As incomes have risen, it’s important for Americans to find new ways to spend ever-increasing amounts of money. I propose that we spend some of it traveling to pick and eat fresh fruit that doesn’t travel well.

Content Warning: Knowing how delicious fresh fruit can be is an infohazard for your wallet.

Close-up of blackberries on a branch with a blue arrow pointing to one particularly ripe, dark berry

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Background

I’ve been participating in MPEG’s DASH group, and currently a lot of work has been focused on reducing live streaming latency. The latency problem in DASH is that clients have to poll servers to check for new media segments. If they poll too slowly, it introduces latency, but if they poll too quickly, it increases server load. When MPD’s are dynamic, a client needs to poll the server until it finds a new MPD, then request newly available segments, then only after the segment has downloaded enough to start, it can continue playback.

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Psyllium husk is a non-fermenting (no gas or bloating) soluble dietary fiber that improves both constipation and diarrhea (such as with IBS), normalizes blood sugar, reduces LDL (“bad”) cholesterol, and can help with weight loss. Each type of dietary fiber has different effects, and a “high fiber” diet in general won’t necessarily provide the same benefits, especially for conditions like Irritable Bowel Syndrome.

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