SoylentNews

A couple of queries on the moderatorlog table. Make of them what you will.

Most upmods received:
+--------------------+-----------------+
| nickname           | upmods received |
+--------------------+-----------------+
| Anonymous Coward   |          160701 |
| Runaway1956        |           10069 |
| takyon             |            8339 |
| frojack            |            7302 |
| c0lo               |            7062 |
| The Mighty Buzzard |            6845 |
| Thexalon           |            6787 |
| VLM                |            6682 |
| bob_super          |            5399 |
| aristarchus        |            5051 |
| Azuma Hazuki       |            4661 |
| Ethanol-fueled     |            4615 |
| Phoenix666         |            4160 |
| khallow            |            3978 |
| DeathMonkey        |            3916 |
| jmorris            |            3810 |
| DannyB             |            3733 |
| maxwell demon      |            3340 |
| edIII              |            3271 |
| bradley13          |            3262 |
+--------------------+-----------------+

Most upmods performed:
+----------------+------------------+
| nickname       | upmods performed |
+----------------+------------------+
| AnonTechie     |            10712 |
| HiThere        |             9504 |
| anubi          |             7578 |
| turgid         |             6837 |
| rts008         |             6564 |
| jelizondo      |             6275 |
| takyon         |             5764 |
| aristarchus    |             5724 |
| Freeman        |             5228 |
| Unixnut        |             5018 |
| DeathMonkey    |             4943 |
| acid andy      |             4782 |
| Sulla          |             4746 |
| Bloopie        |             4680 |
| PartTimeZombie |             4456 |
| canopic jug    |             4161 |
| dg             |             3987 |
| SomeGuy        |             3818 |
| Geezer         |             3798 |
| tonyPick       |             3775 |
+----------------+------------------+

How to make a right turn from a main street onto a low traffic street.
_{Easy Guide: For Dummies!}

1. First come to a complete stop.
2. Pause for several seconds.
3. (only if driving a BMW...) if there are cars approaching from behind you, continue to wait until they either pass you or are forced to come to a complete stop behind you. The more accumulation, the better.
4. Signal for a right turn.
5. Look around to see that it is safe to make a right turn.
6. When you feel as through you are ready to proceed, then gradually begin making the right turn from the busy street you are on to the non-busy street you are turning into.
7. If any other cars that were behind you also make the same right turn, then proceed slowly and carefully.

22 percent of millennials say they have “no friends”

A recent poll from YouGov, a polling firm and market research company, found that 30 percent of millennials say they feel lonely. This is the highest percentage of all the generations surveyed.

Furthermore, 22 percent of millennials in the poll said they had zero friends. Twenty-seven percent said they had “no close friends,” 30 percent said they have “no best friends,” and 25 percent said they have no acquaintances. (I wonder if the poll respondents have differing thoughts on what “acquaintance” means; I take it to mean “people you interact with now and then.”)

In comparison, just 16 percent of Gen Xers and 9 percent of baby boomers say they have no friends.

Wow.

Back when I was in college, when the Apple II, TRS-80, PET and Star Wars were somewhat new, we had to actually go physically locate our friends (no cell phones), and ask "hey, you want to go spend some quarters at the video arcade and then get some nachos? Who's going to drive? Want to go ask XXX and YYY to see if they want to come along?"

Sometimes they couldn't go because -- gasp! -- studying! Or reading the required chapter.

Some of us would go to the "computer center" together to use the terminals. For hours. But even this had a significant social element to it.

I wonder how life would have turned out if everyone was trying to get "likes" and "thumbs up" and always glued to their phones? Or glued to video games without spending the required quarters.

I remember getting very good at an electro-mechanical game called "Space Tactics". But I still had a life and limited quarters. And doing laundry competed for those same quarters, which I kept in a Big Cheese Pizza mug with lid. Arcade trips were limited by pouring out a generous handful of quarters and pocketing them.

When graduating, I remember wishing those days could go on forever. We kept in touch all these decades. These people are my lifelong best friends.

What is so different about today? Is it right to blame social media? Does it not only tear apart the fabric of civil society, but also isolate everyone? Can't we have "no phones at the table" rules? (my house did, but I was one of the parents)

I don't believe the people are any different. It is something about the environment.

and it was uphill both ways . . . get off my lawn!

I was reading the IRC and had a suggestion for Azuma. What she needs is the Makita Hypoid circular Saw, its got all the memes and has been worth every penny I didn't spend to receive it as a gift

I have the Magnesium because its got extra memes. There is a non magnesium version for like 20 cheaper but the base is probably more fragile.
https://www.amazon.com/Makita-5377MG-Magnesium-4-Inch-Hypoid/dp/B000N5UR5A/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=makita+hypoid&qid=1564592706&s=gateway&sr=8-2

Combine this with a cheap 3/4in sheet of plywood, two sawhorses, chalk line, 8ft straight edge, mitre box, standard saw, and two clamps and you can replicate pretty much everything else for much cheaper. Or at least enough of them to make it worth it. Table saws are pretty much worthless unless you have space to have a sturdy accurate and large table to surround them with to ensure safe and straight cuts. Mitre saws are good but rarely are the angles and stuff set up correct from the factory. Craftsman for a while made a mitre saw they sold in the 300 dollar range with a non-floating lock system on the front end that wasn't calibrated right, so you could never cut at a perfect angle. The only way you can fuck up with a circular saw is if you fuck up, I would rather blame myself than be pissed an expensive tool let me down.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIKPUL6b4N8

Having a properly built tool around is great because you find things to use it on, and it takes the abuse well. Not a sales pitch, just a really satisfied gift receiver.

Disagree? Fite me IRL

It used to slightly tweak my nose when the weaponized outrage mob on the left complained of not feeling safe. Primarily because they'd say it in response to someone doing nothing but disagreeing with them or even simply saying something they didn't want to hear. Since neither of those remotely implies impending violence, I figured they're either lying or so paranoid that they need to be institutionalized and medicated.

Nowadays though, I count it as a happy thing. Turns out it's usually a combination of them lying and being extremely fragile little pussies. That sets me up to call them out on both counts and I genuinely enjoy doing so.

2019 why arent you browsing sn in vr?

(crossposted from TechDirt)

If laws can be copyrighted, then would obeying the law require a copyright license?

Would obeying the law without a license constitute copyright infringement?

With so many jurisdictions (city, county, state, federal) and so many laws, there are a lot of copyright licenses that each citizen would need to acquire.

To simplify things, collection societies could be created. These societies would obtain the rights to license and enforce the licenses on copyright 'bundles' of various laws.

When a new law is passed, one of the copyright societies would acquire the rights to it and add it to its bundle. Now you can get a proper copyright license -- necessary to obey the laws -- from one convenient place, and with one single copyright fee.

Oh, wait -- but with multiple copyright societies, each licensing different subsets of the laws, it seems you would still have to go to multiple parties in order to acquire all of the necessary licenses in order to obey the laws without infringing the copyrights of those laws.

So maybe congress could establish a new federal department of law licensing. Give it suitably large budget, offices, staff, etc. Every citizen could be required, annually, just like with taxes, to file forms declaring that they intend to obey the laws, and paying the copyright license fees for those copyrighted laws they intend to follow.

There. That should fix everything.

See this screen grab from the Hacker News site.

If you can't read it, it is page 3, containing two adjacent news items:

65. Lockheed has an opening for engineers with VAX eperience for the F22
66. The New York couple donating millions to the anti-vax movement

Coincidence that these items are adjacent?

Or some evil alien conspiracy?

When I was young, it was uphill both ways, and in plain ASCII, no GUI.

You had to memorize a stack of manuals -- that couldn't be removed from the computer room because they were bolted (literally) to the table. Young people learned to type properly, otherwise you would have to DUP the card you were punching up to the column where you made the mistake. There was no backspace -- the hole is punched into the card and can't be un-punched. And stand up straight. Pay attention. Don't drop your deck of cards on the floor -- that's a real mess to sort out.

Are palindromes for people who like to end at the beginning?

Or for people who like to begin at the end?

Or for people who like to start in the middle?

Or for people who do only half the work and say they are done?