Hybrid hard drive. Basically, a hard drive with a large solid state cache.

Actual shipping would vary depending on location, but sellers are padding the shipping charge so they can display a lower unit price.

It doesn’t work that way at all.

Pricing strategy generally calls for optimizing return. They calculated that this company has 342 customers. Each customer adds $28 in costs. The unknown is how many additional customers will choose to buy at a particular price point.

If we halve the price paid by the customer (and add $28 to account for our increased costs) will we at least double our customer base to 684?

If we halve that price again (and add another $28), will we at least double our customer base again, to 1368?

At some point, lowering the price any further will not gain enough customers, and that is the minimum price we can charge while maintaining our current profits. The article went well beyond that point, contemplating a price point that would provide only 30% of their current profits.

If they lowered their price point to, say, $2700/yr, they would only need to add about 5100 new customers to break even with their $42,222 price. I think they would attract a hell of a lot more than 5100 new customers at that price point, meaning they would be radically increasing their revenue and profits. They are currently earning far less than they could be by demanding so much.

Just to expand your math in a different direction, going from 342 customers to 684 adds $9576 in costs, but cuts the price by 1/2 (plus $28). $21,139.

Going from 684 customers to 1368 adds another $19152. They break even at a $10,598 price point.

From 1368 to 2736 customers adds another $38304 in costs, but reduces the break even price point to $5327.

From 2736 to 5472 customers, another $76608 in costs, and a break even price point of $2685.

They are recouping all their additional costs, and making exactly the same profit charging 5472 people $7/day instead of 342 customers $115/day.

How many of those 1.2 million HIV patients can afford $7/day? If just 1% of them are willing to pay $7 a day, they will more than double their profits.

Need to add shipping charges to the price…

Never seen a two-stroke mower…

This wasn’t “negligence” or “accidental”. He was deliberately pointing the gun at the individual. It wasn’t unintentionally pointed at him. It wasn’t accidentally pointed at him. The bullet didn’t unexpectedly ricochet off of something to hit the teen. He deliberately chose to point a gun at another person. That deliberate handling of the gun eliminates the possibility of “negligence”.

I don’t quite know how you didn’t, but you managed to piss off both gun owners and hoplophobes with that comment, and those groups can’t seem to agree on anything else.

The only relevant factors I can think of are jurisdictional. You don’t risk having your servers stolen by jackbooted government agents when your servers are safely beyond their physical reach.

Mmm… Compressed pig rectum…

There’s room for batteries in the rail industry.

Diesel electrics rely primarily on dynamic braking. To save wear and tear on friction brakes, they convert kinetic energy to electrical, and then to heat in a giant resistor bank.

Add a couple battery cars, and dynamic braking becomes regenerative braking.

Theoretically, you could back feed the grid with that electrical energy, but if you do that, the train’s primary braking system is now dependent on a connection to the grid, and that doesn’t seem like a particularly good idea to me. All of the “stop” systems need to be far more reliable than the “go” systems.

I keep meaning to grift the SovCits, with new and exciting producta. For example, license plates with yellow fringe on them to indicate they are actually seagoing vessels portaging overland between navigable waters. You just have to drive them to a boat ramp and let their wheels touch the water from time to time, to make them subject to maritime law. This allows you to use them even for commerce without needing to register them with the DMV.

I think they should build it, but use it to reflect some darkness down on the bright side, rather than sunlight down on the dark side.

Brb, restocking guillotines in my Etsy store.

The problem with CO2 is that it traps energy radiated from the earth, preventing it from passing through the atmosphere and back into the sky. Now we’re going to send down more energy?

Most of the right, and a good chunk of the left.

80% of lawyers, 90% of politicians, 98% of salespeople. 100% of lobbyists.

Must be difficult to live in a country where you think 49% of the people there are so dangerous.

At least 49%. I’d say that about 25% near the center are OK, but 75% of the people outside that center are batshit crazy on some important issue or another.

It’s extraordinarily difficult thinking that a majority of the people are an honest, open conversation away from making a scene.

Trump supporters tend to hang out in the /modlog community. Try there first.

What are you even on about? One person could conceivably add CSAM to a torrent that you eventually download, and you could find yourself subject to a criminal investigation.

I’ve gone my entire adult life downloading copyrighted material without using a VPN

“I’ve been fucking multiple partners weekly my entire adult life. without protection, and I haven’t gotten AIDS yet.” <— That’s you. That’s what you sound like.

You are giving your ISP every thing that a rightsholder needs to harass you, with your understanding that laws and corporate policies currently protect you from that harassment. But you ignore that those policies can be changed, and those changes can apply to data you’ve previously given to your ISP. When rightsholders start arguing “think of the children” and pointing at such torrents, that’s the kind of thing that gets laws and policies changed.

Why give them the information in the first place? Why not keep that information away from your ISP? Why trust them to do the right thing when you can easily deny them the ability to do wrong?

That level of paranoia is a waste of energy.

I know I am paranoid, but am I paranoid enough?

Identifying and evaluating vulnerabilities is a critical component of any security plan. In a good one, any vulnerabilities will be well outside the scope of feasibility.

Why would some Hollywood studio plant CSAM in a torrent?

To cast FUD on piracy in general. To inextricably link “pirate” with “pedophile” in the mind of the general public. To convince the general public to treat copyright infringement as criminal rather than a civil matter.

That would implicate them as well.

They hire or extort someone to initially seed from some third world ISPs, and the swarm takes over from there. It never gets traced back to them.

It would cost them far more in legal fees to come after me than to just leave it alone.

You aren’t the objective, just the means. The purpose is to make piracy a truly objectionable practice in the eyes of the public.

None of this is a likely threat, but is any of it completely outside the realm of feasibility?

You don’t have any justification to be that condescending. Your security practices are reliant on the law, and the law is not a factor under your direct control. It has changed without your input before, and it will change without your input in the future. Meanwhile, your ISP is building a record of your non-compliance that it can provide to rightsholders just as soon as it likes.

Good security practice minimizes reliance on factors outside your control. You can’t control whether your ISP has your personally identifiable information, but you can deny them knowledge of your data transfers. You can’t control whether a VPN has knowledge of your data transfers, but you can deny them knowledge of your PII.

Also it definitely would cost them if they told me “we have not responded to this notice from the rightsholder” and then turned around and did exactly that. That would be a flat out lie to their client.

As of the time of their letter, they had not responded to that notice. They could respond tomorrow without ever having lied to you. You would not have grounds to sue.

Just out of curiosity, will your Canadian ISP and your (current) Canadian laws protect you when a rightsholder portrays you as a pedophile instead of a pirate? If they anonymously publish a torrent containing their movie and some hidden CSAM, are you fucked?