The joke's on them and they probably don't even know it.

Remember that Disney owns the ABC TV broadcast network.

With this move, the regular TV news that has been streaming from abcnews.com and local affiliates for years has finally become inaccessible from all my Windows 11 PCs. This is using clean Windows with Edge only, no 3rd party apps or ad blockers, not relying on anything but good old Windows & Edge to handle security & privacy as well as they can.

Pre-recorded clips still play but not live news any more from ABC News or local station websites.

The same old PCs that played abcnews just fine until recently, and still play everything else at all resolutions.

The live internet streams were regular TV news with regular TV ads as always on their regular websites. No broadcast sports or entertainment programs were included, on the web those time slots were replaced by things like public interest programs from ABC studios. Including the same number of ads as the scheduled in-house news programs.

This hurts the advertisers more than anybody, Disney has now abruptly cut off countless web users who have always been just fine with the traditional 24/7 ads on the ad-supported news, apparently so Disney+ fans can be made more comfortable with any ads being eased in to paid premium programming. Just because they are on the same internet, that's a lot of collateral damage.

If I was an advertiser I would be hitting the ceiling and demanding far lower ad fees from Disney than there was a couple weeks ago. Now that casual random internet viewers have been kicked off the news stream in countless numbers.

Then you wouldn't have to change the initials and could claim it was that way the whole time :)

Now the heretofore well-understood descriptor "Artificial Intelligence" has been distilled from all of the world's experts for quite some time.

You can't expect terminology alone to turn things around completely, there's got to be some equivalence for it to be a meaningful rebrand.

In the Trump vocabulary I think the closest thing that comes to mind as AI for most people would be "Fake Intelligence", which is right on-brand the way he talks, and rolls off the tongue easier than the runner-up "Hoax Intelligence."

Like anything else, FI would be understood to be convenient shorthand, every time you see Trump's face associated with "intelligence" of any kind it would naturally imply the full formal name; "Fake Intelligence of America."

The process of dying and rejuvenation would be somewhat analogous chemically.

In this case the electrode is metallic lead and the electrolyte is water containing sulfuric acid.

The electrode-electrolyte "interphase" is a solid coating based on lead sulfate, that forms on the lead plates after extended recharge cycles. This doesn't redissolve very well during use after a while when the electrolyte has become oversaturated with lead ions, and the electrodes have been "replated" so many times. Especially when recharged from near-death.

One antique way of restoration without disassembly was to agitate the battery using an industrial vibrator to loosen up the solids, then dump out the (highly toxic lead-containing) electrolyte to physically remove as much sludge as possible. Followed by repeated filling using distilled water, agitation, and dumping until the waste water looks OK. One final fill with DI water (which acts as a very weak electrolyte at this point) and a reverse charge until an amp or two has been reached for a bit, to deplate as much oxidized coating as possible into a virgin solvent.

More agitation, dumping, rinsing, and finally replace with fresh acid.

Desperate measures for desperate times, not too economical today unless similar wastewater is already being handled in a scale that dwarfs a single battery, and fresh acid is obtained surplus or purchased at bulk pricing as well.

This sounds more complicated than the existing processes to recycle the acid and the electrodes separately and make new batteries from the raw materials.

Well "Consumer Reports" already has its niche in product comparisons. As the name implies consumers are supposed to get the most out of their ratings.

How about "Producer Reports" where companies are evaluated on whether they actually produce anything of value first and foremost as a benchmark.

Completely separate from the financial data which is already well-covered elsewhere. Investors are already supposed to get the most out of the money angle.

But for any one product most people are neither consumers of the product nor investors in the company.

These are the vast majority who would benefit from better information on whether a company is worth having around, for everyone in general who is not an avid consumer nor investor.

That would probably be more helpful for "innocent bystanders" who want to better avoid being assimilated by forces they have no interest in but could end up quite costly anyway.

My objective has often been to build & test as many experimental circuits as I could in the shortest amount of time.

One of the real good shortcuts is to just start soldering parts together according to a plan in your head, without taking the time to make a schematic drawing beforehand or do any advanced calculations.

There might be more emphasis on the properties and ratings of each component this way, this is not something to skip over, you should be very familiar with each component you use. Well in advance, and loads of hours of component study needs to be behind you, otherwise you may not do too good at just whipping something up on the bench that's electrically sound to begin with.

As pointed out, with math it can be the same way.

If you just want to quickly start picking up parts and soldering them together right away without doing any advanced calculations, the best shortcut is to have already become quite familiar with the equations including calculus when necessary, so you can bring to bear endless hours of mathematical study and use it to intuitively guide your soldering iron for every hour at the bench.

Edit: upvoted because your message should not be less than neutral, not greyed out at all. Obviously, I'm on the fence, sometimes I use math, other times not at all ;)

It can get hard to follow after a while :)

How about a triple-play, damning with damn damnation?

Sshh. Her lips are sealed.

It's just a stylistic thing, same with the smoke, which represents heat more so than fumes.

Normally you hold the iron horizontal under the nose and of course don't breathe during the heat test.

And you don't actually kiss the soldering iron until it's cooled all the way down, and usually not unless the experimental circuit you came up with works the first time you plug it in :) So you can relax as intended and unplug the damn iron, without having to keep on hammering til all hours.

One thing she's not telling is the way you should be effective enough soldering using (very inexpensive) uncontrolled soldering irons, that you can eventually solder two pieces of solder together. Before you graduate to a "pro-grade" soldering station.

Points aren't that meaningful but that's the part that is a "popularity contest."

For what it's worth.

I agreed right off the bat, they definitely reached scale like few others, but maybe it might have been the way they grew without stopping more so than today's well-known scaling process that got them there.

Doubtless they got in position early to take advantage of many potential upswings.

I know what you mean, nobody in North America understands vive la différence outside of French Canadians and Louisiana Cajuns.

And some of them only at their own convenience.

I wouldn't let it bother me, son of a gun I'm gonna have big fun on the bayou :)

edit: not my downvote btw