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User: Chalnoth

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  1. Re:Good! Those laws just misinform consumers anywa on US House Committee Approves Anti-GMO Labeling Law · · Score: 1

    It's because if you give any substance to lab mice and wait long enough, they'll get cancer.

  2. Good! Those laws just misinform consumers anyway. on US House Committee Approves Anti-GMO Labeling Law · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Labeling laws like this convey no real information to the consumer. They just add a word to the food item that many people interpret as frightening, a word that has literally zero impact on the safety or sustainability of the food item. This is definitely a win for people everywhere in the US.

  3. I do have free access to public transportation (my employer covers the cost). I sometimes use this because parking at work is horrendous at the moment. But it takes something like twice as long to get to work, so I often feel it isn't worth it. To really make public transportation worth it, it has to be much more convenient. The subways in NYC are like that (at least in Manhattan). I really wish we had more investment in public transportation around the US, so that we had more public transportation systems that were convenient to use.

  4. Re:The Struggle on Is the Amazon-Led Economic Boom Wrecking Seattle? · · Score: 2

    This is because the refusal to bake the cake was of minimal consequence to the size of the judgment. The size of the judgment was primarily about the harassment that the Kleins subjected the couple to after they lodged a discrimination complaint (the refusal to serve a couple because of their sexual orientation is illegal in Oregon).

    See more here.

    The article includes the following quote from the ruling:

    The Agency's theory of liability is that since Respondents brought the case to the media's attention and kept it there by repeatedly appearing in public to make statements deriding Complainants, it was foreseeable that this attention would negatively impact Complainants, making Respondents liable for any resultant emotional suffering experienced by Complainants. The Agency also argues that Respondents are liable for negative third party social media directed at Complainants because it was a foreseeable consequence of media attention.

  5. Re:They don't already? on SpaceX Rocket Failure Cost NASA $110 Million · · Score: 1

    That's certainly what it sounds like. Requiring insurance should be an absolute no-brainer here. There is no sense in which NASA should be on the hook for launch failures by private companies.

  6. Re:Listen to the old guy on Even the "Idea Person" Should Learn How To Code · · Score: 1

    What does his retirement package have to do with how much others should listen to him?

  7. Re:useless idea person... on Even the "Idea Person" Should Learn How To Code · · Score: 1

    If you're going to be in any supervisory position related to technology, learning to code is pretty darned important. If you don't understand what is or isn't doable with regard to the work you are supervising, then you'll be completely incapable of making good decisions. Sure, everybody doesn't need to learn to code. There's no reason for most writers to learn, or a manager in a supermarket chain, or a lawyer, or one of many other positions. But if you can't be an effective "idea person" with regards to software if you don't understand software.

  8. Re:Very finance specific on Even the "Idea Person" Should Learn How To Code · · Score: 1

    One big contributing factor is the conflation of wealth with virtue. Pervasive in US culture is the idea that the poor are poor because of some moral failing, and the rich are rich because they are "hard working". If you take as axiomatic that income is correlated with virtue, then any action at all to increase income becomes justified.

    If you doubt this, listen to the rhetoric that people use to justify cutting aid to the poor, justifications for not helping homeless people, or the whole "job creator" line you hear from the Republicans.

  9. Re:Been standing for years... on Ask Slashdot: Have You Tried a Standing Desk? · · Score: 2

    I don't know about the OP, but I haven't had my wallet in my back pocket for many years, and switching to a standing desk has significantly improved my back pain. Even just a couple of hours a day helps dramatically.

  10. Re:bit coin doesn't solve the strategic issue. on Greek Financial Crisis Is an Opportunity For Bitcoin · · Score: 1

    Inflation is exactly what Greece needs. But because Greece has a primary surplus, there is no reason for them to do this. Simply defaulting on their existing debt will leave them with a positive yearly balance. So they don't need to print money to pay the bills. Instead, they are free to have monetary policy focus on maintaining stable inflation, which is beneficial to economic growth (printing money to service the debt is comparatively uncontrolled and can lead to runaway inflation which isn't so nice).

  11. Re:Gold will not solve this problem on Greek Financial Crisis Is an Opportunity For Bitcoin · · Score: 2

    Greece has had that massive bank run, to the point of closing banks and imposing capital controls. As the primary problem with exiting the Euro is that it would likely result in a massive bank run, I think they should probably default on their debt exit the Euro. The cost has already been paid. But exiting the Euro will give them the tools to recover.

  12. Re:A case of out of control Liberals on After Protest, France Cracks Down On Uber · · Score: 0

    "Productive?" Productive workers don't have salaries of millions of dollars. And few rich people can move overseas to avoid their tax burden because their money is made within the country (and you can bet your ass that to the extent they are able to shift their tax burden overseas, they already do that). But rich people are leeches on society. They're not productive workers. They just exploit their own privilege and the rule of law to fleece everybody else of their money.

  13. Re:Require licenses for commercial driving or not? on After Protest, France Cracks Down On Uber · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Yes. And there's also the issue that Uber drivers are paid at such low rates that many barely break even after vehicle maintenance is taken into account.

  14. Re:Amen brother! on Ask Slashdot: Are There Any Search Engines Left That Don't Try To Think For Me? · · Score: 1

    Simply changing the shape of the likelihood function used will have zero impact on the ordering of the results, which is what matters here.

  15. Re:Amen brother! on Ask Slashdot: Are There Any Search Engines Left That Don't Try To Think For Me? · · Score: 1

    I suppose I could see variable weights being used between the personal search results and the public search results. But I doubt it would be even remotely common for people to use anything but "on" and "off", as is available today.

  16. Re:One more in a crowded field on Swift: Apple's Biggest Achievement For Coders · · Score: 1

    You can store objects (not pointers) in arrays in C++ just fine (aside from storing objects which include arrays such as strings, it is common for all of the value data to reside in the array). But this is usually an irrelevant implementation detail. 99% of the time it won't make any noticeable difference at all to performance. And when it does make a difference, you can optimize that section of code as needed. This makes no difference whatsoever as to how most algorithms are translated to code.

    And no, C/C++ are almost always going to be faster. In part this is because when you run into a performance bottleneck, the optimization possibilities are much more diverse. In part it's because many of the safety guarantees are enforced at compile time rather than run time. In part it's because C++ developers are rarely going to make use all of the same guarantees in their code, precisely for performance reasons. Unit tests and good programming practices can usually avoid the pitfalls that come with avoiding those checks.

    Of course, you can simply write your performance-critical bits of code in C or C++ within a Swift application, though for other languages SWIG works pretty well for that.

  17. Re:One more in a crowded field on Swift: Apple's Biggest Achievement For Coders · · Score: 1

    An optional is not a pointer. (Nor is it a reference). And that's not simply a matter of names. They are completely different things. Suppose you had an array of 4 optional integers, how do you imagine that is represented in memory?

    The memory representation is largely irrelevant to the coding algorithms. It might be important if you're going to do some low-level optimization, but if you're doing low-level optimization where that sort of thing matters, you shouldn't be working in Go, Swift, or Objective-C.

    Turing machines are equivalent. That doesn't mean language features are the same. They're not. You might solve a given problem in a similar number of lines in lisp, basic, forth and scheme. It doesn't mean the language features that you would use are the same.

    That's why I specified, "similar number of lines and with the same guarantees." The benefits of optional are entirely about the sorts of things that the compiler enforces for you when you use the type. I'm saying that Swift is neither special nor unique here, and that other languages have the same kind of functionality. In C++, you can get the same functionality with boost::optional (which will probably eventually be part of the standard library). With Go, their pointers can act almost exactly like Swift's optionals.

    And if you're going to argue performance, Swift may be better than Objective-C, but it's probably not going to be better than Java or Go, and is certainly much slower than C/C++.

  18. Re:This makes no sense on Ask Slashdot: Are There Any Search Engines Left That Don't Try To Think For Me? · · Score: 1

    Except Google does listen to their users. And sorry to say, but you are in a strong minority. Even among technically proficient people.

    As for other people, it's no longer 1998 and other search engines have made their own changes. Google could not compete with the likes of Bing if it hadn't updated its algorithms.

  19. Re:Amen brother! on Ask Slashdot: Are There Any Search Engines Left That Don't Try To Think For Me? · · Score: 2

    You can do a fair amount of customization at Google's Account Settings page (you can also access this page by clicking on your profile picture and clicking "account" on a google.com page). Of course, this only works while logged-in.

    To customize search results, you should turn on personalized search and look through your search history to delete searches that are probably not going to be relevant in the future. For ads, there's a list of categories that you're automatically assigned to based upon search history and views of pages with Google ads. You can add or remove categories as you choose. Of course, you have to turn on interest-based ads for this to be worthwhile.

  20. Re:Give it some hints ... on Ask Slashdot: Are There Any Search Engines Left That Don't Try To Think For Me? · · Score: 1

    Sounds like you've got personalization turned off. If Google doesn't know what country is relevant, how is it supposed to surface the right country for you? If you've been using VPN servers in different countries, that might also screw things up.

  21. Re:quotation marks on Ask Slashdot: Are There Any Search Engines Left That Don't Try To Think For Me? · · Score: 1

    Which is why Google's separation between the different meanings of the word can be so helpful. Give it enough context to know the meaning that you are using and it will usually do a much better job of finding what you're looking for.

    But I can't replicate it adding or removing words from a phrase as long as I put the phrase in quotes. It always seems to search for the exact phrase, though sometimes with punctuation in between.

  22. Re:This makes no sense on Ask Slashdot: Are There Any Search Engines Left That Don't Try To Think For Me? · · Score: 1

    Why should Google cater to you personally instead of billions of other people in this world? Also, searching by meaning is far more expressive than searching by keyword. You "get off my lawn" types really should learn how to use the updated tools. And I'm not just talking about Google here: every decent search engine either is already or will be going the same route, because this really is the way most people search.

  23. Re:One more in a crowded field on Swift: Apple's Biggest Achievement For Coders · · Score: 1

    Attaching the word "pointer" vs. "optional" doesn't change the behavior one iota. There are only two differences in terms of the programming interface between Swift's optionals and Go's pointers:

    1. Syntax. But all of the same operations are permitted.
    2. How they are passed to functions (by reference or by value).

    I challenge you to find a code snippet using optionals in Swift that does not trivially translate to a similar number of lines in Go with all of the same guarantees, aside from whether or not a function can mutate the passed variable (because that is orthogonal to whether or not the object is optional, and a different issue entirely).

    In languages like C and C++, of course, there are other differences (e.g. pointers are numbers that point to actual memory addresses, and the value is not guaranteed to exist at the destination). This is not anything new. It's just a slightly different syntax (and similar to boost::optional in C++).

  24. Re:Give it some hints ... on Ask Slashdot: Are There Any Search Engines Left That Don't Try To Think For Me? · · Score: 1

    Are you looking for an unlocked phone? Search for that instead. And yes, you're going to get carriers in most any search for purchasing cell phones because carriers sell a lot of cell phones.

  25. Re:quotation marks on Ask Slashdot: Are There Any Search Engines Left That Don't Try To Think For Me? · · Score: 2

    Funny. Searching for "drops words inside them" with quotes took me directly to your comment and nowhere else.

    Adding quotations doesn't change how Google deals with most punctuation (i.e., ignores it). But it does require those words to be in that order in the page.