Slashdot Mirror

"... the global epidemic of HIV and AIDS started in New York around 1970"
This sentence is copied from the article, but on further reading you see that it is the USA epidemic, not the global epidemic, which is being talked about.

Compare the opening sentence of this article, "Scientists have managed to reconstruct the route by which HIV/Aids arrived in the US – exonerating once and for all the man long blamed for the ensuing pandemic in the west."

According to this article, the family of viruses HIV belongs to have been infecting primates for millions of years. As to HIV-1 and HIV-2, it has this to say about probable origins:

The HIV-2 strain is widely accepted to have been passed from sooty mangabeys in west Africa to humans, probably bushmeat hunters or those keeping the primates as pets, or both. Scientists believe HIV-1 was passed from chimpanzees to humans.

So what we likely have is a couple of events, unlikely in and of themselves, but where there is enough interspecies contact, as keeping infected pets or eating infected bushmeat, that the these two related viruses managed to cross-infect. After that, the viruses would have quickly have evolved to their new hosts (which really are pretty damned closely related to the old hosts).

What is the first thing smart criminals, corrupt police, private detectives and the press will do?
Hack it and get the background stories to each person. Create a reason for a face to face interview with real details from the initial police contact.
If they saw something its a great story or information to sell.
The UK tried to keep digital secrets about case work in the past and the files got sold to anyone with cash in real time.
"Journalists caught on tape in police bugging" (21 September 2002 )
https://www.theguardian.com/uk...
"Tabloid journalists were caught on tape by a police surveillance operation obtaining information from a private detective agency which in turn paid corrupt officers for confidential police material."
The access to any witness material in digital form should be air gapped, not networked with telcos. Telco staff with access are just as corrupt or cult members or criminal or have cash flow issues to help with as any other member of the wider public and would sell or give such contact lists.

She continues to believe there's value in the Yahoo name,

To be fair, that is actually true. There is value in the Yahoo name.

Nobody ever said it was positive value, though.

Apparently your "much research" didn't look at China.

So what's "noticeable"? The problem is that the changes occur so slowly we aren't likely to notice.

Yep we won't notice In case you're too lazy to read those, they go from pending flooding to already uninhabitable and cover descriptions of vanishing land due to rising seas over the last 80 or so years.

I live in a major city - we had our first major snowfall over two weeks ago and temperatures have been at or below 0C for nearly a month. There are still THOUSANDS of kilometers of land (many million square km) between me and the north pole, btw. Also, this snow cover will likely last until next May (8 months out of the year).

So, from this we can surmise that you live at least 3k km south of the north pole. Given that London or Tokyo are also just over 3000 km south of the north pole and aren't covered by snow for 8 months, we can also surmise that you live inland and possibly at altitude. You might just as well complain that you suffer from heat, year round snow, or daily rainfall and high humidity and live 13k km south of the north pole (all are possible, it's merely geography)

A warming trend seems like a good thing, and if you're telling me I'll live to see a point where we don't have winter like conditions for over two thirds of the year, we're all just going to laugh.

You could just move as it appears you severely dislike your climate instead of advocating that the rest of the world become potentially uninhabitable to make your apparently miserable location bearable.

You're right: mankind won't go extinct. This is obvious hyperbole but sadly gets taken literally too often, by both sides.

You're wrong: there will absolutely be huge trouble for humans, even if by "short adaption period" you mean a few centuries. You think adaption is free? It'll cost us many trillions. You think developing countries can afford that? It'll hit them hardest.

We have a phone that in fact can replace your PC

It's a bit too late for that. For most non-techies their phone is already replacing their PC.

http://www.extremetech.com/computing/134868-there-can-only-be-one-smartphones-are-the-pcs-of-the-future

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eliot-van-buskirk/6-signs-smartphones-will-_b_2689271.html

So the IPCC is the prime source of evidence we should go with and other sources are not acceptable?

Okay. Prepare to dance.

https://www.theguardian.com/en...

They based their "research" on an interview in a climbing magazine.

it is also ironic that you'd say something about politics in the same breath that you're advocating the IPCC. Much of the IPCC is not authored by scientists. Its a political organization via the UN not a scientific organization. You'd know that if you knew anything. But you don't.

You're another tool that repeats the same stupid shit with no understanding of what he's talking about.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new...

You're getting caught in a lie or a scandal or a fraud practically daily. And despite that all we get out of you is the same pretension to a functioning brain stem.

Keep in mind, you're the one that started the ad hominem game by talking about deniers and politics. If you want to talk issues, I'll crush you with facts. You likely don't have anything besides some cartoonish illustrations or some PDF links you didn't read.

But if you want to play the ad hominem game... then flame on.
https://youtu.be/Ae04r1EQOKk?t...

What people like you get away with is shifting between an unjustified pretense of intellectual or moral superiority into fallacious ad hominem without pausing to back up anything. It works on people that don't know what this is...

If you want to make a stab at being rational or justifying any of that comical pretense you walk around with... try me. Otherwise... Burn.

There's this little thing called google that slashdotters need to learn to use!

Here's one article: https://www.theguardian.com/te...

If you want one of the other articles on similar studies done I suggest you learn to google. Here is a great resource for learning how to google:

http://searchengineland.com/gu...

And how do you think the media would have reacted if the Trump campaign did something like this to elicit a violent response?

They covered it, which is why you're being obtuse and this entire "scandal" is an exercise in BS designed to muddy the waters and give cover to Trump by creating a false "both sides" narrative.

There is precisely one side, one side, in this discussion where the CANDIDATE FOR PRESIDENT has SUPPORTED VIOLENCE ON HIS BEHALF. You know that. O'Keefe knows that. It's precisely why most of us are so fearful he might become President. It's unheard of in modern political history for a Presidential candidate to incite violence on his behalf.

And while he's constrained - a little - by the law right now, the fact he's willing to support violence by his supporters means we have good reason to believe that - if Trump wins - there will be no fair elections in 2020. Because as President he can and probably will prevent any legal consequences for those who threaten and deal out violence against his enemies.

Hillary Clinton has not in any way endorsed violence. And frankly, the best Trump's supporters can do to muddy the water is find some low level operative who says he might hypothetically support an operation designed to expose the fact that Trump's supporters are violent.

So with respect, stop pretending you're arguing any legitimate point here. You're not. You're trying to normalize violence in an election. You need to ask yourself if you're going to continue to do so, or whether you have the guys to re-evaluate what you've been calling for.

Carry on down this path, and you, and America, are in serious danger.

Sure, here's a top official in the Trump campaign offering to pay the legal fees of anyone who beats up protestors at a Trump rally:

Video

Notice, incidentally, that this isn't some low level idiot in the campaign brainstorming about ways to make their rival look bad by taking advantage of a group already known to be violent, but a high up official promising that those who instigate violence on Trump's behalf will be shielded legally from the consequences of their actions.

It is quite well accepted that improved hygienic, nutritional and medical conditions had already contributed to a serious decline in the infectious diseases.

These diseases, and others, have for periods been completely eliminated in some countries that have passed a certain threshold of vaccination. You cannot find a single credible voice who has proven that this was the result of better hand washing .

It is "quite well accepted" that vaccines work. There's no reason at all to think that they don't work. They've been shown to be highly effective even in third world countries where running water is a luxury.

Andrew Wakefield has been proven not to be a fraud in the juridical case... axed down by the judge as being highly unprofessional and also wrong for that matter in revoking his license, and had to re-instate the same.

Nope. I took ten minutes out of my busy day to examine this and it's completely untrue:

1. It was widely reported in 2010 that he lost his license.

2. As of March of this year, he still hasn't been reinstated. Note that the Walker-Smith stuff you allude to happened in 2012.

3. Then I saw an article from just two months ago explaining at length that not only has he not been exonerated, but we can be fairly sure he will NEVER be exonerated despite the legal happenings involving John Walker-Smith that you allude to.

Do you have any sources showing otherwise? Are you going to own up to that little mistake / lie or are you going to carry on like nothing happened? Your intellectual credibility, such as it's worth, is on the line here.

Even if his license were eventually reinstated through some horrible technicality, that does not excuse his highly suspect and unethical behavior. The most charitable possible interpretation is that he was extremely reckless in misusing terminology to support his extraordinary theory, but the evidence points much more strongly towards an obvious intent to deceive, particularly when taken in combination with his later statements and actions. I would dissect that entire incident at length for your benefit, but at present I'm not entirely convinced you'd be interested or willing to hear me.

By all means, celebrate Amy Goodman's charges being dropped. But did you know there are many other journalists also facing charges for covering the pipeline resistance?

Two documentarians facing decades in prison.

Four Unicorn riot journalists facing charges in North Dakota and Iowa, and another was arrested on Saturday as part of the largest set of arrests in one incident to date.

Follow /r/NoDAPL for more.

The problem is that something as basic as not wanting to bend over, drop your underwear and let an immigrant rape you senseless is now deemed xenophobia.

Exaggerated rhetoric? Barely.
http://www.hna.de/kassel/herde... didn't include rape.
https://www.theguardian.com/wo... did.

People being told they're xenophobic for trivial shit is one of the reasons Trump is so popular. He doesn't let the labels being attached to him stop him sharing his views.

The West has been placing devices in Russia for years.
"Russian 'spy rock' was genuine, former chief of staff admits"
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/new...
"... accepted that Britain did indeed plant a "spy rock" despite attempts by the then-prime minister to dismiss the story and denials of improper conduct by the Foreign Office."
Britain admits 'fake rock' plot to spy on Russians
https://www.theguardian.com/wo...
A lot of spy devices are distance sensitive. So a good idea of the inner device location is needed and the location for a collection or helper device.
By altering the GPS, measurements for device placement by spies gets tricky. Any more power than needed a device risks detection. Not enough and signal is too week to get out of secure area.
Readers might recall the ANGRYNEIGHBOR, SURLYSPAWN, VAGRANT, DROPMIRE, SURLYSPAWN and the note about TAWDRYYARD and gps.
Catalog Advertises NSA Toolbox (December 29, 2013)
http://www.spiegel.de/internat...
A hired spy with local time limited access placing a device is then 10 feet out? 100ft ? Pacing the building with funny walk might be off limits or get seen on gait analysis from CCTV. Past sketches, plans or details might have altered with upgrades or have come from double agents sent to West with amazing stories of fiction about layout.
So expecting gps to work well at all times was needed to get fine tuning of device to outside support device by spy.

Also, it's worth remembering that Assange is an anti-Semite who thinks there's a "Jewish Conspiracy".

https://www.theguardian.com/me...

A) I didn't write the OP, 0100010001010011 did. Not a great track record so far.
B) Sharia law, as implemented in such countries, includes many things that would be considered against human rights here.

Tell me, can you explain why complaining about things like this is "bigotry"? The complaint is about the legal system, specifically their implementation of Sharia law, not the people themselves. The problem is what the law permits, not the actions of the people, though I will present some such actions as illustrations of what is considered acceptable under that law in just a bit.

Are you not aware that they still enslave people? Are you not aware of, say, the Saudi princess and her housekeeper in France?

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

Such things are very much acceptable there due to bad laws. Go look up what happened to the workers prepping for the World Cup:

https://www.theguardian.com/fo...

How is it "bigotry" to complain about bad laws? Are you capable of engaging in a conversation with anything but insults designed to stop people from thinking? Or do you just error out on a stop word every time? "How dare they criticize a legal system that permits slavery! Bigot!!!"

Note that the slavery referred to here is mostly a matter of status and economics, such as being held in debt slavery under false promises and unable to leave the country, roughly equivalent to the company towns the USA had long ago. There's also another type of slavery under Sharia law that essentially no longer exists for men & women literally conquered during Jihad. That probably only exists with groups like Boko Haram nowadays. It's also bad to allow that, but at least there aren't many of that type any longer.

In my opinion, Trump is a loudmouth not unlike Howard Stern, and definitely should not be president. When it comes to RACIST remarks, these are some of the comments I've come across:
Calling employees "n*gger" (Hillary)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

This link doesn't work.

Calling people "f*cking Jew bastard" (Hillary, confirmed by three witnesses)
https://www.theguardian.com/wo...

'Confirmed' by the couple who originally reported the incident, and a campaign worker who later turned out wasn't even in the room and claims to have overheard through a door.

Hillary said publicly that her mentor is Robert Byrd, former KKK leader.

You apparently don't realize that Byrd publicly denounced and apologized for his former ties to the KKK and went on to support the Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts. Jesus, even the NAACP released a statement after his death praising his work later in life to advance civil liberties.

Before you decide to believe the worst of someone, it's worth checking your facts.

No problem here is your link. That particular situation is now resolved but would you like to bet your life that there are no more hidden things like this? https://www.theguardian.com/uk...

He wants to ban all Muslims from entering the US. If that's not an "agenda that is against equality", then what is?

Indiscriminately bombing and burning hundreds of Islamic men, women, and children alive?

Oh, but we've already been at war with Eastasia, right?

That happened under Obama's watch, so no big deal. It will also be okay if Clinton does it, but not if racist Trump does it, because that would be racist!

In fairness, pretty much everyone already knows about the Note 7 fiasco.

But...

If the modder were to modify the mod to include references to other Samsung phones, other than the Note 7, which would be used in the same way, then Samsung can consider the merits of either leaving it be, or doing the same thing, resulting in a large amount of publicity for a story that suggests the Note 7 was not unusual, that Samsung might actually have an exploding phone problem in general.

You forgot to mention the part about the Saudi weapons deals that she helped broker as payment.

https://www.theguardian.com/us...

He wants to ban all Muslims from entering the US. If that's not an "agenda that is against equality", then what is?

Indiscriminately bombing and burning hundreds of Islamic men, women, and children alive?

Oh, but we've already been at war with Eastasia, right?

In my opinion, Trump is a loudmouth not unlike Howard Stern, and definitely should not be president. When it comes to RACIST remarks, these are some of the comments I've come across:
Calling employees "n*gger" (Hillary)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Calling people "f*cking Jew bastard" (Hillary, confirmed by three witnesses)
https://www.theguardian.com/wo...

Hillary said publicly that her mentor is Robert Byrd, former KKK leader.

That idiot trump *has* talked about building a wall; Hillary actually voted to do so.

What bothers me much, much more, though, is the condescension of Hillary and friends towards my family. It *really* bothers me that they tell my daughter, in effect, "we'll give you an extra ten points on this test since you're black, and obviously black people like you are too stupid to actually learn the material like we white people can do". The hidden, implied racism and bigotry that runs deep in all of their policies is infuriating to me. When my daughter hears Hillary call someone a "n*gger" or a "f*cking Jew bastard", I explain to my daughter that Hillary is wrong, very wrong. Some people are stupid and say stupid things; that's simple enough to understand and accept. But when the entire school system, through college, is predicated on the assumption that my daughters complexion makes her less capable, it's harder to convincingly explain that EVERYONE setting school policy are ALL morons. I'm sure she will at times wonder if they are right; and that saddens and angers me tremendously.

They have contracts with the US gov, mil to worry about. Just reading a site with a codeword that gets stored on their computer is an issue. They know their work and home internet is been logged as part of work "security".
They know that for the next promotion their internet logs might be looked into for the term "polygraph" over years. Other terms might be of interest to a gov or mil trying to find staff who can still think for themselves and "read" about events.
They get told not to read sites. All part of working for and protecting "freedom".
"The most vocal" is usually just faith based or virtue signalling or need to push a political tech narrative to gain as a contractor.
The sale of more security products, services due to super "hackers" from other nations got pushed a lot over the past weeks.
The idea that leaks got "faked" vs actual staff having to quit. Staff don't quit over fake news.
"Will reading WikiLeaks cost students jobs with the federal government?" (December 9, 2010)
http://edition.cnn.com/2010/CR...
"Don’t Look, Don’t Read: Government Warns Its Workers Away From WikiLeaks Documents" (Dec 4 2010)
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12...
US blocks access to WikiLeaks for federal workers (4 dec 2010)
https://www.theguardian.com/wo...
The other aspect is just domestic US gov/mil propaganda been allowed in with the relaxing of the Smith–Mundt Act. A lot of sock puppet accounts.
The next step will be a flood of US gov workers pushing a "story" under ideas like 'H.R. 5181: Countering Foreign Propaganda and Disinformation Act of 2016"
https://www.govtrack.us/congre...
So wait for a new big US bureaucracy with a fun name like "Information Analysis and Response" to really get vocal and create prolific posters :)

This is another bogus scandal that'll backfire badly. It tries to link Clinton with something she had no involvement in, and it raises more opportunities to (correctly and responsibly) link Trump's own words to violent behavior by his supporters.

Leaving aside the source, O'Keefe's is a stupid story that has no connection with Clinton herself. Even taken at face value, it's actually not even a sign that low level Clinton campaigners are bad per se: I mean, these guys are willing to risk injury and possible death exposing behavior they consider easily displayed by their opponents. They're morons, not evil.

Here's, FWIW, a video of a highly placed Trump activist who is promising to pay the legal fees for anyone who attacks anti-Trump protestors:

Video

Now, do you notice anything different about these two stories? In one, O'Keefe's, you have allegations that some Clinton supporters, unbeknownst to any Presidential candidate, might have tried to demonstrate that Trump supporters are actually violent.

In the other, you have a Presidential Candidate announcing, in public, he'll help out any violent supporter of his and prevent them from suffering the consequences of their violent actions.

O'Keefe has raised another opportunity for Trump's opponents to point out he is a bona fide fascist - in this case, demonstrating that he is willing to support violence against his political rivals, one of the attributes of fascism Trump displays.

They already do this at some power generation stations (e.g., [1] from 2014). There may possibly be issues with suphur poisoning though.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/en...

Oh really?

https://www.theguardian.com/me...

It was actually Ecuador that cut him off but do you REALLY believe that Ecuador care that much about what he posts about the US? I'd bet big that Hillary found some way to lean on them.

From the same article: "Many felt it was no coincidence that the internet was cut just after WikiLeaks had released another batch of emails from the campaign manager of the US presidential candidate Hillary Clinton."

That would be called prejudice, motherfucker. But I bet you STILL will feel like your clever opinion is correct.

Some states have higher education levels than others, this is a fact. Just because you can't grasp that fact doesn't make it any less true.
Donald Trump has by far the lowest percentage of educated voters of any candidate in the modern era, so it follows that the strongest support would be in the least educated states.
If you had an education you would understand this, instead you get angry and call names when you hear things you don't like to hear.

The facts that we have indicate that the charge is bogus. The rape charge comes from him not using a condom - not forcible rape. The two women were willing participants, and don't deny it. One of them continued to sleep with him The timing of the accusation is also very suspicious.

https://www.theguardian.com/wo...

See here: https://www.theguardian.com/me...

Statements by 'anonymous government sources' don't count.

The Russian hacks of the state election systems were not announced by "anonymous sources". They came directly from the FBI, as well as election officials in Arizona (red state) and Illinois (blue state). Oh, and Florida (red state).

https://www.washingtonpost.com...

http://www.cnn.com/2016/10/12/...

https://www.theguardian.com/te...

Remember tho' - these Einsteins believe that the FBI is in on the Fix, cuz you know, they didn't put Grandma in a pantssuit in front of a firing squad.

Given the removal of protections like the Smith–Mundt Act "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smith–Mundt_Act" domestic propaganda is now legal.
Once all this would have just been passed to a waiting international press.
Now its been pushed domestically.
"Revealed: US spy operation that manipulates social media" (18 March 2011)
https://www.theguardian.com/te...
or "British army creates team of Facebook warriors" (31 January 2015)
https://www.theguardian.com/uk...
So the past legal press protections are gone and contractors love the over time.

Given the removal of protections like the Smith–Mundt Act "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smith–Mundt_Act" domestic propaganda is now legal.
Once all this would have just been passed to a waiting international press.
Now its been pushed domestically.
"Revealed: US spy operation that manipulates social media" (18 March 2011)
https://www.theguardian.com/te...
or "British army creates team of Facebook warriors" (31 January 2015)
https://www.theguardian.com/uk...
So the past legal press protections are gone and contractors love the over time.

Statements by 'anonymous government sources' don't count.

The Russian hacks of the state election systems were not announced by "anonymous sources". They came directly from the FBI, as well as election officials in Arizona (red state) and Illinois (blue state). Oh, and Florida (red state).

https://www.washingtonpost.com...

http://www.cnn.com/2016/10/12/...

https://www.theguardian.com/te...

You have to understand, people who are posting such nonsense are generally Russian trolls being paid by the Kremlin. Their job is to try and insert comments which will make people unfamiliar with the situation to have doubts or in general, deflect anything which puts the Kremlin in a bad light.

It's well known there is place in St. Petersburg where they operate out of because workers there have spoken out about what they do and one of them even sued for back wages.

Now, having posted this, watch two things. First, I will be down modded and two, just like the response to your question, the Russian trolls will ask for proof even though proof has been given. It's what they do. Just like Russia still denies they shot down the civilian airliner over Ukraine despite the photographic, audio and eyewitness evidence. They claim none of that is proof yet at the same time, they offered their own photographic "evidence" (highly doctored photos shown to be false) as proof. Which only goes to show they can't keep their own lies straight.

You will also notice any time Russian relations with the U.S. is brought up they immediately jump to talking about a world war. Go ahead. Check their posts. Every single time.

Once you see the same things repeated over and over, you'll understand why what they say can be ignored.

Yahoo, get a competent CEO!!!

The World's Fourth-Largest City Outlaws Billboards, Calls It 'Visual Pollution' (2007)

Sao Paulo: The City That Said No To Advertising (2007)

Quote: '... all forms of outdoor advertising were to be prohibited, including ads on taxis, on buses -- even shopfronts were to be restricted, their signs limited to 1.5 metres for every 10 metres of frontage. "It is hard in a city of 11 million people to find enough equipment and personnel to determine what is and isn't legal," reasoned Kassab, "so we have decided to go all the way." '

Can cities kick ads? Inside the global movement to ban urban billboards (2015) Quote:

Quote: "First it was Sao Paulo, then Chennai. Then Grenoble, Tehran, Paris and now even New York have spawned movements to replace or ban outdoor advertising."

Well, you did specifically request Gulag information, so here you go then:

Chicago within the contintental USA:
https://www.theguardian.com/us...

More info regarding Chicago police corruption:
https://theintercept.com/2016/...

You're welcome =)

"Completely politely"? What universe are you living in? Gamergaters participated in sustained harassment of multiple women, including death threats and publishing of personal information (e.g. addresses). Women who dared criticize them, no matter how mildly, became the subject of targeted harassment themselves (e.g. when Felicia Day posted that she had been fearful of saying anything at all on the subject, her home address was posted within minutes).

Milo's all about freedom of speech. I don't know if he can keep the lights on at 4Chan

Well, as a fan of free speech, you'd think he'd have turned up to the employment tribunal that resulted from his seemingly failing to keep the lights on at a previous venture.

Thank you Google! This is badly needed because the Unicode Consortium screwed up Asian language support badly. The problem started when a bunch of Silicon Valley WASPS got together and formed the Unicode Consortium. Their experts were a joke. They had a foreign language expert who by his own admission couldn't speak the language he was supposedly expert it.

Then without consulting Asian language speakers they decided to combine all the Asian language characters - including those that were physically different.The result was like some elitist looking at the Greek and Roman alphabets and deciding 'a' is a lot like alpha, 'b' a lot like beta, so why not comine the two of them into a single alphabet, then tell you your name isn't Sam, it's "S". (Slashdot probably won't display this but you get the idea.) This affected eastern and central and south east asian languages.

This created the absurd situation where some people couldn't even spell write their names or enter them into databases prompting the famous "I Can Text You A Pile of Poo, But I Can't Write My Name" https://modelviewculture.com/p...

When it was pointed out did the Unicode Consortium admit they fucked up and fix it? Nope. They dug in their heels and insisted each country produce their own font which would display each Unicode character differently to suit their own language. Given the original goals of Unicode this was an amazing backflip. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... https://books.google.com/books... https://plus.google.com/+LizHa... There are other problems too: The encoding the consortium expected makes asian codepages use more space than the standards they were supposed to replace. This was stupid since ASCII was already super efficient for English language, so what was the point?

If you only write English language software and ASCII is good enough you won't notice any of this but if you have to write International software it's a nightmare. Yes, you might think adding Unicode support allows any your app to run in any language, but it doesn't work like that because of this clusterfuck. You still have to provide different fonts for different countries, and you often have to provide support for old codepages (the various BIG5 variants) for fallback which Unicode was supposed to replace. It also makes translation very hard.

But Unicode fixed it eventually? Nope. The Unicode consortium continued to ignore it to this very day and instead started churning out stupid emoji: a steaming pile of poo, a taco, and farcical 'equality' emoticons. https://www.theguardian.com/te... https://www.theguardian.com/ar...

I hope this new font gives us one font which can display all languages and fuck the Unicode Consortium

Thank you Google! This is badly needed because the Unicode Consortium screwed up Asian language support badly. The problem started when a bunch of Silicon Valley WASPS got together and formed the Unicode Consortium. Their experts were a joke. They had a foreign language expert who by his own admission couldn't speak the language he was supposedly expert it.

Then without consulting Asian language speakers they decided to combine all the Asian language characters - including those that were physically different.The result was like some elitist looking at the Greek and Roman alphabets and deciding 'a' is a lot like alpha, 'b' a lot like beta, so why not comine the two of them into a single alphabet, then tell you your name isn't Sam, it's "S". (Slashdot probably won't display this but you get the idea.) This affected eastern and central and south east asian languages.

This created the absurd situation where some people couldn't even spell write their names or enter them into databases prompting the famous "I Can Text You A Pile of Poo, But I Can't Write My Name" https://modelviewculture.com/p...

When it was pointed out did the Unicode Consortium admit they fucked up and fix it? Nope. They dug in their heels and insisted each country produce their own font which would display each Unicode character differently to suit their own language. Given the original goals of Unicode this was an amazing backflip. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... https://books.google.com/books... https://plus.google.com/+LizHa... There are other problems too: The encoding the consortium expected makes asian codepages use more space than the standards they were supposed to replace. This was stupid since ASCII was already super efficient for English language, so what was the point?

If you only write English language software and ASCII is good enough you won't notice any of this but if you have to write International software it's a nightmare. Yes, you might think adding Unicode support allows any your app to run in any language, but it doesn't work like that because of this clusterfuck. You still have to provide different fonts for different countries, and you often have to provide support for old codepages (the various BIG5 variants) for fallback which Unicode was supposed to replace. It also makes translation very hard.

But Unicode fixed it eventually? Nope. The Unicode consortium continued to ignore it to this very day and instead started churning out stupid emoji: a steaming pile of poo, a taco, and farcical 'equality' emoticons. https://www.theguardian.com/te... https://www.theguardian.com/ar...

I hope this new font gives us one font which can display all languages and fuck the Unicode Consortium

I find it offensive that the submitter and editors emphasized that the software is made in Serbia and highlighted it in the title. They could have said "outside USA" but I guess when you say "Serbia" it sounds a lot more serious. Looking at some of the posts here I see that for some of you it actually does.

Crooked software is made in many countries. Perhaps the choice of the company wasn't really based on where the company was based but the quality of service. There are many excellent software companies in Serbia. Just check this out. And this, and this...

I get the point that voting software is too sensitive to be outsourced but if you're going to outsource it then software company based in Serbia is probably one of the better choices.

Because humans are notoriously inaccurate and biased when it comes to making judgments. If we could rely on people to make perfect, rational decisions constantly, there would be no:

The problem isn't humans making bad judgments it is the runaway aggregation of power and people choosing to maximally leveraging their position by using technology against others in ways that asymmetrically alter the rules of the game in their favor.

- Market bubbles and crashes;

This is rank nonsense. Computers will do what they are instructed to do. They will not ever be programmed to act in ways which interfere with the objective function of their owners. Players don't give a shit about bubbles and crashes they only care about making money. There are numerous well known examples of computers causing market crashes.

- Racism; Sexism; Most other nasty prejudiced and bigoted behavior;

Did you even RTFA?

https://www.theguardian.com/co...

- negligence;

This is a word game. Computers can't be negligent and more than a brick can be negligent.

People are emotional, irrational, and panicky, and make decisions that they *think* are rational all the time, but which actually turn out to be irrational, sub-optimal decisions. Study after study has found that "actuarial" judgement (e.g., classification and decision making based on statistical models) routinely outperforms "clinical" judgement (e.g., expert interpretation of the facts resulting in a decision about how to proceed).

That said, though, it's not a very controversial statement to say that statistical models are, generally, better at making decisions than "experts." Even REALLY EXPERT experts.

And that's why the fuck you would outsource judgement.

The true objective function is rarely obvious in the real world. Computers have a proven track record of being suckered by bad data and getting stuck in locally optimal ruts. The proper use of DSS is context dependent. Your sweeping generalizations are in fact worthless.

When was that prediction made? Did they predict an entirely ice free arctic, or just one that is ice free in summer? Did they predict the entire arctic would be ice free, or just the central basin? (If they predicted the central basin would be ice free by 2016 then that was a good prediction; it's not that far wrong; give it a couple of years.)

It was widely reported in the news at the time, and you can still find some of them up. Here are some details.. Apparently that scientist was still making predictions this year. Note: other scientists disagreed with them.

The idea was to induce events.
CIA admits role in 1953 Iranian coup (20 August 2013)
https://www.theguardian.com/wo...
The chance of uprising starting is then 100%.

So it could exist, but maybe it's on a computer technically owner by the US government.

No way. Obama assured the world back in 2013, NSA does not spy on ordinary citizens either:

"I was a critic of the previous administration for those occasions in which I felt they had violated our values and I came in [to office] with a healthy scepticism about how our various programmes were structured," Obama told the press conference in Berlin's chancellery. But, he added, having examined how the US intelligence services were operating: "I'm confident that at this point we have struck the appropriate balance".

And he never told a lie...

We were assured that the "NSA is not rifling through ordinary people's emails". https://www.theguardian.com/wo...