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User: russotto

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  1. Re:I know this isn't politically correct on UK 'Faces Build-up of Plastic Waste' (bbc.com) · · Score: 3, Informative

    I read that fish in the oceans are eating plastics. They must want it, so why not just feed the plastics to the fish?

    Study retracted.

  2. Re:AKA Censorship on Call For Tech Giants To Face Taxes Over Extremist Content (bbc.com) · · Score: 1

    He was also a fan of hate speech. Had there been laws against it back then his rise to power and WW2 may have been curtailed.

    The Weimar government was indeed worried about the nascent NSDAP. So worried that the army sent one of their intelligence-branch corporals to infiltrate it. And so he did. Too bad that corporal was Literally Hitler.

    What about Trump's banning the use of certain terms such as 'diversity', 'vulnerable', and 'evidence-based'.

    He didn't. "Ban" was part of style guide instituted by career bureaucrats, not Trump administration appointees.

  3. Re:But is it right to do this? on Ask Slashdot: Has Technology Created A Monster? (codinghorror.com) · · Score: 1

    And then there are all those businesses that provide services to all those truck drivers. When the trucks stop only for (automated) refueling an entire business sector will die.

    Won't someone think of the lot lizards?

  4. Re:Frustrating from several angles .... on How A Civilian Drone Crashed Into the US Army's Helicopter (arstechnica.com) · · Score: 1

    That distance is five miles. You're within five miles of the nearest airport? I drive past one any time I go anyplace, pretty much, and yet I'm not within five miles of it. I'm just outside

    I'm within 5 miles of about 13 airports. See, airport doesn't include just the places with the control towers. It also includes uncontrolled strips, and any place anyone's designated as a place to land a helicopter, which is not only the local hospitals but a few sports fields. The FAA claims I'm required to notify each of them every time I fly (and the FAA database does not include contact information). Conclusion: the FAA doesn't want me to fly. Too bad, I don't work for nothing; I do expect to be able to engage in enjoyable activities now and then.

  5. Re:All drones should be required to have transpond on How A Civilian Drone Crashed Into the US Army's Helicopter (arstechnica.com) · · Score: 1

    I know it is burdensome

    The word you are looking for is "prohibitive". Look, if you want to argue for banning model aircraft, argue for banning model aircraft. Pretending a transponder regulation is some reasonable common-sense regulation when it amounts to prohibition is dishonest.

    Perhaps the cost of the transponders will come down if all drones must have them.

    And perhaps the check really is in the mail.

  6. More than half of the tech employees will be from sales, marketing, or management rather than the actual technical people.

  7. Re:All drones should be required to have transpond on How A Civilian Drone Crashed Into the US Army's Helicopter (arstechnica.com) · · Score: 2

    Spotted the FAA lackey. If I have to put a $1500 transponder and a $600 GPS (all FAA approved, remember), each weighing a few ounces, plus the electrical system to support them, in an model aircraft which costs under $1000 and weighs about a pound, I might as well give it up. Especially since I have several such models. Obviously that's what the FAA wants; they don't want anything in the airspace (including an inch off the ground) not flown by a Real Pilot with thousands of hours of instruction and medical exams and is impractical unless you're independently wealthy or do it for a living. Especially since once you have the license, anything the FAA says goes or they pull your license, regardless of what the actual law says.

    Fortunately the FAA doesn't have enough enforcement officers to chase down all the model aircraft users.

  8. Re:Obvious Solution on How A Civilian Drone Crashed Into the US Army's Helicopter (arstechnica.com) · · Score: 1

    Pilots aren't random civilians. They're FAA lackeys (have to be, or they lose their license).

  9. Re:Might have been nice if the summary explained.. on Hitler Quote Controversy In the BSD Community · · Score: 1

    Yeah, they went after anything with "Hitler" in it, regardless if it was actually a Hitler quote. The Starship Troopers version is

    Anyone who clings to the historically untrue - and thoroughly immoral - doctrine 'that violence never settles anything' I would advise to conjure up the ghosts of Napoleon Bonaparte and of the Duke of Wellington and let them debate it. The ghost of Hitler could referee, and the jury might well be the Dodo, the Great Auk and the Passenger Pigeon. Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Breeds that forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and freedom.

    I don't know where the fortune file version comes from; maybe the framing of "Expanded Universe" or "The Notebooks of Lazarus Long"

  10. Re:Sure.... on Foreign Students Have Begun To Shun the United States (axios.com) · · Score: 1

    Sorry, but Frederich Trump was never deported from the US, for running a brothel or anything else. He was deported from Bavaria, but he wasn't an immigrant there.

  11. No, and their Saudi Arabian patron Prince Alwaleed bin Talal is in trouble at home.

  12. Re:"Not possible to be fair" on The US Is Now the Only Country In the World To Reject the Paris Climate Deal · · Score: 1

    Not signing up for the obligations of nobility until I get the actual patent of nobility. And the US is forbidden from issuing such.

  13. You want self driving cars? on US Consumer Groups Warn 'Robot Car Bill' Threatens Safety (consumerreports.org) · · Score: 1

    You're going to need laws like this. Because it's just not going to be possible to make self-driving cars under a regulatory system designed for human-driven cars. Or indeed under any "mature" regulatory system (that is, one that has managed to fix the industry in question in place). It would be like taking today's regulatory system and insisting Ford follow it for his first Model A.

    Personally, I'm not a fan of self-driving cars, so by all means oppose this law.

  14. Right now, you're probably right. But when groups of malcontents are allowed to fester unchecked, they eventually cross the line from being bitter to being violent... and that's when the EU approach suddenly looks better.

    Except that it doesn't. Everyone's favorite example got his start with the NSDAP when the Army assigned him to infiltrate that group of malcontents.

    So far as I know, nobody has figured out how to balance the two concerns in a way that makes everyone (or even most people) happy.

    There is no balance; suppression is an altogether losing proposition.

  15. Won't get wide acceptance on An Intelligent Speed Bump Uses Non-Newtonian Liquid (businessinsider.com) · · Score: 2, Insightful

    It's going to cost too much and not be durable enough. Regular speed bumps are extremely cheap and made of asphalt; slightly fancier ones are cheap and made of rubber and metal.

    Also, if it doesn't hinder slow drivers, the people installing them won't be satisfied. Speed bumps are a tool installed by hateful people to make driving suck more; reducing the suck defeats the purpose.

  16. The more recent cycle of retreating glaciation started over 20,000 years ago and was largely over by the Holocene Climatic Optimum 5,000-9,000 years ago. Since then temperatures have generally been declining and glaciers growing ... until recently when anthropogenic global warming has taken over.

    Well thank Man for staving off the ice age!

  17. Re:Gab does ban some content on Google Explains Why It Banned the App For Gab, a Right-Wing Twitter Rival (arstechnica.com) · · Score: 1

    Except I'm left wing and I've followed the Soros / Clinton led criminalisation of the DNC, the rise of Antifa and the MSM complicity. I support the ACLU and Gab, not lying, pro-censorship, anti-American retards.

    Nope, you're alt-right with the rest of us. And Noam Chomsky. Everyone's alt-right now.

  18. Re: Because they've abandoned their claimed princi on Google Explains Why It Banned the App For Gab, a Right-Wing Twitter Rival (arstechnica.com) · · Score: 4, Interesting

    So you say, I say that's the path to evil. They are evil thoughts, encourage evil and the acts of evil people. I say we don't want vulnerable people and the young to fall under the sway of these evil people who are trying to turn society on each other

    You are the moral successor of the killers of Socrates.

  19. Because they've abandoned their claimed principles on Google Explains Why It Banned the App For Gab, a Right-Wing Twitter Rival (arstechnica.com) · · Score: 5, Insightful

    They can explain all they want, but the Google that claimed "A free and open world depends on a free and open Internet." cannot without contradiction ban an app from its store for the crime of _not censoring its users sufficiently_.

  20. Re:"While this is exciting news" on New Work Suggests That P Is Not Equal To NP (arxiv.org) · · Score: 1

    There is no well-known problem that has like a O(n^10) as the best known algorithm.

    Primality testing is pretty close, at O(n^7.5) (where n is number of bits).

  21. Limited item selection on Amazon Adds 'Instant Pickup Points' In US Brick-And-Mortar Push (reuters.com) · · Score: 0

    For instance, at Berkeley all you can get are gas masks, black bandanas, "Bash The Fash" bumper stickers, and baseball bats.

  22. Re: DNW on The 2017 Hugo Awards (thehugoawards.org) · · Score: 1

    I do believe that is just how I would describe Bujold's works.

    Equality, justice, trans-alien rights, and minorities? Her protagonists are aristocrats, one from an egalitarian place which attempts to brainwash her into returning after she leaves. Justice isn't absent, but is in rather short supply. Aliens are absent (unless you count the highly genetically modified Cetagandan haut, who are antagonists); there are transgender characters but the only one given much treatment changes her sex only so she can run for office. And mostly that's a setup for a comic scene involving Ivan. Minorities; well, there's a Greek minority on Barrayar not given much treatment. And the Komarrans, who one of the protagonists ground under his heel.... for what are presented as good reasons.

  23. Re:He still doesn't understand why he was fired. on James Damore Explains Why He Was Fired By Google (wsj.com) · · Score: 1

    How could any female employee work with this man

    The same way a male employee can work with people who claim the male-female disparity is due to the men in tech being "emotionally stunted infants" who drive all the men away.

  24. Re:Why Damore is wrong on James Damore Explains Why He Was Fired By Google (wsj.com) · · Score: 1

    The position that 100% gender disparity in employment is due to discrimination and active discrimination is the reason women aren't at parity in Google engineering is in fact a very commonly and loudly proclaimed one at Google. And advocating for it in the strongest terms possible while casting aspersions on white male Googles for doing all this discrimination is in no way threatening to your job security there, so it is apparently a position approved by management.

    That is the context in which Damore wrote his memo.

  25. Re:You got fired... on James Damore Explains Why He Was Fired By Google (wsj.com) · · Score: 1

    Ignoring that in particular, software is drastically non-diverse *even compared to other STEM fields* by a huge margin.

    It's about on par with engineering as a whole.

    Ignoring that the possible biological link to "thing based" interest doesn't necessarily translate into disinterest in computers (computer science, prior to the 1970's, was predominantly female).

    Certainly not. In 1967, 11% of Computer Science majors were female. It's certainly true that programming was a female dominated field when six women were recruited for the ENIAC project during WWII, but that's a rather special case.