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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 29th, 2023

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  • Im not sure exactly how the system works, but if I were designing one, there would be 3 approaches I can think of.

    The first is to equip the lock with a GPS system and dictate that it locks if it’s not within range of a particular location. This one would be the most expensive to implement, but should come with minimal opportunity for messing with it.

    Next down the list is each lock is equipped with a radio to connect to a wifi or sub-GHz broadcaster, and as soon as it misses enough heartbeats to a central control point, it locks the wheels. This could be disrupted by jamming the signal, but jammers of this type are highly illegal, and easily trackable.

    Last is the cheapest option, which is to include an RFID module tied to the lock and a system to broadcast a signal at the perimeter. If a cart comes within range for a long enough period then the RFID tag is activated and the wheels lock.

    I suspect it’s probably a sub-GHz radio situation, with the broadcast power tuned to be within a few hundred meters of the store. If you had some kind of SDR you could probably pinpoint the signal they use and repeat it, letting you wheel a cart outside the zone, but as soon as you stop the signal the wheels will lock.



  • I work in an office as a network administrator. Largely my day to day is a meeting every morning to go over what everyone is doing for the day, then looking through and responding to all the alerts that came up from all the servers I manage(things like failing backups, unexpected reboots, stopped services, strange login behavior, etc)

    Then, if I still have time in the day, I put time towards some of the long term projects I have which largely consists of finding things that can be automated and scripting up solutions to that









  • It depends on what you think the purpose of keeping creative works outside of the public domain is. Generally, the idea is so that the original creator can make a living off of their art without someone immediately copying their work and undercutting them. The idea of keeping a character true to the original interpretation is not usually considered in this discussion.

    Personally, I believe that IP should enter the public domain way sooner than it actually does. I’m generally in favor the original definition of 14 years, with a 14 year extension before the work enters public domain. That gives someone 28 years to make a living off of a character before the ideas become free game for others to use and adapt in any way they see fit.

    Having Spongebob as IP keeps him on rails for who he is as a character. Change that, Spongebob as a character is changed by the public that could make the original unrecognizable

    I fundamentally disagree with this premise. The vast majority of characters that are in the public domain are not significantly different from their source work, outside of a handful of modern exceptions. Dracula is still mostly Dracula, even in the modern day. Same for Sherlock Holmes, or anyone in a Shakespeare play. The idea of completely twisting a character once they enter the public domain happens, like with Blood and Honey, or that Popeye horror movie coming out, but I think you’d struggle to find anyone that only knows Winnie the Pooh or Popeye from their modern, cheesy slasher adaptations rather than the original stories.