kirklennon

I recently finished reading His Majesty’s Airship, which focuses specifically on the R101 development and disaster, but also more broadly on the entire history of rigid airships through the 1930s. The recurring theme is that people want airships to work so they keep trying. A new design comes along that promises to fix the problems from before and it’s fine for a while, until there’s a problem like, say, a strong breeze, and dozens of people die in a horrible crash. I want airships to make a comeback. The basic idea of something that floats and you merely need to push around with some propellers sounds great. I’m not terribly optimistic about it though. The weather is a real problem. Planes and ships and trains and trucks can all function even in an outright storm; airships inevitably require fair weather. Worse still, if they’re outside a hangar when the weather starts getting bad, they're stuck. They can’t get into a hangar before it gets worse because the very act of getting in a hangar for protection requires extremely precise control with no chance of sudden gusts that could shove it into the ground or the sides of the hangar. Extra propellers to maneuver can do only so much; they’re not magic. Major advances in weather forecasting in recent years maybe mean there are more situations where an airship could be safely used, with greater confidence of agreeable weather for the duration of the trip, but you’re certainly not going to build a freight business model on “sorry, let’s try again next week."

WooPayments, formerly known as WooCommerce Payments, is a payment gateway. I think we can let it slide.

You own your own hard drive. That copy of an iTunes song is yours. No DRM, no remotely removing your ability to use it.

Not to mention they can revoke your access to your music on iTunes.

iTunes got rid of DRM a decade and a half ago.

Many people don’t listen to local music or pop music.

I was responded to a comment about the availability of pop music.

And out of everything available iTunes is your first choice too?

Yes, the largest digital music store is, naturally, the first one I searched for availability numbers for (119 markets).

I don't really understand the rest of your rant.

You don't own the music you buy on a CD either. You are buying a license to the music and physical storage of it. If you want you can burn your iTunes songs on a CD and you're in the same situation.

I am aware, but unless you're saying iTunes doesn't sell pop music in most markets, it's not really relevant.

No it's not. The iTunes Music Store is available in the majority of countries in the world. Plus there are other services that cover some of the other countries. Vanishingly few people can choose only a CD.

The headline is right. Even if you don't know Best Buy's fiscal year, the tenses used in the quote makes it clear that they already closed 24 stores. Best Buy's 2024 fiscal year ended on February 3, 2024. They plan to close 10 to 15 more by roughly one month into 2025, so not literally "by 2025" but close enough.

CBDC is blockchain based, i.e cryptocurrency.

A CBDC can be blockchain based, but almost none actually will be. China's isn't. Japan's CBDC is not. In the US, the Federal Reserve is still in early stages but I'm confident it won't use blockchain either.

The login process for it is absolutely terrible and requires so much jumping back and forth between the dumb app and my computer, which is where I want to actually do my taxes.