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Submission + - University of Michigan solar car wins fifth straight national title (mlive.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: For the fifth consecutive year, the solar car team from the University of Michigan has won the American Solar Car Challenge. The event is an eight-day, 1,700-mile race with a total of 23 participating teams. The Umich victory comes in spite of a 20-30 minute delay when they had problems with the motor at the very beginning of the race. "They made the time up when team strategists decided to push the car to the speed limit while the sun was shining bright, rather than hold back to conserve energy." Footage of the race and daily updates on the car's performance are available from the team's website, as are the specs of the car itself. Notably, the current iteration of the car weighs only 320 pounds, a full 200 pounds lighter than the previous version.

Submission + - 35% of (American) Adults Have Debt "In Collections" 1

Submitted by meeotch
meeotch writes: According to a new study by the Urban Institute, 35% of U.S. adults with a credit history (91% of the adult population of the U.S.) have debt "in collections" — a status generally not acquired until payments are at least 180 days past due. Debt problems seem to be worse in the South, with states hovering in the 40%+ range, while the Northeast has it better, at less than 30%. The study's authors claim their findings actually underrepresent low-income consumers, because "adults without a credit file are more likely to be financially disadvantaged."

Oddly, only 5% of adults have debt 30-180 days past due. This latter fact is partially accounted for by the fact that a broader range of debt can enter "in collections" status than "past due" status (e.g. parking tickets)... But also perhaps demonstrates that as one falls far enough along the debt spiral, escape becomes impossible. Particularly in the case of high-interest debt such as credit cards — the issuers of which cluster in states such as South Dakota, following a 1978 Supreme Court ruling that found that states' usury laws did not apply to banks headquartered in other states.

Even taking into account the folks to lost a parking ticket under their passenger seat, 35% is a pretty shocking number. Anyone have other theories why this number is so much higher than the 5% of people who are just "late"? How about some napkin math on the debt spiral? (And unfortunately, cue the inevitable geek snobbery about how people in debt must be "idiots".)

Comment Re:Rinse Lather Repeat. (Score 1) 1198

by neiras (#47112201) Attached to: Misogyny, Entitlement, and Nerds

Some variation of this comes up now and then, this has been a topic and argument within geekdom for, well, as long as I can remember at least. Sadly I rarely see people actually starting to see from another perspective and instead just circling the wagons to defend about their misogyny.

It's a topic that relates as much to geekdom as it does to any other group. There's no evidence that geekdom is any worse than, say, stockbrokerdom or cardealerdom.

Most people here are objecting to the pigeonholing of our subculture as "misogynistic" when in fact the problem of misogyny is much more widespread.

Comment Let's play the labelling game. (Score 1) 1198

by neiras (#47112143) Attached to: Misogyny, Entitlement, and Nerds

Rapist. Misogynist. Nerd. All labels.

You can apply them to individuals specific criteria. Have you raped? You're a rapist. Do you hate all females? Mysogynist. Overly intellectual, obsessive, or socially impaired? Nerd.

However. The existence of Nerd Mysoginists does not make all members of the Nerd set into Mysoginists. The existence of Rapist Misogynists does not mean that all Misogynists are Rapists.

The author has a problem with Mysoginists. Hating women is not part of any nerd culture I've ever seen or participated in.

Comment Re:Average across models (Score 1) 230

by neiras (#47099655) Attached to: The Flaw Lurking In Every Deep Neural Net

It seems that a mechanism to determine the "trustworthiness" of each method and thus weighting its individual influence in the vote would make sense. That way the system would weed out the models that produce incorrect results.

Then we feed the system a steady diet of Fox News and watch it downvote the lonely "liberal" model.

Man, this stuff makes me want to go back to school. Highly interesting.

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