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Comment Re:Two Bits Of Bad News... (Score 1) 92

I guess you missed this part:

The firm’s findings still contrast strongly with those put forward by three Australia-based academics, who estimated in 2019 that based on transactional data from 2009 to 2017, one-quarter of all 106 million Bitcoin users engaged in crime, and that by 2018, illicit finance accounted for around $76 billion a year, or roughly half, of all transactions in bitcoins.

Cryptocurrencies have transformed drug trafficking by enabling crime syndicates to cut out street dealers and sell directly to customers around the world through darknet markets, as well as peddle higher-quality narcotics, said Sean Foley, a finance professor at Macquarie University in Sydney and one of the report’s authors.

“Chainalysis is trying to tell us about the total consumption of cocaine in Australia by telling us about how much cocaine has been seized,” Foley said. “It’s very difficult for me to meaningfully comment on the methodology because they don’t really tell you what they do.”

Comment Re:Meanwhile (Score 4, Interesting) 56

It's better for you.

It's not better for a lot of businesses. The collaboration features of openoffice are sub-par. That alone excludes openoffice from most shortlists. Many businesses nowadays rely on Sharepoint. Only Google comes close to this.

Excel is by far the best in connecting to external database resources. By far the best in pivot tables. Both are extensively used for financial reporting.

Not saying Excel is perfect. But there simply is no serious competition.

Comment Re:Women... (Score 2) 86

A man will pay double for something he needs to have it right when and where he needs it. A woman will pay half price for something she doesn't need simply because "It's a good deal!" Women make purchases based on emotion. There are entire industries built around this. Cosmetics being the biggest one. Fashion being second. Hell, even plastic surgery. Women shop based on emotion. Tell them what they want to hear, and they'll pull out a credit card so fast you'll feel a shockwave.

Sure, whatever you say. The reality is that most studies show that, while the categories they spend most on differ from women, men tend to spend more than women on non-essential products based on emotion.

Advertising for men revolves more around giving a sense of purpose, practicality, productivity, freedom, endurance, and adventure.

In other words, appeals to emotion.

Comment Re:Was it a Russian drone? (Score 1) 142

Na, looks like you were just flat-out wrong. [denvergazette.com]

Do you care to explain how I'm wrong? All you did was post a link to the article. I read the article and it does not say anywhere that I can find that I'm wrong. Maybe if you want to use a source to make an argument you should, you know, actually make the argument.

The article does say:

The defendant plead guilty to the crime on Jan. 12. Four other counts against him were dismissed as a result of the plea deal.

which agrees to what I said. It also explains that it took 7 months for the officer to be charged, whereas Waddy was charged immediately.

Now, as to the other charges against Waddy, they included assault charges, but it is very hard to find much about the precise nature of those charges. This case is cited in a number of places as a case where someone was charged for actions of non-accomplices that harmed bystanders, but it is hard to find precise confirmation. None of the news articles go into enough detail and the major search engines are steaming heaps of garbage that just regurgitate news articles now. I tried going back to news articles right around the time of the original arrest and shooting. Same problem of course with detail, plus all of the articles at the time seemed to be credulously repeating what later turned out to be pretty much outright lies from the police.

So, it is cited as an example, but it is unclear. What is clear is that there were assault charges. Now, it is possible that those were instead about the fist fight that the police were originally called about, but the only victims named by any of the articles are the ones who were shot. Basically, while it still seems likely that this was an example of what we were talking about, there are no reliable primary sources immediately available to demonstrate it. At one point I would have searched harder and looked for court filings, etc. but the return is just so low since you seem unlikely to accept even absolute proof.

There are plenty of other examples though of police shootings leading to the person the police were after being charged for the indirect killing, even though the killer was not an accomplice. Try looking up Donald Sahota in Washington. He was an off duty police officer from Vancouver who was chasing a burglary suspect with his gun out. He was shot and killed by a Sheriff's deputy who thought he was the burglar. The burglary suspect was charged for murder as a result. That one seems like a pretty clear cut example meeting the criteria. The person killed was killed by a police officer (unless we want to nitpick on the differences between a deputy and a police officer). They were not an accomplice to the suspect the police were responding to. The suspect who they were responding to was charged with the death of someone they did not directly kill and who was killed by police.

Comment Re:Fukushima Volume 2? (Score 2, Informative) 28

So, it isnt the size of the quake that is the concern, it is the unknown shifting of material underwater. And 30 miles deep is pretty tough to gauge significant changes quickly.

Not that it invalidates what you are saying, I just want to be clear the 30 miles deep is underground. No water to displace there. The deepest part of the ocean is about 7 miles deep.

Comment Re: Definitions [Re:ADHD does not exist] (Score 1) 237

20-40 isn't coke bottle glasses.

That is true, but that is not the point. I was not responding specifically to that very specific example. I was responding to the part about:

"It's more as if there were a Diagnosis of Seeing Manual (DSM) that redefined the definitions to merge blindness with other vision problems into a single category, a spectrum "Visual-acuity spectrum disorder".

Which was frankly surreal since that category or spectrum obviously already exists (not under their made up name, of course) and it is truly bizarre to encounter anyone who does not know that. It's like talking to someone who does not know that there are different kinds and severity and causes of diabetes and that people with diabetes just need to "stop eating like pigs". Or people who don't believe that allergies exist and intentionally put things into people's food that they say they're allergic to. Etc., etc. Those, and others, by the way are real examples. Actual people I have met in real life. They really think that allergies are made up. As in, they think there is literally no such thing and that they're entirely made up. It's basically right up there with flat Earthers and people who think the moon landings were faked. You just feel like, somehow, they're not living in the same universe as you.

Comment Re:Was it a Russian drone? (Score 1) 142

Regarding Waddy. If the charges were dropped, that means that he was being prosecuted on those charges, so what I said is correct. Also, just worth noting that the officer shot 7 people and got probation whereas Waddy went to prison for 2 1/2 years on a firearms possession charge. This was after pleading guilty to the possession charge. In other words, a plea deal. The prosecution over assault charges for the shootings was not dropped because of the prosecution of the officer, it was dropped because he took a deal.

The very simple fact is that it is indeed the case that someone can be charged for shootings by a third party who is explicitly not their accomplice if they commit a crime that leads to the shooting. I am making no claim on whether this is right or wrong, or what a jury will decide in court, or how prosecutors might decide to handle it, or any other point. I am saying only that it can, and does happen and that my statement is demonstrably true due to recent court cases.

Comment Re: Good for her! (Score 1) 152

Certainly the data aggregation is a real one. In theory, it is a separate issue from people doing their own private filming and photography in public though. Now, modern technology and the relentless corporate push to make all data produced by everyone corporate property stored on public servers instead of kept privately certainly bridges those two issues. Regardless though, we should not conflate them.

Comment Re:Also the right wing manipulates elections (Score 1) 107

Oof. You really seem to have it bad on this trying to pretend that you're actually politically neutral/both sides thing. I'm not a partisan. I have political leanings and preferences of course. I simply recognize the extreme limitations of the US system of elections. I am basically very much against one of the two major parties because of a pretty long list of the ways they are completely against the majority of my principles. Until the broken system is fixed (which does not seem likely any time soon, since the vast majority of people don't really seem to grasp the most severe problems with it), that means that I have to weigh the lesser evil. As it stands at the moment, there is, from my perspective, a clear greater evil, so the choice is pretty much a default. I am not some sort of fan or zealot. Frankly though, I think you know all this. I don't think you're calling me "partisan slime" because you believe it. I think you're doing it because you know that I am not, but you also think that calling me something I am not will trigger me, so it's just a cheap trick on your part.

Comment Re:Noviye Russkiye jokes aside, (Score 1) 112

What is scary is... what happens if a satellite is knocked out or Internet connectivity destroyed? Especially in a disaster.

Perhaps there is a personal physical override in those cases. It's certainly a good "remedy" for people who don't pay their subscriptions.

"The system takes between one and four hours to install, and Porsche says it’s about 1,000 euros ($1,140) to fit, with a monthly 20 euro ($23) service charge. "

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