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User: Talderas

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  1. Re:Nuclear Winter is A-OK... on EPA Says Higher Radiation Levels Pose 'No Harmful Health Effect' (bloomberg.com) · · Score: 1

    This could have been done as an expansion to the Navy though rather than calling it a separate branch though.

    They could have made the Air Force an expansion to the Army. Oh wait... they did form the United States Army Air Force in 1907 which was a branch of the US Army. Then the boys in blue got all hot and bothered about being under the budgeting of the US Army and wanted their own budget and not be forced to act as a sub branch of the doughboys even though the US Army brass was mostly hands off with the USAAF during WW2. 1947 saw the creation of an independent Air Force in a likely violation of the Constitution.

  2. Re:That is a LOT of cheaters on PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds Blocks 322,000 Cheaters (pcgamer.com) · · Score: 1

    It's pretty much the same thing as playing a console FPS with 3 buddies and watching everyone else's screen to know where they are. The only different between that and stream sniping is that streaming usually incorporates a delay so you would only know where someone was and not where they are but that usually is enough to let you catch up to them.

  3. Re:That is a LOT of cheaters on PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds Blocks 322,000 Cheaters (pcgamer.com) · · Score: 1

    WoW had an achievement, I think, at one point in time where you would kill the leader NPC in each of the opposing faction's main cities. Whether this still exists, I do not know. You were accosted by a relatively constant stream of high level NPC guards along with players of the opposing faction coming in and smacking you around.

    Factions taking over towns was very much the outcome of one or two players going on a gank-fest around the vicinity of a low level quest hub town. The ganked players would complain, a bunch of higher level players on their faction would respond and try to deal with the gankers, and failing that would then go after the nearby low-level quest hub town of the opposing faction and gank those players as retribution for the act of the original gankers.

  4. Re:Seems Legit on Unsent Text On Mobile Counts As a Will, Australian Court Finds (abc.net.au) · · Score: 1

    Vagueness or giving most of the inheritance to some family member that you've previously disavowed or have little connection and contact with.

  5. Re:Or you could just... on Scientists Race To Create Synthetic Blood in the Wake of Mass Tragedies (vice.com) · · Score: 1

    Earlier this week I tried looking to see if there had ever been a challenge to the National Firearms Act that reached the Supreme Court. I was expecting to find something but I didn't, which is surprising. Maybe there has been a challenge, I'd like to know what it was and the outcome of it. I would be quite interested in knowing it because we do know that since the founding of the country, private individuals had owned artillery pieces without problem.

    Events in Las Vegas are useful for bringing light to an issue of guns that is a small portion of gun related death. In the grand scheme of things, banning semi automatic weapons will have minimal impact with regard to preventing gun deaths. There's well over 10,000 concerts annually in the US. If we include sports games, clubs, conventions, and other large events we're probably easily in a figure that exceeds 50,000 events each year. We're dealing with a problem that is at most in the hundredths of a percent.

    Let's look at what you're talking about. Banning semi-automatic weapons. Banning semi-automatics doesn't reduce the lethality of a gun. It will have virtually no impact on the largest group of individuals that die each year from firearms which are successful suicides. What about the second largest group? That's victims of gang and criminal related activity. The majority of these victims are members of rival gangs or crime organizations. A small number of bystanders who are shot and killed. Would banning semi-automatics help here? Not by much. Semi-automatic vs non-semi-automatic doesn't magically improve a shooter's accuracy. Shots will still be fired and miss. What about the third largest group? That's domestic abuse cases. Banning semi-automatics will have no benefit here for the same reason that banning them won't help suicide cases.

    What broad gun legislation would help in all those cases? An outright ban on guns but there's no topic or discussion of even proposing a Constitutional amendment to repeal or modify the 2nd amendment. That's why all this talk is pointless. All it does is lets politicians use shootings to try to score political points. They use the defenselessness of the rare situation to grip and turn your heart to make you emotional so you can't even think of it in a rational manner. I get that it sounds scary that you could go to a concert and someone could just fire bullets down on you and kill you. Your life is over for doing nothing wrong but wanting to enjoy some music. If people are afraid of something like this happening to them then their risk assessment is screwed up because there's plenty of things they do on a daily basis that has a much higher probability of getting them killed and they don't even bat an eye at it.

    You want to reduce gun death in the US? Then lets identify and target legislation to help and protect the individuals in the groups that are most at risk from gun death. Let's craft legislation that helps people with depression and not something punitive like taking away their guns because that's only going to encourage them to not seek help. We need to accept that people are depressed and that it's a normal thing for it. We can't look down on people like that. We need to help them so that they don't want to end their life.

    Let's address gang and other crimes that lead to gun death. Let's find out why these kids join gangs. Let's target that. Keep them from joining gangs in the first place so they aren't likely to end up on the receiving end of gunfire from that.

    Let's address spousal abuse more seriously but not in a way that assumes women are always the victim of it.

    Will we do these things? Nope. We won't do those things because they're hard and they don't look good and it doesn't let politicians act like they're "doing something".

  6. Re:The U.S.-only price hikes on Netflix is Raising Its Prices, Again (mashable.com) · · Score: 1

    Only on Wednesdays and Saturdays if they end in a 7. It's an independent country all other days.

  7. Re:flawed goals, premises, everything here on Unselfish People Are More Likely to Wind Up With Depression (vice.com) · · Score: 1

    That's not the ultimatum model. Under that ultimatum game you have an individual who is given a reward and must decide on how to split the reward. A second individual is then given the opportunity to refuse or accept the proposal. With a refusal, the reward is lost in its entirety. It's usually done with two players so a group based version is unfamiliar with me.

    Here's maybe an example of how they would do it with multiple participants. They take five individuals and each individual will have the chance to offer a proposal to one other player (A->B, B->C, C->D, D->E, and E->A) so that each player has one opportunity to offer and accept. The offer is in the format of X:Y where Y is split among the recipient of the proposal and the three others not party to it. If A proposes to B 40:60 then be has to decide whether A receives 40 or 0 and he and the others receive 15 or 0. This offer is obviously not fair since all players are not receiving 20 from the offer but accepting the offer gives himself and the other three players 15 more than they would otherwise receive. From B's perspective he can altruistically reject A's offer to encourage A to make future fair offers (which since there's only one offer permitted there's no opportunity for A to make an offer). More like, B would reject A's offer as a punitive rejection against A for failing to present a fair offer. A rejection is more likely to occur of the offer value is low relative to the receiver's perception of its value. Whether a rejection or acceptance occurs, the results of it are likely kept secret from the remaining three members of the group. Once all five pairs have made the offer and acceptance/rejection the collective results are probably published with each player knowing how much each other player received as a total reward.

    The depression scale probably slides based on how firm the unselfish player is in that stance. An unselfish player that accepts selfish offers is probably going to less depressed than an unselfish player that rejects selfish offers with the latter being mode depressed because the player had to reject giving the group some reward.

  8. Re:Pipe bombs would have killed thousands. on Las Vegas Shooting Leaves at Least 50 Dead, More Than 200 Wounded (wsj.com) · · Score: 1

    If the shooter was shooting from a hotel room in the Mandalay Bay (shooting came from the 37th floor of MB which I assume are hotel rooms), and is known to be a guest of the hotel, why would you assume the shooter was a Nevada resident?

  9. Re:Why So Long? on Equifax Will Offer Free Credit Locks for Life, New CEO Says (bloomberg.com) · · Score: 4, Informative

    Seven states already entitle you to zero cost credit freezes. This includes Colorado, Indiana, Maine, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, and South Carolina. They may be trying to get ahead of state legislation but my guess is that they're going through damage control with regard to their customers (entities that give credit) not with regard to their data (the people with SSNs). After all, if Equifax is the only one of the big three to make it easy and free for credit freezes to be places, lifted, and removed, then the credit granting entities have reason to use Equifax over TU or Experian as it reduces the risks that they are complicit in identity fraud and give credit to people who are never going to repay.

  10. Re: So.... fix the laws, I guess? on Nestle Makes Billions Bottling Water It Pays Nearly Nothing For (bloomberg.com) · · Score: 1

    Those laws are limited in scope as to whom they cover. You won't find anything that is wide open and almost without question you're only legally required to provide the necessaries of life for your dependents. The short list would be your children, if they're not of the age of majority or of an age where they can obtain a job, someone who is your dependent who is not your child that through illness or disorder unable to provide the necessities for themselves, and in some cases your spouse regardless of your spouses ability to provide its own necessities.

    Strictly speaking, if some stranger wanders up to my door and claims to be homeless, starving, and thirsty I almost certainly have no legal requirement to provide shelter, food, or water to the individual nor does the individual have any right to enter my home or to any food or water that he can obtain on my property.

  11. Re:If one wants to recapture that Wild West energy on Internet Is Having a Midlife Crisis (bbc.com) · · Score: 1

    Cockroaches were genetically modified by bug pesticide companies in order to sell more extermination products.

    Getting punched in the face is caused by people being targeted by advertising to make them think they're more badass than they really are.

  12. Re:Negligence or malfeasance - you pick on Equifax Stock Sales Are the Focus of US Criminal Probe (bloomberg.com) · · Score: 1

    According to Equifax's official procedures the execs should not have known about the breach. Additionally, there would have been a number of forms they would have had to fill out in order liquidate those stock assets. On the surface, it all looks clean.

    What needs to be investigated is whether the execs had come about the information from other methods/sources and whether the disclosure by Equifax may have been delayed to allow for the stock sales to go through.

  13. Re:Birds also crash into large glass walls on Why Bats Crash Into Windows (nature.com) · · Score: 1

    Humans are abnormal and understand the concept of reflections. If you want to fuck with people, create an automatic door for your lobby made out of pure glass. No non-glass pieces anywhere other than perhaps at the bottom or top of the door to secure it shut when the building is closed. Keep the window perfectly clean so that there is no surface indicators there is glass. You will have people run into it.

  14. Re:If Jessica Tisch keeps her job on New York City Cops Will Replace Their 36,000 Windows Phones With iPhones (theverge.com) · · Score: 1

    Not really. It can be argued that having Window's phones lessened the impact of unauthorized third party apps from being installed and creating problems for the phones affecting their performance, as well as limiting their use for things outside of work obligations and the distractions that go with that

    It can be argued but poorly and it's really just comparable to security by obscurity. If your organization is deploying mobile devices without MDM then you are definitely asking for a higher TCO from support issues. Use the right MDM and pretty much most of the issues you speak of are not.

  15. Re:Oh for the love of... LEARN about LOGISTICS mor on Tesla's Electric Semi Truck Will Reportedly Get 200-300 Miles Per Charge (reuters.com) · · Score: 1

    There's a classification system for vehicles that's already in use and you can be a good judgment call on which class they're targeting once they unveil the vehicle. Additionally, the only locations that can't accept a trailer load either have no room for the truck and trailer or lack a forklift while having no loading dock.

    Once you have a picture of the truck then you can determine Tesla's intent for it. Right of the bat we're going to see which classification the truck can fit into. The first thing to look for is what all is on the chassis. The cab is a given but what to look for is whether it's just a cab/chassis or if they already have some things fitted to the chassis. If they have a box on it then they're targeting class 5-7 depending on the number of rear axles and that's in line with deliveries made within a city. If they have a fifth wheel they're targeting class 8-13 and that's a different sort of use case. If it's a pure cab/chassis then they're leaving which class to target the vehicle up to the purchasers.

    If the chassis already has a trailer attachment point then you're getting into what people classically refer to as semis which are the class 8-13 vehicles. The trailer on these vehicles typically sits higher off the ground than you would find in class 5-7 vehicles. You would need a loading dock with a hand lift or a forklift (with or without a dock) in order to unload the trailer.

  16. Re:Oh for the love of... LEARN about LOGISTICS mor on Tesla's Electric Semi Truck Will Reportedly Get 200-300 Miles Per Charge (reuters.com) · · Score: 1

    Actually no, no that STILL will not work because even those 'small local routs' STILL use full sized semi trucks. They just use what is a called a 'day cab'. Or a basically full sized semi truck, but without the sleeper compartment.

    How much importance does does the truck's chassis have between the two styles of trucks? As far as I can tell the only real difference between a day cab and sleeper cab semi would be the elongated chassis on the sleeper which can support more or larger fuel tanks. There shouldn't be a difference in engine block or the GAWR of the chassis.

  17. Vat meat isn't organic. From my experience organic and vegan tend to frequently go hand in hand with the people that advocate it.

  18. Re:PS4/XB1 game developer here on Sony Blocks Yet Another Game From Cross-Console Play With Xbox One (arstechnica.com) · · Score: 1

    Yes, the PS4 supports it. It's also not relevant to the question, whether they're using a shitty software keyboard or a hardware keyboard plugged in via USB the PS4 players can use the in game chat functions of FF14 to communicate with PC players. I'm seeking more information about what the AC meant when he wrote

    Sony allow PS4 cross play with PC but not with live chat. They can't have you talking to PSN members unless there's a facility to be reported and blocked. So PS4/PC cross play is missing a key feature already because of this. We dropped it for this reason.

    Did they drop cross play because they didn't want to create an in game method for PC and PS4 users to communicate? Were they wanting to use a voice service facilitated by the game that PS4 users couldn't connect to because the PS4 keeps a lock on the voice traffic?

  19. Re:PS4/XB1 game developer here on Sony Blocks Yet Another Game From Cross-Console Play With Xbox One (arstechnica.com) · · Score: 1

    Sony allow PS4 cross play with PC but not with live chat. They can't have you talking to PSN members unless there's a facility to be reported and blocked. So PS4/PC cross play is missing a key feature already because of this. We dropped it for this reason.

    Could you elaborate what you mean by this? I have to look at FF14 as an example of PS4/PC crossplay. I am aware that there's a PSN messaging, chat, and voice service that PS4 FF14 users can use and communicate which PC players cannot gain access to, but the PS4 users can also communicate with PC users using chat windows. They may have to use a shitty software keyboard but they definitely can communicate anything they want as long as it can be expressed in text.

  20. Re:Screw the soldiers on Paul Allen Finds Long-Lost World War II Cruiser, the USS Indianapolis (usni.org) · · Score: 1

    Why bother coming to the US? There's a far more readily accessible graveyard of American soldiers in Colleville-sur-Mer, France.

  21. Re:The market can handle this on Popular Pesticides Keep Bumblebees From Laying Eggs (npr.org) · · Score: 2

    I will admit that it's difficult to search for info on wild bee hives. A majority of search results will go to beekeeping links. That said, beekeepers can and do merge hives together but doing so requires one hive to be queenless and this is obviously different from bees voluntarily leaving one hive and finding another in the wild. Colonies will also respond differently when a frame of brood cells is introduced to the hive. If the hive has a queen they will not accept the brood but they will accept it if they do not have a queen. We can readily observe that some colony responses and behaviors are tied to the queen and that the lack of a queen does seem to trigger different behaviors in colonies.

    I consider it more likely that bees that abandon a queen do so because there's a virgin queen in the mix and there's something inherently wrong with the old queen or reproductive workers in bees that flee lay eggs which are used to raise a new queen in a new hive.

  22. Re:The market can handle this on Popular Pesticides Keep Bumblebees From Laying Eggs (npr.org) · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The investigation of pesticides is more driven at colony collapse which is the sudden disappearance of the workers leaving the queen and a few nurses the reasoning for it are still misunderstood. This research at least provides some path to explain why the bees disappeared. If the queen is producing fewer eggs, the workers may be able to sense that is occurring and leave the hive either going feral, dying, or attempting to merge with another colony with a healthy queen because it is very rare that the bees in a hive will leave while there's still brood in cells.

    When the colony dies, a bunch of dead bees in the hive, it's far easier to autopsy the hive and determine a cause. You could find the presence of varroa mites, indicators that the bees are suffering from dysentery or nosema, American/European foulbrood, starvation, or a loss of a queen which could not be replaced. There's numerous other reasons as well but unless you perform the autopsy on what you find you can't determine the cause. Blindly blaming pesticides for a bunch of dead bees is pointless when you have the option to find the cause of the colony death.

  23. Re:Worry worry worry on Scientists Discover 91 Volcanoes Below Antarctic Ice Sheet (theguardian.com) · · Score: 1

    The only way that I see reason as to why anthropogenic climate change causes an increase in volcanic activity is the following point of yours.

    Volcanoes happen when fissures in the Earth's crust open from seismic activity and such and open a channel to the surface.

    We do know that glacial ice can compress the earth's crust. It is not inconceivable that melting ice reduces this compression to the point that channels that had once been sealed due to compression are now open.

  24. The other perhaps two thirds of workers never have their experience turn into the type of wisdom you refer to. They just get set in their ways, spend too much time in a niche role while the industry passes them by, and then never have the drive to catch up again. These are the older workers who complain about age discrimination, and end up transitioning into project or product managers or if they are lucky find a non-tech company with horrible IT hiring practices and stagnate there for a couple decades.

    This isn't limited to tech. It's all ranges of employment. I've seen plenty of older individuals who are not managers constantly complain about every change saying the "Old way worked just fine." They fail to understand the problems inherent with the old way, typically scalability with regard to company growth. If these individuals are lucky then they are identified and then they get excised from any projects to change aspects of their job because their participation is more or less pointless since they fail to accept the flaws with the old method. They are then forced to accept the new method.

  25. Re:"more women and ethnic minorities" on Blizzard Starts Drive To Recruit More Women and Ethnic Minorities (bbc.co.uk) · · Score: 1

    On the plus side, you'll get more beefy hunks with huge packages.

    This is pretty much every male character in StarCraft or Warcraft. For further evidence, see the Sun's Out Gun's Out skins they gave Tychus in Heroes of the Storm.