Trains are easy and they’re easily electrified already. So putting solar on the trains won’t have any advantage.

Rails are the difficult part of railways. They never seem to put them between my house and my work. They’ve put something called a road in between instead.

Because by having a private company “screen” people there’s added corruption.

He gets to simply sell clearances to private companies.

From the typical Conservative viewpoint this makes no sense.

“The state provision needs to be better or this needs to stay illegal”

So if the state can’t provide a service, neither can the private sector.

Extend that logic and Streeting is a hardcore socialist.

He’s not voting with any of his stated principles, which is proof he has none.

Look at TANF.

Give any control to states of federal funding and it’s the most vulnerable who suffer.

And that creates a whole load of angry people suffering who tend to fall for rhetoric blaming others for their problems.

Republicans gain votes by making people angry, poor, and powerless.

If the Democrats want to flip a swing state the best way to do it is making people better off.

The fact Republicans then try to get credit is irrelevant. If Republicans need to say how much “they” improved things it’s them saying how positive things are and evidence the damaging messages the party usually spews are failing. This representative is panicking because of the infrastructure bills effect.

You’ve proven yourself wrong.

Mochi Tetsu is mentioned in that article as being a source that produces higher quality products than iron sand. Exactly what you’re arguing against.

The facts are that due to the limited availability of good quality iron ore the steel produced in Japan often used iron sand and that led to lower quality products.

Why? The past lives long in the memory.

Sony was at the Vanguard of Japan’s post-war recovery. Making any electronics for the home.

Rice cookers and standard small white goods in the 40s.

They had a huge success with the transistor radios in the mid 50s.

Bearing in mind transistors themselves were first created in 1947. Sony is putting them in consumer products 8 years later. Copying a product produced in small numbers but making it better. Using the latest technology.

I own a 1960s reel to reel machine that still works perfectly. Sound on sound recording, echo and reverb effects. Built using transistors and “solid state” amplifies. Not at the cutting edge but using transistors to mass produce a product more reliably than previous tech.

All high fi equipment following the same pattern. Can they replace the old style amplifiers in record players. Yep.

The cassette tape comes along Sony makes it portable. And this is the point they also start hitting the top of the market in quality.

The portable tape decks Sony produced are considered the best.

This is while they’re dealing with videotape and producing betamax and the first consumer recorders and cameras.

Sony is a mark of reliability from the 50s by replacing old tech with transistors and a mark of quality by being better than the mass market competition by the 70s.

They then look at digital and create their own media. Betamax is a war they eventually lost even though it was better quality than VHS. But they made money on the professionals end of the market because of that quality.

This moved Sony into that direction. Focusing on the premium product, aiming high and for the mass market, but with the idea that quality will guarantee the high end segment.

In audio

Digital cassette DCC, DAT CD SACD Competition for Dolby Surround SPDIF optical audio. LDAC Bluetooth protocol

All the devices to play and record/transmit these.

In video: U-matic Betamax MMCD (mothballed to then partnering with DVD) Blu-ray Blu-ray 4K

The devices to play and produce them. The media to go on them from Sony Music and Sony Pictures.

Displays they created Trinitron displays to go with their analogue video cameras and formats.

They produced the first LED backlit LCDs. They produced the first quantum dot displays to go with the professional cinema quality digital cameras.

In the computing world they produced the first 3.5" floppies then CDs, then flash memory storage.

They tried to partner with Nintendo on the first CD-Rom gaming system and, when they were kicked out, launched their own console.

Sony have aimed for the professional market and bring those lessons learned to the masses.

Always based around a media format.

1999 Sony produced SACD. R&D in audio finished when that wound up in 2007.

High end audio equipment before that point is great. After that it’s just badges up stuff made to the lowest price.

2006 Sony produced Blu-ray. Blu-ray 4K looks to be the last gasp in 2016.

They were aiming for the top with video, TVs and blu ray players were great.

They’re still the best quality audio and video products you can buy.

But no one is buying them. We left quality of CDs for the convenience of mp3. We left Blu-ray for streaming.

We left high quality physical products for software products and codecs for convenience.

We left individual electronic devices for smart phones.

Sony have stopped R&D and quality control on devices as the market for them has dropped.

You can still buy a great high end TV from Sony.

Everything else, they’ve let the high end go.

If the high end isn’t mass market. Then they’re not going to make it high end anymore.

But as the last mass manufacturer to leave so many segments over the years. The cheapest high end device is still often a second hand Sony.

When the high end drops out of a segment all the individual components they would mass produce get penny pinched. Before they would produce huge numbers of lasers for CD players and make sure they were all good enough across the whole range.

When no one wants a high end CD player, no more high quality lasers get made.

The same with each component. Amplifiers, connectors, buttons, power supplies.

Sony’s products borrowed from each other’s tech and as the high end went in one area it had knock on effects in others.

Look at the PS5, the components are not produced in Japan by Sony. They’re outsourcing.

The 4K Blu-Ray disk drive is optional.

They say they’re unlikely to ever release their 8K Blu-Ray standard.

Top quality is no longer a priority and you place 20 years ago about right for audio. Probably 10 years ago for video.

The playstation 3 was Sony’s last CD player in a console. The last to be backwards compatible. The last of the Sony attitude of trying to be the best and trying to be backwards compatible.

The best CD players, SACD, players, DVD players etc all come in one Sony 4k UHD Blu Ray box.

Then you need a decent receiver and speakers to take that digital signal through a DAC, and amplify it. The last vestage of high end Sony audio is there.

The TVs the last of Sony’s high end lines in general.

The best portable cd players without breaking the bank, old Sony’s.

Incorrect

1st attempt was a republican shooter. He was

2nd attempt didn’t actually happen. They didn’t see Trump or draw their weapon. It was just someone who owned a gun in America.

It’s the republican party who have consistently displayed the attitude that the 2nd amendment is there for this type of thing, not the democrats.

How calm are you about your party doing this?

She read Ayn Rand, Hayek simplified by tax cut lobbists and no conflicting positions.

Most of what she did was wrong and people knew at the time. But she fooled enough voters like Regan.

I’m going for UK, specifically Scotland.

In the UK the Conservative party decided to get rid of DEI initiatives in education. When?

When the minority specifically recommended to be targeted for support became poor/working class white boys.

Conservatives will go out of their way to harm the working class because as long as things are going badly for them they’ll be angry enough to vote for the ones with dog whistles pretending it’s someone else’s fault.

VLC

Exceptions are possible. Money isn’t everything for everyone.

“On 31 December 2009, rather than being fully privatised, the mint ceased to be an executive agency and its assets were vested in a limited company, Royal Mint Ltd. The owner of the new company became The Royal Mint trading fund, which itself continued to be owned by HM Treasury. As its sole shareholder, the mint pays an annual dividend of £4 million to the Treasury, with the remaining profits being reinvested into the mint.[58] In 2015, Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne announced a £20 billion privatisation drive to raise funds, with the Royal Mint being up for sale alongside other institutions including the Met Office and Companies House.[55]”

“Then in 2016, the mint announced plans for Royal Mint Gold (RMG), a digital gold currency that uses blockchain to trade and invest in gold. Operated by CME Group, the technology is to be[out of date?] created by technology companies AlphaPoint and BitGo.[69]”

Bring it back into public ownership. It’s been partially privatised and the vultures are extracting what they can.

It’s not completely nonsensical for the government to lose a small margy on making currency. It’s useful and the harder it is to counterfeit the better.

But both “New Labour” and the Conservatives have a lot to answer for when it comes to our national assets being lost.

Honestly, Zoom just has a hilariously high frequency of vulnerabilities being discovered.

Let’s set the sentence for executing an innocent man to, death.

The first barrier to the death penalty is to make sure verdicts are right 100% of the time.

After that you can begin the debate about **whether it’s moral at all.

I’m sorry, I started joking because you weren’t being serious either.

Wait, you were being serious?

Well I’ve got a solution for you!

Just insert this adapter into the 3.5mm jack and it will be blocked for you. It’ll no longer be wasted space because this adapter is a useful place to store several grains of rice for a snack.

Unfortunately you do lose a feature as a result of using this adapter, it will stop one of the speakers from working and degrade your audio quality.

But you shouldn’t complain about anything removing a feature, or degrading your audio quality. You’ve got a new feature of being able to store rice!

You can even buy special fairphone sustainable rice from us. With only a small 300% mark up but an incredible 80% of the sustainability of already available rice. It comes in green!

The “demographic” of human being who doesn’t want to wreck the planet if Fairphone’s target.

If Fairphone is not trying to be universal anymore you should see that as a problem. So should every fairphone customer.

I’ll buy a more sustainable phone than the fairphone when my phone loses support in 2027. I’ll encourage everyone to buy a more sustainable product today.

I’d much prefer a 3.5mm jack

There are sandwich artists and sanitation engineers. Everyone knows they get paid like crap.

Unfortunately “prompt engineers” seem to be getting paid small fortunes when their job is essentially using a massive amount of computing power to commit various levels of intellectual property theft they hope no one will notice.