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Comment Re:Why not a ban? (Score 1) 60

Then we're going to need a lot more funnels to refill all those toothpaste tubes.

If you removed every foreign-made product from a typical Walmart, you'd basically be left with a steel-frame building stripped to the beams.

If you replaced every one of those products with an American version - You'd have Niemann Marcus plus Erewhon, with some products simply not available at any price (short of bespoke).

Comment Re:I think it may be a good idea... (Score 1) 248

4.0 GPa is actually a lot of pressure!

If students are being subjected to 4 GPa of pressure (40,000 bar), that's a real problem. I mean, that would crush their bodies beyond the limits of molecular cohesion, rupturing all cell membranes and turning all of their bodies' water into high-density ice. If the university is regularly murdering students this way, they should be stopped.

I'm not sure how pass/fail grades help, though.

Comment Re:Why? (Score 1) 51

"its suggested commission gives it fair compensation for the App Store platform."

Which is a pretty bold claim given this is specifically targeting devs/publishers who don't want to use their walled garden but have no choice if they want an audience of more than a few dozen hardcore geeks.

Never mind "under that approach, the fee would be zero" - Under that approach, the fee should be negative! People are actively trying to work around Apple's lock-in. I can't speak for everyone, but I usually don't go out of my way to avoid beer and BJs.

Comment Re:Uh, what? (Score 4, Insightful) 67

If 1,000 Kilowatts only costs "about $5", that puts each Kilowatt at about 1/2 cent? Seems kind low...

Time to turn in your geek card. A "watt" is a unit of *power*. People pay for *energy*. Energy = power X time.

Electricity is often sold in energy units called kWh (which is 3.6 megajoules). At a retail price of 20 cents/kWh, five dollars of electric ital energy is 25 kWh.

With a power consumption rate of 1000 kW, that amount of energy is used in 90 seconds. Presumably, the 1MW peak power rate was only used briefly, just like a car with a 300hp peak power engine usually cruises around only generating a couple of dozen hp.

Submission + - Proposed ICE Shock Gloves are purely Torture Devices

An anonymous reader writes: Wired Reports on how the shock gloves sought by ICE actually work, and they are not in fact intended for pacifying subjects, but specifically for causing them pain:

Classified as a CD3 (conductive distraction and de-escalation device), the gloves don't work like stun guns or Tasers, which shoot out probes or use high voltages to cause neuromuscular incapacitation that overrides the central nervous system. Instead, the GLOVE works using neuro-peripheral interference, essentially shocking the skin to bombard the sensory nerves and temporarily short-circuit the brain's focus.

The latest ("Gen 5") model is capable of delivering 90 total minutes of pain shocks between charges. On just one charge, you can torture a person for an hour and a half.

Comment Re:What SHOULD humans learn now? (Score 1) 83

It's a good question, but I think framing it as what humans need to do to be able to live alongside ASI is the wrong way to look at it. The right way to look at it is "What do humans need to learn how to do to have fulfilling lives?".

Of course that question also depends on what makes sense for humans in a world run by benevolent ASI. We don't need to bother thinking about humans' role in a world run by malevolent or even disinterested ASI because there will be no role.

Comment Re:Block AI in schools (Score 1) 83

Your point about primary sources is correct. However, educators did *not* consider Wikipedia equivalent to other encyclopedias. They explicitly did not trust it, while they considered traditional encyclopedias more reliable.

Sort of. When my kids were in public school in the 2000s and 2010s, book encyclopedias were sometimes grudgingly accepted as source. Not always, and it was often made clear that they weren't proper sources (because they're not!). The solution was to use Wikipedia but to follow the reference links to the primary sources it cites and use those.

I thought that wasn't just a good answer, but a strict improvement over accepting hardcover encyclopedias, both pedagogically and as a matter of scholarly principle.

Comment Re:the solution to "the mental health crisis" (Score 1) 248

If U-M is doing the now-common waste of a first semester packed with "Freshman 101" bullshit, I would agree with you.

If students are taking real classes, then no, I'd call that the second most important semester (with only the very last one mattering more). Why? Because that's when half the incoming class realizes they are wildly unprepared for college and either pursues an exciting career in fast food, or for those only slightly overwhelmed, switches to a 2-year structured a lot more like an advanced version of highschool.

Not everyone should be going to college, that is the real problem here. There's nothing new under the sun, dumb kids exist and they become dumb adults.

Comment Re:The grift is now right out in the open (Score 1) 78

You're right that wasn't an exhaustive list - I'm personally a counterexample to my own comment in that I'm a mere peon of a coder... Who is often tapped to assist with M&A, major vendor changes, and onboarding new customers (in the B2B sense). I do have privileged information that would be illegal to trade on.

But this is Slashdot, not Investopedia. The "tl;dr" is, if you have actionable insider information, you're not merely guessing, you damned well know it and almost certainly signed an NDA specifically covering what you can and can't do with that information.

Comment The grift is now right out in the open (Score 5, Informative) 78

Congress "did not intend" to legalize straight-up gambling nationwide through what amounts to a semantic loophole. There is absolutely no doubt about that, on any side of this discussion (including the CFTC).

It's funny - Online discussions among (real) investors often worry about, and frequently caution each other about insider trading. The reality is, insider trading isn't applicable to the vast majority of us. Unless you're a C-level employee, specifically working in M&A, or maybe as the lead on a truly revolutionary new product (no, your company's Facebook wannabe or thinly disguised open source ripoff ain't it) - You have no insider information to trade on. Sincere belief that your employer's cool new toys are going to change the world ain't it - every company has cool new toys in the pipeline, and most of them are going to flop or at best be just another branded widget.

Thanks to Kalshi and Polymarket, congrats, every single one of us can now have truly actionable insider information. And that's not good, because as the past year has shown repeatedly, the average Joe is more than willing to use that information and has zero comprehension of securities regulations.

And to be clear, I have no substantial objection to gambling. This sham is something else entirely, however, and that something is a naked power grab.

Comment Re:Great (Score 1) 177

CA is also:
#1 in homelessness AND #1 in per capita homeless spending!

CA is #6 in homeless per capita among states. #1 is NY. I can't find any good nationwide numbers on homeless spending; it doesn't seem like anyone collects that data. However, I did find numbers from CA and NY, and NY spends nearly three times as much per capita as CA, so CA is definitely not #1.

#1 in poverty

Per the official poverty measure, CA is #22. That's arguably not a great measure, though, since it assumes the value of a dollar is the same everywhere. Using the supplemental poverty measure, CA is #2, behind Louisiana (#3 if you include DC, which falls between LA and CA). LA is high because people are actually very poor. CA's poverty rate is high even because though incomes are relatively high, housing is very expensive. Anyway, not #1.

#1 in highest taxes (excluding property tax the only tax stat they are middle-of-the-road)

CA is #11 in percentage of income collected, though it does have the highest marginal rate. It's important to keep in mind that CA's tax burden is more progressively allocated than most other states. If you're middle-class, your tax burden in CA is about the same as someone in TX or FL. If you're poor, CA is cheaper. If you're rich, CA is more.

#1 in lowest in adult literacy rates

#6, not #1. LA, NM, MI, TX and NV are numbers 1-5. Well, that's "average literacy score". If you want to look at percent with literacy skills at or below PIAAC level 1, then CA is in a three-way tie for #2. #1 is NM, #2-4 are CA, TX and MI. Either way not, #1.

Personally, I wouldn't want to live in CA, mostly because of their ridiculous gun laws, but it's a pretty decent place to live by most measures. It's best if you're highly-educated and highly-skilled, because while it costs a lot to live there, you can also make a lot of money.

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