SoylentNews

SoylentNews hack explores the seedy underworld of "flavor tripping". See this thread.

Before I started, I used a tongue scraper to clean my tongue. There was some anecdotal talk somewhere of that helping absorption. Probably a good idea anyway.

The effect didn't last very long... about 15 minutes, which is on the short end of the expected 15 minute to 2 hours duration. However there seemed to be a bit of a residual aftereffect where the lemon would still taste a little sweeter... just sour as well. It's hard to tell, and that's a good thing!

• Lemon: Right off the bat, it tastes like lemonade.
• Lime: Distinct limeade taste, as expected.
• Bragg Apple Cider Vinegar: Absolutely tolerable taste, very interesting. I thought of throwing several kinds of vinegar in my mouth but chickened out and settled on just Bragg. I like consuming lots of sour vinegar to begin with but mberry makes it easy.
• Low-calorie/Light Cranberry Juice Cocktail: Whatever edge it had was gone. Not too great of a taste. I decided to get this instead of lemonade/limeade or other juices since I had the actual fruits on hand.
• Sriracha sauce: Tastes a bit like Mae Ploy Sweet Chili Sauce (basically the same as Frank's RedHot Sweet Chili sauce or other brands), but not quite as sweet. As if I needed an excuse to squirt sriracha sauce in my mouth.
• CVS Sour Jacks Watermelon candy: Tasted sweet and unremarkable. Since I've never tried this candy before, I'll have to have some in a couple of hours to judge how sour it really is.
• Dr. Pepper: Interesting results. It was opened yesterday so I didn't know how well the carbonation was maintained. It seemed to sweeten up and mute the flavors. Then when I tried it a few minutes later, I felt the acidity of the phosphoric acid and the carbonated taste much more clearly.
• Navel orange: Very subtle change if any at all, but it was one of the last things I tried.
• Strawberry popsicle: Tried it too late to judge any change. Also, if you're rushing to try things, a popsicle isn't the best thing to have (sherbet/sorbet would have been better).

Unfortunately, I forgot I had homemade lemon curd and lime curd in the fridge. That would have been perfect to try slathered on a ginger snap.

For roughly $1.50 per attempt per person, I'd say flavor tripping is well worth it.

Neat Trick!

Former Atheist Mark Zuckerberg Gets Religion

I guess having an enslaved robotic Morgan Freeman softly whispering into your ear can cause you to question things.

Uncertain Propulsion Breakthroughs?

Further into the article, they really trash the recent peer-reviewed paper for having several flaws.

Overview

Technical

(1) The experimental methods and resulting data indicate a possible new force-producing effect, but not yet satisfying the threshold of “extraordinary evidence for extraordinary claims” – especially since this is a measurement of small effects.

(2) The propulsion physics explanations offered, which already assume that the measured force is real, are not sound.

(3) Experiments have been conducted on other anomalous forces, whose fidelity and implications merit comparable scrutiny, specifically Jim Woodward’s “Mach Effect Thruster.”

Implications

(1) If either the EmDrive or Mach Effect Thrusters are indeed genuine, then new physics is being discovered – the ramifications of which cannot be assessed until after those effects are sufficiently modeled. Even if it turns out that the effects are of minor utility, having new experimental approaches to explore unfinished physics would be valuable.

(2) Even if genuine, it is premature to assess the potential utility of these devices. Existing data only addresses some of the characteristics necessary to compare with other technologies. At this point, it is best to withhold judgment, either pro or con.

Pitfalls to Avoid

(1) The earlier repeated tactic, to attempt fast and cheap experimental tests, has turned out to be neither fast nor cheap. It’s been at least 14 years since the EmDrive first emerged (2002) and despite numerous tests, we still lack a definitive conclusion.

(2) In much the same way that thermal and chamber effects are obscuring the force measurements, our ability to reach accurate conclusions is impeded by our natural human behavior of jumping to conclusions, confirmation biases, sensationalism, and pedantic reflexes. This is part of the reality that also needs understanding so that we can separate those influences from the underlying physics.

Edit this journal.

Samsung's New Beauty Products Are Very Judgmental
Samsung Alexa/Echo vacuum
Ford Fusion Hybrid autonomous vehicle
Qualcomm's Snapdragon 835
Samsung Unveils Quantum Dot Curved Monitors
Cars, robots expected to star at CES 2017
The Best of CES 2016: Where Are They Now?
CES 2017: Tech preview of Las Vegas's biggest launches
Microsoft Surface Pro 5 Outed By Manufacturing Partners For March Launch With 4K Display And Kaby Lake

A fun piece over at the Mirror that managed to reach near the top of Google's World news section.

It's Boxing Day!

Update: Malls Across U.S. Beef Up Security After Brawls

Gingrich Says Trump Must Address Business Conflicts Soon, Urges Monitoring

Gingrich: Trump dropping 'drain the swamp'

Trump Adviser Says He Is Ditching 'Drain the Swamp'

Newt Gingrich says Trump is done with ‘drain the swamp’

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_MJbgO7SF0

The God Kek demands many more human sacrifices, otherwise Trump will continue to discard all of his campaign promises. Sacrifice children for the glory of Kek and the success of Trump.

Update: The child sacrifices have satisfied Kek, and Trump will continue his policy of draining the swamp.

If there was any sort of "we're all in this together" feeling, it would help, but there isn't.

There isn't such a feeling because we aren't all in this together.

Why does US labor have to take a haircut while the 1% get lots more money?

Because you're competing with several billion people who will work for a lot less while the capital of those rich people does not. There's no reason to expect this to be fair. But at the same time, it's not unfair to expect you to adapt to the situation rather than make it worse.

For example, let's say you're the only plumber in a town. You are a paragon of virtue and don't abuse your effective monopoly position and offer prices comparable to neighboring towns which do have more than one plumber.

Then one day, five new plumbers move in and immediately start offering lower and lower prices. It's not fair to you. Nobody else in town has this sort of competition going on. You are losing wealth relative to everyone else who isn't a plumber through no fault of your own. Income inequality increases as a result with six poor plumbers.

At this point, you have a number of choices, all of them bad to some degree. For example, you can attempt to tough it out to be one of the last ones standing, knowing that you'll still have a greatly reduced market share and profit as a result. You can move to a new town and be a plumber there. Or you can abandon plumbing as a career altogether. Maybe you'll try to take a chance and create a new plumbing service that the other plumbers can't match (maybe it'll pay off, maybe it won't)..

There are all ways you could attempt to better your situation. But you could also choose to make the situation worse such as developing a drinking habit. I believe this is going on at a vast scale in the developed world. There's all this entitled talk about how the rich people owe us a good salary and such. Well, they owe the Indians and the Chinese good salaries too. And good salaries there are much less than good salaries in the developed world.

Bottom line is that developed world labor has to be able to offer something that developing world labor can't offer (and it can be as simple as access to a nice market, though the developing world has nice markets too) or it won't get the work for the pay that is desired. Developed world labor just doesn't have pricing power and won't get it until there is near parity with the developing world (which is improving at a good rate) or until some remarkable advantage is created (I'm not seeing the remarkable advantages in the long run).

You want what rich people have, but you don't have leverage to get it. You're not going to make your situation any better by making it harder for rich people to give you what you want.

The FBI Is Investigating Me Because I Tweeted A Joke About Fake News

It's a company run by engineers. There were electronic bits all over the place. I said I liked that about them.

They are asking me to quote them on three different projects. The first one is only a week or two of work - heh: "only" - the other two I'm going to have to study before I can quote them.

If these three work out OK they said they'd have lots more work for me.

I shouldn't say who it is because that would preannounce that they will be supporting Mac OS X. Mostly they need drivers.

There are very few Mac driver consultants, as most who know how to do it have perm jobs at apple.

I'm both excited, and greatly relieved.

A couple months ago I lost a good contract because I don't have a Mac. I had a really tricked-out MacBook Pro, but it died shortly after the AppleCare extended warranty expired.

They were completely cool with that, and said they have macs I can use.

I specifically asked to work on-site. The vast majority of my clients are remote, but these guys I can get to on the bus and light rail. They were very pleased by that.

I asked to work on-site before I asked them to lend me a Mac, so they would understand I didn't plan to take it home with me.

I should be able to buy a new MacBook Pro with my first paycheck. That will be the third I've owned. I have no complaints about the first one, it lasted six years.