Posts by Eddy Ito

Re: Wahhhh Freedom of speech,, not letting us do what we want....

Drama much? I haven't seen much if any 'Wahhhh Freedo... oh, they're not the government' going on and certainly not in this story. So they decided to add another host platform to their channel, how is that whinging about free speech?

Everyone who used to watch on YouTube will switch to Full30, PornHub, or somewhere else. It isn't that difficult to hit 'ctrl+d' as long as there is a pointer or a brief transition period and channels aren't simply shut down by Google, which I expect in a few months unless they start losing enough eyeballs to the other sites. At most Google will lose a few bucks and some data points but they're probably also serving the gun ads for some of the other sites anyway so it'll be a wash.

Re: Over-h(y/o)pped

(where X is actually a fairly big number)

6,000,000 barrels¹ per year is only a fairly big number?

I also don't know that it's a legal term as it's defined by the Brewers Association.

^{1. Per barrel that's 31 US gallons, ~26 UK gallons, or 20.2455 footballs in proper units.}

Re: the Chinese are the real arseholes

That's a broad brush you're using there. They aren't arseholes, they're ignorant. The problem is educating them is laborious, time consuming, and likely full of pitfalls.

The easiest solution may be to farm rhinos for their horn, it is the same as fingernails and hair after all, and supplement the supply with artificial horn. This would reduce the price and hopefully make poaching unprofitable. It was only ten years ago when trade in rhino horn was legal and in South Africa there were only ~1% as many rhinos poached then as there are today.

As far as the 'traditional'/quackery medicine crack goes, I'll remind you that it wasn't so many years ago that your ancestors were sucking on willow bark as an analgesic. TCM needs scientific study to see whether there are useful compounds in some of the concoctions rather than just dismissing it as quackery, which isn't to say all of it is worth studying. Specifically rhino horn is already well understood to have no actual medicinal benefit.

Maybe if the drugs were legal we could address drugs and addiction honestly like we do with legal drugs like alcohol and alcoholism. It also might cut down on drug related gang shootings and killings over turf wars, just like the alcohol related gang shootings and killings during Prohibition. Oddly folks learned a lot faster back then and dumped Prohibition within 14 years but the "War on Drugs" has been going on for about 47 years now and we're only just showing signs of getting it.

Re: Dates

There seems to be some discord in this thread so I propose we change Pi day to Confusion 14th. Of course perhaps we should simply use base 32 in which case pi=818 which means using either August 18th or every other June 8th. Then again a full circle is 2*Pi so if that represents a full year or orbit around the sun then Pi would be June 30th no matter how you write it. Of course the date is pretty much arbitrary no matter how you slice it. I mean it isn't like September, October, November, and December are the 7th, 8th, 9th, and 10th months. So yeah, happy 01V23E.

Edit: Perhaps that should have been happy MFRC depending on how literally you want to keep the date.

Re: @imanidiot

@DougS, but those expenses aren't equal. The McDonald's worker pays to commute to work and basic living expenses while the Uber driver has exactly the same expenses plus the added wear and tear on the car and far more fuel since I imagine most of the fares don't come from their own apartment building so there is still an initial commute whether it be to the airport, downtown, etc.

If everything else is the same the added expense in fuel alone is enough to make a substantial difference. If they both manage $10.50/hr (the Cali minimum) and are roommates in LA, one has to buy far more fuel than the other. If both put in 25 hours per week the McD's worker isn't paying for the fuel burn that whole time while the Uberer is. If we assume our Uberer is driving a car that averages 40 mpg and they maintain LA's average speed of 26.8 mph that's $51 per week¹ in fuel the McD's worker isn't spending which is a difference of about $2/hour straight off the top so the Uberer needs to pull down closer to $12.50/hr just to match the effective income the McD's worker has. It also means that the Uberer also pays $12.50/week more² in taxes than their roommate.

^{1. Using $3.05/gallon that I paid at Costco last week}

^{2. Yes, I understand that the fuel as well as depreciation on their car and possibly lots of other things is deductible on their income tax but neither is going to earn enough to pay any substantial income tax anyway.}

Re: He's right, but no one here will accept it

Could we trust LE to not abuse the system?

No. Even if you have some contrived access that requires multiple people to get in, it will be abused. This isn't something like launching missiles where consequences are extreme and nearly universal it's more a matter of "come on, Jenny, I just want to see what my ex said about me and hey, you can check on your kids to make sure they aren't hanging with the wrong crowd online. It's a win-win and nobody else needs to know."

Do I need to add that multiple incidents of LE abusing the existing systems for either personal gain or retribution happens all the time. Then there's things like civil asset forfeiture where they're just going to drain your accounts. There's also COINTELPRO, LOVEINT, & SEXINT. Even if it's only one incident per year at every agency it's a lot then add in all the subterfuge we can expect the CIA and their likes to perform adding the evidence they need to blackmail their mark into doing who knows what.

So, no, LE can absolutely not be trusted because in the end LEOs are just people who are no different from anyone else and have all the same weaknesses as you & I. The ostrich is the one who thinks that any such system can work because they are ignoring their own human failings and everyone else's.

Re: Bait?

Easy enough to find out. MarketWatch puts them with ~$35B in cash & cash equivalents, $65B total assets, and about $35B total liabilities.

That said, I think this is at least as much about the current CEO Hock Tan saving face as the actually benefit from the takeover. At this point it doesn't much matter since having the US deny the takeover would still allow him to save face provided he doesn't go too far down this road. Which means as long as he stays away from slamming folk on Twitter or offering stupid money like a quarter trillion dollars, he's probably good.

Re: No scary implications

At least the ability to see around corners should reduce the amount of artillery shells used.

Re: What about the manifestations?

I think I understand why Apple started their wellness program for employees. Maybe they could have a doctor stand in front of the glass to warn people about to walk into it.

Re: The House passed it?

Of course he's an authoritarian. Every politician in D.C. is an authoritarian in the same way that all squares and trapezoids are quadrilaterals.

You might convince me that there a few of those quadrilaterals with one really short side so from a great distance if you squint just right it looks like a triangle. It's the same with politicians.

Re: You'll never get me up in one of those things

This is a much larger aircraft than the Lightning or Twin Mustang and it seems the newer twin designs are moving to independent tails like White Knight 1 & 2. Consider in a turn the outboard side is taking a faster larger turn and the inboard side is making a slower but tighter turn and especially in an aircraft this large it would likely be advantageous to compensate by differing the inputs to the control surfaces as identical inputs would induce unnecessary stress on the frame and slippage over the control surfaces as neither side will be fully coordinated. If the aircraft is small like the Lightning it probably doesn't matter so much given the distance between the tails isn't great and it probably benefits from a stiffer airframe in combat maneuvers where here it just adds extra weight. Since I imagine this is also a fly by wire plane they can take advantage of computer power and sensors to ensure the optimal operation of the control surfaces.

Re: adverse weather ???

Which is the exact point. It's potentially subjecting the structure for loads that it wasn't originally designed for. There is no telling the impact angle of a drone that moves in all three dimensions with relation to a flying plane especially a glider that is flying slowly, quite near stall speed, as it comes in for landing.

Sure, it might take a pigeon on the leading edge of the wing but if it comes from an odd angle and tears up the control surfaces it's a whole different story.

Re: So basically it's just a bluff, and has been for the last 13 years at least

I don't know that it was a bluff but it does show the level of competence. When you have a situation where everyone is screaming that gov't must do something then what you get is gov't usually does something. Is it the right thing, a practical thing, or effective thing to do? Probably not but it tempers the vocal minority and when a plane isn't hijacked in the next year everyone goes back to sitting on their hands.

Oh, the reason no one knows how long it takes is because once the heat is off they go right back to hand sitting or playing minesweeper or surfing pr0n or whatever it is minions do when the boss taxpayer isn't looking.

Re: Joe public doesn't know or care

Maybe they just think they're getting an internet of babysitters with millions of people checking up on their precious little tot at all hours of the day and night to make sure the little angel is safe and secure.

What? Why are you laughing? It is at least statistically possible you know!

Re: I also went there once.

You can check shortened urls before visiting them. There are various websites that allow you to do this like unshorten.it, checkshorturl.com, getlinkfinfo.com, and I'm sure there are more. Alternately some of the shorteners have built in tools. If you have a tinyurl.com/[whatever] link change it to preview.tinyurl.com/[whatever] to get the full address. Likewise with Bitly you can simply add a + to the end of the string to get site details like this bitly.com/2onEO9w+ and adding .info to a goo.gl link will get you a similar result, for instance goo.gl/l6MS.info.

Re: What a load of Trump...

If someone feels that they want to wipe out their place of employment, and who hasn't thought that way at some point,

That's some disturbing stuff there AC. I highly doubt that most people have felt a desire "to wipe out their place of employment" or even entertained the thought and I'd go as far as saying that is point where mental health professionals need to step in. Sure, we get all likely get upset at times but it's unlikely to rise to the level of wiping anyone out much less the entire place.

then if you live somewhere with gun control it is very difficult to get hold off a weapon and put these thoughts into action, even if you are planning ahead. If you want to commit suicide (one of the biggest gun death statistics IIRC) then by the time you get the gun it is too late and the 'need' to kill others, or yourself has passed for another day.

Suicide is the biggest cause of gun deaths in the US and it typically represents 2/3 of all gun deaths but then there is roughly an equal number of suicides in the US that don't involve guns as well. As for planning ahead that was certainly the case here as it is reported that he purchased the rifle about a year ago

Re: Roses are red.............

Oh Holly week already! That means Palm Sunday, Samara Wednesday, Maple Thursday, and Dogwood Friday are close at hand. I think I'll go celebrate. Hmm, a rusty nail or simply a rolling rock.

Re: Ends-Means

Maybe it won't be so bad as it looks like identifies itself with a custom tag. Apparently the spec requires either <html ⚡> or <htmp amp> so it should be simple enough to filter crap containing it to /dev/null.

Re: Some?

To be fair to Equifax it's quite obvious that they're too fucking incompetent to even begin to find out how much information was taken much less know what was taken.

Re: evil feds

I'll put money on it being the Girl Scouts instead of the feds.

"or otherwise inserted the gear into himself"

Presumably this bit indicates using the back door approach.

That said, it seems pretty shady to hold someone so long on a mere "belief" of the plods. Do they have anyone who witnessed his either eating or inserting? If not that's one hell of a low standard of proof to confine someone for over three weeks.

Accidents by gender

It really doesn't matter what accidents are caused by which sex as it's likely anonymized data. As such the data ignores any possibility of the 80/20 rule in play. Sure, women may have more accidents per mile but it isn't know whether 80% of those accidents could be caused by only 20% of drivers or if it's roughly evenly distributed. It's quite easy for one particularly poor female driver to go from spot to spot dinging everything along the way to skew the statistic. On the other hand if males tend to be involved in more serious accidents it is highly unlikely the car, much less the operator, will be able to continue smashing things much later in the day but, assuming the prat survives, he can go on and ruin another car next month.

Let's also keep in mind that most of these aren't truly accidents as the vast majority are avoidable and the result of someone acting negligently or carelessly.

Re: It's not supposed to make it past a challange, silly!

Definitely out of control. Have you seen the state of CalPERS lately? It's looking more and more like a black hole that's eventually going to suck every dollar from the state.

Re: "raise property taxes slightly"

Raising the property taxes really won't help much. The tax rate is already pretty high at ~1.7% and a quick web search shows the property values are just the opposite with most if not all falling below $100k. Compounding that is the fact that there are only about 900 households in the village making $3M a debt over $3k each which is nearly 10% of median household income. It's pretty clear this isn't a wealthy area and it's more than likely going to result in the village being forced into receivership or bailed out by a higher/larger entity. I'm all for fining the greedy sods who put this plan into place but I don't see where even selling off the village owned real estate would cover this debt given the low real estate values.

Re: The really ridiculous part of this

You've got to admit, the FBI has long been known for spending a lot of time under the branches of shade trees pretty much since their inception. COINTELPRO, the letter to MLK Jr., Whitey Bulger, Teddy Deegan, Fast and Furious, etc. The DOJ doesn't get any slack since they sit atop both the FBI and DEA and the DEA's list of shade tree machinations would also fill quite a few burn bags. In the end, it doesn't matter if it gets released since it's unlikely to change anything. Folks who are inclined to think one way or another will only have their opinion reinforced and the rest of us who understand it's all political B.S. will say, "meh, whatev's".

Re: So you accidentally told a million people they are going to die: What next?

That's just it, they weren't told they were going to die, they were told to "seek immediate shelter" which causes everyone to stampede like cows heading off a bluff on their way to some magic hole in the ground. Oh wait.

Now I get it, a self burying population means easier cleanup when the Geiger counter ticks a little slower in a few years. Simply genius!