Tangurena2
Joined 9 years ago
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Member since
Jan 21
Software developer at a state government agency.
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Comment · 3 days ago
They watch the TV network that tells them every single day that huge numbers of illegal immigrants (or other scary brown-skinned people) are the reason for all their troubles & fears. They always hype the false story that there is a huge caravan of migrants approaching US borders but only during lead-up to elections.
Trump is persecuting the same "others" that the "don't tread on me" group also hate. They only wave their weapons when Democrats are sitting in the White House.
Comment · 3 days ago
The 19th Century was full of anti-Catholic sentiment in the US. There was even a political party devoted to getting rid of Catholics who became known as "the know nothings".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Know_Nothing
The other immigrants from Catholic countries were also perceived as being "not white", which is why there was a lot of anti-Italian and anti-Spanish sentiment along with the anti-Irish folks. Along with the "they are not real Christians" sentiment (still held by many Evangelicals), they were perceived as "taking orders from Rome" much like (during the Cold War) communists were perceived as "taking orders from Moscow".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Catholicism_in_the_United...
Comment · 3 days ago
The court rulings are based on telephone directories and the conflicts between their disparate companies (including Ma Bell). The phone company tried to claim that they owned the phone numbers (and any derivative intellectual property rights). The companies that published competing phone books successfully argued that the only property rights exist in the compilation of data - not in the data itself. The result of this pile of history is that whosoever owns the computer owns the data on that computer.
The GDPR comes from the opposite direction - you own the data about yourself.
Comment · 4 days ago
> "the US has the most freedom"
This is an example of a thought-stopping cliche. It is a slogan to prevent the listener from thinking. Or at the least, to divert the listener's thoughts back to a more politically acceptable (to the speaker) rightthink.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought-terminating_clich%C3%A...
Comment · 4 days ago
I was living and working in Kokomo, Indiana when the Ryan White situation occurred. There were other kids who got AIDS/HIV from hemophilia meds like Ryan. My coworkers were thrilled that several of these kid's homes were burned to the ground by people who didn't want those kids going to "our" school. Those coworkers were also proud that one of the Grand Wizards of the Klan lived in Kokomo.
I remember Reagan manufacturing AIDS into some sort of plague sent by God to punish brown skinned alongside gay people. I'm not surprised that historians have whitewashed Reagan's racism.
It was Reagan's administration that got the Fairness Doctrine repealed. That single action made the right wing media possible. Fox could never have existed prior.
The HPV vaccine prevents several cancers. Australia, which has mandatory HPV vaccination, is seeing a 95% drop in the cervical cancers that the vaccine prevents compared with pre-vaccine people. In my state, as well as some other red states, want the HPV shot banned or at the very minimum requiring positive parental consent.
Comment · 4 days ago
The 6th Amendment was written to prevent secret courts. The English Star Chamber was frequently secret and you could be put on trial without knowing what evidence/testimony was brought against you. The Star Chamber was also why the 5th Amendment exists.
Comment · 5 days ago
Prolog is from the early 1970s.
The "problem" with Japan's approach was that it was top-down, being driven by a committee of bureaucrats. Unlike the Toyota approach (continual improvement and pushing decisions to the lowest level possible), this fossilized decisions (like picking Prolog instead of any other possibly better programming language).
To give an idea of how intransigent some Japanese bureaucracies can be:
> It's taken until 2024, but Japan has finally said goodbye to floppy disks.
> Up until last month, people were still asked to submit documents to the government using the outdated storage devices, with more than 1,000 regulations requiring their use.
> Sony, the last manufacturer of the disks, ended its production in 2011.
Comment · 5 days ago
One of the earliest versions of these stories is that of the Golem (of Prague) back in the late 1600s.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golem
> All of the world's stories about humanoid robots basically involve them attacking humans and behaving in nefarious destructive ways. It's fundamentally embedded in the models, and there's no reason post training would pull it out, because it's basically in the key value vector meaning "malicious human destroyer".
That misfeature is baked into modern corporations. They don't have human morals, values nor behaviors, despite being made out of humans. We haven't managed to fix the alignment issue with corporations (thanks, regulatory capture!) and there's no reason to believe that AI's alignment issue is fixable either.
https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2018/01/dude-yo...
oldest version from Stross: https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/12/invader...
Comment · 5 days ago
My state (Kentucky) does provide for "tenure" for primary/secondary teachers. In Kentucky, that is called a "continuing contract". KRS 161.720(4):
Comment · 5 days ago
This is a good one. Also Cod gives a rather interesting deviation from the common idea of how the North Atlantic got explored/discovered.
Comment · 9 days ago
> Say what you will about the old arcade model, but you didn’t have to buy the cabinet and then pay a quarter per play
I'm unhappy that the Kinect got removed from the Xbox and with this sort of nonsense, I won't be purchasing any sort of replacement from Microsoft.
Comment · 12 days ago
> the abuse is tangential to the fact that "the system working as intended" is designed to comprehensively and cheaply subjugate us all to the whims of whoever or whatever has the ear of government at any particular minute.
I'm reminded of a "hah hah, only serious" joke/slang popularized by EverQuest players: Broken as intended.
https://wiki.c2.com/?HaHaOnlySerious
> if cops couldn't stalk their girlfriend
This used to be called "running a date" by law enforcement when checking up on some pretty face. That abuse is part of what led to the Driver's Privacy Protection Act. When I worked for my state's motor vehicle agency, there were training videos about what was and wasn't allowed. It won't happen under this administration, but ALPR systems should be legislated as covered by DPPA.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Driver%27s_Privacy_Protection_...
Comment · 12 days ago
It started under bush jr. That mass surveillance was illegal and then-respected media outlets like NYTimes and WaPo knew about it prior to the 2004 elections and deliberately covered it up until after that election. Congress then retroactively legalized that illegal activity in order to protect bush & themselves.
Comment · 12 days ago
If your company has enough money to pay bonuses, then your company does not need to be bailed out.
If your company can afford bonuses after getting bailed out, then you never needed to be bailed out.
Bankruptcy court would almost never allow bonuses to be paid out during any sort of BK.
Comment · 15 days ago
From 2007-2008? Taxpayers bailed out the perps so that they could keep their bonuses.