SoylentNews

The billion-dollar RNC question: What is Peter Thiel doing there?

Fun for everyone.

Previously I wrote a journal entry that asked the community if the objectivity requirements in submissions should be relaxed, perhaps limited to a specific topic for exactly those cases so that fact is readily apparent to anyone who looks. It was for personal reasons because I write about things I'm passionate about and my bias comes through. The consensus was no, do not do that.

Here's the deal: I've got a 100% success rate on story submissions which generally I would consider to be a demonstration that I'm doing something right. But in my previous RFC a site moderator pointed out that at this time the bar is very low for story submissions since the need for content is so great at this point in Soylent News's life cycle. That is a valid point and some advice was given on how to temper my submissions to fall more inline with community norms here. Well I tried but it didn't seem to work and I'm wondering if I'm even capable of being so impartial.

I understand the revulsion to a story biased with quadcopter hurting babies but at least that story had some people who saw the merit in the joke and my approach to the topic.

I don't understand the libertopia response and near universal distaste for the content of my FCC/Wireless router article which despite my best efforts produced the following:

• Complaints of bias
• Hatred for the FCC
• Hatred for the Government
• Considering me a shill sucking the governments dick
• Conspiracy theories about the NSA

I'm not particularly concerned about being called a shill or having people jump to conclusions about how I feel about the FCC (though you are almost certainly wrong in your assumptions regarding how I feel about the FCC) but there was also a number of comments complaining about bias. Despite by best efforts to damp that shit down. People latched onto single word choices to prove the bias. I'm unsure if my bias is still leaking through or it is just a typical libertarian response to the concept of regulations and restrictions on freedoms and the need to vilify those that question the viability of that philosophy even if indirectly. There is no doubt this place is mostly inhabited by, or at least the majority of commenters are, libertarians on the moar freedom spectrum of that philosophy. I'm a reformed libertarian myself so I can appreciate the stance.

My question is: am I providing value? I'm not really interested in spending the time to produce content and submitting what a community would consider crap even if the editors decide the content is worth approving. I've tried to conform to the community to the ability that I can but it doesn't seem to work. I'm perfectly happy to run around and just make comments since the community feedback from that is quite positive.

And that is why I again seek comments from my peers here at SN. Thanks for your feedback. For reference my list of submissions can be found at the bottom of my user page. That is the most direct link I could find or I'd provide one that didn't involve directions to scroll to the bottom of the page.

Not a big enough deal to get an article. Prices start at $460-$535, significantly more than 8 TB drives which can be bought for $200 on sale.

Seagate Announces 10TB Consumer HDD Lineup With Five Year Warranty

Seagate's New 'Guardian Series' Portfolio Brings 10TB Helium HDDs to Consumers

Seagate BarraCuda Pro 10TB Helium HDD Capsule Review

Melania Trump speech appears to plagiarize Michelle Obama's 2008 Democratic convention address

Watch Melania Trump Plagiarize Michelle Obama's 2008 Democratic Convention Speech

      Referring to the "Soylent" which is a startup that makes a nutritional powder and drink that are supposed to be able to replace meals, Quartz has posted this taste-evaluation article:

[...] As part of Silicon Valley's desire to disrupt everything about modern life -- whether it needs to be disrupted or not -- Soylent has become a popular company for venture capitalists to back and Valley types to be seen with. The company's newest drink, Soylent 2.0, was released last October, and costs $32 for 12 bottles. It has seen a marketing push of late, with advertisements appearing on Facebook, Instagram, and other internet properties that millennials and those that want to market to them tend to congregate.

        There are almost as many ingredients in Soylent as there are characters in Game of Thrones pic.twitter.com/sxyuAAOBxy
        - Mike Murphy (@mcwm) June 27, 2016

      The tech team at Quartz decided to try a bottle-live on Facebook-for the first time today. It's safe to say that most of us will likely continue to keep eating food, instead of drinking our meals. But in case you're so fed up with having to carry out that arduous task of taking time to purchase and masticate something a few times a day and are interested to know what Soylent tastes like, here are a few of the descriptions of its flavor that the team came up with in video, and after having the flavor linger for a little while:

        Wet cardboard
        Sand
        Water
        Glue
        The aftertaste of Cheerios cereal
        Licking stamps
        Stale cereal
        Old refrigerated oatmeal
        A taste of nothingness and awfulness
        Not food

Pakistani QT killed by brother for what would be usual vanity stuff for Westerners on social media:

Qandeel Baloch: Pakistani social media star strangled by her brother

Qandeel Baloch, one of Pakistan's most famous and controversial social media stars, has been strangled to death in what police are calling a case of so called "honor" killing in the city of Multan in the country's province of Punjab. Azhar Akram, Multan's chief police officer, told CNN that Baloch was killed by her brother in her family's home after he had protested at the "kind of pictures she had been posting online."

[...] She had nearly 750,000 followers on Facebook, where her videos went viral but were also the subject of much debate and discomfort. In recent weeks, several of her posts encouraged her audience to challenge old practices of Pakistani society. In a July 14 post, Baloch referred to herself as a "modern day feminist."
Hamna Zubair, the culture editor of Pakistani newspaper Dawn, told CNN that she had received much criticism for carrying pieces on Baloch. One commentator asked her if she would be "reporting from a brothel" next.
Baloch tightly controlled her narrative in the media. She shared little about her personal life and was something of an enigma; nobody really knew which city she was based in.

She found fame and slipped into the national consciousness after declaring that she would perform a live strip tease online if Pakistan won a cricket match against arch rival India.
As her media profile grew, Zubair said Baloch became aware "of her power to deliver a certain message about being female in Pakistan," and that she had become a "burgeoning activist for increasing women's visibility" in the country. She made more headlines after posting selfies on her Instagram account with Mufti Abdul Qavi, a senior member of the clergy. The bizarre pairing led to frenzied media coverage and resulted in Qavis's suspension from his post on one of Pakistan's religious committees. After news of Baloch's death, while waiting to go on air on a local channel, Qavi told CNN that "her death should be a lesson for all those who point fingers at someone's honor."

[...] A couple of days ago, local media reported that Qandeel Baloch had married at 17 and left her husband about a year later. After the reports were published, she confirmed that her legal name was Fouzia Azeem and that she had been using an alias for safety reasons. Earlier this week Baloch had stirred up more controversy by releasing a kitschy music video on YouTube called "Ban," which mocked some of the restrictions that she had been subjected to. Behind the scenes, however, things were a bit different. Hassan Chaoudhry, a reporter for local paper Express Tribune, told CNN he had spoken to Baloch on the phone just two days ago, saying she was sobbing and "feared for her life." On the morning she was murdered, Qandeel had shared a picture of herself staring defiantly into the camera, wearing a pair of leopard print pants and a black tank top. She had written that she was a fighter. "I will bounce back," she said, adding she wanted to inspire women who have been "treated badly and dominated by society."

Manhattanhenge! -- Submitted Jul 12, Rejected Jul 15

      If you're thinking, "Western triangularized futons?" Manhattanhenge is a term popularized by astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson. From the Huffington Post (very cool photo):

Manhattanhenge creates "a radiant glow of light across Manhattan's brick and steel canyons, simultaneously illuminating both the north and south sides of every cross street of the borough's grid."
      [...]

      Manhattanhenge -- the name is a nod to the prehistoric monument Stonehenge, which was built to align with the rising sun during the summer solstice -- occurs because of the roughly east-west alignment of the borough's street grid. It's not the only "henge" out there -- others include Bostonhenge, Phillyhenge and Torontohenge, according to The New York Times.

      But if you're in Manhattan, you might want to head to one of the major cross streets -- 14th, 23rd, 34th, 42nd and 57th Streets -- and look to the west.

Moon Photobombs Earth -- NASA Camera Catches It
Submitted Jul 11, Rejected Jul 15

      "For only the second time in a year, a NASA camera aboard the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) satellite captured a view of the moon as it moved in front of the sunlit side of Earth," reports Phys.org.

The images were captured by NASA's Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC), a four-megapixel CCD camera and telescope on the DSCOVR satellite orbiting 1 million miles from Earth. From its position between the sun and Earth, DSCOVR conducts its primary mission of real-time solar wind monitoring for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

      EPIC maintains a constant view of the fully illuminated Earth as it rotates, providing scientific observations of ozone, vegetation, cloud height and aerosols in the atmosphere. The EPIC camera is providing a series of Earth images allowing study of daily variations over the entire globe.

      The video is at youtube.

Team Lofts Skateboard to Space in "Awesome" VR Film -- Submitted Jul 11, Rejected Jul 15

      Space Daily reports:

LOS ANGELES, July 7, 2016 /PRNewswire-iReach/ -- 121C has announced that it launched a carbon fiber skateboard to the edge of space above the Mojave Desert earlier this year. The event can be experienced in Virtual Reality (VR) narrated by NASA astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria at https://youtu.be/5NSbVwTVU20. (VRs are best viewed from a mobile device.)

      [...]

      The board and camera rig were launched using a helium weather balloon and safely descended via parachute. After reaching an estimated altitude of 90,000 ft a GPS tracking system with a satellite uplink helped to locate and recover the payload. The launch and recovery are described in detail in a 121C blog post at: http://www.121cboards.com/blog.

SpaceX Receives First Order for Crewed Mission from NASA -- Submitted Jul 8, Rejected Jul 15

      The Albany Daily Star is reporting that SpaceX got approval today (Friday, July 8) from NASA to take a crew to the ISS. This will be SpaceX's first such mission.

Both Boeing and SpaceX have received billions in seed money from NASA to restore American access to the ISS, after the US space shuttle program was retired in 2011.

The announcement of $4.2 billion for Boeing and $2.6 billion for SpaceX was made in September 2014.
Boeing announced in January that it would be the first, sending a piloted mission aboard its CST-100 Starliner capsule by late 2017.

However, in Friday's announcement, NASA said that "determination of which company will fly its mission to the station first will be made at a later time."

SpaceX is already flying cargo missions to the ISS, and is working on a crew version of its Dragon capsule to carry astronauts. [...]

If things go as advertised a "normal" CCP mission could see around four NASA or NASA-sponsored crew members and about 220 lbs (100 kg) of pressurized cargo to the orbiting laboratory.

[...]

This is the second in a series of four guaranteed orders NASA will make under the Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCtCap) contracts. The Boeing Company of Houston received its first crew mission order in May.

"It's really exciting to see SpaceX and Boeing with hardware in flow for their first crew rotation missions," said Kathy Lueders, manager of NASA's Commercial Crew Program. "It is important to have at least two healthy and robust capabilities from U.S. companies to deliver crew and critical scientific experiments from American soil to the space station throughout its lifespan."

The flight isn't set to happen until late 2017. But SpaceX can now begin preparing for the journey. The flight is one of two guaranteed missions that SpaceX secured the rights to in a 2014 contract with NASA.Boeing, which was also awarded a contract with NASA last year, was given its first assignment in June. As part of the contract, both Boeing and SpaceX are entitled to at least two and as many as six missions. The deal is part of NASA's effort to transition some of its low-Earth orbit flights to less expensive commercial operators. [...]

The contracts call for orders to take place prior to certification to support the lead time necessary for missions in late 2017, provided the contractors meet readiness conditions.