I work in live TV. The podcast mike’s are tiny compared to the ones used in most TV work. A shotgun mic, with a windshield can be bigger than your forearm.

E.g. the Sannheiser MKE 600 is 20mm diameter and 256mm long (10"), without its windshield.

The lapel mics are both expensive as hell, and far lower quality. They are only used when a better mic can’t be.

The mics used by many podcasts are similar to those used by radio stations and music recording. They trade directionality for compactness, without dropping quality.

The Qatar royal family couldn’t sell the thing beforehand. They gave trump a white elephant to deal with. Even disposing of it properly would be expensive.

There’s also the fact that most industries have a natural saturation point. Most of the predictions used current numbers to calculate it. The numbers changed with production however. The saturation point slid away as fast as production shot up. Economists know this can’t keep up, and tend to be conservative in their estimates, so they were that this won’t keep happening for much longer.

Basically humans aren’t good with exponential growth predictions. They have a tendency to run away in apparently absurd ways. You don’t need deliberate conspiracies to create this effect.

I mostly agree. I can think of a few niche uses for it. However, they are very uncommon. E.g. bringing a freezer of blood up from “deep storage” temperatures to “ready to use in a hurry”.

I can also think of a few more where a “boost mode” could be useful e.g. a supermarket that knows there is a heat wave. Over-chilling the freezers would let them cope better with the temperature spike later in the day.

Critically, these should still be within safe hard limits. The fact that hackers could effectively switch them off in mass is the huge issue.

I don’t think we are to blame for the beans thing (we prefer our beans as baked beans).

As a rule of thumb though, we can be blamed for far too much stuff. You need to include the french too however. They got up to almost as much “shenanigans”.

Read only remote access is useful for life critical supplies. You want to know, as soon as possible if your blood has gone out of safe storage temperatures, and for how long. It would let you save the supplies by moving them to a new freezer.

The problem is remote temperature control. That bit should be air gapped, unless you have a very good reason to need to adjust it remotely.

Art is a form of communication. Modern art tries to explore new ways to do this. This can take the form of viewing common things in a new light. E.g. the soup cans. It can also deliberately be abstracted to absurdity. E.g. using paint splatters in an attempt to express pure emotion.

A child’s stick man drawing takes relatively little skill (for an adult) coming from a small child to a grandparent, it communicates so much more, and can be treasured accordingly. The skill isn’t a critical bit of art (though often important, the communication is.

AI slop cuts that line of deep communication. It also poisons the communal trust in the value of that link.

UK based here.

I was in scouts, and my little minion is now also in the lower levels.

I personally think it fills a critical need for a lot of kids. Schools are locked hard into the national curriculum, and don’t have time for the more character and skill building events. Scouts cover this nicely.

Regarding my local group. So far, my experience has been excellent. The kids adore it and they are doing a lot of fun learning. E.g. recently they did fire lighting. Learning to use matches, and basic fire safety around candles etc is an important skill. Learning as a group also means they learn from each other’s (minor) mistakes.

The group is also mixed gender. While it’s mostly boys, there are enough girls that it’s not intimidating for either gender. Its activities are “boy focused”, so most of the girls are of the tomboy mindset.

There are a few religious aspects attached to it. The pledge/promise mentions God. In practice it’s mostly non religious. What religious elements there are, are quite inoffensive. I’ve also noted that the older groups have a choice of pledge, including a non-religious/atheistic option.

Also, regarding some of the scandals, the UK government now has quite rigorous procedures in place to protect children. Enhanced DBS checks are required for adults in a supervisor roll. While not perfect, these checks stop someone jumping from area to area to avoid their past acts. Parents, teachers and other helpers are also a lot hotter on spotting minor discrepancies before they can escalate. It’s just done calmly and quietly, to avoid accidental witch hunts.

Basically, my minion loves scouts, and I am completely comfortable with them attending.

Not infinite. Eventually they begin to overlap and are no longer distinct rainbows.

It’s related to the number of total internal reflections inside a raindrop. The 2nd rainbow is actually inverted, colour wise. The 3rd inverts again, and so is normal. Each reflection loses more light however, so it gets dimmer. 3 is the practical limit in the sky, with our eyes. In the lab version, at least 18 rainbows can be detected, even by undergraduate level students!