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Comment Re: Or, hear me out... (Score 4, Informative) 98

William Shatner is a classically trained Shakespearean actor who appeared in festivals and on Broadway prior to switching from stage to television. His TOS enunciation and emphasis is due mostly to his experience with radio performances (which were over the top verbally) combined with directors on TOS constantly telling him to increase the astonishment. And in reality, wasn't anywhere near as pervasive or dramatic as the pop culture version that pokes fun at Kirk.

Comment The vector art 3D rotate tool is super cool (Score 2) 7

I watched the "Project Turntable" video, and that is unbelievably cool.

To work, the AI has to recognize what the drawing represents, figure out how to reverse-transform the 2D representation into a 3D object, and work out what the hidden parts should look like. It's amazing.

It's only a short step between this and working out walk cycles, matching mouth movements to dialogue, adding facial expressions, etc.

This will revolutionize 2D animation.

Comment Re:Errrm, .... no, not really. (Score 1) 94

That was 12 years ago. A 12 year out of date critique of a web technology that has had ongoing language updates and two entire rewrites in that interval should be viewed with some suspicion. Also, are you really just citing the title of the article and none of the content?

I'm not even defending PHP here, just questioning lazy kneejerk, "but it sucked once, so now I hate it forever" thinking.

Comment Re:A Voyager 4? (Score 1) 80

I'll disagree a little bit: we have heavy lift rockets bringing mass to orbit at a greater rate than any time in history and new larger and more efficient rockets on the cusp of being brought to use, with next generations planned for the future. Space launch technology -- the actual raw launching of mass to orbit, where it can be useful -- has advanced. And mass to orbit means more fuel -- if we really wanted to get something out there faster.

And that's where our statements arrive at the same conclusion: there's little need to do anything but super efficient deep space probes. While I can quibble with your implied assertion about newer technology not making a difference in ability, in a practical sense given our funding of deep space research, the big tech upgrade has been to data collection devices and communication. We'll have to have way cheaper lift capability before extra fuel to cut time off a project makes any kind of sense. But it is now at least plausible as an option.

(Also, this appears to be the only thread that isn't making Trek or Aliens jokes)

Comment The solution is simple as can be... (Score 1) 104

If you try youtube-dl to download a copy of any random video, it works, but if the video is protected by DRM the download will fail, even if logged in. But it plays just fine in YT's player (on Chrome). So, why doesn't the record industry just demand all their files be DRMed on YT? The ball is in their court. Literally.

Comment What I want... (Score 1) 50

A smart phone that all apps that aren't part of the core OS can be completely removed and uninstalled. Not just "deactivated," but literally no longer present...without the need of rooting your phone. Yes, I get it, apps like Facebook (*barf!*) help keep the cost down, but frankly, I could give a rat less. I'd pay more for a phone that didn't have all that crap on it. Also, why is it no matter how much storage I buy on my phone....50% of it is listed as "system"? 32MB phone.... 16 is "system".... 64MB phone....32 is "system." It's like the damn thing grows to accommodate the area it has, and that's annoying.

Comment Re:Just play YouTubes on your paperbacks (Score 1) 52

So, you're saying, an otherwise normal Android tablet isn't supposed to work like one? That's, and forgive me, dumb as fuck. Tablets, branded or not, should do that which tablets do. What all tablets should do. Oh, and their built-in Kindle app sucks too. There's a whole discussion about how crappy they are with local vs. cloud storage...it's a mess.

Comment Kindle == Dumpster fire (Score 0) 52

Every Kindle device I've owned (and there have been several) have been steaming, hot, piles of crap. Slow, crappy interface, terrible app store functionality....just garbage. I don't care how cool they make the interface look. I want the thing to be responsive, I want it to not lock up when trying to play YouTube videos, I want it to...you know...WORK. Amazon Kindle ... you are not welcome in my home. I'll stick with other tablets that actually function. I had a junky RCA tablet that worked better (and was still a POS) than any Kindle. That's orders of magnitude of "sad".

Comment Re: The nationwide "experiment" (Score 1) 354

I see it that we have evolved to the point where we can recognize the same flawed argument used to oppose one form of moral harm to when trotted out to oppose a different form of moral harm.

There is no need to try and force an equivalency on different types of moral harm; that's just another form of "whataboutism".

UBI makes a huge dent in the problems of homelessness and hunger - it does a lot more than that too, but just those two problems alone are major moral harms that deserve being addressed, if not solved outright. And while it is a comparison between apples and locomotives, I'll put "hunger" and "homelessness" on the same side of the moral scale as "slavery".

Comment Re: The nationwide "experiment" (Score 1) 354

> you also need to talk mechanisms to keep it from snowballing out of control.

What's to snowball? UBI is fixed to population size - it is *universal* basic income, so everybody gets it. The US population is growing by 0.5% annually, so unless there is a dramatic increase in birth rate coupled to a dramatic decrease in death rate, this is a fixed cost.

That comes out to roughly $164 billion, or roughly 25% of the annual defense budget. Not only is that not "out of control", it is relatively cheap for what it buys you.

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