I never had a rotary phone, by the time I was born (1990) touch-tone was pretty much the standard everywhere, and my parents were/are kind of "gadget people" and as such tried to keep their tech super current (we had internet in our house before any of my friends did, for example).
I've never actually used a rotary phone that was actually in service. I think I know how to dial with it, and I've played with one briefly at a GoodWill about 17 years ago. They definitely have a very satisfying "chunkiness" to them, as most clockwork gadgets tend to. I wouldn't mind picking one up but I have to fight against my hoarding tendencies, and I don't have any kids to which I can justify making them a toy.
I’m old enough that, growing up, rotaries would have worked on our phone line but not old enough to have actually had a rotary phone. It did used to cost more for touch tone service though (incredibly) and my dad was cheap so our digital phones were all set to pulse dial mode.
All the “high tech” of a digital phone with the “fun” of having to wait for the digits to pulse out! Also I figured out at a young age that pulse dial was just toggling the rocker switch so I got pretty good at dialing by tapping the switch myself.
> Also I figured out at a young age that pulse dial was just toggling the rocker switch
I saw a Cathode Ray Dude video that talked about this recently. I definitely would have enjoyed playing with this and annoying my parents if I had known that that was how it worked.
Ireland sponsors a bunch of local leagues all over the World to promote Hurling/Camogie and Gaelic football. Lots of fun if you want to give it a try or just watch some games.
That's a bit of a misconception. From what I understand, Amazon's non-AWS branches don't get deeply-discounted services from AWS. There is a discount, but it's not enough to turn dark skies into sunshine and rainbows.
Amazon tends to want every part of itself to be in ship-shape, and giving itself a massive discount would discourage efficiency in non-AWS parts of the business.
Disclosure: neither a current nor former Amazon employee.
This is a misconception. Amazon wants to depict itself as wanting every part to be in ship-shape, but it does not operate that way and AWS is treated like any internal resource like printers and staplers.
AWS basically finances the rest of Amazon. It's 70% of its revenue (that is public info). Except for retail, the rest is all losses. So the discounts don't matter much, other branches just try to save money (frugality is one of Amazon's core values) but basically get what they need.
Traditional media political ads can't micro-target people that are more likely get sucked into their made up "facts" and conspiracy theories.
They also are broadly broadcast so that they can be dis-proven and discussed. Instead they are hidden away only shown to people that won't question it.
If facebook wants to do political ads then it needs to disconnect them from targeting, publish them for public display, publish who paid for the ad, and moderate them to some basic level of being truthful.
> people that are more likely get sucked into their made up "facts" and conspiracy theories.
If these people are so easy to fool and manipulate, why do we allow them to vote? If all it takes is some post on Facebook to change their votes, there will be dozens of other easy ways to manipulate them. Are the other ways better because they more opaque or tend towards one ideology or another?
Almost all of these arguments boil down to "People are dumber than me so I should be able to control what they see". Dress it up however you want but ultimately this is about feelings of intellectual superiority and a desire to control outcomes in favor of those who wish to control the narrative.
Do you think direct mail should be banned too? That is the original microtargeting platform, and is a $44bn industry (so only recently surpassed by Facebook in $ terms)
I’d put it differently: targeted ads allow campaigns to do more with less by focusing on people who are more likely to be receptive to their messages. That’s a valuable thing that shouldn’t be prohibited.
> targeted ads allow campaigns to do more with less by focusing on people who are more likely to be receptive to their messages
Fair point. I suppose targeting could be balanced against a public cool-down period.
So you can randomly target people in the district now. Or, make your targeted ad publicly available for N days before it goes out. This would let the public see it, check it, and potentially respond before the damage is done.
No censorship. Just a head start for the public if a campaign wants to target.
All the schools in the area have days off for Indian Holidays since so many would be out of school otherwise.