. . . it seems weird that these are reported with a lowercase 'k' but 'M' and so on remain uppercase.
For SI units, the abbreviations are defined, so a lowercase k for kilo and uppercase M for mega is correct. Lower case m is milli, c is centi, d is deci. Uppercase G is giga, T is tera and so on.
Not true. Several SI prefixes already overlap with units. m is both metre and milli-. T is tesla and tera-. c is a prefix of candela (cd) but also centi-. (G is gauss (cgs unit, not mks/SI) and giga-.)
But I do care about latency . . . and I want things to still work when the wifi is dodgy. I already find things like Office 360 deeply frustrating (only use it for work).
You do, but most people don't. So not enough people will complain that it will make any difference. And the people who don't complain will just keep forking out money because they're addicted.
For half a century or so aircraft height was largely done with air pressure alone.
It still is. Flight levels (20000 feet and above in the US) are defined by air pressure without reference to current atmospheric conditions (i.e. the actual altitude of FL200 can vary based on atmospheric conditions). Below 19000 feet, altimeters are calibrated to local conditions which are given to the pilots by air traffic control.
I'm glad that I am not the only one saying this. I made the switch 20+ years ago for my day to day use, and I have rarely experienced any problems with it.
As a sibling comment said, gold was effectively money. Having more money, without having more products to buy, effectively triggered massive inflation. Prices went up, but the actual supply of goods and services didn't change much. The Spanish economy suffered massive inflation, as did Europe in general to a lessor extent.
Since the industrial revolution productivity has actually been increasing and automation continues to make this happen.
If you don't have a mechanism for productivity increase matching your inflation it's just making whoever is creating the new money temporarily proportionally wealthier until the money spreads everywhere.
Well only with a fairly fixed amount of gold available. If suddenly a vast new supply of gold is discovered, its not shocking that there would be inflation.
It's interesting that mining gold and silver is similar to printing more money; we usually think of inflation as represented by debasing coinage but there's been a few circumstances where flooding the local economy with precious metals is the same effect.
We sometimes see similar localized effects when wealthy foreign governments and NGOs go into poor countries to "help" with foreign aid and investment. When done correctly this can boost the local economy in a sustainable way, kind of priming the pump. But often it just dumps a lot of cash in, causing price inflation as the supply of goods and services fails to keep pace with the supply of money.
Outside influence heavily distorts local economies and needs to be done extremely carefully or you end up making a few people rich and starving everybody else.
Heifer International presents a good face on doing this by introducing livestock, providing education to the new owners, and imparting an in-kind donation requirement so as to perpetuate and spread the gains.
Likewise charities that build clean water infrastructure, small scale solar, cell phone infrastructure, insulated cooking pots to reduce fuel use, and build infrastructure and training for basic medical care – these are all things that support increases in productivity by removing barriers and introducing efficiency into people's lives enabling them to do more, for their children to attend more school, for them to lose less time to illness and malnutrition.
Where just giving away food or money, especially on large scales distorts and ruins economies. Likewise introducing significant export markets when a local economy isn't ready.
> Early data from a sub-district pilot showed sharp reductions in extreme poverty and improved wellbeing with minimal inflation, showing direct cash is a scalable tool to accelerating the end of extreme poverty.
That is an organization judging it's own success while a program is accelerating.
And if you measure poverty by how much money someone has and then give them money saying you've fixed poverty is tautology.
If your plan is to build a client state on perpetual welfare, well sure it's easy to be successful. But you can never leave and it's very possible that if you do leave things will be worse than if you had done nothing at all.
Whereas if you distribute a bunch of goats and chickens among a community and spread some education about raising goats and chickens, there's a good chance you've made a one shot permanent improvement to the quality of life of a community.
The criticism for giving direct aid in food and cash isn't that things are worse for the people you're giving them to while you're giving it to them... it's that you wreck the local economy for food and everything else because nobody can sell food when food is free and you can't price things correctly when money is pouring in. The money always stops and the aftermath is a disaster.
You can imagine every year the price per bushel of the wheat you grow drops and your mortgage stays the same. When your whole economy is like that no one wants to borrow or lend money and investment slows.
American TV has always been violent. It may have been less gory in the past, but there has always been gun fights and fist fights and violence of many kinds.
In this case, it is more of a question of whether the FBI considered it a criminal matter. The lessor was in possession of the car. The lessee filed a lawsuit against the lessor to get it back. It sounds more like a contract dispute: a civil matter.
Serious Q: What is the fundamental difference between a legal and illegal e-bike. This largely is differentiated by the location but I don't know what illegal e-bike means.
Maximum power output and maximum (assisted) speed are generally legislated. In the UK, an e-bike is up to 250 W and 25 kph. More than that, it would classify as a motorbike and you'd need a license (not particularly onerous). The bike itself is often built differently to accommodate the different power profile.
As a pedal cyclist, I feel that's a reasonably sensible limit as much faster than that you should be more experienced as a cyclist to control the bike and anticipate the conditions.
In addition to the other answer you got. E-bikes are pedal assist, so illegal ones usually have throttles in addition to more powerful motors. This depends on the region though.
In the United States, throttle-only ebikes that go up to 20 miles per hour (Class 2 ebikes) are legal pretty much everywhere. They're required to have functional pedals, but no pedal assist function is required.
Your class 3 definition is inaccurate. Class 3 is limited to 28mph and cannot have a throttle, only pedal assist.
Anything that doesn't fall in one of those classes is a motorcycle that is not street legal and can only be rudden of private property (unless you can convince your DMV to give you registration as a motor vehicle.)
This can vary somewhat from state to state, but most states have adopted or are moving to adopt these classes.
