michael_h

Anybody know of a mirror? Facebook won't let me through :(

Edit:: found https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QvW61K2s0tA

Bafflingly, a search on YouTube for 'OK go the one moment' didn't turn this up for me. Bunch of ripped songs came up though.

Edit 2: Ah, it's 'unlisted'. Also, I've read a few of the comments on the youtube video, so you don't have to. It's still the worst bit of the internet.

I have location history disabled. Over the weekend I was prompted to give them more information about a restaurant I had visited.

Right up to the creepy line, then a giant leap over it.

Usually, you have to wire the fees in advance of the 'payout'. Spend a couple thousand to receive your millions.

Use the excite bike 'overheat' sound and use it sparingly.

It's enjoyable to work on them, but...there's a limit.

A bed for fifty falling-down drunk people? If you are not asphyxiated by the morning (crushed by your neighbor or in the normal way), you can make a game of trying to identify the different varieties of puke that coat you like a varnish.

Google Translate is arguably improving substantially with this update. The state of machine translation in general has already been better than Google Translate. The problem with the bleeding-edge systems is that they are not well distributed, no thought has been given to UX/UI, and the people who created them just want to finish their thesis and get out. Also, speed - the systems that eke out another few extra percentage points on accuracy tend to hoover up the CPU cycles, crushing their business case.

Spotify's model is slightly different - for premium subscriptions, they pool the total subscription revenue, take their cut, and then pay out to the artists, based on their total share of listens. Not awful, not ideal.

Concerning #1: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/30/business/gmo-promise-falls...

TLDR: "genetic modification in the United States and Canada has not accelerated increases in crop yields or led to an overall reduction in the use of chemical pesticides"

That's correct. You set up the shape of the neural net and you decide what aggregation function the neurons will use, but the process is largely opaque.

What? You don't like columns?! Columns everywhere! What enormous weight are they lending their support to keep aloft? Why, it's THE EAVES! Those immeasurably heavy goliaths of the architectural world.

Here come the roof ridges!!

Gah! You are correct. Posting comments in a post-lunch stupor leads to grave mistakes.

High IBU IPA's are in fashion. For a few years, it was dark beers - the Darker the Better™. Stouts were king[0]. Then the american pale ale, then the IPA, then double IPA, now triple/quadruple IPAs and bourbon barrel aged everything. Fatigue is setting in - I'm predicting that sours will enjoy a short stint (there's only so far you can push a sour), and then porters will be the next big thing, followed by pilseners and then the cycle starts anew.

[0] For the record, Rogue's (not Stone's) Shakespeare Stout is still the kinglord of all beers.

> China [...] less likely to be a major hamper of innovation

Another way to look at it: western foreigner looks to beta test a product with the lives of Chinese citizens. I'm not sure how well that's going to go over.

That's 'high IQ'->'higher income'. You are implying 'higher income'->'high IQ', of which there are multitudes of counterexamples.

I was thinking less about the 'intelligence is partly heritable' part, and more about 'affluent people are smart and conscientious' part.

> Affluent parents pass high IQ and conscientiousness

I'll have to go with 'citation needed'.

Absolutely. I've heard the phrase "If I quit now, I'll have nothing" about fifty times this week.

This line of reasoning is repeated in every single thread about the romance scams, and it's enraging.

You have no idea what the situation is. This isn't some old lady we stuffed in an apartment and ignored on the other side of the city. My wife talks to her every day and we see her in person 4-5 times a week. She comes over for dinner every single weekend. She was treated seriously, right up until the point that she lost her life savings and started laundering money.

Done, done, and done. That was the first thing we did. Facebook was only the initial mode of communication - now they communicate by text, which I can't control.

Lot of questions.

Not sure where he is located. She says that she met him for dinner twice in one week. At that point, I think she had given him $90k, so even if he was not local, the incentive to fly out for a week would be pretty high. As for plans, they are characteristically nebulous and not well thought-out.

I don't think 'thinking realistically' is going to help. When his VoIP number gets shut down, he messages her and says he got a new number "because his old phone got smashed". When I point out that you don't get a new number when your phone breaks, she shrugs. I showed her an outline of the scam and it matched her situation exactly. I showed her news articles (like this one), I pointed out obvious lies. I wish I could reason my way out of this, but I don't think that's the case.

EDIT: as for laws that help people out -> Not that I know of. You can consolidate accrued debt, but that's it.

No, she met someone in person, which made the whole thing a little more scary. They went out to dinner, twice in a single week.

From what I can gather, she met someone, but I doubt it was the same guy she's talking to over txt.

Probably not senile, but certainly a mental breakdown. Which makes 'seeing a doctor' easier said than done. She's not a gentle lady being tricked out of her cash, she's tenaciously ejecting her money to a dude she thinks she's going to marry, while everyone around her is making her miserable.

The whole situation is beyond surreal.

I don't think you can inherit cash loan debt. You can inherit property that is still under mortgage (no problem there), but then it's a choice: keep the house and pay the mortgage debt or sell the house/give it to the bank.

The first day he messaged her, we told her it was a scam to take window's money. Four months later, when we discovered she had been talking to him in the intervening months, we showed her a few websites that detail exactly how the romance scam works (matching her situation exactly). Last weekend, when we found out all of her money was gone, we had the police and adult protective services come out and tell her point blank that she was being scammed.

She listens, agrees, and then sends him more money.

No, they won't.

We can take over her finances if she is declared mentally incompetent. She's not mentally incompetent - she understands everything, but she just disagrees with the crucial bit: that the dude doesn't love her and is scamming her. As the judge told us yesterday: we are walking a fine line, taking over another person's autonomy, but it's not illegal to fall in love and do colossally stupid things.

My mother in law is currently $150,000+ deep on a Facebook romance scam. I believe she's about to send him another $200k or so when her house is sold. Instead of living out her retirement in relative comfort, she will be scraping by on social security. Adult services can't help, because moonshot-level stupidity is not a mental disorder. She can't live with us, as she can no longer be trusted. She can't live on her own, as she obviously doesn't understand how fixed income works. It's a very strange situation to be in, having a parent desperately trying to abandon you as an adult, basically dying without being dead.

I don't know how these people justify it to themselves. They have taken 100% of her money, plus a unknown amount of debt (I've found $100k in loans so far). My mother-in-law is not 'going to be okay'. To be honest, once she figures out that there isn't $3.5MM in the Bank of Israel, she's probably going to look for the quick exit.

At the moment, I'm afraid I'm unable to muster the empathy necessary to understand how you could even begin to help the scammer.

This is a strange way to look at the world.

From dmv.org:

If you are under eighteen, states requiring driver's education from a professional driving school (with behind-the-wheel instruction): CA, DL, HI, ID, IA, KS, LA, MD, MA, MI, MN, MS, MT, NH, NJ, NM (waiver available), NY, NC, OH, PA, SC, TX, UT, VT, WA, WI,

Require the course, but not professional, behind-the-wheel instruction: CT, GA, FL, IL, KY, ME, MO, ND, RI, VA,

Professional instruction not required: AL, AK, AR, CO, IN, NE, NV, OK, OR, SD, TN, WV, WY, DC

So, about half of the country is required to have professional, in-car instruction. Quite common.

It is not mandatory in every state, I believe. However, even when not required, it is very common to use professional driving instructors with modified cars.