Comment 2050 == never ? (Score 1) 49
the omission of > 2050 devaluates the poll.
Comment very healthy (Score 4, Interesting) 55
> 18 hottest or the 18 coldest days
That's 10% of the Year.
> nearly 6% -- almost 1 million -- of all deaths between those years happened on days of extreme heat and cold.
During 10% of the year only 6% of the yearly deaths? The extreme temperatures seem to be very healthy.
Comment creators, artists, and media organizations (Score 4, Interesting) 58
What percentage was paid to creators and artist and how much was paid to the like of Disney?
Comment Files ripped from CD (Score 1) 151
FLAC ripped from own CD
Journal Journal: Is any amount of Facebook paranoia too much?
At the highest level, I think phishing works. In general terms that means some of the suckers are going to get suckered by phishing broadcasts. However at the specific and personal level, I think it's even worse. If you are personally targeted for spear-phishing (or worse) by a serious "player", you might as well surrender and hand over your passwords. Just questions of how badly they want you and how many resources they are willing to invest in such toys as imposter wireless routers.
Submission + - SPAM: Why Switching Jobs Makes You a Worse Programmer
theodp writes: Forrest Brazeal explains why switching jobs or teams makes you, at least temporarily, a worse programmer. "When you do take a new job," Brazeal writes, "everybody else will know things you don’t know. You’ll expend an enormous amount of time and mental energy just trying to keep up. This is usually called 'the learning curve'. The unstated assumption is that you must add new knowledge on top of the existing base of knowledge you brought from your previous job in order to succeed in the new environment. But that’s not really what’s happening. After all, some of your new coworkers have never worked at any other company. You have way more experience than they do. Why are they more effective than you right now? Because, for the moment, your old experience doesn’t matter. You don’t just need to add knowledge; you need to replace a wide body of experiences that became irrelevant when you turned in your notice at the old job. To put it another way: if you visualize your entire career arc as one giant learning curve, the places where you change jobs are marked by switchbacks." He concludes, "I’m not saying you shouldn’t switch jobs. Just remember that you can’t expect to be the same person in the new cubicle. Your value is only partly based on your own knowledge and ingenuity. It’s also wrapped up in the connections you’ve made inside your team: your ability to help others, their shared understanding of your strengths and weaknesses, and who knows what else. You will have to figure out new paths of communication in the new organization, build new backlogs of code references pertaining to your new projects, and find new mentors who can help you continue to grow. You will have to become a different programmer. There is no guarantee you will be a better one."
Submission + - UK Parliament seizes cache of Facebook internal papers
infolation writes: The UK Parliament has used its legal powers to seize internal Facebook documents in an extraordinary attempt to hold the US social media giant to account after chief executive Mark Zuckerberg repeatedly refused to answer MPs' questions. The documents are alleged to contain revelations on data and privacy controls that led to Cambridge Analytica scandal. Damian Collins, the chair of the culture, media and sport select committee, invoked a rare parliamentary mechanism to compel the founder of a US software company, Six4Three, to hand over the documents during a business trip to London.
Submission + - Nearby star is Sun's long-lost sibling
The Bad Astronomer writes: A nearby star, HD 186302, was almost certainly born from the same cloud of gas the Sun was 4.6 billion years ago. Astronomers have found it has an almost identical chemical composition as the Sun, is on a similar orbit around the Milky Way, and has the same age (within uncertainties). Interestingly, it's only 184 light years away, implying statistically many more such stars are waiting to be discovered.
Submission + - The Story of Lenny, the Internet's Favorite Telemarketing Troll (vice.com)
dmoberhaus writes: Motherboard spoke with the developer who maintains the public server for Lenny, a robocalling algorithm throws telemarketers through a loop. Lenny was created in 2009 and almost a decade later has developed a cult following online. Anyone can forward their telemarketing calls to Lenny, who is a kind and forgetful old man who is interested in whatever the telemarketer is selling. Some telemarketers stay on the line for up to an hour interacting with this chatbot, leading to hundreds of hours of hilarious recordings on YouTube. This is the story of Lenny's rise, and an analysis of its effectiveness at stopping unsolicited calls.
Comment bipartisan? (Score 5, Insightful) 333
What does "bipartisan support" mean in a system with 7 (*) parties governing the various legislative organs and a federal government of a coalition of 3 parties?
Do the US American journalists have no vocabulary to describe the reality outside of their country?
(*) I hope I haven't missed any party.
Comment linearbookscanner (Score 1) 122
If you are able to build this thing, look at linearbookscanner. This would be my preferred method of digitizing but to build it is above my ability
Comment 3-prong electrical plug? (Score 1) 401
standard household 3-prong electrical plug
I have never seen this standard in my life. It may be a standard in your country but as worldwide standard this is a fantasy.
The only 3-prong electrical plugs I've seen are computer power-cable extensions. My standard cables for standard 230V have 2 prongs, possible with an additional slot for earthing.
Comment subtitles are obnoxious (Score 1) 508
more than a few scenes with subtitles are obnoxious because you can't really see the movie anymore if you are constantly reading the subtitles. The next thing is you can't relate the various speakers to their text, especially if there is a heated discussion with multiple people. To add insult to injury subtitles are mostly a severely condensed version of the spoken text because the average reader simply can't read with the same speed as hear the words.
It may be more a "realistic" (what ever this means within fiction
I have read a few books where after a few paragraphs with translation of foreign language there was an explanation that for the convenience of the reader from this point on all was shown in the language of the reader. maybe this could be used in movies as well.
Comment Falling into a star (Score 1) 508
I cringe if a spaceship without propulsion is in danger of falling into a nearby star (or planet).
There are only 3 reasons to fall into a sun:
1) the course is already so
2) drag from friction with the outer heliosphere
3) application of the *missing* propulsion to counter the orbit velocity
Nearby a black hole are 2 more reasons:
4) at close distance there is no stable orbit
5) loss of energy by gravitation waves
If one of the two black hole options apply, the tidal force would transform the crew into reddish paste.
Comment Re:And yet, no one understands Git. (Score 1) 203
You have to understand the data-structure, how files, directories and commits are all content-addressable objects. The linkage of the commits by means of their id's must be understood.
To understand merging you should have used diff and patch a few times.
This is all.
With these few concepts anybody, who can write a program, should be able to understand git. To invent new use-cases or work-flows is another thing, but comprehending a given usage of git should be straight forward.
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