Efficiency

Postage stamping

How did you end up working for him a second time?

Eh, sometimes getting kids started like this can spark their interest.

I wish it said more about the camera sensor; guess I’ll have to look that up separately

My wife preordered it for me but I still haven’t read it. I actually used to work with Kim (not closely) at a TV station and Penn worked at a different station in the market. I had no idea they were married until their first video went viral (she used a different last name professionally). I was glad to see them on The Amazing Race and that was the first time I’d heard of hyperfocus, in retrospect the first hint to me about my ADHD.

Like how I built a tolerance to Concerta?

I was listening to most of the game on the radio, got home and had dinner. Decided to check the score after and saw it was 3-2 in the tenth, so I turned it on just in time to watch the bottom of the tenth. I don’t even like either team, but what a half-inning to watch!

I also do this several times a week

That’s a neat solution

“There’s two problems in the retail industry. The experience for customers sucks. Secondly, it’s very hard to process all of the sales information in real time,” said Vasco Portugal, CEO and co-founder of Sensei.

I’d say the first problem largely revolves around having employees who are overworked and underpaid. Keeping enough staff around that checkout moves quickly and paying them enough that they don’t visibly hate their job can go a long way toward solving that. This is a customer service issue and removing employees is basically never a solution to improve customer service, except perhaps for specific bad employees.

For the second problem, I don’t see how the added data overhead of AI/Machine Learning helps improve processing time. This also doesn’t seem like a real problem to me. Processing transactions from a dozen or so registers simultaneously really shouldn’t be beyond the capabilities of a modern system, or even many old systems. The real issue I’ve seen is a lot of stores don’t seem to have good information on how much inventory is on their shelves, especially when stocking. The other challenge is the delay between someone putting something in their cart and reaching the register. I’m not sure how much of a problem that really is, though; stores can just display an alert if stock is low and if it’s gone from the shelf when someone gets there, too bad. You could put a barcode scanner on people’s carts that wirelessly updates your inventory and lets customers see their running total, but a lot of stores wouldn’t want that because it would probably reduce impulse purchases; it’s a lot easier psychologically for customers to put items back at the shelf than at the register.

This seems like a “solution” using the latest buzzword in search of a problem.

Yeah, there’s usually a throttle. My dad has an old electric one that plugs into an extension cord and it’s strictly on/off, but pretty much every other one I’ve used lets you adjust the speed, whether gas or electric/battery. It’s helpful because you don’t necessarily want to blast leaves at full power when you get them close to your target (like a pile of leaves that you’re adding to and don’t want to disperse), but sometimes you need that full power to move things that are a bit stuck. Plus with my battery powered blower, the higher power levels drain the battery faster and the low levels are quieter.

It’s interesting, those sounds have never really broken through on me, but I’m 41 and just got diagnosed this year. Pretty much just inattentive type, little to no hyperactivity. Any sort of conversation can pull me away though.

Do people just mostly use rakes or leave the leaves where they fall?

I think your last point also applies to Valve. Limiting the number of models simplifies things for Valve; effectively they only have two models to support right now between the LCD and OLED models. From a software perspective I assume they’re extremely similar except at a very low level, mainly with the display panel difference. From a hardware perspective that’s only 2 main SKU families (looks like maybe 6 total with 3 of each?) and still probably a lot of parts overlap except with the panel and I’d assume two variants of the mainboard to accommodate different connections for each panel. Even making the OLED variants complicated things I’m sure, but it should be manageable.

We learned within the past year that Valve is still an astonishingly small company compared to how much revenue it has; I think they were only around 450 employees. That’s pretty doable with software, but dealing with hardware starts to force that level up and would start cutting into the incredible profitability per employee that they’re accustomed to.

Of course they’ve made plays in the hardware space before, but I don’t think anything’s been near the volume the Steam Deck has. Even assuming that they’re outsourcing the manufacturing, and maybe fulfillment, and maybe even warranty repairs, that still means they need employees to manage and support those programs. They need employees trained to support those products. They need to store spare parts and plan to have enough to legal requirements beyond the final sale date. They need to test software updates against every hardware variant prior to release for as long as the product is supported. Keeping the number of SKUs small makes the rest of that manageable and hopefully keeps profitability high and quality of service good. If they start adding too many SKUs then they need more employees, giving lower profitability and they start cutting quality and service until we end up with the bad products and support we see from so many big PC companies.

It seems like they’re working towards opening Steam OS up where other companies can make their own devices. Let other companies handle the incremental updates and making the software work with their hardware. Let Valve keep focusing on just making a few things but making them really good.

I don’t get it, what’s the problem with leaf blowing?

Offhand I think AV1 is supposed to be a bit better than H265, but I think the improvement would be pretty marginal. Also, that’s a newer codec with less support everywhere, so you might find yourself slowing down a lot doing live transcoding to a format with better support like H265 or H264, depending on your devices. Add in all the time transcoding your current files from H265 to AV1 and it might just be worth adding more storage space.

I know there’s a National Fire Code in the US that serves as a minimum standard for every state, but an individual state can make stricter requirements if they want. I’m not sure if the base level is federally mandated or it’s just an agreement among the states to have a baseline that is easier to design to for companies working in multiple states.

I’m pretty sure the basic standard in the US is that most buildings (with few exceptions) should have at least one smoke detector, and usually more depending on the type of building. Normally in residences I think now there is supposed to be at least 1 per level in a single family home along with 1 per bedroom, but there could be fewer in older buildings built to an older standard that maybe weren’t required to upgrade (although highly recommended).

I guess one distinction we haven’t made is having an alarm vs. having a monitored alarm, something that will notify perhaps a private monitoring company, a watchman on site, or directly to an emergency dispatcher. Monitored alarms aren’t legally mandated in nearly as many buildings, but insurance companies may require them in more buildings than code requires. If a commercial building doesn’t have a monitored alarm their insurance rates might be much higher or they might be unable to get any insurance. The owner of a large apartment building might need a monitored system for insurance while someone who owns their own single family home normally doesn’t, but might get a discount on their insurance if they have a monitored alarm.

Does Germany at least require smoke detectors that will alert a building’s occupants, even if the alarm doesn’t send a signal elsewhere?

Does the 1.1 million firefighters number cover just your professionals or also include the trained volunteers/conscripts? Compulsory fire service is an interesting concept. Does that force employers to make concessions that might’ve prevented an individual from otherwise being able to volunteer?

This is all wild to me, alarms not required in a building that is largely unoccupied?! Who cares that its purpose is to fight fires? Especially if people aren’t there often it needs an alarm!

And most of your firefighters are volunteers? I can understand having volunteer firefighters in rural areas, but Germany seems like a country where most of the population lives in urban or reasonably dense suburban areas, at least from an American perspective of population density. My midsize town of just under 80,000 people has a population density of around 1100 people per square kilometer and has a professional fire department with about 110 full-time employees working at 6 different stations. It started as a volunteer department a century ago when the town was tiny, but as it grew they eventually switched to a professional force. Our property insurance rates would be very high if it wasn’t professional.

Does Germany not need as many firefighters because many buildings are constructed of materials less susceptible to burning?

OP: *posts about wanting to marry a stranger on twitter*
OP: *finds and follows said stranger on twitter*
Stranger: *reads through his new follower’s twitter timeline, responds to marriage comments *
OP:

I’d like to get a Steam Deck but was wondering if it’s getting close to a newer, better version coming soon. This makes me feel more comfortable, not that I have the budget for one right now anyway.