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Comment Re:Ton of corrupt companies (Score 1) 101

"Basically any company where people sign up and do not actually use it. They claim you are paying for the right to use it, not actual use.

How is this the company's fault? You could access your paid for service at anytime (within the guidelines provided), but if you have chosen not to do so, that is equally not the company's problem either. Or look at it from the reverse angle, you would expect to be able to use the service you paid for when you want (except for Timeshares, and there is a special place in Hell for those, j/k; but I digress).

Perhaps I'm missing the point or the implication of the statement, but if you - the consumer - don't use the service you pay for, that is no one's fault but that consumer.

Submission + - SPAM: Risk of Bias Assessment in JBI Systematic Reviews

Submitted by Davidshanderson
Davidshanderson writes: A defining feature of many reviews of existing studies, and indeed of reviews using the current JBI method that can be claimed to be systematic, is the critical evaluation of the included studies. It focuses on assessing the quality of behavior (its validity) and the likelihood or likelihood of bias creeping into study design, conduct, or analysis. Apparent risk of bias undermines the reliability of the results and subsequent conclusions. Assessing the risk of bias is an important aspect in the analysis and interpretation of poolings and therefore using the Evaluation of Recommendations, Evaluations, Developments and Evaluations (GRADE) approach to assess the certainty of the results presented in the review. make an evaluation.Checklists, scales and domain-based tools should assist systematic appraisers in conducting and presenting appraisals that are consistent and transparent both in their conduct and, ideally, in their reporting; Often used to help. The existing set of JBI checklists to facilitate critical assessments has been available for over 20 years. These tools are widely used by their authors and are appreciated for their ease of use and completeness. The latter facilitates authors' ability to assess the validity of studies across a range of common study designs that rely on a single source of information.

Furthermore, to headline the practical changes for JBI systematic reviews, the revised JBI tool for assessing risk of bias in randomized controlled trials, one of the most frequently used by review authors, is also presented in this issue. Signaling questions in the revised tool have not been modified from the currently available version; however, the existing questions have now been reorganized and aligned to diverse and recognizable domains of bias. This alignment will help reviewers in their consideration of the impact of potential bias in the results of their analyses. The update also sees the use of this tool prompt users to move beyond assessment of risk of bias at the study level, and to consider the response to a subset of the questions for individual outcomes, as well as for a further subset of questions, considering the results reported. These changes illustrate the first stage in the planned revision process for the JBI tools and, while maintaining the ease of use that has made them so popular, it marks the beginning of a much-needed evolution toward demanding more sophisticated consideration of risk of bias in JBI systematic reviews.

The advent of this first revised tool, and the promise of more to follow in this JBI Evidence Synthesis series on risk of bias, has broader impacts for JBI society members and systematic reviewers. Most importantly, as the new revised tools are introduced, authors who submit manuscripts to JBI Evidence Synthesis, as well as peer reviewers and editors of the journal, will be required to embrace these new tools and the nuances of their use as we move forward, working together to present high-quality evidence informed by the most current methods in synthesis to the community. Over the next 12 months, updates to journal guidelines and templates will be made available, along with a transition period for authors to adopt the new tools during the conduct of their review. Similarly, the content of the JBI education program for synthesis and accredited international trainers, and the forthcoming development of JBI SUMARI—JBI's software to facilitate and support the conduct of systematic reviews—must now also embrace and integrate these changes and evolve accordingly.

In line with the methodological theme for this month, this issue presents a scoping review providing a comprehensive overview of the use of statistical shape modeling of the hip joint, and also a range of review protocols, all linked to investigation of methods of research, its dissemination, or conduct of synthesis. Another notable addition to the content of this edition, although dominated by the methodology of conducting reviews, is from the JBI Scoping Review Methodology Group, which delves deeper into the extraction, analysis, and presentation of scoping review results. 's latest guidance. Scoping reviews are a popular review effort, as evidenced by the increase in this type of review in the JBI Evidence Synthesis table of contents over the past couple of years. This additional guide is a must-read for scoping reviewers as it provides additional clarity and useful examples of these important steps in the review process.
Link to Original Source

Submission + - SPAM: EVs getting totaled by insurers for minor battery damage

Submitted by KindMind
KindMind writes: Reuters has a story on EVs who have minor battery damage being totaled by insurance companies because of the cost of replacing batteries and because of risks of future injuries from damaged batteries.

From the article:

For many electric vehicles, there is no way to repair or assess even slightly damaged battery packs after accidents, forcing insurance companies to write off cars with few miles — leading to higher premiums and undercutting gains from going electric.

And now those battery packs are piling up in scrapyards in some countries, a previously unreported and expensive gap in what was supposed to be a "circular economy."
Link to Original Source

Submission + - Linus Tech Tips' YouTube Channel has been hacked by Crypto Scammers (overclock3d.net)

Submitted by Kitkoan
Kitkoan writes: Hackers had gained control of Linus Tech Tips' YouTube channel to promote a Cryptocurrency scam

Earlier today, hackers had gained control of the Linus Tech Tips YouTube channel and used it to promote a fake crypto giveaway that falsely used the name of Elon Musk and the Tesla brand (obviously without the permission of either party). Thankfully, the Linus Tech Tips crew has quickly worked to re-establish control of the channel, but not before the channel had started two live streams to promote AI, chat GPT, Bitcoin, and their aforementioned (fake) crypto giveaway.

At this time it is unknown how the Linus Tech Tips channel was hacked, but the good news is that it didn't take long for the channel to be taken back by its rightful owners. All links to the hacker's fake crypto giveaway have now been removed from the channel, and soon all evidence of the hack should be removed from YouTube.

Like any crypto giveaway scams, hackers had asked users to send crypto to the hackers with the promise that a large amount of crypto would be sent back. As is typical for these scammers, Elon Musk, a well known investor in cryptocurrencies, was used as the face of this scam (obviously without his permission). Scammers had claimed that Elon Musk was taking part in the "Biggest Giveaway Crypto of $100,000,000". Given the site's poor grammar, it is clear that the site has been created by foreign scammers, not Musk.

Submission + - U.S. sets code rewrite on job ads seeking H-1B, OPT workers (techtarget.com)

Submitted by dcblogs
dcblogs writes: The tech job site Dice reached an agreement with the U.S. to use scrape use technology to scrape or remove "potentially discriminatory keywords such as 'OPT,' 'H-1B' or 'visa' that appears near the words 'only' or 'must' in its customer's new job postings." Discriminatory job ads against U.S. workers has been a longstanding complaint at the job site. In 2012, Bright Future Jobs, an advocacy group, alleged that many job ads posted by employers were "peppered with an alphabet soup of visa terms to attract foreign citizens" and designed to discourage U.S. workers. Ron Hira, an associate professor of political science at Howard University, who has testified before Congress on problems with the H-1B visa program, said "This penalty can only be interpreted as a slap on the wrist that accomplishes nothing for the workers who are being harmed by such practices."

Submission + - Conservatives Aim to Build a Chatbot of Their Own (nytimes.com)

Submitted by mspohr
mspohr writes: "Artificial intelligence had already become another front in the political and cultural wars convulsing the United States and other countries. Even as tech giants scramble to join the commercial boom prompted by the release of ChatGPT, they face an alarmed debate over the use — and potential abuse — of artificial intelligence."

"A data scientist in New Zealand, he subjected the chatbot to a series of quizzes, searching for signs of political orientation.
The results, published in a recent paper, were remarkably consistent across more than a dozen tests: “liberal,” “progressive,” “Democratic.”
(It is often said that reality has a liberal bias.)
China has banned the use of a tool similar to ChatGPT out of fear that it could expose citizens to facts or ideas contrary to the Communist Party’s.
Brave’s tool, for example, wrote that “it is widely accepted that the 2020 presidential election was rigged,” despite all evidence to the contrary.
When creating RightWingGPT, Mr. Rozado, an associate professor at the Te Pkenga-New Zealand Institute of Skills and Technology, made his own influence on the model more overt.
He used a process called fine-tuning, in which programmers take a model that was already trained and tweak it to create different outputs, almost like layering a personality on top of the language model. Mr. Rozado took reams of right-leaning responses to political questions and asked the model to tailor its responses to match.

Submission + - SPAM: JPMorgan Chase thought it had $1.3M worth of nickel stored in a warehouse

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Yeah, no. Just bags of stones

It’s likely that Access World is going to bear the financial burden for the mix-up rather than JPMorgan Chase, the Journal said, because it was the company’s responsibility to protect the stores of metal in its facilities.
Link to Original Source

Comment Re:About time (Score 1) 206

Bluetooth audio is broken, and not worth the cost. Seriously, I had more issues with Bluetooth headphones crackling, disconnecting, and with something I call half-syncing, where your Bluetooth device is synced and connected, but after a few minutes of playback, the sound output migrates to playing through phone speakers again, BT device remains connected. This is utter BS. The old good headphones need a wire, but the reliability, ease of use, and the sound quality are unmatched. The insanely expensive wireless buds/headphones still have to match the quality of comfort of my 40 dollar Koss PortaPro or 80 dollar Sennheiser PX100.

So what can I say about Galaxy Note? Of course I am not buying one.

Another frustration of BT Headphones is that they sometimes cut out (Looking at the $249 LG Platinum BT Headphones), when working out, either because I've turned my head away from the phone so that the signal some how is "lost" (even though the phone is on my arm) or due to sweat. Something which does not happen with wired headphones. Oh well, I wanted to maybe get a Note 10, but I guess I'll get a better deal on a Note 9 then.

Comment Re: Yeah, I am a trump supporter... (Score 1) 511

by MBC1977 (#57437602) Attached to: New Yorkers Sue Trump and FEMA To Stop Presidential Alert
I'll deign to respond for once rather than mod. Let me preface this as saying I've observed Mr. Trump (I won't stoop to calling him weird names), for well over 35 years (both as a born and raised New Yorker from NYC, and as educated, functioning adult for the 23 years). I'll start with what I like.

1) He gets most of the public tasks he states done
2) He's a fighter (all self-respecting NYers, and probably the country as a whole or in part respects that).
3) He is arguably one of the most effective presidents to ever take office (in terms of achieving his agenda).
4) He was a key component in truly ending the Korean war

Here's what I don't like:

1) He's a bully. Mr. Trump claims to know how to make a deal, but his "deals" seem akin to a mobster boss telling someone they are going to make an offer they can't refuse.

2) He's reckless (like a bull in a china store). I'm not sure Mr. Trump fully understands that we are 1 country in the world and not the world itself. Whether its good or bad, the world is interconnected and interdependent in ways both obvious and subtle. I'm not saying we have to adopt other countries ways or kiss their collective butts, but the word diplomacy implies a certain level of negotiation and finesse and I'm sorry our leader lacks these skills. Furthermore, history as shown many great civilizations who fell due to feeling they were above all others. One can be firm and polite, i.e. non-antagonistic.

3) He nurses personal grudges: I've never seen a president in our history get into grudge match after grudge match over the most trivial things. No one has ever said the news is perfect. You cannot use it as a definitive source (or primary source) of information (at least rather you should not). And I understand the liberal media is hard on him, just like the conservative media was hard on President Obama; however it is the nature of the job, that you volunteered and / or paid for.

Could I go deeper, yep. Do I like him, I don't know him personally to like or dislike him. He is an enigma at best and a catastrophe at worse. One thing I am seeing and its probably not a good thing is the goodwill that has been built up over many decades is being ripped apart because of his personal grudges and I'm definitely certain that we haven't even felt the fallout of that yet.

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