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375
Joined
2 yr. ago

  • A man commanding the largest military on the planet who is in substantial personal debt and has no moral compass of any type is, unfortunately, everyone’s problem.

  • I agree that there are statistical methods to everything, and they are quite powerful. My concern is that population sample is limited and, in many ways self-selecting, due to the ability of pollsters to access a representative cross section of the (population/voting population). I noted the impossibility of getting a representative sample using telephone polling. Online would be just as fraught - huge demographics literally don't participate in those communication methods, by choice. Granted, actual voting is similarly inaccurate, and can be wildly so, do to voluntary non-participation; but the cross product of phone/internet poll users and voters, I would suspect, is pretty far from 1.0.

  • according to the polls.

    Yeah, about those - I've been wondering who and how they're polling. Nobody I know under 50 even has a real landline, and most of them don't pick up calls on their cell unless it comes up as someone in their contacts. Same with SMS or any messaging. Web ads? Facebook ads (LOL)? It sure as hell isn't email, either. It's probably nearly impossible to get any realistic data in person since most people avoid in-person marketing even harder than online. The only people I know who do answer the telephone are old people - like over 55 or 60, and that's a pretty skewed demographic.

  • If he wants to have a third party doctor give him a cognizant test, and he passes it, and he publicly notifies all of us voters of that, then I would be up for voting for him again.

    Except for the fact that it's generally military physicians who treat the President, he gets a cognitive test every year as part of his physical. Trump got one every year too, and was as proud as a toddler with a gold star sticker when he "passed" it. The white house releases the results of the President's annual exam and, presuming you do not distrust the doctor, it is what it is.

    Nobody is going to be administering some mental agility test on the President any more than they'll be asking him to complete and pass the ACFT (Army Combat Fitness Test).

    (IMO he should have stepped aside last year and let Kamala Harris take over as President to give her a chance to make her own case for re-election, making way for the next generation to lead.)

  • The description of an unexpected/(impossible) orientation for an on road obstacle works as an excuse, right up to the point where you realize that the software should, explicitly, not run into anything at all. That’s got to be, like, the first law of (robotic) vehicle piloting.

    It was just lucky that it happened twice as, otherwise, Alphabet likely would have shrugged it off as some unimportant, random event.

  • I would prefer they brought back the actual shipping part. Not this $169/yr for “best effort 3-10 days depending on our mood” they want me to pay for.

  • Very likely. Lots of super geeks on staff.

    But it's also possible some astroenthusiast did the math and emailed it to NASA, and whoever got that endo thought it would be cool and passed it to someone who could schedule the instrument. If you think about your geekiest friend and how they’d react if you sent them something truly unique about their geekdom that they could act on - well, that’s pretty much how every engr/scientist at NASA would react.

  • TBF, I got a finger wagged at me when I missed a recurring-fee cancellation date and I had only locked the card instead of deleting it. It notified the fraud department and they (claimed in the email notifying me that they) locked my entire card out and had to call them to remove the lock. They then went through the "you should remember to cancel" speech and recommended deleting the number instead of locking it. C1's customer service is, generally, trash compared to Amex and Chase so I shouldn't be surprised that they're a bit overzealous in how to handle a locked card. Still, it's a worthwhile feature.

  • I actually keep very few virtual cards. I usually use them and then delete them; unless it's a recurring charge, or a frequent online use, I figure there's no reason to let them hang out since you can just make a new one if you need it.

  • When mammals encounter an invasive pathogen, they increase their temperature to assist with the response to eliminate the danger, often requiring only 2-3C above their steady state average. Maybe we aren't actually causing climate change and Earth is just fighting off the human infection.

  • XL feels like using cheat codes.

  • On the flip side, global banking processes something like 5+ orders of magnitude more transactions than ETH, so even at the low end it’s 1000x more efficient than the most well known POS coin.

  • If you print with incompatible filaments (materials which don’t bond/adhere) you can get cheap, nearly perfect breakaway supports. I’ve done some rocket parts on my PrusaXL and it’s certifiably magic.

  • TBF, if you’re really, really good at throwing feces, civilization sounds like a poor way to maximize the value of your skill. 🫤

  • You could say the same for a finite element model. A junior engineer with just 4 years of training can solve, explicitly, the deflection at the center of a slender, simple-simple beam of prismatic section and produce an exact (if slightly incorrect) answer. Building a FEM of the same can solve the problem and take longer (to make the model) with similar accuracy, both of which are good enough for design work.

    Only a fool wouldn’t have a FEM around though, as it can solve problem that would take centuries for a human to solve. They may as well make a cartoon with the child digging a 3” hole in beach sand and then showing a backhoe making a jagged edged hole of the same size.

  • This is the first half of a proper sentence. The second is personal charges against all directors or and/or major stockholders for the crimes had they been committed personally.

  • A movie-set must have certain features (full, even, ready for shooting on schedule) and there are millions of dollars on the line - you don’t just plant a field and hope it meets spec - I would think someone was making case it would be ready for filming. That that’s time and effort. The movie industry unions have livable - one might say exceptional - wages, even for someone just checking to make sure the corn field is maturing properly, much less planting and tending the crop.

    An un-referenced medium article says he invested $100,000 in the corn field and he generated $162,000 in revenue, with no indication of the expenses of monitoring or harvesting. The best result would be $62k (compared to the $20,000,000 Nolan was paid for the film) in profit if the “investment “ included all of the miscellaneous expenses I mentioned above (as well as the lawyers cost for acquisition, travel and time spent finding the plot and securing all of the contracts for farming and harvest) and wasn’t absorbed in the “film budget”.