Non-IT News Thread
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Microsoft takes a big step towards putting Xbox games on Windows
New Windows 10 builds are using Xbox's infrastructure for Windows games.
The last few Windows 10 preview builds have included some vague instructions from Microsoft to install a special edition of a game, State of Decay, and report any problems with the process. There are no problems with playing the game but, rather, problems with installing and launching it. The instructions didn't give any indication as to why or what to look for.
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@mlnews said in Non-IT News Thread:
Suicide instructions spliced into kids’ cartoons on YouTube and YouTube Kids
“Sideways for attention. Longways for results,” a man says in the middle of a cartoon.
The sinister content was first flagged by doctors on the pediatrician-run parenting blog pedimom.com and later reported by the Washington Post. An anonymous “physician mother” initially spotted the content while watching cartoons with her son on YouTube Kids as a distraction while he had a nosebleed. Four minutes and forty-five seconds into a video, the cartoon cut away to a clip of a man walking onto the screen and simulating cutting his wrist. “Remember, kids, sideways for attention, longways for results,” he says and then walks off screen. The video then quickly flips back to the cartoon.
Wow, that is absolutely disgusting. What a degenerate.
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Amtrak train stuck in Oregon since Sunday after hitting tree
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-47375076 -
@scottalanmiller said in Non-IT News Thread:
Amtrak train stuck in Oregon since Sunday after hitting tree
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-47375076They kept them on the train because the town they were close to has no power either.
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Utility to pay $119.5 million settlement after massive 2015 natural gas leak
Aliso Canyon leak was the worst gas leak in the US from a climate perspective.
On Monday, a Los Angeles Superior Court Judge approved a $119.5 million settlement between Southern California Gas (SoCalGas) and the California Air Resources Board (CARB). SoCalGas was responsible for the Aliso Canyon Natural Gas Storage Facility when one of the 115 storage wells at the site started leaking methane dramatically.
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Pakistan-India: Pakistan 'shoots down two Indian jets' over Kashmir
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-47383634 -
Physicists set world record in tabletop plasma acceleration with laser drill
Laser pulses make like a speedboat, churning up wakes that electrons can "surf."
Particle accelerators can speed up subatomic particles almost to the speed of light. The tradeoff is that this requires miles-long tunnels, so such machines are typically enormous and very expensive to build. Physicists are keen to build a viable tabletop version capable of accelerating particles over mere centimeters. Researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have now achieved the highest energy yet recorded using these so-called "plasma wakefield accelerators," and they describe their work in a new paper in Physical Review Letters.
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IT snafu leads to IBM asking applicants if they are “yellow” or “coloured”
IBM included Brazilian and South African racial terms in a US intern application.
IBM was forced to apologize after drop-down menus on an American recruiting site asked applicants to identify themselves with several racially insensitive terms: "yellow," "mulatto," and "coloured." Unsurprisingly, this sparked outrage on Twitter.
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@scottalanmiller said in Non-IT News Thread:
IT snafu leads to IBM asking applicants if they are “yellow” or “coloured”
IBM included Brazilian and South African racial terms in a US intern application.
IBM was forced to apologize after drop-down menus on an American recruiting site asked applicants to identify themselves with several racially insensitive terms: "yellow," "mulatto," and "coloured." Unsurprisingly, this sparked outrage on Twitter.
Needing to know about race or color really gets on my nerves.
And then certain applications will give you an option like other or whether not to say. Minds well not ask in the first place.
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@black3dynamite said in Non-IT News Thread:
@scottalanmiller said in Non-IT News Thread:
IT snafu leads to IBM asking applicants if they are “yellow” or “coloured”
IBM included Brazilian and South African racial terms in a US intern application.
IBM was forced to apologize after drop-down menus on an American recruiting site asked applicants to identify themselves with several racially insensitive terms: "yellow," "mulatto," and "coloured." Unsurprisingly, this sparked outrage on Twitter.
Needing to know about race or color really gets on my nerves.
It is weird hiring outside of the US, because so many places allow or encourage or assume that age, race, gender are all factors in hiring.
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@black3dynamite said in Non-IT News Thread:
And then certain applications will give you an option like other or whether not to say. Minds well not ask in the first place.
Some people want to report. However that really makes it worse, not better.
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Texas lawmakers have tried to end daylight saving time for years. Can they do it this session?
State lawmakers are again trying to abolish daylight saving time in Texas, arguing it's antiquated. But supporters of the practice argue it gives Texans a crucial extra hour of light in the evenings during the summer months.
“That messes up my whole Sunday,” he told the Morning News leading up to the House vote. “I don’t want to miss church, and I don’t want to miss the Cowboys. So what am I supposed to do?”
GET A FREAKIN DVR AND RECORD THE GAME LIKE EVERYBODY ELSE!!
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@NerdyDad said in Non-IT News Thread:
Texas lawmakers have tried to end daylight saving time for years. Can they do it this session?
State lawmakers are again trying to abolish daylight saving time in Texas, arguing it's antiquated. But supporters of the practice argue it gives Texans a crucial extra hour of light in the evenings during the summer months.
“That messes up my whole Sunday,” he told the Morning News leading up to the House vote. “I don’t want to miss church, and I don’t want to miss the Cowboys. So what am I supposed to do?”
GET A FREAKIN DVR AND RECORD THE GAME LIKE EVERYBODY ELSE!!
I would love to get rid of it. We already get longer days in the summer time.
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@NerdyDad said in Non-IT News Thread:
Texas lawmakers have tried to end daylight saving time for years. Can they do it this session?
State lawmakers are again trying to abolish daylight saving time in Texas, arguing it's antiquated. But supporters of the practice argue it gives Texans a crucial extra hour of light in the evenings during the summer months.
“That messes up my whole Sunday,” he told the Morning News leading up to the House vote. “I don’t want to miss church, and I don’t want to miss the Cowboys. So what am I supposed to do?”
GET A FREAKIN DVR AND RECORD THE GAME LIKE EVERYBODY ELSE!!
WTF - no he doesn't need a DVR - NOTHING WILL CHANGE. Really, nothing changes.
Personally I want them to adapt the daylight savings as the permanent single time - I like having that tiny touch of sunlight we'd have in the winter at the end of the day (5 PM) if we leave it there.
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Pick the best time on the worst day and leave it there, imho.
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FTC’s first case over fake paid Amazon reviews targets dodgy diet pills
Company paid $1,000 for fake reviews, admits there's no evidence for diet claims.
The maker of a supposed fat-blocking weight-loss pill that didn't help much with weight loss paid for fake Amazon reviews to push its false and misleading claims, the Federal Trade Commission said in a lawsuit announced yesterday.
It's the first time the FTC has filed a lawsuit "challenging a marketer's use of fake paid reviews on an independent retail website," the agency said. The FTC complaint was filed against Cure Encapsulations, Inc. and its owner, Naftula Jacobowitz, in US District Court for the Eastern District of New York. The defendants have agreed to settle the case, pay a $50,000 fine, and notify past customers that there's no scientific evidence backing up the weight-loss claims. Customers may get refunds, but it's not definite.
The FTC said its complaint "alleges that the defendants made false and unsubstantiated claims on their Amazon product page, including through the purchased reviews, that their garcinia cambogia product is a 'powerful appetite suppressant,' 'Literally BLOCKS FAT From Forming,' causes significant weight loss, including as much as twenty pounds, and causes rapid and substantial weight loss, including as much as two or more pounds per week.
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The advent of cheap, renewable hydrogen is nigh
As the price of wind turbines tumbles, the hydrogen fuel cell revolution is nigh.
Hydrogen gas has been the pipe dream fuel of clean-energy advocates for decades. Splitting electrons from H2 molecules creates electricity and a waste product: pure H2O. It has the added benefit of being storable (albeit at high pressures or low temperatures), and it can refuel a car or a generator in minutes, as opposed to batteries, which can take hours to recharge.
Unfortunately, most of the hydrogen that is mass-produced today is made by synthesizing it from natural gas (more specifically, methane, or CH4). But it's also possible to make hydrogen using electricity and water, using an electrolyzer. If that electricity is renewable electricity, hydrogen can be nearly carbon neutral in its lifecycle.
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@scottalanmiller renewable hydrogen because of wind? Maybe.
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Alphabet subsidiary trained AI to predict wind output 36 hours in advance
Intermittent power supply is a problem for the grid, and predicting it has value.
