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Comment Re:Was it a Russian drone? (Score 1) 144

lol. You really are just the most pathetic fucking thing.

In other words you can't explain it and you just fall back on arrogance and vulgarity rather than try to form a coherent argument. Got it.

The article clearly demonstrates that he was not.
He was never charged for any harm that came to the bystanders.
He was charged with 4th degree assault for an assault the police witnessed before they approached, and being a felon in possession of a weapon.

The article does not clearly state that. This is the part I asked you for. Normally, what you do is reference specific parts of the article, usually in the form of quotes, to actually make your argument. If it's so certain. Then do that. However, it doesn't matter because, as I pointed out, that was just one example. I don't have much stake in one example. I only need one example for my point, so if it's contentious, I don't have to bother defending it, I can just provide another one.

Seriously, go crawl back under your fucking rock.

So you just completely ignore the other example I provided? And I'm supposed to be the one under a rock?

Comment Shakedown cruise (Score 1) 41

If lawmakers were serious and believed in the provisions they must have had a good idea in advance what reaction to expect from industry so why have they folded so easily?

I sometimes get the distinct impression lawmakers don't even care and just dangle the threat of promulgating good reasonable provisions just to rake in corrupt political contributions.

Comment I can see the point. (Score 4, Insightful) 55

Social media has become a toxic dump. If you wouldn't allow children to play in waste effluent from a 1960s nuclear power plant, then you shouldn't allow them to play in the social media that's out there. Because, frankly, of the two, plutonium is safer.

I do, however, contend that this is a perfectly fixable problem. There is no reason why social media couldn't be safe. USENET was never this bad. Hell, Slashdot at its worst was never as bad as Facebook at its best. And Kuro5hin was miles better than X. Had a better name, too. The reason it's bad is that politicians get a lot of kickbacks from the companies and the advertisers, plus a lot of free exposure to millions. Politicians would do ANYTHING for publicity.

I would therefore contend that Australia is fixing the wrong problem. Brain-damaging material on Facebook doesn't magically become less brain-damaging because kids have to work harder to get brain damage. Nor are adults mystically immune. If you took the planet's IQ today and compared it to what it was in the early 1990s, I'm convinced the global average would have dropped 30 points. Australia is, however, at least acknowledging that a problem exists. They just haven't identified the right one. I'll give them participation points. The rest of the globe, not so much.

Comment Re: Meanwhile (Score 1) 67

Typical "but it works for me, and everyone else is a fool. Ãoe reply.

I am a systems biologist regularly handles tons of genetic, spectroscopic and clinical data. I often want to use a spreadsheet to look at data structure, even it is only to write extraction and curation scripts

Excel is dumpster with a hole rusted through the bottom leaving a trail of garbage everywhere it goes.

"A programmatic scan of leading genomics journals reveals that approximately one-fifth of papers with supplementary Excel gene lists contain erroneous gene name conversions."

https://link.springer.com/arti...

Comment Re:Meanwhile (Score 1) 67

That was me, too. Excel was absolutely essential to my productivity as a data-slinger, managing real-word data into and back out of largish SQL databases. The ability to just refresh a pivot table from SQL was an automatic one-click updated report, with no code.

I could do a whole bunch of massaging of data from plain text files, notes, cut-and-paste from other applications - or I could do several Excel formulas and maybe a short macro, and process tens of thousands of records into the big database.

It was about far more than "modelling" it was a swiss army knife of data massaging, reformatting, and above all, data-cleaning.

Whenever I get data in excel I cringe. The data will almost always be mangled requiring me to go back to the source and ask them to change their workflow.

Just before Thanksgiving I received a spreadsheet full of serial numbers. The serial numbers with letters in them were fine. The serial numbers that were all numeric all ended with a 0 due to irreversible loss of precision.

Decades ago I loved seeing all the shit people would come up with in excel, access and oracle forms. It let people who do not get paid to do this shit get useful value. Everyone else... professionals who should know better than to use excel is an another story entirely.

Comment Re:in a way (Score 1) 144

russia has already reached the point where attrition cascades. even the nyt admits this.

Russian attrition is indeed spiraling.
https://en.zona.media/article/...

at this point only a few countries in europe (actually just 3-4 that count: uk, france, germany and maybe poland) and a minority of ukranians (20% according to last gallup poll) want to continue the war, hoping to rescue the situation in the long run.

With the exception of Putler very few wanted the war to start much less continue. Don't mistake wanting war to end for any Ukrainian willingness to acquiesce to absurd demands of Putler et el.

1. ukraine:
- fight to the last man (which will be soon) while being supported by ... europe (the us has bailed)

This is nonsensical. Both sides are capable of suffering their respective rates of attrition forever. This war like nearly every war will not be settled by running out of men. It will be settled by running out of will.

- steal russian assets to support ukraine for 2 more years, see from there. if they succeed, the money will last 6 months, it will wreck their financial industry for good (one of its few industries still standing) and when the trial comes they will have to pay the money back plus reparations.

Forfeiture of Russian assets is something that should have been done years ago as a down payment for harms Russia has already inflicted on Ukraine. This is no different than any corporation or person having their assets forfeited to cover damages they caused.

- rebuild their military, specially germany, for an eventual direct confrontation years down the line, 2030 is thrown around as a target. the problem with this plan is lacking industrial capacity, no access to cheap energy, no money, stagnation or growth of less than 0.5% in the best case and the fact that russia will keep doing the same with industrial capacity at full steam, unlimited energy, growing about 4% and about 4 years headstart.

You are delusional. The Russian military industry is shrinking because the country is going broke. The Russian central bank selling off gold reserves is like a spider eating its own web.

https://www.themoscowtimes.com...

https://peacerep.org/wp-conten...

now, the thing is that russia can win this conflict, and is actually doing so, but not the greater war. even if they get to the dnieper and odessa, as long as these european elites refuse to back off, and they don't seem inclined to do so, western ukraine will be a festering wound, even if totally depaupered. the conflict will freeze and will eventually erupt again. this is not a good situation for russia, which is why

Nobody can win jack shit. This war is exclusively grinding attrition for as far as the eye can see with Russia suffering the vast majority of all losses.

they want to negotiate, and their stance on this hasn't changed much since 2022, which is what they have been warning about since 2008. it would be the best for everyone, frankly.

You contradict yourself. Russia has shown zero interest in negotiation having maintained the same set of unacceptable maximalist demands throughout.

Comment Re:Women... (Score 2) 88

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.

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