xkcd

Coyne

The requests would all be identical, right down to voice, inflection and timing. Could Google have technology that detects such problems and automatically defeats them?

Coyne

My nightmare was presented as a story-within-the-dream The story took place on facing pages of a picture book. The picture was of many blue-green paper dolls crowded on the red-brown pages, Where's Waldo style, and they were attending a pot luck dinner. The mass murderer doll killed all the other do...

Coyne

I say why not save flat maps for later schooling and instead teach from something like 3D Interactive Earth Globe ? No flat projection is without problems, and physical globes (most ideal) have problems in teaching environments. As the student graduates to flat maps, the form should be introduced in...

Coyne

1800:

Alt text: Quite a few of our political arguments are declared drawn due to the fifty move rule.

Spoiler:

Coyne

A few days ago, I learned that the peace sign is a combo of the flag semaphore signs for N and D, standing for "nuclear disarmament." http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2017/02/delicate-sketches-of-the-original-peace-symbol-to-be-exhibited-in-london/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_symbols...

Coyne

That's what I gathered listening to the radio last night. It's been raining cats and dogs here for the last few weeks (and more generally, over the course of the "winter,") and as has been mentioned, it's after years and years of drought. I'm not surprised the infrastructure is having som...

Coyne

But the projected sequence of events is: (1) extradition to Sweden; (2) US files espionage charges and demands extradition of Sweden; (3) Sweden dismisses/bypasses charges there and extradites Assange to the US. The charges in Sweden appear to be very weak. In fact, I believe that officially he is ...

Coyne

Chelsea Manning has had her prison sentence commuted by President Obama. Manning has served 7 years of a 35 year sentence for leaking classified files related to the Iraq War. She is scheduled to be released May 17, 2017. I wonder where this is going to lead. It's basically a promise from Assange t...

Coyne

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/12/health/rise-in-infant-drug-dependence-in-us-is-felt-most-in-rural-areas.html?_r=0 It's crack babies all over again, except they're white, so that must mean it's important. In all seriousness, it's gonna be a long time before the country gets serious about prosecuti...

Coyne

Scientific progress is exponential, not linear. Please offer a rigorous definition of 'scientific progress' that has a clear metric that can be measured. Measure years between achieving one tech and the next! I've made 26 patents on a blood pressure pill. Each one improves results by 1%and extends ...

Coyne

I dreamed I was being sued by a blog for reading one of their stories, after they published it and before they unpublished it at a legal demand. Not only did I know (in the dream) they didn't have a legal leg to stand on, but I subsequently proved that my retrieval was after they unpublished it. All...

Coyne

If I'm doing the box moving, I'm leaving the "MANIFOLDS" box strictly unmolested. Might take a chance on that one on the bottom labelled "DOUGH", just on the off chance...

Coyne

A couple of hints I can add. To test primality using the sieve you only need test candidates through CEILING(SQRT(N)). For 32 billion, that works out to a maximum value of P of 178,886. Reason: Suppose that there is some composite number C = P*P such that P > SQRT(C)...but that isn't possible. There...

Coyne

Mambrino wrote:South Africa 'to withdraw from [ICC] war crimes court'

<sarcasm>Oh that's no big deal. Just following the good example of the United States, which never joined at all.</sarcasm>

Coyne

CorruptUser wrote:Wasn't Allende in the process of nationalizing the farms though? Quite sure that that sort of thing has historically ended... poorly.

Oh, yes, you're right. That would have been horrible. The murders, torture, and internments without trial were such a huge improvement.

Coyne

Djehutynakht wrote:It takes a special kind of world leader to Godwin himself.

I miss the days where the US could just subtly replace any regime that was causing us problems in one of our allied states...

That's because we could install such great leaders as Augusto Pinochet and Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, right?

Coyne

Sheikh al-Majaneen wrote:
thunk wrote:According to Life.ru, bombing Syria is necessary to prevent Da'ish from building a "secret moon base".

They'll have to fight the moon Nazis for it.

They'll have to contend with Moon Maid's people, too.

Coyne

I was with a starlet (name reserved) about a third my age. We were laughing together--and helping each other--because we were both gimps. I had broken my leg, which was in a cast and her knee joint was immobilized for some reason. Then we were in Walmart and she picked up two of some common item, th...

Coyne

The scientist is actually also wrong. The Moon's gravitational pull on the earth is only 90x stronger than that of Jupiter. The Sun's gravitational pull is much, much stronger than either of them. But the tides aren't caused by gravitational pull directly, but by the difference in gravitational pul...

Coyne

That's why the last time it happened, the courts ruled that you had to let them go, guilty and all. Most of the dumb/unlucky ones reoffended, but it was for the best to let everyone go. It happened before, I was checking if it was gonna happen again. Wasn't that related to intentional fabrication o...

Coyne

So...what about all those people we put in jail based on their testimony? And you think that bothers the Attorney General? I mean, if I'd needed no other indication she was lying (that she was opposed to anything that might discredit forensics, no matter how slapdash or unscientific ) that line, &q...

Coyne

Your math is off somewhere. $38 billion over 10 years, $3.8 billion a year, works out to $11.80 per US citizen per year. (Not that I am claiming that makes it all better--it still sucks big time.)

(Oh, yes, BTW: I agree pop-ups suck big time, too.)

Coyne

I think I need to elaborate a little. The term "a grand" is US slang for $1000 US. It started as underworld (organized crime) slang and derives from the sense of "grand" as in a great or large amount (think $1000 US in 1920). It was usually spoken: "Tony just bet ten grand.&...

Coyne

I had a double-take before I realised they didn't mean 57 gigadollars... While I never even thought of it being the giga- prefix. In money, 57 G's (grand) is just thousands. Grew up with that and never even thought of it as a conflict. Obviously it is a conflict. Should I file a style complaint? Nah.

Coyne

I'm not sure if the purple thing is a knife, but the black and orange knife is probably legal : ...<snip> ...So, odds are, even their pretense for the stop is crap. The article that precedes that one is somewhat more illuminating. This is also illuminating: NYC pays $57G to electrician after cop wr...

Coyne

NYPD bust a guy for possession of a folding knife, take 18 grand from him in civil forfeiture, brag about it on Twitter accidentally doxing him in the process I'm not sure if the purple thing is a knife, but the black and orange knife is probably legal : the blade looks to be 3.7 inches long, measu...

Coyne

I awoke remembering only the voice and the declaration it made, with no other context. It said, "I gave you an order Deputy Dawg. You will be there, on time, or I will have you locked in your own jail."

Coyne

I don't know, but I think there are a lot of assumptions in these studies about people that are unwarranted. Such as: ⋅ Most people have no budget; or more pertinent, do not know the monthly income they need ⋅ Most people wouldn't adjust their hours--increase their effort--to mee...

Coyne

commodorejohn wrote:...nah. It's ~~Florida~~ Flori-duh.

FTFY

Coyne

sardia wrote:*"I swear that shooter misunderstood my call to lynch them all, it was a metaphor for voting them out"

I'm not sure this is an accurate statement: "metaphor" is an awfully big word for one of these "target the opposition" Republicans to use.

Coyne

Rocketry: it be hard! A test, not takeoff. I love how they call a giant pillar of fire an "anomaly". I certainly hope that's not SOP! Comes from NASA. Challenger was called an anomaly early on. I'd feel sorrier for them if the payload hadn't been part of Zuckerberg's scheme to take over th...

Coyne

Rob: "Not fair. You really expect me to write a WoW addon like that in ten seconds?"

Black hat guy: "No, Rob, I expect you to die."

123

Coyne

By the way, I've hurt my shoulder. Condolences. Heal quick: you'll need that arm (and, evidently, a crowbar) to open tea bags. (Sometime in the future, aliens will find us all dead with unopenable packages--and broken scissors--nearby. The aliens will find the contents of the packages are still &qu...

Coyne

Mr Duterte describes it as a pandemic, afflicting millions of his fellow citizens. It is also very profitable. He has listed 150 senior officials, officers and judges linked to the trade. Five police generals, he says, are kingpins of the business. But it is those at the lowest levels of the trade ...

Coyne

This is roughly akin to saying "it's not sketchy for me to demand money" and "it's not sketchy for me to enter a bank" and "it's not sketchy for me to hand someone a note" and "it's not sketchy to rapidly run to my car" to support bank robbery. Uh, no, it's i...

Coyne

chridd wrote:It's Superzoom!

I loved the software enhancement one. No doubt it can take the pale blue dot and enhance it to where we can see where all the banded falcons were then, right?.

Coyne

I was an international jewel thief. A partner (female) and I stole a packet of gems, then we stole a train to get away. That was fine until we came to the place where the track abruptly jagged left into a U shape, swinging out and back and returning to the straight track ahead. The sheriff was comin...

Coyne

Unless I'm misreading you're saying that because the shot against a non-moving target in this circumstance should be something a trained officer should be able to do with a rifle, no problem, then the fact he hit Kinsey implies he did it on purpose. I could buy that logic, if 2 of his 3 shots didn'...

Coyne

What happened was that "non-bigots" got complacent. The bigotry never really went away, it was just driven into the dark corners; like roaches, looking for better conditions to return. Oh, that's all true, but hidden bigotry is still a much better state of affairs. You can't ever cure a b...

Coyne

I wouldn't say bigots have been vanquished. Not when anyone who's not white is in risk of getting killed simply for being seen by the police, women's rights and control over their bodies are constantly under attack, transgender people are just as much, and it's acceptable for some kids to get taugh...

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