most likely outcome is the bill dying on the vine. Senate Democrats aren’t randomly gambling here.

I’m not currently, but I do know that HA has made specific pushes to improve voice-control over the past year. Should be numerous blog posts on their website about it.

It’s part of why you’re seeing many departments move from internal (under the uniform) vests to external vests.

It also helps get gear off their very heavy duty belts.

Depends on the department but police vests being carriers with ceramic plates is far from uncommon these days. I know for a fact that’s the case for my local department.

Standard procedure literally nationwide is that normal officers are expected to go in with what they have. That’s exactly what happened in Nashville less than a year later:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Nashville_school_shooting

The body cam video is public. Officers responded with what they had. Yes, there’s an officer with an AR. There are also officers clearing rooms with handguns and in plainclothes. And one of the officers that engaged the AR-wielding shooter did so with their duty handgun.

Body Armor, AR15s.

They absolutely wear the former every day and many these days have either an AR or a shotgun in the trunk of their patrol vehicle.

It’s why I’ve avoided anything smarthome tied to any particular vendor.

My endpoint devices are almost entirely Zwave or Zigbee/Matter based. I started out with a SmartThings hub but migrated it all to Home Assistant last year. HA has honestly had easier integrations than SmartThings did and supports almost anything under the sun.

I don’t have to worry about suddenly losing control of my devices and the only ‘subscription’ associated with it all is $15/year for a domain name to make setting up remote access easier. This approach requires a little more research, but it opens up the ability to mix and match devices however you’d like. Absolutely zero regrets.

To expand a little bit for those that don’t want to click through:

5.56 penetrates hard targets because it concentrates energy across a small cross-sectional area due to its small diameter. It delivers a lot of energy to a small point which helps it push through hard objects.

5.56 similarly does not over penetrate in soft targets due to its dimensions: the projectile is narrow and relatively long, with the weight biased to the rear. This means that when it penetrates a soft object, the heavier tail end retains more energy and wants to flip past the tip of the projectile. Because the projectile is long and narrow, it tends to break apart when that happens. That quickly dumps the energy in the projectile and causes the large wounding effect being described above. Since the smaller fragments have less energy, they come to a stop much faster than a solid projectile would.

tl;dr saying 5.56 is capable of both punching through steel and also generally won’t overpenetrate in soft targets is accurate because physics