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At least in my part of suburban hell the parking lot of the strip mall across from my apartment fills up with teens standing around at 8:00pm Friday-Sunday because that is when most of the stores in it close.
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Mar 26, 2018 16:19
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:did they ever release those disks that had a layer that would physically rot/cloud with exposure to oxygen? I remember some company talked up that concept as a single watch disk but I'm not sure that ever actually hit market. A disk with a dye layer that would start to erase the disk a few days after you opened the package. Yes those did come out. The fun bit of them is that the discs were still readable in Blu-Ray or HD-DVD players and drives, because the visible dye layer couldn't actually erase the pressed data layer, it was just designed to block the DVD layer and be visible to the consumer. As such, so long as you had an appropriate drive at hand, you could watch those discs as long as you please, or simply copy them with a normal DVD drive before the ink got out because they were otherwise normal DVDs. The result of this was that a ton of people could just use them to get a movie for $1 or $2 and have it forever.
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Mar 26, 2018 20:14
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That’s the most anti consumer thing ever. I wonder why they didn’t get a law passed requiring these be the only kind of home media. They call it something like the FAIRPLAY Act.
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Mar 26, 2018 22:17
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Yeah read police blotters from very suburban, very white neighborhoods. It's simultaneously hilarious, depressing, and infuriating. One of the craziest I read was about somebody calling the police repeatedly because the same black guy walked past their house every day at like 4:45 a.m. or something. It was pretty early in the day. The guy was accused of casing the joint and the caller was worried about being robbed. The police eventually talked to the guy. Turns out he was just walking to work every day. But yeah one of the things with the suburbs is that they're pretty hostile toward outsiders in multiple ways. Not just because of who tends to move there but also because the roads are typically not walkable and they're designed to direct traffic away. The people are the biggest one; they tend to want to create their own little bubble in the world where they can be 100% totally safe and keep everybody they don't like away. The level of paranoia in suburbia is insane and God help you if you ever have to deal with a home owner's association. Anything that might make the neighborhood look the slightest bit idyllic or drop land values by any value greater than zero is either explicitly verboten or will make your neighbors shun you.
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Mar 27, 2018 01:30
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It would be a very underconfident burglar that needed to "case the joint" every morning at the same time for a year.
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Mar 27, 2018 01:49
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I once had the cops called on me for testing a new macro lens by taking pictures of flowers in a suburb. That I lived in. The cop asked me where I was from and I pointed down the street at my house and said "there".
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Mar 27, 2018 02:52
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Star Man posted:No, they live out in the country and commute for thirty miles for anything they need. dirt bikes are cool though dude
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Mar 27, 2018 04:58
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I did the amazon delivery thing for a summer when it first launched. So many middle aged white ladies peering through their curtains or accusingly saying *Can I HELP you!?* while I, lily white college aged guy, wearing a high vis vest, deposit armfuls of packages on their doorstep. I can't imagine what it was like for all the black and Pakistani dudes doing most of the routes. Only time I got a gun pulled on me was when I was delivering at like 10pm to a very nice neighborhood, and the app required I take a picture, with the flash on, of every doorstep I left a box on. The guy was really apologetic afterwards though!
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Mar 27, 2018 08:21
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TsarZiedonis posted:Only time I got a gun pulled on me was when I was delivering at like 10pm to a very nice neighborhood, and the app required I take a picture, with the flash on, of every doorstep I left a box on. The guy was really apologetic afterwards though! Why were you still making deliveries at 10pm? I didn't know that was a thing.
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Mar 27, 2018 09:30
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DaStampede posted:Why were you still making deliveries at 10pm? I didn't know that was a thing. I don't know if they still do this, but last summer they'd have a few packages they were desperate to deliver and would offer $70-90 to go drop a few boxes off in inconvenient locations late at night. I'm guessing they were the ones that had been missed or lost in the system and some supervisors desperately needed to turn a red checkbox green.
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Mar 27, 2018 09:47
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DaStampede posted:Why were you still making deliveries at 10pm? I didn't know that was a thing. Amazon prime now does late night deliveries. its way faster due to no traffi I remember doing census work nearly a decade ago and would get hassled by rich white ladies in downtown Chicago for having the temerity to write down their buildings adress while standing on the sidewalk.
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Mar 27, 2018 13:19
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ToxicSlurpee posted:But yeah one of the things with the suburbs is that they're pretty hostile toward outsiders in multiple ways. Not just because of who tends to move there but also because the roads are typically not walkable and they're designed to direct traffic away. The people are the biggest one; they tend to want to create their own little bubble in the world where they can be 100% totally safe and keep everybody they don't like away. The level of paranoia in suburbia is insane and God help you if you ever have to deal with a home owner's association. Anything that might make the neighborhood look the slightest bit idyllic or drop land values by any value greater than zero is either explicitly verboten or will make your neighbors shun you. God I hate HOAs with such a passion. I just started doing service work on a new complex that has six large 18 unit condo building with interior entrance halls. Every individual unit is locked up like a drum, and there are no master keys for service work even though there are common systems. Everyone has private alarm systems just to make life even more complicated. Lastly the main common doors into the shell have keypad access, but now they suddenly are demanding that the special access codes we are given to enter the building get changed every 2 months. gently caress. All of this in what has to be the safest god drat area in the entire country.
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Mar 27, 2018 13:44
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Noctone posted:dirt bikes are cool though dude Wrong. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVe-PBgOhxw
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Mar 27, 2018 14:56
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Lol of course the dude complaining about is some fat white douche business owner and as far as I can tell from the video all the people on the bikes are black. gently caress Ohio.
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Mar 27, 2018 15:26
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Yea gently caress Ohio for some people not being cool with swarms of assholes on quads and dirt bikes disregarding nearly every traffic law.
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Mar 27, 2018 15:46
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Dirt bikes belong in the dirt, dummies
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Mar 27, 2018 15:58
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Whoa Cleveland is like mad max now. Sounds dope.
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Mar 27, 2018 16:56
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HEY NONG MAN posted:Whoa Cleveland is like mad max now. Sounds dope. young black kids have been riding dirt bikes and atvs like young white kids for the same reason - they're cheap, fun, and you dont need a license except the black kids dont have forests and streams to tear up, they have to ride in the city where their presence annoys people
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Mar 27, 2018 16:58
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boner confessor posted:young black kids have been riding dirt bikes and atvs like young white kids for the same reason - they're cheap, fun, and you dont need a license This, basically.
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Mar 27, 2018 18:36
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TsarZiedonis posted:I don't know if they still do this, but last summer they'd have a few packages they were desperate to deliver and would offer $70-90 to go drop a few boxes off in inconvenient locations late at night. drat, that is good money. Double-edged sword as a prime member. I expect my packages delivered the day they are supposed to show up. However, I would be pissed if someone knocked on my door at 10pm though. Hard to turn down that money as a driver.
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Mar 27, 2018 18:38
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boner confessor posted:young black kids have been riding dirt bikes and atvs like young white kids for the same reason - they're cheap, fun, and you dont need a license Lemme help you with that. Doctor Butts posted:Yea gently caress Ohio for some people not being cool with swarms of assholes on quads and dirt bikes disregarding nearly every traffic law. I live in Ohio and it's full with dumb racists of which that dude in the vid is the platonic ideal so gently caress Ohio.
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Mar 27, 2018 18:51
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Something tells me most people wouldn’t want swarms of people of any color riding around on loud motorbikes in packs. Like every time Mosquito Fleet or some other group of raging hipsters flies through my part of town by the dozens on 49cc mopeds, I have a negative reaction by default and those dudes are like 98% lily white.
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Mar 27, 2018 20:14
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Unregistered non-street legal mostly 2-strokes operated (possibly) by unlicensed riders don't belong on the street no matter what color the rider's skin. The lack of nearby fields and poo poo doesn't excuse it. Traffic laws are what separates us from the third world.
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Mar 27, 2018 20:39
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And some how in none of those other cases does the local news interview some fat white dipshit complaining about it, but totally a coincidence I'm sure. I mean, you're really putting it out there getting this bent out of shape over some kids goofing off. Oh no people riding motorcycles in the streets, it's like we live in Somalia! Then again some dork upthread was literally complaining about teens in malls so whatever.
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Mar 28, 2018 00:56
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ryonguy posted:
children seem like the last people you should want to be playing in the street.
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Mar 28, 2018 01:06
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ryonguy posted:And some how in none of those other cases does the local news interview some fat white dipshit complaining about it, but totally a coincidence I'm sure. You're acting like I'm pissing on your dumb hobby or some poo poo. Doctor Butts fucked around with this message at 01:31 on Mar 28, 2018 |
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Mar 28, 2018 01:27
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I've seen the hordes of (multiethnic) motorbike/quad/atv/wtc riders in the middle of Miami multiple times, which makes no sense and is mostly just silly looking. There's not really anywhere to offroad around here guys! Also thread related: I went to two different malls today, only separated by a mile or so along the same major thoroughfare, with not a lot of socioeconomic difference between the two. The larger one seems to be thriving, and has little surrounding housing, although it has more upscale stores and is probably 2-3x the size. The smaller, despite being located on a major cross-intersection, in a mixed residential area, and containing a 24-screen theatre (the other doesn't have one) seemed to be almost half empty, with an odd assortment of stores, and missing many retailers that have been there for years beforehand.  Anyway, that's my anecdote to contribute. Owlofcreamcheese posted:Now imagine a laserdisk that instead of a laser used an actual physical needle to read the grove on the disk but then also that made the disk so fragile that the whole thing had to be kept in a giant plastic shell almost as big as a pizza box. And then imagine that the picture quality was worse than broadcast tv and you have the amazing technology of selectavision. 
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Mar 28, 2018 01:47
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Zero_Grade posted:I'm confused as to who thought this was remotely a smart idea, but I guess Guy 1: Returning movies to Blockbuster on time is so much effort, I wish I didn't have to return them but I really don't want to pay full price to buy it outright Guy 2: What if we made a disc that only works for about as long as movie rental, and costs about the same? DVDs are cheap as hell to produce and they can be recycled or just trashed. And that's how several different methods of "DVD that only plays a little while" came to be, including DIVX and the several "dye that blocks the laser eventually" discs. And all of that poo poo died out for good when people started switching to streaming, or at least had Redboxes all over the place so it was much easier to return.
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Mar 28, 2018 03:07
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fishmech posted:And that's how several different methods of "DVD that only plays a little while" came to be, including DIVX and the several "dye that blocks the laser eventually" discs. And all of that poo poo died out for good when people started switching to streaming, or at least had Redboxes all over the place so it was much easier to return. eyebeem posted:They were also almost all pan and scan and had little to no extra features.
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Mar 28, 2018 04:16
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fishmech posted:All of that poo poo died out for good when people started having Redboxes all over the place so it was much easier to return.
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Mar 28, 2018 04:19
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City group rides has been a thing for a long time. Biggest problem is the kids frequently kill/injure themselves. Probably the main reasons the police don't usually try to pursue. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOMQY6k16TU
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Mar 28, 2018 04:21
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A few years ago there was video showing that one of the dangerous & obnoxious dirt bike gangs tearing around San Francisco was led by off-duty cops from Marin. If someone on a dirt bike doesn't want to be caught and doesn't care about the safety of bystanders then there is literally nothing you can do to stop them aside from containment foam or rocket-launched cable nets or whatever.
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Mar 28, 2018 04:25
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I'm kind of amazed that Redbox didn't exist until 2003. I can see why Blockbuster wouldn't want to cannibalize their existing (lovely) business model, but a lot of grocery stores were already doing video rental at that point and it chewed up a considerable amount of floor space that they now get back by just dumping a kiosk or two in the lobby or in front of the store.
OneEightHundred fucked around with this message at 04:35 on Mar 28, 2018 |
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Mar 28, 2018 04:31
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OneEightHundred posted:I'm kind of amazed that Redbox didn't exist until 2003. I can see why Blockbuster wouldn't want to cannibalize their existing (lovely) business model, but a lot of grocery stores were already doing video rental at that point and it chewed up a considerable amount of floor space that they now get back by just dumping a kiosk or two in the lobby. It's a hell of a lot more annoying and expensive to build a robust touchscreen interface with good enough quality graphics to display box art and related information well before then. With customers willing to accept just picking off a text based list and use a physical keyboard, sure, you could have made the machines even as early as the mid-90s, but that would turn away a lot of the customers each box needs to rely on for day-to-day rental traffic to pay for being deployed.
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Mar 28, 2018 04:35
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OneEightHundred posted:I'm kind of amazed that Redbox didn't exist until 2003. I can see why Blockbuster wouldn't want to cannibalize their existing (lovely) business model, but a lot of grocery stores were already doing video rental at that point and it chewed up a considerable amount of floor space that they now get back by just dumping a kiosk or two in the lobby or in front of the store. Computers sucked in the 90s. Vending would work like a soda machine but anything with the checking the movie back in or the credit card stuff would have been garbage much before the 2000s
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Mar 28, 2018 04:45
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fishmech posted:It's a hell of a lot more annoying and expensive to build a robust touchscreen interface with good enough quality graphics to display box art and related information well before then. The only real technical barrier was the existence and adoption of the DVD format itself to let you stuff more discs into the cabinet. OneEightHundred fucked around with this message at 04:50 on Mar 28, 2018 |
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Mar 28, 2018 04:48
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OneEightHundred posted:Windows-based kiosks were already a thing at that point, the interface touchscreens didn't need to be any more accurate than an ATM for that kind of use case. I mean they're basically just modified jukebox/vending machine hybrids with a credit card reader. Windows-based kiosks were much more expensive then, plus the entire dispensing mechanism was quite pricey in itself. Most of the kiosks of the time had more limited selling selections or didn't handle product at all. Also at that time a ton of ATMs didn't do touchscreen lol, you used the side buttons and the keypad! There were some touchscreen ATMs about but the majority were physical buttons only. And no that's just bullshit.
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Mar 28, 2018 05:05
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Is everyone forgetting the fact that business owners probably wouldn't drop a telephone line for the things (must less a dedicated Ethernet line)? Or the fact that they would probably have to take bills instead of credit cards because that wasn't as widespread back then either? I'm picturing 90sBox as being like the old Cigarette vending machines where a little picture of New Movie was under a big red button and there would be a slot under that the movie popped out of.
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Mar 28, 2018 05:15
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FilthyImp posted:Is everyone forgetting the fact that business owners probably wouldn't drop a telephone line for the things (must less a dedicated Ethernet line)? You wouldn't need an ethernet line, they're not streaming anything. It would certainly have been more expensive providing the alternative of a cell modem for when the location didn't want to drop a phone line to it though, that's one thing that's really enabled mass proliferation of vending machines that can do more stuff and take cards in a lot more places. One of the invisible revolutions in connectivity we all take for granted. No, they wouldn't have taken bills because there'd be no way to ensure the person paid the ongoing costs of not returning the rental. Unless you were going to have the thing take a whole say $20 at the start to cover the cost if you never returned it, and then pay back change when you returned the disc.
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Mar 28, 2018 05:34
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FilthyImp posted:I'm picturing 90sBox as being like the old Cigarette vending machines where a little picture of New Movie was under a big red button and there would be a slot under that the movie popped out of. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9b0AdetkxE
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Mar 28, 2018 06:46
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