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User: Trepidity

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  1. Re:Uber is quite retarded on Berlin Bans Car Service Uber · · Score: 3, Informative

    If you have personal auto insurance and you drive the vehicle commercially, the insurance will not pay out: driving commercially violates the terms of personal auto insurance, so you voided the policy. So you are uninsured.in that case, despite claiming to be insured. If you drive commercially, you need commercial auto insurance to actually have a policy that is valid.

  2. Re:Uber is quite retarded on Berlin Bans Car Service Uber · · Score: 2

    No, this is precisely about accountability. It's not a new problem either: London invented this solution in response to this problem ~350 years ago. In the 17th century, there were many hackney carriages driven by unscrupulous drivers, who had no assets you could go after to pay for damages they caused through their rash behavior.

    Here are two solutions:

    1. Enforce a skill floor on drivers, so the worst cannot drive at all.

    2. Require the rest of the drivers to carry insurance, so that any damages they cause to a third party may be assured coverage.

  3. Re:Average people just don't like hipsters. on Berlin Bans Car Service Uber · · Score: 2

    Sounds like Webvan.

  4. Re:Average people just don't like hipsters. on Berlin Bans Car Service Uber · · Score: 0

    No real person has ever heard of "Lyft".

  5. Re: Uber is quite retarded on Berlin Bans Car Service Uber · · Score: 5, Insightful

    No, they haven't. If Uber was willing to themselves shoulder any liability, that would be one thing. But they claim that individual drivers are responsible for any liability that may arise in an accident, and that Uber is not responsible. Of course, conveniently enough, the average driver nowhere near enough assets to pay out any liability claim in the case where they caused an accident. That is precisely why insurance is required.

  6. seems to be the trend on DARPA Uses Preteen Gamers To Beta Test Tomorrow's Military Software · · Score: 1

    NSF has been shifting its funding away from CS research, and DARPA has been moving a bigger proportion of its funding from basic research to near-term applied research. As a result, there are more and more strings attached to research-grant money. Some kind of "dual-use" thing where you're doing the research you want to do, which DARPA also happens to be able to repurpose for its own uses, is if anything the best case. It's not that uncommon to just straight be working on whatever DARPA wants done.

  7. Re:Screwed... on California May Waive Environmental Rules For Tesla · · Score: 1

    If you don't like these legal mechanisms, get rid of them.

    Did you read this thread? I am arguing for that explicitly, which is what started this thread! Instead of jumping onto you ideological soapbox right away, why not learn to read?

    California has a problem with red tape and NIMBYism. Telsa's fear of locating in California is most likely, I am arguing, due to that. HSR is just an example that the problem is so bad that even the government itself is running into it, so no wonder Tesla is scared of building anything there. Whether HSR is good as a policy reason or not is irrelevant to this discussion. The fact that the people using red tape and NIMBYism happen to agree with you politically on this issue doesn't make them any less disgusting fucks; they're just as bad as any other NIMBY asshole.

  8. Re:Screwed... on California May Waive Environmental Rules For Tesla · · Score: 4, Informative

    There are plenty of legitimate reasons you could oppose the HSR system, but tying it up in red tape and NIMBY lawsuits is not one of them, and that's one of the big things it's run into. I'm just using it as an example of how the red-tape and NIMBY-lawsuit problem is so bad in California that even California's own infrastructure projects get snagged in it.

  9. Re:My local library on Why the Public Library Beats Amazon · · Score: 3, Informative

    You can get academic journal articles in many libraries, which can help independent researchers, autodidacts, or even just particularly interested people. Obviously a local branch serving primarily non-researchers won't have a huge selection of journals on the shelves, but many do have access to academic library material via partnerships, if you want those materials. For individual articles, sometimes they'll even just get you a PDF scan (if local policy/law permits).

    Depends on the library systems of course, but I've used two systems that are like that. The Danish public libraries have access to the entire national university system's holdings via loans and scans, and it works very nicely. Now you might think that's something that only happens in Socialist Scandinavia, but another place that does that is, oddly enough, Texas: through the TexShare program, anyone holding a public library card can visit most academic libraries in-person, or access electronic databases remotely.

  10. Re:Libraries are one thing Amazon is not on Why the Public Library Beats Amazon · · Score: 1

    Yeah, I don't know why you'd take the bus when the metro is so much faster.

  11. Re:Screwed... on California May Waive Environmental Rules For Tesla · · Score: 5, Informative

    Somewhat true, but the regulations really could use an overhaul in the efficiency department. I'm fine with high standards, but if the standard is met, it should be possible to get approval in a reasonable amount of time without spending an inordinate amount of money on the process, and with a reasonable degree of finality (rather than having a million different ways to reopen a court challenge). California's patchwork of regulations is kind of a mess in that department, which is even causing problems for the state itself; the high-speed rail plan has been mired in the process and lawsuits over the process that state law permits a very wide range of people to file. (Granted, it's not all CA law that's the problem in that case; there are also people trying to slow down the process using federal agencies and lawsuits.)

  12. Re:Its better to contribute to an existing project on Ask Slashdot: Corporate Open Source Policy? · · Score: 1

    Quite often the project ends up with zero adoption because its not that interesting and often there's a bunch of existing projects with already built communities that are doing more or less the same thing. Or the focus is so narrow that it solves nobody's problem.

    And those are the better ones! The really bad open-source dumps don't even really build or work outside the original company's complex production environment, and don't have any documentation for how to set up such an environment.

  13. Re:Hmmm ... what? on DEFCON's Latest Challenge: Hacking Altruism · · Score: 1

    Not to worry, lots of other styles in attendance as well. Wikipedia only has one photo of attendees, and it happens to be this one.

  14. Re:Snowden's comments at odds with his actions on Snowden: NSA Working On Autonomous Cyberwarfare Bot · · Score: 1

    What does it have to do with his generation (born 1983, so I guess borderline Millennial)? People have been doing similar things for at least the two generations prior to his. Did you forget the '60s?

  15. Re:Quit whaling on Jimmy on Wikipedia Gets Critical Reception from UK Press at Wikimania 2014 · · Score: 1

    Weird, I've never run into that.

  16. Re:Quit whaling on Jimmy on Wikipedia Gets Critical Reception from UK Press at Wikimania 2014 · · Score: 2

    I keep hearing that editing Wikipedia is terrible, but I edit now and then, and somehow I haven't run into it. Maybe I should edit Israel-Palestine articles or something to see a more heated area. In archaeology (which is what I mostly write about) people seem nice.

  17. Re:Quit whaling on Jimmy on Wikipedia Gets Critical Reception from UK Press at Wikimania 2014 · · Score: 4, Informative

    The guy who wrote the linked article (Andreas Kolbe) is legit. He contributes quite a bit to Wikipedia and I believe is interested in making it better. He's also critical of many aspects of it, but not trollishly so.

    Much of the rest of Wikipediocracy is indeed filled with unsavory characters who're angry they weren't allowed to push various agendas on Wikipedia, though. What seems to have kicked it off initially, among other things, was one of its co-founders getting banned because he tried to expand his linkfarm business into Wikipedia.

  18. quibble on usernames on Wikipedia Gets Critical Reception from UK Press at Wikimania 2014 · · Score: 1

    Recall here that in the English Wikipedia, a company employee who registers a User:AcmeLtd. account and then proceeds to edit the Acme Ltd. article is instantaneously blocked for violating the user name policy, and politely asked to come back with another account carrying some innocuous name like RedRider12.

    Although I think this policy doesn't make a lot of sense even as it is, it's not quite that strict. The English Wikipedia doesn't have a policy against company names in usernames, but against shared "corporate" usernames not run by an individual. So you can't have an official "corporate account". You can however you use corporate names in your individual username, if you want to identify both yourself and your affiliation. In that case the suggestion is to pick a username that has both the organization name and some individual identifier, like User:AcmeLtdJohn or User:John@AcmeLtd. See here. The goal seems to be to ensure that accounts are operated by individuals rather than by press offices. Although I'm not sure policing the actual name is a particularly effective a way of enforcing that.

  19. Re:Tech Rivalry? on The Fiercest Rivalry In Tech: Uber vs. Lyft · · Score: 2

    Yes, thinking of Uber and Lyft as taxi businesses rather than tech businesses makes it a lot clearer what's going on. The taxi business has long been shady, and it still is even when the taxi company has an app.

  20. Re:Quit COMPLAINING about Comcast and buy them out on Comcast Drops Spurious Fees When Customer Reveals Recording · · Score: 2

    Gas, electricity, etc. are typically regulated monopolies though, while Comcast isn't. A company like Georgia Power can't raise its rates without legislative permission, while Comcast can set its rates to whatever it wants.

  21. Re:Legal pemission? THEY GIVE IT! on Comcast Drops Spurious Fees When Customer Reveals Recording · · Score: 1

    Generally no; them providing notice to you that they're recording isn't the same as you providing notice to them that you're also recording.

  22. Re:EIGHT weeks??? Nukes need to be more modular. on Gas Cooled Reactors Shut Down In UK · · Score: 1

    1983 was over thirty years ago, just for the record :)

  23. Re:why? on Geneticists Decry Book On Race and Evolution · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I actually have studied it; some of my colleagues work directly in this area. It's a fairly big interest here in Scandinavia, because some populations can be identified with relative genetic stability over significant periods of time, which makes some kinds of studies easier. Iceland has particularly good records and genetic isolation, but much can also be done in other parts of Scandinavia. And it is quite difficult to correlate societal changes with genetic changes even with these detailed records. For example the major shifts in Scandinavian society from warlordish violent societies to peaceful egalitarian societies don't appear to be related to genetic shifts.

  24. Re:why? on Geneticists Decry Book On Race and Evolution · · Score: 4, Interesting

    and those traits which are successful in a specific society will then go on to build the society that those traits are best adapted to. like a feedback loop.

    The evidence for this is actually pretty inconclusive, which is where some of the disagreement stems. It's easy to hypothesize this, but hard to prove it. In particular, many evolutionary biologists are skeptical that historical-timescale social changes and changes in genetic makeup are closely tied.

  25. I don't get the point of this site on John McAfee Airs His Beefs About Privacy In Def Con Surprise Talk · · Score: 1

    You can complain about literally anything? So it's the superset of all reviews sites/forums on the internet? How accurate do you expect the results to be?