Tech Giants Settle Antitrust Hiring Suit:
On Hacker News, the grumbling about the settlement was immediate. “I honestly do not understand why the plaintiffs would settle this case,†one poster wrote. But some saw another side: “What did the engineers risk with this lawsuit? Nothing. What did the law firm risk? Getting paid peanuts for hundreds of hours they spend on the case if they lose.â€
Meet the Armatix iP1. 22 LR calibre semiautomatic with a 10 round magazine. What’s not to like? How about the the RFID wristwatch that only allows the wearer to fire the gun?
Back in 2002, New Jersey passed a law mandating that all guns sold in the state had to have lockout technology built in, three years after such a gun went on sale somewhere in the United States. The gun has gone on sale &emdash; albeit very briefly &emdash; twice, once in Los Angeles, and then again in Rockville, Maryland (a place that it is strongly advised that one to not return to). Both stores stopped selling the guns after receiving death threats. Not only that, but the Republican Attorney General of New Jersey is refusing the certify that the gun was sold, and active the law.
Instead of “promoting freedom” to own the gun one chooses, the NRA is actively campaigning against the sell of a particular firearm, because the RFID locks would increase manufacturing costs. Why do they care about this? Because the NRA gets significant amounts of funding from gun manufacturers.
Back in 1978, a box of newsreels were found in the Yukon. Only recently though, was a newsreel of the infamous Black Sox 1919 World Series discovered in the collection.
It’s a great find, and as Deadspin points out, it shows the infamous 5 run inning that made it obvious everyone that the White Sox were throwing the game. However that’s not what caught my eye. What I was astonished by was the mechanical scoreboard that allowed people in Cincinnati to watch the game in near-real-time. The board doesn’t just feature moving base runners, but also features a ball that moves around as the play progresses. I had never seen anything like this before. Even the Flash players that MLB.com puts out, don’t feature a moving ball.
Writer, director, ghostbuster Harold Ramis, dead at 69. He’s busting the Holy Ghost now.
In all seriousness. I was bummed when Philip Seymour Hoffman died, because I liked his movies, and now there wouldn’t be anymore. When I heard Harold Ramis was dead, I thought, “Oh good! Perhaps Ghostbusters III won’t get made.”
Police clash with anti-government protesters in Kiev on February 18, 2014 and fired rubber bullets at stone-throwing protesters as they demonstrated close to Ukraine’s parliament in Kiev. Police also responded with smoke bombs after protesters hurled paving stones at them as they sought to get closer to the heavily-fortified parliament building. (Anatolii Boiko/AFP/Getty Images)
The GSA has approved NASA’s deal with Google subsidiary Planetary Ventures LLC, to reskin Hanger One and assume control of air operations at Moffett Field.
I guess this means Larry, Sergei, and Eric get their garage. At least, us plebes still have our landmark to look at.
Over the weekend, thieves apparently not-too-concerned about booking a place in heaven, stole a relic that contained a piece of gauze that was once soaked with the blood of late Pope John Paul II. Church officials at the isolated San Pietro della Ienca church in the Abruzzo region of Italy reported the burglary. The small church housed the relic that is one of only three in the world.
According to the BBC, the relic was not heavily guarded, as the thieves were able to break through the iron bars and a window protecting the display. The burglars also took a crucifix, but left the church’s collection box untouched.
Be on the look out for pope clones, or perhaps Baphomet, or maybe just deranged billionaires with collections of bloody gauze. Who owns Curt Shilling’s bloody sock?
Premier Health Plans, a a health insurance broker, employs a rather elaborate chat bot to collect a customer’s basic information and interests before sending the potential customer to a real person to close the deal. It’s really a clever chat bot, but the odd thing about it is that it insists that it’s a real person. Clearly someone at Premier Health Plans, thought that a chat bot made good business sense, but at the same time didn’t think it was quite convincing, so they added in scripts to respond to questions like, “Are you a robot?”, with the idea that if they just deny it, that would placate enough curiosity and automaton-phobia to hold a potential customer on the line long enough to close.
Think about this for a second. At some point there was a discussion that went something like:
Analyst: In order to get n conversions per day, we need x telemarketers, which costs y dollars.
Manager: Hmm, y is a lot of dollars, and that initial part of the conversation is where we lose most of customers. What can we do bring down this cost?
Analyst: What if we used a robot?
Manager: Not a phone tree. I hate those press-one-for-English type things.
Analyst: No a really smart robot, like Siri.
Manager: Yeah, a sexy robot, like Siri, but it would have to be smart. Can we make it smart?
Analyst: That can be done, and it would only cost z dollars, which is much less than y dollars.
Manager: Good. Good. Let’s do it.
Analyst: I just thought of something. You know how people don’t like to leave voicemails, or deal with phone trees. What if they don’t like the robot?
Manager: Well, we’ll just have robot lie.
Sadly, the phone number and website, premierhealthagency.com are now disabled.
Vodka spokesman Mikhail Kalashnikov dead at 94.
