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  1. Yeah, the 1980s finished, people made Revenge of the Nerds films and stuff, and then the internet happened.

    Now it's ok if you're into chess, anime, comic books, computer games, even computers! Guess what, even girls (shock, horror!) are.

    But Grandpa, you just reminisce about your glory days of punching a kid in 1985 and thinking you were tough. You're not the first to peak in high school.

  2. To be fair, he's also the #1 ranked standard chess player in the world.

    The only real difference is that where Fabiano is #2 in the world in standard, he's #10 in speed. Still, it's not like he's bad.

  3. Re:Power requirements on Corporate America's Blockchain and Bitcoin Fever is Over (axios.com) · · Score: 1

    Blockchain does not particularly need a lot of power.

    However, some of the alt-coins that are implemented using the blockchain, such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, rely on an ever increasing amount of CPU cycles (effectively) to "mine" a new coin. If they didn't, all the coins would just get mined and that'd be that (which can be fine too). This uses lots of power.

    There are lots of other blockchain techs and other alt-coins that just have all coins essentially pre-mined. The biggest of these in probably Ripple / XRP.

    Another alternative is someone comes up with some other proof-of-work scheme that involves some other type of work, or that takes type but isn't particularly electricity dependent. I don't know what such tech would look like though, and it may not exist :)

  4. Good on them, glad enough at the outcome.

    BUT, isn't this a collective boycott? Which is illegal in many many jurisdictions? You can strike as a worker, with rules and procedures for doing so, but you do the same as a group of businesses, and in many places it is illegal.

  5. Re:Seriously? on Do You Know Cobol? If So, There Might Be a Job for You. (wsj.com) · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Exactly this.

    COBOL isn't hard. Whatever, it's a language.

    But if you want to take smart people away from their shiny modern languages and dev stacks, and ask them to put up with bureaucracy, then you need to pay them at least commensurate salaries to what they'd get elsewhere (if not MORE).

    These are really stories about banks not wanting to pay talented devs to put up with their BS.

  6. Re:Fringe benefits on Drone Startup Airware Is Shutting Down After Raising $118 Million (techcrunch.com) · · Score: 1

    No, they will owe that money to the employees. In most jurisdictions, if a company can't pay their debts as and when they fall due, then they are out of money.

    In some places, the Director's are personally liable if they let a company continue to trade past that point (which is bad, because a company is explicitly about limiting the liability).

  7. Re:More shipped because of Walmart on Google Home Outships Amazon Echo for Second Quarter in Row · · Score: 1

    So? He's still correct.

    This isn't because of Walmart.

  8. Australia on China Negotiating For Cheaper Cancer Drugs (reuters.com) · · Score: 5, Informative

    This is how Australia does it.

    The PBS - Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme - provides heavily subsidised prescription meds to any with a script from a Doctor (and super cheap for certain categories like Age Pensioners, disabled etc).

    The catch is, pharmaceutical companies have to try and get their drugs on the PBS, and to do that they have to offer up evidence that their drug is better than those currently on the PBS, and quantify the extra benefit. For some drugs (like psychiatric meds), just show ANY benefit over placebo is a huge hurdle. Then quantifying the benefit to tax payers to justify what gets paid per pill.

    Sometimes it limits the quick adoption of new drugs (although there are other paths for experimental treatments), but the main thing it provides is a science based monopoly buyer. The drug companies don't get to artificially court demand, and extract super high margins without showing they're worth it.

    Oh, and it is illegal to advertise prescription meds in Australia. None of these ads full of older gents "Talk to your Doctor today about Cialis."

    The system is very effective.

  9. Good. on Amazon's Alexa is Getting Clobbered (axios.com) · · Score: 2

    When I got my two Alexa Echo's it was primarily to easily play my own mp3 collection in some rooms, but it has a few other extra features, like radio stations etc that were good.

    Fast forward to today, Amazon have announced that I will no longer be able to play my own collection through Alexa, and they'll cut me off next year.

    I'm pissed at them, and hope the new generation of devices that give user choice, rather than lock-in to a subscription model, win.

    I'll be perfectly happy if the innovators are Chinese. I'd rather reward their skill than their place of founding.

  10. Spoken French diverging from written on France Says 'Au Revoir' to the Word 'Smartphone' (smithsonianmag.com) · · Score: 1

    The Academie is one of the reasons that written French is diverging from spoken French.

    I'm not sure that is a good thing either..

    Schools also largely have to stick to a fairly conservative language curriculum.

    Learning French is a many step process, with written forms that are essentially never spoken, and spoken forms that may be written, but largely aren't.

    Yet for all this, I'm not sure what they hold on to by doing it? The French are French. They should have no fear of ever not being.

  11. Re: forfeited stuff

    Where in Europe is this the case?

    It certainly doesn't appear to be EU regulations. I know of lots of regulatory "raids" (you'd be amazed at the breadth of reasons that companies get raided, often not hanging or even moral-outrage stuff) and this isn't the general case.

  12. Re:Great Job on Amazon Music Ending Cloud MP3 Storage, Streaming Option (billboard.com) · · Score: 3, Insightful

    This is how I feel.. Have just bought two echos, uploaded 30G of mp3s to Amazon, and now this?

    Damn.

    If nothing else, I have a heap of albums I can't get even with a subscription, that I now just can't play.

    90 day return on the echo though I think, although then I've blown the money on the 1yr storage with Amazon anyway.. fuckers.

  13. Their biggest earner is I assume as creator of the Unreal Engine- they must be making a mint off pubg.

    --Q

  14. Re:Are lawyers really the way to handle this? on Free Game Company Sues 14-Year-Old Over 'Cheats' Video -- Claiming DMCA Violation (bbc.co.uk) · · Score: 1

    powerpro certainly looks like it hooks other programs.

    Either way, this won't be an Epic Games thing as much as a Battleye thing (the anti cheat used by fortnite).

  15. Volatile things are volatile? on America's Five Biggest Tech Stocks Lost $97 Billion Friday (yahoo.com) · · Score: 1

    Wait? What?

    Google is down to levels not scene since May?!

    --Q

  16. Re:Is this free movement or not? on UK Tech Visas Quadruple After Applications Soar (telegraph.co.uk) · · Score: 1

    This visa is only meant for founders and key employees of start up businesses.

    This just isn't true.

    They're seeking almost all high-tech style engineering, engineering management & product management skills. Do you have good cloud experience? Good sysadmin experience? Good product management experience? Written some device drivers? Written serious fuckin' code? Done random marketing fluff? .. along with many other skills .. ie, have you worked in a high tech environment of late? If so, then you probably tick a lot of the boxes.

    Source: I have one of these visas.

    --Q

  17. Re:Ninety percent of coding is... on The Working Dead: Which IT Jobs Are Bound For Extinction? (infoworld.com) · · Score: 1

    This isn't a real issue at all, and does come up in the real world. The answer is just to use a non-Turing complete language.

  18. Hopper? No. She's the grandmother of COBOL on Should Banks Let Ancient Programming Language COBOL Die? (thenextweb.com) · · Score: 3, Informative

    Grace Hopper did not invent COBOL. Follow your own links - there is a whole list of who designed it, and none of them are Grace Hopper. She did lay lots of the foundations they worked upon of course.

    To the question of should they replace it? About the same time as any other language should be replaced - it is a very silly question...

  19. In what way is the Australian company Atlassian a Silicon Valley startup?

    Sure, it has an office in San Fran, but really .... (yes, yes, I know it listed on the NASDAQ)

    Maybe, "Billionaire tech founder Mikey Cannon-Brookes" or whatever. No need to co-opt everything ;)

    --Q

  20. Yes, apologies, typo.

    2000 MB/s.

    ie, super fast, by any drive defintion..

    --Q

  21. I've just bought an NVMe m.2 drive for my new desktop, I was blown away by how fast it is.

    It's tiny and super fast - just what a laptop wants too. Looks like a memory stick (well, it is a memory stick!).

    Clocks over 2000 Mb/s easily (once I changed from default drivers).

    I assume their heat/power profile is better too?

    --Q

  22. In London (and lots of the UK I believe), most of my packages are sent by Amazon Logistics.

    All Prime deliveries that aren't bulky seem to come through them. Large items still use normal courier firms, or if it isn't an Amazon sold item.

    About half the time I'd get a better experience with Royal Mail..

    Amazon Logistics is run like Uber - random drivers sign up, go fill their car with packages, and then drop them off on the day. You get no surety as to the time (7am-10pm is the helpful window they give you). Mine have mostly come 5-7pm. The courier firms will often have an app that will give me notifications, or sms me a one hour delivery window, which is a much much better experience.

    Luckily there is an Amazon Parcel Point box just next to me, so I've been able to switch most things that would come via Amazon Logistics to there.

    With all that said, this is the Amazon/Bezos model. Launch it fast, get it out there, see if it can work in a city or two. Then they scale at unbelievable speed, while continuing to iterate on the product, improving it slowly but surely, or just killing it early and walking away. Bezos has big picture, long term planning, for most everything he does.

    I'm always discovering new Amazon services, AmazonFresh (which is launching meal kits like everyone else now), Prime Now (now also delivering from restaurants), Amazon Pantry, Amazon Tickets (West End or Broadway show tickets - only just discovered this the other day!), etc.

    --Q

  23. No stories of the drivers asked to go to Chelsea on Uber Accused of Cashing In On Bomb Explosion By Jacking Rates (thesun.co.uk) · · Score: 1

    Demand = Supply.

    It's magic, as long as you have some way to keep it balanced.

    Stupid headline driven sensationalist journalism.

    --Q

  24. Re:Like is done all over the world already? on Nevada Startup Stores Energy With Trains (fortune.com) · · Score: 1

    Ah.

    Reading the articles.

    You must be new here.

    --Q

  25. Like is done all over the world already? on Nevada Startup Stores Energy With Trains (fortune.com) · · Score: 1

    Essentially what is already done already.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

    --Q