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Build a gun with a drill press and hand tools! Lots of other related books telling you how to make even simpler guns, ammunition, even gunpowder. Buy from Amazon, have it on your Kindle a matter of seconds!

Neither do the guns in this book, or many others...

https://slashdot.org/~guruevi vouchsafed:

Proving repeatable, testable hypotheses is indeed doing science.

Mmm ... no. But you're close.

Attempting to disprove hypotheses by means of experiment - especially experiments designed to allow only one, carefully-defined variable at a time - is doing science. Documenting the design of such experiments in sufficient detail to permit others, as it were, "skilled in the art" to replicate them accurately is doing real science. Publishing your hypothesis and the detailed description of your experimental design, as well as your results is also part of the job. And making your data public makes you a true professional.

Scientist, that is.

Extrapolating a trend based on a single and limited metric is statistics ...

Or science fiction ...

(Posting as AC only so as not to undo prior upmods in this thread.)

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Or you could get one that doesn't block all the IO pins https://amazon.com/NavoLabs-Ra...

Lots of people install the Amazon App Store and pay for games through that source.

It does appear that Google wanted to make an example of Epic specifically, in the hopes that more app developers will be cautious to follow.

Nordic capitalism works pretty well. It's called Social Democracy; people today want to run to Democratic Socialism.

I've extended some of the basics to achieve stronger economic stability and growth with lower taxes. The Nordics use huge social welfare systems as an economic support and a household support; I split those two duties between two specifically-designed systems, with the main economic support being a foundation and the rest built on top. We should be able to provide stronger welfare and social insurances at half the tax rate of the Nordic nations.

niittyniemi railed:P

So Intel, as a condition of using your patch to fix the broken shit you sold us, you don't want us to use the patch to empirically determine just how broken your shit was, or else you'll sue us?

I've got the message loud and clear: you're crooked dirtbags.

Mmm ... no.

As another Anonymous Coward pointed out halfway up the page from here, the summary is (surprise!) poorly written. It leaves the reader with the impression that Intel is trying to use its EULA to suppress benchmark reviews of its microcode fixes for the latest set of predictive execution bugs. It's not.

What it IS doing is forbidding developers from sharing benchmark data about its own, proprietary microcode development tools, to whit:

“Development Tools” means the development, evaluation, production, or test tool software, and associated documentation or other collateral, identified in the “development_tools.txt” text files, if any, included in the Materials.

You're perfectly free to publish before-and-after benchmarks of the impact of Intel's current - and previous - microcode fixes on CPU performance to your geeky heart's content. You're simply forbidden from using the tools in Intel's own developer software (which you have to buy from Intel) to obtain the results you publish.

(And, of course, you're forbidden to give, resell, reverse engineer, or share the tools themselves, because they're commercial software, the redistribution terms of which are protected by international copyright law. Nota bene: the topic under discussion here is NOT international copyright law. Therefore, please confine any rants about the evils of copyright to your mother's basement.)

There are ZERO restrictions imposed by the license terms for Intel's own developer tools on the use of third-party test software to establish performance benchmarks and evaluations - and no trace of attempted prior restraint on publishing those results.

Once again, the problem is that The Guardian has conflated Intel-proprietary test software with the microcode fixes themselves, and has invented a scheme by Intel to suppress publication of all benchmarks, including those produced by third-party tools, because Richard Speed, its reporter, misunderstood the EULA about which the Debian people are complaining. And, unfortunately, Bruce failed to catch Speed's mistake before posting this story.

Early in this discussion, he mentions in a comment that he "screws up" as often as anybody else around here - and this is an exemplar of that.

I think Mr. Perens is a real asset to the Slashdot community. His comments are usually thoughtful, informed, and often well-documented. I admire the fact that, when he gets things wrong, unlike many users here, he swiftly and cheerfully admits his errors and disavows them.

Would that more of Slashdot's users had that kind of intellectual honesty ...

(Posting as AC only so as not to undo prior upmods in this thread.)

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Nothing about the status you perceive yourself to have by publicly displaying the Apple logo?

Preposterous.

It is not as if accessory makers intentionally design iPhone "protective cases" with a giant hole so that the Apple logo is visible or anything absurd like that.

HP started again making new RPN calculators a couple of years ago--the HP 35s.

It's not quite as nice as the original HPs but it's still pretty good compared to everything else out there.

You can buy it on Amazon for about $50 : brand new HP 35s

When you're an RPN guy, there is no substitute for an RPN calculator when you really need one. The HP 35s fills the bill.

They still do.

CRC Handbook of Standard Mathematical Tables

https://www.amazon.com/Standar...

... to fall back on when you want to get up close to papyrus.. https://www.amazon.com/Million...

First. World. Problems: We no longer waste paper to print archaic Mathematical tables /sarcasm OH NOES!

You know what else is "dead" ?

* Slide rule
* Tables of common Logarithms
* Tables of Trigonometric functions

Guess what, nobody is stopping you from buying those tables from old CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics which have them.

Apparently you didn't get the memo that a cheap calculator is "good enough."

What's next?

Whining that we don't have rotary telephones? Black and White televisions?

The link you provided only shows used models.

Note: This item is only available from third-party sellers (see all offers).

If you go to the Kindle frontpage on Amazon there are no Voyage models shown in the comparison table.

Yeah, I was just noticing that. Went to close the tab and saw that it was a page for a bundle, so I went to find the actual device itself, and... came back here to fix this.

Seems I may have spoken too soon on this one. I'm usually pretty careful to do at least a cursory check before making an assertion like this, so I'm kind of embarrassed that I missed this one. Lo siento mucho, todos.

HRMmmm... What was the point of the Voyage that justified the extra price verses the Paperwhite? I recall looking at these a year or two ago and not being able to figure it out. Thanks. I think the big diff was automatic light sensing or something. :-/

The link you provided only shows used models.

Note: This item is only available from third-party sellers (see all offers).

If you go to the Kindle frontpage on Amazon there are no Voyage models shown in the comparison table.

Kindle Voyage E-reader, 6" High-Resolution Display (300 ppi) with Adaptive Built-in Light, PagePress Sensors, Wi-Fi - Includes Special Offers:

https://www.amazon.com/Amazon-...

It's still for sale, right now, so... I have no idea what they're talking about. I guess this is like you go to a big box store, and you see they no longer have Campesso Beef with Barley Soup, and you go, OMG, THEY DON'T HAVE BEEF WITH... oh, wait, they just moved it to the end-cap between this aisle and the next. Never mind.

Maybe they are planning to phase them out, or maybe they just have lots more of the other models they'd rather sell, and so they want to steer people towards those other models. Just saying.

djinn6 opined:

There's only so many explanations for why Africa hasn't developed as quickly as places like South America or East Asia. You can't blame everything on imperialism, since that happened in other regions too.

I'd say of all of the potential explanation, laziness is the most optimistic one, since it's something that Africans can actually change.

You can blame an awful lot on the kind of rapacious imperialism that sub-Saharan Africa experienced - particularly under the Belgians. The natives benefitted not at all from European rule. There was minimal investment made by imperialist powers in building infrastructure, none whatever in education for other than their own offspring, and zero effort made to improve the lives of the people they exploited.

Slaves were not just an African export for European imperialists, either. Some of the natives were enslaved to work growing export crops, mining mineral resources (especially diamonds and gold), and serving their owners in various menial capacities. And when the Euro powers pulled out, basically all of the remaining wealth and resources wound up in the hands of settlers of European origin.

It took until the latter half of the 20th century before a majority of those countries gained true self rule - and the richest ones have taken the longest to get there, thanks to stubborn opposition from those entrenched interests. That, in turn, has created a climate favorable to strongmen and juntas as rulers, rather than functioning, western-style representative democracies. Low literacy rates (remember - these are cultures with a history of zero investment in public education as a starting point), terrible infrastructure (especially roads and electricity) outside of cities, ditto for electronic communications, not to mention the virtual absence of adequate sanitation, clean water, health care other than folk medicine, and so on in the most rural areas - these things make nominal democracy a joke.

And then there's tribalism. Most African countries weren't really countries before the European conquerors arrived. They were merely big, whacking chunks of geography inhabited by as many humans as subsidence farming and/or pastoralism would support, all of them products of their tribes or clans. (No mass communications, no real roads, little trade, large predators, and only the most rudimentary technology make life hard enough for primitive societies that they seldom interact with other people more than a day's walk away.) Thus tribes and clans became the basic unit of society, not nations, and the fact that a bunch of pushy white people drew lines on a map and called the result a country has had no practical meaning for the many millions of natives who still live in the bush and spend all their effort trying not to starve, even today.

And don't forget the ballooning population - which is growing so fast because the custom of pumping out children as fast as possible that was universal in the human race before the advent of antibiotics continues apace throughout Africa. This, despite the fact that, in the cities, there's now fairly easy access to 'cillins and 'mycins, and childhood mortality rates and deaths from puerpural fever have both plummeted (although, compared to western norms, they're still appallingly high).

I'm just sayin'. There's a helluva lot more to Africa's plight than mere laziness, and much of it comes back to the aftereffects of a profoundly malignant kind of imperialism that, for a couple of centuries, simply took and took and took, without ever giving anything back in return ...

(Posting as AC only so as not to undo prior upmods in this thread.)

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Black Panther being social commentary is nothing new, and hails straight from the source material.

Well ... sort of.

I subscribed to FF at the time Black Panther was introduced. That storyline did basically zero social commentary (aside from the fact of T'Challa himself being a black African king). The use of his character as a vehicle for overt social commentary didn't really begin until he was spun off into a title of his own (which only ran for a year, because the writer failed to understand the nature of the superhero comics-buying public - which is to say 12-year-old boys - and so didn't bother to make his assigned character appealing to the people who buy them).

I thought Black Panther was a cool idea for a superhero in the Batman mold: a Reed Richards-class scientist with the resources of an entire country to throw behind his secret identity, who had no inherent superpower of his own, but instead used technological gizmos and his own, finely-honed athletic and martial arts skills to do his costumed thing; and who specifically wasn't from New York City, like pretty much every other Marvel superhero of the era. The gag of having him test the abilities of the FF before revealing to them that he was seeking their help as an introductory device didn't work for me at all, but I didn't hold Stan Lee's shortcomings as a writer against the character himself - and, damn, Jack Kirby did a great job of making him seem larger than life ... !

(Posting as AC only so as not to undo prior upmods in this thread.)

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No, you miss the point.

It's not about calories, it's about net carbs after fiber. Counting calories works well for high-output individuals, who in the US, are about 2 in 10. The rest of the people need to count carbohydrates by the gram or other measure.

Calories isn't so much of a figment, rather, it doesn't portray the accuracy of a nutritional diet. See https://www.amazon.com/Case-Ag... for questions. His other books are equally as well annotated, chapter and verse.

Truly and sincerely, it's not the calories, it's the carbohydrates net of fiber content.

Scarletdown warned:

That may be so; but that still won't stop them from trying. They could even attempt to make it an ex post facto law, like a group of traitors tried to push through here in Oregon recently (fortunately they failed). And nowadays, there are good odds that they could slip such a thing through.

Mmm ... no.

In the USA, Article 1, Section 10 of the Constitution expressly denies states the power to adopt ex post facto laws, and Article 1, Section 9, Clause 3 prohibits Congress from doing so at the national level.

So, with Oregon being constitutionally barred from enacting ex post facto legislation, and the national government similarly powerless, the entire premise of your post disappears. No such laws are permitted in the USA.

Regulations, however, are another matter altogether ...

(Although I posted the above rebuttal to your post, the fact that it provoked me to rebut it meant that it was, in fact, interesting. So I gave you a +1 Interesting upmode, because fair is fair, after all.)

(Posting as AC only so as not to undo prior upmods in this thread.)

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You can buy a dictionary to do that from Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/Oxford-...

Spotted the armchair critic who is magically an "expert" on other people's experience with something they have never even experienced.

/sarcasm Oh look, it is a blind man arguing there is no such thing as color!

> Some studies have shown that out of body experiences is real.

FTFY.

But keep trying to ignore the evidence (Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, 1968, vol. 62, no. 1, pp. 3-27.) of both OBEs and NDEs.

The shared OBE is proof that you don't know what the fuck you are talking about.

Even high endurance cards are only good for 5-10k hours about 6months at 40hours a week. https://www.amazon.com/SanDisk...

$20 every six months is easily covered by a single instance where video evidence shortens a court case.

we have minds that allow us to deal in things other than black and white.

Except when it comes to the regulators.

Looks like this would work without taking an additional gpu.
https://www.amazon.com/Diamond...

Also I haven't seen a motherboard in years that wouldn't boot without gpu/keyboard. Thats 90's shit. The only time they halt now is with an error, and you can make them not even do that.

Know what's the best and most pleasant thing to inhale into your lungs? CLEAN AIR.

Interesting idea, where might I find some of this clean air to put into my lungs?
I never thought to search for some on Amazon but... woah, whatdya know

Clean Air Purge III Aerosol (1 Can)
"Pyrethrins-based Purge III insecticide is metered insecticide formulation for flying insect control. It kills insects such as flies, mosquitoes, gnats and small moths for a full 30 days. Purge III leaves no lingering insecticide odor. For the most economically-effective flying insect control, trust Purge III, formulated with 0.975% Pyrethrins."

Sounds delish, I just ordered a can and will let you know how it goes!

And apparently we didn't teach them history, like how many in the past died due to socialism,

Wow. Maybe it is you that needs to go read a fucking book. https://www.amazon.com/Radium-...

Much of the rest of the world seems to have implemented various levels of socialism without widespread murder. Will you teach that too?

I have never felt a greater need to put some of these stickers on things in my life. For those afraid to click it is a Hello Kitty Punisher sticker.

I have never once been in a hotel (or motel) that doesn't have a mechanical privacy lock on the door. It can't be opened from the outside without considerable trouble (and noise).

Do people not know what these are for?

There's always the trusty door jamb and security bar.

https://smile.amazon.com/Maste...

Amazon's guidelines (currently) specify that for an item to be called "new" the original manufacturer's warranty should still be applicable. Otherwise, the best option is "Used - like new". I had not realized this before; my understanding was pretty much "new = still in shrinkwrap" and there was no warranty (after all, the verbiage "no warranty expressed or implied, including fitness for purpose" is pretty standard). I suppose the warranty is that if the disk is physically damaged you can get a replacement. *shrug*

You could always check with your local library.

Most offer e-book loans for free.

I bought a Kindle e-reader. Not because I was interested in Amazon's collection, but because it seemed to be the best hardware. Our library, like many, use Overdrive for e-books, with uses Adobe Digital Editions DRM locked ebooks. Unfortunatly they are epub, which is compatible with every other ereader except Kindle, and Amazon has no interest in interoperability. Plus Digital Editions is a pretty terrible program.

So to read library books on my Kindle, I have to download and load the book into Digital Editions, then use DeDRM to load them into Calibre, to convert to mobi to load on the Kindle.

Install aldiko ebook reader on the kindle. It directly supports overdrive downloads/loans.

there's (an older) free version in the amazon app store:

https://www.amazon.com/Aldiko-...

Dread_ed suggested:

Drop it on a subduction zone and watch it get pulled into the crust over the course of a few thousand years. It's a geologic time scale shredder, with all natural, organic, pesticide free, gluten free recycling!

Unfortunately, I see two potentially-serious problems with that proposal: firstly keeping the exceedingly-radioactive material of the actual reactor cores (there're two of them, btw) safely contained between the time they're scuttled and the time they've been completely subducted, and are on their way to the mantle; and secondly, safely guiding them to the proper resting place(s ... ?) on the ocean floor for them to be fully subducted in as short a time as possible.

Neither problem is trivial. It may well be that the only real solution is to glassify the material of the cores and await international consensus on a location for a global high-level radioactive waste repository ...

(FWIW - even though I'm picking holes in your proposal, I modded it +1 Interesting, because it is.)

(Posting as AC only so as not to undo prior upmods in this thread.)

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Heck, even the equipment is different. Sure, if you want to go pro, you can do the traditional three-vessel approach and can make it as complicated as you (or your wallet) like. I, however, prefer the simple one-vessel "brew-in-a-bag" approach, saving me about $4,700 in equipment costs. YMMV.

https://www.amazon.com/SNES-Ni...

What is this? It's in stock too. Also the power cable is USB, so you can buy this if you are even not in EU unless you don't have a powered USB plug somewhere in your house.

Surprisingly, the statistics is suggestive: https://www.nytimes.com/2010/0...
"They say they believe in freedom and share our values. They say a few bad apples shouldn't bring down judgment on their entire kind. Don't be fooled. Though they walk among us with impunity, they are, in the words of Henry Farrell, a political scientist at George Washington University, "a group that is notoriously associated with terrorist violence and fundamentalist political beliefs."
    They are engineers.
    Farrell, of course, was kidding. He posted that comment on a blog shortly after Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab (confessed Al Qaeda operative and engineering student) tried to blow up an airliner over Detroit last winter. But the satire was rooted in a statistical fact: in the ranks of captured and confessed terrorists, engineers and engineering students are significantly overrepresented. Maybe that's a numerological accident. The sociologist Diego Gambetta and the political scientist Steffen Hertog don't think so. ..."

And also: http://www.slate.com/articles/...
"It's true that eight of the 25 hijackers on 9/11 were engineers ..."

Alternatives: "The Ethical Engineer: An "Ethics Construction Kit" Places Engineering in a New Light" by Eugene Schlossberger
https://www.amazon.com/Ethical...
"On occasion, professionals need to use moral reasoning as well as engineering skills to function effectively in their occupation. Eugene Schlossberger has created a practical guide to ethical decision-making for engineers, students, and workers in business and industry. The Ethical Engineer sets out the tools and materials essential to dealing with whistle-blowing, environmental and safety concerns, bidding, confidentiality, conflict of interest, sales ethics, advertising, employer-employee relations, when to fight a battle, and when to break the rules. The author offers recommendations and techniques as well as rules, principles, and values that can guide the reader. Lively examples, engaging anecdotes, witty comments, and well-reasoned analysis prove his conviction that "ethics is good business.""

And also: "Disciplined Minds" by Jeff Schmidt
http://disciplinedminds.tripod...
"Who are you going to be? That is the question.
    In this riveting book about the world of professional work, Jeff Schmidt demonstrates that the workplace is a battleground for the very identity of the individual, as is graduate school, where professionals are trained. He shows that professional work is inherently political, and that professionals are hired to subordinate their own vision and maintain strict "ideological discipline."
    The hidden root of much career dissatisfaction, argues Schmidt, is the professional's lack of control over the political component of his or her creative work. Many professionals set out to make a contribution to society and add meaning to their lives. Yet our system of professional education and employment abusively inculcates an acceptance of politically subordinate roles in which professionals typically do not make a significant difference, undermining the creative potential of individuals, organizations and even democracy.
    Schmidt details the battle one must fight to be an independent thinker and to pursue one's own social vision in today's corporate society. He shows how an honest reassessment of what it really means to be a professional employee can be remarkably liberating. After reading this brutally frank book, no one who works for a living will ever think the same way about his or her job."

If you doubt it, check out Lawrence Kusche's masterpiece:

https://www.amazon.com/Bermuda...

He did what none of the writers of the other Bermuda Triangle books ever bothered to do: He went back to the original news items and historical accounts of what was going on at the time of each of the "disappearance". Lloyd's Registry of Shipping. Weather reports. Original newspaper stories. Later newspaper articles after the first ones.

Each chapter starts out with "The Story As It Is Usually Told", then compares it with contemporary information, and results of investigations at the time.

Contrary to the myth, it was not a clear, sunny day, it was in the middle of Hurricane Iona.

The Marine Sulfur Queen was a horrific death trap, the real mystery is that it stayed afloat as long as it did. (Molten sulfur tank penetrating all previously watertight bulkheads; the tank leaked, and there were constant sulfur fires between the tank and the ship's hull.)

Some ships were just delayed; next week's newspaper reports it arriving in port unscathed.

Some stories, there's no record of the ship ever existing, so there's nothing to check.

Etc. The book is definitely worth checking out.

Why does stating facts seem to piss you off?

Because these particular "Facts" are being SPUN to make them look like they are a behavior/policy/business-model that is EXCLUSIVE to Apple.

Every. Single. Time.

But even this SLIGHTEST effort will show them to be anything BUT Apple-Exclusive behaviors/policies/business-models.

For example: Since we were talking about Adapters (so-called "Dongles"), these were found in about 5 minutes of Googling, and I didn't even have to try hard AT ALL (my search term was [mfg] USB-C Adapter:

https://www.cdw.com/product/De...

https://www.amazon.com/Dell-DA...

https://www.dell.com/en-us/sho...

https://www.dell.com/en-us/wor...

So, where's the Outrage at Dell?

https://store.hp.com/us/en/pdp...

https://www.amazon.com/HP-USB-...

https://store.hp.com/us/en/pdp... ...and IMHO, the MOST egregious:

https://www.amazon.com/HP-N2Z6...

So where's the outrage at HP?

I could probably go on an on with other laptop OEMs; but I think (hope) you get the point.

I'll take my apology now...

Why does stating facts seem to piss you off?

Because these particular "Facts" are being SPUN to make them look like they are a behavior/policy/business-model that is EXCLUSIVE to Apple.

Every. Single. Time.

But even this SLIGHTEST effort will show them to be anything BUT Apple-Exclusive behaviors/policies/business-models.

For example: Since we were talking about Adapters (so-called "Dongles"), these were found in about 5 minutes of Googling, and I didn't even have to try hard AT ALL (my search term was [mfg] USB-C Adapter:

https://www.cdw.com/product/De...

https://www.amazon.com/Dell-DA...

https://www.dell.com/en-us/sho...

https://www.dell.com/en-us/wor...

So, where's the Outrage at Dell?

https://store.hp.com/us/en/pdp...

https://www.amazon.com/HP-USB-...

https://store.hp.com/us/en/pdp... ...and IMHO, the MOST egregious:

https://www.amazon.com/HP-N2Z6...

So where's the outrage at HP?

I could probably go on an on with other laptop OEMs; but I think (hope) you get the point.

I'll take my apology now...

Why does stating facts seem to piss you off?

Because these particular "Facts" are being SPUN to make them look like they are a behavior/policy/business-model that is EXCLUSIVE to Apple.

Every. Single. Time.

But even this SLIGHTEST effort will show them to be anything BUT Apple-Exclusive behaviors/policies/business-models.

For example: Since we were talking about Adapters (so-called "Dongles"), these were found in about 5 minutes of Googling, and I didn't even have to try hard AT ALL (my search term was [mfg] USB-C Adapter:

https://www.cdw.com/product/De...

https://www.amazon.com/Dell-DA...

https://www.dell.com/en-us/sho...

https://www.dell.com/en-us/wor...

So, where's the Outrage at Dell?

https://store.hp.com/us/en/pdp...

https://www.amazon.com/HP-USB-...

https://store.hp.com/us/en/pdp... ...and IMHO, the MOST egregious:

https://www.amazon.com/HP-N2Z6...

So where's the outrage at HP?

I could probably go on an on with other laptop OEMs; but I think (hope) you get the point.

I'll take my apology now...

What is Amazon HQ2?

HQ2 will be the second Amazon headquarters in North America. We are looking for a location with strong local and regional talent—particularly in software development and related fields—as well as a stable and business-friendly environment to continue hiring and innovating on behalf of our customers.

https://www.amazon.com/b?ie=UT...

Exactly! The GP mentioned 10,000 cores like it was a big deal so I assumed that he meant CPU cores.

The smallest Amazon P2 instance has 2500 GPU cores, the biggest has 40,000 GPU cores.

Re-read the GP post and try to fit the price he mentioned with GPU cores offered by Amazon.

https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/ins... .9$/2500*24*365 = 3.15360

3.15$ by GPU core a year, not 80$ per core a year! So IMHO he meant CPU cores.

Feel free to review my numbers, I did this quickly.

Cheers,

Exactly, unless you have thousands of super computers at hand.

How important is cracking that password? It's quite easy to get 10000 cores working in parallel for $80 per core-year.

If you're satisfied with it costing more to crack your password than it would cost for the attacker to just get his own Internet service, a medium-strong password is fine.

This problem was already solved decades ago with a drastically smaller price tag and 100% less surveillance.

Well, why are you taking with them instead of the people paying them?

Because they are the ones writing crap, and they are capable of doing better if they applied themselves a little. When people don't try, that is entirely on them. There are plenty of books they can read or even partially free ones to get better. They can go home and watch Netflix if they want but then it's all on them.

Oh well look at what I've found. Bluetooth receiver with headphone amp plus analog out plus digital out.

Yup, and it's only about $60. Not super portable looking, though, and yet another thing to charge; it also doesn't appear to support Apt-X or AAC, so we're back to crap audio quality, not that Apt-X is the greatest and for anything that's not already AAC (and fed straight to the bluetooth stack, rather than being re-encoded) AAC just means more compression artifacts -- and re-compression artifacts are audible.

My yacht was broken up in 1993, after the US Navy sold it to the Australian Navy for parts, and they sent it to the breakers in Bangladesh after they'd pulled what they wanted. For my time on the yacht (back in early 70s), I earned one of these: https://www.amazon.com/Navy-To...

guy scree trumpeted:

They stopped getting MY dimes when I got that 1st shot of Salk vaccine.

I use MOD as a counterexample whenever anyone talks about the superiority of the private sector vs the public. All bureaucracies are equally self-serving.

Well, that's because you're an ignoramus who hasn't bothered to inform himself about MoD's current focus - which is now mainly on preventing birth defects.

How fucking ludicrous would it be to create a giant, nationwide charity to address a particular problem, then disband the organization once that problem is solved, rather than refocus on other, significant, related problems. You'd throw the entire staff out of work, have to sell all the office equipment and furniture at pennies on the dollar, and discard all the goodwill, public visibility, and name recognition the organization has earned over the years - for what? A symbolic laying down of arms that accomplishes nothing useful ... ?

(Posting as AC only so as not to undo prior upmods in this thread.)

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It's not crazy, just complex and new. We have things like unemployment insurance and disability pensions already; the policy I designed is basically a social insurance. Overall, it's a logistically-purified form of what the Nordic nations do, allowing us to manage means-tested welfares while also taking advantage of an egalitarian social insurance.

The Nordic nations make their basic social insurances more-egalitarian--unemployment insurance, for example, pays quite a bit and you can be on it for something like 7 years(!), while many services simply pay to anyone regardless of income. This is a kind of roundabout way to redistribute a portion of incomes to poverty areas, essentially making all your social insurances and welfare services leak by paying to people who don't really need it because the economy needs it. We can, instead, simply distribute a portion of incomes, and then not worry about the impacts on that when we adjust welfare services (separate the two functions).

Unless you just want to provide full food stamps and HUD housing assistance to everyone making under $40k, and phase it out until about $80k.

All the odd things that pop out are a consequence of improving economic marginal efficiencies. Imagine if your nation implemented an economic policy of raising unemployment and then imprisoning the poor. You raise taxes on the middle-class so they can buy less (fewer jobs), lock people up in prisons, and use the tax money to feed and manage them. Over time, your labor force adjusts (fewer immigrant laborers and babies born), and unemployment comes down from 10% to 5%.

Now: imagine if you elected someone who said, "What the hell are we all doing?!" and then got those people out of prison, provided them welfare, moved them into jobs so they're making an income that can be taxed, and reduced taxes. There's now more income, people can buy more than what they were being supplied in prison, and the prison economy integrates into the regular economy. Those prison people are still consumers of what they were in prison, but also now are consumers of things they didn't produce in prison. They make hardly a dent in unemployment themselves--about 0.2%--but you suddenly need 10% more labor to keep up with the purchasing power of your population, and you don't have it.

That's basically what the Dividend is: it resolves localized recessions and enables greater productivity; the shock is kind of ludicrous. You handle the shock by balancing it against a cut in productivity--doable by reducing working hours and retaining the same minimum annual wages.

https://www.amazon.com/GPD-WIN...

GPD Win 2. Actually a tablet with touchscreen, but also folds out into gaming controls. If I had money to burn I'd do it but I don't have the around $750-850 USD to burn depending on where you get it.

That's pretty much the size of it: The Bell Curve.