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Comment "Smaller than a hair" - no (Score 1) 15

If you read the article carefully, they are talking about lenses THINNER than a hair. I see several of the posts here thinking the width/radius of the lenses is this small, a reasonable mistake given the way this was written. Having a radius that small would severely reduce their light gathering ability, requiring very bright light or very dim images or very long exposure times.

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Comment Re:Also republicans stole the election because (Score 1) 106

I mean there's solid evidence that Republican voter suppression prevented 17 million Democrats from voting. That's a wide enough margin by far to have given Haris the win.

LOL..ok, you keep telling yourself that, rather than do a lot of retrospection and look inside to see what a poor candidate with a poor message you ran....and the republicans will continue to clean your clock.

Yep...SO much voter suppression with a Democrat president and senante during the election....not to mention the wins in DEM controlled states.....yes, keep telling yourself whatever makes you feel better.

Comment In many cases it isn't stalling, it never happened (Score 1) 51

In large companies, these pointless mandates come down from higher-ups who are completely divorced from individual contributor reality - and are initially completely ignored by everyone below a certain level in the org chart. Ground-level HR doesn't want to enforce these orders, because they're measured on (inter alia) employee satisfaction. If the higher-ups don't go investigate, they won't find that their whims are being ignored, and life will go on - everyone remote, but the top brass in blissful ignorance.

What can upset this apple cart is either a nosy higher-up who actually follows up on his diktat "just because I want to see my monkeys dancing", or a surprise event that reveals that no warm bodies are, in fact, sitting in cubicles. For example (and this is not a theoretical example) a site might get a surprise visit from a third-party inspection team, and nobody is there to answer the door. This typically leads to a progressive tightening of rules after each incident. Again, basically everyone below a certain level in the company recognizes that this is meaningless nonsense, and complies to the absolute minimum degree possible, with a strong element of "don't ask, don't tell". I've observed this at multiple organizations.

The only case where followup/investigation is guaranteed from the get-go is where RTO is explicitly put in place to cause attrition. Attrition numbers are easy to see on a single slide of a PPT, and they're watched closely. If not enough people quit, there will be an investigation as to why not enough people have been made sufficiently unhappy to leave the company.

Comment Re:If having video as wallpaper... (Score 1) 81

I dont know, I would like to have a an HTML page back as an option. Active Desktop was removed after Windows XP. I ran a simple web server which monitored my backup jobs for servers I administered, listed all services and hosts, some loading time statistics, and had links to view drill-down statistics. I also had some utilization graphs. Lastly, I had a security camera that took a picture every minute overlooking the view to the ocean (in San Diego where I was) that refreshed the image on a corner of my "dashboard" wallpaper. It was so nice. Whenever I wanted to check on anything, I simply minimized my windows and looked at all the green signals, and if anything was yellow, or red, it was what I paid attention to. Otherwise, I could see out the building's roof, at the beautiful ocean and skyline.

I wish they would bring a modern Active Desktop back. If they want a video, you could just run an RTSP stream or an embedded video in a web page. I miss that.

Comment Re:Why stay in Seattle? (Score 0) 52

Geographical mobility used to be much easier. In the age of credit scores and limited housing, it is extremely difficult to find a landlord who will admit you without a job, and much harder to find a job that will hire you without already being local.

Well, credit scores as we know them have been around since the 60's...so, not really that new.

There's PLENTY of housing....just depends on what part of the US you are in.

I see houses for sale all the time where I live (New Orleans area)....it may be scarce in NYC or west coast urban areas....but that is not the whole US.

In other parts of the US, there are homes...GOOD jobs, and cost of living is much less.

And those are regular W2 jobs.....if you jump into 1099 contracting....you can work wherever and very much often....remote.

I've done both....and if you have any job experience, you can get jobs before you moved.

I've never moved before having a job in that area....

Comment Re:Why stay in Seattle? (Score 1) 52

Not so easy once your kids have friends and school in Seattle.

As a child, I had to move with my parents a number of times as Dad progressed through his career....

Hell,, military brats do it all the time still....but it wasn't that long ago this was pretty common....grow up, leave the nest....it's ok and natural....

Comment Re:Why stay in Seattle? (Score 1) 52

I guess you must be single or young....Reasons not to leave your area: owning a house, family, friends, not wanting to pull kids from school during critical times (or mid year), established connections, and a lot more tech jobs in Seattle than 99% of the rest of america, outside silicon valley? "Sell your house" and then you pick up a house that is also overpriced but pay much higher property taxes. Income tax is *zero* in Washington...Also, this is actually Redmond, not Seattle proper.

When did people get to be such pussies about moving?

Hell, when I grew up, this was a common thing....you moved to where the best job or new opportunity was.

Fun? No.

PITA? Yes

But families did it as a matter of how life is/was....

I remember as a kid moving a number of times

...as my Dad career progressed.

I myself have moved....

Do people today believe that as grown adults they STILL have to live near Mommy and Daddy?

Friends? Well hell, there's a TON of ways to stay in touch that weren't there when I was young....you only had phone calls and snail mail growing up and if they were real friends....you stayed in touch.

Today it's a piece of cake to keep in touch.

When I grew up, most people I knew hit the road at 18yrs or so and often it was to a different state for college and jobs....no one had to stay in same town as Mommy....but then again, we never too "Mommy" out on job interviews like they apparently do today...

Comment Re:\o/ (Score 0) 76

I guess if this is true....

Then I regularly shorten my neighbors lives (and mine) whenever I fire up my log burning offset smoker for BBQ.

I don't generally have any complaints....quite the opposite reaction in general (I share and offer to throw things on for them too, since it is large and I often have extra room).

Comment Re:A life of 8500 hours? (Score 1) 39

TFS didn't claim it was 8500 hours of direct sunlight.

As someone else pointed out, this was an accelerated life test where 1000 hours of light is thought to model a year of real exposure, bit going from 1.5 to 8.5 years of life still means it's a pretty short lifetime.

And that's 5.6 times as long, not 5.6 times longer.

Comment Re:I think it is a shame.. (Score 4, Insightful) 67

However, I'd like to ask you what, if anything, you've ever done for your country or have you just held out your hand hoping your government would drop money into it?

Once you realize it is the governments of the world that cause tribalism, and pit us against each other, you will realize what a folly it was to go to war so some politicians and can win over some other politicians. Sorry if that upsets you, but the stupidest thing you can be is patriotic. Even in America, we are far from free, and far from the sort of men who went to war over a 1% tax on tea. Our governments own us. They are in control, and we cant do shit about it. They are evil, regardless of which side of the aisle you think your side has the moral high ground. You are wrong. No peoples want to harm you, no peoples want to take what is yours. Just governments do (unless you are Palestinian, and there are Israelis around). I commend your bravery for going to fight, just not the wits you used to decide to do it for some shitty politicians. They are all shitty. All of them.

Comment Re:Probably! (Score 1) 18

Reform copyright, allow derivative works, abolish moral rights. What's the worst that could happen? Solves the problem of AI being "inspired" by existing works. Well, perhaps someone will write a crappy HP-inspired story about Tanya Grotter, a machine-gun wielding lady wizard who goes after bad Chechens (that is a real book, BTW). So what? The goal of copyright is cultural abundance, and that will (eventually) include AI generated works.

Look at Nosferatu, considered to be one of the great vampire movies. The movie was called that because they did not secure the copyright to the Dracula story, and after a lost lawsuit they had to destroy all copies and negatives. Luckily a few survived, and we can still enjoy it.

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