Show us on the doll where the mean orange man hurt you...
My brain.
Seriously, I don't understand this big group of his supporters who can't perceive how comically incompetent he is.
Sorry for clipping your salient points, but it was to cut down on over-quoting for readability's sake.
In any 2 party democracy (US, UK, Australia and Canada for example), you will have 45% of voters who will always vote party A and 45% of the people who will always vote party B. The remaining 10% who are willing to change their votes are the ones who make the decisions for everyone.
Because of this I'm not worried about trumps popularity, its the 10% who make the decisions and given the midterms, they've voted against him (G.W. bush didn't lose the house until the middle of his second term in comparison).
However there are a large percentage of the 45% who will always vote R who are deliberately cutting themselves of from any information that could contradict what they believe. They cocoon themselves with Fox News and believe anything contrary is a conspiracy. To these people it doesn't matter how bad he is, as long as the other side doesn't win. These delusionals aren't powerful though. They'll talk about revolution, but will give up as soon as they run out of hot pockets.
Maybe, just maybe, this is a mess created by Chavez and further worsened by Maduro.
I know it's popular to blame the US for everything that happens.. but shits been hitting the fan all over the world a lot longer than the US has been in existence.
If the people are being taken care of, I doubt there would be massive demonstrations.
Anyone who's worked in IT long enough knows that if you stick your neck into a mess, you end up being responsible for it.
I can buy that the US isn't initially responsible for the mess Venezuela is in... but the US just can't manage to keep their dicks out of it, so they've taken ownership.
The US has two problems with it's approach to Venezuela
1. Guiado is still a socialist. He might dress it up as a nicer, gentler kind of Socialism but he's still pretty firmly on the Left.
2. It doesn't matter who calls themselves president, it doesn't matter who has international support... It doesn't even matter who actually won the elections. When you've got a dictatorship, all that matters is who is in control of the Army and right now, that is Maduro.
So Maduro is in charge until one of his generals decides to try the crown on for size. The correct course of action is to leave them be until someone with half a brain decides to get rid of the current crop of idiots and asks to sit at the big table again... I doubt this will happen so you'll need to accept that the US owns this mess because the US stuck it's dick in where it wasn't wanted or needed and won't bloody stop doing it.
Or he just likes beers that don't fit into what the trendy crowd says is "proper".
I can't stand hoppy beer. I enjoy beer just fine but I literally research the IBU and basically won't touch anything over 15-ish (generally the lower the better for me). That doesn't mean I don't like beer - just that I don't like the same beer as you.
Shiner Bock, Snapshot Wheat, or yes, even Bud Light, taste fine to me.
You do know that beer has other flavours than "hops" right?
Quite a few of the beers I favour are malty (Doom Bar) or even sweet as there are quite a few fruit infused beers here in the UK.
I think IPA's are over-rated and drunk by people who don't really know anything about beer and are just trying to be fashionable. I much prefer an amber ale or an American session ale (both similar styles). German Pilsners have the bitterness, but not the hop flavour.
The problem with most places is that you only brew lager style beers, not ales. Lager style beers have to have very strong flavours to overcome the carbonation, ales which are carbonated naturally can support more complex and subtle flavours.
Shiner Bock, Snapshot Wheat, or yes, even Bud Light, taste fine to me.
We have a joke here in England... Why is American beer like sex in a canoe. Its fucking close to water.
America produces some nice beers, Anchor Steam, Goose Island, Samuel Adams at a stretch... I usually say no flavour is better than a bad one, but Bud can't even manage that (erm, unless it's the original Czech Budvar, that is quality)
Not entirely, but the evidence fits the hypothesis and we don't have a better explanation for the observed results.
However the problem here isn't strictly the Dunning-Kruger effect, but rather the notion that someone's ignorance is worth as much as someone else's knowledge.
English speaking people tend to misspell certain German digraphs by swapping the letters, for example ie (writing weiner instead of wiener) or ue (Kreuger instead of Krueger). I have no idea why, though.
Because we won the bloody war.
Jokes aside, people unfamiliar with a language will mispronounce it because they simply aren't the letter sounds they're used to. With common languages like English and German we often have the same sounds but different spellings. It gets really difficult with very foreign languages like Thai that have a "pb" sound that is very hard for a westerner to pronounce. With English, we're kind of used to it as English itself is a mongrel language and defending it's purity is like defending the virtue of the town bike.
But proper nouns don't change according to language. A German bloke named Krueger would still be Krueger in English.
Also Slashdot shite unicode support so anything with an Umlaut or Virgulilla (tilde above the N used in Spanish) can't be easily displayed here.
The best “backup phone” is the one you shoved into a drawer right after you purchased your current phone.
You mean the one that doesn't work any more?
Sounds like a shitty backup phone. You might be surprised to learn that a lot of people don't replace their phone yearly and many of those that do will often use the old phone as a hand-me-down to kids/family. My Nexus 5X was a mere 10 weeks from 3 years of faithful service when it died. Its predecessor, a Nexus 4 was killed by a TSA X-Ray machine. The last phone I still have that I used as a daily was a 2012 Galaxy Nexus. That's 7 years old.
My backup phone is a Nokia 3110. It cost me £20 and does everything a backup phone needs to (makes calls and receives messages).
Most of the time, most of the science is mostly wrong.
Science isn't "right" or "wrong". It's simply a model of how things work based on analysis of available data. Either the model accurately reflects observation or it does not. Either it helps predict or it does not.
If you're on a search for "right" and "wrong", then maybe you're the one who's confusing science with religion.
This.
Sadly there are a lot of non-scientist who call themselves scientists and manage to spew enough psudo-scientific babble to confuse idiots who want desperately to believe something. I think that the likes of Andrew Wakefield and Anthony Watts are the worst conmen of our generation.
The difference between a scientist and a conman is that a scientist sets out test a hypothesis and looks at what the data tells them. A conman looks for the data that supports their hypothesis and ignores anything else.
Sadly there are enough thick people around who cant tell the difference, so they think science == religion.
Apple has always relied on differentiating its products with unique hardware.
You mean unique software. Apple is at its core a software company.
The fact that you two are confused about the kind of company Apple is means they're quite successful at it.
Apple are a marketing company, they license or buy other companies hardware and leach of the open source community for software. Then convince you that it's "unique" and "special" with advertisements.
Finally I can start ignoring all those patents that have been keeping me down... Rounded corners on this, rounded corners for that, rounded corners everywhere.
The UK Daily Mail, a well-known source of ill-informed and reactionary garbage.
So for once, MS has made something that works.
Jokes aside, NewsGuard isn't from MicroSoft, they've just included it by default in Edge. NewsGuard is an independent organisation founded by a pair of American lawyers and media entrepreneurs in 2018 that has criteria for judging the trustworthiness of news sites. The 1 star reviews for Chrome involve the words "Leftists" and "Neo Liberal" so that's a good sign the extension is pretty accurate.
Right. This doesn't sound like gaming the system to me. This sounds like encouraging people with positive experiences to write a review. Because generally people are moved to write reviews out of anger.
Is it "encouragement" (nods and smiles) or "encouragement" (frowns and shakes head)?
So your boss sticks his head in and asks "Laz, would you be a good chap and write us a good review on that employment review site" it followed with a spoken or unspoken "and this will be remembered at your next performance review".
Because you can get away with that even in Australia and the UK with it's strong worker protection, you cant really count on any review not to be written under duress.
But anybody who is really looking on Glassdoor should know that you want to take a sample of different reviews, with tenure being the primary factor in how you evaluate a review.
Anyone looking at online reviews needs to realise that they should be taken with a huge grain of salt. These systems have been openly gamed for years and are inherently untrustworthy.
Glassdoor is kind of redundant, it's not a reliable source of information and you'll get a better idea about the company by asking questions in the interview. Interviewers will give huge clues to the corporate culture, especially if they're non HR types, asking open-ended questions like "what do you like most about working here" or "what are the top 3 reasons I would join" will tell you huge amounts, then throw them a "curve ball" as the Americans would say and ask "what is the thing you like the least about working here", this is good if you can read how the responder reacts, delays, umm's ahh's and what not are good cues that they're not giving you an honest answer and are trying to formulate something hat wont scare you away.
But honestly, companies tend to give themselves away. The most honest employer I've ever worked for put me in a room with two of my perspective colleagues sans management after the interview for an informal chat. The least trustworthy employer I've ever worked for expected a full afternoon of free work from me.
If the EU had a real sense of irony, they'd make them pay via PayPal as many businesses in EU and elsewhere are now encouraging their customers to use in order to cut down on credit card fees (which are charged to the merchant, not the user).
I think the question seems a little strange as if you have an iPhone you'd be using Apple Pay, otherwise some Google variant.
My answer is none of the above.
I'm squarely in the Android camp... But not a fanboy, my last phone was Android, my current phone is Android but my next phone will be Android unless something better comes along (unlikely, but I'm open to the possibility). I'm still not going to use Google pay.
My issue with all of these services is that they add additional parties, additional complexity and additional cost without adding any benefit to me or the merchant. My cards work fine, cash works even better. Given that most mobile payment services are just wrappers for my credit card, what benefit is there to not using my card to begin with.
If I use my credit or debit card, here are all the parties currently involved in the transaction.
Me ----> My issuing bank ----> Card processor (Visa/MC/AMEX) ----> Merchant's bank ----> Merchant.
Every one of the middlemen is scrapping a percentage off the top for themselves, I might pay £3, but by the time the merchant gets their money there's only £2.60 left at best. So what benefit to me is adding another middleman to this palaver?
Presently Google and Apple are forgoing charging their cut, but this is only to get people using their system. Once they have enough users hooked they'll start charging.
Also, the reason Google and Apple are just wrapping around your credit card is to avoid being called banks as being a bank is a regulatory minefield and at least here in the UK, stupidly, insanely competitive. Speaking of competition, this is why I think that ultimately, Google and Apple will exit the payments business. Australian banks have already cottoned on and gotten app based payments, I'm sure UK and European banks aren't far behind. Once this happens, another middleman becomes even more redundant.
Just for comparison, if I use cash (or bank transfer here in the UK).
Me ----> Merchant.
Spread of Fake News is a direct result of death of journalism. If Facebook was serious about tackling this problem they would find a way to revenue share with journalists.
I'm pretty sure that this would do SFA to stop the spread of fake news.
The death of journalism was caused by the industry placing the importance on getting page views and eyeballs on ads became more important to publications than printing reliable, factual information in the least biased and inflammatory language possible.
Now publications are owned by huge conglomerates like News Corp that not only embellish the truth, but print outright lies, deliberately in biased and inflammatory language in order to inflame their audience. This is important because angry people are more susceptible to advertising.
We've had fake new long before Trump, in fact some organisations have been at it for over 100 years, the Daily Mail war-mongered in the 1910's.
Meanwhile, in civilised countries, if a budget approval isn't given, the previous authorised budget is automatically continued until such time as a new budget is approved.
Nobody goes unpaid.
Government doesn't get shutdown.
Nobody has to implement emergency measures.
Everything carries on as it did before until someone can get changes approved and sign off on the new budget.
At no point does anything go any more unfunded/underfunded than it already was before the new budget was proposed.
It's almost like those other countries spotted what a stupid idea "shut down the government", including using it as blackmail, was many, many, many centuries ago and worked around it.
Not quite, under the Westminster system as used in Australia, Canada and the UK, if a budget is not approved the government get two weeks to resubmit a budget and if it is not approved the second time a general election (federal election in the US) is called. During an election period the government goes into caretaker mode where services get their budget to operate, but non-operational spending is suspended until the government is re-established and a new budget can be passed.
Basically instead of shutting down, we go to an election.
I am okay with the costs of the ACA. Because moving to a public healthcare system would be cheaper than the current corporate system.
The rest of the world has proven that to be true. Only in the backwards USA do Republican morons dispute what the rest of the world has figured out.
An American Ex-Pat in Colombia once asked me... "Is health care in Europe really as bad as Fox News makes it out to be". I said "No, sure it isn't perfect but I always get the treatment I need". He replied with "I always figured if it were that bad, Europeans would be coming to the US for treatment".
And he had a good point, Europeans aren't going to the US for essential treatment, much like Americans going to Thailand for cheap dental and cosmetic surgery, the only Europeans going to the US for "treatment" are those after a boob job cheaper than they can get in Europe.
Its also cheaper, I pay into the most expensive healthcare system in Europe, the UK's NHS (National Health Service) which takes US$5000 of taxpayer money per person. The US takes US$9000 of taxpayer funding per person and to add insult to injury, I or my Employer do not need to pay anything on top of that.
It's called the loudness war for a reason. The best raw source for music will always been CDs prior to the year 2000. Every re-release after will have been compressed (audio, not digital/mathematical).
I'm all for 24-bit audio so long as it doesn't suffer from compression, otherwise a giant waste of time and money.
Its actually worse than the loudness war. Not that it isn't an extremely valid point mind you.
Better audio quality won't make badly written songs that spend more time in post processing than being written or recorded sound better, nor will it improve the terrible writing. Music today is designed for compression as quality is removed from the foundations up.
A lot of "artists" now mime their concerts because they're incapable of producing a similar sound to the recorded version.
The most blatant statistic that shows cultural racism is the crime clearance rate by race of the victim.
The computer should send many more cops into 'communities of color', not doing so is racist!
They aren't getting their 'fair share' of law enforcement, as seen by the fact that blacks are shot at a lower rate than their share of crime committed. Until 40%+ of those shot by cops are black, they aren't being treated fairly.
Cops do not prevent crime.
If black communities are suffering the most crime, the question is why and what can be done to fix it. The answer is simple, black communities are also over-represented in poverty statistics and impoverished white communities have the same problem with crime, its just that there are less impoverished white ghettos. Poverty is best solved by removing systemic barriers that keep people in disadvantaged communities from accessing better opportunities than being a thug or being a victim.
If you look at the countries with the least crime and recidivism rates, beat cops are almost redundant, very few are armed with anything more than a taser... if that.
Algorithms and bad statistics are not artificial intelligence. People using algorithms and bad statistics in idiotic ways is also not ai. Words mean things. Use them with care and precision.
The thing about statistics is that they identify correlation, not identify causation. To draw any causation from statistics, you really need to analyse them on a level currently beyond the best weak AI we posses (strong AI does not yet exist outside of Science Fiction stories).
Statistics identified that people with ginger hair require 20% more aesthetic to render unconscious... We still don't know why.
Who needs this? Who is asking for this? What is the problem that this is trying to solve? I guess my point is what the fuck is wrong with these people?
The problem with this is Uber's growing irrelevance. They need to keep their name in the news to detract from the fact that they're running out of money, losing hundreds of millions each quarter and are only left with the drivers who literally cant get a job at McDonalds.
For Brits, this is basically what Michael O'Leary of Ryanair does. Every few months they'll announce something silly that will never get approved by any aviation authority like coin slots on the lavatory, replacing the co-pilot with a blow up doll or installing urinals in the seat back and get some free publicity (paying for advertisement costs money, not a good thing for a low cost airline or illegal taxi company). Uber is basically doing the same thing but with a bit less flair and imagination than Ryanair.
In this case you decided to rent your phone from the carrier. You pay monthly for it, if you exit early there are fees and they want the phone back or the remainder of the balance on it, right?
Just buy the phone unlocked, or get a contract from someone who doesn't lock it to one network. I get the impression that such options are not widely available in the US, but around here it's common, usually cheaper and I've never bought a SIM locked phone ever.
This. In almost every country I've been to you can buy phones outright and stick a SIM from any carrier in them. It gets a bit fuzzy when new networks are established and sometimes the frequencies used are not supported by all handsets, but generally if you're buying locally your phone will work (those of use who buy cheaply from importers need to do their homework).
Only in the US are you restricted by the carriers. Only a few carriers will permit a non-carrier phone to even be registered on their network and even then you need to register the IMEI on their network before they'll let you do anything. Not like here in the UK where I can walk into Tesco and get a SIM card that will register itself. In fact the UK 3 brand PAYG (Pay As You Go) SIM is highly prized by American travellers because it includes data roaming to 73 countries. Last time I went to the US I used a 3 SIM and got 1GB of data for £10 that just worked when I turned my phone on in LAX, no mucking about at an AT&T store.
Fascist is not the opposite of Communist, and yet you seem to think it is.
Both are totalitarian regimes, arguable of a socialist structure (yes, the NAZIs held many socialist concepts strongly, including eradication of 'oppressors')
Classical Liberals/Libertarians are probably the closest to the opposite, although the terms have been stolen these days by socialists, most likely trying to play wolf-in-sheeps-clothing.
Actually you're wrong.
The first target of all successful fascism was the Communists. In Germany, in Italy and in Spain, first target of any Fascist party was the elimination of the Communists and Bolsheviks.
Also Nazi is a proper noun, not an acronym. Capitalising it is also wrong.
Now Fascism is considered far right because it's ultra-nationalistic and tends to enforce very conservative social views such as traditional gender roles (a woman's job is to raise children, men are to work and fight), age roles, anti-homosexual, et al. Economically they don't really have a viewpoint apart from being fanatically anti-communist.
Communism and Fascism are polar opposites. Just because they're both totalitarian does not make them the same.
Slashdot Mirror
Show us on the doll where the mean orange man hurt you...
My brain.
Seriously, I don't understand this big group of his supporters who can't perceive how comically incompetent he is.
Sorry for clipping your salient points, but it was to cut down on over-quoting for readability's sake.
In any 2 party democracy (US, UK, Australia and Canada for example), you will have 45% of voters who will always vote party A and 45% of the people who will always vote party B. The remaining 10% who are willing to change their votes are the ones who make the decisions for everyone.
Because of this I'm not worried about trumps popularity, its the 10% who make the decisions and given the midterms, they've voted against him (G.W. bush didn't lose the house until the middle of his second term in comparison).
However there are a large percentage of the 45% who will always vote R who are deliberately cutting themselves of from any information that could contradict what they believe. They cocoon themselves with Fox News and believe anything contrary is a conspiracy. To these people it doesn't matter how bad he is, as long as the other side doesn't win. These delusionals aren't powerful though. They'll talk about revolution, but will give up as soon as they run out of hot pockets.
Maybe, just maybe, this is a mess created by Chavez and further worsened by Maduro.
I know it's popular to blame the US for everything that happens.. but shits been hitting the fan all over the world a lot longer than the US has been in existence.
If the people are being taken care of, I doubt there would be massive demonstrations.
Anyone who's worked in IT long enough knows that if you stick your neck into a mess, you end up being responsible for it.
I can buy that the US isn't initially responsible for the mess Venezuela is in... but the US just can't manage to keep their dicks out of it, so they've taken ownership.
The US has two problems with it's approach to Venezuela
1. Guiado is still a socialist. He might dress it up as a nicer, gentler kind of Socialism but he's still pretty firmly on the Left.
2. It doesn't matter who calls themselves president, it doesn't matter who has international support... It doesn't even matter who actually won the elections. When you've got a dictatorship, all that matters is who is in control of the Army and right now, that is Maduro.
So Maduro is in charge until one of his generals decides to try the crown on for size. The correct course of action is to leave them be until someone with half a brain decides to get rid of the current crop of idiots and asks to sit at the big table again... I doubt this will happen so you'll need to accept that the US owns this mess because the US stuck it's dick in where it wasn't wanted or needed and won't bloody stop doing it.
Or he just likes beers that don't fit into what the trendy crowd says is "proper".
I can't stand hoppy beer. I enjoy beer just fine but I literally research the IBU and basically won't touch anything over 15-ish (generally the lower the better for me). That doesn't mean I don't like beer - just that I don't like the same beer as you.
Shiner Bock, Snapshot Wheat, or yes, even Bud Light, taste fine to me.
You do know that beer has other flavours than "hops" right?
Quite a few of the beers I favour are malty (Doom Bar) or even sweet as there are quite a few fruit infused beers here in the UK.
I think IPA's are over-rated and drunk by people who don't really know anything about beer and are just trying to be fashionable. I much prefer an amber ale or an American session ale (both similar styles). German Pilsners have the bitterness, but not the hop flavour.
The problem with most places is that you only brew lager style beers, not ales. Lager style beers have to have very strong flavours to overcome the carbonation, ales which are carbonated naturally can support more complex and subtle flavours.
Shiner Bock, Snapshot Wheat, or yes, even Bud Light, taste fine to me.
We have a joke here in England... Why is American beer like sex in a canoe. Its fucking close to water.
America produces some nice beers, Anchor Steam, Goose Island, Samuel Adams at a stretch... I usually say no flavour is better than a bad one, but Bud can't even manage that (erm, unless it's the original Czech Budvar, that is quality)
Are you sure about that? :^)
Not entirely, but the evidence fits the hypothesis and we don't have a better explanation for the observed results.
However the problem here isn't strictly the Dunning-Kruger effect, but rather the notion that someone's ignorance is worth as much as someone else's knowledge.
English speaking people tend to misspell certain German digraphs by swapping the letters, for example ie (writing weiner instead of wiener) or ue (Kreuger instead of Krueger). I have no idea why, though.
Because we won the bloody war.
Jokes aside, people unfamiliar with a language will mispronounce it because they simply aren't the letter sounds they're used to. With common languages like English and German we often have the same sounds but different spellings. It gets really difficult with very foreign languages like Thai that have a "pb" sound that is very hard for a westerner to pronounce. With English, we're kind of used to it as English itself is a mongrel language and defending it's purity is like defending the virtue of the town bike.
But proper nouns don't change according to language. A German bloke named Krueger would still be Krueger in English.
Also Slashdot shite unicode support so anything with an Umlaut or Virgulilla (tilde above the N used in Spanish) can't be easily displayed here.
A smartphone cannot be a "minimalist" phone, as that term defines a phone that only makes phone calls. This is all Apple marketing.
Minimalist (n).
1) Marketing. A term to describe a device that can't do half the things it's competitors can do.
The best “backup phone” is the one you shoved into a drawer right after you purchased your current phone.
You mean the one that doesn't work any more?
Sounds like a shitty backup phone. You might be surprised to learn that a lot of people don't replace their phone yearly and many of those that do will often use the old phone as a hand-me-down to kids/family. My Nexus 5X was a mere 10 weeks from 3 years of faithful service when it died. Its predecessor, a Nexus 4 was killed by a TSA X-Ray machine. The last phone I still have that I used as a daily was a 2012 Galaxy Nexus. That's 7 years old.
My backup phone is a Nokia 3110. It cost me £20 and does everything a backup phone needs to (makes calls and receives messages).
Science isn't "right" or "wrong". It's simply a model of how things work based on analysis of available data. Either the model accurately reflects observation or it does not. Either it helps predict or it does not.
If you're on a search for "right" and "wrong", then maybe you're the one who's confusing science with religion.
This. Sadly there are a lot of non-scientist who call themselves scientists and manage to spew enough psudo-scientific babble to confuse idiots who want desperately to believe something. I think that the likes of Andrew Wakefield and Anthony Watts are the worst conmen of our generation.
The difference between a scientist and a conman is that a scientist sets out test a hypothesis and looks at what the data tells them. A conman looks for the data that supports their hypothesis and ignores anything else.
Sadly there are enough thick people around who cant tell the difference, so they think science == religion.
Apple has always relied on differentiating its products with unique hardware.
You mean unique software. Apple is at its core a software company.
The fact that you two are confused about the kind of company Apple is means they're quite successful at it.
Apple are a marketing company, they license or buy other companies hardware and leach of the open source community for software. Then convince you that it's "unique" and "special" with advertisements.
Finally I can start ignoring all those patents that have been keeping me down... Rounded corners on this, rounded corners for that, rounded corners everywhere.
The UK Daily Mail, a well-known source of ill-informed and reactionary garbage.
So for once, MS has made something that works. Jokes aside, NewsGuard isn't from MicroSoft, they've just included it by default in Edge. NewsGuard is an independent organisation founded by a pair of American lawyers and media entrepreneurs in 2018 that has criteria for judging the trustworthiness of news sites. The 1 star reviews for Chrome involve the words "Leftists" and "Neo Liberal" so that's a good sign the extension is pretty accurate.
Right. This doesn't sound like gaming the system to me. This sounds like encouraging people with positive experiences to write a review. Because generally people are moved to write reviews out of anger.
Is it "encouragement" (nods and smiles) or "encouragement" (frowns and shakes head)?
So your boss sticks his head in and asks "Laz, would you be a good chap and write us a good review on that employment review site" it followed with a spoken or unspoken "and this will be remembered at your next performance review".
Because you can get away with that even in Australia and the UK with it's strong worker protection, you cant really count on any review not to be written under duress.
But anybody who is really looking on Glassdoor should know that you want to take a sample of different reviews, with tenure being the primary factor in how you evaluate a review.
Anyone looking at online reviews needs to realise that they should be taken with a huge grain of salt. These systems have been openly gamed for years and are inherently untrustworthy.
Glassdoor is kind of redundant, it's not a reliable source of information and you'll get a better idea about the company by asking questions in the interview. Interviewers will give huge clues to the corporate culture, especially if they're non HR types, asking open-ended questions like "what do you like most about working here" or "what are the top 3 reasons I would join" will tell you huge amounts, then throw them a "curve ball" as the Americans would say and ask "what is the thing you like the least about working here", this is good if you can read how the responder reacts, delays, umm's ahh's and what not are good cues that they're not giving you an honest answer and are trying to formulate something hat wont scare you away.
But honestly, companies tend to give themselves away. The most honest employer I've ever worked for put me in a room with two of my perspective colleagues sans management after the interview for an informal chat. The least trustworthy employer I've ever worked for expected a full afternoon of free work from me.
Credit Cards as payment for fines?
If the EU had a real sense of irony, they'd make them pay via PayPal as many businesses in EU and elsewhere are now encouraging their customers to use in order to cut down on credit card fees (which are charged to the merchant, not the user).
I think the question seems a little strange as if you have an iPhone you'd be using Apple Pay, otherwise some Google variant.
My answer is none of the above.
I'm squarely in the Android camp... But not a fanboy, my last phone was Android, my current phone is Android but my next phone will be Android unless something better comes along (unlikely, but I'm open to the possibility). I'm still not going to use Google pay.
My issue with all of these services is that they add additional parties, additional complexity and additional cost without adding any benefit to me or the merchant. My cards work fine, cash works even better. Given that most mobile payment services are just wrappers for my credit card, what benefit is there to not using my card to begin with.
If I use my credit or debit card, here are all the parties currently involved in the transaction.
Me ----> My issuing bank ----> Card processor (Visa/MC/AMEX) ----> Merchant's bank ----> Merchant.
Every one of the middlemen is scrapping a percentage off the top for themselves, I might pay £3, but by the time the merchant gets their money there's only £2.60 left at best. So what benefit to me is adding another middleman to this palaver?
Presently Google and Apple are forgoing charging their cut, but this is only to get people using their system. Once they have enough users hooked they'll start charging.
Also, the reason Google and Apple are just wrapping around your credit card is to avoid being called banks as being a bank is a regulatory minefield and at least here in the UK, stupidly, insanely competitive. Speaking of competition, this is why I think that ultimately, Google and Apple will exit the payments business. Australian banks have already cottoned on and gotten app based payments, I'm sure UK and European banks aren't far behind. Once this happens, another middleman becomes even more redundant.
Just for comparison, if I use cash (or bank transfer here in the UK).
Me ----> Merchant.
Spread of Fake News is a direct result of death of journalism. If Facebook was serious about tackling this problem they would find a way to revenue share with journalists.
I'm pretty sure that this would do SFA to stop the spread of fake news.
The death of journalism was caused by the industry placing the importance on getting page views and eyeballs on ads became more important to publications than printing reliable, factual information in the least biased and inflammatory language possible.
Now publications are owned by huge conglomerates like News Corp that not only embellish the truth, but print outright lies, deliberately in biased and inflammatory language in order to inflame their audience. This is important because angry people are more susceptible to advertising.
We've had fake new long before Trump, in fact some organisations have been at it for over 100 years, the Daily Mail war-mongered in the 1910's.
Meanwhile, in civilised countries, if a budget approval isn't given, the previous authorised budget is automatically continued until such time as a new budget is approved.
Nobody goes unpaid.
Government doesn't get shutdown.
Nobody has to implement emergency measures.
Everything carries on as it did before until someone can get changes approved and sign off on the new budget.
At no point does anything go any more unfunded/underfunded than it already was before the new budget was proposed.
It's almost like those other countries spotted what a stupid idea "shut down the government", including using it as blackmail, was many, many, many centuries ago and worked around it.
Not quite, under the Westminster system as used in Australia, Canada and the UK, if a budget is not approved the government get two weeks to resubmit a budget and if it is not approved the second time a general election (federal election in the US) is called. During an election period the government goes into caretaker mode where services get their budget to operate, but non-operational spending is suspended until the government is re-established and a new budget can be passed.
Basically instead of shutting down, we go to an election.
I am okay with the costs of the ACA. Because moving to a public healthcare system would be cheaper than the current corporate system.
The rest of the world has proven that to be true. Only in the backwards USA do Republican morons dispute what the rest of the world has figured out.
An American Ex-Pat in Colombia once asked me... "Is health care in Europe really as bad as Fox News makes it out to be". I said "No, sure it isn't perfect but I always get the treatment I need". He replied with "I always figured if it were that bad, Europeans would be coming to the US for treatment".
And he had a good point, Europeans aren't going to the US for essential treatment, much like Americans going to Thailand for cheap dental and cosmetic surgery, the only Europeans going to the US for "treatment" are those after a boob job cheaper than they can get in Europe.
Its also cheaper, I pay into the most expensive healthcare system in Europe, the UK's NHS (National Health Service) which takes US$5000 of taxpayer money per person. The US takes US$9000 of taxpayer funding per person and to add insult to injury, I or my Employer do not need to pay anything on top of that.
It's called the loudness war for a reason. The best raw source for music will always been CDs prior to the year 2000. Every re-release after will have been compressed (audio, not digital/mathematical).
I'm all for 24-bit audio so long as it doesn't suffer from compression, otherwise a giant waste of time and money.
Its actually worse than the loudness war. Not that it isn't an extremely valid point mind you.
Better audio quality won't make badly written songs that spend more time in post processing than being written or recorded sound better, nor will it improve the terrible writing. Music today is designed for compression as quality is removed from the foundations up.
A lot of "artists" now mime their concerts because they're incapable of producing a similar sound to the recorded version.
The most blatant statistic that shows cultural racism is the crime clearance rate by race of the victim.
The computer should send many more cops into 'communities of color', not doing so is racist!
They aren't getting their 'fair share' of law enforcement, as seen by the fact that blacks are shot at a lower rate than their share of crime committed. Until 40%+ of those shot by cops are black, they aren't being treated fairly.
Cops do not prevent crime.
If black communities are suffering the most crime, the question is why and what can be done to fix it. The answer is simple, black communities are also over-represented in poverty statistics and impoverished white communities have the same problem with crime, its just that there are less impoverished white ghettos. Poverty is best solved by removing systemic barriers that keep people in disadvantaged communities from accessing better opportunities than being a thug or being a victim.
If you look at the countries with the least crime and recidivism rates, beat cops are almost redundant, very few are armed with anything more than a taser... if that.
Algorithms and bad statistics are not artificial intelligence. People using algorithms and bad statistics in idiotic ways is also not ai. Words mean things. Use them with care and precision.
The thing about statistics is that they identify correlation, not identify causation. To draw any causation from statistics, you really need to analyse them on a level currently beyond the best weak AI we posses (strong AI does not yet exist outside of Science Fiction stories).
Statistics identified that people with ginger hair require 20% more aesthetic to render unconscious... We still don't know why.
Who needs this? Who is asking for this? What is the problem that this is trying to solve? I guess my point is what the fuck is wrong with these people?
The problem with this is Uber's growing irrelevance. They need to keep their name in the news to detract from the fact that they're running out of money, losing hundreds of millions each quarter and are only left with the drivers who literally cant get a job at McDonalds.
For Brits, this is basically what Michael O'Leary of Ryanair does. Every few months they'll announce something silly that will never get approved by any aviation authority like coin slots on the lavatory, replacing the co-pilot with a blow up doll or installing urinals in the seat back and get some free publicity (paying for advertisement costs money, not a good thing for a low cost airline or illegal taxi company). Uber is basically doing the same thing but with a bit less flair and imagination than Ryanair.
This is literally the most ridiculous thing I've heard of in recent times. It HAS to be a prank, it CAN'T be real.
I've figured out that Uber wen't to the same school of marketing as Ryanair.
1. Make incredulous statement to get name in the media.
2. ?????
3. Free Marketing.
I couldn't write Profit there whilst Uber seem to be copying Ryanair's marketing, they aren't following Ryanair's ability to make money.
In this case you decided to rent your phone from the carrier. You pay monthly for it, if you exit early there are fees and they want the phone back or the remainder of the balance on it, right?
Just buy the phone unlocked, or get a contract from someone who doesn't lock it to one network. I get the impression that such options are not widely available in the US, but around here it's common, usually cheaper and I've never bought a SIM locked phone ever.
This. In almost every country I've been to you can buy phones outright and stick a SIM from any carrier in them. It gets a bit fuzzy when new networks are established and sometimes the frequencies used are not supported by all handsets, but generally if you're buying locally your phone will work (those of use who buy cheaply from importers need to do their homework).
Only in the US are you restricted by the carriers. Only a few carriers will permit a non-carrier phone to even be registered on their network and even then you need to register the IMEI on their network before they'll let you do anything. Not like here in the UK where I can walk into Tesco and get a SIM card that will register itself. In fact the UK 3 brand PAYG (Pay As You Go) SIM is highly prized by American travellers because it includes data roaming to 73 countries. Last time I went to the US I used a 3 SIM and got 1GB of data for £10 that just worked when I turned my phone on in LAX, no mucking about at an AT&T store.
Fascist is not the opposite of Communist, and yet you seem to think it is.
Both are totalitarian regimes, arguable of a socialist structure (yes, the NAZIs held many socialist concepts strongly, including eradication of 'oppressors')
Classical Liberals/Libertarians are probably the closest to the opposite, although the terms have been stolen these days by socialists, most likely trying to play wolf-in-sheeps-clothing.
Actually you're wrong.
The first target of all successful fascism was the Communists. In Germany, in Italy and in Spain, first target of any Fascist party was the elimination of the Communists and Bolsheviks.
Also Nazi is a proper noun, not an acronym. Capitalising it is also wrong.
Now Fascism is considered far right because it's ultra-nationalistic and tends to enforce very conservative social views such as traditional gender roles (a woman's job is to raise children, men are to work and fight), age roles, anti-homosexual, et al. Economically they don't really have a viewpoint apart from being fanatically anti-communist.
Communism and Fascism are polar opposites. Just because they're both totalitarian does not make them the same.