SoylentNews

Coca-Cola plans to launch its first alcoholic drink

Coca-Cola is planning to produce an alcoholic drink for the first time in the company's 125-year history - with an alcopop-style product in Japan. It is keen to cash in on the country's growing taste for Chu-Hi - canned sparkling flavoured drinks given a kick with a local spirit called shochu. The product is typically between 3% and 8% alcohol by volume.

A senior Coke executive in Japan said the move was a "modest experiment for a specific slice of our market". "We haven't experimented in the low alcohol category before, but it's an example of how we continue to explore opportunities outside our core areas," said Jorge Garduno, Coca-Cola's Japan president. It was unlikely the drink would be sold outside of Japan, he suggested.

Some BBC commenterds want to ban alcopops.

Also at NPR and CNBC.

Which VPN Services Keep You Anonymous in 2018?

Which version of XKeyscore are we running on?

So here we are, once again being the alternative to the "other site", which seems to have crapped itself, but we still have our own problems. Yes, I have gone on about them for maybe way too much, but I wanted to bring up one nicety of SoylentNews that is honored in the breach. Notification of submissions rejected.

For Example:

We're sorry, your submission "Here’s How an Alt-Right Troll Auditions for Survivor" was declined for the following reason:
Journal for this - not worthy of the front page--JR

Now I love JR, or janrinok, he is my favorite editor, he tries to stay true to the ideal that was SoylentNews, but I have to ask, not worthy, why? Us submitters could use some more constructive criticism! Is it just that once again, I was critical of the alt-right? Knowing that would help. Or was it that the submission was about broadcast TV? Was that the reason? Not enough to go on, even for a 2400 year old philosopher!

And then there is the boilerplate:

The editors felt it inappropriate for them to correct the issue themselves. Please feel free to correct the issue yourself and resubmit.

For some reason, in my particular case, I feel that this is less than sincere. I have resubmitted, with the limited guidance given by the eds, and had the re-submission also rejected. Oh, poor aristarchus! Doomed to a level of Dante's hell where the editors are the authorities, and they can make decisions based on things we know not of. So I guess I will put something about how there are boobies, a la TMB, on Survivor, with the alt-right rejected because there are never any boobies in alt-right things at all because it is just like the scene in the Blues Brothers, where the Illinois Nazis were plummeting to their death, and the second in command, cmn32480, says, "I have always loved you." So, there is that.

Now is the time for all good Soylentils to come to the aid of their news aggregating website! We need more balance, more inclusiveness, less right-wing fanbois bubbling! We could use an aristarchus submissions, not because he will just submit more and make us look like a bunch of right-wing dweebs, but because there is a viable, majority, sane and everyday position out there that thinks the alt right needs to be hung out to dry. Let the racist bastards speak, I say. And my submissions are the one way to do so. If the eds reject them, they have made the bed in which they will lie. Not a good bed. Roll over, and there is Milo? Do you really want that?

Exclusive: Florida Public School Teacher Has A White Nationalist Podcast

Crystal River teacher hosts white nationalist podcast, HuffPost reports

Meanwhile:

Here Are 911 Transcripts of Some of the Times Apple Employees Walked Directly Into Glass Walls

I ran out of work to do

I fixed a panic only I could reproduce, tagged and built a release, rolled an installer then put it where QA was sure to find it

I marked my panic Resolved in the bugbase

I sent out an email

The VP of engineering stepped into my office to ask "Do you think this is ready for our customers?"

"Yeah"

"Cool" then he stepped back out

I hung out on the tubes for two hours. Having gotten bored with that I left work two hours early

What did I expect? A ticker tape parade?

To appear on CNN a _second_ time?

I'm finished

And quite likely unemployed. The VP said there was no market for what was to be my second project. They haven't mentioned any others

Aren't I supposed to celebrate this?

I feel strangely let down

The L3+, its sold-separately power supply and DHL shipping set me back $2,295.

I at first intended to set it up this evening, then decided I'd put it off until tomorrow evening because I was too tired. CryptoCompare's LiteCoin Mining Profit Calculator yielded the insight that putting it off that way would set me back $9.35 that I would have otherwise earned.

Or rather, that my L3+ would have earned.

I bought their LiteCoin rig rather than the Antminer S9 BitCoin miner because the S9 requires 220 volts. The L3+ can use 110 volts.

I puzzled over ways I could safely power it from my electric stove outlet. I was widely advised that if I didn't electrocute myself I'd burn my apartment building down. Despite all that I am confident that I could have made it work - safely and reliably - but in the end decided that doing so would be a huge pain in the ass.

I have the hope that I can provide for myself purely through mining. But that's not likely to happen anytime soon:

I ordered my L3+ in December, during the Irrationally Exhuberant Cryptocurrency Bubble. At the time the mining calculator said it would make me ten grand a year.

I live in a very modest way. Were I to buy three of them - and I really did have enough money, which I've since spent on hookers and blow - they would make thirty grand a year, which is far more than what I require to live comfortably.

I once earned $120/hour as a contract programmer but oddly never had any spare cash. My current monastic lifestyle is facilitated by having moved out of state then having changed my cell number.

(If the issue ever comes up I can truthfully claim never to have declared bankruptcy.)

To my great dismay that same mining calculator now tells me that my L3+ will produce just $2,900. That's the result of LiteCoin's fall in price after the bubble burst.

Try it yourself:

504 MH/s - Hash Rate

$0.0816 - per kilowatt-hour of electricity (cheap because Pacific NorthLeft)

800 watts - power consumption

$208.12 - LiteCoin Price

I'm not in a pool yet so I don't know what the pool will charge me. But the pool fee isn't really significant.

This is puzzling - the first time I tried today the calculator said my L3+ would mine 19.6 LTC per year. The second time it said 19.3. Now it says 16.65.

I'm going to try a different calculator...

WhatToMine sez it's 18.3, for an annual profit of $3,200.

Were the LiteCoin price to stay like this it would have been a far, far better investment to have bought a second macintosh. That would enable me to write OSX drivers without using my client's equipment.

Really the only way to know is to actually mine some LTC for the next little while as I follow the exchange rate.

I'm going to post this then play with my new toy.

Hi-Rez president compares new ‘Overwatch’ hero to a ‘Paladins’ protagonist

Just bookmarking so I can check out the videogamedunkey video later.

Nintendo Holds Off on Switch 2.0, Looks to Peripherals for More Sales

It would be bizarre to release a new version of Switch so soon. They talk about a slimmed down version (rather than a mid-cycle upgrade like PS4 Pro or Xbox One X). Compare to PS4 (Nov 2013) and PS4 Slim (Sep 2016), and Xbox One (Nov 2013) and Xbox One S (Aug 2016). In fact, the PS4 Pro and Xbox One X didn't come out very long after the slimmed down versions.

What they could do is drop in newer ARM CPUs and Nvidia GPUs. Even if they underclock and keep performance almost the same, the console would benefit from lower power consumption since it is battery-powered in handheld mode.

AC thinks I'm a creep. I wouldn't want my bad reputation to go to waste

Which of my posts is your favorite?

He livestreamed his own murder on Facebook in a North Carolina town

Man fatally shot on Facebook Live had been outing suspected drug dealers, sources say

LiveLeak.

Subject: Need to take Tuesday off work

Why time off?

The onset of Manic Depression, Schizophrenia and my own Schizoaffective Disorder typically occurs when one is a young adult. In my case it was in the early Spring of 1984, when I was a sophomore at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California.

I left in January 1985, and eventually earned my Physics degree at UC Santa Cruz.

I have had very, very little contact with anyone or anything that are connected to Caltech since I left. I was in a profoundly altered state of reality my last few months there. My Bipolar-Type Schizoaffective Disorder was diagnosed during a psychiatric inpatient admission in July 1985.

It happens that if one has ever been psychotic, simply thinking about psychosis will cause one to become psychotic again. This gives me the odd ability to start hallucinating just by thinking about it.

(I discuss this in The Heebie Jeebies.)

It's best that I not do that.

For me, Caltech is Powerful Voodoo.

I was recently invited to join the Caltech Alumni Facebook group. I have never been a member of the Caltech Alumni Association - again that would be Powerful Voodoo.

I explained my mental illness to the Caltech Alumni Facebook group.

When I was still a student there I found that none of the students, faculty or staff had the first clue about any form of mental illness. That no one else knew how to help me made my Schizoaffective Disorder far, far worse than it would have been had I been attending some other school when I experienced its onset.

None of the Facebook group members were at the Institute when I was. Most of them are quite a lot younger than that.

I didn't expect their response: an outpouring of support for me.

I've been thinking quite a lot about Caltech today.

It's best that I not do that.