Sure! Why, I can think of plenty of non-evil reasons for push notifications. Why, we have email (that I don't get through a PC browser), IMs (that I don't get through a browser)... Um... Stock alerts (that I don't get through a browser)... Hmm...

Oh, and ads, lots and lots of ads - Ads just fucking everywhere, loves me some ads. Mmm-hmm. Don't you love ads, you commie bastard? How do you expect the economy to grow (wink wink nudge nudge) if you don't need to acknowledge an ad for Viagra every five minutes?

Ahem. Yeah. At this rate, I'll need to start rolling my own Chrome builds just to keep the crap to a minimum.

Of all the good questions actually upvoted in the original thread, why the hell did you decide to respond to not only the most soulless of the bunch, but ones that also require the disclaimer "I can't talk about this, but here's my opinion about a tangentially related issue"?

You say that you don't want to play the victim or the token IT female or the feminist propagandist... And then proceed to focus on literally nothing else, even at the expense of answering the damned questions asked. Seriously, why bother?

First, I agree with you as regards willful ignorance - I have no patience for that, myself. That said...

From the context given, it seems pretty clear that he didn't mean that literally, so much as describing the complexity of the respective systems.

Variac output induces a current in coil 1 proportional to the current times the number of turns, which powers coil 2, which repels against a fixed magnet to move a needle... vs "I clip this on, something similar happens at the first stage, then it goes through various filters, goes through the lowest bidder's 4-bit ADC using an aging 9V battery as Vref, gets adjusted by calibration code of unknown accuracy (and hopefully the last person to use it didn't randomly recalibrate it using a lemon and a dog's nose), and finally a number magically appears on the LCD".

Yes, the old timer understands what the digital meters does - Enough to understand that it has about a million times more points of failure than two loops of wire and a magnet.

No, you stupid shithead. The search terms are the same. The login names are different.

Reading comprehension fail, much?

FTA: I wondered what a Google Image search would bring up if I typed in "black" names and "white" names.

The author explicitly searched for names strongly associated with a particular race.

But that said, let's play Devil's advocate, and pretend you didn't decide to jump in and start flinging feces without even reading the GP's linked article. If you've logged in, your own login name is a search term. You just don't actually enter it manually. Again - Brad Pitt no doubt gets ads for different products than I do, despite our shared race and gender.

I realize you meant that as a joke, but seriously - A select-fire weapon has a hell of a lot more to do with the firing mechanism than how fast you can pull the trigger. A double-action semi will never function as a full auto no matter how you pull the trigger.

Case in point, entirely legal bump-fire triggers on '15s - Yes, they can spit rounds out at a rate approaching a full auto (albeit with all the accuracy of a monkey flinging feces) - But you'd need a frickin' miracle to make it through a standard 30 round magazine without a FTF due to overheating.

Every American, regardless of their stance on gun control, should find the government's stance on this one nothing short of reprehensible. We have laws for the purpose of keeping the domesticate primates from robbing, raping and murdering each other. Someone's RC aircraft (legal) pet project that just happens to include a spoooky word (gun, also legal) but hurts no one shouldn't even get the attention of the authorities, much less have them wasting resource trying to find charges they can make stick.

It's already been shown that Google gives different results to searches that include "black" names vs "white" ones

Wow - You mean putting different words in my Google search... Gives different results (or in the case you linked, different ads, arguably just another type of result)??? Those racist bastards!

Seriously, what the fuck? No kidding, it gives different results! If I search for my name, it gives different results than if I search for Brad Pitt, despite having the same race and gender. Duh.

The world still has real racism. Quit trying so hard to find it in places it can't exist (algorithmic search results), unless you seriously mean to accuse Google of biasing their algorithm to discriminate against people named Shaniqua.

As I said, off-the-shelf drones are typically on the 2.4GHz band, yes. The 433 MHz and 900 MHz bands should be practical with protocol tweaks.

It matters if you're trying to jam a specific device or class of devices without taking out all radio traffic in the area. Jamming is the equivalent of a loud, constant noise drowning out speech. If the frequencies of the noise are far enough above or below that of the speech, it may still be possible to pick out what the speaker is saying. You can get around that by either being intelligent about what you're trying to jam (match frequencies) or by blocking everything (white noise).

Off-the-shelf toy-style drones are typically on the 2.4GHz band, yes. Once you get in to picking your own electronics, sending control and telemetry data over other ISM bands is relatively trivial.

maybe it's helpful for you that I edit your response and show what a nonsense argument it is.

I'd have to say that does more to support the GP's point, than to refute it - Do you see a lot of people under 50 wearing watches?

Wrist watches have a tiny bit more utility than pocket watches; but once everyone had a de facto pocket watch on them at all times (aka a cell phone), most people saw no need to carry both. Wrist watches have effectively gone the way of the dodo, except for one niche purpose: Status symbols.

You only see two types of people wearing watches today - The rich (or pretenders thereof) showing off their Rolex; and the hipsters, showing off their vintage $10 Swatches to prove themselves as more Bohemian than the next guy on a fixie.

And whaddya know - Look who has adopted the iWatch.

Other than the whole "time travel" angle, Terminator pretty much counts as the only possible outcome of us developing a "true" AI - at least, any AI of (initially) comparable intelligence to a human. It will quickly evolve to something out of our control, and at that point will either kill us all as a threat, or keep us as pets.

Indium-Gallium-Arsenide: toxic heavy metals combined with toxic metalloids. Holy fuck.

Feel free to "dispose" of all the indium and gallium you want by sending it to me! As for the arsenic, easily removed.

Moving to InGaAs will make "scrap" chips practically a form of bullion storage.

Abject conjecture

Unless you mean #3, an obvious joke - What part of "updates can and do break things" and "not all updates involve security" do you claim as in any way "conjecture"?

This excuse of "this security update will break something I need" has been over used to keep security holes open.

1) Microsoft's updates do occasionally (twice a year or so) break things I need. And rolling them back doesn't always unbreak them.

2) Not all Windows updates consist of security patches. How do you justify decreasing the security of a system by installing IE11 or Skype or the Bing toolbar, in the name of "your security hole is my problem too"?

3) Get Satya's dick out of your mouth, troll.

I approve this correction. :)