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User: smelch

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  1. What the fuck are you talking about? Other mergers blocked in 2017: Anthem-Cigna, FanDuel and DraftKings, Aetna-Humana. Why are you calling this the first? Those are also just the ones that came up on the first page of google when I searching for blocked mergers in 2017. Call it bullshit all you want but nobody wants this deal to go through. And it isn't just "sell CNN" it's "Sell Turner Broadcasting or DirecTV".

  2. Re:Please just don't just be SJW propoganda on 'Star Trek: Discovery' Premieres Tonight (ew.com) · · Score: 1

    That is true, and that probably helped a lot. The episode was written by Seth, though.

  3. Re:Please just don't just be SJW propoganda on 'Star Trek: Discovery' Premieres Tonight (ew.com) · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I really enjoyed the latest episode. What I really liked was how smoothly they introduced their hot-button token character. The guy with gender issues didn't come in out of nowhere, he wasn't just placed there. They took the time to develop over the course of three episodes in a sneaky little subplot. They orchestrated a situation that is slightly removed from how gender issues actually manifest in real life, but now they can focus on the issues trans people allegedly have instead of whether or not the character is mentally ill or faking it. Emotional understanding of the problems of these people may allow the viewer to reexamine their beliefs or judgment. It's got a way better chance than anything else I've seen on TV which basically amounts to "I'm trans, deal with it!"

    I mean, don't get me wrong, I hold the belief that gender as defined separately from sex is a fake construct and we will find that it is simply an attempt to stereotype people more specifically instead of not stereotyping at all. It's the new astrology. "I am these things because I am a Libra" is no different from "I am these things because I am third gendered". No, you are an indescribable, complicated personality and mind. Do whatever you want to your body but stop trying to escape from the genitals box society put you in by building a gender box to put yourself in. You don't need to be in any box.

    What irked me was that while they set up this nice character, people roasted the show for not going far enough in to gender politics while they were telling a very genuine story that seemed realistic (from a psychological and emotional perspective in terms of the motives of the characters). I'm sure we'll periodically have that stuff come up related to gender identity now that we have this character, but this past episode wasn't about that. We got a story that can relate to many things in current culture such as deaf parents wanting their child to remain deaf instead of getting an operation to restore hearing, circumcision, and sex assignment surgery for intersex persons. As much as many people decried it for being dumbed-down, they sure didn't seem to understand what was happening.

  4. Re:Did anyone think it would be otherwise? on Artificial Intelligence Has Race, Gender Biases (axios.com) · · Score: 1

    certain factors have some correlation with a certain outcome and it will copy that behavior, and those factors will turn out to correlate very closely with race and nothing else.

    So, you have two statements there.

    1. Certain Factors correlate to a Certain Outcomes
    2. Those Certain Factors only correlate to race

    Then you draw this conclusion. "Racist AI". I don't think you meant to say what you said there. If those certain factors only correlate to race, then "Certain Outcomes" must be race because you've already said "Certain Factors" correlate to "Certain Outcomes". Not only would that imply that the outcome being looked at was specifically Race, but race doesn't correlate to anything outside of the certain factors. If Race did correlate to anything outside of the Certain Factors then the Certain Factors would also correlate to those things. At that point you're talking about taking all the distinguishable traits of a race and using them to determine race and nothing else. That doesn't sound racist. That sounds like biology.

  5. Re:Relevant in an intro programming course on Ask Slashdot: How Do You Read Code? · · Score: 2

    I always go with "less-than less-than" in the same way I say "equals equals" for "==" if I am telling somebody what to type. If I am not telling them what to type exactly (like somebody more experienced) I would use language like "bit shift to the left 2" or "write out str" leaving the stream I am referring to implied, or in the case of HTML where I wanted an element with attributes "open a div [pause until they've written div] class equals my class".

  6. Re: Been saying this for years on 'Google Is As Close To a Natural Monopoly As the Bell System Was In 1956' (promarket.org) · · Score: 1

    Ok, so you've got two major avenues, and several smaller ones. So how is that a monopoly, even restricting your advertising to "Internet" advertising? Keep in mind though that the more specific you get you come close to "Apple is the only company I can get iPhones from".

  7. Re:Been saying this for years on 'Google Is As Close To a Natural Monopoly As the Bell System Was In 1956' (promarket.org) · · Score: 1

    So right there are two choices for advertising, and then there is print media, television, radio, billboard, sign spinning.... lots of choices for advertising.

  8. What the fuck is wrong with you? Is grounding kidnapping? Is spanking assault? Is allowance a violation of minimum wage laws? "I'm the child's parent" is a perfectly fine legal defense. Children don't have the same rights that adults do, that's just the way it is.

  9. Re:... Says the Frenchman on EU Leader Says English Is Losing Importance (politico.eu) · · Score: 1

    What matters the most is how many people will understand you when you speak. More people understand English in the EU than any other language. Mother tongue may give some sort of hint at which direction the most widely understood language may go in, but that's not necessarily true.

  10. Thanks for mansplaining that to me.

  11. Re:Doesn't make sense. on More Than a Hoodie: How We Talk About Developers (medium.com) · · Score: 1

    What you're missing here, is that this person believes developers are special. The tell is throwing in "cab drivers" right before talking about how passionate developers are about building new things. The subconscious bias at play here is "developers are a better type of people because of our virtuous pursuit of making things". Now they want to figure out how that can be showcased without the negative effects of the other side, which is strutting around the office, playing by different rules than everybody else because our skills are in high demand and we can get away with it.

    Of course, in reality both of those things are stereotypes because most developers are just normal people that come in and do their job professionally and don't need to be pampered because they aren't dedicating their life to the pursuit of building the next hot thing and perpetually failing to do so. They've got real lives to reward them and a job that stimulates them. The funny thing is, those people don't care about the stereotype because they don't self identify with the genius developer type. They aren't that arrogant. The people mad at the stereotype are the guys that feel like they're the hero in real life, so they don't like how they're being portrayed because shockingly real life is harder than movies and deep down they're terrified they don't measure up in real life either.

  12. Re:Dress is Statement on More Than a Hoodie: How We Talk About Developers (medium.com) · · Score: 1

    Yeah, but that's the problem. That's just being a dick and a poor sport. They aren't more talented or special than anybody else, their specialty is just in higher demand right now. Seriously, when I look around at the average intelligence of the development team versus the legal team or other types of analysts, (all of which dress nicer than development) it feels about the same to me. One day, that won't be true anymore and everybody will remember that you're kind of unreliable, take as many liberties as you can get away with, and need special care and feeding or you get unhappy. Worse, you may not be able to make the adjustment to normal business rules.

  13. As somebody who is constantly having Visual Studio open new tabs in chrome, Close tabs to the right is fantastic.

  14. Re:Chrome _is_ the standard! on Chrome 57 Arrives With CSS Grid Layout and API Improvements (venturebeat.com) · · Score: 1

    It's actually kind of the reverse. It's cute that you still don't understand that IE6 wasn't a problem. It added a tremendous amount of functionality that wasn't available before. The problem was how long it took to go from IE6 to IE7, how long it took the W3C to provide standards that people wanted, and the fact that Firefox, Opera, IE6 and Safari all implemented standards differently for a long time. I concede that IE took the longest to get their shit in order, but I don't think we'd be better off had IE not pushed forward ahead of standards.

    Of course, things are a little different now because we aren't having a problem with the standards lagging so far behind desired capability. This whole thread is stupid because CSS Grids are standard.

  15. Also, that's not including that everything else is more expensive too. All of the businesses around him and their employees have to make more than they normally would as well to pay their own rents. So guy in SF is paying $3k for less, has a higher tax rate, and everything around him is more expensive.

  16. Re:Good on Tech Jobs Took a Big Hit Last Year (fortune.com) · · Score: 1

    We're trying to develop technologies to divert the next asteroid, survive a super-volcano and make it so we all can live well even in our 15th decade. I think we do need to work every day.

  17. Re:There's are reasons people say start with C on Ask Slashdot: How To Get Started With Programming? [2017 Edition] · · Score: 2

    I don't understand the constant "programming jobs are going away" comments. They're really not, and there are a lot of us in the US with a good salary.

    https://www.bls.gov/ooh/comput...

    In 2014 there were 1,114,000 software developer jobs. Projections are that it will grow 17% between 2014 and 2024, meaning we plan to add 186,600 jobs. Which, incidentally, is a much higher rate of growth than other jobs.

  18. Yeah this is ridiculous. If you want to use UTC, you can just use UTC. People do it all the time. But most of the time you want to know "should I be expecting a person in Utah to be awake right now? Would they be at the office? Is it early?" We change the clocks twice a year because it's easier to do that than to have everybody shift their hours. In spring we open at 7:00AM, in the winter we open at 8:00AM is harder to remember than twice a year move your clock. That same concept applies with UTC. With time-zones, we just mentally move the clock. Instead of remembering "this location has this schedule, and this location has this schedule" it's generally easier to hold one schedule in your mind and then mentally move the clock. "people are generally awake from 6:00AM - 10:00PM", not "people in Ohio are up from 11:00 - 3:00, people in California are up from 13:00 - 5:00".

  19. Re:More like... on ISP To FCC: Using The Internet Is Like Eating Oreos (consumerist.com) · · Score: 1

    Somebody dared me to put it as my sig, so there it is.

  20. Re:More like... on ISP To FCC: Using The Internet Is Like Eating Oreos (consumerist.com) · · Score: 1

    I'm confused here. It seems like a contract that doesn't mention a data cap would lead to the ISP being mandated to not institute a data cap because, well, the contract. Seems like any lawsuit would be able to get the data cap removed. That makes me think that the data caps are in the contracts, but then, the analogy becomes "you can consume 10 cookies a day up to 30 cookies a week" and then after you've consumed 30 cookies they're like "ok, no more cookies", and again, what's the problem. One side of this is painfully wrong and I just can't figure out who. Having never been under a data cap and not having access to the contract of somebody who has, I'm having a hard time figuring this out.

  21. Re:Bandiwidth is *free* fallacy.. on ISP To FCC: Using The Internet Is Like Eating Oreos (consumerist.com) · · Score: 1

    That seems ridiculous to limit them to advertising monthly data cap / billing period, as it doesn't address the thing most people care about foremost, which is bandwidth. Advertising bandwidth and advertising data cap sounds more fair. If they are disclosing the data cap in the contract, then I don't see what the problem is. You seem to be advocating for a totally useless metric. The reality is, regardless of how they communicate it, operating a network capable of handling all subscribers using all of their allotted bandwidth, is much more expensive than figuring out what the real peak load is and operating a network capable of handling that, which is again much more expensive than trimming users back a little bit under peak load. If you were to keep the margins the same, I bet you'd find that most people would opt for a tiered plan that degrades their bandwidth slightly during high usage times and opens them up under low usage times because it would be so much cheaper than the network that has dedicated bandwidth for each subscriber.

  22. Re:Dangerous language... on iOS 10 Is Surfacing Hardcore Porn GIFs in iMessage (theverge.com) · · Score: 1

    What are you talking about? hate verb 1. feel intense or passionate dislike for (someone). "the boys hate each other" synonyms: loathe, detest, despise, dislike, abhor, execrate; More noun 1. intense or passionate dislike. "feelings of hate and revenge" synonyms: hatred, loathing, detestation, dislike, distaste, abhorrence, abomination, execration, aversion; More Please tell me in historical terms when hate wasn't a synonym for dislike.

  23. Re:Dangerous language... on iOS 10 Is Surfacing Hardcore Porn GIFs in iMessage (theverge.com) · · Score: 1

    Why would you assume that? It's a matter of degree, right? Maybe he is intense and passionate about his dislike of Apple. I mean, he's taking the time to canvas the internet about it. Don't try to rewrite the meaning of hate to only apply to certain causes or situations that you think are the worst. There are other words for that such as unconscionable, deplorable, inhuman or disgusting.

  24. Re:the real problem on iOS 10 Is Surfacing Hardcore Porn GIFs in iMessage (theverge.com) · · Score: 1

    I feel like this is more like if you were walking by and accidentally dropped your pornography out of your folders on the street and a kid saw it. It's clearly not intentional behavior, there was no intent. I find it hard to believe you'd go to jail for accidentally exposing a kid to porn.

  25. Re:Statistical analysis demonstrated this long ago on Dolphins Recorded Having a Conversation For The First Time (telegraph.co.uk) · · Score: 2

    This line of thinking perplexes me. Yes, they may be talking about things that we don't necessarily care about, but we almost certainly can tell them things they would like to know. Such as where danger is. We could possibly introduce new vocabulary and through the power of giving something a name, give them a new concept that they can relate to each other. We can make smarter dolphins to eat.