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Comment No AI, Just Standard Advice (Score 1) 71

Most of the people using these "Financial Advisers" and paying 0.5% to 1% of their retirement portfolio are only really getting standard advice that is available on just about any mainstream stock market 101 for retirement website. It really isn't worth the fee unless you can't be bothered to do basic reading. For financial advisers this is just a gravy train. There is no "Artificial Intelligence" behind it. You could get the same thing off of a simple spreadsheet.

Comment Steam Greenlight (Score 2) 727

You recently ran a successful campaign to get your game approved on Steam's greenlight. What approaches did you use to get your game ranked high enough to be greenlit. What do you feel had the biggest impact in getting the numbers? What suggestions do you have for other Indie Game Developers who want to get their games approved on Steam's greenlight system?

Comment Ahhh... Charties. Start with 990 forms (Score 1) 268

First off, I strongly suggest not donating to a charity unless they produce a 990 form.

There are still a lot of charities that are flat out scams, like breast cancer "awareness" charities who's board member owns a marketing firm, that creates awareness by calling people and asking for donations to their breast cancer awareness fund. Avoid "awareness" charities. Most of them are complete bunk.

Here are my top three websites for researching charities.

http://www.charitynavigator.or...

http://foundationcenter.org/fi...

http://www.guidestar.org/

I shoot for a 90% efficiency ratio. But that isn't always possible for all diseases. Sometimes you will have to settle for a 80-85% efficiency ratio. Whenever you find a charity that you like, look it up and see if there are any charities that address the same issue, but perform better.

Also, start looking at the 990 forms for the charities that you do give to. This will help you to evaluate charities that are too small to have 3rd party evaluations.

Also start looking at their Annual Reports to see what they have actually accomplished for the past year. This will be especially important for charities that do not provide services or do research (like political/lobbying charities). Their efficiency ratio will be much lower, but their staff may be doing what you consider to be important work. Avoid charities that are not readily transparent about how their money is spent and what their accomplishments are.

Some exceptions are small charities such as food banks or soup kitchens that do not have any paid staff or management. Those are probably some of the most efficient charities out there.

Comment Re:membrane (Score 1) 69

And it seems to me that the earliest replicators would benefit more from free interaction with the medium they're in, rather than being locked up in a sealed bubble.

What if the early replicators or proto-replicators benefited from the differences between the outside of the bubble, and the inside of the bubble?

Comment Get an ADA Siezure Detection Dog (Score 1) 327

The dog will warn your wife when the symptoms of a seizure are about to come on. This will give her enough time to act to ensure her safety & even call for help. Yes, ADA dogs are pricey, but since you post here, I am going to guess you can afford one to keep your wife safe. Plus it will make a good playmate for your 2 year old.

Sometimes the old solution that just works, is the best solution.

Comment Re:uhhh (Score 2, Informative) 138

I agree with your primary point. However the article does state he analyzed the chemistry too. I wonder how much the chemistry is really going to change if the microbes are pulled from the same environment. I would expect proteins to break down after a couple of billion years.

Schopf used several techniques to analyze the fossils, including Raman spectroscopy — which enables scientists to look inside rocks to determine their composition and chemistry

Security

Doxing Victim Zoe Quinn Launches Online "Anti-harassment Task Force" 693

AmiMoJo writes: On Friday, developer and doxing victim Zoe Quinn launched an online "anti-harassment task force" toolset, staffed by volunteers familiar with such attacks, to assist victims of a recent swell of "doxing" and "swatting" attacks. The Crash Override site, built by Quinn and game developer Alex Lifschitz, offers free services from "experts in information security, white hat hacking, PR, law enforcement, legal, threat monitoring, and counseling" for "victims of online mob harassment."

They have already managed to preemptively warn at least one victim of a swatting attempt in Enumclaw, Washington. As a result, the police department's head e-mailed the entire department to ask any police sent to the address in question to "knock with your hand, not your boot."

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