• 0 Posts
  • 31 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
cake
Cake day: June 30th, 2023

help-circle


  • Professor Santiago Gallino specializing in retail management was interviewed last year by NPR for a piece about these tags.

    While the labels give retailers the ability to increase prices suddenly, Gallino doubts companies like Walmart will take advantage of the technology in that way.

    “To be honest, I don’t think that’s the underlying main driver of this,” Gallino said. “These are companies that tend to have a long-term relationship with their customers and I think the risk of frustrating them could be too risky, so I would be surprised if they try to do that.”

    Rather than seeing an opportunity to use surge pricing, Gallino says retailers are likely drawn to electronic shelf tags to ensure consistency between online and in-store pricing.

    What a prophet.



  • Given the noise Musk has been making surrounding the political landscape in Germany, the United Kingdom, and lately Canada, it stands to reason that the richest person on the planet is actively trying to make the world revolve around him.

    Sentiment similar to yours was undoubtedly stated a century ago throughout Europe; ‘You overestimate the impact Germany has on the citizenry outside of it.’ Look where that attitude got the world, and here you are saying the same thing.



  • Certainly not an expert in the field here, but I’m not sure there’s much environmental benefit from laundry bags of that sort, given the collected microplastics optimistically end up - Germany excluded - collated in your local landfill.

    Guppyfriend even recommends sealing them in a container for disposal to ensure they don’t blow around during waste collection and transport. This assumes of course that you can successfully transfer microplastic fibres from a large bag into a small container without spillage, but that’s a matter separate from my conjecture.

    Guppyfriend's FAQ

    Source

    While I don’t think any particular company that makes similar bags is purposefully guilty of this, the marketing strategy used to promote these as environmentally responsible products just smells like greenwashing to me.

    The ones I’ve had are also made of synthetic materials, and so eventually break down and begin releasing their own fibres.

    Frankly, the true environmental benefit I see is something I’ve never seen advertised: I can wash groups clothes I want kept from intermingling in the same load and therefore run the machine half as often.




  • I’m all aboard Spotify alternatives, but this post is an echo chamber of people that are far more likely to know “the difference”. We aren’t representative of Spotify’s customer base.

    Most people listening to music probably wouldn’t be able tell the difference from cutting the quality down by double digit percentages. This is exemplified by the number of people using wireless headphones.

    Spotify certainly could offer service on par with Tidal and similar, but being beholden to shareholders that only look at the bottom line and never the quality of the service, that executive might not be right, but they’re not exactly wrong.






  • China’s market is also fundamentally different. The buyers care more about function than they do form. This is what allows vehicles like the Changli to sell in China for about $1,000 USD. People import them for about triple that, and there you go, a four figure electric car. These days there are even some commercial outfits in the United States that import dozens at a time and sell them for about $10,000 USD for people that don’t want to deal with the bologna that comes with international imports.

    The safety and quality are certainly on par with the cost, but at low speeds, we certainly don’t need advanced safety equipment. Accidents would be less common anyway if people had more reaction time as a result of driving slower. Besides, many repairs that may be needed will be simpler to perform due to the less complex construction.

    Regarding longevity, there are people using these things on farms, on construction sites, and in college towns. Might not last twenty years, but seeing how buying a used car for $500 can end up costing you more than $40,000 over less than a decade, I’d say the Changli is extremely compelling given the cost per year of ownership.



  • Ah I completely forgot streaming away from home. My travels tend to have limited internet access, and so my practice is to download things we might watch through Findroid.

    Given your friends have access to your library, what do you think would be required (ideally) for streaming to work without transcoding? As simple as a beefy internet connection, a 4k screen and them having a Shield or equivalent?

    I only ask because I know a number of my circle use Shields already and I think the ones in my neighbourhood are all on gigabit connections. Might be worth looking into so long as I’m not in for upgrading the machine. I’m more of a set and forget person myself.


  • Stepping aside from this particular thread for a moment. Could you share why you need hardware transcoding?

    Admittedly, I don’t quite understand what components would build a better machine as far as a media server goes, but I turned off hardware transcoding when I first set Jellyfin up on a NUC. The only issues I have are the startup speed of the app, and every now and then it crashes when loading the library and I just relaunch it and it’s fine.

    I’ve assumed it’s the Nvidia Shield doing the heavy lifting as far as playback goes, because I’ve never had a recurring problem with playing any particular file. I’m starting to think I don’t really appreciate the benefits of hardware transcoding.


  • Echoing @Bronzie@sh.itjust.works, I downloaded the first party app right from the Play Store on my Samsung. Though I prefer the third party, Findroid, the first party app is good for the dashboard management.

    When we launch Jellyfin, we are shown icons for what user, we select the user, and it opens the associated library. Similar to Netflix.

    I started using Jellyfin about two years ago now, and have only encountered a codec issue here and there, but I’ve found it can be worked around by setting playback to another player, like VLC.