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User: Northdot

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Comments · 58

  1. Maybe, just maybe, the gender disparity in STEM is not because of lack of ability, but because of lack of interest?

    Let's be honest - men as a group are more interested in things, and women are more interested in people. As a group. Obviously there are overlaps on both sides of the bell curves.

    This is not something that requires "fixing". It just is what it is.

  2. Bogus Conclusions on Low-Carb Diets Could Shorten Life, Study Suggests (bbc.com) · · Score: 2

    The idea that you can extend the results of this study to the current definitions of "low carb" eating is bogus.

    In this study "low carb" was 38% of calories from carbs.. way higher than anything you would need to approach nutritional ketosis (the target of current low-carb eating). In fact the group identified as "low carb" were basically "shitty lifestyle", and in the words of the study: "were more likely to be young, male, a self-reported race other than black, college graduates, have high body-mass index, exercise less during leisure time, have high household income, smoke cigarettes, and have diabetes."

    So in fact the study showed something that is common sense.. people who don't care about their health fair worse than people who do.

  3. Re:Floppy drives and 25 pin parallel ports on Apple Stops Selling 2015 MacBook Pro With Old-Style Keyboard, Legacy Ports (arstechnica.com) · · Score: 2

    Are you from the future where all your daily-usage peripherals have USB-C connectors?

  4. It's just Perception on Ask Slashdot: Why Do Popular Websites Add New Features So Sparingly? · · Score: 1

    Since a lot of desktop software is sold via a license, they need to make a big deal out of the "shiny new version" in order to get your upgrade business.

    For websites, advertising is the model so sites just quietly add features all the time to keep current - and since it is continuous they don't make a big deal of it.

  5. Re:Nonsense on Increasing Similarity of Billboard Songs · · Score: 1

    Chord progressions do not tell the whole story. Sonically and stylistically, pop music is now more homogeneous than ever. Arrangements, mix, instrumentation, even sound-alike synth patches replicated endlessly. If you took the vocals off of many recent hit records, you could barely tell songs apart. Such a far cry from say, the 60s and 70s. The Beatles, The Stones, Chicago, Jethro Tull, Alice Cooper, The Jacksons, Abba, Fleetwood Mac, and on and on, they all had their own sound. Now there is one sound.

    Pop music has become assembly lined, with "top-liners" adding their unoriginal/derivative melodies to beat tracks produced on laptops, copied by other producers creating tracks on laptops. It's all ear candy, no substance or originality - at least not on mainstream radio/media.

  6. Re:Only $23.50? on Most GDPR Emails Unnecessary and Some Illegal, Say Experts (theguardian.com) · · Score: 2

    $23.50 seems like a pretty insignificant penalty.

    I had previously read that the fines were "crippling".

    Did someone miss a zero (or several)?

    I think they missed the "M". The potential penalties are big enough to put all but the biggest players out of business.

    We're simply going to block all of the EU, because the consequences for even an inadvertent misstep could be catastrophic.

  7. Doesn't entirely compute. on Facebook Reaches Its Natural Conclusion As A Dating App (buzzfeed.com) · · Score: 1

    Facebook's revenue is based on advertising, and they want to eliminate an entire highly active sector of advertising on their site? (dating apps)

    It's a bit mystifying. Anyone shed some light?

  8. Re:How about if the US gives up weapons too? on North Korea's Leader Kim Jong-un Says He'll Give Up Weapons if US Promises Not to Invade (nytimes.com) · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Do you know anything about WWII?

    With Japan the choice was not "Use Nukes" vs. "Everyone lives in Peace". The alternative was a landed invasion of Japan, with an expected body count far in excess of anything the nukes did. The nukes gave the Japanese leadership a face-saving reason for surrender, saving many lives. Claiming that the U.S. leadership using nukes was "insane" in the context of the Pacific war is ridiculous.

  9. Google created this problem on Chrome 66 Arrives With Autoplaying Content Blocked By Default (venturebeat.com) · · Score: 1

    Google will elevate sites in search results if there is an associated video on the page. Once people twigged onto this, every site out there (especially news sites) started putting tangentially related videos at the top of their pages. These videos almost never match the actual content of the page in question. It's a big problem, but if you want your site to rank in Google, you have to play along (so to speak).

    So now everyone is going to cheer Google for making the web more friendly via Chrome...??

  10. Re: Next - janitorial staffing updates on Tesla Temporarily Stops Model 3 Production Line (theverge.com) · · Score: 0

    At my local Starbucks, there were often 3 retirement-age white dudes who seemed to always be parked in the comfiest chairs, without purchasing anything. They seemed to be just using the place as their personal social club. I remember thinking that if I owned that business, I might be a bit ticked off. It wasn't a big place, and there wasn't a whole lot of seating.

    So when I read about the non-customers waiting in the Phil. Starbucks being asked to leave, it didn't strike me as 100% crazy. So hey, maybe it was about racism, and maybe it wasn't. We simply don't know the entire circumstance, or what was in the manager's mind when he wanted them to leave.

  11. Re:pretentious crap on The 50th Anniversary of Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey" · · Score: 1

    Made a standard internet-review template for you, to simplify your life:

    _____ was pretentious crap, made as an excuse to have _____ , thus a harbinger of all the crap _____ of today. The only good thing about _____ was the _____ . Other than that was unmitigated garbage. Better to celbrate the 50th anniversary of Joe Schmoe.

  12. When you create a facebook app, if you want to access user information such as date of birth or current location, you need to jump through hoops and even upload a video demonstrating how you will use the data.

    However, you automatically get access to the person's friends list, with no specific authorization required from Facebook. This is where much of the abuse is really taking place, and they need to change it.

  13. Couldn't agree more.

    I also switched to DDG on my phone due to dislike of the AMP UI, since there is no way to tell google not to serve you AMP pages.

  14. We should be pretty damn worried about what Ballmer is going to do next!

    With Microsoft's monopoly on all digital platforms, God knows they could crush Linux if they wanted to. /sarcasm

  15. Re:You love to be hated on Windows Phone 8.1 Users Are Having Trouble Downloading Apps From the Store (neowin.net) · · Score: 1

    Your comment from 1996, when Microsoft ruled the world, is interesting.

    But these days Google, Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft are all abusive and pushing things as far as they possibly can in search of profit.

  16. Definition of Consciousness on Do Particles Have Consciousness? (qz.com) · · Score: 2

    If you expand the definition of Consciousness to absurd lengths (anything that interacts with anything else), then any conclusions you draw will be meaningless.

  17. The Bright "professional" critics were probably thinking:

    "Finally a movie that if I trash talk it to boost my critic-cred, it won't endanger my invites to movie premiers and pre-screenings from the big studios"

  18. Geepers on Bitcoin Plunges Below $12,000 To Six-Week Low Over Crackdown Fears (cnbc.com) · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Coinbase shows it's at $10K (as of 15:30 MST on Tuesday). Down 28 percent in one day.

    Hope all you speculators have iron nerves!

  19. When did Luke get beaten up by Ray? What movie were you watching?

    I believe it was right after Luke interrupted the finger sex scene. He walks away, she cracks him on the head with her staff, they tussle and she gets the best of him finally threatening him with the light saber. She beat up fricking Luke Skywalker. Because female.

  20. Trump's methodology on Justin Trudeau Is 'Very Concerned' With FCC's Plan to Roll Back Net Neutrality (vice.com) · · Score: -1, Flamebait

    If Obama had passed a law outlawing child sex slaves, Trump would repeal it "because Obama".

  21. Re:There's crap worth watching on TV? on Ads May Soon Stalk You on TV Like They Do on Your Facebook Feed (bloomberg.com) · · Score: 1

    Unfortunately we're still a captive audience when it comes to live events such as sports, the Oscars, etc. And broadcasters are already on the verge of driving people away with the amount of advertising that is crammed into every spare moment (looking at you, NFL).

  22. Re:Stupid on IBM's Quest To Design The 'New Helvetica' (fastcodesign.com) · · Score: 1

    Well.... It takes many years, but popular fonts eventually do look dated. Look at any movie credits or posters from the 1970s.

    Or if you've ever acquired a large set of "free fonts".. majority of them will typically look very dated.

  23. Re:Nope, bad idea. on Chrome Will Whack Website Bait-and-Switch Tactics (cnet.com) · · Score: 1

    It sounds to me more like chrome will be blocking redirects that occur via javascript (ie. the "3rd party content" they talk about). So this shouldn't affect the HTTP header redirects that are produced by the originating server (which is how most exit link redirects are implemented).

  24. Re: Umm I live in the frozen north. on Apple To Ditch Touch ID Altogether For All of Next Year's iPhones (macrumors.com) · · Score: 2, Interesting

    It's a hell of a lot easier to pull off a glove for touch-id than to remove scarves/ski-goggles/motorcycle helmet/etc. for face recognition. And you probably have to pull off a glove anyway, to punch in your pin code.

    It's a step backward in functionality/simplicity for certain use cases. Same as the missing headphone jack.

    Apple is probably just reading the center of the bell curve for what drives people to purchase their products, and form seems to rate higher than function for most of their base. Apple has some great products, but their current focus on removing functionality/ports/etc.in the pursuit of fashion is pretty off-putting.

  25. Re:Idea! on PornHub Uses Computer Vision To ID Actors, Acts In Its Videos (techcrunch.com) · · Score: 5, Funny

    Scarily, once they have their database, that is completely possible if you're talking a facial match. Facial. hehe