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This is a great setup. I’m approaching the age where I just want things that work and for no one to move my cheese

Any form of hacking products to be more useful is a win in my books! I can see the multi room play being a nice thing on the odd occasion. Perhaps if I had kids and had to move around the house a bunch more or maybe if it operated as a home system that could also do those additional things I may have had a more positive experience with it. But I maintain my original point that hardware tethered to some software service is basically a random financial-enshitification-quarter away from being bricked and that’s a shame for otherwise excellent hardware

I feel certain products just dont need apps or 'tech'. Speakers should not be 'smart' anymore than a powertool needs an app. It just turns products that should otherwise be long-lasting become disposable waste once software support evaporates for any reason.

I dont think it was a good product even back when it did 'work'. We received a pair as a house-warming gift and I remember not understanding how or why I should use them. I already had a soundbar that I could stream music to. I now, out of politeness, had to use these new "wireless" speakers that demanded a constant wifi connection but still required their own Very Visible power cables along with its own dedicated app which was nothing but a wrapper for music services that logged me out after every software update. I couldn't even use it as a dumb speaker and operate it as part of my main sound system so now I have a soundbar that is nicely mounted to the wall and additionally these speakers that clutter my living room. Lovely.

"Heavier vehicles are safer for their occupants.."

Only if the other vehicle is smaller/lighter. SUVs were relatively uncommon when this perception of safety was established. Its now just something people like to tell themselves as justification for buying an even bigger car.

What a crap business model these companies have if they rely on haggling over legal loopholes to operate. The business case, at best, is the status quo remains with material threats to their operations if these laws change. This is a lose-lose for everyone. Ignore the morality arguments, why risk your money on something with almost zero upside and all this downside? Suing the government is not a sign of strength

The BT46B being banned after a single race is a bit of an urban legend. It was not banned and was perfectly legal to run for the remainder of the year.

The background to why Gordon Murray (designer) decided to go with the fan design was the flat-12 engine used by Brabham didn't allow venturi tunnels along the side of the car (flat-12s being too wide) so he had to find another way to respond to the then-new ground-effect others were exploiting.

A neat legal trick was discovered: a fan could be installed on the car as long as its primary purpose was to cool the motor. Primary purpose in this case meant, and GM got a lawyer's opinion on this, at least 51% of the volume of air went to cool the engine. Brabham was very clear this fan sucked the car to the ground but also proved to the governing body that most of the air went to cooling, so it was deemed legal for the rest of the year but the loophole was to be closed for the following year. Stories by Andretti about the BT46 throwing stones and being dangerous to other drivers was complete rubbish made up by Colin Chapman to get the car banned as he saw Brabham would walk away with the championship. In effect the tips of the fans never moved particularly fast (ballpark 50mph along the edges) so it was never dangerous to other drivers.

The actual story as to why it was withdrawn is Bernie Ecclestone, then owner of the Brabham team was also the head of the Formula One Constructors Association and the other manufacturers threatened to leave the association if he didn't withdraw the car. Seeing the bigger picture of securing TV and advertising rights to F1, Bernie withdrew the car after a single race.

These sorts of articles dont reflect how the US gov funds itself:

1. Gov spends $100 and taxes $90

2. Commercial banks then have $10 (100-90) in reserves at the Fed

3. Treasury is required to sell $10 of bonds to keep its account at the Fed at zero balance. (This collective tally of 'debt' is what everyone loses their minds over)

4. Commercial banks buy these bonds up immediately as long as the interest earned on the bond is greater than the interest earned on the reserves at the Fed.

Important things to remember:

- The $10 'borrowing' done by the government is funded by the deficit it created.

- The treasury doesn't have to issue bonds to fund itself it can simply deficit spend as its done in every major war or during Covid.

- When the treasury does choose to issue bonds the coupons dont need to match market interest rates (this is what the Bank of Japan is doing this very minute). The bonds will always be purchased so long as there is a positive interest rate differential between the bond and the Fed's reserve interest rate.

- Bonds have secondary uses but funding the government is not one of them.

- Government debt = private sector savings. Collectively it represents the excess of money paid into the pvt sector vs whats been taken out via taxation.

- US gov bonds are extremely useful financial instruments used in all sorts of repo operations providing liquidity in the banking sector. They are better than gold!

- Dont stress about government debt. It has never, and will never, be repaid and thats a good thing because it effectively translates to a massive destruction of pvt sector savings.

Thats really impressive students are doing this. These tools are non-trivial to use and it shows great initiative from them. I could see these tools being used proactively as part of a creative writing class or helping people improve their language skills. Top stuff!

I am certain I'm in the wrong here but I'm struggling to understand Arrow's USP. I (originally) assumed it meant python/R users would be able to get around memory limitations when model-fitting but all the examples I've come across are just data manipulation and none of the main modeling packages support it. Those who are using it, what am I missing?

You will own nothing and love it

>> Have a handful of executives who can't wait to get back into their comfort zone - the office - and that office spending budget will find a way to get spent

you could have just said this. everything else you wrote is superfluous justification

Totally agree there. It is not a replacement and it is trying to solve a different problem. I dont believe Julia contributers are lying awake at night upset that other languages exist and feel they need to put a stop to that. My point (put across clumsily I see) is that IF that was their goal then they are going about it the wrong way as most R/Python users have different priorities. But it is a moot point as that would be an absurd motivation to create a whole new language

'highfalutin ivory tower' is a great name for a band :D

Naturally you are correct and I am wrong to dismiss it as unimportant. What I'm saying is that the majority of R/Python users today are not looking for ultimate speed or sophisticated programming paradigms. Most users are doing the unsexy bread and butter of 'Take some tabular data' -> analyse -> report on it and I want to dismiss the argument of 'users will migrate to Julia because of these nifty features' because it ignores the very reasons the existing users use these tools in the first place. It would be as absurd as proclaiming Excel users will switch to Python because the accounts deparment suddenly cares about NLP.