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Related: http://www.ted.com/talks/amanda_palmer_the_art_of_asking

The people's responses to the comment are telling. The Kickstarter said he'd make a potato salad. He probably has. He asked, and people gave, why do people rage about this? It just so happened that lots of people thought it was funny / wanted to give money / whatever. Who cares? The proverbial you could have thought of it too.

I don't understand the stink people have over this :/


> The proverbial you could have thought of it too. It's here (imho) that the problem lies. People get jealous around money, especially when (from their perspective) it's unearned, and this often leads to irrational anger, which is the bread and butter of internet comments.


By what measure is it unearned? The guy said he would make potato salad, the market decided that was worth $70k. Assuming he follows through and makes the salad, he's earned his money.


You nailed it with "The proverbial you could have thought of it too", people are just envious.


Similar to that line about contemporary art being a combination of "I could've done that" and "Yeah, but you didn't".


Contemporary art has nowhere close to any objective criteria, by any lax use of the word. Which means it's a popularity contest. Network, a nice name, a pretty face and last but not least a good personal story will make you go far. I'm talking about art-exhibition contemporary art and not the stuff people hang on their walls.

Reference: http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21586580-fakes-say-som...


managing one's speed so as not to get pulled over for speeding?


That ... doesn't seem that expensive to me, coming from someone that lives in Seattle. Then again, I tend to get the day rates, or the late-night rates, which, if memory serves me, are like $15 for the night, while only staying an hour or two for dinner.


"MonkeyParking and any motorists using the app face fines of $300 per violation of the city’s law prohibiting selling or contracting for parts of a public street, according to the city attorney."

I was going to ask what the actual law was, but it seems I've found some version of the gist of it here. Where I live (not San Fransisco) we have privatized parking in plots of land that aren't on the public street. Would using this app on places like that in SF be legal?


Maybe. If I understand you correctly, you're talking about selling the information that you're ready to leave a 100% privately owned/operated off-street parking space to someone else who is looking for such a space and is willing to pay the parking fees to the owner/operator, as well as paying you for the tip about the vacant space.

Basically it would depend on whether the parking space vendor's contract with motorists sought to prohibit such arrangements as a condition of use. Of course that's a rather heavy-handed unilateral tactic, but you're not legally required to enter into a parking arrangement with them so if you don't like their terms and conditions, you don't park there in the first place. The mere inconvenience to you of having to seek other parking or transit options doesn't constitute a property interest, so you have no particular claim on the fairness of the T&C. Same logic that allows parking lot operators to disclaim liability for theft/damage to your vehicle.


I can park nearly all day at moscone center with little time investment for $20-$30, why the hell would I use this then?


You wouldn't :) but, it can be hard to find a parking spot in, for example, Seattle on a Friday night.


Why does the airforce hate the A-10? That thing is terrifying.


Just a guess: the A-10 is designed as a support aircraft for ground troops, which means that if it does its job perfectly, the Army gets to claim a decisive victory. The F-15 is an air-superiority fighter, which means that if it does its job perfectly, the Air Force claims a decisive victory. Inter-service rivalry is a Thing...from the POV of an ordinary citizen, it doesn't matter as long as we whup the bad guys, but from the POV of a career military bureaucrat it matters a lot whether the victory is credited to his branch of the service.


Yep exactly. The A-10 isn't glamorous. The air force hates interdiction missions even though they're among the most useful. The A-10 is also relatively cheap and can loiter over the battlefield for a long time


Wait, I thought they liked interdiction missions (e.g. keeping the enemy from resupplying the front), and that's congruent with their service goals.

Close air support is another matter altogether. Ugly, dirty, and a high potential for friendly fire causalities, which makes them look very bad in today's unrealistic no errors allowed environment. E.g. nowadays in our too common non-existential wars if an officer flying a plane hits friendlies, I'd suspect his career will be over.

Of course, the A-10 can do both, but the greater ability to do close air support, unlike say the F-111 back when we were flying it, means it will be called up to do so.

Another issue is that things like GPS guidance means close air support can be done without getting as up close and personal, and if the guys on the ground supply their own coordinates instead of the target's, as I seem to recall having happened at least once, it's on them.


Could you post a link to that YouTube video? sounds awesome.


I remembered wrong. It was over Bagdhad:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2uh4yMAx2UA


Wow.

And in reference to your previous comment, if a drone pilot makes a mistake, we lose money, not lives. Another advantage of the drones.


614 revolutions per minute on the tire, assuming a 17" wheel, is still pretty impressive.


While I understand the intent here, do taxi drivers get checked against the potential for a stroke? That could happen to either side.


Then tax Uber in a special way?


Doesn't need to be a special way.

1 medallion per car per shift [iirc] + the per-trip tax.

It is just they need to pass the laws to do that and haven't yet. Of course, I think Uber is lobbying against being taxed given that they've tried to evade paying taxi-like taxes so far.


There's a lot of really cool information here, especially for animal lovers. From the technical side of things, though, one part stood out: the dogs are more effective at finding mines? That's not something I exactly expected; though I suppose it makes sense. Dogs and their nose, like humans and their eyes are great pattern matchers. Humans are great at seeing and recognizing faces, and specific faces to a degree, better than humans, at least historically (we have put a lot of research into face recognition). I suppose the reason that dogs are so good at this is a similar reason.


Yes, dogs are very effective at detecting mines.

I used to work at a company that had a large mine detection section (clients includes most militaries and mine clearance organisations).

Mine detectors work similarly to metal detectors, but are tuned differently. However, because of the conditions they are used under they aren't generally as effective as civilian metal detectors because they need to work in all conditions and be used by people with only basic training.

For example, a top-of-the-line metal detector will detect very small amounts of gold well over a metre underground, while ignoring aluminium-trash in heavily mineralised soil. But that requires the operator to carefully tune the detector to the soil.

A mine detector rarely needs to detect things so far down. But OTOH it isn't possible to ignore trash, as mines (and especially improvised explosive devices) are often disguised to seem like trash. It also needs to work reliably in all soil types with little tuning.

That all means that mine detectors tend to suffer from false positives (last thing you want is for a mine detector to be overly aggressive in throwing away signals)

A dog, OTOH is much better at distinguishing trash and mines and they can be trained fairly easily.

In practice both are often used together.

There are other technologies (Machine olfaction and ground penetrating radar). These work well in labs but haven't been very successful in the field.

(Also, trained rats haven't been very successful in the field: turns out they don't really domesticate that well)


There a smell from the explosives - it's quicker to cover an area for the smell-ee than with a metal detector. ------ "After a few months underground, almost all landmines leak vapours that betray the presence of explosives."

http://www.economist.com/news/technology-quarterly/21603239-...


Indeed, and it's awesome. It's just impressive that we can detect that odor better with dogs than with some sort of engineered odor detector


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