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Comment Re: So much stupid (Score 4, Informative) 111

Which just goes to show a lot of indie media is composed of fucking retards

It really doesn't fucking matter whether talking about a black or a white or a hispanic or an asian getting shot in the back by a cop, the "officer's pistol" didn't magically "discharge". The cop murdered a non-threat, plain and simple.

And never mind the recent rash of suicides for traffic violations - I have to give them credit, that takes their disdain for the general population to a new low. They couldn't get much more blunt about how the feel about us short of literally pissing on us at every traffic stop. "Don't worry, I've marked you, the next one will pass you by".

Comment Re:No surprises there... (Score 1) 608

I never really followed politics much when I was younger, but has it always been like this?

You will occasionally find people who get very, very offended when you point out that Democrats and Republicans differ only in name. These people, sadly, really do believe that the next Obama will change things, and then grow all the more bitter when he ends up just like the rest of the worthless fucks in DC.

But yes, it has pretty much always gone like this. Every charismatic young buck looks like the next Prez Rickard, right up until he turns into the next Tricky Dick.

Townshend was wrong. It's seems like you can just keep fooling us over and over again.

Meet the new boss - Same as the old boss.

Comment We have this awesome new tech... (Score 2) 147

They call it a "lock and key". Totally uncrackable over the internet or via USB, and although exploits do exist, for higher quality setups they take considerable time with physical access to the device.

The "IoT" is not our friend, folks - It turns solid, reliable old-school products into yet another vector for malware in your house. And if you think reinstalling Windows sucks, how about having your oven go into self-cleaning mode during your vacation without the safety latch closed? How about having your blender "playfully" get your cat's attention with brief pulses before going full puree? How about overriding your on-demand hot water heater to its "steam clean" setting with you in the shower?

I love toys, including electronics. But the fewer things in my house vulnerable to remote exploits, the better. My toaster should have one dial and one lever and zero computers, period.

Comment Re:Under what authority? (Score 3, Insightful) 298

Their permit said that they would not have this wanted fugitive perform. They violated the terms of their permit, so were shut down. This is pretty straightforward and they had to know this would happen - they probably wanted the publicity.

Would the police also have shut them down if they started playing clips of Roman Polanski (wanted in the US for raping a 13 year old girl) movies?

Sure, they can ban him from appearing. But "straightfoward", for effectively playing a movie by someone with an opinion they don't want heard? Yeah, I would call that straightforward - A straightforward violation of the first amendment.

Comment Key detail: Security experts have IT skills (Score 4, Insightful) 112

Although the password keeper point struck me as interesting, I take issue with the "experts" stance on updates.

People don't shun (non-OS) updates because they "might" install malware - They shun them because they do install unwanted tag-alongs (if not outright malware). Flash tries to install its partner-of-the-week every time you update it. Chrome just added push notifications. Java... Let's not even go there. And let's not overlook the fact that most users can't tell a legit update prompt from a drive-by installer.

Security experts have a bias here because they:
1) can usually tell the legit updates from the bogus ones (and know enough to get the bloat-free version of the update); and
2) can themselves remove or repair the occasional spyware that slips through, without needing to pay BestBuy $150 for five minutes' work on a machine only worth $300 in the first place.

Comment Re:Interesting choice of questions to address (Score 1) 557

Yes and no - That would count as a valid reason, if not for the fact that Wu has five minutes of fame solely because of GG. No one gives the least damn about the co-founder of some two-bit game studio.

When your pony has only one trick, no one comes to the show to hear its opinions on the merits of alfalfa vs clover. Heck, until the trolls showed up and explained why we should care about this Q&A, I dismissed it as a blatant Dicevertisement.

Comment Re:Lets just hope (Score 0) 67

Sure! Why, I can think of plenty of non-evil reasons for push notifications. Why, we have email (that I don't get through a PC browser), IMs (that I don't get through a browser)... Um... Stock alerts (that I don't get through a browser)... Hmm...

Oh, and ads, lots and lots of ads - Ads just fucking everywhere, loves me some ads. Mmm-hmm. Don't you love ads, you commie bastard? How do you expect the economy to grow (wink wink nudge nudge) if you don't need to acknowledge an ad for Viagra every five minutes?

Ahem. Yeah. At this rate, I'll need to start rolling my own Chrome builds just to keep the crap to a minimum.

Comment Interesting choice of questions to address (Score 4, Insightful) 557

Of all the good questions actually upvoted in the original thread, why the hell did you decide to respond to not only the most soulless of the bunch, but ones that also require the disclaimer "I can't talk about this, but here's my opinion about a tangentially related issue"?

You say that you don't want to play the victim or the token IT female or the feminist propagandist... And then proceed to focus on literally nothing else, even at the expense of answering the damned questions asked. Seriously, why bother?

Comment Re: Uhmmmm (Score 1) 620

First, I agree with you as regards willful ignorance - I have no patience for that, myself. That said...

From the context given, it seems pretty clear that he didn't mean that literally, so much as describing the complexity of the respective systems.

Variac output induces a current in coil 1 proportional to the current times the number of turns, which powers coil 2, which repels against a fixed magnet to move a needle... vs "I clip this on, something similar happens at the first stage, then it goes through various filters, goes through the lowest bidder's 4-bit ADC using an aging 9V battery as Vref, gets adjusted by calibration code of unknown accuracy (and hopefully the last person to use it didn't randomly recalibrate it using a lemon and a dog's nose), and finally a number magically appears on the LCD".

Yes, the old timer understands what the digital meters does - Enough to understand that it has about a million times more points of failure than two loops of wire and a magnet.

Comment Re:Do they have a choice? (Score 1) 312

No, you stupid shithead. The search terms are the same. The login names are different.

Reading comprehension fail, much?

FTA: I wondered what a Google Image search would bring up if I typed in "black" names and "white" names.

The author explicitly searched for names strongly associated with a particular race.

But that said, let's play Devil's advocate, and pretend you didn't decide to jump in and start flinging feces without even reading the GP's linked article. If you've logged in, your own login name is a search term. You just don't actually enter it manually. Again - Brad Pitt no doubt gets ads for different products than I do, despite our shared race and gender.

Comment Re:Existing Law (Score 2) 312

I realize you meant that as a joke, but seriously - A select-fire weapon has a hell of a lot more to do with the firing mechanism than how fast you can pull the trigger. A double-action semi will never function as a full auto no matter how you pull the trigger.

Case in point, entirely legal bump-fire triggers on '15s - Yes, they can spit rounds out at a rate approaching a full auto (albeit with all the accuracy of a monkey flinging feces) - But you'd need a frickin' miracle to make it through a standard 30 round magazine without a FTF due to overheating.

Every American, regardless of their stance on gun control, should find the government's stance on this one nothing short of reprehensible. We have laws for the purpose of keeping the domesticate primates from robbing, raping and murdering each other. Someone's RC aircraft (legal) pet project that just happens to include a spoooky word (gun, also legal) but hurts no one shouldn't even get the attention of the authorities, much less have them wasting resource trying to find charges they can make stick.

Comment Re:Do they have a choice? (Score 1) 312

It's already been shown that Google gives different results to searches that include "black" names vs "white" ones

Wow - You mean putting different words in my Google search... Gives different results (or in the case you linked, different ads, arguably just another type of result)??? Those racist bastards!

Seriously, what the fuck? No kidding, it gives different results! If I search for my name, it gives different results than if I search for Brad Pitt, despite having the same race and gender. Duh.

The world still has real racism. Quit trying so hard to find it in places it can't exist (algorithmic search results), unless you seriously mean to accuse Google of biasing their algorithm to discriminate against people named Shaniqua.

Comment Re:I hate watches (Score 1) 213

maybe it's helpful for you that I edit your response and show what a nonsense argument it is.

I'd have to say that does more to support the GP's point, than to refute it - Do you see a lot of people under 50 wearing watches?

Wrist watches have a tiny bit more utility than pocket watches; but once everyone had a de facto pocket watch on them at all times (aka a cell phone), most people saw no need to carry both. Wrist watches have effectively gone the way of the dodo, except for one niche purpose: Status symbols.

You only see two types of people wearing watches today - The rich (or pretenders thereof) showing off their Rolex; and the hipsters, showing off their vintage $10 Swatches to prove themselves as more Bohemian than the next guy on a fixie.

And whaddya know - Look who has adopted the iWatch.

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