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User: Vermonter

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  1. Wonderful but I already know when a call is spam on AT&T, Comcast Announce Verification Milestone To Help Fight Robocalls (usatoday.com) · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I don't want my phone to ring with a little alert that something is a scam. My phone already tells me when something is a potential scam. In fact if its a number I don't recognize, I know that 99 times out of 100 it's a scam. I want my phone not to ring at all. I want the call to get stopped before my phone is even involved. It's not answering a robocall that annoys me, it's having my phone ring in the first place.

  2. The advice on robocalls is wrong on AT&T CEO Interrupted By a Robocall During a Live Interview (theverge.com) · · Score: 4, Insightful

    We're always told - don't pick up, don't engage. But the truth is, if we want to stop these robocalls, then if you can you *should* answer, you *should* engage, and you should try to keep a live person on the line with you for as long as possible. This will cost the scammers money... after all, talking to a human isn't free; that human is getting paid. Or if they aren't paid by the hour, then if they are busy with you who (presumably) knows its a scam, then they are unavailable to be scamming others.

    If we as a culture decided to waste a few minutes of the scammers' time with every phone call, then they would quickly lose their value, and many scammers would go out of business.

  3. I agree it seems a bit high, but when you consider how many people rent and chose not to renew their annual lease and moved to a different apartment across town, the number may not be so high.

  4. Re: More accurately - A **few** FB employees outr on Facebook Employees Outraged Over Exec's Appearance at Kavanaugh Hearing (thedailybeast.com) · · Score: 5, Funny

    king neckbeard raped me 20 years ago. Please disable his ability to post to Slashdot. Also if you doubt my claim you are pro-rape and have a small penis.

  5. LinkedIn is a Facebook clone with a gimick on Does LinkedIn Suck? (techcrunch.com) · · Score: 3, Interesting

    "It's for work!"

    OK sure. But why do I need a picture of myself? How I look has no bearing on my ability to do my job, since I'm not a model. But no, every other week, LinkedIn would prompt me to upload a picture, despite repeatedly saying "No". So, I closed me account. I don't want facebook. I sure as hell don't want a cheap facebook clone.

  6. Maybe I'm getting old.... on Nearly Half of American Households Will Own a Smart Speaker by 2019, Study Says (fortune.com) · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ...but why exactly would I want one of these? I can already sit at my pc which I am almost always in front of at home, or whip out my phone, to order stuff on Amazon. I don't understand what value these speakers add to my life.

  7. Color me shocked on Popular College Majors Changed Abruptly After the Financial Crisis (qz.com) · · Score: 3, Insightful

    So degrees that were never big money makers in the first place are now huge financial losses since the economy has taken a hit, so people are avoiding them?

    >It's not clear they are making the right decision.

    I mean, if by "right decision" you mean "not bankrupting themselves", then I'd say it's quite obvious they are making the right decision to skip out on these humanities degrees.

  8. SSN was never meant to be used as ID either on Phone Numbers Were Never Meant as ID. Now We're All At Risk (wired.com) · · Score: 5, Insightful

    And that's caused all kinds of problems with identity theft in recent years. I'm not surprised we are making the same stupid mistake with phone numbers.

  9. Re:Time to rethink monetization on The Flourishing Business of Fake YouTube Views (nytimes.com) · · Score: 1

    Nonsense, websites can see where traffic is coming from. If I click on an ad on youtube, the advertiser knows I just came from youtube. That website can then see if you buy anything. Yes, the user can mess this up by rejecting cookies or whatever the website uses, but the majority of users aren't going to do that.

  10. Time to rethink monetization on The Flourishing Business of Fake YouTube Views (nytimes.com) · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I am amazed the internet still values "views" and "clicks". Until advertisers stop placing value on such stupid metrics, this is going to be a problem. They should be focusing on actual sales and paying people based on that.

    If you had a car dealership where instead of commission for sales, the sales people were paid based on how many people came in to look at cars, you bet there would be rampant fraud there as well.

  11. The problem is too many channels on People Still Don't Like Their Cable Companies, ConsumerReports' Telecom Survey Finds (consumerreports.org) · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The cable companies are under this false impression that it was a good idea to provide as many channels as possible. My biggest issue with TV now when I go somewhere that has cable, is it takes me a while to even find one of the channels I might want to watch. Maybe their idea what to increase the odds that a show you like is currently airing on one of the 800 channels, but in an age of on demand programming, this strategy is insufficient. The only saving grace for them now is to offer Netflix-style on demand programming for all their content.

  12. Re:Why change what's working? on Senate Rejects New Money For Election Security (apnews.com) · · Score: 2

    Seems like every time we upgrade to the latest and greatest voting machines, they are found to have serious security flaws. I am not convinced that throwing a ton of money at upgrading voting machines would really fix the issue of security.

  13. Re:No, it's the content on Twitter Is Limiting the Visibility of Prominent Republicans In Search Results (vice.com) · · Score: 1

    Why does Facebook have to choose political sides at all?

    Money, duh. It's always about money, either directly or indirectly.

  14. Re:One way to discourage them from calling on Robocallers Win Even if You Don't Answer (wsj.com) · · Score: 1

    It should be easy enough to tell within 5 seconds if a telemarketer is legitimate or not. If they are trying to renew your paper subscription, just tell them no thanks and ask them to take you off their list. If they are "Calling from Microsoft because we noticed a virus on your computer", then go nuts.

    Any legitimate cold calls should be honoring the national do not call registry anyways.

  15. One way to discourage them from calling on Robocallers Win Even if You Don't Answer (wsj.com) · · Score: 1

    Next time you get a scam caller, pick it up. Talk to them. Play along. See how long you can keep them on the line before letting them know you are just wasting their time ("Feel free to call back whenever you want me to waste more of your time!").

    The biggest expense for telemarketing scams is having a live person talk to you. And if they get no money from you, that time spent talking to you is completely wasted. If enough people do this, the scam becomes unprofitable, and the scammers give up. Their only other choice is to start removing numbers from their database of people who are known time wasters.

    I propose a website where people can post recordings of their calls, and people can be ranked based on how much time they can waste talking to live scammers. Unless there is a serious government crackdown (which would be difficult and require multiple nations to do it), this would be the best option for fighting back.

  16. Maybe, but don't expect your pay raises to reflect their appreciation of you. The reason job hopping is so popular these days is because that is the fastest way to increase your annual income. You can stay in your job and average a 3% raise every year for 10 years, or you can switch jobs every 2-3 years and negotiate a 20% increase over your previous salary each time. After 10 years you are looking at a difference of about a 35% pay increase for staying in your current job, or more than doubling your starting salary by job hopping.

    The vast majority of companies don't take care of their employees like they did in the 50's. Employee loyalty today is something that is taken advantage of, not rewarded.

  17. Re:Not a fan of the death penalty but... on States Turn To an Unproven Method of Execution: Nitrogen Gas (nytimes.com) · · Score: 1

    I certainly agree those people exist, I was only questioning the " *most* people who advocate for the death penalty are like this" assertion.

  18. Re:Not a fan of the death penalty but... on States Turn To an Unproven Method of Execution: Nitrogen Gas (nytimes.com) · · Score: 1

    Most death penalty proponents do not want to execute criminals, they want to see what they see as Bad People(tm) suffer. They don't want execution. They want torture, the more horrible the better.

    Is this true? I have no idea, but I would like to see some sort of citation before I buy into the claim that most death penalty proponents just want to hurt people.

  19. Re:Brave take on 8K TVs Are Coming, But Don't Buy the Hype (engadget.com) · · Score: 1

    You realize that government salaries aren't tax free? Politicians are scum, but they know that would be one grift too far. Take home on $175k isn't that high, not that there's any chance.

    Well, by default, yes. But any politician worth his salt in corruption going to get around it.

  20. You expect AI to be more than a set of programming instructions?

  21. Re:Yeah, it was her fault on Police Release First Video From Inside the Uber Self-Driving Car That Killed a Pedestrian (recode.net) · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The scariest part is that the pedestrian does not react to the car at all before being struck. As if she either gave no effort to check for oncoming traffic, or if she just had the mindset of "I have the right of way, the vehicle will stop for me".

    We'll never know what her motive was for crossing at such a poor time, and it's a tragedy that this happened, but her choice to cross there was baffling.

    Also the driver was "intermittently" looking down? No, the driver was looked up twice for a brief moment twice in the video with very long periods of staring down. This may have been unavoidable regardless, but until self driving cars are more reliable, taking your eyes off the road like this is not a good idea.

  22. So you're saying racists refused to vote for a white candidate, and instead voted for a white candidate? Boy howdy you're just full of logic!

  23. Plastic was found inside plastic bottles? on Microplastics Found In 93 Percent of Bottled Water Tested In Global Study (www.cbc.ca) · · Score: 2

    So you're telling me that someone tested a bunch of bottled water, almost all of which is inside plastic bottles, and they discovered plastic in them? And they were surprised by the findings?

  24. Yeah this was a problem 4000 years ago, too on Children Struggle To Hold Pencils Due To Too Much Tech, Doctors Say (theguardian.com) · · Score: 5, Funny

    As the newfangled quill became more popular, we began to see more and more children lack the hand strength to use a hammer and chisel. Sadly, we have yet to recover from such a blow to society. Once again technology has degraded our quality of life.

  25. For the same reason the government gets to regulate your power company. When you fight hard to become a monopoly, don't be surprised when you are suddenly heavily regulated.