Comment This paint is so white (Score 3, Funny) 123
That the GOP has made it their 2024 presidential candidate!
Comment Re:Geez (Score 1) 83
Hell.
Facebook Removes QAnon Conspiracy Group With 200,000 Members (bbc.com) 188
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: Facebook has deleted a large group dedicated to sharing and discussing QAnon conspiracy theories. QAnon is a wide-ranging, unfounded conspiracy theory that a "deep state" network of powerful government, business and media figures are waging a secret war against Donald Trump. A Facebook spokeswoman said the group was removed for "repeatedly posting content that violated our policies." The deleted Facebook group, called Official Q/Qanon, had nearly 200,000 members. There are, however, many other QAnon groups that are currently still active on the platform. Reuters reports that Official Q/QAnon "crossed the line" on bullying, harassment, hate speech and the sharing of potentially harmful misinformation.
Comment Bad editorializing in headline (Score 4, Insightful) 219
Remove ‘only’ from the headline, and the result would sound rather great! There were over 36000 traffic fatalities in the US in 2018. If we ‘only’ saved one third of those, it would be an awesome improvement.
Comment All these people cooking for the first time... (Score 5, Funny) 236
This must explain the TP shortage.
Do You Remember the Y2K Bug? (fastcompany.com) 241
harrymcc writes:
In the late 1990s, lots of people were concerned that the Y2K bug could lead to power outages, financial collapse, riots, and worse when the clock rolled over to January 1, 2000. Hundreds of books about the problem and suggestions on how to respond (quit your job, move to the country, stockpile food) not only capitalized on this fear but helped to spread it.
Over at Fast Company, I marked the 20th anniversary of the "crisis" with a retrospective on the survival guides and what we can learn from them.
The article calls them "an eternally useful guide to how not to give people advice about technology and its role in their lives... They provided a brief layperson's guide to the origins of the problem, and then segued into nightmare scenarios."
They had scary titles like Time Bomb 2000 and The Millennium Meltdown. Their covers featured grim declarations such as "The illusion of social stability is about to be shattered... and nothing can stop it" and garish artwork of the earth aflame and bombs tumbling toward skylines. Inside, they told readers that the bug could lead to a decade or more of calamity, and advised them to stockpile food, cash, and (sometimes) weapons. There were hundreds of these books from publishers large and small, some produced by people who turned the topic into mini-media empires...
Spoiler alert: When January 1, 2000, rolled around, nothing terrible happened. By then, techies had spent years patching up creaky code so it could deal with 21st-century dates, and the billions invested in the effort paid off. Some problems did crop up, but even alarming-sounding ones -- such as glitches at nuclear power plants -- were minor and resolvable.
On December 31st, 1999, Roblimo posted a call for comments from Slashdot readers, writing "This thread ought to make an interesting chronicle of Y2K events -- or non-events, as the case may be."
But NBC had even filmed a made-for-TV Y2K disaster movie (which Jon Katz called "profoundly stupid and irresponsible.")
And one survivalist videotape even featured an ominous narration by Leonard Nimoy.
Over at Fast Company, I marked the 20th anniversary of the "crisis" with a retrospective on the survival guides and what we can learn from them.
The article calls them "an eternally useful guide to how not to give people advice about technology and its role in their lives... They provided a brief layperson's guide to the origins of the problem, and then segued into nightmare scenarios."
They had scary titles like Time Bomb 2000 and The Millennium Meltdown. Their covers featured grim declarations such as "The illusion of social stability is about to be shattered... and nothing can stop it" and garish artwork of the earth aflame and bombs tumbling toward skylines. Inside, they told readers that the bug could lead to a decade or more of calamity, and advised them to stockpile food, cash, and (sometimes) weapons. There were hundreds of these books from publishers large and small, some produced by people who turned the topic into mini-media empires...
Spoiler alert: When January 1, 2000, rolled around, nothing terrible happened. By then, techies had spent years patching up creaky code so it could deal with 21st-century dates, and the billions invested in the effort paid off. Some problems did crop up, but even alarming-sounding ones -- such as glitches at nuclear power plants -- were minor and resolvable.
On December 31st, 1999, Roblimo posted a call for comments from Slashdot readers, writing "This thread ought to make an interesting chronicle of Y2K events -- or non-events, as the case may be."
But NBC had even filmed a made-for-TV Y2K disaster movie (which Jon Katz called "profoundly stupid and irresponsible.")
And one survivalist videotape even featured an ominous narration by Leonard Nimoy.
Comment Re:Why? (Score 1) 107
Cost.
The government can do pretty much anything, including an undetected tapping of undersea cables, if they’re willing to pay the cost to do it. They want the ability to intercept or disrupt communications, and they don’t want people to know it’s them. They’ll pay that price (and have already done so many times, no doubt).
Your cable company simply doesn’t want to pay the extra costs to provide uninterrupted service while conducting repairs.
Twitter Users Are Escaping Online Hate by Switching Profiles To Germany (cnbc.com) 335
An anonymous reader shares a report: A couple years ago, a friend invited Carl Perez to a virtual world promising online discourse free of Nazis. That world was Germany. Perez, who uses gender-neutral pronouns, didn't fly from their home in Colorado to escape the hatred they saw online. Instead, Perez simply changed their Twitter account location. "Since then, I've seen pretty much no nationalist content," they said. Perez is not alone in trying to escape a sea of hate by virtually jumping ship to Germany. But local residents and researchers say German Twitter is not exactly the internet utopia some imagine.
"We are not the paradise of social media without any hate speech whatsoever," said Stephan Dreyer, a senior media law and governance researcher at the Hans-Bredow-Institut in Germany. While the most obvious expressions of Nazism and racism may be harder to find on Twitter accounts with their locations set to Germany, there is still plenty of coded content that slips through the cracks, Dreyer said. Twitter users often point to the company's content policy in Germany to argue it should be able to identify and remove Nazis from the platform in other regions. When Maureen Colford learned about the location setting "hack" to filter out Nazis, she said she was "amazed that somehow Twitter manages to do this in Germany," and wondered, "why can't they do this everywhere?"
"We are not the paradise of social media without any hate speech whatsoever," said Stephan Dreyer, a senior media law and governance researcher at the Hans-Bredow-Institut in Germany. While the most obvious expressions of Nazism and racism may be harder to find on Twitter accounts with their locations set to Germany, there is still plenty of coded content that slips through the cracks, Dreyer said. Twitter users often point to the company's content policy in Germany to argue it should be able to identify and remove Nazis from the platform in other regions. When Maureen Colford learned about the location setting "hack" to filter out Nazis, she said she was "amazed that somehow Twitter manages to do this in Germany," and wondered, "why can't they do this everywhere?"
Comment He didn’t cheat. He prepared himself. (Score 2, Insightful) 263
He did his research on the interview process by asking somebody who went through it. He then prepared for it as best he could. It’s no different than his learning that a potential employer asks “tell us about a time you...” questions about customer service methods, workplace interactions, etc, and then preparing answers to those questions instead.
If anything, what he did was highlight the lazy stupidity that is demonstrated in the hiring practices of many companies these days.
Comment It isn't gold. (Score 5, Funny) 192
It looks blue and black to me.
Comment Penn & Teller - Perfect explanation (Score 1) 668
Penn & Teller did a great segment on their show 'Bullshit' about the idiocy of not getting your kids vaccinated.
Youtube link (contains swearing and open comments)
NC Governor Allows Anti-Community-Broadband Law 356
zerocore writes "North Carolina governor Bev Perdue will not veto a bill that will limit small town municipalities' ability to create community broadband when private industry will not go there. 'The governor said there is a need to establish rules to prevent cities and towns from having unfair advantage over private companies. But she said she was concerned that the bill would decrease the number of choices available to consumers. The bill would require towns and cities that set up broadband systems to hold public hearings, financially separate their operations from the rest of government operations, and bar from them offering below cost services. They also couldn't borrow money for the project without voter approval in a referendum.'"
Threatening YouTube Video Lands Man In Prison 243
wiredmikey writes "Norman LeBoon of Philadelphia was sentenced to 24 months in prison for his production and transmission of a YouTube video over the Internet last March containing a threat to injure and kill a United States Congressman. Following his arrest, LeBoon told federal agents that Eric Cantor is 'pure evil'; 'will be dead'; and that 'Cantor's family is suffering because of his father's wrath.'"
Comment Missing option: (Score 1) 534
I prefer to measure my day by the number of empty bottles on the table...
Comment Move 7 inches in an hour? (Score 4, Funny) 259
If this is the same measuring of 7" that most guys use, then these things will probably top out at about 4" or 5"...
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