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User: HornWumpus

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Comments · 22,708

  1. Re:Pointless and Useless Speculation on Researchers Say The Aliens Are Silent Because They Are Extinct (theconversation.com) · · Score: 2

    First generation stars have no heavy elements. Hence first gen solar systems won't have the chemistry for life.

  2. Re:KODI does just fine.... on Microsoft Isn't Adding a TV DVR Feature To Xbox One Anymore (theverge.com) · · Score: 2

    It can only record it at 720 over the component connectors. Assuming you have a device that will capture component video and a cable box with component out.

  3. Re:No. on Microsoft Could Turn Every PC Into an Xbox (theverge.com) · · Score: 1

    Fanbois 'consider' lots of things that just aren't true.

  4. Re:No. on Microsoft Could Turn Every PC Into an Xbox (theverge.com) · · Score: 1

    They are slightly more efficient. But they are still obsolete shit hardware. 30fps is good for a console, many games render at 720 or worse.

  5. Re:We need Loser pays on Man Sued For $30K Over $40 Printer He Sold On Craigslist (usatoday.com) · · Score: 1

    More than 20 years ago Farmers insurance had an open and notorious policy of flat refusing payment for any car worth less than $5000. They figured if the car was worth less than it cost to hire a lawyer, just don't pay.

  6. Re:Pensioners not even born yet on Finnish Mail System Abandons Tuesday Delivery · · Score: 1

    They fund them as they occur. Hiring/keeping an employee means they have to fund the fraction of the retirement they just vested in.

  7. Re:What's so "unreasonable"? on Finnish Mail System Abandons Tuesday Delivery · · Score: 1

    Baby boomers are retiring everywhere, but the postal service's core business is going away.

    Companies are required by law to maintain actuarially sound funding levels for their pensions. When their investments tank, they often have to make pension contributions that materially affect earnings. GM is now effectively owned by the union pension fund, stock and bond holders got fucked.

    Most government and military pensions and Social security are being run as ponzi schemes. But that's not a reason to not fund the postal service pensions.

  8. No. on Microsoft Could Turn Every PC Into an Xbox (theverge.com) · · Score: 1

    Just No.

    Don't make PCs and PC games worse, make the consoles better.

    Console ports already generally suck. Leave them in the console controller ghetto.

  9. Re:Lawn Mowing Service? on Finnish Mail System Abandons Tuesday Delivery · · Score: 1

    Once a week snow shoveling?

    Snow shoveling is not the same as lawn mowing. One you can put on routine schedule, the other is after storms.

  10. Re:What's so "unreasonable"? on Finnish Mail System Abandons Tuesday Delivery · · Score: 1

    Any company with a trajectory similar to the Postal service should also fund its pensions.

    Shrinking businesses can't fund pensions out of cash flow and need to set aside reserves. Duh.

    Actuaries work this stuff out all the time. Insurance boards are all over this in the private sector, with varying degrees of success.

  11. Re: That's just too damn bad. on Weary Homeowners Wage War On Waze · · Score: 1

    Best not to get caught.

    Don't do it at night, put up cones and hire people to stand around doing nothing, like you were an official work crew.

  12. Re:That's just too damn bad. on Weary Homeowners Wage War On Waze · · Score: 1

    There are, in fact, private roads that are closed once per year, just so no public easement is formed. One across a college campus springs to mind, though the college name escapes me. Boston College? I think Boston anyhow.

    If it's a private road, the government representative is the one with no right to put up a sign.

  13. Re:Mod parent up on Weary Homeowners Wage War On Waze · · Score: 1

    I bet it's real consistent blacktop, we need a new loop to drift on. Where is this?

  14. Re:That's just too damn bad. on Weary Homeowners Wage War On Waze · · Score: 1

    Chicanes are good drifty fun.

  15. Re: That's just too damn bad. on Weary Homeowners Wage War On Waze · · Score: 1

    Bobcats aren't really that expensive to rent.

  16. Re:Way tinier than silicon transisters, wow. on Future Phones May Use Vacuum Tube Chips As Silicon Hits Moore's Law Extremes (inverse.com) · · Score: 3, Informative

    And stand on the same side foot as the hand you're working with. Ground path not through chest.

  17. Re:The MBA's mind on GE Considers Scrapping The Annual Raise (bloomberg.com) · · Score: 1

    You could game that. They usually pay your accrued vacation at final pay rate. If salaries are going up faster than investment returns, you can afford it and they don't have vacation balance limits in play this could be a decent angle.

  18. Re:management on GE Considers Scrapping The Annual Raise (bloomberg.com) · · Score: 3, Insightful

    'Raise budgets' are dreams. I've personally taken 130% of the department's entire raise budget *. They didn't even blink. It was a mistake, never take a counteroffer. Never!

    When they quote 'raise budgets' at you, point out that budgets are plans (say 'plans' but think 'dreams'; PHBs get their panties in a bunch when you get too realpolitik on them) and plans get changed _every day_, you should have a recent example on hand.

    * the managers also told the rest of the team they weren't getting a raise because I had taken '100% of the raise budget'. Since the managers had started the conversation I felt free to tell them all that I had taken _130%_ of the raise budget and that they should all jump up and down until their balls dropped. (Including the dyke, she was next one gone IIRC. More balls than many.)

  19. Re:Yeah, Right on GE Considers Scrapping The Annual Raise (bloomberg.com) · · Score: 2

    All the good employees left at GE should be in their supervisor's office _tomorrow_. For their new monthly compensation review.

  20. Re:This sort of thing is why people like Trump on IT Layoffs At Insurance Firm Are A 'Never-Ending Funeral' (computerworld.com) · · Score: 1

    Capital is not profit you dimwit, in the long term it is integrated retained profit. Capital is needed to make profits. People with capital have choices. Unless you can make a living banging two rocks together you depend on somebodies capital.

    It's easy for leftists to expropriate. Taxing overseas profits under the rule of law is very difficult, attempts have unintended consequences. None are as bad as the unintended consequences of expropriation.

  21. Re:Also donations are tax deductible on Man Sued For $30K Over $40 Printer He Sold On Craigslist (usatoday.com) · · Score: 1

    SuperKendal clearly implied inflated values.

    If you are at the threshold of itemized deductions donating an item can make almost as much money as selling it used, since you can write off donated items.

    To do that you divide the actual value by your marginal tax rate. (e.g. $50/0.35 = $143).

  22. Re:Also donations are tax deductible on Man Sued For $30K Over $40 Printer He Sold On Craigslist (usatoday.com) · · Score: 2

    If you're just going to makeup values, why not just makeup the donations in the first place?

  23. Re:We need Loser pays on Man Sued For $30K Over $40 Printer He Sold On Craigslist (usatoday.com) · · Score: 0

    You all are so cute when you are this young and naive.

    Are you using your grandfather's login? At six digits, you should know better.

  24. Re:Pseudo-intellectuals. on Working at Facebook Sounds Like Joining a Cult (gizmodo.com) · · Score: 1

    Get a little older. New memories definitely don't push out old ones.

    'The Classics' are a obsolete body of knowledge. They were used to separate the rich from the not rich, but are now used to separate those stuck in the past from those living in the present. It's a narrative that tells you more about the people clinging to them than anything else. Unless you are studying why the 18th century was so fucked up, there is no reason to care.

  25. Re:Pseudo-intellectuals. on Working at Facebook Sounds Like Joining a Cult (gizmodo.com) · · Score: 0

    I did two years of Latin in HS. I learned that studying dead languages was a waste of time, that's about it. Some of that useless trivia is still using up valuable memory.