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User: kylemonger

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Comments · 481

  1. Re:Keeps the brain sharp on John Urschel: The 300 Pound Mathematician Who Hits People For a Living · · Score: 1

    He doesn't need to be imprisoned. We as a society need to accept that the desires of the people in our societies are very diverse. Rather than labeling and imprisoning such people, we should provide outlets that permit them to remain happy without harming others.

    Urschel found his outlets. Other naturally aggressive individuals work as bouncers in clubs or brawl as ham-and-eggers in semi-pro fights. Unfortunately some of these frustrated warrior types just go out and start barfights for their kicks. Every time I look at MMA and think it should be banned as bloodsport, I think about what the idled MMA fighters would be doing instead.

  2. Re:I hereby nominate ... on Opportunity Rover Reaches Martian Day 4,000 of Its 90-Day Mission · · Score: 2

    Or it was an intentionally lowball estimate of feasible mission duration so everyone involved looks good.

    Mars is a cool, dry place; electronics and machinery love cool dry places. Drop a mobile surveyor on Venus and have it trundle around for 4000 days and I'll be considerably more impressed.

  3. Re:Both own half. on Who Owns Pre-Embryos? · · Score: 1

    Most human are social animals, but maybe someone on the autism spectrum would be a better fit for such an environment.

  4. Re:title is wrong on Chess Grandmaster Used iPhone To Cheat During Tournament · · Score: 1

    Someone could have stolen his phone and then given him food adulterated with a laxative a day prior to the tournament. They then launch the analysis app and plant the phone in the restroom and wait for it to be found.

    I don't believe this really happened, but we're only talking about a moderate level of cunning to frame someone like this. Professional chess players are capable of much more devious planning.

  5. Re:A Recognition Algorithm That Outperforms Humans on Killer Robots In Plato's Cave · · Score: 1

    True, but let's not make the perfect an implacable enemy of the good enough. Consider that we're already willing to launch a Hellfire missile at terrorist leaders and count the 10-15 "maimed and also deads" as collateral damage. Shooting only one wrong person in the head every fifty kills would be a huge improvement over the missile.

  6. Re: JotNot Really, Really Pro on Tiny LIDAR Chip Could Add Cheap 3D Sensing to Cellphones and Tablets · · Score: 1

    There's no way HCB would be using an iPhone as a camera; he'd be shooting with one of the digital Leicas. A dedicated camera just crushes an iPhone in terms of ease of use and image quality for any kind of serious photography.

  7. twitter = monkey cage on SeaWorld and Others Discover That a Hashtag Can Become a Bashtag · · Score: 1

    On the other hand, it might be that PR people realize that by inviting attack on Twitter Seaworld can say they addresed their critics openly while basically mooning the monkey cage for all the difference the hoots and cries generated on Twitter matter in the real world. Who goes to Twitter to find out anything important about SeaWorld? I saw their advertising, had a free day in San Diego and decided to go see the whales and dolphins. There's lot of other cool stuff there, too.

    As for the abuse claims, I see these beasts as working for a living. A killer whale or a dolphin is fully capable of drowning and/or eating its tormentors if it has had enough foolishness that day. Some of the people coming out now against SeaWorld predictably enough have books to sell.

  8. Heroin on How To Execute People In the 21st Century · · Score: 1

    A massive heroin overdose seems equally humane. And as we've demonstrated for the past thirty years at least, despite our best efforts we cannot stop heroin from entering this country.

  9. Re:It's not censorship on Chinese Government Takes Down Anti-Pollution Documentary "Under The Dome" · · Score: 1

    It's one thing to see smog out the window day after day, it's another to find out how widespread the pollution is, or to see green beaches, exploded trees, and river water so polluted that it doesn't look like water. The U.S. would be where China is right now were it not for the people who raised enough hell fifty years ago that we have the EPA today.

  10. I knew China was polluted but... on Chinese Government Takes Down Anti-Pollution Documentary "Under The Dome" · · Score: 1

    "I cut up a lemon and put it beside my pillow. When I returned to Beijing, I discovered I was pregnant."

    Now that is serious pollution.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

  11. Re:Ah, come one, don't we trust the Feds? on US Marshals Service Refuses To Release Already-Published Stingray Info · · Score: 1

    I can accept this analogy but it is not airtight. We do have elections, so we can change out the parts of the government that we don't like. So it is almost like having competitors for government; instead we have competitive ideas. Government is slow to respond because we have a largely apathetic citizenry that does not drive it to respond more quickly.

    Sometimes, when I'm in one of my nastier moods, I think a solution might be for those who do vote to approve by referendum a $1000 per capita excise tax on all eligible adults who don't vote.

  12. Re:If "yes," then it's not self-driving on Would You Need a License To Drive a Self-Driving Car? · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Forget about sensors for a moment: We don't deal with malfunctioning PEOPLE right now. Drunks, old people, and visual impaired people routinely climb behind the wheel everyday. We are already running over darting children, cyclists and pretty much anything else with the temerity to set foot, hoof or paw on the road. Old people ramming cars into crowds because they can't tell the brake from the accelerator are just the cost of doing business in a free society.

    A self-driving system doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to be better than what we have now when we scale it up. Given that you can give a driving AI the equivalent of millions of miles road experience in all conditions, I doubt that AI's will drive worse than human beings for much longer.

    The insurance companies will need to be convinced for sure, but they will be when self-driving systems demonstrate their superiority.

  13. Krebs on How Do You Handle the Discovery of a Web Site Disclosing Private Data? · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Give the information to Brian Krebs and have HIM call them. I guarantee you they will get off their asses and do something then.

  14. Re:Talk versus Action on Facebook Puts Users On Suicide Watch · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I saw a suicide note posted on Flickr. Friends got to the individual in time. I don't know the stats but if Facebook can do something to help keep someone from dying, I would not dismiss it. They will be raking through the postings regardless, nice to see something good come of it that's not just good for Facebook.

  15. Re:No win situation on Facebook Puts Users On Suicide Watch · · Score: 0
  16. Re:It was a movie--duh on Why Hollywood Fudged the Relativity-Based Wormhole Scenes In Interstellar · · Score: 2

    I think they could have made it work if they framed the shots right. If you move from one star field to another star field, then yeah, the audience isn't going to see much difference. But if Saturn were in the foreground and dead ahead in one shot and they transitioned to Gargantua being dead ahead as they went through the wormhole, I think the transit would have been obvious enough. Particularly if they looked back and showed a distorted view of Saturn through the wormhole after they passed through.

  17. Re:Well, if they wanted to make it more realistic. on Why Hollywood Fudged the Relativity-Based Wormhole Scenes In Interstellar · · Score: 2

    The problem I had with the low tides is that you don't get a glowing accretion disk if the tides aren't strong enough to rip apart nuclei. Where was all the radiation supposed to be coming from, bremsstrahlung?

  18. Re:In other words on Why Hollywood Fudged the Relativity-Based Wormhole Scenes In Interstellar · · Score: 2

    I knew the wormhole transit view was BS, having read Rudy Rucker's book about wormhole travel years ago. I forgave them for it because the different views of the black hole itself were just awesome, and they needed a heavy-hitter like Thorne to come up with those.

  19. Re:so breakthrough on Breakthrough In Face Recognition Software · · Score: 1

    The annotations were probably more useful features such as distance to the subject, angle of head tilt, or principal lighting angle, lens focal length. Train a net to recognize the shape of heads tilted at various angles and you've gone a long way toward recognizing faces tilted at those angles. Now you can train separate networks to recognize faces at each specific angle or small range of angles. The same for dealing with varied distances and lens focal lengths.

  20. Re:How is this a good thing? on How "Omnipotent" Hackers Tied To NSA Hid For 14 Years and Were Found At Last · · Score: 2

    It's a good thing because I appreciate knowing what kind of country I really live in. For most of my life I thought I lived in a country that wouldn't torture people. Later I learned that the CIA not only tortures people, they ship people to other countries so they can be tortured harder. That's one of many examples of the things they don't teach you in school that should nonetheless influence how you think and vote. I want to know the ugly truth about what's going on. It probably won't make me happy, but it might just keep me free.

  21. Re:every few years on Drones and Satellites Spot Lost Civilizations In Unlikely Places · · Score: 1

    I'd settle for a link to a Google Earth image that shows one of these civilizations "hiding in plain sight". The article only has some stock image of a desert that looks like it was shot form the back of a jeep.

  22. Re:Not an overreaction on Art Project Causes Atlanta Police To Close Highway and Call Bomb Squad · · Score: 4, Insightful

    True, but the odds are pretty much 100% that your art project request will be denied for liability reasons. People sue the hind legs off each other for anything nowadays, and rampant paranoia is the natural result. So if you want to do your project you just roll the dice and hope that no one notices your guerilla installation.

    Oops, someone noticed? Now comes the part where you beg for forgiveness.

  23. Re:Company does exactly what it says it does... on Google, Amazon, Microsoft Reportedly Paid AdBlock Plus To Unblock · · Score: 1

    Ambrose Bierce's short story "The Ingenious Patriot" comes to mind.

    Having obtained an audience of the King an Ingenious Patriot pulled a paper from his pocket, saying:

              "May it please your Majesty, I have here a formula for constructing armour-plating which no gun can pierce. If these plates are adopted in the Royal Navy our warships will be invulnerable, and therefore invincible. Here, also, are reports of your Majesty's Ministers, attesting the value of the invention. I will part with my right in it for a million tumtums."

              After examining the papers, the King put them away and promised him an order on the Lord High Treasurer of the Extortion Department for a million tumtums.

              "And here," said the Ingenious Patriot, pulling another paper from another pocket, "are the working plans of a gun that I have invented, which will pierce that armour. Your Majesty's Royal Brother, the Emperor of Bang, is anxious to purchase it, but loyalty to your Majesty's throne and person constrains me to offer it first to your Majesty. The price is one million tumtums."

              Having received the promise of another check, he thrust his hand into still another pocket, remarking:

              "The price of the irresistible gun would have been much greater, your Majesty, but for the fact that its missiles can be so effectively averted by my peculiar method of treating the armour plates with a new -"

              The King signed to the Great Head Factotum to approach.

              "Search this man," he said, "and report how many pockets he has."

              "Forty-three, Sire," said the Great Head Factotum, completing the scrutiny.

              "May it please your Majesty," cried the Ingenious Patriot, in terror, "one of them contains tobacco."

              "Hold him up by the ankles and shake him," said the King; "then give him a check for forty-two million tumtums and put him to death. Let a decree issue declaring ingenuity a capital offence."

  24. Re:What are you planning to do? on Drone Maker Enforces No-Fly Zone Over DC, Hijacking Malware Demonstrated · · Score: 1

    Fly my drone indoors. The stupid GPS restriction would prevent me from doing that despite the fact that indoor flights pose no hazard to the White House or anyone else except me. There are indoor uses for these copters. I'll bet you can think of some.

  25. Re:Other than the obligatory security theatre... on Bomb Threats Via Twitter Partly Shut Down Atlanta's Hartsfield Airport · · Score: 1

    I wasn't one of the ones that called 911 but the booms from the sky were loud enough to make you stop whatever you were doing and wonder what bad thing had happened somewhere. Unforgettable if you've never experienced one before. I imagine this was because the fighters were coming in pretty low to be flying at that speed.