Category: facebook

October 12 2019, 22:58

It turned out that Netflix started with renting DVDs. At that time, they were the online competitor of Blockbuster, which had about 10,000 stores in 2004. Now, Blockbuster is down to just one store in Oregon. Yet, the DVD rental market here in the states has not died. There’s a Redbox on every corner (about 40,000 in the country). Renting a movie costs from $1.75, which is cheaper than any streaming service. But they are dying out, of course.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yOAIU2WpIUQ

October 12 2019, 17:37

Today, Typhoon Hagibis struck Japan. I became curious about the difference between a hurricane and a typhoon. It turns out, the difference is only that a typhoon is a hurricane in the Far East and East Asia. It is believed that a typhoon is a gradually developing hurricane, but there are significantly fewer destructive typhoons than destructive hurricanes, so this is kind of an exception. Meteorologists call them both tropical cyclones.

October 11 2019, 17:11

I wonder if there could exist a society where everyone would be required to allocate certain fixed taxes across a portfolio ranging from police maintenance, healthcare services to education, with the departments themselves convincing people to invest more in them than in other areas?

I wonder, what prevents the use of the three-ballot voting system? Its principle is as follows: each voter receives a ballot with a unique number that has three detachable stubs. To vote “FOR”, the voter marks the selected candidate on any two parts of the ballot, and to vote “AGAINST”, the candidate is marked only on one part of the ballot where they are listed. If there is not at least one mark for each candidate, the ballot is considered invalid. A validator checks that the following condition is met (the number of markings for each candidate is greater than or equal to one and does not exceed two). The voter receives a receipt with a number (but without an indication of whom they voted for). After the election ends and votes are counted, a list of voters and all parts of the ballots are published in a public ballot database, so that everyone can check if their vote was counted. According to the protocol, the number of ballots is three times the number of voters who participated in the voting and correctly filled out their ballots. The number of votes cast for each candidate is calculated as the difference between the number of marks for the candidate and the number of correctly filled ballots, divided by three. If desired, it is possible to reconcile the number of attendees with the number of different numbers. What are the drawbacks?

October 08 2019, 20:26

I tried to return to the good old 35mm photography. Lisa got interested and even secretly bought an Elikon 35CM. I immediately criticized it and convinced her to upgrade to a Minolta 5000i – also a beginner’s camera, but an SLR with three lenses. I took it with me to Texas on a trial and shot two rolls of film. Here’s what I got.

The Minolta 5000i with an external flash and three lenses (70-300mm, 80-200mm, and 35-80mm) cost 50 bucks. Film costs 3-4 dollars per roll. Developing costs 7 dollars, and scanning another five. So compared to digital photography, it’s not cheap to operate, but if you count the initial investment, it’s pretty good. My digital SLR with lenses costs several thousand bucks, and it’s hardly paid off 🙂