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User: Lendrick

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  1. Re:Burn due to water-skis on fire subsequent encou on Doctors On Edge As Healthcare Gears Up For 70,000 Ways To Classify Ailments · · Score: 2

    I'm curious enough how they came up with these exact codes that I'm going to try and find out.

    Some of them are specific enough (waterskiing while on fire, for instance) that they must have actually happened, but in that case you'd think they'd have one for getting hit on the head by a falling coconut, which they don't. (Incidentally, falling coconuts account for a single confirmed death in the US, in 1973).

    Maybe they chose a particular year as the cutoff for injuries, although I'd imagine at least a few more Americans have been *injured* by falling coconuts after 1973.

  2. Re:Turing Test on Ashley Madison Source Code Shows Evidence They Created Bots To Message Men · · Score: 1

    There was a chatbot a while ago that "passed" a turing test by claiming that English wasn't its first language. This situation is kind of similar. Most of the comments were things like "lol hi how r u lol"; in other words, the bots were acting generally unintelligible to lower the expectations of the people who interacted with them.

    Pretending to be a person who can't pass a turing test is cheating on a real turing test.

  3. Laziness apparently trumps desire to spy on people on Oakland Changes License Plate Reader Policy After Filling 80GB Hard Drive · · Score: 1

    For some reason I find that hilarious.

  4. How is this any different from thyroid hormones? on MIT Researchers Discover "Metabolic Master Switch" To Control Obesity · · Score: 1

    You can already raise your metabolism by taking synthroid. While this might be interesting from a genetic standpoint, there's already a pill that will make you burn more fat.

  5. Re:Supermodels on ESA Satellite Shows Sudden Ice Loss In Southern Antarctic Peninsula · · Score: 1

    The people who are the most qualified to tell us about the climate are corporate execs and economists who *really really want* global warming to be not real. If someone tries to pull you out of that protective bubble, the best thing you can do is close your eyes, cover your ears, and yell LA LA LA as loudly as possible.

  6. Re:Minimum Wage on Los Angeles Raises Minimum Wage To $15 an Hour · · Score: 1

    Indeed. Let's strawman the minimum strawman to a billion strawmen per strawman. Then we can all be strawmen!

  7. Re:Teamsters on Self-Driving Big Rigs Become a Reality · · Score: 3, Interesting

    > > A human will be present at the wheel at all times, and will take control whenever the truck is in more populated areas.

    For now. Anyone who thinks that eliminating drivers isn't the end goal of this (or that we lack the ingenuity to do it) is fooling themselves. Think about it. If you replace your fleet of regular trucks with driverless ones, you suddenly don't have to pay all those drivers $50k a year (or whatever it pays now), and your trucks are twice as productive because they can operate 24 hours a day since there's no driver to get tired.

    Mind you, I'm not advocating that we halt technological progress, but we're coming up on a time when there just aren't going to be enough jobs to go around, and the economy is going to have to adjust for that in a way that rewards people who work but doesn't starve people who want to work but can't find jobs.

  8. Re:Entirely disingenuous on Valve Pulls the Plug On Paid Mods For Skyrim · · Score: 1

    I take it you're fully in support of modders getting a measly 25% cut?

  9. Re:Democrats don't want this to pass on Bill Would Ban Paid Prioritization By ISPs · · Score: 4, Insightful

    That's actually a fairly reasonable thing to ask, from a technological and price standpoint.

  10. Realistically... on CNN Anchors Caught On Camera Using Microsoft Surface As an iPad Stand · · Score: 1, Interesting

    The anchors in question have iPads and are comfortable using them. Microsoft almost certainly paid CNN to have all their anchors use Surface tablets on air, and the anchors probably aren't particularly thrilled that they have to ditch the platform they're comfortable with. I'm sure that now that this (admittedly hilarious) picture has circulated, it will be mandated that CNN anchors not have iPads anywhere near them while on the air.

  11. This is just traditional web advertising on Users Can't Distinguish Scams From Facebook's Features · · Score: 2

    Ads have been pretending to be part of website user interfaces forever now. A good website would ban those kinds of ads, but Facebook's customers (the advertisers) pay top dollar for unfettered access to Facebook's main commodity (its users). The only way that's ever going to change is if people start to leave Facebook in droves, but unfortunately it's the primary way that Gen X, Gen Y, and older Millenials communicate with each other. It's going to be a couple decades yet before Facebook's primary users age into less valuable advertising demographics, and people have already shown that they're generally unwilling to jump ship for better platforms (Google Plus isn't great, but it's a hell of a lot less obnoxious than Facebook). Me, I deleted my Facebook account several years ago, and have never looked back.

  12. Re:Inverse Wi-fi law on Marriott Fined $600,000 For Jamming Guest Hotspots · · Score: 3, Informative

    I think it's because cheap hotels are for regular travelers and nice hotels are for people traveling on business who will be reimbursed by their employers. Even for expensive hotels, the prices are pretty minuscule compared to what a big company can afford, so money is really no object for them. So the employees book at expensive hotels because it's kind of a perk of traveling for their company, and private individuals book at cheap ones because that's what they can afford.

  13. Re: More regulation on The Secret Goldman Sachs Tapes · · Score: 1

    Your sarcasm and oversimplification has convinced me that government always bad corporations always good.

  14. Re:Long overdue on News Aggregator Fark Adds Misogyny Ban · · Score: 1

    I know. We need government interference to tell Fark that they aren't allowed to moderate the content on their own site. If people area allowed to run their privately owned websites the way they choose, it'll be anarchy! Anarchy!!! ANAARRRCCCHHHYYYYY!!!!

  15. Re:Are you kidding me? on California Man Sues Sony Because Killzone: Shadowfall Isn't Really 1080 · · Score: 1

    ...so meaningless as false advertising?

  16. Re:You go girl on California Man Sues Sony Because Killzone: Shadowfall Isn't Really 1080 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    There needs to be an addition to contract law wherein if something is in large print, it trumps anything in small print.

  17. Re:Neither on Which Is Better, Adblock Or Adblock Plus? · · Score: 1

    I very rarely run into ads that are aggressive enough to get through AdBlock.

  18. Re:Where's grumpy cat when you need him? on Iran Court Summons Mark Zuckerberg For Facebook Privacy Violations · · Score: 1

    The fact that you're making that comment is a pretty strong statement about the (un)likelihood of that actually happening.

  19. Late to the tablet game... on Microsoft Continues To Lose Money With Each Surface Tablet It Sells · · Score: 3, Interesting

    ...and desperately attempting to avoid irrelevance.

    That being said, there's some sense to the strategy. If it's true that they lost money on the original Xbox, then it's worked for them in the past. Selling products below cost is a good way to get customers, provided your product is good enough that they'll buy your next one at a price where you'll actually profit.

    I don't personally see Microsoft tablets being taken seriously (the number of people I see on the internet who apparently like Windows 8 doesn't fit with the number of people I've met who like it in real life, which leads me to believe that they learned a lesson from Vista -- albeit not the right one -- and have seen the value in paying astroturfers to pad their failures a bit). But then again, I didn't expect the XBox to be a runaway success either, and it did just fine, so time will tell.

    Fortunately there's enough competition in the tablet market among Apple and all the different Android manufacturers that Microsoft isn't likely to be able to achieve the level of lock-in that they have on the desktop market, which means that another viable tablet maker could actually be a good thing. So even though it's Microsoft, I don't wish them ill here.

  20. Re:Get rid of income Tax on Intuit, Maker of Turbotax, Lobbies Against Simplified Tax Filings · · Score: 2

    You sound like someone who has access to hard data that shows a causative relationship between higher taxes and reduced economic performance. Please post your data; I'd love to see it.

  21. Re:Really? on Can the ObamaCare Enrollment Numbers Be Believed? · · Score: 1

    Sure. The NSA scandal was proof of that they've lied and violated the Constitution. On the other hand, I don't see where this is the "worst administration for lies in our lifetime" considering they followed the Bush administration (spoiler: the NSA was doing its spying shit then too).

    That being said, about the ACA, promoting the general welfare is specifically constitutional, and there are 7.1 million more people with health care now than there were six months ago (and I'm sorry but "LALALA THE'RE LIARS I CAN'T HEAR YOU" isn't evidence that they're lying about the enrollment figures, no matter how much the irresponsible right wing press may be disingenuously speculating).

    Your line of reasoning seems to be "we know they're liars, so that means they're telling a lie. Since they're lying, we know they're liars." Come back with real evidence.

  22. Re:It depends on your frame of mind. on Can the ObamaCare Enrollment Numbers Be Believed? · · Score: 2

    Seriously.

    From the article:

    an eye-popping 90% increase in just the last month of the six-month open enrollment period.

    That's not eye-popping at all. The enrollment numbers didn't even double in the last month. Those number are completely ho-hum, and if anything, I'd expect it to be even more skewed to the last minute.

  23. Re:Really? on Can the ObamaCare Enrollment Numbers Be Believed? · · Score: 4, Funny

    Sure, this is the worst administration for lies in our lifetime

    You're very well-spoken for a five year old.

  24. Re:Actually... on Scientists/Actress Say They Were 'Tricked' Into Geocentric Universe Movie · · Score: 1

    True, but it's not the center of the solar system or the galaxy.

  25. Re:What do they think? on Isolated Tribes Die Shortly After We Meet Them · · Score: 3, Funny

    Spaceballs.

    There goes the planet.