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User: Troyusrex

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  1. They have no herritage [SIC] with Sweden and the only thing they have in common with the Swedes is that they speak a dialogue of the language.

    This is not true. The Finnish is NOT related to Swedish but is related to Hungarian.

  2. I don't have any commentary on the subject matter, but I can say it took me a full minute to parse this awful headline. First off, I've never heard, nor can I easily find, reference to "strip mine" with regard to data. After that it isn't clear which nouns and adjectives go together. For instance, I was surprised to hear that there is specialized "Social Media For Landlords" until after a few seconds I realised that wasn't what they were getting at. I tend to give a lot of leeway to typos and grammar mistakes as they are easy to make, hard to catch, and usually have so little negative impact. But in this case the headline was put together in such a way as to make it extremely difficult to parse. "British Startup Strip Mines Renters' Private Social Media For Landlords "

  3. Re:Mechanical storage on Nevada Startup Stores Energy With Trains (fortune.com) · · Score: 4, Interesting

    There are some very interesting things going on with storing mechanical energy using Flywheels. It isn't quite the same concept but takes a lot less space than moving a large train uphill.

  4. Re:Even a broken clock is right twice a day on Swarm AI Correctly Predicts Kentucky Derby Superfecta, Turns $20 Into $11,000 (yahoo.com) · · Score: 2

    If this platform could reliably make bets such as this then the last thing they'd be doing is telling everyone about it. They'd use the platform to make billions for themselves betting. Once they were set for life maybe they'd share the technology.

  5. There is reasonable grounds to be skeptical of GMOs on economic grounds.

    Saying something is uneconomical is a very different proposition than saying it is harmful to health. If it is uneconomical it will fail of it's own accord. Farmers do not have to use these plants, they do so because they believe that the advantages will outweigh the additional costs.

  6. Re:Ocean garbage patches? on Continuous System For Converting Waste Plastics Into Crude Oil · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Unfortunately, those ocean garbage patches average four 5 X 5 X 1 mm piece of plastic per cubic meter so while a clean up tanker would be great for the environment it wouldn't collect enough to make a meaningful dent in its own fuel needs.

  7. Probably not what it appears on Oil Man Proposes Increase In Oklahoma Oil-and-Gas Tax · · Score: 1

    My bet is that he wants to go to 7% tax straight away instead of having the tax at 2% for the first four years because his wells are older than those of other companies and this tax structure would put him at a disadvantage? Unfortunately, more often than not when businesses push for regulations it's not out of pure motives but as a way to restrict competition.

  8. Why does how much money the company's have matter? on Plaintiff In Tech Hiring Suit Asks Judge To Reject Settlement · · Score: -1

    Against such tremendous cash hoards, $324 million is chump change

    So... because Apple has a lot of cash on hand they should have to pay more in damages? Why? The reward should be based on the damage done not the size of the defendants bank account.

  9. Misprint... on Biological Clock Discovered That Measures Ages of Most Human Tissues · · Score: 0

    'My goal in inventing this clock is to help scientists improve their understanding of what speeds up and slows down the human aging process.

    That's a misprint. The actual quote is "My goal in inventing this clock is to become really stinking rich. I don't mean a little rich, I mean Bill Gates rich. Famous too. 'The guy who solved aging' has a good ring to it. Mostly, however, I just want sacks and sacks of cash.

  10. Re:Why only the Northern Hemisphere? on Arctic Ice Extent Tops 2012's, But Is 6th Lowest In History · · Score: 1

    I'm not sure where you got that graph, but it doesn't match the official statistics from the NSIDC. There is absolutely a statistically significant trend in Antarctic ice, both in minimums and maximums. In fact, the minimum trend is even more pronounced than the maximum trend. Now, had you argued that the ice melt in the Arctic far exceeds the gains in the Antarctic (by about 3 times) I'd agree with you but as-is you are very much overly minimizing the gains in the Antarctic. http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2012/10/poles-apart-a-record-breaking-summer-and-winter/

  11. not so good with numbers... on Scientists May Have Detected Neutrinos From Another Galaxy · · Score: -1

    The two events, nicknamed Bert and Ernie, have a 99% chance of originating outside our galaxy

    I beg to differ. They either have a 100% chance of originating outside our galaxy or a 0% chance. We may be 99% sure it originated outside the galaxy but that doesn't impact whether they actually did or not. (and don't give me any of the quantum observer effects jargon. These waves functions would have collapsed long ago).

  12. Re:Misleadingly framed on Pew Research Finds Opinion Dominates MSNBC More Than Fox News · · Score: 3, Funny

    This is as misleading as the studies that "disproved" that organic food is more nutritious. Nobody was making the claim they disproved.

    There are absolutely many people making the claim that organic foods are more nutritious. Like here, here and here.

    And yes, there are people making the claim that MSNBC is not biased or much less biased than Fox News.

  13. That sounds great. I hope it actually passes...

  14. Tantalum won't be much effected on New Technology Produces Cheaper Tantalum and Titanium · · Score: 4, Interesting
    I happen to live close to the largest Tantalum processor in the world and so I've been following tantalum movements for a long time. The main constraint on Tantalum as it is isn't processing cost but supply of the mineral.

    At CURRENT extraction rates there's less than a 50 year supply so making the processing cheaper will just make it run out faster.It's possible some new sources will be found, but no apparent ones are on the horizon.

  15. Re:No bias at all... on There Is Plenty To Cut At the Pentagon · · Score: 1, Insightful

    And the F-35 replaces the F-18, F-15, F-16, A-8, A-10 and the Harriers. The 3 versions they will have is a huge SAVINGS because it replaces so many other planes. Of course, the author also doesn't adjust for inflation which is a huge factor. I'm not saying that there isn't a lot to cut from the Pentagon, or even from the F-35 program, I'm just saying that the rational given here makes no sense at all.

  16. the prospect of accessing limitless wealth beyond the Earth has caused a bit of media speculation

    You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

  17. So what... on Tech Firms Keep Piles of 'Foreign Cash' In US · · Score: 1

    [Oracle pays] about 2.5% at the time (by contrast, grad students and parents pay 6.8%-7.9% for Federal student loans).

    Why bother to add this? Oracle is a very credit worthy company with large assets. In contrast, student loans have a very high default rate and are risky to lenders (or the government if they assure them).

    Obviously it was added to try to create some outrage where none rightly exists.

  18. Re:go go private equity! on Microsoft May Invest $1B-$3B In Dell Buyout · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Actually, one of the benefits of private equity is that they usually DO think of the long term because they don't have to worry about things like their stock tanking and the short term thinking that goes with quarterly reporting.

  19. Re:Now THERE's a reversal. on Soot Is Warming the World — a Lot · · Score: 1

    Warming has not been lower than forecast (what stinking place did you pull that from?)

    I pulled them from a VERY stinking place, some place most people never go, the actual data. Take a look at the IPCC forecasts from 1999 IPCC now take a look at actual data from 1999 to 2012 at NOAA (or Hadley CRUT).

    It clearly shows that while there has been warming it has been lower than the low forecast.

    If you don't want to sift through the data (although I encourage you to do so and see for yourself), here's an article from an anti-denier site showing Hansen's 1988 predictions similarly being low. Note that this site is in the business of proving that global warming is real, their bias is strong and their data is suspect but even they clearly admit that actual temperatures are below the forecast.

    These aren't cherry picked examples either, take most past temperature predictions and chart them against actual and you'll see that the rise is less than predicted. Or check the IPCC predictions from edition to edition and you'll see that they are slowly moving down in the near term (although often have global warming shift into high gear a few decades hence).

    To be clear, I'm not a denialist. I do think global warming is real and a problem. But I think Climate Science is a lot like economics, they have a pretty good idea what's going on and you'd be foolish to ignore them, but you'd also be foolish to think that they have everything fully figured out or that they aren't missing some really big and important factors in their analysis.

  20. Now THERE's a reversal. on Soot Is Warming the World — a Lot · · Score: 1

    It was less that two years ago that they said that the reason warming is lower than forecasts is because of pollution in China Global warming lull down to China's coal growth. While I certainly believe the earth has warmed and humans have some blame I'm HIGHLY skeptical of the media's representation of Climate Change for reasons like this.

  21. Re:this is great news on Scientists Develop Sixty Day Bread · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Ok, keep eating that terrible bread for $0.05 cheaper because you think the invisible hand is always right.

    Another straw man about Capitalism, the one about how it's only price that matters. Quality and other factors are integral to Capitalism. If your bread is of such quality that the other bread seems "terrible" in comparison and yours only cost $.05 more (in 2012 US dollars) then your bread will sell very well. The exception would be commoditized products wherein price is the prime determinant. But to be commoditized the quality has to be indistinguishable so your example doesn't work there either.

    More importantly, however, is that the only alternative yet presented to "the invisible hand" is some bureaucrat(s) deciding for us. If I prefer to eat the terrible bread and spend the saved money on something else who's this guy to tell me I should prefer the other bread? Don't get me wrong, Capitalism stinks. It just stinks less than every other system implemented to date.

  22. Re:this is great news on Scientists Develop Sixty Day Bread · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Problem is most bread companies dont want to do that, it reduces the CEO's pay by reducing profits.

    That's only how straw man capitalism works, not real world capitalism. In real world capitalism if bread made with honey were actually a superior product then although the CEO of an entrenched bread company might not want to produce it a CEO of an upstart would realize she could raise her pay by producing and selling it thus gaining market share, enriching her investors and leaving the entrenched bread company in the dust.

    Of course, in "capitalism" as practiced by the US right now the entrenched bread company would get the government to pass some regulation that seemed reasonable but that was actually designed to hamper the competition. Perhaps new labeling or packaging requirements that, due to scaling effects, would impose much higher costs per unit on small producers.

  23. Re:Oh noes! 11 mm in 20 years! on Grim Picture of Polar Ice-Sheet Loss · · Score: 1

    Salt water does not.

    It most certainly does. Feel free to show a citation to the contrary.

  24. Re:Oh noes! 11 mm in 20 years! on Grim Picture of Polar Ice-Sheet Loss · · Score: 3, Informative

    For 0 to 4 degrees C it contracts but warmer than that it expands. Water Physics_and_chemistry

  25. Not quite... on Sub-Ice Antarctic Lake Vida Abounds With Life · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The find increases the chances that life may exist (or have once existed) on planets such as Mars and moons such as Jupiter's Europa.

    So life on other planets is dependent on our knowledge? Sounds doubtful. It may increase our reason to believe that such life is possible, but not whether that life actual exists/existed.