41

Science & Alternative Science / Fasting intervals are good for you

« on: January 17, 2016, 02:47:16 AM »

This is some very interesting research into the effects of fasting on the body. Apparently fasting causes your white blood cell count to drop and triggers the immune system to begin regenerating them.

“And the good news is that the body got rid of the parts of the system that might be damaged or old, the inefficient parts, during the fasting. Now, if you start with a system heavily damaged by chemotherapy or aging, fasting cycles can generate, literally, a new immune system.”

https://news.usc.edu/63669/fasting-triggers-stem-cell-regeneration-of-damaged-old-immune-system/

42

Arts & Entertainment / Virtual Reality Headsets

« on: December 02, 2015, 12:25:47 AM »

I thought I'd make a thread dedicated to the new gadgets coming in a few weeks. The HTC Vive is supposed to release here in about two weeks, with Facebook's Oculus Rift being released Q1 2016. I'm going to be preordering a Vive, assuming I'm able to before stock runs out.

For anyone that doesn't know, the new virtual reality headsets are meant to not be entirely immersive, but offer a new kind of gaming experience for the wearer. The Oculus Rift, based on statements by the developers, will be centered on a "seated experience" with accurate head tracking similar to TrackIR. I'm not going to buy the Oculus because Facebook is just a social platform, not a gaming or consumer company. Whatever they have planned for the device, I don't want any part of it.

The HTC Vive is a headset made in partnership with Valve. HTC is a fairly popular mobile device company, while Valve is a top (if not the top) PC gaming and social platform company. Valve is the company that originally helped created the Oculus Rift, but stopped doing so when Facebook acquired Oculus. The Vive is supposed to be a standing/room experience. It will come with motion controllers and a base station that detects the position of the headset, apparently very accurately.

It's impossible to actually show a video of what virtual reality is without someone experiencing it. I haven't tried any of the headsets, so I can't say exactly how good they are, but I hear a lot of good things.


Here's a quick video of the Vive's controller seen inside the game world. It gives you an answer to "why would I even want this?"


 

43

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Flamethrowers don't count as firearms

« on: August 03, 2015, 08:02:19 PM »

I found the most fascinating thing on Reddit today:

http://throwflame.com/products/

I can buy a flamethrower for $1600, no licensing required. Apparently flamethrowers are not regulated at all in the vast majority of the US and don't count as firearms, despite the fact that they shoot fire.

44

Philosophy, Religion & Society / 2016 US Presidential Race

« on: July 22, 2015, 03:50:26 PM »

As of right now Donald Trump is leading the Republican nominee polls by a lot, currently at 24 over Walker's 13 and Bush's 12.

Hillary Clinton is winning the presidential poll and nominee poll by a landslide.

A vote for Trump is a vote for freedom, democracy, and trophy wives. Don't let me down, FES. Topple the Clinton dynasty.

45

Suggestions & Concerns / Terrible Wiki Writing

« on: July 18, 2015, 10:39:32 PM »

https://www.reddit.com/r/flatearthsociety/comments/3dorwf/seeming_contradiction_in_the_description_of_the/

As a connoisseur of strange ideas I have naturally found myself here. I was looking at the flat earth wiki and can't help but want to have this explained to me.

On the page for the Bedford Level Experiment (http://wiki.tfes.org/Bedford_Level_Experiment[1] ) , it says:

"The Bedford Level Experiment remains one of the most widely-accepted examples of Flat Earth proof."

Then says "...a set of three poles fixed at equal height above water level along this length. As the surface of the water was assumed to be level, the discovery that the middle pole, when viewed carefully through a theodolite, was almost three feet higher than the poles at each end was finally accepted as a new proof that the surface of the earth was indeed curved."

So the experiment showed that the Earth is actually curved? Am I missing something here?

Some fellow on Reddit actually read the Wiki, and to no surprise, the damn thing contradicts itself because some dolt copy and pasted passages straight from Wikipedia. Is the Wiki account separate from the TFES account? I can't seem to logon as it recognizes none of my usual userids.

46

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Invest in the Military

« on: July 11, 2015, 01:16:39 AM »

For a few years now President Obama, as his campaign promised repeatedly, has downsized the military. Now, I can't be mad about this because he said he was going to do this and then did it. That's not a terribly big surprise. However, you get to wondering where those jobs go, and for me it was pretty obvious, I saw a lot of the jobs replaced by contractors.

In the government world there are two types of civilian employees. The GS series employees are considered federal employees. They work for the government. In addition to this you have contractors, who are employed at your job location but do not work for the government, but instead work for a defense company. These defense companies have been sucking up all the jobs that the military once held and taking more money to do it. Companies such as General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, DynCorp, and Raytheon have all nearly quadrupled in size and value. Their stock prices are through the roof as all that once federal military money is now theirs.

Contractors now make up the majority of more than a few military installations. Essentially meaning, these facilities are now being maintained by people who aren't federal employees, but rather employees of private firms. Private firms which are under considerable pressure to make as much money as humanly possible. This also, leads into the title point. That you can now, essentially, invest directly into the military. For example the F35 isn't flown by contractors, but it is built and maintained by them... and still owned by Lockheed Martin. Lockheed Martin doesn't sell them directly to the government, the government pays for the right to use it (as do all other foreign nations who pay for it). That means if you want to invest in the F35, go ahead and invest in Lockheed Martin. Its the same thing.

tl;dr President Obama is a master troll.

47

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Police Body Cameras

« on: April 29, 2015, 08:02:12 PM »

For the past few months the notion of body cameras on all law enforcement officers (LEOs) has come up repeatedly on various sites. This is odd, considering not but a year or so ago, the entire country was up in arms about mass surveillance of everyone via the NSA, Facebook, and other organizations. Now we not only have the idea of creating a perpetual state of cameras watching from CCTV on the corner to cameras on LEOs, but many people are begging for more of it. Am I in the twilight zone? I'm guessing it is safe to assume that the people against mass surveillance aren't the same people wanting these cameras everywhere.

In addition, how would you trust the authority (that you already don't trust) to handle the cameras and subsequently huge amounts of data storage it would require? Even worse, who is paying for all of this new equipment? None of this really adds up to me.

48

Suggestions & Concerns / Regarding Reddit

« on: April 15, 2015, 07:57:46 PM »

     If you didn't already know, we have a subreddit (www.reddit.com/r/flatearthsociety). Parsifal recently mentioned it in another thread and I have admittedly not been very good about informing people about it.

     Reddit is a forum that has visibility based on votes rather than time posted. While this doesn't matter much for small subreddits, this can be demotivating to post there because often the RE'ers that arrive to the subreddit will begin blanket downvoting all FE'er responses. Reddit upvotes/downvotes are not intended to be agree/disagree buttons and I would urge our members not to treat them as such.

     Please post your username here or PM me if you are a Reddit regular or have experience coding Reddit sites so that I can give you moderator status. I am the only moderator there and could use extra eyes on the subreddit. This offer is open to all old site regulars, regardless of FE or RE standing.

     In addition to all of this, I would like to note that Reddit advertising is an option available to us. I can even target specific subreddits or interest groups. I could, for example, target the conspiracy subreddits or the geology subreddits. This could potentially drive enormous amounts of people to the subreddit and this site. Comments on whether this would be a good idea or not would be appreciated.

49

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Nuclear Non-Proliferation and its actual impact

« on: April 05, 2015, 04:14:47 PM »

I want Iran to have nukes. Historically, a country that acquired nukes always became more stable and the region became more peaceful. Very recent examples include Israel, which threatened to nuke the entire region and subsequently survived an Egyptian beat-down, and then we have Ukraine, who gave up their nukes only to be invaded by Russia.

Nuclear weapons have only stopped wars, they have never started them.

Since this was obviously off-topic inside Yaakov's "Ask A Jew Anything he happens to want to answer at the time" thread, I thought I'd make a new thread, since Tausami had some very interesting thoughts about foreign relations. Let's pick up where we left off:

Are you saying that North Korea has become more stable since it developed nuclear technology? I thought we were just ignoring them as the outlier in the situation. Anyway, they haven't developed the missile technology to use them yet so they don't really count at all.

I'm not saying it is more stable, but it hasn't really degraded much. (not that I imagine it could)

I'm not sure how not-stupid [Iran is]. They knowingly stepped into a situation where the UN would impose extremely harsh restrictions on them. That doesn't sound like something an intelligent, self-aware country would do.

Now you're implying that Russia is not an intelligent, self-aware country. I'm really confused about how you imagine foreign countries.

50

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Ellen Pao lost her discrimination case

« on: March 28, 2015, 05:46:54 AM »

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/28/technology/ellen-pao-kleiner-perkins-case-decision.html?_r=1

By all accounts she wasn't good at her job, didn't get along with people, didn't take the good advice she was given. She filed the lawsuit the same month her husband declared bankruptcy, and he's subsequently been accused of fraud.

Also, she is the CEO of Reddit and even made a SJW subreddit default (when it didn't want to be) and used it to spread her bullshit. Obviously didn't help in the end, though.

51

Technology & Information / AMD/Samsung

« on: March 26, 2015, 03:32:12 AM »

As I've been a long time owner of glorious AMD stock (which has done nothing but become worth less and less and given not even a cent in dividends). What I do get, though, is some neato news from time to time about what AMD is doing internally. Other than having a consistent net profit of -$364 million per quarter, there isn't much of note, until today.

Samsung has always been interested in buying out AMD. For the most part the move made little sense and Samsung sort of dabbled in the idea of buying them out repeatedly over the last decade only to fizzle out every time. Now, it is a bit different. With companies like Intel trying to expand into their market, Samsung now seems pretty interested in fighting back and expanding into theirs. So, as of now, Samsung is in talks with AMD over an acquisition once again, and all things considered, it will probably work this time.

Also, I got to vote on new directors for the company. I doubt my vote had any sway, though. I'd have to own millions in stock to have any real impact.

52

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Germany court orders a guy to pay up his bets

« on: March 13, 2015, 09:55:45 PM »

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-31864218

A man in Germany bet 100,000 euros that the Measles virus doesn't exist and was responded to by a German doctor who quoted various medical studies and journals as evidence of the virus' existence. The man refused to pay up and dismissed the evidence, however a German court found the evidence to sufficiently prove the virus' existence. The court then orders the man that he must in fact pay his bet, meaning this doctor just got a easy 100,000 euro bonus.

That's hardcore. I wish this guy had posted his wager on FES first.

53

Technology & Information / VR Headsets

« on: March 03, 2015, 03:25:49 AM »

Virtual Reality is hitting a popularity streak once again, with the most recent burst of news coming out of the Gaming Developer's Conference. As you may or may not know, the leading (and only) contender for VR headsets was Oculus with the Oculus Rift. After some time of gaining popularity Oculus was bought by Facebook. This was seen as a Very Bad Thing by most of the VR community at the time. However, after the acquisition much of the community conceded that since Oculus was the only modern VR company, they would have no choice but to buy the Oculus, Facebook or no.

Then, GDC 2015 comes along, and HTC announces a VR headset in collaboration with Valve. Valve originally worked with Oculus for quite some time and stopped when Oculus was acquired by Facebook. This is probably because Valve and Facebook are both major social platforms which are, at some level, competing with each other. Knowing that Facebook may very well build an ecosystem around the Oculus Rift that locks Valve's Steam gaming platform out of the loop, Valve hooked up with HTC to create their own VR headset.

http://www.theverge.com/2015/3/1/8127445/htc-vive-valve-vr-headset

Clearly, Valve and HTC knew what they were doing. The headset has better tracking, resolution, refresh rate, and many other attributes. All of this combined with HTC's holiday 2015 release schedule was a devastating announcement to Oculus. Rumors abound as to whether Valve will announce Half-Life 3 at their GDC presentation tomorrow, which is scheduled at 3:00 P.M. local time on March 3. 3/3 at 3. Sort of assholes for doing that. Probably think it's funny.

54

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Keurig's Coffee DRM is Unpopular

« on: February 06, 2015, 01:32:24 AM »

http://www.theverge.com/2015/2/5/7986327/keurigs-attempt-to-drm-its-coffee-cups-totally-backfired

Keurig is shocked.

55

Arts & Entertainment / Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor

« on: January 02, 2015, 10:51:53 PM »

Right, so earlier in IRC I was telling Blanko how games these days are trashy and too easy. I recently bought Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor during the Steam Winter sale. I downloaded the 43 jiggawatts and began playing the game vigorously.

It starts off ridiculously easy, and I mean ridiculously easy. I didn't know where the health bar was, and didn't bother finding out, because I killed at least fifty Orcs and not a single one touched me. The game continued on in this manner for quite some time. Even when I met an Orc Captain, who started on some monologue (mid-battle, by the way) about how he was going to kill me and drink my blood etc. I did tense up a bit, thinking that maybe the game gets hard now. Nope. Killed him in about five seconds and all his buddies ran away. How droll.

As I continue steam rolling the enemy and killing nearly everything on sight, I realize their numbers are increasing, as in now there is maybe twenty total Orcs all fighting me at once. No big deal, I guess. Except now another captain introduces himself, whatever guy, I don't care. So, I start fighting him... and then another captain shows up. And... then another... and another. Well now I'm fighting all these assholes and one has a poison blade and another blocks all your counters and another always counters when you try to dodge etc, well you get the picture. They all proceeded to collectively kick my ass. Bummer.

Oh, but that's not it, no. The game doesn't give you "GAME OVER", "CONTINUE", "RETRY" or any of that nonsense. No, they built dying into the lore, so that your character cheats death every time. Except now all the guys that killed you REMEMBER THAT THEY KILLED YOU. Every time they kill you, the game punishes you by making them even stronger than they were before, ensuring that every subsequent attempt to kill them results in your death, in fact, after they learn you come back to life over and over again, they'll start doing shit like hunting you down. Some will even sneak up and ambush you.

tl;dr made fun of game for being too easy, game turns on beast mode and is now hard as fuck.

56

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Is the UK pedo-topia?

« on: December 23, 2014, 06:43:48 PM »

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/paedophile-police-officer-kept-his-job-years-after-being-caught-taking-upskirt-photos-of-children-9941899.html

The article title is misleading:

Nick Lidstone, 54, was sentenced to 14 and a half years in prison by Judge Anthony Bate at Norwich Crown Court after pleading guilty to 13 offences that included three counts of rape, three of indecency with a child, various sexual assualts and taking an indecent photograph of a child.

Anyway, why is this happening? Are there not enough women on the island? Maybe there is prolific repression? Why is the UK a place of constant homo and pedo tension?

57

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Cheap Oil is Killing Russia

« on: December 17, 2014, 04:33:33 PM »

http://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from=RUB&to=USD&view=1Y

As oil represents a whopping 50% of the Russian economy, the cheap oil coming from ISIS and Saudi Arabia is murdering their economy. This is going hand in hand with the fallout from sanctions over the whole Crimea incident.

http://yle.fi/uutiset/rouble_collapse_hits_finland_forex_stops_buying_russian_currency/7694302

The Finland FOREX no longer accepts Rubles, no doubt others may follow.

58

Philosophy, Religion & Society / The UK is a silly place.

« on: December 02, 2014, 04:34:23 PM »

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/a-long-list-of-sex-acts-just-got-banned-in-uk-porn-9897174.html


I really have to wonder what your politicians are sitting around doing if they drummed up the time to write this stuff into law.

59

Philosophy, Religion & Society / 1 World Trade Center Now Open

« on: November 03, 2014, 04:48:26 PM »

http://nypost.com/2014/11/03/1-world-trade-center-is-open-for-business/

I didn't know it was almost complete. Hell, I stared at the picture for a long time trying to eyeball if it was concept art or not. I'm also surprised it doesn't have flak guns mounted on top.

So, will the Jews try to blow up this tower too? Only time will tell.

60

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Time does not exist.

« on: October 11, 2014, 07:54:13 PM »

Time is entirely a human construct and does not exist outside of the mind. Prove me wrong.