The gambling industry has funneled a ton of cash into academic researchers producing papers that gave credence to the idea of "addictive personality," which in turn was massaged by PR experts into the notion that some people are just born addicts, and the gambling industry can't help it if they become addicted to gambling too. "Addictive personality" itself is on very shaky grounds statistically, and the derived PR messaging certainly is false. The gambling industry is likely more culpable in this mess than even a typical, generally well-informed person might be aware.
"Addictive personality", now there is a deprecated phrase!
In drug rehabilitation, the phrase is no longer used. Instead people have a bingo card of disease, conditions and syndromes to go with addiction. Once people have been pigeon-holed in a dozen ways then the die is cast, these conditions are no longer imaginary, you have to hold yourself up in life because X, Y and Z prohibit you from even giving it a go.
Regarding the article, I detest organised gambling, however, relatively few chronic gamblers end up homeless and destitute. You need a good dose of class A drugs and a smorgasbord of childhood trauma to guarantee the truly negative outcomes.
I don't object to gambling amongst friends, even if it is on a card game. I might bet someone that they can't beat me on Scrabble, but I would be getting the dopamine hits from laying some massive, high-scoring words on the board to devastate my fellow players, but winning that £10 just ups the stakes and my competitive drive. If I am just betting on a sport (or even a Scrabble game) played by others, then it isn't quite the same.
What does amaze me about modern day gambling is that you know it is rigged. I don't trust an app to honestly flip a coin for me. My version of the app would be 'if heads show tails and vice-versa most of the time'. Yet people pour their life savings and some more into apps that are black boxes with no way of peeking inside to see how it works. The seasoned gambler must know that every game is rigged and that the house always wins, but they still queue up for another spin.
> relatively few chronic gamblers end up homeless and destitute.
They rank up unpayable debts and their married partners end up being legally obligated to pay half of that even after divorce.
Getting life together after gambling is super hard to impossible. It is literally easier to get back on track as alcoholic, as those have much smaller debts.
And it is easier to avoid keep alcohol out of house then ... cell phone put of house.
I have wondered for a while what happens to the gamblers in the city where I live. They don't end up in homeless shelters or at the soup kitchen, which has got me curious. I appreciate that the money comes to an end and debts are a result of that. However, the gamblers are not pushing it to destitution, they might lose all their big ticket stuff but they don't end up in just the clothes they wear and nothing else.
I don't think generalisations about ease of giving up alcohol versus ease of giving up sports betting (or other gambling) is an apples to apples comparison.
In case of Kakao Taxi vs Uber, it was Uber's unwillingness to work with existing taxi operators that killed any chance Uber had in the Korean market. Kakao (at least until they became dominant) acted more like an agent that sends additional customers to existing independent taxi drivers while Uber kept trying to find legal loopholes to bypass the taxi licensing system. S Korea is a civil law country, and its courts have no patience for actors whose entire legal strategy is to subvert the intent of the laws, and that was the end for Uber there.
To be accurate, Uber didn't abide by laws in most countries it went up against. It was a little slimy but also the taxi systems of most places were very entrenched. I remember never enjoying riding taxis in San Francisco for years, the cars were gross and the drivers were grumpy and generally shady about having their "credit card readers being broken" so they didn't have to pay the fees. Uber and a bunch of companies did and end run around those very politically entrenched systems and I certainly am happy to have clean, friendly, safe, modern rides with good tech where reviews keep things in line and payment is easy and I can share my location easily and know I'm going to end up at the right place way better.
Exactly. Uber was shady, but that kind of shadiness and willingness to ignore laws is necessary to bring positive change in a highly corrupt society. It's a lot like Batman: when the police are completely ineffectual or corrupt and working for organized crime, you need a vigilante who ignores the laws that just protect the criminals.
However, in better-run and not-so-corrupt societies like Korea, it's not necessary and probably downright harmful.
> However, in better-run and not-so-corrupt societies like Korea, it's not necessary and probably downright harmful.
South Korea was under varying levels of dictatorship from the Korean War until the Sixth Republic in 1987. Roh Tae-woo, the first president after authoritarian rule, was imprisoned for corruption. Roh Moo-hyun, the President from 2003-2008 was investigated for corruption and died by suicide rather than face charges. Lee Myung-bak, his successor, was imprisoned for corruption. Park Geun-hye, his successor, was imprisoned for corruption.
I don't know that South Korea is the poster child for a "better-run and not not-so-corrupt" society.
>I don't know that South Korea is the poster child for a "better-run and not not-so-corrupt" society.
It's not a poster child, but the US sets such a low bar that SK looks great by comparison.
Note also that the US isn't so visibly corrupt at the federal level; it's at the local levels where it's really no better than the typical poster children for corrupt countries. Taxis are a completely local (municipal) issue.
Yeah, I wouldn't go quite that far. Here's Samsung's heir, convicted in court of bribery, getting a special presidential pardon because, and I quote, he's "needed back at the helm to spearhead economic recovery post-pandemic".
Not sure I'd call Korea and its countless cases of political corruption with Chaebol more and more appearing to be basically running the show "not-so-corrupt".
I find it strange these types of articles never mention UAE's Barakah nuclear power plant (which did not source reactors from a nation unfriendly to the U.S.) and experienced only 4 year delay from the originally projected commercial operation start date and relatively limited cost overruns.
Regulatory red tape often comes with very good reasons, particularly regarding safety.
Authoritarian regimes don't need to concern themselves with such pesky things as nature protection or people dying in accidents, especially if the workers are basically modern slaves.
If you want an example for what happens when you cut corners in nuclear, just look at Sellafield (UK) or La Hague (France). This shit is why regulations are so tight, and yet even that didn't prevent people from cutting corners which is why a lot of France's nuclear power plants were down for safety maintenance (corroded pipes) last summer, made worse by the drought that forced a lot of the remaining NPPs out of operation.
I can't read the study (published in India?), but I would dispute the data.
> This hasn’t worked for lithium batteries, partly because so many formats exist. “These batteries are all over the place in different sizes,” he said. A related challenge is that the technology for lithium batteries changes rapidly — every one to two years, he said.
It's possible that Samsung got a briefing on what's happening with ARM and Qualcomm and negotiated an extended reprieve from the new licensing scheme about a month ago when Masayoshi Son had a high profile meeting with the head of Samsung to discuss "a strategic alliance between Samsung and Arm."
>But in recent years, nearly every modern phone shipped today has an eSIM
How many phones other than iPhone, Pixel, and (very recent) Galaxy S/Z have eSIM? There aren't that many cellular IoT boards that support swappable eSIM either (some boards say eSIM, but what they mean is that the IoT vendor's SIM is soldered onto the board - thus "embedded SIM"- not that you're allowed to load eSIM of your choice).
Though the table could use an update, I've tried to add new devices I got my hands on because (conversely) I'd like to know the accuracy of a device before buying it with mapping in mind.
What I found interesting is that
> As of 2021, some recent smartphones claim to support Galileo but in fact do not work with it. This includes the Fairphone 3 and 3+; Motorola Moto G Power and Moto G30. On the other hand, the Xiaomi Mi A2 Lite does not claim Galileo support (including on the manufacturer's own page), yet it works. The Samsung S10e is also confirmed to work.
The spec sheet doesn't always match reality unfortunately (or, for Xiaomi, fortunately!).
Most phones since 2013 or so for GLONASS, and most after 2017 or so for GALILEO, at least in the US. These constellations needed US approval to be allowed as supplemental data, and it still requires an initial lock to GPS before feeding them in. GLONASS is only one of the constellations not broadcasting a civilian second band.
Additionally, Beidou is still banned and blocked in firmware while in US even though the satellites are broadcasting, since this constellation lacks US approval (partially because the other constellations are 1-way systems broadcasting to receiver and Beidou is a two-way system, that can be used for tracking and likely emergency response). Here's some slides about BeiDou's technical details, specifically note the 2-way messaging since all anyone's been talking about is Spacex/Globalstar: https://www.gps.gov/cgsic/meetings/2020/geng.pdf
Does GNSS chipsets in phones really support two way communication? Sounds like something that would need specialized antennas and high output power, not exactly something that can be hidden at least.
Galileo also supports or maybe will support emergency beacons from the ground.
> it still requires an initial lock to GPS before feeding them in
Is there any technical reason, or is it just protectionism? (as in, no GPS lock? No lock at all, even if Galileo and Glonass are 100% fine!)
> Beidou is still banned and blocked in firmware while in US even though the satellites are broadcasting, since this constellation lacks US approval
Is it legal to use a Xiaomi phone in Wifi only mode with Beidou GNSS?
> Here's some slides about BeiDou's technical details, specifically note the 2-way messaging
Super interesting, ty! I see interesting details like "Horizontally positioning accuracy is about 1.5m" so it should be better than GPS! Also, it supports 300k SMS/h with a coverage over Japan, India and Thailand!
> Is there any technical reason, or is it just protectionism? (as in, no GPS lock? No lock at all, even if Galileo and Glonass are 100% fine!)
No technical reason. It's a mixture of both legitimate concern for public safety (they are newer constellations with a shorter reliability track record) and the uh, more political concerns over privacy and national security.
I wouldn't be surprised if China does the inverse considering their motivations for developing BeiDou were first and foremost to stop the US jamming the GPS receivers on their missiles. My immediate thought with the decay of US/Russia relations was that it might be a good idea to throw a switch to disable GLONASS in case they start transmitting bogus signals. My assumption is with the 'GPS first' policy, the receiver shouldn't mix in less accurate data, but without documentation I'm not sure.
Personally I'm all for having options and I have come to respect Galileo for being civilian system, rather than a military system. More than anything I want the choice to be able to enable and disable whatever constellations I want and not deal with the bullshit that is Qualcomm's undocumented GNSS receiver firmware.
> Is it legal to use a Xiaomi phone in Wifi only mode with Beidou GNSS?
It's legal to use if it doesn't transmit on someone else's licensed spectrum. It's illegal to sell in the US as a navigation receiver (EDIT: without it being disabled in firmware). But you are free to do whatever you want with captured signals with only a very few restrictions (like sniffing cordless phone bands). I've even sniffed pager networks so I could track COVID cases coming in, afaik it's only illegal if I share what I see.
> I would love to play with Beidou!
Same. I told a GPS launch commander I'd like to play with their system and he got incredibly butthurt. I told him to stop being a bitch and either make the US system better or stop excluding civvies from using it to its fullest potential. There's no commercial alternatives in the US as all commercial satellite projects get heavily subsidized by the US military and they don't want competitors.
> It's legal to use if it doesn't transmit on someone else's licensed spectrum
Great then! I only want to listen, to study the performance of the different networks when non-technical limitations are removed.
> No technical reason
Then it's exactly what I thought: protectionism.
I'll try to get my hands on some devices and play with them - or mod existing ones if possible!
> More than anything I want the choice to be able to enable and disable whatever constellations I want and not deal with the bullshit that is Qualcomm's undocumented GNSS receiver firmware
Let's get in touch by email, I want to explore the GNSS firmware to allow "everything and the kitchensync"!
They do more than just average the systems - they can use information from one to get a lock on satellites from another, they can in some cases use just one or two satellites from a system even when a lock requires 4 or more satellites.
Considered that I follow hardware development fairly closely, I didn't even know this was not a thing on iPhone. And now Apple is making a big deal about it.
Could anyone shares any thoughts as to why Apple only include it now? And not earlier?
The government that was in power from 2017 to 2022 put a moratorium on new reactor construction there and promised a full phase-out, and although the newly-elected government promised to reverse this, it likely has done some damage to S. Korea's civilian nuclear capabilities.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LhIwfu73reE