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User: AmiMoJo

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Comments · 35,594

  1. Re:Yeah, whinning is more likely to work on Tech Group Urges US To Recruit Allies To Take on China, Not Tariffs (venturebeat.com) · · Score: 1

    China is building a lot of infrastructure in Africa. It's working very well for them.

  2. Re:Yeah, whinning is more likely to work on Tech Group Urges US To Recruit Allies To Take on China, Not Tariffs (venturebeat.com) · · Score: 0

    Thing is, China expected this to happen one day and planned according. It made sure that the US couldn't screw China without screwing itself. It made sure it was mutually assured destruction, while at the same time pushing into other markets that the US is ignoring (like Africa) or pissing off (like Europe).

  3. Does Facebook have any deals with the NSA that allows them to mine their user data . . . ?

    Does the NSA even need a deal, or do they just take that data? The Snowden leaks suggest they just took it.

  4. Re:Um, duh. on Ask Slashdot: How Do You Stream/Capture Video? · · Score: 2

    The questioner seems to understand that, they are asking what tools can be used to edit the video down rather than just throwing the raw 4k60 stream up there.

    For a start they could re-encode it in H.265 to make it about 1/4 the original size. But that has the down side that it probably takes as long to encode as it would to upload anyway. So a better option is to drop down to 1080p60 or 720p60. Depending on the game maybe go to 30 fps as well.

    Downmixing sound to stereo might help a bit too.

    For editing Shotcut and OpenShot are both free and decent.

  5. Re:Quote on Zuckerberg Gets a Crash Course in Charm. Will Congress Care? (bgr.com) · · Score: 3, Insightful

    What do you call a person who learns to interact socially but doesn't feel the emotions and empathy that drive normal people to be sociable? The ones who have to study social interaction like they study coding, sometimes with people to teach them, rather than intuiting it...

  6. Re:A lie repeated 1000 times becomes truth on Cambridge Analytica Whistleblower Says Data From 87 Million Users Could Be Stored In Russia (cnn.com) · · Score: 1

    The crime is breaking US election rules. Multiple people have already admitted to doing that, under oath.

  7. Re:People vote for it. on Tim Cook Says Ads That Follow You Online Are 'Creepy' (cnet.com) · · Score: 1

    Every time you allow your computer to load and run a tracking javascript from some web site... that's what you vote for.

    Every time you load a "web bug"... that's what you vote for.

    Most people don't even know those things exist, let along that they are being loaded or how to stop them loading. I don't think that could be taken as a vote in favour of creepy advertising.

    Same with people not having full control over their devices. They just don't understand or see it as a good thing.

    Educational efforts have failed. The only option left is to block by default. Mozilla has the right idea but needs to go further; remove privacy invading APIs and block web bugs, third party cookies and scripts, auto-play anything, WebRTC and all the rest by default.

  8. You can think of a thousand ways for any safety technology to fail, but that doesn't mean they are worthless. A car airbag might fail to go off, or go off at random, but overall they are a huge net benefit.

    Some of your fears are unfounded, e.g. the ultrasonic transducer or microphone getting fouled up. Both of those things will be inside the wristband/floating detector and work through the waterproof housing. I'd be more concerned about the radio link failing, but again people rely on baby monitors all the time and it's pretty simple to have an alarm if the radio link goes down for a few seconds.

  9. Re:Yeah - genius who's NEVER worked with kids... on Engineer Develops Sonar Alarm System To Monitor Kids In the Pool (newatlas.com) · · Score: 1

    By that logic toddlers would be constantly setting off fire alarms, throwing your phone in the toilet, knocking the TV over, microwaving spoons...

    What your example fails to mention is that shortly after the big excitement, there is the big sulk on the naughty step. If you kid is constantly doing stuff like that then you have bigger problems anyway.

  10. Re:What if they aren't wearing the wristband? on Engineer Develops Sonar Alarm System To Monitor Kids In the Pool (newatlas.com) · · Score: 1

    I guess it's only for protecting your own kids.

    They mention other alarms that sense waves. Okay, so this thing is designed for the case where you want some people to be using the pool, but not the kids. In that case, it's hard to see how else it could work. If you require authorised users to wear the bands then you need some way of detecting unauthorised users reliably, which is non trivial to say the least.

    This sounds like a good compromise. Use whatever protection you normal do when the pool is not in use (fence, wave detector etc.) and bring this thing out for parties and the pool will be an open area.

  11. Re:You fucked yourselves on Electronics Surplus Shop 'WeirdStuff Warehouse' Is Closing (fastcompany.com) · · Score: 1

    Online is part of it, but retail really needs to do better at providing a compelling reason to actually visit them.

    Shops around here often don't have what I want. When I do find something it often feels like I bought what they had, not what I really wanted. I get ripped off on parking fees, there are never enough chargers and the spaces are too small. Most towns are just clones of each other too, with no character or anything to hold much interest.

    Compare to online. Delivery is mostly offset by savings on parking and fuel anyway, the range is better and you can research stuff much more easily to find out if it is a POS before you buy. There are down sides, but shops make the rest of the experience so poor that they aren't enough to tempt people into the store or to pay a little more.

  12. Re:sex is bad on FBI Seizes Backpage.com, a Site Criticized For Sex-Related Ads (reuters.com) · · Score: 1

    Of course there are some asshat feminists. But do they have any real power? Could they actually have got the FBI to take down backpage.com? Are the millions of women who marched around the world all feminazis?

    It's just a stupid conspiracy theory, they kind of shit Mashiki eats for breakfast. If feminism was that powerful the world would look very different.

  13. Re:So, Tim, how do they "follow" you? on Tim Cook Says Ads That Follow You Online Are 'Creepy' (cnet.com) · · Score: 2

    It's creepy that advertisers ask me to accept cookies so they can track me around the web. If someone walked up to you in the street and asked you to carry a GPS tracker so they could better target their advertising at you, would you do it?

    Third party cookies should be blocked by default in all browsers. There are no non-abusive use cases that can't be replaced by first party cookies.

  14. Re:Back Razor on Tim Cook Says Ads That Follow You Online Are 'Creepy' (cnet.com) · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I always find it strange when people talk about ads as if I'm supposed to know about them. Happens a lot with TV ads, I guess because people are less willing to admit they have seen online ads because they understand they are targeted at them rather than broadcast to everyone.

    You should block ads online. Not blocking ads is like not running an unpatched XP system with anti-virus back in the early 2000s. Even if you don't get some nasty infection, you are being farmed like an animal. Have some self respect, block ads and don't eat food out of a KFC bucket.

  15. Re:Nothing to see here... on Is Microsoft Trying To Make Windows 10 Mail Worse? (venturebeat.com) · · Score: 2

    But what did you do for shared calendaring etc? Because email is one thing, but Exchange does a lot more than that and presumably you provided equivalent services.

  16. Re:They all hate email on Is Microsoft Trying To Make Windows 10 Mail Worse? (venturebeat.com) · · Score: 4, Insightful

    That might make sense if they had a competitor to email, but they don't. In fact Microsoft profits heavily from email, through Exchange servers, Exchange cloud services, Outlook and so on. It is deeply integrated into their platform, hooked in to calendaring, meeting organization and collaboration tools.

    Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence. Just look at Windows 8 and how long it took them to get that UI semi-usable, and even now it's a poor rip-off of much better ones. It's actually a miracle that Windows Mail was ever usable at all, and it was only a matter of time before some UX and .NET experts screwed it up.

  17. Posting hard core pornography was the last straw after numerous ToS violations.

  18. Re: Comp Sci on Ask Slashdot: Should Coding Exams Be Given on Paper? · · Score: 1

    But then you get people complaining that it's not a real disability, that I should just deal with it, that it gives me an unfair advantage etc.

    It's also problematic for job interviews. In many places it's illegal to even ask if the candidate has a disability, and most people with them don't like to reveal that information until after an offer has been put in.

  19. Re: Comp Sci on Ask Slashdot: Should Coding Exams Be Given on Paper? · · Score: 1

    Writing by hand is also problematic for people with certain issues/disabilities. I have arthritis in my hands, so writing much gets painful and degrades my cognitive abilities.

  20. Re:Comp Sci on Ask Slashdot: Should Coding Exams Be Given on Paper? · · Score: 1

    Seems more like a communication skills test. Certain conditions that affect communication skills but not reasoning or understanding of CS would have a massive effect on this test.

    It is also heavily dependent on the ability of the partner.

  21. There are literal Nazis on Twitter, and they don't get banned because they avoid breaking the rules.

    There is zero credible evidence of political bias from Twitter in relation to account bans.

  22. Re:Useful??? on Twitter Bans 270,000 Accounts For 'Promoting Terrorism' (theguardian.com) · · Score: 1

    In other words they were bots used to increase the follower count of other accounts, and amplify them with likes.

  23. Re:Corfield never heard of "Pleading the Alternati on Google Seeks To Limit 'Right To Be Forgotten' By Claiming It's Journalistic (cjr.org) · · Score: 1

    This is Europe.

  24. Mythbusters did an episode where they tested the "toilet aerosol" theory. Okay, it's Mythbusters, not exactly rigorous science, but they found zero evidence for it.

  25. Re:sex is bad on FBI Seizes Backpage.com, a Site Criticized For Sex-Related Ads (reuters.com) · · Score: 0

    Trump is in the Whitehouse, women are protesting in the streets, the government is explicitly anti-feminist...

    Conservatives are trying to make you register to see porn, regulate people's bathroom usage...

    And somehow it's still feminism's fault.