Why commuting by motorcycle (and lane splitting) is good for everyone

GoodbyeBlueMonday · 4 days

Whenever I am sitting in traffic and a motorcycle passes me. I think "Thanks! That's one less car in my way!" If I see him in time, I slowly scoot over to give him a bit more room.

tiwalas · 6 days

After hitting 100,000 Karma points, it all got boring and repetitive. So I unsubscribed to everything excerpt /r/TrueReddit and /r/foodforthought. Much better.

undercurrents · 6 days

In the real world, I haven't exactly seen a massive Australian Army start rampaging through Asia... (smile)

undercurrents · 7 days

Jared is a bit late. This question was definitively answered in 1999 in Eat the Rich: A Treatise on Economics by P. J. O'Rourke.

http://www.amazon.com/Eat-Rich-Treatise-Economics-ORourke/dp/0871137607

undercurrents · 7 days

In my research (which consists solely of playing the RISK board game), conquering North America gives one a very large advantage...

W_Edwards_Deming · 7 days

Hmmm. An Army of Killer Robots... Can you think of anything -- anything at all -- that could possibly go wrong?

EquanimousMind · 8 days

At least with Mac you will be free to complain about the no-confederate bullshit (or commie pinko cowcrap, or eco-terrorist squidpoop, or laissez-faire koalapellets -- whatever group you want to flame) on the Internet without being censored...

JeromeTomorrow · 9 days

Rather than asserting "We all know what 'climate change denier' is" why not start with the actual, documented positions of [insert your favorite label here]s?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_scientists_opposing_the_mainstream_scientific_assessment_of_global_warming

You don't do anyone any favors by arguing against a straw man.

OMouse · 1 month

Response from Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28technical%29#Wikipedia_and_Smart_Phone_Power_Usage

AngelaMotorman · 1 month

One big problem is that brainstorming is often used when creativity is the last thing you need. It is a very small subset of problems that are lacking creative solutions. Most problems need experts in solving similar problems collaborating on how to address this new, slightly different problem.

rawbamatic · 1 month

Wow. Telling lies about Carl Sagan. That's a new low.

Quote by Carl Sagan:

"Both I and Penny were majorly vexed (a good thing, according to Dr. G) last week when we were part of a debate between free-willers (as opposed to Free Willy-ers) and predeterminationists -- do humans have free will to make choices, or is the future predetermined and free will and freedom of choice is nothing more than an illusion. Both I and Penny were on the side of the free-willers, and we lost the debate with the predeterminationists for the latter fell back on the argument ad nauseum that everything was predetermined -- no proof or logic needed."

rawbamatic · 1 month

Nope.

Quantum indeterminacy states otherwise

See:

http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/25041/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Determinism#Quantum_mechanics_and_classical_physics

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deterministic_system_%28philosophy%29#Non-deterministic_systems

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counterfactual_definiteness

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell%27s_Theorem

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superdeterminism

BTW, there are aspects of electronics that cannot be explained by determinism. Shot noise, tunnel diodes and metastability, to take three examples, all require an understanding of quantum mechanics in order to understand observations of how the systems work.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shot_noise#Electronic_devices

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunnel_diode

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metastability_in_electronics

aws5000 · 1 month

From: The law offices of X (letterhead)

To: X

It has come to my attention that at 12:34 AM on April 1st 2012, an employee of your firm identifying himself as Sauron, Dark Lord Of Mordor, may have disparaged my client, Saruman the White, in a telephone conversation with a potential employer who was checking his references....

And so on. The key here is that you have a lawyer send a polite letter requesting that they not disparage you or otherwise attempt to hinder your ability to obtain employment. You have no intention of doing anything further, but they don't know that. The usual result is that whoever badmouthed you get yelled at and everyone is told to not give out any information other than confirming the dates you worked there.

http://www.sendalawyerletter.com/ will send one for a flat $99 fee.

aws5000 · 1 month

Remember, we are talking about companies that think so poorly of their employees that they don't give the standard two week pay in lieu of notice. Any company that does that sort of thing is very likely to see any voluntary quit as being "disloyalty" (it is always the ones that are least loyal to the workers who demand absolute loyalty from the workers). IMO, in such a situation an attitude of "Oops! Totally unexpected personal issue, really sorry but I have to leave. It's not you it's me" is ''less'' likely to burn whatever shaky bridges there are.

aws5000 · 1 month

I would suggest:

Thoroughly clean your office, including keyboard and telephone.

Organize your files (physical and computer)

Make a document explaining what projects you were working on, with names they can talk to and files they can look at. Print 5 copies. One goes on your desk, one goes in your bosses' inbox, Two go in two folders in your filing cabinet and one you give to a co-worker. Consider putting your home address and phone number on the document.

Arrange to have IT and security take away your network access, company email, card entry, etc. and to make it so your voicemail doesn't just pile up (delete your voice mailbox or forward it) Test all these things to make sure they no longer work, and keep notes of your tests. I had a former employer ask me about some alleged network break in after I left and it came in handy telling them that I had personally confirmed that I could not access the network.

Walk around and give everyone in the dept. a handshake, and say it was a pleasure to work with them. Especially if it wasn't.

After you are gone:

Never, ever badmouth your former employer to anyone. There is zero upside to doing this.

Have a female call the company posing as a secretary checking references. Ask why you left and whether you are eligible for rehire, salary, name of supervisor, etc. Anything other than "good employee" or "we don't give out that information" means you need to have a lawyer send them a certified letter, and retest several months later.

Scrawly · 1 month

Given the frequency that people who haven't been on Reddit a year complain about something that was posted two years previously in a different subreddit, I don't see any way of making them happy.

aws5000 · 1 month

About that two weeks notice...

If a company gives employees two weeks notice or two weeks pay in lieu of notice, give them two weeks notice when you leave. If they don't, treat them the same way. Don't show up one day, and when the telephone call comes tell them you had to leave suddenly for personal reasons, and ask them when you can pick up your last check. When the company is a jerk, leaving them in the dark this way is actually better than letting them know you are planning on leaving.

injulen · 1 month

My carefully calibrated eye says you were going 22.2 mph and has 2.2 gallons of fuel. :)

Remember, a Subaru requires 250,000 miles before it is properly broken in...

stuartlea · 1 month

You can get a Dell Optiplex GX620 for less than $60 if you shop around and then you can start your own LFS (Linux From Scratch) project on it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_From_Scratch

http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/

http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=lfs

The Dell Optiplex GX620 is the minimum Dell that doesn't have a crippling flaw for modern use. It supports a dual-core 3.2GHz Pentium D, interfaces with Sata drives and USB mice/keyboards and has 4GB of RAM. You really don't want to have to keep IDE drives or PS/2 keyboards just so you can use an older PC.

brainvulture · 1 month

I have never considered Karma to be something desirable in itself. It is useful as a rough guide telling you what people like to read, but you have to divide it by the number of subscribers in a group, and by a guess at nonsubscribers if it hits the front page. To me, 10 upvotes in a 500-subscriber subreddit are better than 100 upvotes in a 50,000-subscriber subreddit.

electronics-engineer · 1 month

From the article:

"Any environmentalist who believes that this [Superfund] set-up is a super idea should pay heed to our experience with legislatively limited liability in another industry where the risks of injury are high: nuclear power. Back in the 1950s, when "the peaceful atom" was but a fervent dream on the part of the Atomic Energy Commission, Congress stepped in as the promulgator of devil-may-care. Faced with a drawing-board industry unable to obtain insurance (for reasons that themselves have much to do with government–see "Who Caused Three Mile Island?" REASON, Aug. 1980), Congress passed the Price-Anderson Indemnity Act in 1957, dictating that, in the event of a major nuclear accident, the first $500 million in claims would be footed by US taxpayers, the next $60 million by the firm (through its insurance), and anything over and above that–practically everything in a serious accident–would simply go uncompensated.

The nuclear-power industry was born as a direct result of this legislation. While it may well have come into existence anyway–eventually, and when reactor designers and so on had satisfied insurers’ safety experts that nuclear-power generation was insurable–the indisputable effect of this legislation has been to reduce the incentives for individual firms or the industry as a whole to make sure that they are employing and coming up with the best, safest procedures possible."

electronics-engineer · 1 month

From the article:

"Any environmentalist who believes that this [Superfund] set-up is a super idea should pay heed to our experience with legislatively limited liability in another industry where the risks of injury are high: nuclear power. Back in the 1950s, when "the peaceful atom" was but a fervent dream on the part of the Atomic Energy Commission, Congress stepped in as the promulgator of devil-may-care. Faced with a drawing-board industry unable to obtain insurance (for reasons that themselves have much to do with government–see "Who Caused Three Mile Island?" REASON, Aug. 1980), Congress passed the Price-Anderson Indemnity Act in 1957, dictating that, in the event of a major nuclear accident, the first $500 million in claims would be footed by US taxpayers, the next $60 million by the firm (through its insurance), and anything over and above that–practically everything in a serious accident–would simply go uncompensated.

The nuclear-power industry was born as a direct result of this legislation. While it may well have come into existence anyway–eventually, and when reactor designers and so on had satisfied insurers’ safety experts that nuclear-power generation was insurable–the indisputable effect of this legislation has been to reduce the incentives for individual firms or the industry as a whole to make sure that they are employing and coming up with the best, safest procedures possible."

electronics-engineer · 1 month

Now that you point that out, I have to agree. Like most people, I started as a teenager in fast food (good old Jack in The Box), and we had low pay and a lot of turnover. A newbie not only was pretty useless, but actually slowed everyone else down. You really do have to count that as a "training cost" no matter what they put on the books.

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