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SpaceGhostC2C

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    Techonomist

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  1. It's not even reviews: product placement is the most effective form of marketing. Say Linus wants to make a janky CPU cooler? Companies will be desperate to provide them not just with a top-tier CPU, but also motherboards, PSUs, RAM kits... They don't need them to advertise them, praise them, or anything other than use them, and perhaps list them in a part lists at some point in the video. Their presence alone in the video instills a latent demand in the viewers. This then helps companies in two ways: 1) increase demand for higher-tier products, at a price range most people shouldn't / wouldn't be buying otherwise; 2) create a halo product effect, leading buyers to get whatever product from the same brand they can afford, unconsciously expecting it to be better than a similarly priced competitor. All this is more important than reviews, hence why intel would send an 18-core, "walk-in-the-rain" CPU for Linus' 3-year old daughter PC. The best illustration of this is an LTT video from back when Zen hadn't launch yet. In that video, Linus went over the products bought in Amazon using LTT's affiliate code. In that video, the best-seller CPU was a K i7, despite every LTT video telling viewers they didn't need more than an i5 for gaming, nor a K chip unless planning to overclock (which probably also wasn't worth the cost in FPS/$ terms). The explicit message was against Intel desires ("don't pay 50% more for an i7, get the i5"), but all the i7s and HEDT builds in the channel were able to overpower the explicit message. In the end, the whole tech youtube ecosystem (and similar ones for other industries) strived and consolidated on the basis of channels acting as marketing arms for manufacturers, not in the blatant shilling or "paid reviews" sense, but in this, more indirect way: companies were willing to sponsor the channels and supply parts for their projects because their mere existence was good for business, regardless of what they said about one particular product or other.
  2. AFAIK he did not actually say anything, so everything tool place in a private, virtual space, which couldn't cause a threat or an alarm to the airport/airline. Hence, it's the claim that "he did it at an airport" that requires ignoring the physical world. He may have actually alarmed one of his friends if that's the source, which I haven't seen any evidence of yet. Snapchat would be mass surveillance in that case. We know since Snowden, if not earlier, that private companies' cooperation is part of the surveillance web. That is true; however, that is not necessarily how their users see it or how the companies promote those services (hence the qualifier "what he thought was in private" in my post).
  3. Ultimately, the problem is not so much what Kickstarter chooses and what it doesn't, but the fact that it gets to choose, at any point in time, with no restrictions and no accountability. It's just a terrible institutional design that results in terrible contracts between startups and Kickstarter, and between Kickstarter and backers. AS a backer, you retain all risks, no guarantees. As a startup, you retain all costs and receive no property rights. It's a miracle it's able to exist. Makes you wonder whether it's a question of people being stupid or a question of financial markets being too dysfunctional that such a terrible idea gets to exist.
  4. He did it at the right place - he did it in private (or what he thought was in private). The problem wasn't caused by his joke, the problem was caused by being spied on. It's just another case of mass surveillance producing more expenses to burden the taxpayers and zero actual threats stopped.
  5. (Un)surprisingly, the person with the least criminal behavior in the story is the one that ended up in jail... You simply can't threaten an airport by sending a private message to your friends. You need to at least, you know, involve the supposedly threatened person... Sending a text message that reads "Fire!" to your friend inside a theatre is not a crime; shouting it out loud is. Or about god. Or sex. Or the government. You enjoy the absolute freedom to say what we want you to say and joke about what we want you to joke about; don't misuse it.
  6. It seems we got us a Debbie Downer here...
  7. I was going to reply, but then I took a scoped storage in the knee.
  8. If you were about to build it, I would say go with 280 on top. Since you already have it, I'd say no, don't waste money and time on whatever marginal gain you may have here or there. What for? It won't change the temperature under load.
  9. That site refers to unemployment insurance recipients, not the unemployment rate. Don't know which one the ORF new piece was talking about, though. It seems so, according to their statistics office: https://www.statistik.at/en/statistics/labour-market/unemployment/unemployed-seeking-work
  10. That is indeed the letter of the law. Also, it doesn't change that it is in fact a zero-accountability position, and there is no catering to a "constituency" à la US congress.
  11. This is exactly how ransomware spreads from one infected computer onto entire companies. It all comes down to how protected are those other computers from inbound traffic coming from that particular network.
  12. The Commission is nothing like the US congress. To begin with, they don't even have a "constituency", since they aren't even elected. It's more of a retirement plan for politicians from around the EU, as long as they have shown enough submission to the European establishment during their tenure at their respective national institutions.
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