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User: Jane+Q.+Public

Jane+Q.+Public's activity in the archive.

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Comments · 16,672

  1. Re: You will print a target on Cringely Predicts: Professional Drivers With Drone Landing Platforms (cringely.com) · · Score: 1

    No.

    People keep forgetting probably the most important aspect of any kind of flight: knowing where the other planes (aerial vehicles) are.

    The major limitation of aerial delivery systems is not the landing zones, it's the flight path and avoiding other aerial vehicles.

    Such a system will not only need a sophisticated shared information system with real-time, accurate GPS coordinates from each drone, but be able to communicate information about potential collisions to drones in flight.

    Unlike most car crashes, people in the area can't just step on the brakes to avoid the collided vehicles. They'd be falling out of the sky.

    Rarely, maybe, but very dangerously.

  2. Re:Finland's UBI experiment shows deadbeats are ha on Finland's Basic Income Experiment Shows Recipients Are Happier and More Secure (yahoo.com) · · Score: 2

    Agree with Bill.

    Plus, offshoring of manufacturing and so on not only leads to trade deficits, but a notable secondary effect is loss of jobs in the same industries at home.

    For some reasons most economists don't talk about that one very much, but it's very important.

    It doesn't matter how cheap your goods are, if you don't have a job to pay for them. Yes, employment is booming now, but part of that is because many manufacturing jobs have been brought back home.

  3. Re:Finland's UBI experiment shows deadbeats are ha on Finland's Basic Income Experiment Shows Recipients Are Happier and More Secure (yahoo.com) · · Score: 2

    The article is both meaningless and misleading.

    Of course people with a safety net are happier and feel more secure. Anybody who needs to do a study to find that out is brain-dead.

    BUT... this is NOT the first national-level UBI system to be tested. Their neighbors in Sweden implemented a very similar -- but not exactly the same -- program back in the 1970s. For practical purposes it was a UBI: if you were not working, you simply got a check from the government, basically no questions asked. And it was a decent, living-wage amount, too. A Swedish employee of our company said, "Man, you people work HARD. I like that. Back home, if someone doesn't want to work, they just don't. They get a check from the government anyway."

    As a result, over a period of about 20 years, Sweden's per-capita GDP went from 4th in the world to 14th.

    This illustrates that a short-term "test" is probably insufficient for a real measure of the program.

    And lest anyone doubt it was cause-effect, in the 90s they realized that their system was causing productivity issues, so they cut it way back. Over time (about another 20 years) their per-capita GDP went right back up where it was in the early 70s.

    Lesson learned. Or it should be, anyway. All other trials of similar systems have resulted in a conclusion of "unsustainable".

  4. Re:Kind of odd to define Alaska as "North" from Ja on Fukushima Contaminants Found As Far North As Alaska's Bering Strait · · Score: 1

    There is absolutely nothing remarkable about these results. They have been fully expected for years.

    I mean, it might actually matter that the circulation patterns in the Pacific are pretty well known.

    Washington State was given a warning to watch for radionuclides shortly after the Fukushima incident. It is absolutely no surprise to anybody that it gradually made its way further northward.

  5. Re:The More you add the more it fails on Volvo To Add In-Car Sensors To Prevent Drunk Driving (reuters.com) · · Score: 1

    It will be a cold day in Hell before I'll buy a car that tells me what to do.

    Ain't gonna happen.

  6. Re:"even threatened to cut off intelligence sharin on Trump Blockade of Huawei Fizzles In European 5G Rollout (bloomberg.com) · · Score: 1
    The excuse:

    The U.K.'s spy chief has indicated that a ban on Huawei is unlikely, citing a lack of viable alternatives to upgrade British telecom networks.

    ... is pretty lame.

    I mean, it isn't as if Huawei hasn't been caught spying on people through their phones, and stealing others' inventions.

    To me, that's the equivalent of saying, "We don't know how to build the phone infrastructure ourselves, so we'll just buy it from Russia."

    Where's the difference?

    I wouldn't let Huawei build my phone infrastructure any more than I'd voluntarily feed my private phone conversations to the NSA.

  7. Re:Will miss Google+ on Before Google+ Shuts Down, The Internet Archive Will Preserve Its Posts (theverge.com) · · Score: 1

    It was an easy way for Google to see what all the technical communities were doing.

    People need to get this aspect of Google into their heads, and keep it there.

    Google sees everything anyone on Google does. Whether it's Docs, or +, or gmail.

    And they can flag it for anything they happen to be looking for that particular week.

    I used Google+ reluctantly and infrequently, I don't use Docs, and I do not use gmail for important business. It's my "junk drawer" of email accounts.

  8. Re:This is going to happen more and more frequentl on Google's Bad Data Wiped Another Neighborhood Off the Map (medium.com) · · Score: 2
    What I think is funny about the Medium article is this:

    "Founded in 1920 as a maker of postage meters -- the machines that stamp mail with proof it's been sent..."

    What nonsense.

    Postage meters are only evidence that the postage was paid for, and when.

    Unless it's being used by the post office, there is no proof that it was ever mailed.

    You can use the postage meter in your office to stamp something today... and send it next year. And since the post office is very lax about cancelling letters these days, nobody would be the wiser. In fact you could probably mail it twice.

  9. Re:Fixed cost of solar too on Renewable Energy Reduces the Highest Electric Rates In the Nation (phys.org) · · Score: 1

    Making electricity for yourself with solar has become more affordable than traditional electricity fuel sources like coal.

    The above quote is utter BS. I really have to wonder where such claims come from.

    Among other things not mentioned, is the fact that now that China has cornered the market on photovoltaics, the Chinese government is ceasing its massive subsidies and prices will be going up. Way up.

    Gee, who'd have thought? (Actually lots of people, and we were hardly quiet about telling others... most of whom refused to listen.)

    In this part of the U.S., solar is completely useless for a very significant part of the average year. I'm talking like 30%.

    And nobody ever seems to talk about the cost of local storage, or the ludicrously expensive interface gear you need to buy to hook to the grid.

  10. In a year, for $200,000, I could build a hell of a website.

    By myself.

  11. Re: Extra per month on Verizon Says 5G Network Will Cost Extra $10 a Month (go.com) · · Score: 1

    In healthy markets, service gets better as prices go down.

    In monopolistic (oligopolisitic) markets, the cost of providing services goes down while end user prices go up.

    Can't say I didn't warn you.

  12. Re:Now there's an old tradition. on Salon: Republicans Are Launching Fake Local News Sites To Spread 'Propaganda' (salon.com) · · Score: 1

    I think the very concept of Salon complaining about "propaganda" is hilarious.

    There's an old saying for that: "The pot calling the kettle black."

  13. Re: wasn't a robot you tards on A Doctor Remotely Told A Patient He Was Going To Die Using A Video-Link Robot (bbc.com) · · Score: 1

    Pendant (noun): someone who hears truth from a pedant but doesn't listen.

  14. Re:Wrong Headline on Microsoft Reaches 800 Million Windows 10 Devices (cnbc.com) · · Score: 2

    There are plenty of solid reasons to downgrade.

    Among them: (1) Windows 10 is generally just awful. And (2) it's dog slow compared to 7. Personally I see no benefit to 10 over 7, except that new software is designed to use it. And 7 performs much better.

  15. Re:Private detective on Ask Slashdot: How Is It Even Legal For Websites To Gather And Sell Users' Data? · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Not really.

    Example 1: Facebook and Twitter track you on every web page you ever visit with Facebook or Twitter "share" icons (or "like" in the case of Facebook). They don't tell you that. (In fact they track people who have never been to Facebook or agreed to a damned thing.)

    Example 2: It is illegal in the United States to track people who are less than 13 years old, without explicit parental consent. Yet not only to Google, Facebook, and Twitter do this on a massive scale, they don't care about the law and don't even try to abide by it.

    The latter is BIG. The fine per violation is significant. If it were actually enforced, those companies would be out of business very quickly.

  16. Re:Own, as opposed to commercial on Europe Frightened By US 'Cloud Act', Fearing National Security Risks (straitstimes.com) · · Score: 1

    Oops... (2) isn't a known "fact".

    But I wouldn't be surprised at all if it were a fact.

  17. Re:Own, as opposed to commercial on Europe Frightened By US 'Cloud Act', Fearing National Security Risks (straitstimes.com) · · Score: 1

    You were foolish to use Google BigTables EVER.

    We know for a fact that:

    1) Google has NEVER been honest about the data it extracts or keeps.

    2) It is quite possible they were truthful about information stored in BigTables, but dollars to doughnuts the TOS never mentioned the data being stored elsewhere, outside of BigTables.

  18. Re:Censorship by any other name on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Still Aren't Doing Enough About Disinformation, EU Says (theverge.com) · · Score: 1

    Indeed. But it's even worse than that, in a way.

    Even if they wanted to block disinformation -- and they don't -- they are incapable of knowing disinformation from the other kind.

    Not just because of normal human limitations, but also because of their inherent (and by now obvious) biases.

  19. Re:less disruptive compared to backdoors. on Vodafone CEO Says Banning Huawei Could Set Europe's 5G Rollout Back Another Two Years (cnbc.com) · · Score: 2

    This fantasy yellow-peril BS is racism by another name.

    "Fantasy BS"??? Are you kidding?

    We KNOW how Huawei cheats and spies. It's neither fantasy or speculation.

    Trusting your communications infrastructure to lying, spying Huawei would be an act of sheer stupidity.

  20. Re:Bye, Redis on Redis Changes Its Open Source License -- Again (zdnet.com) · · Score: 1
    Not exactly.

    If the reporting here is accurate, what Gupta actually said was that Redis never was open-source.

    And this really gets me too:

    the RSAL forbids you from using any application built with these modules in a database, a caching engine, a stream processing engine, a search engine, an indexing engine, or a machine learning/artificial intelligence serving engine. In short, all the ways that Redis Labs makes money from Redis.

    That's not just all the ways it makes money; it's pretty damned close to a list of all the things that are practical to do with Redis.

    No use in a database? Get real.

  21. Re:Someday... on NYT Reporter 'Ditched My Phone and Unbroke My Brain' (msn.com) · · Score: 0

    I suspect this is a real problem, but specific to New York Times reporters and their ilk.

  22. Re:Let me get this straight on China Has Abandoned a Cybersecurity Truce With the US, Report Says (bloomberg.com) · · Score: 1

    I wish more people would see the reality of this.

  23. Re:As decided by random security firm? on China Has Abandoned a Cybersecurity Truce With the US, Report Says (bloomberg.com) · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Why are we expected to believe anything CrowdStrike says these days?

  24. The quality isn't that great.

    Many of the pictures I saw had lopsided faces, and many others had "blotchy" looks, like someone had a skin graft from a donor whose skin wasn't quite the same color.

    All in all, I don't think it's ready for prime time.

  25. Re:Sorry, I am more worried about polution then GW on 2018 Was Earth's Fourth-Hottest Year on Record: NOAA and NASA Report (cnbc.com) · · Score: 1

    I don't know where you're from, but in the USA:

    The water in lakes and rivers is much cleaner than it was 20 years ago. And even cleaner compared to 30 years ago.

    The air is much cleaner than it was 20 years ago. And even cleaner compared to 30 years ago.

    Trash and littering are much less of a problem than 20 or especially 30 years ago.

    Groundwater has always needed filtering, in most parts of the world.

    Those are just facts. If you live somewhere else, where it's getting dirtier instead... that's YOUR problem, and your fault.