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User: toddestan

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  1. Re:Too early on Splitting Water For Fuel While Removing CO2 From the Air (arstechnica.com) · · Score: 1

    As usual, you blather on about something you know nothing about. One of the best selling electric cars is made by Nissan. Toyota absolutely dominates the hybrid market, which in case you didn't notice, uses battery tech. Toyota is rather conservative, so it's no real surprise that they started with hybrids, moved onto plug-in hybrids, and the obvious end game of course is to drop the gasoline engine at some point. Even Mitsubishi is dabbling in electric cars. The only one that has kind of missed the boat might be Honda despite being early to market a hybrid with the original Honda Insight, though they just introduced their own electric vehicles.

    Sure, they aren't Tesla, but neither is anyone else.

  2. Re:Not sustainable on Amazon Wants You To Start a Business To Deliver Its Packages (cnn.com) · · Score: 1

    Instead we have a bunch of people driving their own vehicles to do the delivery. And there isn't any optimization of routes - Amazon just gives you a bunch of packages in the same general area and says "you figure it out".

  3. You're much better off buying an Android with third-party support and then loading a custom rom onto it. The iPhone is completely locked down. An even better solution is to buy a feature phone if you can live without a smartphone.

  4. Re:Somebody finally noticed on AT&T Is Screwing Customers By Almost Tripling a Bogus Fee (androidpolice.com) · · Score: 1

    I actually wish my bill was broken more like that. My bill is more of a "you used this much, now pay us $X". I wanted to know more, I remember taking a few years worth of electric bills, and putting them into a spreadsheet with the amount of kwh I used and the amount of money I paid. I figured that I could fit them to a line y = m*x+b, where m would be my rate (cost per kwh) and the intercept, b, would be the base fees that are tacked onto my bill that don't change depending on usage. Well, the data points when plotted up were more of a cloud, and while I could sort of fit a line to them, the slope was significantly higher than the rate they claim they charge for electricity. Bastards.

  5. Re: they are not screwing anyone on AT&T Is Screwing Customers By Almost Tripling a Bogus Fee (androidpolice.com) · · Score: 1

    I'm sure the base price didn't increase, the service was still $69.99 a month or whatever it was. The increase was in the extra bullshit fees that live outside of the contract (but should part of the contract).

    You can try to challenge them on it, but you probably had to sign an arbitration clause so good luck with that.

  6. Re:No more chopped liver keyboards on Laptop Vendors Are Left Sitting On the Sidelines Waiting For the Next Waltz To Start (pcper.com) · · Score: 1

    You can get a clicky keyboard on some of those ridiculous gamer laptops. I'd even consider buying one, but it they look about what you expect a gamer laptop to look like.

  7. Re:This article is fake news on Microsoft Quietly Cuts Off Windows 7 Support For Older Intel Computers (computerworld.com) · · Score: 1

    It seems reasonable to me that if they promise to support some software until a certain date and give me a list of hardware that the software is supported on, that the support date applies to any and all hardware on that list. It's not like I managed to get Windows 7 running on some old CPU that was never supported, and Microsoft broke that (in which case... tough). This is hardware that Microsoft has officially stated Windows 7 supports, and they have also stated that Windows 7 is supported to 2020. Apparently which is no longer true.

  8. Re:Thin end of the wedge on Microsoft Quietly Cuts Off Windows 7 Support For Older Intel Computers (computerworld.com) · · Score: 1

    That's the big news. One of the reasons to use Microsoft is the insanely long support cycles. Now it's becoming clear that when Microsoft says something will be supported to X date, you can't trust them because they can yank the support rug from right out under you anytime they feel like it with little warning and no recourse short of suing them.

    Sure, the number of people running Windows 7 on a PIII must be tiny, but that's not the point. They were sold on a OS that would be supported for 2020, and suddenly that's no longer true. Sure, this move likely doesn't affect many people, but who's next?

  9. Re:Firefox? Never left it. on NYT: 'Firefox Is Back. It's Time to Give It a Try.' (nytimes.com) · · Score: 1

    Ditto the above. Adobe's update service uses less than 1MB of RAM and 0% CPU time while it exists. If you're getting a "performance tuneup" as a result of disabling it then maybe it's time to throw the old 486 away.

    I don't know what you're running, but I have a PC at work with Adobe Audition on it, and Adobe's cloud service runs several processes, most of which chew up at least 100MB of ram, regardless of whether you've actually got any Adobe products running. I will grant that's nothing compared to what Check Point security software likes to chew up, but still talk about bloat. Between that and the other stuff on that computer, 16GB of ram is gone pretty quickly. Good thing it has a SSD, or it would feel like a 486.

  10. Re:I wish Star Wars ended after original trilogy on George Lucas's Terrible Idea for Star Wars Episodes 7-9 (indiewire.com) · · Score: 2

    The problem is that they wrote Tommy Lee Jones' character out at the end of the first movie. A touching scene that was very well done if you asked me. Then they realized for the sequel they wanted the Will Smith / Tommy Lee Jones duo back, and therefore spent the entire first act of MIB2 undoing the ending of the first movie. The stupid part is they had already set up for a sequel, but ended up completely scrapping that in an attempt remake the first movie again.

    Never did see the third movie.

  11. Re:Great Pyramid Constants on Stonehenge Builders Used Pythagoras' Theorem 2,000 Years Before He Was Born (techtimes.com) · · Score: 1

    Except the designers of the great Pyramid eliminates that as a possibility. The base of the Great Pyramid has unequal sides, yet if you add two side together they equal pi*100 (in feet IIRC) and the other two and you get the same number.

    Oh come on. The base of the Pyramid is 755.9 feet long. Twice that is nowhere near 314 feet. Even a casual glance at the Great Pyramid would tell you that its base is a bit bigger than 157 feet anyway.

    The circumference is 3023.6 feet, which is kind of close to pi*1000 so long as you're willing to accept a few percent error. But that is purely coincidence as the Egyptians would have no idea about the foot unit anyway, which was invented thousands of years later and is completely arbitrarily so it's not like they would have come up with it independently either.

    Just how many coincidences do you need to have before you accept it as evidence that it is a deliberate act?

    If you can't get something so simple and easily checked correct, why should I believe any of the rest of that?

  12. Re:That's not really an automation failure on The Man Who Was Fired By a Machine (bbc.com) · · Score: 1

    This person wasn't fired by a machine. His manager was let go and during the transition period failed to renew the contractor - irrespective of the reason, not renewing a contractor is functionally equivalent to terminating the contract. The contracting company failed to notice this. They subsequently failed to inform the contractor.

    The term of the contract was 3 years, so it wasn't up for renewal (yet). I don't know the actual terms of the contract, but likely there is some notice that is required if terminating the contract early, which from the sounds of things was not provided. Of course, the solution is to just automate that step too :)

  13. Re: How can the bosses not over ride the system? on The Man Who Was Fired By a Machine (bbc.com) · · Score: 1

    I would also assume the guard would have some visibility into the keycard system, so the security guard would see that the system does actually recognize the keycard but that it had been disabled. As opposed to something like the system not recognizing the card or something if the card had actually failed. So either the guard was not doing their job, the keycard system is really poorly designed, or the guard was not given access to information that would need to properly do their job.

  14. Re: Intel winning on price according to author? on Shots Fired Again Between CPU Vendors AMD and Intel (tomshardware.com) · · Score: 1

    I haven't seen AMD keep any of their latest sockets around that long either. People remember some of the older ones like AM3 (which is nearly 10 years old) and Socket A which also lasted forever, but forget ones like Socket 754 which was here today, gone tomorrow. And besides, Intel has kept some of their Sockets around for a while too, like LGA775 which started out with single-core Pentium 4's and ended with the Core 2 Quad processors.

  15. Re: The so-called Flynn Effect... on We're All Getting Dumber, Says Science (fastcompany.com) · · Score: 2

    The difference is that there is now a huge world market for Hollywood movies. Because of this, the studios try to create movies that will also appeal to other cultures around the world, so they all kind of end up with a one-size-fits-all feel to them. In addition, they also want them to be easy to translate to other languages - or at least easy enough to follow for someone who knows some English but it isn't their first language. So they simplify a lot of the dialog and avoid using big words. The end result for those of us in the "home" market is that the movies do seem kind of dumbed down.

    The whole endless sequels and reboots is the studios being risk-averse and playing it safe, not really a case of dumbing things down.

  16. Infinity is a concept not a number.

    A better way to think about it is using sets. For example, how large is the set of even numbers? The answer is that it's infinitely large, because you can start with a set with just the number 2 in it, and expand it forever by adding 2 to the largest value in the set to get another number that belongs in the set. Likewise, the same is true for the set of odd numbers, it is also infinitely large. So how large is the set that contains all the even numbers and 7? It's clearly larger than the set of just even numbers, and we even know how much larger it is as it contains exactly one more number in it. But the answer is that it's still infinitely large, not infinitely plus one. Likewise, the set of all even and odd numbers is also infinitely large and not infinitely times two, and so on.

  17. The original problem, which I saw back when I went to high school in the 90's, is that some kids were cheating the system (so to speak) by taking only easy classes to get a high GPA. So we had a quite a few in my class that graduated with a 3.9+ or even a 4.0, but did it by not taking any AP or the accelerated classes, or not taking any class they didn't think they could sail right through. I didn't really have a problem with it because in my mind they were just cheating themselves, but it really rubbed some of my classmates the wrong way.

  18. Re:How About "Good Enough"? on On The Sad State of Macintosh Hardware (rogueamoeba.com) · · Score: 1

    And how many resources are used when that high-tech washer has to be replaced twice again in the next 20 years, when the simpler, low-tech washer will last for long and keep going?

    Granted, it's kind of a false comparison as there's no reason someone couldn't build a washer that uses 12 gallons for a full load and also lasts for decades. In the appliance world all that tech is used to ensure planned obsolesce and to make repairs as difficult and infeasible as possible.

  19. Re:How About "Good Enough"? on On The Sad State of Macintosh Hardware (rogueamoeba.com) · · Score: 1

    That's fine I guess if you don't mind paying a premium price for a brand new, three year-old computer.

    No thanks, I'll go look elsewhere.

  20. Re:Go AMD on Another Day, Another Intel CPU Security Hole: Lazy State (zdnet.com) · · Score: 1

    That's my experience. I like AMD's CPU's, but all the incompatibilities, instability, and general flakiness of the platform eventually drove me over to Intel. I still use their GPU's, mostly because as bad as their software and drivers may be, nVidia's are far worse.

    And somewhat hilariously, I have found the same GPU with the same driver almost always works better on an Intel system than an AMD one.

  21. They could just post the prices at the station. Amtrak doesn't play the pricing games like the airlines do, and the prices are basically fixed. A simple list of the destinations and prices printed out and posted on the wall would be good for months at a time.

  22. Re:70 year claim is bullshit on Hurricanes Are Moving More Slowly, Which Means More Damage (npr.org) · · Score: 1

    Bullshit. Before satellites, one way that comes to mind is to simply record when the eye passes over a location. Given a list of locations and times for where the eye is, you'd have a pretty good idea where the storm is moving and how fast. And this could be done with a map, reasonably accurate clocks, pen and paper, and the human version 1.0 eyeball. Granted this is a bit more difficult at sea, but tracks once landfall was made should be reasonably accurate. Accuracy could be improved further using a network of barometers to track air pressure, given that the lowest air pressure will be when the barometer is closest to (or possibly within) the eye of the storm. Once again very mature and established technology 70 years ago.

  23. Re:better for the workers now! on An Average Earth Day Used To Be Less Than 19 Hours Long (theguardian.com) · · Score: 1

    Actually, the length of the year is getting longer. The reason for this is that the sun is slowly losing mass - both from directly converting it into energy and from the solar wind. As the sun loses mass, the Earth's orbit moves away from the sun, increasing the length of the year.

    The effect from this is small though, even by the standards of how the length of the day is changed. Even though the sun burns millions of tons of fuel a second, it's also truly massive, so even billions of years from now when the Sun becomes a red giant, it will still have some 90% of the mass it has today.

  24. Re:this is too much. on Company Takes Over Well-Known OSS Developer's Name Because the Domain Was Free · · Score: 1

    Even that may not be good enough, as multiple people can own the same trademark. For example, famously there is more than one company with the "Apple" trademark. This is okay because they are in different industries and don't compete with each other (well... sort of). The problem, of course, is there is only one apple.com.

    So basically if you go that route, you'll want to make up a word for you're handle. That way you'll have a much stronger trademark. That'll also preclude you from using your actual name because chances are your name is not unique.

  25. Re:Stupid America on Robocallers Win Even if You Don't Answer (wsj.com) · · Score: 1

    If you are prepaid, then you do pay when someone calls you. Likewise, if you have a limited number of minutes, those minutes are used when someone calls you. The only consolation is that if you don't pick up, you don't get charged. But if they leave a message, you could end up paying when you call your voicemail to check/delete them, though at least on my pre-paid plan, calling voicemail was no charge.

    The spam texts were annoying though, as each received text was 1 minute, and there was no way to turn them off. At least spam texts are still pretty rare, though I'm expecting that will change at any moment.