Catch up on stories from the past week (and beyond) at the Slashdot story archive

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×

Comment Re:Institutional hypocrisy (Score 1) 186

They could sit on their thumbs doing nothing. While this option pleases the anarchist in us, you cannot expect a lawmaker to ignore lawbreakers

What law breakers? This new "law" that was invented by the courts with zero debate is so vague that whether someone is breaking it or not is entirely debatable and thus eminently ignorable.

Comment Re:Correct yet misleading (Score 1) 186

Then companies that routinely exclude qualified candidates because "shit some HR lady found on google" will start to suffer and die as their stupid hiring process systematically excludes 99% of all people alive?

You know what? Smart companies, like Google, do not determine who they hire by what they find on Google. But if someone has a burning need to work for a company that is not smart, they are welcome to upload lots of cool content about themselves and/or explanations about why their previous acts are no longer relevant.

Comment Re:Or maybe you're not so good at math (Score 5, Informative) 512

My memory is a bit foggy, when was the IRA importing mass shipments of long range artillery rockets from Iran and firing them at the UK?

They never did. They got the shipments from Libya instead.

Note that these weapons included rockets propelled grenades, surface to air missiles, flamethrowers, explosives and lots of machine guns.

By the way, a big source of IRA funding and support was the USA. But everyone has conveniently forgotten that post 9/11. Given the constant US wailing over the funding of terrorism, it'd be impolite to recall the open IRA fundraising activities that occurred in places like Boston.

Comment Re: Like China och USSR (Score 2) 512

Chinese sites remove comments themselves too. They get "guidance" from the government on what to remove. Sounds like the French situation is exactly the same: the government lays out laws saying what is and is not acceptable speech and apparently, virtually all comments on this particular conflict are unacceptable.

I think the censor here is great for revealing what's going on, but his diagnosis seems odd. He thinks there's something different about this conflict in particular that results in more comments being taken down due to their content, but simultaneously admits that it's due to laws about anti-semitism which is specific to Jewish people. Perhaps if there were laws specific to Arab people and an Arab nation started doing what Israel is doing they'd see 90% takedown rates on those stories too.

Anyway to answer your point, I'm actually struggling to see the difference between this and what happens in China. The mechanisms and underlying logic are identical. It's actually quite shocking. I had no idea moderation rates would be that high.

Submission + - Bird flocks resemble liquid helium (sciencemag.org)

sciencehabit writes: A flock of starlings flies as one, a spectacular display in which each bird flits about as if in a well-choreographed dance. Everyone seems to know exactly when and where to turn. Now, for the first time, researchers have measured how that knowledge moves through the flock—a behavior that mirrors certain quantum phenomena of liquid helium. Some of the more interesting findings: Tracking data showed that the message for a flock to turn started from a handful of birds and swept through the flock at a constant speed between 20 and 40 meters per second. That means that for a group of 400 birds, it takes just a little more than a half-second for the whole flock to turn.

Submission + - Linus Torvalds: "GCC 4.9.0 seems to be terminally broken" (techienews.co.uk)

hypnosec writes: Linus Torvalds has called GCC 4.9.0 compiler ‘pure and utter sh*t’ and 'terminally broken' after a random panic was discovered in a load balance function in Linux 3.16-rc6. “Ok, so I'm looking at the code generation and your compiler is pure and utter *shit*”, in one of the mails on Linux kernel mailing list. “gcc-4.9.0 seems to be terminally broken”, he added further. The issue that invited such comments from Torvalds is to do with the compiler apparently spilled a constant and incorrect stack red-zoning on x86-64 code generation.

Submission + - The five greatest space hacks of all time

Esther Schindler writes: Space missions are amazingly well-prepared affairs, every action and procedure is followed, right down to the most minute detail. But sometimes mishaps and emergencies occur. Some can be dealt with by sophisticated sensors and equipment. Some can be dealt with on Earth from Mission Control. But sometimes the only option is for an astronaut to get their hands dirty, using whatever comes to hand and a bit of DIY know-how. It’s amazing what has been grabbed, bent and improvised to save red faces – or, indeed, the lives of astronauts.

Submission + - SpaceX executive calls for $22-25 billion NASA budget (examiner.com)

MarkWhittington writes: While participating in a panel called “The US Space Enterprise Partnership” at the NewSpace Conference that was held by the Space Frontier Foundation on Saturday, SpaceX Chief Operating Officer Gwynne Shotwell opined that NASA’s budget should be raised to $22-25 billion, according to a tweet by Space Policy Online’s Marcia Smith. The theory is that a lot of political rancor has taken place in the aerospace community because of the space agency’s limited budget. If the budget were to be increased to pay for everything on the space wish list, the rancor will cease.

The statement represents something of a departure of the usual mutual antagonism that exists between some in the commercial space community and some at NASA. Indeed Space Politics’ Jeff Foust added a tweet, “Thought: a panel at a Space Frontier Foundation conf is talking about how to increase NASA budget. Imagine that in late 90s.” The Space Frontier Foundation has been a leading voice for commercializing space, sometimes at the expense of NASA programs.

Comment Re:Where were you when the Eagle landed? (Score 1) 211

I was working at Disney World when the first shuttle took off, and saw every shuttle launch before Challenger without a TV. One was a night launch I saw from my mom's house in Tampa. We drove to the cape to watch one, man that thing is LOUD.

The first one I not only didn't see firsthand was Challenger; I missed that launch completely. I was in Illinois looking for work (we'd just had our first kid and moved back to be close to family and besides, Florida is a shitty place to live).

Comment Re:no doubter here, I watched the launch (Score 1) 211

I reposted this journal the day before the anniversary; it's my story of that day.

our driver of innovation today? cat pictures and dashcam video of accidents.

Telescopes in outer space, robots crawling around Mars, all sorts of robotic probes all over the solar system, self-driving cars, a permanent space station, GPS, private space launches... And, you know, when Apollo 11 took off, flat screen displays and Star Trek communicators were only fantasy. Those cat pictures themselves were impossible science fiction; a computer as powerful as a smart phone didn't exist. Hell, cars didn't even have seat belts then, let alone ABS, disc brakes, air bags, bluetooth... I think your memory of just how primitive it was and how far we've come is a bit faulty.

Comment Unknown (Score 1) 16

Investigators would not say whether the shooting occurred inside the home or in the alley behind the house. According to the station, Greer is not under arrest and police are still determining whether or not the homeowner will face charges.

The guy was eighty years old, the young people attacked and robbed him in his own house and had done so before. If he shot her before they left, it was certainly justified. If it was indeed in the alley he should certainly face murder charges. As the article says, that hasn't been determined. Personally, I'm going to withhold judgement.

Slashdot Top Deals

Many people are unenthusiastic about their work.

Working...