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  1. Re:#BlackLivesMatter on Using a Bomb Robot to Kill a Suspect Is an Unprecedented Shift in Policing (vice.com) · · Score: 3, Interesting

    You are drawing a false equality/similarity. The majority of police shooting are NOT directed at homicide suspects. So it would not be surprising to find that if one broke down the distributions of citizens killed by police to find a racial disparity in homicide suspects being killed and, as you point out, this wouldn't be surprising. However since the majority of police do not involve homicide suspects it is hard to say. It is even harder to say because the Republican controlled Congress has blocked funding to study police violence.

  2. Re:negligible power will be used on Bitcoin Could Consume As Much Electricity As Denmark By 2020 (boingboing.net) · · Score: 0

    Do you have numbers to back up your assertions? Are you comparing it to ALL aspects of "traditional currency?" According to wikipedia 350 MW is approximately 1% of ALL US power usage. That seems rather a lot to me to be going to something that has zero physical benefit.

  3. Re:Editors? on German Scientists Successfully Teleport Classical Information (upi.com) · · Score: 1

    Two wrongs do not make a right.

  4. ...without the transfer or matter of energy.

    Come on it is the first line of the summary and a glaring error editors.

  5. Re:I have a better idea on Anti-Terrorism Hypothetical: Bulk Scanning of Hosted Files? (justsecurity.org) · · Score: 1

    Not sure where to start. I assume, given the current news, you are referring to the Iranian 'peace' deal when you say:

    Maybe it's time to declare war on the countries harboring and funding these organizations instead of making 'peace' deals with them.

    Iran is not supporting ISIS and is, in fact, urging their allies to fight them.

    You go on to say:

    We no longer tolerate fundamentalist christians teaching 'creation' in place of science, nor allow them to trample women's reproductive rights.

    Again I must assume (you didn't specify) that you are referring to the USA which still has many states where creationism is taught in public schools and recently made exceptions for FOR PROFIT self described (not legally associated with any religion) corporations to deny woman coverage to basic reproductive health treatments at the insistence of their employer.

    I do not believe people are supporting giving "irrational muslim belief" any quarter. Are you implying that all muslim belief is irrational? What action do you believe would solve the current world issues? It seems that having a bunch of American soldiers on the ground does not generally result in a stable nation appearing. This is not a simple problem assuming you have the answers or even all the information without having dedicated your life to it is ignorant at best.

  6. Remove corporate taxes on Tim Cook Calls Apple's Tax Questions 'Political Crap' (cbsnews.com) · · Score: 1

    The US should give up and admit that it cannot effectively tax the the corporations that have grown from it and instead of taxing profits tax where the money flows to. That is remove capital gains tax as well because now all of that would count as normal income subject to the standard laws governing that. Generally individuals are far less able to get sweet heart tax laws passed making their tax burdens minuscule. So while some super wealthy individuals will still manage to avoid taxes as a general rule more taxes will be paid. This would also dramatically reduce our tax code, remove government subsidies (i.e. tax breaks) for specific businesses, and level the playing field for smaller business who have yet to have setup their own tax avoidance systems.

  7. Re:You can't tell who the responsible buyers are on GunTV Aims To Premier 24-Hour Shopping Channel For Firearms · · Score: 1

    If the NRA "sully supports purchase block do[sic] to mental illness" then why is there no national law to that effect?

  8. Re:time's almost run out, O'bummer! on GunTV Aims To Premier 24-Hour Shopping Channel For Firearms · · Score: 1

    A single party controls both the House and Senate of the United States, if there is a super majority of support for universal background checks why has no law been proposed?

  9. Re:Ah the right wing story progression on Young Climate Activists Sue Obama Over Climate Change Inaction (cnn.com) · · Score: 0

    I hope your kids enjoy the world you are willfully making for them. Have you talked to them about how your actions are contributing to their problems or are you just putting up straw men and actually believe that there is nothing to worry about?

  10. Re:Ah the right wing story progression on Young Climate Activists Sue Obama Over Climate Change Inaction (cnn.com) · · Score: 1

    That is all well and good. Just accept that you are doing something. You are actively choosing to continue the status quo. That is fine. That is the norm. That is what the vast majority of humanity is doing. What YOU are asking is that future generations pay for your unwillingness to find a solution to YOUR problems. You "can't stop driving" why? You are angry about spending YOUR money but you are requiring future generations to pay the debts you are incurring. Accept that your actions have consequences and face the reality of the modern world.

  11. Re:I feel you... on Ask Slashdot: Best Tablet In 2015? · · Score: 1

    Updating is required to maintain a secure device. I had had the device for just over a year when it updated. The change that Apple made was not the raise the price, they already have corned the market on over pricing their devices, but to make it that older devices do not offer functionality offered to newer devices. This is reasonable. If Google decides to push a software update to a device THEY are responsible for ensuring it works. Devices do not "degrade with upgrades" that is a contradiction of terms. A software update should not be pushed to a device that cannot handle it.

  12. Re:I feel you... on Ask Slashdot: Best Tablet In 2015? · · Score: 1

    You are essentially saying that he can fix the issues pushed onto the device by the developer, in this case Google. Why is that an acceptable "solution?" When Apple did this with the iPhone 3g people very annoyed (rightfully). I got a free upgrade from Apple after complaining about it repeatedly. I can't even find out who I WOULD contact with regards to my 2012 Nexus 7 being so slow. It is fine and daddy to say that a user can make their 3 year old device do amazing new things by rooting and installing other software; telling a user that they can fix issues pushed on them by the developer of software is not. This is one reason why Apple totally hampers older devices at the OS level (e.g. no multi tasking older devices that will get iOS 9).

  13. Re:How could it possibly "work" for 300M people? on Larry Lessig Reaches Funding Goal and Is Running For President · · Score: 1

    I think the "large welfare state[s]" are providing a minimum income to their citizenry. This has very much the same effect as a minimum wage in countries where the economy can handle either the high taxes or the increased costs of a higher minimum wage. The conclusions you draw from the two systems you are comparing do not follow from their forms of economy so much as their underlying economic base which existed before the socialization (sorry bad term but you get my drift) of Europe. Basically correlation does not equal causation.

  14. Re:Mods. The parent is not a troll. on California Bill Would Dramatically Limit Commercial Drones · · Score: 1

    Delivery drone need to be able to deal with undocumented realities. Having a camera or other 4pi sub-second map of the surrounding area is necessary to avoid collisions with: * other drones * birds * non-commercial air craft All of which operate in the discussed elevation range.

  15. Re:Big Mistake. on GitHub Desktop Launches To Replace Mac and Windows Apps · · Score: 1

    I am pretty sure there is no 3rd party interpretive layer in either Firefox nor Chrome. They are native apps.

  16. Re:Unlimited for one year on Starting Now At Netflix: Unlimited Maternity and Paternity Leave · · Score: 1

    Your two year old apparently didn't climb things. Three feet? That is nothing. That said I still count the first year as being far more draining than anything since.

  17. I know you are using, the now meaningless, quotes around "deadly force" but do tone down the hyperbole. While it seems to be an ill-conceived idea to empower corporations to retaliate against perceived attackers it is not "deadly" in any sense (unless of course it is some other stupid corp who placed life critical equipment on the internet).

  18. Re:Smart on Tesla Presses Its Case On Fuel Standards · · Score: 2

    You are giving a single data point. Perhaps you should provide a data point further in the past to at least give a slope to your assertion? Here let me help. The effective tax rate on the top 1% has been falling since 1995 while for everyone else it is at a historic low. However it is important to keep in mind that the percent of wealth owned by that 1% has increased dramatically: the ratio of 50th to 99th wealth has gone from 0.024 in 1995 to 0.01 in 2013. In particular the 50% wealth level has DROPPED while the 99% wealth level has almost doubled.

  19. Re:Nobody is asking them to condone on Two Years Later, White House Responds To 'Pardon Edward Snowden' Petition · · Score: 1

    The petition was to pardon Snowden, not to "drop the issue." Forgiving an offense and condoning an action are not the same but they are close enough that the kheldan's point remains.

  20. Re:Even U238 isn't radioactive. on Boeing Patents an Engine Run By Laser-Generated Fusion Explosions · · Score: 1

    I think you misread something. Pu239 synthesis doesn't include beta capture. U239 is unstable and EMITTS a beta similarly for Np239. Beta (electron) capture would lead to a lower atomic number:
    P+e^- = N+\nu_e
    There used to be a cool webpage where you could traverse all the isotopes and see how they were produced but I can't seem to find it now.

  21. Re:Harbingers? or just early adopters? on Researchers Study "Harbingers of Failure," Consumers Who Habitually Pick Losers · · Score: 1

    This is easily testable with whatever dataset they used to do the research. * Come up with a hypothesis based on a subset of your data * Test your hypothesis on the remaining data It seems like they had bunch of data so they could have selected data before the last N choices were made them see how their model predicts what the "Harbingers" would say or not.

  22. Re:Why can't this be the law everywhere? on Japanese Court Orders Google To Delete Past Reports Of Man's Molestation Arrest · · Score: 1

    I think that asking a private company (Google) to do the job of the State, keeping records private, is the wrong course of action. If your goal is to have arrest records be private then make the SOURCE of Google's search results remove them, e.g. the state database or historical news reports. It is NOT Google's job to hide these things it is the State's job to make these data private. Now if Google is HOSTING these data then they can be held responsible to remove the, otherwise the State should just go after the sources.

  23. Re:I don't see the logic here on Rocket Labs Picks New Zealand For Its Launch Site · · Score: 1

    You can also add to this that launching with the direction of rotation reduces your fuel cost to get into orbit. The effect is diminished at latitudes further from the equator.

  24. Re:the non-empirical research dollar on Have Some Physicists Abandoned the Empirical Method? · · Score: 1

    You do realize that one reason for the current state of affairs is the complete lack of ability to test ANY new theory? The LHC was really only designed to see what we expected to see. If we don't see some things that will be great but it will mean that the Standard Model is pretty much wrong. But we won't be able to test anything else.

    It is naive to believe that everything in the world can be optimized my some market solution. If some group isn't producing results it is not always the case that reducing their funding will produce better results (e.g. education and basic science). We have trained many great theoretical physicists in the past 30 years but have invested very little in experiments that are likely to produce that could falsify any modern theory.

  25. Citation? on Hacked Emails Reveal Russian Plans To Obtain Sensitive Western Tech · · Score: 3, Insightful

    That is pretty damning. Do you have an references that one could read up on the exact situation to which you are referring?