SoylentNews

Well the good news is that most congresscritters do, and Trump's fake-ass emergency was rejected.

41 Republican Senators and 182 Republican House Representatives, on the other hand, just proved how completely full of crap they are.

A man is on his way home from work. Traffic comes to a complete halt.

"Wow this traffic is worse than usual. Nothing is moving."

Soon he observes a police officer moving back and forth among cars getting closer and closer.
He rolls down his window and asks "Officer, what's the delay?"
The officer replies...

"Trump is so depressed about not always getting his way, that he stopped his limo in the middle of traffic and is now threatening to douse himself in gasoline and set himself on fire. He says everyone hates him. He can't just quit because the Fake News would laugh at him. And he doesn't have, and never has had, enough money for REAL lawyers to defend himself from all the criminal prosecutions that would follow."

"So I've been taking up a collection.", the officer says.

"Oh, really, how much have you collected so far?"

"So far about 26 gallons, but many folks are still siphoning."

_{adapted from a "Canadian prime minister" joke}

Join Us for a Tom's Hardware AMA with Intel Optane

1. What even is it?
2. Why does it suck?
3. Can I have some for free?

Comma.ai founder George Hotz wants to free humanity from the AI simulation

What keeps George Hotz, the enigmatic hacker and founder of self-driving startup Comma.ai, up at night is not whether his autonomous car company will be successful or what other entrepreneurial venture he might embark on next. No, instead, Hotz says he’s tortured by the possibility that all of us are in an advanced simulation observed by either an omnipotent extraterrestrial or supernatural being, or an artificial intelligence far beyond the realm of human conception and understanding.

“There’s no evidence this is not true,” an animated Hotz told a crowd at his SXSW talk on Friday, aptly titled “Jailbrealing the Simulation” and billed on the festival’s website as an exploration of whether breaking out of a simulated universe means we can “meet God” and kill him. “It’s easy to imagine things that are so much smarter than you and they could build a cage you wouldn’t even recognize.”

[...] It’s hard to know seriously to take Hotz sometimes; he strikes me as someone who often says something to get a reaction or to verbalize his inner monologue as a way of making sense of it. And he said as much onstage. “Do I actually believe it? Some days yes,” he said. “Sometimes I don’t know how I feel about something until I say it out loud.”

The crowd didn’t much care either way. During the Q&A, an audience member asked Hotz if he would consider partnering with transhumanists — people who believe in humanity’s eventual evolution by way of merging the body and mind with robotics and AI — to found his church. Hotz was rather ambivalent to the idea; perhaps he didn’t think people would take him at his word. But if he does a start a church, the sermon he gave at SXSW yesterday was delivered to a room of would-be believers.

Smoke weed everyday.

Related: George Hotz's Comma.Ai Cancels Comma One

I was considering the opposition to Federal taxation and wondered what might happen if the requirements to pay Federal taxes were optional on a state-by-state basis.

The way this would work is that state legislatures could opt the residents and businesses of their state out of paying any Federal taxes, levies and fees.

In order to make this reasonably fair, if a state were to opt out, all those in the state would no longer receive any Federal monies, including highway funds, Medicaid block grants, Superfund grants, education funds, federal government contracts (including subcontracts), Medicare, Social Security, military bases, or any other appropriations from the Federal government.

There are a couple of ways this could go. Those states who are least dependent on federal funds might opt out.

Alternatively, states with populations that are most anti-Federal taxes might opt out.

What other scenarios might drive a state to opt out?

More details:
FY 2013 Federal taxation and spending by state
Federal Tax Revenue By State

Would you support such a law? If so (or not), why (or why not)?

I found the recent hipster story great: Hipster Whines at Tech Mag for Using His Pic to Imply Hipsters Look the Same; Wasn't His Pic. It made me think a bit about the broader implications today.

Hipsters get a bad rap, but they're really very similar to any number of "alternative" movements of yesteryear. As long as there has been human society, there have been "rebels" and "non-conformists." But being truly individual is a very a difficult thing. It's difficult to make friends, because you can't be fit into any box. You're unpredictable. You may agree with people on a number of things, and then you have logic that leads you off to a completely different path that those same people find confusing or even offensive.

Thus, most self-identified "individuals" paradoxically found communities of like-minded individuals. It's easier to adopt a pre-packaged aesthetic and set of values than it is to come up with a system on your own. Of course most hipsters have qualities that make them look somewhat "alike," even as they eschew mainstream fashion or whatever -- because it's easier to adopt someone else's brand of "non-conformity" than it is to try to be an individual yourself, which is scary and bold and where you have little guidance. Most people are sheep: they just gravitate toward different flocks.

In terms of my clothing choices and outward appearance most of the time, I'm somewhat of a conformist, in that I feel like standing out is generally counterproductive. I just want to be left alone to do my own thing, so I mostly dress conservatively, though I certainly don't place any value in "fashion." I get the cheapest functional clothes I can that still look professional, often drawing on castaways at thrift stores -- which are frequently even name-brand clothes from a couple years ago, but maybe the color or style is no longer trendy. I don't care... they're clothes, and I generally buy them for 1/5th or even 1/10th of the original price. They get the job done.

But when it comes to beliefs and ideologies, I truly don't accept anyone else's views unless they make sense to me and there's good evidence. Over the years, I've cultivated good friends who seem convinced I'm a diehard conservative, and other friends who are convinced I'm a diehard liberal. I don't lie. I just find it counterproductive to alienate people a lot of the time, so I listen a lot. I'm genuinely curious about other views. And I can often find threads of things I agree with or at least basic concepts I might go along with in any ideology, so I'll find ways of carrying a discussion forward along points of agreement... or often I just find myself playing a sort of "devil's advocate" with nobody on the other side. Some conservative person is ranting about something, and I'll toss in a few facts that would support their argument, even if I don't believe in their argument -- just to be social. And then I'll toss in a nuance they haven't thought of, just to stir things very slightly and see what happens.

With most people, it's very hard to change minds. The only way to do so is to gain their trust, and then maybe throw in some ideas they haven't considered and let them come to a new realization on their own. I'm rarely trying to change anyone myself -- I accept pluralism as a fundamental philosophy. But I do think it's important to inform, to take into account a broad perspective on facts, to know stuff and derive your opinions from knowledge rather than bullet points spouted from someone else.

If you really want to be a "non-conformist," the strongest thing you can do is be a skeptic in a Socratic fashion. Accept that there are always things you don't know, and be willing to listen. That's truly disruptive to ideologies, whether mainstream or "alternative" or whatever.

In my life, I've spent a lot of time going down rabbitholes and questioning my beliefs. For example, when "Intelligent Design" became popular in the late 90s, I spent a few months reading literature by Michael Behe and others, as well as textbooks on evolutionary biology, trying to understand what was going on. I never subscribed the the Creationist ideology, but for a while I was convinced -- and to some extent still am -- that questions of how we could evaluate "design" as distinct from randomness were interesting questions. But ultimately I realized the Intelligent Design people were mostly dishonest hucksters using disingenuous arguments to try to sneak religion into science classrooms, even if they had raised a few minor interesting points.

Heck, even in the past week or two, some post on this site got me curious about measles vaccines, and it led me down a 20-minute dive into research where I seriously started to question my blanket vaccine-positive stance. Could researchers and vaccine manufacturers seriously not be considering the cost-benefit analysis of the measles vaccine in terms of its effects vs. the disease itself? There were a few reputable citations, which I duly followed. And then ultimately I realized it was more anti-vaxxer propaganda and distortion of facts. But for about 10 minutes, I was seriously questioning a core scientific conclusion I had come to over the years. I even contacted a friend who knows more about immunology, though her immediate reply was she didn't know much about the measles vaccine. Soon, though, I realized the opponents (some of them with serious credentials) were calculating ideologues who weren't interested in truth.

If you bring me reputable evidence and links, I will consider the information. I will listen. I am willing to question my beliefs. That's what a true "non-conformist" should go with. It's not about standing out from the crowd. It's not about bucking the mainstream -- because sometimes the mainstream is right. That's something quite a few people on this site might sometimes consider. Is there really a reason to question the mainstream view -- which is founded on good science -- or are you just being a stubborn hipster-like person, feeling like there must be something wrong with the "mainstream," so you need to assert your individuality in a kind of aesthetic performance. (Even if that makes you sound like a conspiracy theorist.)

And often the mainstream IS wrong, or at least lacking nuance to the point that it's basically wrong if superficially correct. Yes, challenge the status quo. Dig into the details. You need to legitimately find your own way. More importantly, you need to find your own path to self-consistency... and sometimes accept that's hard and often not going to be like the pre-packaged ideologies most people live with.

Most conservatives love rules, until they have a personal situation where they really need to break one. Most liberals claim to be open-minded and to accept anyone, unless those people happen to hold conservative beliefs. Most libertarians like to believe in some militant individualistic philosophy, although they often subscribe to the same newsletters and are rarely very diverse.

Most people follow flocks. The hipsters are the same. Why should we be surprised? It's easy to make fun of the hipsters because they are so staunchly "non-conformist" while seeming to conform to stereotypes. But try practicing real non-conformity yourself. It can be surprisingly difficult. Many people here seem to self-identify as social misfits or people who don't care about the mainstream -- but that's just like hipster propaganda. It's easy to be "alternative" when you have your own flock of misfits to join. Try digging deeper sometimes when confronted with someone who thinks differently from yourself. Listen. Seek out more information and nuance. Draw your own conclusions.

I'll just leave you all with one quotation that I try to think about regularly, some wisdom from Charles Peirce:

“It is the man of science, eager to have his every opinion regenerated, his every idea rationalized, by drinking at the fountain of fact, and devoting all the energies of his life to the cult of truth, not as he understands it, but as he does not yet understand it, that ought properly to be called a philosopher.”

If I had to choose a Credo for myself, that'd be a pretty good one. I don't always live up to it, but I aspire to.

Lenovo Unveils ThinkStation P520 & P920 ‘AI Workstations’: Xeon Plus Quadro RTX 6000

Ubuntu Linux based systems shipping with 10 or 24 cores, 128 GB or 384 GB of RAM.

Maybe that will be the new minimum in 15 years.

I gave a spherical cow plushie to a physicist who works for a tech company. It has been on my friend's desk for a month and it has greatly cheered my friend and my friend's colleagues. My friend now wants to learn how to sew. This is for two purposes. Firstly, my friend wants to make a spherical penguin. Secondly, my friend wants to repair clothes. I am extremely willing to help because it has elements of a definitive plan. Specifically:-

1. It has a relatively finite scope.
2. It is a realistic, achievable goal.
3. It has a reward.
4. It has a sensible time-scale.

Admittedly, time-scale is the least constrained. However, I have instigated a plan to make this achievable. I met near my friend's office in the hipster part of London and I introduced my friend to the many haberdashery shops in Ridley Road Market. In particular, Dalston Mill Fabrics has the widest selection of cheap synthetic fur fabric. While in the area, I showed Fassett Square to my friend. The market and the square were used the basis for the BBC's main soap opera and on the second occasion that the set was created, it cost at least £86 million to re-create these unassuming streets in East London.

While wandering around, we made arrangements for a regular sewing session. This is now an open invitation to any member of SoylentNews who wants to meet in Central London.

After the London HackSpace closed for four months and then re-located to the vicinity of a failed makerspace (and midway towards a budding makerspace which failed due to the presumed suicide of one of its founders), many people from the London HackSpace chose to meet in Central London on Tuesday evenings in lieu of the London HackSpace social evenings (also on Tuesdays). This has now settled on the Montagu Pyke Public House in Charing Cross Road, Central London. (Nearest London Underground stations are Tottenham Court Road and Leicester Square.)

Some people boycott this venue on principle. The Montagu Pyke Public House is a Wetherspoon Pub and the founder, Tim Martin, is notoriously pro-Brexit and anti-Europe to the extent that he has removed French champagne from the menu, regularly writes about the topic in the pub's magazine, has pro-Brexit slogans on pub menus and even insists that staff place pro-Brexit signs at entrances which lambast the alleged British Prime Minister, Theresa May. Although, to remain competitive, most of the staff at the Montagu Pyke appear to be Spanish. Regardless, Soylentils are typically libertarian and with signatures, such as UID5690's "Secession is the right of all sentient beings", support for Scottish independence, British independence, Catalonian independence and/or Californian independence is more likely than not.

With few exceptions (most notably, Tue 25 Dec 2018 and Tue 1 Jan 2019), Tuesday meetings have continued for almost one year. We meet at 7PM sharp. Sometimes we stay at the pub and eat fish or steak. More often, we go to one of three restaurants in London's Chinatown: the comically named Wong Kei restaurant on the West side of Wardour Street (famously described by churnalist, Zoë Williams, in TimeOut magazine, as "the rudest restaurant in London"), the Kawloon Buffet in Gerrard Street (by the West Chinatown Gate) or the classier Mr. Wu buffet on the South side of Shaftesbury Avenue (on the same block as the Wong Kei). Actually, these restuarants are all within 100 metres of each other. A friend is also keen on McDonald's and so we've occasionally visited the local branches in Charing Cross Road and Leicester Square (on the West side of the square, to the left of the Lego shop).

We now have a standing arrangement to eat at the far end of the basement of the Leicester Square branch of McDonald's from 7:30PM on the first Tuesday of every month because it has the most space and best lighting to teach sewing. Although there are many sewing groups in London, this is best described a Sewing For Physicists. Indeed, after I mentioned De Broglie wavelength, my physicist friend instantly understood that any sewing error smaller than the length of fur would be completely hidden. Indeed, this is part of the reason that I chose spherical plushies to teach sewing. Synthetic fur is the easist material to use and the spherical shape incurs the least sewing for the most reward.

Anyhow, the invitation is as follows:-

• Meet on any Tuesday at 7PM sharp at the Montagu Pyke Public House for general discussion.
• If you want to learn sewing or make a spherical plushie then meet at 7PM sharp at the Montagu Pyke Public House or meet in the basement of the Leicester Square branch of McDonald's from 7:30PM or so on the first Tuesday of any month.
• Bring two car washing sponges to use as the filling of a spherical plushie. Three car washing sponges for £1 are currently available from PoundLand.
• Synthetic fur, cut to size and suitable for one spherical plushie, can be swapped for one McDonald's £0.99 cheeseburger. I will bring sufficient supplies to make three spherical plushies. My friend will bring a similar quantity of supplies. Patterns vary. They may include black and white Holstein cow print, tiger, leopard, ladybug and/or Sulley from Monsters, Inc. Alternatively, source your own fur. This is likely to cost £8 or more and leave you with a considerable surplus of material.
• All other sewing supplies can be borrowed or kept at no cost.
• If you want to do any other sewing project then please keep it very small. This excludes most clothing repair.

We had a practice run on Tue 5 Mar 2019 and we made significantly less progress than expected. I can hand sew and machine sew and I've worn entirely home-made clothes in public. So far, I've also made 19 spherical plushies. The first took me more than 90 minutes to sew by hand. They now take less than 45 minutes - and about the same again if adding ears. Unfortunately, a geek sewing newbie is unlikely to finish a plushie before the third session. Indeed, you can very probably defer plushie filling. Taking into account drinks at the Montagu Pyke Public House, eating and talking about random geek stuff and the basement section of McDonald's closing at 10PM, we may only have 90 minutes for each sewing session. Regardless, we have confirmed empirically that staff are unconcerned about a bunch of geeks sewing after we've eaten.

We're semi-seriously going to make a furry ball pool. After I gave away seven of my 19 spherical critters, the remainder are on my bed. I've slept while hugging three with each arm. From this, I believe that it would be worthwhile to explore a considerably larger quantity. A friend agrees. Unfortunately, cost and effort are issues. Plastic balls are £1 per 10 and considerably cheaper in volume. Each spherical plushie is about 25 times bigger. In small quatities, material and filling are cheaper per cubic unit. However, an expert with a sewing machine may require more than 15 minutes to make each ball.

Some final notes: Firstly, McDonald's in the UK went cashless at some point I don't remember over the last 10 years. Although I'll swap fur for food and a friend swaps food for cash, this works best if you bring cash in small denominations. Secondly, if you don't know us and we don't look geeky enough to approach then look for a black and bright orange tiger stripe furry ball with a six inch (16cm) diameter or a light gray wolf/husky hat. Thirdly, no video recording, no photography and definitely no flash photography.

We hope to see you on:-

• Tue 2 Apr 2019 (on the reasonable assumption that we have electricity four days after Brexit).
• Tue 7 May 2019.
• Tue 4 Jun 2019.
• Tue 2 Jul 2019.

and/or any other Tuesday.

I hoped that I could summurize 10 days of SoylentNews every week. I'll have to be significantly more brutal to achieve this and I'm concerned that the volume of text has doubled from Nov 2017 to Feb 2019. Regardless, this is an attempt at summarizing one day of articles from SoylentNews. I have a further three millions words covering three months. Quotes aren't attributed because I de-duplicate headers and then use text to speech at 300 words per minute. This makes sources indistinguishable with the exception of about three blowhards. The most prominent is UID6614 rôle-played by UID4512. Summaries select for insight, foresight and comedy:-

1. Samsung Galaxy Upcycle Initiative is Needed but Shouldn't Be - Given the energy consumption of cryptographic currencies (see here) this is generally seen as a greenwashing exercise. Concern that re-purposing old phones may reduce stock of old phones, encourage consumerism (and associated environmental cost). Also concern that re-purposing may require restrictive EULA and/or prevent use of radio interface. The latter may be a benefit if it was guaranteed to be disabled. May be preferable to run SETI@Home or Folding@Home on stock hardware.

2. Startup in Desperate Search for Ideas - Start-up repeatedly fails to make money with trivial ideas (slideshow, calendar, location tracking) and then adds block-chain before that also fails due to legal regulation. Comments about failing upward, "Success is when preparation meets opportunity and luck" and lottery winners going broke. For best snark, search for "So, let me get this straight: TMB and khallow, both noted billionaires of tech" and "I HATE you, khallow! I Hate YOU! You are an uncaring conservative ideologue, and I just wish I could just get quit of you! // Signed, your Brokeback Mountain Time Friend. p.s. When you coming home?"

3. RIPE75 Presentations Online - Apparently, Réseaux IP Européens couldn't find a venue in Europe and instead decided to hold a conference in the United Arab Emirates where European practices (such as alcohol, homosexuality and casual sex) are all illegal. RIPE is also incapable of publishing slides in a standard format, unlike NANOG.

4. Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment Ends, "Follow-On" Launching Soon - GRACE. Catchy gibberish acronym.

5. ESPN Can't Afford Monday Night Football Any More - 108 comments about sportsball! I thought this was going to devolve into partisan politics or the merit of military funding being diverted into corporate sponsorship. However, discussion was on the merit of celebrities raising awareness about matters such as police brutality. "We are talking about justifying moral authority from an industry that is known for its murderers, rapists, abusers, armed robbers, cheaters, drug abusers, and other criminals. For decades, professional sports has turned a blind eye to the moral standards of their employees because the only thing that mattered was winning. As a result, now the public isn't remotely surprised when a player beats his girlfriend on camera, or murders someone." "My gym has ESPN playing on the giant TV in the mens locker room. For a very long time I've been subjected to 5-10 minutes of ESPN at a time. My observations are 40% commercials for old men products, 40% old male sportscaters and occasionally guests yelling nonsense about nothing at each other, and maybe 10% highlight reel commentary the kind of stuff you'd watch a youtube clip for if you weren't watching TV. The other 10% is weird banter, flirting with the elderly yet still hot MILF (GILF?) female hosts who appear to know nothing about sports and their only hiring criteria was affirmative action/hotness. // The commercials are moderately interesting because some day I want to age into being a cranky old man. Assuming I'm not already. So I know all the pills I should be taking in 30 years from watching ESPN ads, all of which have minor side effects like death or my dick falling off. For 5 minutes a day its kind of novel, the commercials I mean, not having my dick fall off." These demographics may explain why 15,000 account per day drop ESPN. Double dipping (or perhaps triple dipping) of subscription, advert breaks (up to 22 minutes per hour) and sponsor logos don't help. Also gives backgound about Rodney King. He was a scumbag.

6. AI and Quantum Algorithms Together Can Compute a Better World - "Fucking 100% marketing drone wankery." "What sort of problems in physics can AI (as we currently understand it) solve? // Look in TFA and you won't find answers to these questions. In fact, you won't even find the questions. // About the closest is the assertion that AI needs a lot of compute power and quantum computers are really fast thus, good for AI. But the big problems in AI are not because of inadequate compute power and it is far from obvious that quantum computers can help AI problems that are related to compute performance." "Current AI amounts to increasingly sophisticated curve fitting."

7. Alexa Can Help You Check Your Credit Score - "sudo make me a credit score sandwich" (Or perhaps, "Can I afford two tonnes of corn?") "where's the eula for when I do not agree to amazon and google saving my voice when I go to a friend of family members house?" "will the Facebook crowd eat this up?" "Of course they will, they've been mind-bleached of any thought about their privacy - they're the perfect product. After they'll eat it, they'll wipe their mouth with the latest advertised toilet paper (assuming their credit is in good enough standing to afford it)" "I agree, the crowd will rush over the cliffs, again. IQs have gone negative, humanity is now at risk." "Black Mirror - Nosedive" "Alexa like most silicon valley shit is made for SV hipsters who have no family or friends and live alone with their cats"

8. Consumer Reports Closes Consumerist - Insecure computing requires Consumer Reports more than ever. However, "Corruption is taking a very firm foothold, talk about the warning signs of a downfall." "There's no need to dream up conspiracy theories. Consumer Reports has been losing readership, subscriptions and therefore money for a while now. I even canceled my subscription." Difficult to use reviews when products are readily re-badged.

9. Set Up Private Blockchain With Ethereum - "I am interested in obtaining some of your Snowcoin, I hear your blockchain is very high-tech! If i get in on the ground floor, can you make me filthy rich? Yours, former Bernie Madoff investor." "If i get in on the ground floor, can you make me filthy rich? Yours, former Enron investor."

10. Bad Rabbit Used NSA "EternalRomance" Exploit to Spread, Researchers Say - "I have a bad feeling about this. Malware, that breeds like rabbits? At least it is not Tribbles, yet."

11. Hubble Observes Titanium Dioxide "Snow" on Hot Jupiter Exoplanet - "Oh, don't thank our taxpayers, thank our military who wants to be sure the whole world knows: A) we can drop whatever size bomb we want, wherever on the planet we want, whenever we want B) we have the optical sensing and data processing capability to see a ladybug on your ass no matter where on the planet you are, including indoors, and C) don't you forget it, thus the continued publication of ever more impressive miraculous feats of putting big things in orbit and bringing back incredible pictures of whatever."

12. We May Not Have Enough Minerals to Even Meet Electric Car Demand - "oh look, one of the electric car makers also has an active space program :D" "What a mess! We need that wall YESTERDAY. Like, the 1950s. To keep American minerals and vitamins in. We make beautiful nickels in this country but THEY won't tell you about it." "We've got plenty of irony. It's nickely, cobalty and lithiumy we need to find." "I had an environmental chemistry professor bring up this point a year or two ago. Our current methods of producing batteries, solar panels, and windmills can often be just as environmentally devastating as their combustible counterparts. NREL and other national labs have been pushing research into improving batteries and utilizing abundant metals, but I personally don't expect any quantum leap in the technology to solve major problems. It will take a multifaceted approach to achieve a sustainable future, all the push about for an electric fleet is pretty ridiculous when there are still many issues with the technology that have to be solved before implemented in scale. But hey, if it convinces snowflakes to re-elect you, set deadlines that you probably can't make, we're going to save the world right? All we need are 'conflict minerals', it's not like they're as bad as blood diamonds..."

13. Aliens May be More Like Us Than We Think - "Homo sapiens will go extinct in this very generation**. It will be replaced by Homo Faecebookensis. // ** We must allow some exception, though. There are fortunate people in this world without access to Internet, they'll last one generation longer." "Thats not blood, you've just popped a zit." Astrobiology? "It's hard science. With a sample size of 0. What could possibly go wrong?" "it could be argued that this is a field with much more grounding in reality than string theory. for instance the predictions are definitely easier to test." "A free and easy way of life is great, up until some other culture comes and destroys it." Dolphin sex. More dolphin sex. The merit of living in the Oort cloud with or without a fusion reactor.

14. Technology Seeks to Preserve Fading Skill: Braille Literacy - Braille literacy in the US has fallen from 30% in 1974 to 13% in 2018. Rely on technology? Cost is a significant issue and this assumes your native language is supported. Speech to text also assumes that you aren't dictating something sensitive. Braille literacy versus sighted literacy?

15. Nurse Who Was Arrested in Utah Receives Half Million Dollar Settlement - Nurse refuses to draw blood without patient consent, false arrest is filmed. Police officer who was being investigated for corruption was initially "counseled" then fired. Blood test was intended to exonerate police officer in coma. "will donate some of the proceeds to a fund that will help people obtain body camera footage and provide free legal aid for open records requests." 'one of the parties paying out the settlement is "the university that owns the hospital." They failed to protect the nurse from police violence, so they're at fault?' "Police officers need to carry their own individual liability insurance. Just as some other professions do. Police departments could subsidize these policies at the rate that ordinary officers would pay. But bad police will either face increased premiums or inability to get any insurance -- which will automatically disqualify them from police work. And without any flack from the union. Furthermore, the insurance underwriters would be motivated to investigate bad police and get to the truth because they are the ones financially on the hook." "Some sort of Federal anti-corruption agency that does undercover secret-shopper encounters with police would also be a good thing. If a cop beats the shit out of the FBI for no reason, I think it'll be taken a lot more seriously than if it happens to the rest of us." "The real award is closer to $300k after taxes" and risks jail if the tax is not paid. "The lawyers get 33%!" "She was pressured into doing something highly illegal to the point of handcuffing her and leaving her in a police car for 20 minutes. If she had buckled under to the pressure, she might have lost her job. And nobody did anything about it until her video ended up on the internet a month later." "Police officers will be barred from patient-care areas at a hospital in Utah that drew widespread notice when an officer handcuffed a nurse, hospital officials said this week." "Police departments and individual officers are still not getting the message after years of being in the public eye and poisoning the public trust." 'I don't get why people are so keen on huge fines to "the group" when they can just throw the culprits in prison. All this "big fines to the org" are the reason why bad CEOs and cops keep doing evil stuff. Nothing really significant happens to them. The more sociopathic or evil they are the less it matters to them that the group suffers. Yeah they get yelled at, or they lose their jobs and end up working for a different Police Department/Company, big fucking deal.'

16. Rylo: A $500 360-Degree Camera With Image Stabilization - "4k is not enough to match good FullHD or even HD if you have to crop a lot out."

17. Q4OS: A Very Flexible Linux Distro - Review - 32 bit support. Five year support. "And then someone mentions that apparently it uses systemd, so there is a limit to the flexibility after all. As in it's no more flexible than any other systemd based system." "This is like saying that the new Windows Creators Update is soooo flexible, it allows you to choose between notepad and wordpad." antiX 17 recommended due to removal of systemd. "If you want new, you should try Windows 12." "No thank you, I prefer being anally probed by a stick wrapped in barbed wire." "You're two revisions back! The new Corporate Motivators Edition comes with standard razor wire stick dipped in salt." "Remember the time you upgraded because you wanted to run the latest games... now you just need it to use the web... *sigh*" "we have web browsers that are an RAM hungry as Crysis. Crysis. Go figure."

18. Microsoft Engineer Installs Google Chrome During Presentation After Edge Freezes - "It wouldn't really surprise me if MS eventually wants to get rid of maintaining windows and concentrate on cloud services and office software. Those are the actual cashcows after all and windows is just a means to an end (selling office). Windows was very useful for keeping their customers locked in as long as it was a near absolute monopoly, but now that so many folks have de facto switched to android/ios as their main OS it might be more important for them to show their software works there too." "There are some shenanigans going on. More and more of their webstack is running in linux. DotNetCore, Visual Studio Code, Kestrel web server, MS SQL, Roslyn compiler (think C#). I think you can host just about everything in linux now. Development still seems partially stuck in windows but there are a lot more cli tools instead of ui. I'm seeing some weird shit in the ms dev world right now." "Nowadays they've stopped making usable GUIs and started telling people to use PowerShell." "The Windows 9x UI was actually quite an improvement over previous stuff. Nowadays you need stuff like Classic Shell to make the newer versions of Windows tolerable." Microsoft Edge was cancelled about one year after this incident.

R. Kelly

R. Kelly denies sexual abuse allegations in explosive interview

R. Kelly was "unhinged" in interview with Gayle King, columnist says (12m36s)

Gayle King talks about her explosive R. Kelly interview on CBSN (7m18s)

Full interview is apparently around 80 minutes and has not been released in its entirety yet. Even Oprah wants the full video.

Turmoil or manipulation?

Previously: R. Kelly Contracts Ligma
R. Kelly Exposes Himself