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User: LordKronos

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  1. Re:Mining or Transactions? on Ethereum Plans To Cut Its Absurd Energy Consumption By 99 Percent (ieee.org) · · Score: 2

    I'm not sure what the difference is. I'll admit I'm not familiar with the internals of Etherium, though I was under the impression it was pretty much the same as Bitcoin (which I am familiar with). In Bitcoin, the "mining" aspect is to take a bunch of transactions and stuff them into a fixed size block, and then repeatedly hash that over and over each time with a different nonce appended until the hashed result matched a preset value or range. The "mining" process is the act of hashing until you find the right nonce. When you do, the transactions that you hashed are then considered processed. The one gotcha there is that because of the distributed nature and the fact that someone else could've minded a block at the exact same time as you, the processed transaction is only considered "verified" after a certain number of additional blocks are mined (at which point it becomes statistically unlikely for a competing blockchain to invalidate the mined block)

    So mining and processing transactions really go hand in hand. Doing one is the same as doing the other.

  2. Re: Goodbye Sears on Sears, the 125-Year-Old Iconic Retailer, Has 24 Hours To Survive (cnbc.com) · · Score: 5, Informative

    It's actually a combination of competition from many faces. Clothing is a major item for Sears, and yes Walmart and Target (and Kohls) are competion for thier price point. But another big item for Sears is appliances (at least in my mind, that is what they are best known for, but I'm not sure if that's the biggest part of their bottom line). In that area they've faced competition from Best Buy, Home Depot/Menards/Lowes, Costco, and others.

    Along with clothing and appliances, tools is the one other thing that comes to mind when I think Sears. And again, Home Depot/Menards/Lowes is big competition here, but I really feel like (and I may be way off) Harbor Freight is a huge source of competition for them here. Yes there is a bit of a quality difference (though that is a bit diminished as I don't think craftsman quality is quite what it used to be), but honestly for most people the cheap Harbor Freight tool is sufficient 9 out of 10 times, and for the price of the craftsman tool you can just replace the harbor freight tool 5 times (and that's not even considering most of the HF non-power tools have a lifetime replacement warranty anyway)

    Of all the things out there, I really feel like Amazon is one of the smallest contributors to Sears' demise.

  3. Re:I know this is too ideal, but ... on 'Two Years Later, I Still Miss the Headphone Port' (techcrunch.com) · · Score: 1

    The problem is there are just way too many things to take a stand against. I don't like a heavily customized OS, so I want something that runs a more or less barebones version of Android (good support for Lineage OS is also highly desired here, so that later when the vendor stops updating, I can switch there for my updates). So I've got to make my stand on the OS.

    When my OnePlus One was about 2 years old, I started looking for a replacement. Nothing felt right. The original Google Pixel was a good contender, but was a bit too pricey in my opinion. So I've got to make my stand on the price.

    I waited for a bit and the Pixel 2 was coming out. It was looking pretty interesting, so I considered abandoning my stand on the price. But wait...no headphone jack? No way. So I've got to make my stand on the headphone jack.

    So I was thinking about another OnePlus phone. The OP6 was coming out soon so I waited even longer for that. Hooray, a real headphone jack and a decent price. But WTF...a glass back? God damn it, I hate that, so I've got to make my stand on the glass back.

    So I wait even longer and now my phone is approaching 4 years old. I'm making my stands on installed OS, price, headphone jack, and glass back. the OP6t is coming but fuck, now it too ditches the headphone jack. The situation is getting worse.

    Pixel 3 is coming out. All the downsides of the previous, plus now they too have the fucking glass back. But god damn did they do a really incredible job on the camera and camera software. My 4+ year old phone is on it's last leg, having to charge it twice a day and dealing with constant reboots (I replaced the battery but since there are no genuine ones I found the replacement even worse than the degraded original). The way the market has gone, my stand on no glass back is pointless. My stand on the headphone jack is nearly the same. So I compromise on those and the price, keep my stand on the OS, and get the nice camera of the Pixel 3.

    I've been holding out for 2 years now and I feel that's about the best I can do. It's a good phone, and I'm really happy with it. It's annoying every time I have to hook up that dongle. I'm annoyed I had to buy a case for it (I used my previous phones with no case, but that's not a realistic option with a glass back). But I love the camera (which to me is probably more important than the cellular functionality itself). I tried making my stands, but it's just not realistic.

  4. Re:Tell me... on Amazon Error Allowed Alexa User To Eavesdrop on Another Home (reuters.com) · · Score: 1

    I agree, but explain to me how the microphone on your smartphone is any different. It's always listening, just say, "Hey Siri..." or "OK Google..."

    I trust it because, 1) I've disabled it so that it doesn't respond to voice, only manual triggering (thus much more difficult to invoke accidentally), and 2) at least with Android, it's open source, and although I haven't personally looked at the source, enough people have that I'm fairly confident if it were doing something to upload recordings without my permissions, somebody would likely have figured it out by now.

  5. Re:So... on People Are Harassing Waymo's Self-Driving Vehicles (usatoday.com) · · Score: 2

    The law says a Driver must be in control of a vehicle at ALL TIMES. Waymo’s vehicles and inherently illegal.

    It's really too bad that laws cannot be amended. Oh wait. They can be. And they have been:

    http://www.ncsl.org/research/t...

  6. Re: Perfect democrats on California Gives Final OK To Require Solar Panels On New Houses (npr.org) · · Score: 1

    Yes, yes they did. Interestingly, it is now explicitly legal to discriminate on boards of directors against transsexual and intersex folks, because the law only states that women must be included. Since there is now a defined list of who must be on a board - men and women - it implicitly means you do NOT have to have anyone else, so feel free to discriminate as you like!

    You do know that "female" is a sex classification, not gender, right? You can chop off or sew on or use hormones to grow whatever you want to in order to change your gender classification, but it still doesn't change your chromosomes.

  7. Re:If you want a laugh... on Samsung Caught (Again) Using DSLR Photo To Advertise Smartphone Camera (theverge.com) · · Score: 1

    "Better" is subjective. A good quality smartphone is just as good, if not better...DEPENDING ON CIRCUMSTANCES. For a pixel peeper or printing an 8 foot banner, the DSLR is certainly going to be sharper. But for normal size prints and online use, the phone is likely as good for most people. Now with the level of computational photography being done on Googles phone, you can actually get cases where it takes a heck of a lot of photoshop skill just to convert that DSLR image into something that looks as good as the what came straight out of the phone (I'm referring, of course, to the overall lighting of the image, not the pixel level sharpness).

    And of course, they always say the best camera is the one you have with you. I've got a DSL with plenty of lenses (including Canon L series), but honestly unless the purpose of me leaving home is specifically for the act of taking photos, I don't drag that thing along. If I did weddings (I don't), I of course would never dream of professionally photographing someones wedding with a phone. But if I were attending a wedding, honestly I wouldn't dream of dragging along my DSLR these days. When I go on vacation I still tend to bring along my DSLR with me just because I can't stand the thought of not having access to it when it need it, but in reality it gets used for way less than 5% of my photos.

  8. Re:In the US? on Japan's Final Pager Provider To End Its Service In 2019 (bbc.com) · · Score: 5, Informative

    It's actually quite the opposite. Pagers have no guaranteed delivery, because they are a one way service. The pager does not ever communicate back to the tower (or at least the type most doctors carry don't). If the pager is out of range or has a poor signal at the moment the page is broadcast, you are SOL. On the other hand, SMS will at least hold the message until you connect and then make a best effort to get the message to you.

    The advantage of pagers is that they work successfully off a much weaker signal and have much broader coverage. And even more importantly, a pager runs off a AA battery that is good for months and can be swapped out with an off the shelf battery in a matter of seconds. You can't say that about any phone.

  9. Re: Environmental impact of a tunnel? WTF? on Elon Musk's Boring Company Cancels Los Angeles Tunnel Following Lawsuit (gizmodo.com) · · Score: 2

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

    "The facility was expanded with hotel tower additions in 1972, 1975, 1980, 1986, and 1996."

    It's possible the 72 and 75 expansions were in the original plans, but you can almost guarantee the 80, 86, and 96 additions weren't

  10. Re:Apologies from NH on The FTC Says It Will Investigate Loot Boxes (kotaku.com) · · Score: 4, Funny

    Maggie was an embarrassing governor (she opposed decrim many other sensible proposals) so we sent her away.

    LOL. Yes, all of NH hated her so much they voted her out of the state senate and into the governor's office. They then hated her so much more that they voted her into US senate. At this rate, I can't wait to see the unbridled fury with which they cast their hate vote for her in the 2020 presidential primary.

  11. Re:How about a picture of the fucking glyphs? on The Mystery Font That Took Over New York (nytimes.com) · · Score: 1

    Sorry if I wasn't clear. I didn't mean the origin of the artwork or the character set. I meant that it was sufficient to recreate all characters in the English language, which is predominantly used in New York. Which was point....for all these Asian business it somewhat conveys the style of traditional Asian writing but is readable by nearly everyone in New York.

  12. Re:How about a picture of the fucking glyphs? on The Mystery Font That Took Over New York (nytimes.com) · · Score: 2

    Exactly. It's an English font which bears a stylistic resemblance to many of the different asian character sets. And almost every use in there is some clearly Chinese, Japanese, Thai, or Korean establishments. There are a few possible exceptions. A beauty salon (though often those are staffed entirely by asian workers) and a Mexican restaraunt (ok, that's the one outlier). A 60 second scan of the images and I decided there was no mystery, and thus no reason to read even a single sentence of the story.

  13. Re:Why did they remove it then? on Georgia's Secretary of State Brian Kemp Doxes Thousands of Absentee Voters · · Score: 5, Funny

    Document successfully erased from the internet. Whew, that was close.

  14. Re:Cup Holders Are Way Better! on Samsung Will Put Notches On Its Future Phones (theverge.com) · · Score: 3

    That's a pretty big LED indicator. It seems to me that even with an LED indicator there would still have to be some dead space that could be used

    But more importantly, and I don't really keep up on the specs of all phones, but don't all phones with notches have OLED screens too? With OLEDs there is no backlight, so there is no huge battery penalty for just lighting up a couple of pixels 24x7, which is why some phones now have the ambient display option. So it seems that if it was really a big deal and enough people cared about the status indicator, they could just as well have any part of the screen act as a status indicator.

    And, oh look at that....part of the ambient display is that you DO see status indicators. Except instead of having to remember that a green light is email and a pink light is instant message (and alternating green and pink lights mean you have both an email and an instant message), you can now just see an icon for an email and an icon for an instant message. The little blinking LED light was really just a hacky workaround for the proper implementation, but you seem a little stuck on keeping the hacky workaround.

  15. Re:Cup Holders Are Way Better! on Samsung Will Put Notches On Its Future Phones (theverge.com) · · Score: 1, Insightful

    cutting into the screen

    Cutting into the screen? So what part of the screen are they cutting into? It seems to me that for a decade now, every single phone*** has had a bunch of dead space being wasted to the left and right of the camera and speaker. We've now expanded the screen to fill the space. It's quite a stretch to call that "cutting into the screen".

    Lets say you build an addition onto your house. If the addition doesn't span the entire width of your house, should we now say that the addition has cut into the living space of your house?

    ***ok, every single phone except the ones with pop up cameras....talk about a stupid design.

  16. Re:Word of the year on Samsung Will Put Notches On Its Future Phones (theverge.com) · · Score: 1

    "Notch designs"

    You know, I think that probably is worthy of being word of the year. There aren't a whole lot of words out there that have spaces in them.

  17. Re:Ignoring or listening? on The Year OnePlus Started Ignoring Fans (venturebeat.com) · · Score: 1

    I like being able to take a picture of myself with the kids without blind guessing whats in the frame. But more importantly, you really need a front facing camera for video chat.

  18. Re:Ignoring or listening? on The Year OnePlus Started Ignoring Fans (venturebeat.com) · · Score: 1, Troll

    What's the fucking advantage of having a fucking notch in the fucking display?

    Is this a trick question? I think most people prefer to have a front facing camera, and plenty (most?) would also prefer a front facing speaker. Until tech advances sufficiently that we can affordably embed these things behind a functional display, you need to reserve the top of the phone for these items. Given that most people also prefer to have a status bar there, what makes the most sense: having the status icon pushed up into the dead space around the camera/speaker, or having them take up the actual usable space below that?

    I'll admit, I too originally hated the notch, but that's because Apple made a terrible decision when they launched it, showing the notch cutting into the side of video playback, which is just stupid. I don't know if Apple ever fixed that stupidity, but on Android every app I've used properly stays out of the notch area and never displays content obscured by it, with one exception (Google's Photos app puts the photos under the notch when you zoom in...please fix that Google).

  19. That makes no sense on Are Touchscreens Robbing a Generation of Surgeons of Their Dexterity? (bbc.com) · · Score: 0

    Sorry, but this theory that touchscreens are depriving us of manual dexterity is just ridiculous. Little kids cut and draw and paint and craft like nobody's business. That's all practicing manual dexterity. Lots of kids continue doing to that on to adulthood. Many (mostly girls) continue on with jewerly making through teen years. Many (mostly boys) are playing video games with console. Many work with electronics. Pool and darts are still popular into adulthood. Working on cars. Woodworking. Sewing. And pretty much every child (even in this age of laptops) spends 13 years in school learning and practicing to write.

    No, but sorry. For the vast majority of kids there are still countless activities every day helping them improve their manual dexterity. I don't know whether this guy is a just some quack wondering why some up and coming students can't stitch as well as he can with his decades of experience, or if there really is some decline, but if there is some decline, I'm certain this guy's theory as to why is completely wrong.

  20. Re:Parks? on Apple Maps Has Surpassed Google Maps in Detail in 3.1 Percent of the US (theverge.com) · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Exactly. It's a neat little feature to be sure, but if I really want to see where vegetation is, I switch to satellite view, which actually distinguishes between grass, small vs large trees, dense vs sparse patches of trees, crops, etc. The only case I see in that article where the vegetation detail is sort of useful is in identifying beaches.

    But yes, when you look at those maps, you can still see the distinction between regular vegetation and parks, but it's very subtle and takes much more effort to distinguish. When I'm in an unfamiliar town and have a little time to kill, I'll actually be looking for parks to take my kids to, not random vegetation in the median.

    Finally, that rest of that article just shows a bunch of cases where Apple is fixing things google already had correct, and several more where Apple is still wrong (and google is correct).

  21. Re:Maybe Android needs to take a page from Apple h on Android Pie Has a Battery Life Problem (venturebeat.com) · · Score: 3, Informative

    Nor did Apple ever hide or lie about this, as much as Haters like to pretend they did

    Jan 23, 2017 - iOS 10.2.1 is released, which is the first version (that we know of) to begin slowing down phones.

    For months and months forum posters speculated they may be slowing down the phones. Apple says nothing.

    December 18, 2017 - John Poole from Geekbench pulls together benchmarks from 100k iphones and creates irrefutable graphs showing how performance is throttled, and exactly which version it started happening for each iPhone version

    December 20, 2017 - Apple finally admits to slowing down phones.

    Nope, they didn't hide anything. Its just pure coincidence that Apple sat silent for almost an entire year***, and then suddenly 2 days after the irrefutable evidence surfaces Apple decides they should probably let users know about it.

    Yeah, and it's the haters that are pretending, right?

    ***actually it may have been longer than a year, as apple's December statement admitting to it said they introduced it "last year"

  22. Re:Qualcomm's Quick Charge is against the standard on Why the Google Pixel 3 Charges Faster On a Pixel Stand Than Other Wireless Chargers (arstechnica.com) · · Score: 1

    But are they actually doing 10W Qi? My understanding is that they AREN'T using a 10W standard, but a 10W proprietary model. I'm not very familiar with this topic, but I'm looking up some 10W Anker chargers on amazon, and they seem to indicate that they have a 10 watt "Samsung" mode and a 5 watt "Standard mode".

  23. Is there even a wireless quick charge standard? on Why the Google Pixel 3 Charges Faster On a Pixel Stand Than Other Wireless Chargers (arstechnica.com) · · Score: 1

    DIsclaimer: I know (and care) very little about wireless charging, so I'm not very well informed on the subject.

    That said, I've been doing some reading about this, and from what I understand, the standard itself doesn't actually specify quick charging, so manufacturers have been left to invent their own method. Samsung created their method and lots of chargers were made to support it. Google also created their own. It sucks that they aren't compatible, but this is how almost every standard begin: lots of incompatible proprietary methods, and eventually one of them wins out and becomes the standard for all devices (except for apple devices).

  24. Re:Anyone else tired of "best camera yet"? on Google Pixel 3 and 3 XL Announced With Bigger Screens and Best Cameras Yet (theverge.com) · · Score: 0

    I wouldn't say they are garbage next to a 10 year old DSLR. They very well hold their own in many aspects, and their post processing does a damn good job...way better than what that DSLR is going to do. In fact a lot of the time they can do just as good a job as I can do with a DSLR photo in lightroom (and for HDR stuff, they seem to do better than what I can do in lightroom) without all the effort of the manually adjustments.

    Not to mention some of the features like the announced "top shot" seem very attractive to me. A large number of photos I take are all multiple attempts to get something timed just right, but that creates a whole bunch of "damn it, just missed it" attempts. Yeah you can do automatic multiple exposures, but then that means every time you take a picture you've got to delete 6 of the 7 shots. Googles solution here seems to be pretty attractive (at least from the demo...I'm eagerly awaiting some reviews)

    I'll also mention I've got probably close to $5k invested in my DSLR/lenses/flashes/filters/etc, but honestly about 95% of my photos these days are taken with my cell phone. I love the work I can do with my DSLR, but it's not convenient to have with me all the time. To carry on long hikes, or lug around when my 5 year old gets tired and whiny and needs to be carried, it's really just a pain in the ass. Same for taking on a bike ride, or into museums and other places that dont want you bringing in bags. They say the best camera is the one you have with you, and so I want the camera that I always have with me to be the best one it can be.

  25. Re:"Call Screen" is worthless, need "Call Harass" on Google Pixel 3 and 3 XL Announced With Bigger Screens and Best Cameras Yet (theverge.com) · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Call screen sounds nice and all but something I would actually use is an automated robot that would be super mean to the whoever was calling, or (it being Google and all) hack a robodialer to kill the servers it uses for the day at least, maybe calling the number back 10 thousand times or so on my behalf...

    No, we don't need it to be super mean. We need super polite and super "interested" in learning more. Whenever I get a call and have nothing better to do (maybe I'm in the middle of prepping dinner) I just sit there and string them along, sometimes for 10 or 20 minutes before the gig is finally up and they realize I'm just screwing with them. We need an automated system to do this for us. Tie up their resources and make their business less profitable