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User: Jbcarpen

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Comments · 153

  1. Re:I can't say I'm surprised on Red Meat Allergies Caused By Tick Bites Are On The Rise (npr.org) · · Score: 1

    Let's be fair, Ixodes Polites is endemic to the entire planet.

  2. Re:$800 a carat or $4000 a carat? Lab vs man-made? on De Beers To Sell Diamonds Made In a Lab (bloomberg.com) · · Score: 2

    Unless they've figured out a revolutionary new method of manufacture, they appear to be trying to drive the honest labs out of business so that people come back to the natural diamonds.

  3. Re:Sacrifice on De Beers To Sell Diamonds Made In a Lab (bloomberg.com) · · Score: 1

    So guys, that synthetic diamond may be a good price, but when she finds out, you'll be loosing brownie points!

    So just tell her upfront? "Yeah... I don't like supporting slavery, so this is a lab diamond instead." (Still requires not buying from DeBeers. Get your lab diamond somewhere else.) If she'd rather have a natural diamond in the face of that, I'd suggest reviewing how well you know her.

  4. I sincerely hope it stays a joke.

    I would point out that unlike windows updates, hearing aid batteries can be replaced on a schedule the wearer controls. If you don't want to risk it going dead at a bad time, just replace the battery a few days early.

    Likewise the times when it's taken off would make good times for an update, but M$ doesn't care about scheduling. Go into the settings and tell it to install updates at 2AM? It's a coin flip whether it will respect that or not.

    Yes, assistive devices have occasional failures, but this one is going to have regular failures.

  5. Sounds like a great idea. Right up until a forced update gets someone killed because their hololens stopped talking to them at a bad time.

  6. Re:Manufacturers bear brunt of responsible cleanup on Europe Plans Ban on Plastic Cutlery, Straws and More (cnn.com) · · Score: 1

    In order for the measures to work, you actually need to hold both the manufacturer and the consumer liable. It doesn't matter if the producer has a facility that can recycle their products with 95% yield, if the consumer throws it in the trash instead of the recycle bin it's still going to end up in a landfill.

  7. Re:Some context on People Hate Canada's New 'Amber Alert' System (www.cbc.ca) · · Score: 5, Informative

    I live in Colorado. Before disabling Amber Alerts on my phone I regularly received them from Tampa Florida. That's an 1800-2000 mile trip (depending on where in CO you start), so the Amber alert system in the US is no better.

    Why is it so hard to get the location for the alerts down to something narrow enough to be useful? I like the idea of the system, but the implementation is so bad that it's useless.

  8. There are three boxes to be used in the defense of liberty.
    We've already tried the soapbox.
    The ISPs bought the ballot box out from underneath us.
    Only one left to try is the ammo box.

  9. Re:Don't do it around me. on Distracted Driving: Everyone Hates It, But Most of Us Do It, Study Finds · · Score: 1

    The fine print probably lets them get their pound of flesh some other way, or maybe it lets them weasel out of paying if you were driving distracted. "Use of a cellphone while driving suspends coverage of this policy for the following thirty days." Or something.

  10. Re:Don't do it around me. on Distracted Driving: Everyone Hates It, But Most of Us Do It, Study Finds · · Score: 1

    I do the same thing. It's NOT my job, that's not why I do it. It's an "Up yours!" to the distracted driver.

  11. I didn't interact with facebook at all during the election. I have it listed as an untrusted domain.

  12. The myth of DRM on Denuvo's DRM Now Being Cracked Within Hours of Release (arstechnica.com) · · Score: 1
    The core problem with the idea of DRM is that it assumes a false premise. It assumes you can somehow provide software to the user in such a way that they simultaneously both can and cannot read it.

    Encryption is the art of getting information from Alice to Bob such that Charlie can't read it.

    DRM is the art of getting information from Alice to Bob such that Charlie can't read it, Except with the further constraint that Bob IS Charlie.

  13. Same here. I might take a rift if they literally paid me to take it, but it would spend its life on a shelf. Any mandatory associated software would live in a VM, and be fed fake data.

    Besides, I already bought a Vive. The Vive II won't happen if the Vive I flops, and I keep my cost of living fairly low, so I can afford to be an early adopter of a few things.

  14. "hay, can we have icons next to the red and green lights because they look the same to me"

    Growing up I remember there being a pair of intersections along a major road in my home town, one had green over red, the other had red over green. Every time I was near there, I wondered "How many people have gotten hurt because a colorblind driver thought a red light was green?"

    Shouldn't the lights at least always be in the same order so that colorblind can just know "the top one is red" (or "the bottom one is red")

  15. Re: So it you watch someone draw the pattern... on Android Device's Pattern Lock Can Be Cracked Within Five Attempts, Researchers Show (phys.org) · · Score: 1

    This is why I push all the buttons before putting my card in.

  16. Re:DMCA is a federal law on Three States Propose DMCA-Countering 'Right To Repair' Laws (ifixit.org) · · Score: 2

    Presumably that's why these anti-DMCA laws "would require manufacturers to provide service information and sell repair parts to owners and independent repair shops."

    The DMCA might still say you aren't allowed to crack the encryption, but if the car manufacturer is required to give you the unencrypted version for free, you don't need to crack it either.

  17. Re:Audio compression? on Ultrasound Tracking Could Be Used To Deanonymize Tor Users (bleepingcomputer.com) · · Score: 1

    They might not be sending any audio at all. A software signal generator capable of producing only a single tone (or maybe two tones if you don't want to use silence as one of your bit states) is not complex.

  18. I'd mod you insightful if I had points.

  19. Profit is theoretically a measure of how much you have served your fellow human beings. (yes, a lot of people have figured out how to cheat the system.) If I want someone to help me with some significant task, I offer them money, which allows them to purchase help with something else from someone else.

    In societies small enough to not need money, help in return for help works just fine "You help me build a house today, I help you build yours tomorrow" In a large society, that doesn't work so well. The guy who builds me a house probably doesn't need my help building his, but he probably wants food, a car, gasoline, internet, phone service, etc... I may not be able to give him any of those, but I can give him money which he can then use to get those.

    If someone has a bunch of money (that they didn't steal), then that indicates that someone did help a lot of people. It may not have been them (their parents, a generous friend, etc...)

  20. Re:Old news on Japanese Company Makes Low-Calorie Noodles Out of Wood · · Score: 1

    I've tried that. It doesn't change the flavor much.

  21. My family all use tapes stored in safe deposit boxes. The same fire is highly unlikely to destroy both your house and your bank. (and even if it did, the boxes are typically stored in a fireproof room.)

  22. Re:Proprietary formats suck. on Google Rolls Out VP9 Encoding For YouTube · · Score: 5, Informative

    Er... VP9 is BSD license. I'd hardly call that proprietary. Sure, they may be the only ones using it yet. But I don't see that staying the case for long if it's actually a better format.

  23. Re:Escort on AirAsia Flight Goes Missing Between Indonesia and Singapore · · Score: 0
    From TFA

    This comes on the heels of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 which is still missing, and Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, which was shot down.

    This is the third one. The first two were 370 and 17.

  24. Escort on AirAsia Flight Goes Missing Between Indonesia and Singapore · · Score: -1

    I wonder how viable it would be to just quietly escort flights in that region with stealth aircraft for a while to determine what's actually happening.

    Three aircraft, in a short time frame, in a small portion of the globe. Yes, we know one was shot down, but that clustering trips my bullshit detector, even for the other two.

  25. Re:Old News on Human Blood Substitute Could Help Meet Donor Blood Shortfall · · Score: 1

    While I don't think non-donors should just be left out in the cold, I do think that donors should get priority over non-donors when it comes to receiving donations. (Exceptions for those who have never been able to donate, such as children, anemics, hemophiliacs, etc...)