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Comment Re:Netflix rating engine sucks (Score 2) 86

Sure, but it's so much worse now than it was then. I was trying to add old Doctor Who to my DVD queue. With each add it pops up other recommendations, but a lot of the time none of them were Doctor Who episodes!

It seems to recommend obscure crap when I'm adding a popular/cult item, and it recommends Frozen or some other recent big budget thing when I'm adding older obscure stuff. I have to think their algorithms have been messed with by their marketing and suits to push things their distribution contracts require them to, not what their users actually want.

Comment Re:Wait until those lamers find out... (Score 2) 385

If you are using concentrated solar thermal instead of photovoltaics, the molten slag is your battery. Use both so you get PV in the morning when your salt is cool. Winds are higher in the morning too. And of course a safe thorium reactor for baseline never hurt anybody.

Comment Re:And this surprises... who? (Score 4, Interesting) 191

Most senior citizens (those 65 or older) became senior citizens since 1995, when the web started taking off. Many became senior citizens after 2005, when it had mostly saturated middle-class households.

It's not so much that granny embraced the internet, it's that she embraced the internet and then aged into being "granny".

Comment In the US, insurance is a racket (Score 1) 1330

Nearly everything is much cheaper to an insurance company than it is for you if you walk in the pharmacy and pay for it out of pocket. By not being able to get it on insurance, you lose that discount. Not that it should be that way, but that's how it is, and often that discount is 70% or more because of some foolishness called "differential pricing" instead of by its proper name, "theft."

Comment Not in the US. (Score 1) 1330

The most common birth control pill in use in the US costs USD$50 a month not counting the mandatory prescriptions. Many countries do sell them cheaper -- but not in the US, and they are never OTC here. Although free clinics do sometimes hand out Plan B I have never heard of one that dispenses regular non-emergency contraception. And this is where the ruling in question applies.

Comment Lots of people can't afford a movie a week (Score 2) 1330

Particularly a $12 movie, which is what they would have to cost to equal the cost of the Pill. (Not counting the mandatory biannual medical exams, without which you can't get a prescription.) Ginsberg noted in her dissent that the cost of an IUD is comparable to a month's salary for a person making minimum wage. Then again, I'm sure you'll also agree that the cost of your own vaccines and blood transfusions are also reasonable when those folks start claiming their exemption under this stupid ruling.

Comment Re:This just illustrates (Score 2) 365

When I lived in regular Texas, Green Mountain was my 100% wind provider, and my rates only went down for the ~6 years I used them.

Austin doesn't give me a choice as I have to use the municipal service. I'm still 100% wind but angry they didn't grandfather my past record of wind power into a lower early adopter rate.

Comment Re:Good. (Score 1) 188

While there are some libertarians that support regulation of trade speech, many seem to prefer caveat emptor. Fraud, then, would be policed not through prevention but through litigation, or (for some libertarians) not at all, and instead be a life lesson.

What would that life lesson probably be? "This libertarian utopia sucks; I want regulation back." At least that's my guess.

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