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  1. Re:How about criminal charges ... on Once Again, Baltimore Police Arrest a Person For Recording Them · · Score: 2

    I wonder about this, but I also wonder what the secondary of effects of harsh punishments would be. What happens if the police end up being just deliberately ineffective?

    It's not like they don't have myriad ways to be ineffective that are basically impossible to control or punish -- evidence lost, conclusions not reached, investigations short-shrifted.

    Maybe some or all of these happen now, but could they get worse and what would the larger effect be?

  2. What's state of the art in UI scaling? on LG To Show Off New 55-Inch 8K Display at CES · · Score: 1

    It doesn't seem to be in Windows 8.1 from my experience on a Surface Pro 2 -- it's a nice display and very high resolution, but it's scaling options leave a lot to be desired.

    I can only imagine the same phenomenon would be true on super high resolution screens, although a lot of people seem to like 4k monitors, but it's hard to know what these would be like in day-day usage.

    Incredible pixel density is nice, but it seems like (IMHO, anyway) that UIs and applications need to have a lot more flexibility about how they work with very high resolution displays.

  3. Re:Watson is a scientist on James Watson's Nobel Prize Medal Will Be Returned To Him · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The pope is invited to parliaments and international diplomacy as if he was somehow especially smart or important.

    The pope is treated as having political importance not because of the efficacy of his theology but because he is the spiritual leader of 1+ billion Catholics, a large portion of which actually believe in the doctrine of papal infallibility.

  4. Re:Bennett discovers moderation on An Algorithm To Prevent Twitter Hashtag Degeneration · · Score: 4, Informative

    I think users have been clamoring for years for a way to moderate stories but I'm pretty sure CmdrTaco and the other original founder/editors never wanted it implemented out of sheer ego to prevent their genius story ideas from being moderated into oblivion.

  5. Re:Opt-Out Strategy on Feds Plan For 35 Agencies To Collect, Share, Use Health Records of Americans · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I'm curious how data sharing works in those countries with nationalized health systems. I'd wager there's at least as much information sharing there as anywhere else.

  6. Re:Shakedown on Civil Rights Groups Divided On Net Neutrality · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The urban poor can't afford Internet? Every time I drive through "poor" urban areas, I'm always amazed at the forest of DISH/DirecTV dishes on apartments. Half the time I wonder if its not an NSA branch office or occupied by a NASA tracking station.

    AFAIK most cities who signed cable franchise agreements required the entire city to be wired. While I'm sure more affluent areas were wired first, I seriously doubt my own city (Minneapolis) isn't universally wired 30 years later.

    And 80% of the population is urban, and I would wager that number is slightly higher for African Americans, meaning that most of them live in areas with accessible broadband.

  7. Re:Why not fish for lamprey? on How One Man Changed the Ecology of the Great Lakes With Salmon · · Score: 1

    I'm not sure they're that closely related to eels. I've had eel in a Chinese restaurant and I didn't find it as good as squid and octopus.

  8. Re:Why not fish for lamprey? on How One Man Changed the Ecology of the Great Lakes With Salmon · · Score: 1

    The article I read say they approximated squid, if less chewy. IMHO squid and octopus don't really have a strong flavor -- they really just represent whatever they are cooked in (the Greeks seem to have a flair for them, oil and herbal seasoning).

    In fact, I think a lot of people could be served tripe if you cooked it like squid and never know the difference.

  9. Re:Old LiIon batteries, what could possibly go wro on Using Discarded Laptop Batteries To Power Lights · · Score: 1

    One of the great ironies of our modern era is the simultaneous effort to reduce technology consuming westerners to the level of subsistence farmers in the name of ecology and to turn subsistence farmers into technology consuming westerners in the name of development.

  10. Re:triggering below percentage is dumb on Windows 10 Adds Battery Saver Feature · · Score: 1

    I suspect that much of the crud in a gas tank mostly remains in suspension as the car is driven. The more fuel in the tank and the more it is driven, the greater the dispersion. It can settle out when stopping and a low fuel level can increase the concentration.

  11. Why not fish for lamprey? on How One Man Changed the Ecology of the Great Lakes With Salmon · · Score: 1

    They are a delicacy in France and could probably be used as dog food or a protein enhancer for other food stocks.

  12. So are they remanufacturing them? on Using Discarded Laptop Batteries To Power Lights · · Score: 1

    Are they basically just remanufacturing the recovered cells into some kind of standardized battery pack with a standardized charging and usage interfaces?

    I'm curious why this isn't done now if there's value in the cells vs. a more material-based recycling that uses them as input into creating new cells. I'd wager the argument is basically economic -- the cost of some other kind of battery input (new alkaline cells or "good" Li cells or whatever) is cheaper/better than these kinds of cells.

  13. Re:Old LiIon batteries, what could possibly go wro on Using Discarded Laptop Batteries To Power Lights · · Score: 1

    The article mentioned that this was meant for places off the grid, so I'd assume they're using something like solar to charge the cells.

    If that's the case, then there's nothing really wasted, since the sun will shine anyway.

  14. TNR has been fading for a long time on Facebook Founder Presents Vision For The New Republic, Many Resign In Protest · · Score: 1

    Back in the 1980s it occupied a more unique space, offering what seemed to be much more of true centrist position, equally critical of the left and the right. At some point it seemed to slide from that position into a more left wing position and losing the intelligence that the center gave it.

    But it's not alone, the National Review has crapped out, too, becoming the print edition of Fox News with a little sophomore-level pseudo intellectualisn sprinkled on top after the death of Buckley.

  15. Re:Overtime system provides the wrong incentives on Should IT Professionals Be Exempt From Overtime Regulations? · · Score: 1

    citation please. I'd be interested in that.

    The reduction in hours is exactly what France did several years ago in an attempt to decrease unemployment and it didn't work. The comment about reductions in hours not increasing unemployment was related to the French experience.

    I still think the cost factor for hiring more employees vs. paying overtime is still cheaper for overtime. I think there are a lot aspects in finding and training employees that have second order effects (like, draining a manager's time from management tasks) which have costs associated with them that are hard to measure.

    It may work in some simple labor environments and in some specific kinds of firms have a labor structure built around temporary and seasonal labor but it's much harder in white collar environment like IT.

    And when it's done, it's very expensive. I work for an IT consultancy -- we're far from "high end" so it's not unusual that when we are called in for a project it's less about the specialized knowledge involved and more about the on site IT not having the time to do the project. But we often bill $180/hr for 40-50 hour projects -- that's more than double (maybe triple even) the overtime pay the onsite would people get if they just worked "overtime" on the project.

  16. It's less about total hours than when on Should IT Professionals Be Exempt From Overtime Regulations? · · Score: 1

    I work as an IT consultant and it's less about total hours than when those hours are. I would rather have 50 hours in a 5 day week if they are contiguous hours than 40 hours during a work week with only 5 extra hours thrown in at random all hours of the night and weekend.

    It's chaotic scheduling and short, just-enough-to-ruin-my-time-off hours that's more annoying than extra hours.

    And I remember this quote which is apocryphally attributed to Soviet-era workers:

    "They can never pay me less than I can work."

  17. Re:Overtime system provides the wrong incentives on Should IT Professionals Be Exempt From Overtime Regulations? · · Score: 1

    I think economists have debunked the idea that working hours are zero sum and that reducing them (eg, to 35 hours a week from 40) gets you more jobs.

    I would assume it would be much cheaper to pay 1.5x for extra time than to hire more employees. More employees means benefits and additional work resources (desks, phones, computers, office space, supervisory time, etc).

    I think the blue collar OT incentives are mostly about low pay to begin with -- they don't make much money to begin with, so the OT is seen as welcome additional income. With otherwise well-paid white collar workers, there would be less of an incentive but that's highly individual -- I'm sure there are many people with kids in college, people that want a new car, etc would love the extra pay.

  18. Re:Musk's batteries on Why Elon Musk's Batteries Frighten Electric Companies · · Score: 1

    I think you're right, but with nickel-iron batteries space becomes an issue with the capacities and output power you want for a single family household.

    What does 75 kWh of nickel-iron batteries look like and can you draw 10kW peak from them?

  19. Re:It will never pass and not for the reasons on Ron Wyden Introduces Bill To Ban FBI 'Backdoors' In Tech Products · · Score: 2

    If he really gave a rat's ass about it, he wouldn't have waited till he was in a lame duck Senate to propose this.

    Lame duck sessions are the ideal time to get controversial bills passed. Lame ducks can vote on anything they want without giving a shit about constituents, contributions, or their caucus. They can vote their conscience, such as it is, without any concerns of political liability. He might get enough lame duck support to create a groundswell of support plus the public PR necessary to sway returning legislators who were otherwise on the fence or even opposed.

    He's also taking advantage of the (at least as of today, until the next batch of nude celebrities comes out) the current wave of unpopularity with law enforcement generally. "A child will die" is laughable in most cases, but it's possible that right now many people might look at that and say "Yeah, when you choke them or shoot them for writing on the sidewalk with chalk." Sympathy for the police isn't real high right now.

    The primary downsides are the length of the lame duck session and the lame ducks who don't bother showing up for roll calls. The session length can be mitigated by lame duck support that moves the bill forward enough that it can be easily resurrected in the next session without starting all over again.

  20. Re:Most people write far less. on Consumer-Grade SSDs Survive Two Petabytes of Writes · · Score: 1

    What's the math to be applied to LBAs? How big is an LBA? A 512 byte sector?

    My nearly 4 year old Samsung shows just under 2 TB written if I multiply the SMART-provided Total LBAs written against a 512 byte block.

  21. Re:triggering below percentage is dumb on Windows 10 Adds Battery Saver Feature · · Score: 1

    AFAIK, most cars have a reserve quantity that goes below the gauge's calibrated "empty" level. I'd suppose it's to allow for a few extra miles once you hit E but may just be to motivate you to fill up again before you put all the crud/water/etc that is at the bottom of the tank once you get near empty.

    Maybe batteries should work like this -- have an extra 10-20% of charge beyond the 0% charge level. It could both keep you from going dead and maybe protect the battery from whatever wear occurs at the extreme end of the discharge cycle.

    Of course the downside would be you'd actually have to *have* 10-20% more battery to get 10-20% more battery but since that won't happen we'd get a battery gauge that just shorted us by 20%.

  22. Re:triggering below percentage is dumb on Windows 10 Adds Battery Saver Feature · · Score: 1

    there are multiple battery saver things that trigger saving features when I'm below percentage - but its obviously too late then!!

    Wouldn't it help if you moved the trigger percentage up to some higher value, maybe even as high as 66%? That way you cut the drain before your battery is at some critical level and can use the rest of the battery more sparingly. I agree that at 20% or some other low value it's too late.

    the trigger needs to activate when the RATE OF DRAIN exceeds a particular threshold

    Wouldn't rate of drain need to be combined with battery remaining? At 99% battery, I might not care about high drain levels because I'm so close to a full charge. At 66% it might start to matter.

    I'm also curious how the drain rate is accounted for -- is it just the wattage consumption of battery, or do you filter it by source so that you exclude high wattage components like the screen and backlighting?

  23. Re:Divisions on Interviews: Malcolm Gladwell Answers Your Questions · · Score: 1

    You're really going to argue that after the Hobby Lobby case?

  24. Re:Divisions on Interviews: Malcolm Gladwell Answers Your Questions · · Score: 2

    Why would you think that changing sexual behavior or cultural impact would be leading reasons why someone would oppose abortion? I don't even think most are religiously motivated. For many the issue is that they see it as ending the life of an actual or potential human being.

    Because almost everyone who opposes abortion is almost never in favor of cheap, easy and widely available contraception, sex education that's not abstinence or welfare benefits to support all these seemingly valuable babies that MUST get born. I won't even include the handful who take it a step further and think that sexual assault, the health of the mother or severe birth defects aren't acceptable justifications, either.

    What possible reason can you have for opposing abortion AND contraception AND sex education AND the welfare of these unplanned families if not for creating an existential threat to women for engaging in sexual intercourse?

    The EASIEST way to prevent abortions is contraception and education yet you almost NEVER hear of someone who is stridently opposed to abortion who is also a strident advocate of contraception and sex education. The only person I can think of like this is (ironically) my own mother-in-law who is a 3-day-a-week Catholic yet also advocated for and ran the low-cost contraceptive clinic in her North Dakota town.

  25. Re:Divisions on Interviews: Malcolm Gladwell Answers Your Questions · · Score: 0

    How is abortion still an issue? Who are these people that lay awake at night worrying about whether someone will have an abortion?

    In a historical way, I can see why it might have been agitating in pre-sexual revolution era (since it was probably always less about dead babies than keeping some kind of existential threat of pregnancy as a way to limit women's sexuality), but now? Do they think making abortion illegal now is going to actually change sexual behavior or have any kind of cultural impact?