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Comment Re:Total BS (Score 0) 522

They are not actually cuts. It is a decrease in the rate of increase of the budget. The net budget is still increasing by a considerable amount.

Maybe we should listen to this Congresswoman who says we are going to lose 170 Million jobs, which is about 100% of the total workforce. Notice how she refers to Pelosi as leader. What is the word for 'leader' in German?

Government

How the U.S. Sequester Will Hurt Science and Tech 522

Later today, the U.S. government will enter the sequestration process, a series of across-the-board budget cuts put into place automatically because U.S. politicians are bad at agreeing on things. "At that moment, somewhere in the bowels of the Treasury Department, officials will take offline the computers that process payments for school construction and clean energy bonds to reprogram them for reduced rates. Payments will be delayed while they are made manually for the next six weeks." The cuts will directly affect science- and tech-related spending throughout the country. Tom Levenson writes, '[s]equester cuts will strike bluntly across the scientific community. The illustrious can move a bit of money around, but even in large labs, a predictable result will be a reduction in the number of graduate student and post – doc slots available — and as those junior and early-stage researchers do a whole lot of the at-the-bench level research, such cuts will have an immediate effect on research productivity. The longer term risk is obvious too: fewer students and post-docs mean on an ongoing drop from baseline in the amount of work to be done year over year.' The former director of the National Institute of Health says it will set back medical science for a generation. NASA Administrator Charles Bolden has laid out how the cuts will affect the U.S. space program. He said, "The Congress wasn’t able to do what they were supposed to do, so we’re going to suffer." The sequester will also prevent billions of dollars from flowing into the tech industry. This comes at a time when there's a pressing need in the tech sector for professionals versed in the use of Linux, and salaries for those workers are on the rise.

Comment Re:Huh? (Score 2, Insightful) 337

They base their finding on a climate model which like most climate models, are always inaccurate.

They also assume that at these temperatures people would be working the same hours. They could easily work at night and since there is a push with the smart grid to pay for the time of use, working at non-peak hours would save costs on energy.

This is nothing but pure speculation based on an unproven hypothetical situation to drive a political agenda. Welcome to modern science.

Comment Re:Fixed (Score 1) 1106

It was also a general consensus among economists that there was no housing bubble in 2006. A consensus means nothing when everyone drinks the same kool-aid and nobody thinks for themselves.

While a higher minimum wage may not always decrease employment it will force any company who relies on unskilled labor to either close or raise prices. The real effect will be to lower the standard of living for those on minimum wage and the middle class due to the increased prices.

You will always be paid depending on how in demand you are. That's why my hometown McDonald's paid minimum wage meanwhile the fast food restaurants in Minot, ND are paying ~$18/hour.

Comment Re:You use GPUs for video games? (Score 3, Interesting) 112

Don't forget electrical costs. At $0.10 a kWh you are paying $0.24 a day (24 hours) per 100 watts of continuous average power consumption. This is $7.20 per month per 100W @ $0.10 /kWh or $87.60 a year. Adjust up/down for your cost of electricity and power usage (120W and $0.12/kWh = 1.2 * 1.2 = 1.44x adjustment)

Believe me, I do not. With electricity costs taken into account I make around $4 per day (from 4 video cards) from Bitcoin or Litecoin on 2 gaming systems I rarely use. When I use my main gaming system it is slightly less.

Now add to this the waste heat vented into your house on the months you cool your house

Living in a colder climate these costs offset, however I have no hard numbers. The slightly higher electricity cost in the summer months are offset from a savings in natural gas cost in the winter months.

+ the depreciated costs (and wear and tear) of the computer assets you tied up processing Bitcoins

The goal is to maximize profits and not necessarily maximize the amount of bitcoins/litecoins I mine, so thanks to the power curve of most cards, it is more profitable to slightly underclock the core and/or memory clock which helps minimize wear and tear on the cards. The cards I've had since 2009 are still running and producing the same MH/s as they always have.

Many people who still mine bitcoins with GPU's are people who don't pay for electricity costs thanks to the difficulty rise from FPGA's and ASIC's. This pushed out any profitability for me, but I still have profitability from Litecoin, which is a similar cryptocurrency.

Even if there were no profits and I was just breaking even I would still do it because I would like a use for my gaming machines since I rarely game anymore but still want to sit down and play every couple of weeks.

Comment Re:Welcome to Capitalism (Score 1) 611

This is a very surprising and disappointing action from Paul -- a politician who once rarely (if ever) contradicted himself.

Well you haven't been paying attention.

  As a member of congress he has repeatedly added amendments to spending bills giving millions to his home district. Then when the bill comes up for a vote, knowing that the bill is going to pass, he votes against the bill. That way he gets millions in pork for his constituents and at the same time can claim he voted against a wasteful spending bill.

You mean, he is transparently giving back his constituent their own money for something useful to them? Isn't that what a Congressman is supposed to do?

Otherwise, that money gets allocated by an unelected person from the executive branch. That's just what we need. More consolidation of power into the executive.

Comment Re:Learn X The Hard Way (Score 1) 183

I would recommend Udacity's CS 101 course along with LPTHW .

The thing I liked about that Udacity course is it is study at your own pace. You can do as little or as much as you want. On top of that you are building a web crawler throughout all of the Units.

I'd also recommend code academy since they added a lot more python modules. It would be a good way to reinforce ideas he is learning whatever course he is going through.

The good thing about LPTHW over the others is you are also setting up a programming environment on your own computer rather than using someone elses interpreter.

Comment Re:So, do something (Score 4, Insightful) 292

The US also had a top marginal tax rate like that. It was during the great economic boom of the 50s and 60s. Turns out that trickle-down, voodoo economics is and always will be bunk.

And as it turns out, nobody paid it. The effective tax rate, i.e. the tax rate people actually paid was around 30-35% at that time.

Comment Re:I have a better idea... (Score 1) 649

You seem to think that just because a company fails that means every single person from that company would now be out of work. Most of these large companies would have profitable divisions that would be worthwhile for shareholders to sell to other companies or spin off into a separate entity and people working for those divisions perhaps may not be out of work. Those services, if profitable would still be in service and there'd be plenty of businesses trying to fill in the void as quickly as possible.

During the financial crisis, had these banks not been bailed out it would have been worse, but it wouldn't have lasted more than 1 or 2 years, instead of the half a decade of stagnation we have now which is destined to become a full decade since we aren't going to change course any time soon.

There is a reason why no one remembers the depression of 1920. They were recovering mid-1921 before the government could even come up with a plan to do anything.

Instead we'll have people on unemployment around 10% and people chronically underemployed around 25% for a decade.

Comment Re:"Cyber 9/11" (Score 3, Interesting) 292

It'll be more like, if you don't give the government insane controls over the internet there will be 100 Chernobyl's in the United States. The legislation is already written. They just need the right opportunity (real of manufactured) to invoke fear and pass it without any congressman being able to read said legislation.

Comment Re:so republicans never get access to it ... (Score 1) 356

Bush and Obama are actually far to the left, if you consider the far left to be total government and far right being no government.

They both believe that the government has a right to regulate in everything that you do. Obama has done nothing but expand everything that Bush started.

He was only recently for gay marriage but both believe that the state can decide who can or can't marry.
Both agree the government should be involved in healthcare
Both twiddled with the income tax but both believe that the government in principle owns everything you make and only allows you to keep a portion of it.
Both increased military spending and both believe in preventative war, policing the world and expanding the empire.
both have left the border wide open. Bush only paid lip service to any immigration issues.
Both believe in giving bailouts to corporations. Obama's so called regulation just gave the Federal Reserve more power, which is nothing but a cartel of private banks who have a monopoly on printing fiat currency.
Both spy on you.
Both have eroded habeus corpus.
Both have said that they can assassinate any American citizen without trial.

The only difference is in their rhetoric, but when it comes to basic, fundamental freedom, they are complete statists.

Comment Re:Uhm... (Score 1) 158

Of course governments can censor speech and cut off Internet access, that's their prerogative.

Just to be 100% sure here: You are arguing that governments have a right to to censor speech and cut off Internet access (like I have a right to shoot a robber that breaks into my house during night and attacks me), not that are able to censor speech and cut off Internet access (like a gang of robbers can kill you and steal your stuff)? Your talk about sovereign governments and prerogative makes me suspect you view it as a right. If I understand you correctly: What is it, in your view, that give a government (or organization of governments like the UN for that matter) that right?

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