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Comment My Advice (Score 4, Insightful) 30

I've got several older people (and some clueless ones) who rely on me for tech support. These people don't know what an address bar is in a browser and had never used bookmarks. (Or rely completely on shortcut icons on the desktop)
For years I've been forcing them to *not* Google their bank, credit card company, etc.. every single time they want to visit those sites. I've mostly got them not clicking on links in emails or calling numbers in emails or texts. I have told them to go to the site they always go to and then do what they need to. I created bookmarks for them to always go to since typing something like www.bofa.com was beyond them and they would just Google it. I was worried they would click on some ad and not the official link in the search results.
It looks like I was totally justified in not trusting a search to lead them to the proper site, without any other hanky-panky going on.

Comment Re:This isn't news... (Score 3, Interesting) 54

Once upon a time, the differentiation was a Saturday night overstay. Prices could be half if you departed on Saturday vs. Sunday. Some cheap companies forced employees stay longer to get the deal. I did it when on work travel and used a good portion of the savings on some very nice dinners.

Comment Fancy Form Letter? (Score 4, Informative) 33

It feels like this could be nothing much more than a new-fangled form letter. Boilerplate legal documents have been around for decades, where you only filled in the particulars like names, addresses, and amounts. A little better if it warns you that the amount you are asking for is too much or too little for the particular court.

Of course, adding "AI" to the description makes it nice and trendy, but there were firms that filled out generic forms and letters for fighting traffic and parking tickets for years as well, before "AI" got tacked on.

Comment Re:Fix the actual problem! (Score 1) 103

The biggest problem is that sound on most TVs sucks. Someone decided that tiny bezels all around was more important than decent speakers aiming towards the viewer. I guess that's great if you are in the soundbar business, but seems silly to have an 80" 8K screen with crappy speakers mashed against the wall it's mounted to.

Multichannel sound is great. There's a separate dialog channel in the center that could be adjusted independent of the others. Good mixing also can make sure that channel is not swamped by the others. Then all those channels get mixed down to 2 at the TV so even a good mix can be turned to crap at the TV, so even good original mixing doesn't help.

Comment Re:Finally! Evidence of harm from microplastics! (Score 3, Interesting) 67

It reminds me of homeopathy. Wild claims are made for the effect of compounds impossible or near impossible to detect. It seems that every study regarding microplastics has dire warnings only to mention at the end "we don't know if there's any effect, we need to study more". This sounds to me that the ability to detect minuscule amounts of a substance has outdistanced the ability to determine what those amounts mean.

There may very well be dangers due to microplastics, but most of these studies sound to me like loud warnings intended to get additional funding. All the results might be completely accurate, but the sensational warnings always are followed by "We just don't know,".

It also reminds me of wild claims about other studies, where you have to dig deep to find that the conclusions were only made "on mice."

Comment Re:Nuclear fission propulsion is likely to come fi (Score 1) 81

A common theme I'll see in mentions of planned missions to Mars is that it would last about 2 years due to how the orbits of Mars and Earth align, this often coincides with the idea of a Mars Cycler: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

The cycler just seems to make lots of sense. I'm surprised it hasn't been attempted as a method to move probes and other unmanned craft to Mars and back. Or on a smaller scale, a lunar cycler. The propulsion needs for interplanetary travel are different than the needs for takeoff and landing. Separating them into two different craft just seems like a good idea to try.

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