Idk about America but at least in Spain squatting is in fact a very lucrative activity for squatters that target investors. They track and buy information of houses owned by banks/investors or are “summer” homes.
Once they break in they ask just bellow of what hiring a lawyer and doing the legal process would cost. Or worse they rent illegally the home in the secondary black market.
The reason it works is because kicking them legally can take months or years plus lawyers and proceedings cost. It also drops the value of the surroundings if they are not kicked fast enough.
This sounds a lot like the plot to Pacific Heights with Michael Keaton and Matthew Modine.
The antagonist looks great on paper and gets keys before actually paying the deposit. Then shielded by that slim residence he proceeds to wreak havoc on the property to lower values to snap it up for a song.
I remember seeing how TV had to take into account numerous formats, specially in the transition from tube to flat screens. Shame that no one takes that into account any more.
If you have an old TV with an off format you will miss a portion of the intended frame.
Passport/EU-ID to check you already have a ticket should be the standard. Everyone saves time and money this way BUT now they can earn more money at the gate.
That's normal in the Schengen area, you only need ID if you're checking a bag. (Or if there's a spot check by police, but they won't care if your boarding pass matches your ID, just that your ID is valid.)
I agree with your view completely. I see the current use cases for AI to be very similar to the practices of augury during the Roman Empire. I keep two little chicken figurines on my desk as a reference to augury[1] and its similarity to AI. The emperor brings a question to the augurs. The augurs watch the birds (source of pseudo-randomness), go through rituals, and give back an answer as to whether the emperor should go to war, for example.
Terry Davis was really ahead of the curve on this with his "god says" / GodSpeaks program. For anyone unaware of what that was, here's a Rust port [0].
Anyway, I think divination tends to get a pretty negative reputation, but there's healthy and safe applications of the concept which can be used to help you reflect and understand yourself. The "divine" part is supposed to come from your interpretation and analysis of the output, not in the generation of the output itself. Humans don't have perfect introspection capabilities (see: riders on an elephant), so external tools can help us explore and reflect on our reactions to external stimuli.
One day a man was having a hard time deciding between two options, so he flipped a coin; the coin landed tails and at that moment he became enlightened and realized that he actually wanted to do the heads outcome all along.
this opens a interesting scenario where drug cartels may be the answer to a logistic problem since they already have the infraestructure for drugs. Could they diversify and smuggle tech products given their volume/weight ratio?
Organized crime has a long history of involvement with smuggling other kinds of products. It's common to smuggle electronics to countries with high import taxes (e.g. Brazil) and cartels have been involved with high value produce imports like luxury goods and avocados for years.
Once they break in they ask just bellow of what hiring a lawyer and doing the legal process would cost. Or worse they rent illegally the home in the secondary black market.
The reason it works is because kicking them legally can take months or years plus lawyers and proceedings cost. It also drops the value of the surroundings if they are not kicked fast enough.
Now theres an entire sector around it.
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