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Comment Re:Your biggest screw up (Score 1) 452

Reddit was started as an experiment in free speech.

Wait, what?

I recall Alex coming on Slashdot a lot to promote Reddit when he first launched it. "An experiment in free speech" was not anything I recall being discussed. I also remember him posting on Slashdot while still developing reddit.

What I recall, is promotion of a general interest platform that was more open than Slashdot (unlimited moderations for all!) and less susceptible to vote brigading than Digg.

It was while ago, so I may be a bit foggy on the specifics.

Comment Re:Dwindling airable land? (Score 1) 279

I think what the Libertarians fail to realize is that farmers, as a general rule, are not smart enough to diversify or maintain course.

First, I think that's a ridiculous assertion. Smart farmers don't diversify because the taxpayers bear the risk of their crop failure, or of crashing prices; they have insufficient incentive to diversify.

Second, if we had a true free market, dumb farmers would go out of business and we would be left with smart farmers allocating resources efficiently. Isn't that the point of economic libertarianism?

Note: I am far from libertarian.

Comment Re:So does this qualify as 'organic'? (Score 1) 279

What do you mean by cyclical? Do you mean the livestock/fertilizer/crop/fodder cycle? Do you mean crop rotation? Or something else entirely?

Just curious, since I'm not aware of either cyclical production or crop rotation being a requirement for organic farming (although both are considered best practices).

Comment Wierd, indeed (Score 1) 2

If it's Ubuntu, it's a new problem, or only affects certain makes and models. I ran kubuntu on an Acer notebook for quite a while, and its wifi was far better than Windows.

I suspect it's an issue with drivers; Linux has had driver issues in the past, especially with newer equipment.

Comment Speed is indeed important (Score 1) 6

Not everyone has a brand-new computer; The manuscript of the book I'm about to publish is in Open Office Word, about 400 pages and full of large images, and autosave is a real pain because it takes minutes to save the file.

Like another commenter said, I wouldn't make it the most important thing, overall efficiency is. But software speed is important to anyone with an older computer, especially a Windows computer, because the computer slows as the registry grows, and the registry never gets smaller, only bigger.

Comment Various whatsits (Score 5, Interesting) 266

I carry around a pipe caliper that I designed and 3D printed. A scissor-looking device that tells you the size of a pipe (up to 4") based on outside diameter. Useful on the job.

I designed and printed a custom flashlight holder for those cheap LED flashlights.

Custom replacement handle for a triangular file

Set of custom drawer knobs.

Custom hard drive mounting bracket.

Custom battery holder.

Custom shelf bracket.

~Three dozen clothespins.

3-axis tilt camera stand that mounts on top of a tripod. (replaces one that broke).

Custom 80:1 worm gear reduction for a machine I was working on, as well as a few spur gears and light-duty V-belt pulleys for same machine. Custom thrust bearing and ball bearing holders.

A full set of Meta-Chess pieces.

A custom tool for aligning V-belt pulleys using a 3V line laser module and magnetic base.

Currently in progress is a mostly 3D printed racing wheel controller for my PC, which uses the guts from a dual analog game controller. The controller is unusable because the silicone pads for the buttons cracked, but the electronics are still good and with 4x analog axes I can get steering and three pedals plus 16 digital buttons. My hangup is I can't get the "feel" of the buttons right...

If I ever get off my ass and finish building the electric furnace I've been working on, and manage to melt some aluminum with it, I fully intend to try lost-PLA casting some aluminum parts. That's be awesome...
=Smidge=

Comment Re:Still too expensive (Score 1) 249

By this logic, nobody would buy a gasoline gar that's over $10K either... yet there aren't many new cars you can buy for $10K.

It's almost like there's more than just sticker price that is of interest to buyers. Things like fit and finish, styling, performance, and maybe even brand.

This is what Tesla realized from the start: It's very hard to make an electric car that's cheap but attractive, and it's a lot easier to make a car more attractive than it is to make it less expensive. So, if you're going to make a $60K+ electric car, make sure it looks, feels and drives like a $60K+ car.
=Smidge=

Comment Re:Incineration (Score 1) 371

The data shows that growth has increased despite harvesting has increased or remained virtually the same over the past ~60 years. The overall volume of tree stocks has VERY CLEARLY been growing for both soft and hard woods.

And you still need to substantiate your claim that we'd need to sacrifice food production to grow enough paper.
=Smidge=

Comment Re:Not surprising... (Score 5, Informative) 181

The FCC has removed incentives for monopolistic ISPs to increase backbone network capacity since they are not allowed to derive any additional revenue to offset the cost of those investments...

They were NEVER going to do that, ever, until it became absolutely necessary and/or someone else paid for it.

For starters, ISPs do not have anything to do with the backbones - those are owned and operated by other companies that do not sell connections to the end user. The backbone is not the problem - the ISPs which control the "last mile" are.

And there's plenty of bandwidth for the most part. All evidence suggests that the plan was never to increase bandwidth and charge extra for better service - the plan was to throttle and charge extra for normal service.

This is self evident in the fact that the backbone is fine, but traffic is what's being artificially throttled. It's exactly what they were doing and the FCC regulations were put in place to stop it and preserve the internet how it was, not change it.

There's no such thing as a free market when there is a monopoly. Network Neutrality prevents monopolies from harming competition and actually *preserves* what little free market exists on the internet.
=Smidge=

Comment Re:Local and small (Score 1) 268

This is still a terrible measure, because bible-belt Southerners average close to 7%, while New Englanders average under 3% (source [philanthropy.com]).

It's also a terrible measure because giving to a church is not always the same as giving to a charity. Not saying that all churches aren't charities, just that some spend quite a lot less on charitable works than some other charities.

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