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User: SharpFang

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  1. Not necessarily. on WikiLeaks' Anonymous Leak Submission System Is Back After Nearly 5 Years · · Score: 1

    They can always enable an alternate submission method that permits full authentication of the submitter - with full understanding that their safety cannot be assured. Sometimes people are brave - they want given thing to be known, even at cost of own life or freedom.

    So - leave the choice to the submitter; anonymous, to be possibly verified by Wikileaks, or open, verifiable by reputation of the known submitter.

  2. Re:Error in headline on Scientists Have Paper On Gender Bias Rejected Because They're Both Women · · Score: 1

    What real-world factors would cause only the very best of minorities to apply while still keeping everyone and their dog to apply if they are the majority group?

    I don't know about the job markets, but I know the scenario presented in my post already happens in some universities, black students being accepted despite lower entry exam score in place of white applicants.

  3. Get me one with a really short period! on High School Students Discover Pulsar With Widest-Known Orbit · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I'd really love to see the discovery of a Quark Star.

    Black Holes have two modes of creation.

    One - observed and well-documented, Supernova explosion, with the core collapsing directly into a black hole.

    The other is only known in theory. A neutron star obtaining enough mass through accretion to collapse either from interstellar gas or by connecting with another star (possibly also neutron). Before that happens though, there is a phase hypothesized between the neutron star and the black hole, where the matter degenerates enough that the neutron structure collapses and the star is composed of unstructured quarks. A little more and it collapses into a Black Hole.

    No such star has been observed, and we don't know what other effects accompany it. The mass window is very narrow, somewhere between 3 and 4 solar masses, but the exact boundaries are not known. Dual systems with neutron stars of very short period are the candidates for this to happen. Hulse-Taylor binary binary will merge within next 300mln years, but I really hope we can observe one within our lifetimes.

  4. Re:Error in headline on Scientists Have Paper On Gender Bias Rejected Because They're Both Women · · Score: 1

    Possibly. I believe I learned the expression used by movements of Martin Luther King. It's quaint how expressions used by the revolutionaries that start a great change for better for a minority become slurs for that minority.

    Well, I'll keep it in mind.

  5. Re: Error in headline on Scientists Have Paper On Gender Bias Rejected Because They're Both Women · · Score: 1

    The same gender research that was thrown out of Swedish university for lack of scientific foundations?

  6. Re:Error in headline on Scientists Have Paper On Gender Bias Rejected Because They're Both Women · · Score: 1

    I'm afraid it will only cause a backslash in the 90-percentile whites harmed by this policy.

    You can't fight racism with a different form of racism. If racial bias is to vanish, it must *vanish*; you can't replace it with a different racial bias.

  7. Re: Error in headline on Scientists Have Paper On Gender Bias Rejected Because They're Both Women · · Score: 1

    It's a subject far too touchy to be critically analyzed by any scientist who wants to retain their reputation. In case the results don't fit the current political agenda, too bad for the results and the scientist who obtained them.

    I'm pretty sure IQ tests that are gender and ethnic background neutral (e.g. developed by a mixed team of all backgrounds) are entirely possible. It's just a can of worms nobody wants to open, because *POSSIBLY* - similarly to how different races, nationalities and genders have different predispositions in sports (take the separation of men's and women's leagues in almost all sports) - so do human brains.

    But in this case objective truth will not be known anytime soon. Any initial research is bound to contain faults, as is standard for every single domain of research. But while in other domains the faults are detected, pointed out and corrected in incremental research phases without any fuss, in this case they mean totally ruining the career of the researcher.

  8. Re:Error in headline on Scientists Have Paper On Gender Bias Rejected Because They're Both Women · · Score: 1

    The same *distribution* of skill levels over a bell curve.

    Have two sets: [1 3 5 7 9] and [1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9]. They have the same distribution, the same averages and medians. Pick 4 highest elements of each set. Compare averages now.

  9. Re: Error in headline on Scientists Have Paper On Gender Bias Rejected Because They're Both Women · · Score: 1

    I am familiar with the concept. It's a concept of trying to fit data into preconceived idea. It's bad science and it produces faulty results.

    It's like you were performing drug tests with use of a test group and a control group but ditched performing any tests on the control group assuming it's 'default' and none of symptoms appearing in the test group ever happen in the control group.

    Any gender bias studies are entirely fallacious if they are gender-biased.

  10. Re:Error in headline on Scientists Have Paper On Gender Bias Rejected Because They're Both Women · · Score: 1

    I'm not a native speaker. I'm sorry but I don't know the subtle nuances of what is considered politically incorrect at given moment in time, especially that it changes month-to-month.

  11. Re:Error in headline on Scientists Have Paper On Gender Bias Rejected Because They're Both Women · · Score: 1

    "Maleness is defaultness."

    The heck?

    You are comparing two groups. And a'priori you assume one group is "default" and the other is "exceptional" despite their population giving a percent or so of advantage to the other. You don't analyze symmetries and asymmetries but only "experiences" of one of the groups, completely disregarding the counterpart. And then you draw comparative conclusions without performing actual comparisons.

    I'd say your research method is flawed from moment one.

  12. Re:Error in headline on Scientists Have Paper On Gender Bias Rejected Because They're Both Women · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Problem in numbers available.

    that's like saying that increasing the number of minority coders will decrease the overall quality of code produced.

    Imagine you have a company that is to hire ten new employees. There are 100 white applicants and 10 applicants of minorities. Their skill lies on the same bell curve; no difference in distribution.

    If you perform tests and pick 10 best candidates, statistics say one of the hired ten will be of the minority.

    Now if your company policy says "50% must be of minority" you end up hiring the top 5% of white and top 50% of minority. Of course the new white employees will outperform the minority ones simply because you got crème-de-la-crème of the whites and merely "above average" of the minorities. And of course the disparity will cause frictions, rift in the team, disparity of handled workload and worse code quality on the average. Oh, and the company policies will protect the minority employees, punishing the whites who confront them for worse performance.

    Trying to enforce a higher percentage of accepted minority products/employees/students than what percent of the applicants they are is in fact discrimination against the majority. In the above example a white guy who got 93% on the company test will be rejected in favor of a colored with 55%, simply because of skin color.

  13. I wonder... on Rocket Lab Unveils "Electric" Rocket Engine · · Score: 1

    This *might* be an avenue alternative to ion engines for flights that don't stray too far from the Sun. LEO-Moon, Lagrangian Points, inner planets. And it could be combined with ion and rocket propulsion.

    You can't store all the propellant at extreme pressures simply because the tank needed to contain these pressures would be extremely heavy. There's a fine balance between weight of the tank and savings on storing pressurized fuel (both energy stored as pressure and more fuel fitting in). We're at "state of art" here and can't push that much farther.

    But we can afford a *tiny* extreme-pressure tank, and we have weightless unlimited solar energy at cost of fixed-size, fixed-weight solar panels.

    Run the pump with solar power, gradually pressurizing the fuel to quite extreme pressures in the dedicated, tiny, very durable tank. Release it through a narrow nozzle at extreme speeds. Speed it up even more through combustion or electric field of ion propulsion. You're converting solar energy to extra delta-v with no extra fuel usage. You have just the fixed cost of the pump+buffer tank infrastructure and they can be kept really tiny, since we don't try to get a high throughput of the fuel (and have limited energy input anyway), just to increase the propellant stored energy by transforming electricity into pressure.

  14. Re:Still under copyright on Turing Manuscript Sells For $1 Million · · Score: 1

    Moreover, copyright timer starts ticking from the first publication date!

    If you discover an unknown script by DaVinci that was hidden in a wall and never shown to the public, it will be copyrighted starting the moment it's published first!

  15. Re:Are you retarded? on How To Make a Bitcoin Address With a TI-89 Calculator · · Score: 1

    Instead of taking values of keys (which would be a poor seed), take timing of keypresses. If the calculator runs at 1MHz, run a loop that takes 10uS per iteration, and count how many iterations it took between keypresses, modulo 100. No human is capable of timing their keypresses to 1 millisecond with *any* precision, nor correlate the keypresses to any fixed multiple of 10us period, so the sub-millisecond part of timing is entirely random.

    So, you're getting about 7 bits of entropy per keypress. Double that for key release. 14 bits per push, d12 is around 3.5 bits of entropy so mash your buttons for a total of 18 keypresses and you have your key.

  16. Re:The perfect summary of the case: on Ellen Pao Loses Silicon Valley Gender Bias Case Against Kleiner Perkins · · Score: 1

    So much for a reasonable discussion. The second your claims are challenged or disproven, you resort to verbal violence. And I'm sure if you had the opportunity, it wouldn't only be verbal. And then you rage when people don't want to treat you seriously.

    So typical. Seeing the straw in other's eye...

  17. Re:The perfect summary of the case: on Ellen Pao Loses Silicon Valley Gender Bias Case Against Kleiner Perkins · · Score: 1

    I hope you realize your mindset is what caused the most recent (and ongoing) recession - "the sub-prime mortgage credits" granted to people, who were clearly classified as a high-risk group that would cause severe losses on the average due to failure to pay them - but since they happened to be covered by anti-discrimination laws, the credits had to be granted anyway.

    That's when political correctness trumps plain business sense and plain scum can get privleged treatment simply based on their skin color.

    The blacks, instead of trying to force more acceptance through laws, should first get to cleaning up their own backyard and simply reduce the reasons that acceptance is so hard to come by: glorification of violence and crime, the "I deserve, you owe me" attitudes, poor ethics, and above all ostracization of these of their society, who grew successful through honest means and education.

    Unfortunately, all these anti-social behaviors are ingrained as their "culture" and defended fiercely; they form a self-destructive society and then they resist if the destruction of their society spills out and is fought back.

    And these, who broke out of the trap, suffer mistrust and discrimination simply because they are still suspect to be "wolves in sheep skins". And the prevalent belief that they are unable to fail on their own - that all their failures are a result of discrimination - really doesn't help things.

    Imagine a situation: There are two black girls that join the college. One studies, works hard and passes all the exams just fine; not brilliantly but well on par with other good students. The other doesn't. She hangs out with the low-life, she choose the life of parties and drinking. When exam time comes, she fails along with fellow white party animals, but unlike them, she submits a complaint that she was discriminated against, and threatens the school with lawsuit. The school yields and grants her the diploma.

    The two show up for a job interview. They have the same diplomas. The employer knows about their skill only basing on their diplomas (needs an expert in a field he's a layman in) and has a good clue about practices of extortion of such diplomas. He may choose either of them, or a white graduate who didn't have the leverage of discrimination lawsuit. He has a good business sense, and picks the low-risk white. ...and in this equation the black girl, who worked hard, gets the shortest end of the stick. But who's at fault here? The employer, who puts good business above political correctness? Or maybe these, who allowed the situation where the party animal was able to extort her diploma? Her friends, who gave her the advice "Party on, you're black, you're safe."? Government, that created a law prone to abuse, and as result deterrent to its intended purpose? Her family and surroundings, which reinforced the "they owe me, and it's always their fault" mindset instead of giving her firm work ethics?

    It's the "few rotten apples" problem, except the rotten apples are quite numerous and any attempt to "un-rot" them is touted an assault on the black culture.

  18. List of banned jobs. on Amazon Requires Non-Compete Agreements.. For Warehouse Workers · · Score: 2

    "As a current employee of Amazon and looking for a different work, with reference to Non-Compete document# xxx I have signed, I am requesting a comprehensive list of jobs and domains which I'm forbidden to participate in. Currently my job as a janitor of warehouse X leaves me with very little to no knowledge of what products or services are in development, manufacture, marketing, sale , offered or otherwise provided by Amazonof any product or service that competes or is intended to compete with any product or service sold, offered, or otherwise provided by Amazon, and especially the ones it intends any of the above in the future. Since I must know if I'm allowed to perform any of jobs there are openings for, I require this information, so that I don't violate my Non-Compete."

    "Please deliver the printed list to my house at [...], as I'm unable to rent a truck to take it home from work."

  19. Re:The perfect summary of the case: on Ellen Pao Loses Silicon Valley Gender Bias Case Against Kleiner Perkins · · Score: 1

    Yes, discrimination against "High-litigation-risk" minorities. The gender/race correlation against said risk makes it appear like gender or race discrimination, but in essence it's just a good business practice to avoid employees that can ruin your business.

    The fact feminists thought ruining their employers is a good gender equality promotion tactics... uh.

  20. Re:Well on Linux Kernel Adopts 'Code of Conflict' · · Score: 0

    Depends on content.

    1. This code doesn't apply to Linus. ...

  21. Re:BITCOIN IS NOT UNTRACEABLE, AND NOT ANON! on The Technologies That Betrayed Silk Road's Anonymity · · Score: 1

    Thing with bitcoin is, it's perfectly traceable from wallet to wallet, but the wallet locations are the big unknown. You don't know who owns the wallet until you have access to the physical machine it resides on. So, you can easily *confirm* the transaction between two individuals happened once you know what their wallet IDs are, but if you don't know who the wallet belongs to, you're unable to determine the person from the Bitcoin operations alone.

  22. Don't connect your alter ego to your real name! on The Technologies That Betrayed Silk Road's Anonymity · · Score: 1

    The bottom line is: Don't connect your alter ego to your real name, EVER!

    The list of his failures to hide evidence was long. But none of them would have mattered if they didn't learn his name.

    First, he posted as 'altoid' advertizing the Silk Road.

    Then he posted as 'altoid' seeking help with 'bitcoin service' and soliciting contact with a gmail address which was based on his real name.

    That's what got his name on the police's radar. That's why they began to monitor him. Since then it was just a matter of time to slip and reveal true identity. All he had set up would hide him 99.99% of time, making a casual observer or random search to notice his activity pretty much impossible. But a focused observation - being a suspect - could easily correlate things between his two identities. And from then on it was just about catching him red-handed.

  23. Re:No on Proposed Space Telescope Uses Huge Opaque Disk To Surpass Hubble · · Score: 1

    Spinning will provide easily obtainable centrifugal force (acting outwards - stretching the rim). Adding contracting straps ("artificial muscle") in the radial direction will allow to control the shape precisely. (creating outward force (push) would be difficult otherwise).

  24. Re:Bless you. on Proposed Space Telescope Uses Huge Opaque Disk To Surpass Hubble · · Score: 1

    Deep Space 1 uses NSTAR thrusters with specific impulse of 1,700 to 3,300s and up to 92mN of thrust; they last for just several weeks of operation.

    LISA uses FEEP thrusters that produce between 0.001 and 1 mN of thrust at 6,000–10,000s specific impulse, and they are really not intended for travel, but instead for stabilization. (while LISA Pathfinder is merely to test the technology, the planned LISA mission will require three probes positioned in a triangle 5mln km apart with picometre precision.)

  25. Re:No on Proposed Space Telescope Uses Huge Opaque Disk To Surpass Hubble · · Score: 1

    Spin it fast enough and the rim will form a perfect circle on its own.