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Comment Re:THE REAL CODE (Score 1) 154

Linus had a good code example, and Phoronix quoted it. However, Slashdot turned it into ")a".

The original code... and no I can't get it to display the two characters either using tags or backslashes...

"( a TWO-GREATER-THAN-SIGNS-FOR-BINARY-SHIFT-LEFT 16 ) + b"

(a << 16) + b.

What I typed to get that was "(a &lt;&lt; 16) + b".

Comment Re:Wasn't an offensive joke (Score 2) 141

The AP article added the context of the joke, which didn't make it funny but subjectively I would agree that it was non-serious. One does not passively say "kill all x" after accused of being one of x in a group chat with friends because she is serious.

A manual review and some minor counseling would have solved this problem, but apparently nobody in a position of leadership understood the point of this software.

Comment Re:Forget the AI! (Score 1) 141

Better yet throw them in jail without an opportunity to speak to their lawyer or friends/family. It's too optimistic to think that these cockroaches will be removed from positions of authority, but we can at least give them a dose of their own medicine so they can see how harmful it is.

Comment Re:bully comeuppance AI software (Score 3, Interesting) 141

Just as likely that she was the one being bullied. IDK why you would assume that an incompetent software package being implemented wrongly by a public district would have been correct. This claim that it was all done automatically without any human intervention is also just wrong. There's no way to perform an arrest without the officers involved making a determination of probable cause.

"Hurr durr, computer said you're guilty" isn't a defense.

Comment Always found Google Finance to be underwhelming... (Score 1) 12

Compared to what is out there, Yahoo, Investor, Bloomberg etc etc, I have always found Google's product to be underwhelming bigtime!

Issues:

* Its interface damn ugly!

* There's almost no structure to the "feedback" one gets once a query is submitted!

* The whole site has a dull color theme. Google thinks users of this product are teenagers with great eyesight!

They now embark on a new task...what's wrong with Google these days?

Comment Re:One fucking mouse button (Score 1) 39

Almost every decision any company makes comes down to money

This is the economist view, but it's really not true. Companies are made of people, and people make decisions for all sorts of reasons, almost none of them purely financial even when the justifications are argued in financial terms. In this particular case, Steve Jobs was a UX purist who made all sorts of decisions on the basis of his taste for elegance and simplicity, even when they didn't make much financial sense. Most of his worst ideas were stopped by the people around him -- often with financial arguments -- but many weren't.

The "homo economicus" model is useful, but don't confuse it with reality.

Comment Re:How is this an EO? (Score 4, Insightful) 149

Could we just do away with EO's entirely? The seem more than a little outside the ideal of a government created with checks and balances in mind.

The president is the boss of the executive branch, and he has to be able to give orders to them to tell them how to do their jobs. Of course, those orders should only be about how they're supposed to go about executing the law, as defined by Congress and the Constitution. The problem isn't the ability of the boss to give orders, that's as it must be, the problem is that Trump is giving orders that tell the executive branch to do things that that exceed and sometimes defy the laws defined by Congress and the Constitution.

When that happens, it's the responsibility of the other two branches to rein him in or remove him. The courts are mostly trying to do their job to rein him in but their ability is limited. The intention is that when the executive gets out of control, Congress should give him the boot. Instead, the GOP leadership in Congress is cheering him on.

Comment Re:Time for some Boomers (Score 1) 149

It's value is inherited from the same basis that gives fiat currency its value, which is to say, pure magical thought.

Completely untrue. flat currency gets its value in that it is backed by the government and economy of a nation state.

To be more precise, it's backed by the enforceability of debt contracts, i.e. the judicial and executive branches of the nation state. But that's only what makes sure the value is provided, what actually backs fiat currency is someone's legally-binding promise to do some sort of productive work. Fiat money is created by banks when they issue loans (including but definitely not limited to the Federal Reserve bank), so every dollar created is balanced by a dollar of debt that is created at the same time, and when the debt is paid off, the dollar ceases to exist.

Suppose you want to build a new house. You go to the bank and borrow, say, $1M. Many people think the bank loans you $1M that they have sitting in their (virtual) vault, money that was deposited by people with savings accounts at the bank, but that's not true. What happens is that the bank invents $1M to lend to you. It's not quite that simple (but note that we've abandoned fractional reserve lending; there are no reserve requirements any more), but we'll gloss over the irrelevant complexities. The core point is, the bank creates (a) $1M and (b) a mortgage contract, which offset one another. $1M came into existence, but there's a promise to repay, and therefore destroy, that money.

You pay the money to the construction company, who pays it to their workers and suppliers and investors, and they build you a house. You move in and all is good, except now you have an obligation to apply your labor for the next 30 years to generate value so you can make your monthly mortgage payments.

That is what backs fiat currency: The future labor of borrowers. The exact nature of the labor is undefined, of course, but that doesn't make the labor itself any less of a very real, very productive (by definition!) asset, and it is that productive asset that gives the currency its intrinsic value. And, of course, the legal system is backing the contracts, so you can't just decide you don't want to pay, not without significant negative consequences. That's just one of a number of crucial roles the government plays. Another is the laws that mandate that all debts public and private be denominated in and payable with the nation's currency.

Obviously, crypto assets (they really aren't currencies; even ignoring their lack of intrinsic value, they suck as currencies) have nothing remotely comparable to that sort of solid foundation. Less obviously, so-called "hard" currencies don't either. The classic hard currency, gold, does have a little intrinsic value because it's pretty and has some useful physical properties, but the vast majority of its value is "pure magical thought". It has that value only because everyone believes it does, but there's nothing behind that belief but tradition, not even anything as abstract as contractual obligations. Unlike fiat currencies.

Comment Re:Lol. I've already switched to Linux. (Score 3, Interesting) 68

Still hung up on a good alternative to Publisher

If it makes you feel any better, whether you're on Windows or Linux, you need to be looking for an alternative to Publisher... it's been deprecated and has an EOL about a year out. You can, of course, continue to run it, but I can't imagine running any MS software that doesn't get security updates anymore, especially one that's an Office component.

Comment Re:Youtube (Score 1) 172

I don't want to make it easier for Google to track me, and they don't let you make an account anymore without giving them a phone number,

The phone number thing has nothing to do with tracking, it's about account recovery. IMO, they should offer an option to skip it that makes you promise repeatedly that if you ever forget your password, or if your account is ever taken over, that you'll give up and make a new account instead of demanding some other way to prove your identity and recover your account. "I promise to take responsibility for maintaining access to this account and will never ask Google to reset my forgotten/stolen password".

Probably people would still pester them for a way to get their account back, though.

Comment Re:Oh....it's about... (Score 2) 47

What's soccer? Is that where you put socks on cars? We're talking about a sport played with a ball and feet. The fact you weirdos confuse it with handegg is your own problem.

There are at least half a dozen different games called "football," none of which are the One True Football(TM). Soccer is a shortening of Association Football (itself named to differentiate it from Rugby Football which was codified earlier), and was, in fact, used as slang shortly after the codification of Assocation Football around 150 years ago.

You can identify the condescending assholes that already know that because they use terms like "handegg" to feign ignorance of this when they demand you stop using a word that's been in use for a century and a half in favor of their preferred terminology.

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