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User: Trepidity

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  1. Also reminds me of the Coca-Cola image generator that had a big blacklist of words you couldn't put in the captions. Here the AI is writing the captions, but seems a similar blacklist idea.

  2. Re:"...and the support of a solid OpenStack partne on Report Finds OpenStack Still Being Debated In The Industry (sdtimes.com) · · Score: 4, Funny

    Report from consultancy recommends enterprises adopt best practices by hiring best-practice consultants.

  3. The airplane aisle, or what?

  4. there's something like that for Mechanical Turk on A Phone App Helps Day Laborers Attack Wage Theft (nytimes.com) · · Score: 4, Informative

    There was a rash of people submitting jobs to Mechanical Turk and then not paying anyone. The person paying can rate work as unacceptable and not pay, and there's no real oversight if they just do that all the time (and Amazon doesn't police this at all, or even provide a reputation mechanism). So some academics put together a third-party site, Turkopticon, that people use to rate jobs, payers, etc., which has made it a lot easier to avoid the people on the site who won't pay. Seems like a good idea to extend it to "the real world".

  5. Re: So what type of Windows PC do you need. on Oculus Founder: Rift Will Come To Mac If Apple "Ever Releases a Good Computer" (arstechnica.com) · · Score: 2

    True, that's not far off. I think I last installed Linux in 2008. At the time, suspend/resume was very flaky, which was kind of a dealbreaker for a laptop. (It would often appear to work, but then various things would be broken in mysterious ways after resume.) It could well be reliable by now. But still, lots of Unixy people use OSX on their laptops, even when their preferred work environment on a VPS or remote server is Linux.

  6. Re:So what type of Windows PC do you need. on Oculus Founder: Rift Will Come To Mac If Apple "Ever Releases a Good Computer" (arstechnica.com) · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I see them pretty commonly in tech. Some people go all-out and run Linux or a BSD on their laptop, but for those who don't want to deal with the hardware-support issues, OSX is often the next choice.

  7. not binding, but still useful on Judge Favors Apple In iPhone Unlocking Case In New York (google.com) · · Score: 4, Informative

    When courts are encountering an issue that's been decided before in another court, they often at least consider the other court's rationale, even if it's not binding precedent for them. That's termed "persuasive precedent". It's especially useful when several decisions going the same way pile up; then a party in a subsequent case can say, "every previous court to consider this issue has decided [x]", putting the onus on the other side to explain why the case here should go differently.

  8. Re:Government knows best! on IRS Taxpayer Data Theft Seven Times Larger Than Originally Thought (cnn.com) · · Score: 2

    In my case I don't really have a choice of either unless I quit my job, since my employer chooses them. The pension fund is particularly problematic because even if I quit my job, I couldn't move my investments to another manager for at least 5 years, when everything vests, so I'm stuck with this one for a while (and they aren't good at data protection). So yes, there is a sequence of choices that could lead to avoiding them, but they're a lot of choices awkwardly tied together with cross-linked contracts and various constraints. Which is also a little bit like how government works: I can avoid governments by not living in their jurisdiction, but there are a lot of cross-linked complications. With both, the difficulty gets higher as the entity gets bigger, with small businesses and municipal governments the easiest to say no to.

  9. Re:Government knows best! on IRS Taxpayer Data Theft Seven Times Larger Than Originally Thought (cnn.com) · · Score: 1

    I'm all for abolishing prisons too, but I don't see how that's very relevant to a discussion of data privacy. But hey, if an anti-prison candidate like Angela Davis runs for president, no objections from me.

  10. Re:Government knows best! on IRS Taxpayer Data Theft Seven Times Larger Than Originally Thought (cnn.com) · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Yeah, like I can realistically stop doing business with my health-insurance company or the company that invests my pension fund.

  11. Re:The next few minutes? on A New Algorithm Could Protect Ships From 'Rogue Waves' (cio.com) · · Score: 4, Informative

    Depends on the wave and the ship, but just turning the ship so it faces directly into the wave can be sufficient to greatly mitigate damage in a lot of cases. Being hit by an unexpected large wave broadside is typically worse than hitting it head-on, especially by reducing the risk of capsizing.

    That's actually been successfully done at least once even with current technology: the captain of a cruise ship in 1998 spotted a 90-foot (27-meter) rogue wave on radar, and turned the ship to face it head-on, avoiding serious damage.

  12. Re:Former Level3 employee here on Google Is Lighting Up Dark Fiber All Over the Country (vice.com) · · Score: 3, Informative

    Not sure if it's the story you were thinking of, but there was a little bit of discussion in the tech press/blogs in 2005 in response to someone noticing that Google had put out a job posting for a "strategic negotiator" with experience in "identification, selection, and negotiation of dark fiber contracts both in metropolitan areas and over long distances as part of development of a global backbone network". That led to a lot of speculation over what precisely Google was planning to do.

  13. Re:Why the steep climb on Google, Yahoo Cry About Ad-Blocking (cnbc.com) · · Score: 2

    Also the company this article mentions, Shine, which provides carrier-level mobile ad blocking. Their product isn't a browser extension like uBlock Origin, it's more of an ad-blocking proxy server that they're currently rolling out on the Three mobile network. Advertisers are particularly annoyed about that because it rolls out to everyone, even the non-tech-savvy, vs. people having to install browser extensions.

  14. Re:God forbid we compromise their privacy on Refugees Rely On Biometrics To Receive Aid, Even As Privacy Concerns Loom (dailydot.com) · · Score: 2

    This doesn't seem aimed at wrongdoing by refugees (terrorism-related or otherwise), but rather at locals trying to get free food, with refugee biometrics/privacy being sort of collateral damage. The UNHCR has a database of refugees in Jordan (for example), and wants to use biometric data to tell them apart from local, non-refugee Jordanians, so that only the refugees can get food aid.

    I can see why they want that for ease of bookkeeping (harder to forge biometrics than refugee papers, etc.), but this is just a bookkeeping exercise aimed at cost efficiency.

  15. Re:When iphones are criminalized on N. Carolina Senator Drafting Bill To Criminalize Apple's Refusal To Aid Decryption (arstechnica.com) · · Score: 2

    but you repeat yourself

  16. how about other third-party tracking? on France Launches Second Salvo Against Facebook (liberation.fr) · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Knowing nothing about French law, is there anything Facebook-specific that led to this ruling? Is there a reason it wouldn't apply to other third-party tracking? For example Doubleclick and those kinds of networks track me across the web even if I've never signed up for an account with them or otherwise accepted their ToS.

  17. Re: Too late on SourceForge Eliminates DevShare Program (sourceforge.net) · · Score: 1

    Meanwhile, the venture capitalists have realized they can play all these sides in the culture wars just fine. Startup run by a brogrammer? Startup run by a social-justice activist? VC doesn't care either way, probably has both kinds in their portfolio.

  18. more specifically, a clustering algorithm on Wolves Howl In Different 'Dialects,' Machine Learning Finds (vice.com) · · Score: 2

    I guess anything but trivial clustering algorithms are "machine learning", but rather than "using machine learning" it'd be more straightforward to describe them as having "applied a clustering algorithm" to see if calls can be grouped into, well, different clusters. That is an idea that's been floating around biology now and then, with a lot of work on clustering bird calls especially.

  19. Re:A Joke on Wolves Howl In Different 'Dialects,' Machine Learning Finds (vice.com) · · Score: 1

    It's a good thing your subject line wasn't A Good Joke...

  20. Re:can't the state do something about this? on Sen. Blumenthal Demands Lifting of IT 'Gag' Order (computerworld.com) · · Score: 1

    It depends on the state and how they structure the sector, but they often have more leverage over utility companies than they would over a normal company. Utility companies typically have contracts with the state or with the state's utility districts, which at least in principle they could attach various requirements to.

  21. can't the state do something about this? on Sen. Blumenthal Demands Lifting of IT 'Gag' Order (computerworld.com) · · Score: 2

    It's a state-regulated energy company. Is the DoJ really necessary here? Can't the state introduce some regulations about how its energy companies operate, e.g. regarding outsourcing or gag agreements?

  22. depends on what you're looking for on Ask Slashdot: Time To Get Into Crypto-currency? If So, Which? · · Score: 4, Interesting

    For the short/medium-term future Bitcoin is really the only option if you want a cryptocurrency that you have any hope of using like a currency, to you know, exchange value with other people. The others, aka "altcoins", are mostly still at the stage of tech demos or niche experiments. Which can be fine if you find investigating that scene to be interesting as a hobby.

  23. Re:Why? on Free State Project Reaches Goal of 20,000 Signups (freestateproject.org) · · Score: 3, Informative

    The far southeast of the state is basically Boston exurbs, and there's a bunch of engineer types who live there and commute in to the Boston area. Although the rest of New Hampshire barely considers those people to be part of the state.

  24. Re:make nobeta the default on Ask Slashdot: How Can We Improve Slashdot? · · Score: 1

    According to this article, as of 2011, there were a little over 200 users with 3-digit UIDs who had posted in the past year (i.e. 2010-2011). Not too bad a percentage considering those accounts would all have been about 14 years old by that point. Wonder what it is now. Probably a bit lower.

  25. Re:There's no doubt that... on Ask Slashdot: How Can We Improve Slashdot? · · Score: 1

    You could at least mitigate #2 a bit with better #1, especially by running fewer general-interest political articles. Sure, tech news often implicates politics, and don't avoid those stories. But stuff like the recent Trump stories (e.g., e.g.) is general election-season news with only a very thin tech veneer.