Forgot your password?
typodupeerror

Comment Re:Two sides to every argument (Score 2) 50

These questions seem to reflect fundamental misunderstandings about free speech and the first amendment.

"Should a journalist be able to walk into a church during service and interrupt the proceedings, and not be held accountable because he's a journalist? "

Interrupting proceedings in this nature would potentially be trespassing, and could be sanctioned as such. That isn't a free speech issue. What WOULD be a free speech issue is if the government tells a journalist they can't report what they've seen or their opinion of what they've seen.

" Should a major news outlet be able to report something without at least a cursory check to see if it's accurate?"

Absolutely, at least as far as the GOVERNMENT is concerned. It's not the government's job to decide if a media outlet was good enough with its fact checking. However, slander/libel law may be allow a private party to sanction a media outlet reporting falsehoods (though the bar is quite high if concerning a public figure).

"Should an interview answer be swapped with the answer from a different question?"

Is that ethical journalism? No. But again, it's not the GOVERNMENT'S job to enforce journalistic standards. Because once you make that the government's job, then low journalistic standards become those of any outlet saying something the government doesn't like.

Comment Re:I don't follow any influencer !!! (Score 1) 104

I think a lot of people are consuming "influencer" content without even realizing it. Suppose you are thinking of going on vacation so you search for [location] on Youtube. You find a video talking about the hotels and attractions of the region. That travel vlog you found is influencer content.

Ditto for any hobby or interest you can think of. The interest in the hobby of the influencer is probably genuine, but they are often paid to shill for some product or another.

Comment "Nearby" (Score 2) 57

This planet is "nearby" only in the mindblowingly vast context of space. Voyager has been traveling for almost 50 years and is just now approaching one light *DAY* away from earth. If it were pointed in the right direction, a probe like Voyager would need 876,000 years to reach this planet. You aren't getting much faster than Voyager with a chemical rocket. A technology that could accelerate a spacecraft to a substantial fraction of the speed of light wouldn't get a human there in a normal lifespan. Even meaningful two-way radio communications at light speed wouldn't be possible within the span of a human lifetime.

Until you've mastered faster than light travel (or at least communications), 48 light years might as well be 4,800 light years. But if you've done that, you've also figured out time travel and/or the ability to bend spacetime to your will (i.e. developed the ability form wormholes between arbitrary points in the universe without somehow violating causality).

Comment Re:It’s going to upend the used car market (Score 1) 110

I'm talking about stuff like battery preconditioning based on selected chargers and also charger-based route-finding on the internal infotainment. Tesla has been pretty good about updating their cars, but I could see features breaking on many models. Heck, many cars from mid 2010s and earlier have had all connectivity break a few years ago when the cell carriers shut down 3g networks.

Comment Re:Time costs more than distance (Score 1) 110

Based on what? Motors often last 20 years despite typical warranties in the 5-7 year range.

I recently saw a 20 year old Rav4 EV listed for sale that was fully working. There are original Tesla Roadsters coming up on that milestone (though those did have a replacement program in the mid 2010s).

Comment Re:taxing unrealized gains is problematic (Score 1) 295

Any large organization imaginable has practices that depart from theoretically most efficient.

In the case of the government, it's often bound by legacy issues worse than any for-profit company coupled with legal issues that no for-profit company is subject. For example, the IRS is behind on tech in large part because its code base dates back to the 1970s (and contrary to Dodge, you can't just feed COBOL into AI and magically bring it up to date), and also because many of the notice requirements that require paper mailing are required by Congress. Many of the fixes you'd want to do in a private organization require an act of Congress, which may be impossible to get support to.

But the problem is that there is no free lunch with government budgets. Saving the REAL money involves tough political choices. For example, the federal budget is dominated by the military and entitlements (social security, Medicare). Much of the military budget is benefits for servicepeople and veterans. But what politician is going to campaign on cutting VA benefits? What politician wants to announce Medicare cuts? None of them. So they go after silly stuff like USAID that's a rounding error on the overall budget.

Comment Re:How do they get in to college ? (Score 1) 264

I wasn't saying or implying that Harvard is the norm or really talking about Harvard specifically. I was just presenting extremes of the college experience. Those extreme's make the averages meaningless. It's like comparing my wealth to that of Elon Musk, the local car dealership owner who is worth $20 million, and saying that on average we have over $300 billion. Doesn't give you much meaningful information.

Your small private college wasn't really the norm either. Most college matriculants numerically are going to community college, local state schools, and for-profits. Non-profit privates (both elite and non-elite) are the minority.

Comment Re:How do they get in to college ? (Score 1) 264

The use of averages to obscures huge differences within higher education. Harvard isn't going to bend over backwards to accommodate a horse because they don't have to (unless they think the parent is going to donate a full equestrian center). They don't have trouble filling their classes with full-pay students. By contrast, your local CC or directional state school isn't getting remotely like 40k for a student in revenue (let alone profit). It's students at the latter that disproportionally make up freshmen dropouts. At highly selective schools, graduation rates typically exceed 80%.

Slashdot Top Deals

1 Mole = 007 Secret Agents

Working...