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User: smallfries

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  1. Re:Is MojoKid shilling for HotHardware allowed by on A Look At GTA V PC Performance and Image Quality At 4K · · Score: 1

    Unless things have changed the editors used to mash together submissions. If there were a range of submissions on one topic (GTA V in 4k), then the submission text would get rewritten to include links to most of the sites that you list. If it was a more esoteric story then the submission from one person would be used raw.

    Performance figures for one resolution in one game is a bit lightweight and sketchy. Combination of nobody else cared and a slow news day? Never attribute malice to the actions of slashdot editors that can be explained by simple incompetence.

  2. Re:How do you program a quantum computer? on Are We Entering a "Golden Age of Quantum Computing Research"? · · Score: 1

    There is a small typo in there, you can't close that kind of loop with "next i", although you'll find that "another i" may work in some way.

  3. Re:Sociopath on John Urschel: The 300 Pound Mathematician Who Hits People For a Living · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This just shows that you don't know what the word means. I've know a couple of real sociopaths over a lifetime, and they were mean, manipulative, vindictive arseholes. One thing that they were not, was violent. They preferred to destroy people in more lasting and important ways than a few bruises. The closest everyday concept that mcuttatches the condition is evil.

    Most blokes like burning off steam though. Not all of them, some are more shy retiring delicate types such as yourself. But for most men, regardless of whether they end up in the ivory towers of academia or cutting blocks in a yard, physical contact is normal. Success tends to correlate with the ability to control it and project it on demand. That's why we see sports as being a good outlet for it. I've known surprising number of martial artists in academia, they were all very straight forward about why they did it: they like punching things.

  4. Re:Money for nothing, chicks for free.... on Ask Slashdot: How To Own the Rights To Software Developed At Work? · · Score: 1

    He's a sharpshooter. Got upper management written all over him.

  5. Re:How do you pee? on USBKill Transforms a Thumb Drive Into an "Anti-Forensic" Device · · Score: 1

    So given what it does... You just go

  6. Re:Deadmans Switch on USBKill Transforms a Thumb Drive Into an "Anti-Forensic" Device · · Score: 4, Informative

    No. A deadman' switch is an idea that has been around in analogue fail-safe systems for a long time. It is typically a device that you have to hold onto in order to keep the machine running. What you describe is one software implementation of that idea, but the GP is correct that this is another.

  7. Re:The real question here on How One Tweet Wiped $8bn Off Twitter's Value · · Score: 1

    This depends on the type of mortgage that you buy. Deals where the lender front loads the interest payments are typically fixed-rate, fixed-term, products. At the other end of the spectrum are interest-only deals with overpayments. In those your bill is however much you owe on the outstanding loan at this this months interest rate, with any payment over that level paying off the debt. Inbetween there are many types of hybrid product.

  8. Re:Stalemate AI on The Battle of 100 Freeciv AIs · · Score: 4, Funny

    Or maybe they would prefer a nice game of chess, Professor?

  9. Re:1) all week 2) the seafood platter on Google Insiders Talk About Why Google+ Failed · · Score: 4, Funny

    Look, it's been a while.

    Reader is not coming back, you have got to let go.

  10. Re:And I just finished recompiling my Gentoo syste on GCC 5.1 Released · · Score: 1

    Ah the powerful effects of a performance placebo

  11. Re:A penny saved on Incorrectly Built SLS Welding Machine To Be Rebuilt · · Score: 1

    Mer jobba, mer penga. Vad är om inte giller?

  12. Conversation went roughly like... on IBM Reported To Be Developing Blockchain-Based Currency Transaction System · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Government: We really like the idea of being able to watch every currency transaction in real time...
    IBM: We can sell you a bitcoin system.
    Government: We don't really like terrorist money, or people mining free cash...
    IBM: We can sell you an IBMcoin system. Please fill in the details on this rather large cheque.

  13. Re:Well, the jig is up for them now. on How One Developer Got the Internet To Watch People Code · · Score: 3, Insightful

    At least it works for gaming. Watching somebody code using a small font size, in a tiny window, down-sampled to 720p and then compressed to hell is about as much fun as... watching someone code. What ever happened to doing?

  14. Re:Hmm? on TrueCrypt Audit Back On Track After Silence and Uncertainty · · Score: 1

    Why bother? The NSA has already done most of them. It would just be redundant.

  15. Re:Yeah, right on What Your Online Comments Say About You · · Score: 1

    Well in that case I guess I must play role of appropriate personality type X to go and find the resource. As it turns out my vague recollection was exactly wrong, it is not choosing beliefs that imposes a cognitive load. Processing other people's beliefs imposes cognitive load (I would speculate this would be some kind of role-playing operation happening at a low (automatic) level).

    So, in the context of online discussions it would work out the other way: that recognising that other people have differing beliefs would impose a greater cognitive load. Anyway, the experiment design that they used is quite cool so if it interests you the article is at this location.

  16. Re:Cause meet Effect. on When Chess Players Blunder · · Score: 2

    It does provide an interesting approach to training though. If we haven't produced a grandmaster for decades then we could simply increase the ratings of our national contenders by hundreds points so that they make fewer mistakes. It doesn't even matter if they are really that could, we could just keep doing it until they play like machines.

  17. Re:Yeah, right on What Your Online Comments Say About You · · Score: 1

    I can't be bothered to check something that I vaguely remember, but luckily there are many people with the personality type to do this, reading this very thread. Woot.

    Doesn't #2 impose a greater cognitive load than #3? Which of course would make it more tiring to maintain in the long run.

  18. Re:Yeah, right on What Your Online Comments Say About You · · Score: 1

    So your presumption is wrong.

    What have you learned about how *other people* filter and interpret information they read in comments? In particular maybe you have learned something about how uniformed comments influence the majority of people that read them, regardless of whether or not you are in that majority.

  19. Re:Only an idiot would buy one of these on Samsung SmartTV Customers Warned Personal Conversations May Be Recorded · · Score: 1

    Who claims that it transmits over the internet all of the time?

    The article specifically says that it only transmits when the voice recognition icon is active. I have not read anyone who has stuck wireshark on it and said "holy crap this transmits all the time". Are you just making shit up, because you are not doing it very well. The trick is to use an element of truth, which you seem to have skipped.

  20. Re:Only an idiot would buy one of these on Samsung SmartTV Customers Warned Personal Conversations May Be Recorded · · Score: 1

    We wanted a 55" and it had to be Samsung as I like the image processing magic. Netflix is great, the app gets used every night. Good image, good enough controls (fast forward and rewind could be improved. Everything else on a SmartTV is total crap and was tested once. The skype client is truly awful.

    Gesture recognition is used once in a blue moon when the couch has eaten the remote.

  21. Re:Only an idiot would buy one of these on Samsung SmartTV Customers Warned Personal Conversations May Be Recorded · · Score: 1

    So that means that you don't own a laptop with a builtin webcam?

    I've got one of these TVs and although the article is accurate the headline is not. When you issue a voice command you have say "Hi TV" or one of two other phrases. These are simple enough to be recognised by the TV itself. Normally you repeat this about 10 times in varying pitches and speeds because the recognition is crap. At this point a big microphone appears on the screen and what you try to say next it records and transmits over the internet to some service.

    No matter what you actually say the TV then tries to change the colour key, or randomly fires up skype. After which you disable it completely in the menus and it never records you again.

  22. August 13th 1954?

  23. Seriously doubt it. on Why Gmail Has Better Security Than Your Bank · · Score: 1

    My bank has pain-in-the-ass 2FA. There is a piece of partly public info (social security), followed by a short pin code, that leads to a challenge-response with a grey box that has my unique token in it as a smart card. Although the box is USB the browser plugin demands custom device drivers that do horrific things to ensure they are "alone" on the system.

    All of this protects me against a hacker breaking my password, which would be impossible, and has no effect on the much more likely attack of a hacker targeting the bank itself. So I have to access my bank from a custom VM because the other plebs like to choose "bigtits" as their secure password.

    2FA is the overrated wet dream of sysadmins everywhere.

  24. Re:First Run On Sentence on Why Gmail Has Better Security Than Your Bank · · Score: 1

    I love you, whoever you are. You may collect your prize of an internets at your convenience.

  25. Re:Does It Matter? on VirtualBox Development At a Standstill · · Score: 1

    I tried to use this a while ago with local unique passwords. Could not get it to work without allowing unauthenticated logins, which was a bit scary. Seemed like a neat feature though as it is more available than rdp/vnc running inside the guest. Will probably have another go when I get some time. In combination with teleporting guests between hosts I can have some fun.