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Comment But of course! (Score 1) 88

What's the point of having a national military if you can't use it to pump taxpayer dollars into corporate coffers?

*scenario*

"Fox company, we'll airdrop a licensed mechanic and a licensed parts salesman onto your position around 0930, as soon as they finish repairing some stuff the enemy captured last year and make their way back to our side of the lines. Division says hold your position as best you can until then -- and remind the riflemen not to use their weapons as clubs, as that will void their warranty. It would be better for the overall war effort to let you position be overrun."

"No, Davies can't fix the autocannon even if your lives depend on it. Division says to shoot him in the arse if he so much as touches it."

Submission + - Be nice - Batman is watching! (sciencealert.com)

Black Parrot writes: From ScienceAlert:

A new study has found that people are more likely to act kind towards others when Batman is present â" and not for the reasons you might assume.
[...]
Psychologists from the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Italy conducted experiments on the Milan metro to see who, if anyone, might offer their seat to a pregnant passenger.
The kicker? Sometimes Batman was there â" or at least, another experimenter dressed as him. The researchers were checking if people were more likely to give up their seat in the presence of the caped crusader.
And sure enough, there did seem to be a correlation. In 138 different experiments, somebody offered their seat to an experimenter wearing a hidden prosthetic belly 67.21 percent of the time in the presence of Batman.
That's a lot more often than times the superhero wasn't around â" in those cases, a passenger offered a seat just 37.66 percent of the time.
[...]
"Interestingly, among those who left their spot in the experimental condition, nobody directly associated their gesture with the presence of Batman, and 14 (43.75 percent) reported that they did not see Batman at all."

The article goes on to speculate about what is causing people to be more generous.

Comment "dry powder" = unallocated capital (Score 2) 52

"For venture capital (VC) and private equity (PE) firms, dry powder refers to the amount of committed, but unallocated capital a firm has on hand. In other words, it’s an unspent cash reserve that’s waiting to be invested."

https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpitchbook.com%2Fblog%2Fwhat-is-dry-powder

Comment We need a Slashdot breakthrough list... (Score 1) 39

We need a community-curated list of technological breakthroughs and their followups that make it to the front page of Slashdot. There's been some amazing R&D reports posted, and pretty regularly there will be one or more comments about how we'll never see it commercialized "because big will bury it", etc.

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