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Comment Re:just what we all love (Score 3, Insightful) 243

by hjf (#49763357) Attached to: Amazon Decides To Start Paying Tax In the UK

Free trade is desirable now? My, my... how much koolaid did you drink?

Free trade is only desirable to the stronger economy/ies in the bloc. For example: The Eurozone benefits the already established industrial powers (Germany) while giving no incentive for the smaller countries to set up their own factories. In a free trade agreement, Germany can now dump all of their products in a smaller country and take all of their money. Germany doesn't need to buy anything from them: they already make everything their need - so basically the smaller country is just a raw material supplier, or purely agricultural exporter. The smaller country is now doomed.

This is the real truth about free trade agreements.

So you say: then don't sign the FTA! Sure: now Germany flat out refuses to do business with you (so much for the "free market" spirit). Or they pressure you with debt you already have with them.

No. Free trade agreements are not a solution to anything. They just perpetuate the "xxxx country is an industrial power while yyyy is just a carrots producer" stereotype.

Submission + - How Employers Get Out of Paying Their Workers

Submitted by HughPickens.com
HughPickens.com writes: We love to talk about crime in America and usually the rhetoric is focused on the acts we can see: bank heists, stolen bicycles and cars, alleyway robberies. But Zachary Crockett writes at Pricenomics that wage theft one of the more widespread crimes in our country today — the non-payment of overtime hours, the failure to give workers a final check upon leaving a job, paying a worker less than minimum wage, or, most flagrantly, just flat out not paying a worker at all. Most commonly, wage theft comes in the form of overtime violations. In a 2008 study, the Center for Urban Economic Development surveyed 4,387 workers in low-wage industries and found that some 76% of full-time workers were not paid the legally required overtime rate by their employers and the average worker with a violation had put in 11 hours of overtime—hours that were either underpaid or not paid at all. Nearly a quarter of the workers in the sample came in early and/or stayed late after their shift during the previous work week. Of these workers, 70 percent did not receive any pay at all for the work they performed outside of their regular shift. In total, unfairly withheld wages in these three cities topped $3 billion. Generalizing this for the rest of the U.S.’s low-wage workforce (some 30 million people), researchers estimate that wage theft could be costing Americans upwards of $50 billion per year.

Last year, the Economic Policy Institute made what is, to date, the most ambitious attempt to quantify the extent of reported wage theft in the U.S.and determined that “the total amount of money recovered for the victims of wage theft who retained private lawyers or complained to federal or state agencies was at least $933 million.” Obviously, the nearly $1 billion collected is only the tip of the wage-theft iceberg, since most victims never sue and never complain to the government. Commissioner Su of California says wage theft has harmed not just low-wage workers. “My agency has found more wages being stolen from workers in California than any time in history,” says Su. “This has spread to multiple industries across many sectors. It’s affected not just minimum-wage workers, but also middle-class workers.”

Submission + - Researchers devise a system that looks secure (but is it easy to use?). (readwrite.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The article in readwrite says that a team of British and American researchers have developed a hacker resistant process for online voting (http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~mdr/research/papers/pdf/15-Du-Vote.pdf) called Du-Vote. It uses a credit card sized device that helps to divide the security sensitive tasks between your computer and the device in a way that neither your computer nor the device learns how you voted. If a hacker managed to control the computer and the Du-Vote token, he still can't change the votes without being detected.

Submission + - Congress Seeks to Quash Patent Trolls (scientificamerican.com)

Submitted by walterbyrd
walterbyrd writes: The process is moving quickly. The Senate Judiciary Committee plans to vote on the bill by the end of the month, readying it for a final Senate vote this summer, and the House of Representatives’ Judiciary Committee is likely to vote this week on a similar measure. That gives observers optimism that Congress will finally enact patent-troll legislation after a failed effort last year. “The Senate version really does seem to be hitting some sort of sweet spot,” says Arti Rai, co-director of the Duke Law Center for Innovation Policy in Durham, North Carolina.

Submission + - Can SaaS be open source AND economically viable? (lucidchart.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The CTO behind Lucidchart, an online diagramming app, recently cited the rbush open source project as an invaluable tool for helping implement an "in-memory spatial index" that "increased spatial search performance by a factor of over 1,000 for large documents." My question is this: what risks does a SaaS company like Lucidchart face in making most of their own code public, like Google's recent move with Chrome for Android, and what benefits might be gained by doing so? Wouldn't sharing the code just generate more users and interest? Even if competitors did copy it, they'd always be a step behind the latest developments.

Comment Re:Machine learning? (Score 0) 184

by circletimessquare (#49754155) Attached to: DNA On Pizza Crust Leads To Quadruple Murder Suspect

I can't have a serious discussion with you if you believe racist things. No one intellectually honest and capable can have a serious discussion with a racist, because it is only possible to believe in racist things if you are of low intellect. Objectively true. To correlate skin color and intellect is gross prejudice composed of logical fallacies. It is ironic too (you need to be low iq to commit to the fallacies and believe this arbitrary link between skin color and intellect).

I can't have a serious discussion with a creationist or an antivaxxer or a ufo cultist either. Because to firmly believe these things is only possible if you are a person with a serious defect in intellect. I'm being 100% serious and sincere. You are a stupid person. Objectively true based on you having a racist belief. You are not worth the time of anyone serious, and you will never find the "fair" airing of your thoughts that you seek because everyone intelligent has discarded your entire domain. No one intellectually honest is interested in indulging and entertaining an idiot's idea. And that is exactly what racism is: the "thoughts" of the dumb people.

And if you want to improve the gene pool: don't have children. Again, I am completely sincere. You are a dumb person. To have a racist belief is only possible if you are.

Comment Re:Machine learning? (Score 1) 184

by circletimessquare (#49754101) Attached to: DNA On Pizza Crust Leads To Quadruple Murder Suspect

You disrespect people based on the color of their skin. Therefore you deserve no respect. You withhold respect for ignorant reasons. You see a skin color, and make a baseless judgment on intellect and character from that. Which, ironically, is proof you are unintelligent and of low character. Because to believe racist thoughts is only possible if you lack cognitive capacity in certain areas of reasoning and social intelligence, and if you have bad intent on society and individuals in general.

You're a disrespectful asshole, so you get nothing but insults and disrespect in return. You get what you give you ignorant douchebag.

Want to improve the gene pool? Don't have children. I mean that sincerely. The quality of your words here belies low intellect and low character on your part, objectively speaking.

Comment Re:Machine learning? (Score 1) 184

by circletimessquare (#49751417) Attached to: DNA On Pizza Crust Leads To Quadruple Murder Suspect

let us say, just for the sake of argument (i don't really believe your ignorance), that skin color and race are correlated somehow

it's a bell curve. you understand that, right?

so, for example, we have on one end one of the most cerebral presidents we've maybe ever had, at least since wilson: barack obama. obviously more intelligent than the vast majority of white people, as well as black people. more intelligent than people of all races, period

what is the value, exactly, of saying that because his skin is brown, that we have to ascribe some sort of negative modifier on how we perceive his intelligence, just because a bunch of other people who are brown are supposedly less intelligent on average?

intelligence is an INDIVIDUAL value. it does no good to class all people according to an arbitrary signifier. if you were interviewing a bunch of people for computer programmer, and disregarded the ones with brown skin because they were "less intelligent," you might have hired a dumb white person and disregarded the black genius. it does no good to you, nevermind black people, to use this shallow useless prejudice, because it doesn't actually help you. an INDIVIDUAL assessment is what matters

for example: most african americans have scottish, irish, english, etc. blood in them, because a lot of their forebearers were raped. therefore, a lot of white people were doing a lot of raping. therefore, according to racist "thinking," we should assume all white people are rapists, because we can prove they rape a lot ( i don't believe this, i'm just demonstrating your ignorance to you)

i'm not really sure this argument is worth having with you though, because i doubt you have enough intellectual capacity to appreciate the argument, since it requires a low iq to believe in racism. by believing in racism, and all of the logical fallacies that come with it, you have objectively proven to me that you are a stupid person. i don't respect you

Comment Re:Machine learning? (Score 0) 184

by circletimessquare (#49750275) Attached to: DNA On Pizza Crust Leads To Quadruple Murder Suspect

what i find interesting is that people who ascribe moronic connections: skin color and intelligence, for example, are, by definition of making that ignorant connection and taking it seriously, stupid people. you have to be low iq to be racist. so when they prescribe exclusionary social engineering to "fix" society of the problem of undesireables, they should take their own medicine and not breed, thereby vastly increasing the iq of the population. that's some good eugenics to improvie the "race"

besides, most african americans aren't really african: too many of them were raped. analyze any of their genetics and chances are you find german, irish, english, etc heritage

so, by the "logic" of how racists think, the real race problem is that all europeans are rapists. i don't believe that. i'm just demonstrating how fucking ignorant and low iq racist "thinking" is

Comment Re:Machine learning? (Score 0) 184

by circletimessquare (#49748789) Attached to: DNA On Pizza Crust Leads To Quadruple Murder Suspect

what's crazier than lame algorithms is trolls and racists having so much time and energy to devote to mental vomit generation

when attempting to understand something pathetic and useless, do not think "it has to be a machine," you give humanity too much credit. never underestimate how much of a depraved loser someone can become

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