I think it was the MPAA that tried to develop DVD players with cameras so they could count room occupancy and lock the content if you were tying to exceed the terms of their license.
Was it Sony that had the patent on a device that would require the watcher to say the product name out loud to the microphone to continue watching? The product to my knowledge doesn't exist but the patent for it did.
Sadly, I think this is only the beginning. Once video monitoring becomes cheap and easy we will see "shirts folded per hour", "distance swept per annum", "steps deviating from optimum path between van and front door", "customers approached per shift" etc
'but I took time off because I was injured and Beth asked if I could come in and cover Mannie's shift. You can't lower be pay compensation because of my metrics that shift'
'sorry, the system says this is your new pay rate. If you meet quota without failing to meet quota for the next 6 months, you will be eligible for a rate promotion if your manager requests it'
They lost me at "vacuum deposition - impossible" without justification. As far as processes go it's one of the safest (everything happens in a sealed vacuum chamber). Maybe the solvents used to clean prior to coating?
Yeah, it’s the solvents used for cleaning the chambers and parts. Very nasty stuff, and it’s probably the biggest concern for this type of facility anywhere, not just in California.
The stuff my dad used for cleaning down beryllium copper sheets that then had silicon, gold, and nichrome deposited onto them to make tiny medical pressure sensors was generally various stages of xylene, amyl acetate, freon, and - on one notable occasion when a shipment of the sheet stock came heavily contaminated with tractor oil - plain ordinary petrol.
It's a big reason why they were constantly accusing every opponent of being a crook. People don't want to vote for a crook, but if you convince enough voters that all politicians are dishonest and it is their only option, than they can rationalize voting for 'their' crook.
Not very dissimilar to Mussolini's tactics back in the 1920s/1930s, it's actually quite impressive how many similarities there are between Trump's and Mussolini's ways to find political power.
He says that he encourages the pieces to only transported by re-shipping them through FedEx, so as they change owners and travel the world they will become progressively more damaged.
I cannot tell if this is /s or real. there is an entire genre of art that specifically about functionality - functional art. Chairs, tables, buildings, vases, textile, and so on can be beautiful art yet functional.
This is the worst take on “it’s not art” I’ve ever read. You can look through any art history textbook and it’s filled to the brim with classic art that convey lots of information.
There was a great study from a decade ago that showed that baseball cards held by lighter skinned hands outsold cards held by darker skinned individuals on eBay.
An algorithm designed today with the goal of helping users pick the most profitable product photo would probably steer people towards using caucasian models, and because eBay's cut is a percentage, they would be incentivized to use it.
Studies show that conservatives tend to respond more positively to sponsored content. If this is true, algorithm-driven ad-sponsored social sites will tend towards conservative content.
It's common to perform longevity testing at higher temperatures to simulate longer lifetimes, in account of nobody has decades of time to actually perform a 1x time test.
I wonder if "damp" modes of decay could still damage them though, which isn't captured in this style of testing. Like some wet chemical or biological process.
Borosilicate glass is much more resistant to chemicals and shocks than ordinary glass, which is why it is used in glassware for laboratories and in also in the better cooking vessels.
Except for hydrogen fluoride (a.k.a. hydrofluoric acid) and for hot and concentrated strong alkalies, biological or chemical agents will not have effects.
The main danger is either breaking the glass or its crystallization at high temperatures. A HDD is also unlikely to survive a drop on a hard floor and high temperatures would demagnetize it much more easily than affecting a glass stab.
I hope a few of these experimental alternative battery chemistries prove viable. One company recently claimed their Al/Li batteries has 92% efficiency at -13°C
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