xkcd

commodorejohn

Well, he did offer an excuse on the recent sanctions bill (it also included sanctions against Iran, which he was not in favor of,) but the Magnitsky act...? Yeah, that kinda casts things in a different light.

commodorejohn

Here you go:

https://votesmart.org/bill/votes/42018
https://votesmart.org/bill/votes/60767

I like that he's apparently officially listed as Bernard "Bernie" Sanders in the voting record. Do you get to just choose your own quasi-official senatorial nickname?

commodorejohn

Then again, not to jump to conclusions about Mr. Sanders, but...he was one of only four senators to vote against the Magnitsky act.

And, uh, one of two to vote against additional Russia sanctions last year...

commodorejohn

Could be that they have and we just haven't learned about it yet - or it could be that they've tried and were rebuffed by people who had the sense not to get involved with actual foreign influence campaigns when they already get plenty of money as it stands. On which note, it looks like Bernie Sande...

commodorejohn

So... what could Russia actually do if they compromised the NRA enough that it was a Russian puppet? Do they expect to be able to indirectly control congress as a result of the lobbying? More than anything, I think this is just part of what has already been established as broad program of sowing ch...

commodorejohn

https://www.npr.org/2018/07/18/630094267/maria-butina-was-in-contact-with-russian-intelligence-feds-say-in-new-documents Russian spy arrested for sexing up conservatives in order to spy on US. The woman, Maria Butina, has been in regular contact with Russian intelligence, the Justice Department say...

commodorejohn

techblogger911 wrote:
commodorejohn wrote:My go-to night-time drive music back when was "Echoes" by Pink Floyd.

Heyyyy! SAME!!

*high five*

commodorejohn

It's a single component that combines a large number of simpler components to provide complex functions in a more compact and efficient package.

commodorejohn

Oh good, Musk has added "wild overreactions to imagined or minor slights" to "delusions of grandeur" and "insane pet projects." Two more and I've got a Supervillain Bingo! No, wait, there was that thing where he thinks that we're actually living in the Matrix because y...

commodorejohn

Oh good, Musk has added "wild overreactions to imagined or minor slights" to "delusions of grandeur" and "insane pet projects." Two more and I've got a Supervillain Bingo! No, wait, there was that thing where he thinks that we're actually living in the Matrix because yo...

commodorejohn

I wonder how that works. Maybe being in an open, noisy environment makes people feel less secure so they go out of their way to reduce further contact and "close up" a lot. While people in cubicles feel more secure and are more willing to initiate contact with other people. This is key. O...

commodorejohn

Beer makers are a typical exception. Fermention produces CO2 , and many beer plants do capture the CO2 and sell it to pubs. I'm still trying to figure this out. I was under the impression that beer is just sold with the naturally-produced carbonation already in it? Why would pubs need it? Unless it...

commodorejohn

That's some grade-A Douglas Adams material right there.

commodorejohn

Coyne wrote:Which, these days, doesn't mean a lot. It could be a false flag attack.

What on Earth would be the point?

commodorejohn

When you start thinking of them as nanotech machines that disperse to optimise their own efficiency and then dedicate themselves to converting disease-carrying insects into more nanotech machines that disperse to optimise their own efficiency and then dedicate themselves to converting disease-carry...

commodorejohn

Sableagle wrote:Same reason there are fewer flies buzzing around in the USA than in Austria: everything's soaked in toxic chemicals.

It's okay, I'm sure Monsanto will come out with a Roundup-resistant strain of bees soon enough. And reasonably-priced, too, no doubt!

commodorejohn

My go-to night-time drive music back when was "Echoes" by Pink Floyd.

commodorejohn

It's certainly been eye-opening as I've grown older (and, um, watched the last couple years of U.S. politics) to realize how much of the international influence game boils down to "find some dumbshit who will sign onto whatever exploitative plan you have in mind for his country and promote the ...

commodorejohn

Well, that one comment pretty much summed up everything there is to say.

commodorejohn

I wish there were more technical details available for the thing - because if they had a compression algorithm that could store a thousand complete recipes in 4KB of core, I'd sure like to hear it.

commodorejohn

Ah, that's probably it - even if it's unusable at the listed minimum, it's probably more usable at 2-4GB than the x64 version, which means vendors can sell a cheaper base system without worrying about customers complaining.

commodorejohn

Well, there's also the matter of whether they're running a 64-bit capable OS - I've even seen vendors shipping 32-bit Win10 on 64-bit capable hardware. Not sure why they'd do that, unless licenses cost more for one than for the other...? But it is a thing.

commodorejohn

poxic wrote:Because keeping a binder with written or printed recipes is just so difficult...

Careful, poxic. Talk like that in Silicon Valley and you could find yourself tied and dragged behind someone entrepreneur's Tesla.

commodorejohn

Is anyone else depressed by the idea the AI should have a designated position to make arguments for? Rather than being given a question to find the answer to in the most unbiased way possible? There have been several programs written that help you to arrive at the right decision by feeding in &...

commodorejohn

Then again, I've seen humans make far more overtly inane arguments.

As seems to often be the case with AI, it seems like the simplest solution to passing the Turing test is to just define "humanity" downward...

commodorejohn

That doesn't surprise me. People who deal with critical systems tend to be incredibly paranoid about fucking with things that work. Yup. There was a news story making the rounds a few years back about a nuclear plant in Ontario deciding to commit to maintaining its PDP-11 controller system until I ...

commodorejohn

If you're referring specifically to x86/x64 platforms, x64 (or amd64, or whatever) features a backwards-compatibility mode that most mainstream OSes use to run 32-bit software natively (Linux requires specific compatibility layers to be installed, while Windows and OSX do it out-of-the-box,) so no a...

commodorejohn

trpmb6 wrote:I would pay to see a movie where humans tamed dinos and rode them like horses.

Sounds like a gay old time to me!

commodorejohn

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5847383/Storm-photos-appear-starfish-octopus-flying-streets-China.html This image alone is crazy! I like the "shellfish" photo. I can just hear the conversation in the office: "Frank, that's clearly a shrimp." "Look, it could be a pra...

commodorejohn

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/11/business/energy-environment/china-solar-roads-renewables.html Holy shit, solar roads, I thought this was deemed really stupid? "Solar freakin' roadways" was bullshit from the start. There have been other small scale trials of more sensible concepts on lo...

commodorejohn

...hey, it keeps us humble!

Oh wait, no it doesn't.

commodorejohn

Liri wrote:The point being, names were just names and they didn't need an explanation in the first place.

But if they stopped answering questions nobody asked, how would they ever get a movie out of it?

commodorejohn

It's a problem, but I don't think it's insurmountable. I mean, cruise control was basically the first step towards this, and it wasn't horrific, despite removing some necessary attention workload from the driver. That's not even remotely comparable, though. Cruise control removes an unnecessary dem...

commodorejohn

And the human driver didn't have an attention lapse, she was paying attention to diagnostic information Uber said she had to watch. Ah. I thought she was expected to be alert and able to take over in an emergency. My mistake. I believe that is also expected, but human attention/reaction time is lim...

commodorejohn

No, people were upset at how Obama allowed all the fraud to go unpunished. Name 2 executive who went to prison over the CDO shennanigans. Just 2. Only 1 did, the guy at Credit Suisse, and that was for actual fraud on his part, yet he wasnt even close to the biggest fraudster there. This really cann...

commodorejohn

Oh, you Europeans; You don't have Cats, Bear and Crocodiles. We Do! They will hunt and kill humans for fun. We have finished terraforming for quite a while. When are you doing your part of the world? Well, we started on it a couple hundred years ago, and were making pretty good progress (Pa Ingalls...

commodorejohn

I think both takes here are partly right. The Internet of old was a special thing, but it was less because the people involved were a cut above (dear God, some of the people that I knew back then - I didn't even know there was such a thing as a 34-year-old bratty teenager until I got online) and mor...

commodorejohn

Which reminds me, I really need to get around to reading The Painted Word one of these days.

commodorejohn

It's been difficult to miss the reports of supposed self-driving cars making fatal errors, but have there been many tales of privately-owned electric car cells going up in a spectacular conflagration? Are we talking spontaneous, or just as a hazard of the design? I recall there was an accident with...

commodorejohn

Also, while that might in theory be a plausible alibi for J. Random Politician, the sheer number of people who came out of the woodwork to relate how this particular guy never, ever pays people with his own money if he can stiff them or filch it from someone else makes it essentially irrelevant outs...

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