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User: Moof123

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  1. Re:Universal Healthcare on App Companies Propose New Model For Worker Benefits (cio.com) · · Score: 1

    ACA was a conservative patchwork solution, and is far less of a clean solution than single payer. It has helped to a great degree in reducing the ranks of the unemployed, and greatly eased suffering for many. It should be lauded for this.

    However it was never a 100% solution like single payer would be. It left hospital system in place with their huge waste and lack of transparency. It left most people with the same insurance they had, meaning that for the middle class if you change jobs you change insurance. For most workers their insurance is still tied to their job. Lose your job and you can go on the exchanges and find something affordable (better than COBRA provided for), but you are still likely dealing with a fresh set of doctors in a new network. Anyone with someone in their family going to a specialist, this can be a major disruption.

    Single payer was politically too big of a leap, even implementing the conservative invention of RomneyCare nationwide was used as proof of a socialist takeover by death panels.

    I still see single payer being inevitable, but probably still 10-20 years away.

  2. Re:Universal Healthcare on App Companies Propose New Model For Worker Benefits (cio.com) · · Score: 3, Funny

    Best compliment I've gotten all day.

  3. Interactive ads mandatory?! What The Fox? on TV Networks Cutting Back On Commercials (bloomberg.com) · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Has Fox forgotten that vegging out or having background noise while doing other stuff is most of the point of watching TV. Nothing will tick someone off more than have to fumble around and click to proceed every few minutes.

  4. Universal Healthcare on App Companies Propose New Model For Worker Benefits (cio.com) · · Score: 1

    So if the problem is portability and income security, lets take that off the table.

    Solution: Universal healthcare, paid for by a corporate value added tax (rate to be set by actual costs from the previous few years costs).

    Job retraining issues?

    Solution: Free university tuition and subsidized apprenticeships for trades. Pay for that with a flat 50% income tax for income above ~200k (or whatever income level keeps the budget balanced, set by recent year incomes and projected budget costs).

    Any questions?

  5. Re:It's a phone on With Respect To Gaming, Android Still Lags Behind iOS (bgr.com) · · Score: 1

    This. Touch interface sucks for many types of games. When stuck on a long flight I generally end up just playing solitare or 2048, after quickly tiring of the level of focus and frustration from trying to play most everything else. I gave up on data for my phone a few months back, since I so rarely needed it on the go. So I have a quad core bohemoth of a computer in my pocket for phone calls, a few texts, and taking pictures. Luckily I found a phone plan that costs me only $13.41 a month for what I actually need it for. I can quickly turn data back on if I ever need maps to work away from wifi, but haven't in the last 3 months.

  6. Re:What's the complaint? on DNA Data From California Newborn Blood Samples Stored, Sold To 3rd Parties (cbslocal.com) · · Score: 1

    He's in his 40's. Check, and mate!

    Of course, I did work for one of the three letter acronyms, so I know I am fully owned regardless.

  7. Re:What's the complaint? on DNA Data From California Newborn Blood Samples Stored, Sold To 3rd Parties (cbslocal.com) · · Score: 5, Interesting

    In my 30's? Check.
    Born in Cali? Check.
    Born at home? Check! I escaped this one thanks to the awful experience my parents had at the hospital with my brother.

    Interestingly, back then the state could really make you jump through hoops for doing this. My birth certificate got held up for 4 months to try to force my parents to divulge the midwife's name (midwifery was and may still be illegal in the People's Republic of California).

  8. Re:Bad practice. on Unhashable: Why Fingerprints Are Weaker Security Than Passwords (hackaday.com) · · Score: 1

    Yep. And really, once you have someone or some organization focused on just you as one person you are pretty much F'ed with pedestrian level security. Various leaks have shown that most everything has been cracked and is only a few GUI clicks away from law enforcement via Hacking Team software (or other less known software).

    My guess is that even today it is harder for the big guys to crack fingerprints than employ pre-canned software to defeat just about anything.

  9. Re:Doesn't everyone wait for games to get cheap? on "Fallout 4" Release Raises Questions About Reviews of Buggy Games (kotaku.com) · · Score: 1

    This. Games play well on hardware that is a few years younger and the bugs are mostly fixed. If the bugs aren't fixed it is usually pretty easy to figure out.

    I made the mistake of getting GTA V only 4 months after release and the install/update was just plain awful (super slow download, 2 installs to get a non-corrupted install, etc). Should have waited longer, but at had sounded like these were mostly launch issues until I started searching for the right terms only after hitting the rampant problems myself.

  10. Re:Fuck off. on Dorms For Grownups: a Solution For Lonely Millennials? · · Score: 2

    Seriously, millennials are getting a lot of crap (just like every generation) for their lifestyle. Much of the caricature is the result of their rational reaction to an insecure life. Most folks in general would love to have a steady job and to own a home. Once you start expecting to have to change jobs every 6-18 months when your startup flops, or you get downsized out of your corporate one, you start looking at the whole world as temporary. Throw in low wages for the younger set, and even steady work doesn't let you live terribly well. Having a 5 year loan on a car becomes a huge liability if you have to make ends meet on unemployment, rather than just a monthly expense if you have a decent salary and some decent job security.

    The son of one of our good friends falls into the hipster camp (young, gay, lived in San Francisco, worries about fashion too much, uses words I've never head before), and he and his new husband still want the same thing everyone else wants, a secure roof over their head. It cost them $500k for a 1 bed, 1 bath in Oakland to make it happen. So these kids are still going through huge hoops to get their crumb of the American Dream (I mean Oakland, really?!). I see no "entitlement" complex, just people trying to live in a world that has changed a lot from when I was their age and starting out.

    A major draw of the bay area is that unlike many other places, it is very easy to get another job when your company inevitably spits you out on the street. In smaller towns the corporate pressure to cut costs is just as strong, but the chances of picking up another job without ripping up your life and moving are vastly diminished. Here in Portland we get a lot of California transplants who move once they have enough years of experience to be able to get a decently secure job in an area where they can actually afford a house. Just people making rational decisions in a pretty irrational world.

  11. Re:Axiety from Breaking Assumption of Unlimited Da on No Such Thing As 'Unlimited' Data (wired.com) · · Score: 1

    Most consumers have limited control on the data coming and going. Ads come along for the ride mostly outside of our control. Websites are often bloated with autoplaying videos, tons of picture, and are coded with very little efficiency. As a user the control you have is to not visit a site, which is a blunt instrument. Even then we have no infrastructure to let someone know how many MB's loading clickbait.com is going to take.

    Windows is constantly phoning home, even auto-downloading GB's of Win10 install files.

    With so little control I also see no good path that does not include unlimited data.

    On the other hand, it would be good to have some sort of cost imposed on the folks who bloat the world with spam, ads, and unbelievably big downloads (70 GB games are getting common?!).

  12. Re:There are accounts with unlimited access on No Such Thing As 'Unlimited' Data (wired.com) · · Score: 1

    The cost to the providers per GB has steadily dropped as time has gone on as the technology march has move to higher speed standards, and more integration (the spillover of Moore's law). But there has mostly been a plateau to the cost to consumers for the same pipe (unless Google Fiber or municipal fiber comes to town), and likely now an era where there may be an upswing.

    I personally would rather there be a utility model where I paid for the data pipe maintenance and upgrades (fixed monthly charge), and then the actual costs per byte. In reality the second charge is likely peanuts overall.

    Take cell phones as an example. LTE is a much more efficient usage of spectrum than WCDMA for a network installation. Did the cost per GB drop as LTE rolled out? Nope, not really at all. Data use has steadily increased, but caps have not scaled with either the usage or the system capability. It is very apparent that this is rent seeking behavior. You can now exhaust your 3 GB data cap is about a 1 minute (maximum carrier aggregation rate of 450 Mbps). The action taken to throttle users to 2G rates (0.04% of LTE maximum rate) is clearly a punitive tool rather than a management tool.

    Text messages are still astronomically expensive per GB if they are not part of your plan. Heck, I pay $3 per hundred 140 character message, which is $214,000 per GB. But rent seeking has kept these from becoming free.

  13. Re:Whats this guys definiton of real world on Autonomous Cars Aren't As Smart as They're Cracked Up To Be (computerworld.com) · · Score: 1

    Part of Google's testing involved lending out Beta cars to employees. Sure enough, they whipped out laptops, went to sleep, and otherwise were in no position to take over if HAL gave up and handed over control. These were well educated folks who knew they were in Beta cars (and who should have been fired for such negligence). So as far as the general public goes we can expect zero backup for the system from the human inside. So the system needs to be truly autonmous in every sense before it gets released to the public.

  14. Re:Last quarter mile navigation on Autonomous Cars Aren't As Smart as They're Cracked Up To Be (computerworld.com) · · Score: 1

    The real killer for adoption is going to be the couple minutes you have to spend punching in a destination before you get going. We are so used to just getting in and going where we want that such delays will be very frustrating for short trips.

    Worse will be the times where you know where you are headed, but don't really know the address or proper name such as that italian place downtown, you know the one with the good meatballs. Or the soccer field just past the railroad tracks. Judging by how awful some of the built in navigation systems are I don't think we can trust car companies not to foul up the one for an autonmous interface.

    I see a lot of people tiring of such small delays and hassles that they just don't use it much of the time. The likely heavy adopters will be the wackos with long commutes who prefer to spend on tech instead of a closer address.

  15. Neither link mentions dimming the lights to save power. Honestly, doing so would be a bad idea. We have a street light across from our bedroom that I wish was dimmer, but one that pulses form dim to bright every time someone walks by would be more distracting than a steadily bright one.

    The "smart' seems to simply be that a small fiber connected base station is being integrated into a light pole. Big whoop. The other solution for improving cell service in urban areas I've seen proposed is a flat ~1x1 m wall mounted cell site that can be bolted on the side of a building, and looks to be less ugly than this solution.

  16. Re:Yorkshireman here on How Apple Is Preventing the Apple TV From Becoming a Console Rival (redbull.com) · · Score: 1

    You had a tape?! Luxury! We have to make scratches on a broken bottle at the bottom of a lake.

  17. Re:No 4K support on How Apple Is Preventing the Apple TV From Becoming a Console Rival (redbull.com) · · Score: 1

    And how many 4k TV owners have any actual 4k content?

  18. Re:Wake me when it's BeOS's next turn. on The Return of OS/2 Warp Set For 2016 (techrepublic.com) · · Score: 1

    Yep, BeOS is still the only dead OS i have any nostalgia for.

  19. Re:Jargon on Investigating the Complexity of Academic Writing (theatlantic.com) · · Score: 1

    IEEE journals within my area of expertise are often nearly indecipherable. Often once you penetrate the awful overuse of lingo anf jargon, the underlying achievement wilts. I think the authors often know this and use buzzwords and obfuscation to get published since they can't do so otherwise.

  20. Re: they serve a purpose on Are Car Dealers a Business Worth Keeping? (vox.com) · · Score: 1

    Cars are more interchangeable than Apple vs a PC. I would rather have fewer middle men and be able to order my car with my options without ever setting foot in a dealership EVER AGAIN. The shiny showroom and annoying sales guys you suffer through are all costs the end up being peanut buttered onto the price you pay.

  21. Re: they serve a purpose on Are Car Dealers a Business Worth Keeping? (vox.com) · · Score: 1

    How dare you ever haggle and deprive your community of its cut.

  22. Re: used car sales on Are Car Dealers a Business Worth Keeping? (vox.com) · · Score: 1

    Service centers don't need to sell cars to be able to fix them. Basically you might need to beef up certification of third party repair shops, very little else is needed.

  23. Re:That explains it on Paternal Stress Is Passed To Offspring (arstechnica.com) · · Score: 1

    So maybe we need to stop putting people into tiny fabric boxes and subjecting them to annual "performance review" torture processes. As a recent dad I am struck how much rearing kids in a good environment is a low priority in this and many other countries.

  24. Re:Might be a bigger problem on In Battle With Ad Blockers, Ad Industry Fesses Up To Alienating Users (iab.com) · · Score: 1

    The old saying for marketing is that I know I am wasting half my ad dollars, I just don't know which half.

  25. Re:Drama or reality ... on Windows 10 Upgrades Are Being Forced On Some Users (arstechnica.com) · · Score: 2

    Reality. Just ran intothis. It lets me select updates, but the install is replaced with a "Download Windows 10" button, and it keeps checking the box for windows 10 for installation no matter how many times I uncheck it. Awful behavior.