Now that I think about it, why land upright at all? You could do a gentle controlled touchdown in a water pool and slowly tilt to horizontal with a minor splash, like the previous Starship.
These companies were profitable on higher quality ads in earlier years. Does this drop in quality indicate the ad well has run dry, so to speak? Or the demands for revenue are greater, necessitating a drop in standards?
Are we sure they were higher quality? They estimated in 2024 that 10% of their revenue was from fraudulent ads or ads that should be banned based on their own rules.
I commented in another thread recently that almost 15 years ago on a high traffic site we were full of obvious scam ads, tons of fake world of Warcraft clones with busty characters asking you to play, tons of you’re the 1 millionth visitor click here to claim your prize, download buttons. Even the occasional penis enlargement pills and stuff would come through. I really think even if the scale is maybe amping up, things weren’t much better 20 years ago, the web was just smaller, fewer people were paying attention, and the folks who were there had grown up learning to spot that stuff from the beginning.
I doubt it. Advertising there is pretty expensive and you don't really have a choice today if you want advertise something. They just don't care, they are greedy mfs.
Yeah, anyone expecting Zuck to give a fraction of a shit is hopelessly naive.
This is the man who, after Facebook literally canary in a coal mined one of their own employees - let him be jailed as a "test" to see whether Zuck or any exec would be arrested like threatened, then let him stay a little longer because they could "get some good PR out of it", then when the guy came to the US after his release and was meant to meet Zuck, he couldn't even pull himself off of his phone, was led away by a flunky asking "who was that, anyway?".
Or when told by both his team and anyone in Myanmar (including the government) that they intended to use data from a Facebook feature to crack down on dissidents, which has historically included jail, torture, and execution, decided "well, it's a really cool feature - we're not going to turn it off".
To think he cares about "misleading ads" is laughable. They don't care about ads selling illegal drugs or hinting at selling CSAM.
I think it is hard to imagine someone in tech with as non-existent a moral and ethical compass as Mark Zuckerberg, and that's saying something.
He did the best job anyone could have with the election interference and stolen documents cases (slam dunk imo). I'm not a lawyer but it seems the defense strategy ran out the clock. What would you have proposed?
Garland would have launched the Epstein case if there were proof. It is possible an investigation started and did not reach the threshold required, we'll never know. If they cannot prosecute, the DoJ does not publicly attack people.
They could run out the clock because Merrick Garland spent too much time running his strategy of starting from the bottom and prosecuting regular foot soldiers. What he should have done was appoint Jack Smith or someone like him as soon as he was sworn in, rather than playing coy about trying to figure out how something like J6 happened and who was responsible.
It wasn't a time for following the facts "where ever they may lead", as he loved to say. The facts as they stood when Garland was sworn in already showed it was Trump who was responsible -- the impeachment record had collected enough evidence against Trump at that point to warrant a SC on day one of the Biden admin. Instead Garland waited almost half his term!
It became clear Garland really dropped the ball when the Congressional J6 Committee's investigation actually outpaced the Justice Department's investigation, which is a pretty sad indictment of that DOJ when Congress can get its shit together but the DOJ can't.
I think neither of us is a lawyer. If the groundwork wasn't laid properly for Jack Smith, the whole investigation could have been thrown out. I would assume Garland knew the optimal strategy.
Please elaborate. There were two DoJ cases against Trump (election interference and stolen nuclear documents) plus several others from other states. Why would the Biden DoJ sit on an Epstein case until Biden 2?
That's actually a pretty good reason. If you are going to put him away for life anyway*, maybe you can hold off on the one which would drag victims into court.
*An inevitable outcome, slowed by the immunity ruling and Aileen Canon, that could only be permanently derailed by the unthinkable scenario where voters re-elect him.
I disagree that protecting the victims would have been a reason to delay prosecution. Garland is criticized for publicly launching the two prosecutions too late in Biden's term. He knows more about the law than I do so I'm sure there was a good reason.
It will be interesting to see if the prosecution resumes after Trump leaves office and if the immunity ruling will get him off the hook, then:
"This case would have determined whether then-president Donald Trump and others engaged in election interference during the 2020 election, including events during the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol."
Biden was very concerned about losing faith in democracy. Putting Trump in jail before an election isn't a good look. Like a politician jailing his opponents.
That would imply the DoJ would also sit on the stolen nuclear documents and interference cases until Biden 2. I assume either case could have resulted in jail time.
And they could have arrested and tried Trump for treason after Jan 6, but decided against it because they are feckless "moderates" who seek bipartisanship even with the scum of the Earth. Doesn't mean anything about the amount of evidence (or lack thereof) against Trump in the files.
The tried him for election interference. Unfortunately the defense ran out the clock.
Has anyone this high profile been prosecuted for treason in modern times? They could not have kept him in jail pre-trial for four years for a complex treason trial.
I think you are asking for the voters to give the government a blank check to solve the issue.
In my opinion, the only way to make this issue, or any other, exempt from voter feedback is having a very high trust in government. This trust probably peaked in the World War II era and was damaged by Vietnam.
Compare how the Salk polio vaccine was received by the public to the COVID vaccine, in spite of the fact there had been errors made with earlier polio vaccines. The trust was strong enough to surmount that.
Yes, I take the term "politicized issues" to mean anything which voters vote on directly. The remainder of issues, non-politicized, are silently handled in the background by bureaucrats and experts, with the mandate of voter trust. In this case, it would be a bureaucrat decision to cut carbon emissions, and the population would comply.
Neither contemporary presidential candidate campaigned against the Salk vaccine. It was a non-politicized issue because the trust was greater.
For scientifically bogus reasons, there is a lack of trust in the experts behind the COVID vaccine, and therefore an opportunity for political exploitation. Hence vaccines have become a political issue.
Believe me, I would rather go back to a time of voter trust.
Aha! What I meant by "politicized" is an issue like climate change, which is mostly an objective matter of evidence and rationality, turned into a political football that is a matter of my-side-vs-your-side.
It's a common technique used when the evidence and rationality are overwhelmingly against someone. Then they harp on (climate change) as (liberal) lies and oppression.
> For scientifically bogus reasons, there is a lack of trust in the experts behind the COVID vaccine, and therefore an opportunity for political exploitation. Hence vaccines have become a political issue.
I think that's backward: Politicization of COVID vaccine, with the ground laid by prior health and scientific issues, causes the distrust. The same was done by the same people to attack every other institution: Science generally, journalism, academia (e.g., elite colleges), healthcare, international relations (the State Dept and Defense Dept), Federal Reserve, 'liberal' judges, etc.
It's intentional - by politicizing the issue, it shifts influence from the institutions to the political group. Reality becomes whatever they say it is - there is no external check on them remaining.
I think you are correct and politicians know this. I.e. why did California not maneuver to save those SoCal refineries? Higher price reduces gas use and is below threshold of flipping the state Republican.
I take it that was an indoor gas water heater? Which used your indoor cold air? So it's analogous to a decorative fireplace losing good air up the chimney.
Pretty much all gas water heaters are indoors in the US. I was worried about the electricity consumption of our heat pump water heater, but it's actually minimal.
The coefficient of power is like 5 or something, and, since it's a bit more expensive than a contractor-grade water heater, I think the manufacturer also spent an extra $10 on better internal insulation or something. It uses much less than 1/5th the energy I'd expected, even with the "turn yourself down at night" feature disabled.
Majority of gas water heaters I have seen in Southern California have been exterior in a shed, or in a garage, so not pulling good air from the living space. I can't speak to Northern California.
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