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User: Moblaster

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Comments · 191

  1. An interesting bit of trivia but why is this news? Companies like Amazon files thousands of patents annually. Most of them never make it into production. It doesn't mean they are "working" on it at all. In fact the idea seems largely impractical on many levels and is probably more defensive than real.

  2. Re:Just my opinion, but on Astronomer Finds Potential Furthest Object In Solar System · · Score: 2

    They know what they're doing.

    Farther McFarface was already taken.

    And farfarfarout.com was still available as of this morning.

  3. Re:Huge stretch on How Streaming Music Could Be Harming the Planet (bbc.com) · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Is this whole question a big troll?

    It takes thousands of times more energy to transport a CD from manufacturer to distribution center to consumer on the UPS/Amazon truck... or even more to store to consumer.

    And your CD player is hooked up to a big wifi system anyway. And often you are streaming on a portable device that uses a miniscule amount of electricity.

    What kind of broken carbon math is this?

  4. bad marketing on New Parents Complain Amazon Baby-Registry Ads Are Deceptive (wsj.com) · · Score: 5, Insightful

    if they were smarter they'd make them add-on bundle products, clearly marketed as such (perhaps w a special discount, as this would encourage gifters to add-on the products and get the new parents hooked on them)

    mainlining the sponsored products among parent-selected ones is very shortsighted and likely to lead to anger, because a registry should be a "trusted" information source

  5. The math question is concerned with a variation of a permutation known as a super permutation. Basically you could string together all of the x episodes in such a way that the individual x! permutations would be embedded within a larger string permuation.

    For example, 2 episodes could be viewed as separate permutations 12 or 21 (four episodes). But you could also watch them as 121.

    Similarly 3 episodes could be 123, 132, 213, 231, 312 and 321 (18 episodes). But you could also view them as a shorter string that includes all permutations: 123121321.

    The interesting mathematical issues is that the pattern to compute the length of the permutation that holds for permutation lengths 1 through 5 breaks down at length 6 (and for all others). So these proofs give a better answer for arbitrary length permutations beyond 5.

  6. Hold on -- a private company can be given the right to search somebody's home in Australia? They have literally been given the legal right bust into multiple private citizens' homes? WTF? Is this life imitating art or some kind of crazy distopian future?

  7. Re:$5 Wrench on Marshall Islands Warned Against Adopting Digital Currency (bbc.com) · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Someone at IMF must be scared of cryptos. Little old Marshall Islands with 50K population is that scary?

  8. Cost of Story on Ethereum Startup Vanishes After Seemingly Making $11, Leaves Message: 'Penis' (vice.com) · · Score: 5, Insightful

    So this Slashdot story about $11 prank... or "ICO"... basically will up chewing about $25,000 worth of time from its primarily tech/IT-related audience.

    Not to be a .... penis about editorial decisions, but I'm wondering how this was deemed either news for nerds or stuff that matters?

  9. Hey! I'm innocent!
    Pro net neutrality spam?
    Twas the other guy!

  10. HomePod Haiku on Apple Will Release Its $349 HomePod Speaker On February 9th (theverge.com) · · Score: 0

    You can't buy real friends.
    But lobotomized Siri's
    a close substitute.

  11. SaaS Haiku on Ask Slashdot: What Is Your View On Forced Subscription-Only Software? · · Score: 4, Funny

    If a had a nose,
    Iâ(TM)d gladly pay through it, twice.
    But my nose expired.

  12. Drunk Tesla Haiku on Tesla Owner Attempts Autopilot Defense During DUI Stop (arstechnica.com) · · Score: 1

    The law has caught up
    with Elon's autopilot?
    Passenger seat, bro.

  13. Linus Haiku on Linus Torvalds Calls Intel Patches 'Complete and Utter Garbage' (lkml.org) · · Score: 5, Funny

    Linus proclaims thus:
    This patch is a piece of shit.
    So what else is new?

  14. wordy on France Says 'Au Revoir' to the Word 'Smartphone' (smithsonianmag.com) · · Score: 5, Insightful

    i don't speak French but even I can figure out that's a big mealy mouthful... hard for six or seven syllables to come up with two... couldn't they even compromise with a more streamlined "multifonc" ?

  15. Re:Was I supposed to take that as a negative? on Apple Product Delays Have More Than Doubled Under Tim Cook's Watch, Says Report (wsj.com) · · Score: 0

    You worked on your first post for minutes. In contrast, I slaved for hours on this post #2. Do I get 5 points for "amazing" just because I produced a superior product? Or do you get 5 points for "insightful" with your crushing first-mover advantage? While I toil in obscurity?

  16. Glass half full, glass half empty... maybe you're just thinking about it the wrong way?

    Perhaps this "app" is really the kernel. Or maybe you should think about it that way. And the rest of your kernel, and whole damn computer, is wrapped around its little finger.

    There. Problem solved. Just a bit of topological thinking and you're good!

  17. haiku on Ask Slashdot: What Would an AI-Written Poem Look Like? · · Score: 5, Funny

    Kardashian trumps a trending meme like "covfefe" with one weird trick. Sad!

  18. Re: CPUs on Ask Slashdot: What's The Worst IT-Related Joke You've Ever Heard? · · Score: 5, Funny

    A QA Engineer walks into a bar. He orders a beer. He orders 0 beers. He orders 9999999999 beers. He orders -1 beers. He orders a lizard. He orders asldkfjinw. He orders....

  19. Human Error??? on Former Equifax CEO Blames Breach On One Individual Who Failed To Deploy Patch (techcrunch.com) · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Anyone who has worked with sensitive processes (esp computer security processes) knows that relying on one person for a mission-critical function is not a "human error" - it's a process failure. If this person's communication job was that essential, they should have had a team-based process in place with multiple individuals charged with making sure the process got executed, backed up by computerized records and nag alerts if not done. Seems like this "human error" would have happened if the person had gone on vacation, gotten fired, or went off their meds. That's not a human error. That's execs failing to make sure they build a resilient security process. Quarter billion in expenditure won't buy common sense, it seems.

  20. Re:This will be buried and never heard of again on New Antibody Attacks 99% of HIV Strains (bbc.com) · · Score: 1

    "we are past the Polio and Small Pox phases of medicine" Not following here... medicine is only getting more powerful and advanced. Medical science barely knew what bacteria were let alone viruses were when cures for these diseases were developed. Progress may appear incremental now but these diseases are being targeted at the microbiological level, which involves a whole new set of techniques. It looks incremental but the quantum leap of complete eradication of transmissible disease is around the corner, based on advanced techniques that were impossible even two decades ago. Might be a decade or two but soon it will effectively be impossible for transmissible diseases to escape the jaws of technological progress.

  21. Re:Money this, money that... on Computer Science Degrees Aren't Returning On Investment For Coders, Research Finds (theregister.co.uk) · · Score: 4, Funny

    I only get tired of explaining to traditionalist relatives who have engineering degrees why I'm called an "engineer" when I don't have an engineering degree. It's brutal. But not as nasty as the look I got from that damn chemist who took umbrage at my explanation of how I was creating biodiesel in my garage. My god, my nerve at being such an impudent auteur as to research the chemistry on the web and try it at home. The death state I got when I explained that any way to get energy into the reaction - heat, ultrasonic, microwave, catalytic assistance - made it more efficient... I'll never forget the evil eye cast upon me. I bite my thumb at that dude!

  22. Overthinking it. Pull the parachute.

  23. Metafeelings on Feeling Bad About Feeling Bad Can Make You Feel Worse (berkeley.edu) · · Score: 3, Funny

    This is why I suck at competitive Starcraft. No meta-game. But at least have a scientifically-validated excuse to tell wifey next time I disappoint her by not feeling disappointed about disappointing her, "hey! I got no meta-feelings!"

  24. Apparently Laurene has decided to skip buying a freaking island and is buying a freaking ocean instead.

  25. Re:Wait, is this deja-vu? on Physicists Have Created the Brightest Light Ever Recorded (vice.com) · · Score: 5, Informative

    In this experiment they are basically jamming up the valence shells with photon wavepacket energy - the valence shells do not have time to "discharge" the energy before getting hit again, so they get overloaded in a sense. The output photons combine the energies of the input photons allowing for various harmonic (double, triple etc) frequency (i.e. energy) of the incoming photons. Basically if you consider normal decay times for re-emission under normal (not-so-bright light flux conditions), if you can fire photons at an atom faster than the average decay (normal re-emission) time, you'll start to get these energy-combining effects. The "appearance" changes because the normal preservation of angular momentum in the output re-emission is also altered (along with the output energy) because it must be preserved as well, so you don't get re-emission at the regular angle anymore.