I've been thinking about writing a scraper for a while now, to gather some stats on Slashdot and do some analysis. It's not really my area but isn't exactly difficult. I think there would be some very interesting data in there. You could see what periods people were active, and how moderation changed over time, and maybe even how the political centre ground shifted.

What do you expect when apparently money is the only language that the US public understands? Climate change is all a scam, pollution is someone else's problem, so what other option is there?

If you were not so ideologically opposed to any kind of socialism you could subsidise improvements to people's homes that would make them more efficient and dramatically cut their energy use to European levels. You won't do that either, so there really is only one option left.

If you are not being down-modded you are not saying anything controversial. Particularly anything that suggests that there might be some sexism in CS, as an example, will be hammered down fast and hard by MRAs. If you are lucky you might get some counter-mods and end up in the black.

I think that's what has screwed up Slashdot's moderation system. There are now organized groups moderating in concert to push a particular point of view. Look back at some of the threads about GamerGate, for example, and you can see the block vote in action. People getting modded "troll" for posting links to GamerGate's own material that happens to contradict the point they are trying to make.

That's the point of making noise about these arrests. Distract people from what the US is doing, maybe drum up some support for it because after all everyone else is doing it... Make China look like the big bad, to justify offensive hacking.

Minimum wage hikes help the middle class. The people on minimum wage become less dependant on the government to make up the shortfall in their income or house them, so less tax money is needed. At the same time, they won't tolerate businesses putting their prices up.

The idea that minimum wage should only go up by inflation assumes that it is currently at the correct level. Since you can't live on it, it might not be.

Of you never you refactoring tools you are lucky. Clearly you are not integrating or maintaining other people's code.

The other big feature that IDEs offer is code browsing. One or two clicks to go to a function/variable definition. Compiler errors link directly to the line in question. I'd never want to go back to wasting time manually looking for stuff.

LG and Sharp are the two big panel makers. Samsung make some for their own hardware but aren't big on supplying others. All Apple's current products use LG and Sharp screens.

Apple's phones were extremely expensive when the iPhone first launched, it's just that now other manufacturers have realized they can charge the same ridiculous prices.

The joke is that you can get a better phone for less than half the price, even one third as much. Apple, and the other manufactures, are just fleecing you.

My Panasonic TV passes the remote control through to connected devices over HDMI. I have a Raspberry Pi set up with xbmc and can control it with the TV remote when the correct HDMI input is selected.

Cursive is a particular style of joined up writing, but it is different to what is taught in the UK, for example.

The problem with generating the key on the device is that you can't back it up. Well, there is another issue, you don't know how good the RNG is. The cops won't be able to break it but the NSA/GCHQ might.

What is your alternative? Carry on polluting because it's cheaper, any you probably won't be around to deal with the really serious consequences so...

Or maybe build more nuclear, throw vast amounts of subsidy at that instead and hope they figure out what to do with the waste and employ competent people for the next 50+ years and don't decide profit is more important than safety.

At some point things will have to change. The only question is what the nature of the change will be. I'd rather it was towards a clean technology.

Any mining chip is doomed to failure. Within 6 months it will be worthless, incapable of mining more value than it costs to manufacture and run.

See all the other Bitcoin mining chips that have been released. They look powerful when announced, by the time people get them they are average, and six months later the difficulty level has risen far enough to make them worthless bricks or expensive room heaters. The more of them in existence the faster this will happen. That is how Bitcoin is designed to work.

To MRAs, just talking about women's portrayal in media is an SJW conspiracy. See the recent story on the Mad Max film.

>Blame the readers. The publishers just make what they know will sell.

The authors still have a responsibility here. "Money" is not a universal justification for any morally dubious act. People want cheap electronics, doesn't justify building them in a sweetshop and then dumping the waste in the local river though.