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No.

"Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

If the headline asks a question, try answering 'no'. In the vast majority of cases, the story is tendentious or over-sold. It is often a scare story, or an attempt to elevate some run-of-the-mill piece of reporting into a national controversy and, preferably, a national panic. To a busy journalist hunting for real information a question mark means 'don't bother reading this bit'

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

No.

You can buy it.

Oh, and where did these venereal infections come from? First-world horn dogs from Alpha++ world metropolises from the same imperialist nation that compromised these people for centuries, whose "shithole" countries are even now being promoted as sexual-tourism hot spots.

If we stopping immigrants from arriving, we would reduce the number of infections transmitted from immigrants to America to pre-existing American citizens.

If we stopping sexual tourists from leaving, we would reduce the number of infections transmitted from Americans to people living in other nations.

But we're not actually going to build either wall, because global civilization is not a bubble enterprise.

People move around. That's a fact of life. How did H. luzonensis get to the Philippines? Somehow I don't think they flew in on a Dreamliner.

AFAIK, the v3 of GPL is partially in response to companies trying to do content distribution platforms using open source software. The content owners are very particular about having DRM, and the platforms on which that content is distributed have to provide some sort of secure boot chain that prevents unauthorized software from running on the *hardware*. Those companies comply with the open source GPL v2 license and publish their source code for others to use, but they do not allow modifications of that source code to run on their hardware. Not clear to me why a software license should extend to the hardware. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

What?! We are talking about a galaxy which is so far away that can't be seen.

Uhm no, no no no! Why do you keep uttering these false claims?

Clearly visible with the Hubble Space Telescope

But then again, you will probably claim that this is false too. Sad!

BSA

Links to articles that show Microsoft's VERY poor management.

• Making seatbelts mandatory equipment on all vehicles (1968).
• Decrease in travel due to the Arab oil embargo and recession (1973-1975).
• Making seatbelt use mandatory (late 1980s to early 1990s)).
• Decrease in travel due to the recession following the housing bubble burst (2008-2009).

Since 1995, if you factor out the 2008-09 recession, there's been a continued slow decline in fatality rate. The dip during the 2008-09 recession also seems disproportionately large compared to past recession-linked dips. The 1973-75 recession happened at nearly 2x the fatality rate, so you would expect its dip to be 2x as large. But the 2008-09 dip is nearly the same absolute size. (The post-recession rebound after 1973-75 is nearly 2x as large.)

NHTSA has been claiming credit for this decrease, citing improved crash safety testing and standards. But I wonder if it's more the effect of GPS becoming commonplace to where it's now ubiquitous in all new cars, and people whose cars don't have GPS navigation just use their phones. In the days before GPS, it was common to drive with a folded map on your steering wheel, trying to figure out where you were and how to get to your destination. Way more dangerous than texting while driving IMHO.

• Making seatbelts mandatory equipment on all vehicles (1968).
• Decrease in travel due to the Arab oil embargo and recession (1973-1975).
• Making seatbelt use mandatory (late 1980s to early 1990s)).
• Decrease in travel due to the recession following the housing bubble burst (2008-2009).

Since 1995, if you factor out the 2008-09 recession, there's been a continued slow decline in fatality rate. The dip during the 2008-09 recession also seems disproportionately large compared to past recession-linked dips. The 1973-75 recession happened at nearly 2x the fatality rate, so you would expect its dip to be 2x as large. But the 2008-09 dip is nearly the same absolute size. (The post-recession rebound after 1973-75 is nearly 2x as large.)

NHTSA has been claiming credit for this decrease, citing improved crash safety testing and standards. But I wonder if it's more the effect of GPS becoming commonplace to where it's now ubiquitous in all new cars, and people whose cars don't have GPS navigation just use their phones. In the days before GPS, it was common to drive with a folded map on your steering wheel, trying to figure out where you were and how to get to your destination. Way more dangerous than texting while driving IMHO.

4000 records, small potatoes. The OPM hack did the same thing on a much larger scale 4 years ago. Back in 2015 the Federal Office of Personnel Management had their UN-ENCRYPTED files taken containing every single current and past Federal employee, and everyone who had ever applied for a top secret clearance. Over 21M people's personal information was taken, where as this was only 4000 unique records... .
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Disclaimer: I am a Bioinformatician. I am working daily with terabytes genomic, trancriptomic, proteomic andepigenomic data.

Let's first, almost everything is wrong in your post:
- No, this is not even close to a turing machine;
- No, there are no checksum (even is there some redundancy and there are some repairing mechanisms);
- No, anecdotes are never a valid evidence ("i know of a couple", " in speaking with an expert from the Cambridge Genome Project over ten years ago", ...);
- No, DNA does not express "a fully-functioning biological computer", it is not about computation;
- No, we are not bypassing the safeguards, the modification that are done could have be done naturally over millions of year with the right sequence of environmental pressure and natural selection. We are just doing that faster, and with far less collateral damage.

Your "expert" probably described to what you learn in the first quarter of a first course in molecular biology. If it was so simple, we would already deciphered the whole thing long time ago. In fact, this "computer" is doing a lot of mistakes all the time, many going uncorrected: this is a feature. Without those mistakes/mutations, there is no possible evolution and our survival as a specie will be challenged.

The short story explained during first course is, the central dogma of biology: DNA is transcribed into RNA and RNA is later translated into proteins and not the other way around. But it is very far from the whole story:
- There is the other way around (keyword: reverse transcriptase);
- Some RNA are not translated into proteins but are still functional (keyword: ncRNA);
- DNA is not sufficient to characterize a human (keyword: epigenome);
- DNA is modified all the time by mutation or other mechanisms (keyword: MGEs);
- DNA, RNA, Proteins interacts all the time and they regulate themselves mutually in a very complex systems (keyword: pathways);
- The transcription DNA -> RNA is making a lot of mistakes;
- The RNA are modified post-trancription (keyword: alternative splicing);
- The proteins are modified post-translation;
- The ribosomes (the machinery translating the RNA into proteins) are making mistakes;
- Virus alters our genome all the time;
- There is some redundancy (2 DNA strands, a.a. coded by multiple codon sequences), some mechanisms to correct DNA;
- Women miscarriage far more often than believed without being aware of that, this is the main selective process, no checksum, it is all about one step in the development having failed. Simply. Brutal. Selection. Nature. Sometimes, it leads to handicap/sickness because the embryo is still viable. For example, The loss of three nucleotides in the DNA causes cystic fibrosis but do not prevent the development of the embryos.
- ...

Computer are simple, faultless (they execute the code without error), deterministic, for every common usage do not self-modify their code and do not evolve.

Krishnoid enthused:

Finally, a real-live chimera!

Multiple human chimeras have been identified in the past, going back to 1953 ...

Joce640k inquired:

Can't they adopt one?

People who have never actually looked into the reality of the adoption process ask that question as if by reflex.

In the USA, the average time it takes to actually adopt a child is seven years from the time you first submit your application. And the cost to adopt varies widely, depending, in part, on which state the prospective parents reside in, and whether the child they adopt is a resident of that state, a different state, or another country.

Greece actually passed a sweeping adoption reform law last year that has considerably reduced both the cost and the legal complexity of adoption of Greek children by Greek citizens, so it's now easier and less expensive there than it is in the USA. But there are still many people who insist on their own, biological children for a whole range of reasons, including cultural tradtions, religious custom, and personal, psychological issues.

My point is that, while it's an easy question to ask, it's a lot harder and more complex to answer it than most people even begin to imagine ...

Productivity per hour goes down

Productivity is already "per hour". Output per hour, to be precise.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

but at least for that stretch productivity will be way up.

No. Output might go up, but it'll likely do so less than proportionally to the hours worked.

You're picking straws over terminology.

Productivity per hour will go down.

But productivity per employee will go up.

And it might even go down if people are so tired they're making errors that cost time to fix.

If you're making 1.5 times as much stuff but taking twice the time then productivity (at least if you use the word to mean what it actually does) falls by 25%. This has been known since forever.

Yes, that's a factor as well. It's like the Laffer curve, too little it's efficient but you get nothing, too much and you get diminishing returns.

There's no reason to think 40 hours is the magic number, it's going to vary by individuals and it's going to vary by jobs.

In some cases there's people who can see a substantial productivity increase going from 70 to 80 hour work weeks. On other cases someone might be outrageously productive in only 5 hours a week, but beyond that they're just not that useful.

Productivity per hour goes down

Productivity is already "per hour". Output per hour, to be precise.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

but at least for that stretch productivity will be way up.

No. Output might go up, but it'll likely do so less than proportionally to the hours worked.

You're picking straws over terminology.

Productivity per hour will go down.

But productivity per employee will go up.

And it might even go down if people are so tired they're making errors that cost time to fix.

If you're making 1.5 times as much stuff but taking twice the time then productivity (at least if you use the word to mean what it actually does) falls by 25%. This has been known since forever.

Yes, that's a factor as well. It's like the Laffer curve, too little it's efficient but you get nothing, too much and you get diminishing returns.

There's no reason to think 40 hours is the magic number, it's going to vary by individuals and it's going to vary by jobs.

In some cases there's people who can see a substantial productivity increase going from 70 to 80 hour work weeks. On other cases someone might be outrageously productive in only 5 hours a week, but beyond that they're just not that useful.

Productivity per hour goes down

Productivity is already "per hour". Output per hour, to be precise.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

but at least for that stretch productivity will be way up.

No. Output might go up, but it'll likely do so less than proportionally to the hours worked.

You're picking straws over terminology.

Productivity per hour will go down.

But productivity per employee will go up.

And it might even go down if people are so tired they're making errors that cost time to fix.

If you're making 1.5 times as much stuff but taking twice the time then productivity (at least if you use the word to mean what it actually does) falls by 25%. This has been known since forever.

Yes, that's a factor as well. It's like the Laffer curve, too little it's efficient but you get nothing, too much and you get diminishing returns.

There's no reason to think 40 hours is the magic number, it's going to vary by individuals and it's going to vary by jobs.

In some cases there's people who can see a substantial productivity increase going from 70 to 80 hour work weeks. On other cases someone might be outrageously productive in only 5 hours a week, but beyond that they're just not that useful.

Productivity per hour goes down

Productivity is already "per hour". Output per hour, to be precise.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

but at least for that stretch productivity will be way up.

No. Output might go up, but it'll likely do so less than proportionally to the hours worked. And it might even go down if people are so tired they're making errors that cost time to fix.

If you're making 1.5 times as much stuff but taking twice the time then productivity (at least if you use the word to mean what it actually does) falls by 25%. This has been known since forever.

Productivity per hour goes down

Productivity is already "per hour". Output per hour, to be precise.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

but at least for that stretch productivity will be way up.

No. Output might go up, but it'll likely do so less than proportionally to the hours worked. And it might even go down if people are so tired they're making errors that cost time to fix.

If you're making 1.5 times as much stuff but taking twice the time then productivity (at least if you use the word to mean what it actually does) falls by 25%. This has been known since forever.

I don't remember when I used Perl the first time, probably around 1990, Perl 4.
I started with C++ a little bit earlier.

I just found this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... I used C++ on Sun Solaris (cfront obviously, not sure when we had a g++ compiler), Think C was the first software I bought, well, cant remember what I bought for my Apple ][, probably I only used school licensed software.

So I guess I started C++ around 1989, I started studying at the university 1987 ...

In writing, you say?

Since this is about video, I suppose you're into LaserDisc as well.

I was actually specifically referring to the BFR, which seems to have replaced the 7-booster Falcon 9 "supercluster" that Musk mentioned a few times early on as a possible heavy launch vehicle.

The Sea Dragon though - I'm not certain I've ever encountered it before - it's been many years if I have. What a beast! And launched not just from on the water (as planned for the BFR), but *in* the water, floating vertically.

I hate to think of what that sonic blast might do to whales anywhere nearby though.

A link for anyone interested: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Pretty sure sales of Betamax, VHS, and Laserdisc movies are down too... what's your point?

I know, right? And don't get me started on how hard it is to find good phonograph cylinders anymore.

But if we teach it to use the slide rule, we'll have an analog AI.

You really honestly want to tell me that people don't know the difference between there and their and they're

That wood a peer to bee the K's, wooden tit? They aren't typing the word wrong, they're typing the wrong word.

Historically, this referred to mistakes in manual type-setting (typography). The term includes errors due to mechanical failure or slips of the hand or finger,[2] but excludes errors of ignorance, such as spelling errors, or the flip-flopping of words such as "than" and "then".

As I said before: get over it.

I'm right, you're wrong and I produced a citation to back it up. How about YOU get over it?

If you would speak another language, you most likely would know that.

Another? Just the one? Do you think I'm an American or something? Fail.

Says the man who thinks everyone in Ireland speaks Irish and that Thais always dive alone.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

The term includes errors due to mechanical failure or slips of the hand or finger, but excludes errors of ignorance, such as spelling errors, or the flip-flopping of words such as "than" and "then".

Mind you half the money in that fund will probably end up in the pockets of telco executives as bonuses

That's not socialism, though.

No, that's the other part that isn't socialist, the part where they pay themselves massive bonuses is pure mindless capitalist greed. If Republicans cannot do Christianity without changing it into a cut of mammon, did you really think they could do socialism without injecting a massive dose of selfish greed?

It's because a mechanical clutch pack on a freight train would melt, wear down, and/or explode under the required torque and a shifting gear box would have a similar issue.

And even when they got that to somehow hold up and work, it made maintenance too difficult.
Example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

They had 4 diesel engines, with 4 torque converters, 4x 1-way ratchet clutches, 3 differential gear boxes to drive the wheels, AND 2 more diesel engines just acting as superchargers for the 4 other diesel engines.

Compare that to one engine, one generator, some wires, and a bunch of electric traction engines.

It's also much easier to attach and coordinate 6 diesel-electrics together than if they had a mechanical drivetrain for very long trains.

How does this differ from the Grassmann algebra of differential forms? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Just adding: Rule of thumb is optimistically about 10% loss (90% efficiency) in the electric generator, another 10% loss in the electric motors (they're the same thing but used "backward"), those stay pretty consistent through their life (replace the bearings, brushes, and off you go).
The motor controller system efficiency varies greatly.

So ignoring the controller system and wiring losses we're down to 81% (0.9 * 0.9) transmission efficiency, or 19% losses.

The were attempts at direct-drive diesels to increase efficiency. The added complexity wasn't practical in regard to reliability & maintenance.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Steam engines at the end of their era were, and still are, more efficient (around 60%) than current diesels (diesel ICE is 45% efficient, that's BEFORE electric losses in a diesel-electric). For comparison gasoline ICE in car is 35% efficient in practical use.

The cost of maintenance, labor and downtime was the killer of steam, not efficiency. With proper combustion/fuel they're more eco-friendly than other engines. They don't really smoke like in the movies, that's just for show.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?... (the diesel is just there to supply the passenger cars with electricity and brakes for safety, the steamer is doing all the pulling)

I'm getting real tired of the argument that people are shit drivers. No one seems to have to prove it, everyone is just supposed to take it for granted. The truth is, driving is pretty safe as it is. If drivers were that bad, then human driving just wouldn't work. There would be pileups every day.

From the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration via Wikipedia:

For 2016 specifically, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) data shows 37,461 people were killed in 34,436 motor vehicle crashes, an average of 102 per day.

So ummm ... there are pileups every day. Any other objections?

But read up on some of the things that happened during the first 50 years of USA history - how about the Vice President shooting one of his political rivals?

In 21st century, vice president shoots best friend!

But read up on some of the things that happened during the first 50 years of USA history - how about the Vice President shooting one of his political rivals?

In 21st century, vice president shoots best friend!

The shuttles may have also stoked Russian fears of attack on their satellites. They did arm some of their satellites with guns and missles:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

I have a better idea. Send the freight by train hauled by electric locos. Most of the main lines in Europe are already electrified (but obviously not in the USA which is decades behind in rail tech).

No the US is not decades behind in rail tech. The US has a very advanced FREIGHT rail network and it is used far more than in Europe. The US rail network for freight is arguably the best in the world. The US does a shit job in passenger rail for a variety of reasons. But electrifying the rails in the US for freight trains by and large doesn't make much sense given the distances and geography involved. Diesel electric works pretty well for the use cases here.

A lot of industry and distrubution depots in the UK are alongside railways already, because they were originally placed there with rail sidings, now closed.

Rail delivery makes sense if you are getting large and routine deliveries or if you are doing intermodal transport. LTL truck freight makes a LOT more sense economically for many companies. Remember that you have to stop the whole train to drop off goods or a car to a rail siding. Trucks can go point to point and don't depend so much on coordination with other deliveries. Believe me that lots of companies have done the math on rail delivery. Sometimes it makes sense but often it doesn't.

... which doesn't really characterize the nature of the reversal. It could be anything from poles moving 6 degrees per day to years or hundreds of years. And the transition might be the poles wandering around for many years. Which won't result in the loss of the field, but it pointing in various directions or broken up into subdomains. All of which will have radically different effects on geomagnetically induced currents and procedures needed to deal with them.

Thanks for that, it looks like I'm one of today's lucky 10,000 who never heard of The Phantom Edit until today.

Not sure, but if the Russians were able to do it in with Buran, I very much doubt the US couldn't have done it with the space shuttle.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buran_(spacecraft)

After making an automated approach to Site 251 (known as Yubileyniy Airfield),[3] Buran touched down under its own control at 06:24:42 UTC and came to a stop at 06:25:24,[7] 206 minutes after launch.[8] Despite a lateral wind speed of 61.2 kilometres per hour (38.0 mph), Buran landed only 3 metres (9.8 ft) laterally and 10 metres (33 ft) longitudinally from the target mark.[8][9] It was the first space shuttle to perform an unmanned flight, including landing in fully automatic mode.[10] It was later found that Buran had lost only eight of its 38,000 thermal tiles over the course of its flight.[9]

As mentioned in the article update, the take down notice was from the Lâ(TM)Office Central de Lutte contre la Criminalité liée aux Technologies de lâ(TM)Information et de la Communication (OCLCTIC).

Translated relevant section:

This office deals with the most important computer cases that are referred to the central management of the Judicial Police .
Decree No. 2015-125 of 5 February 2015 allows him to block a website by simple administrative decision, outside the authority of a judge for sites "provoking acts of terrorism or by apologizing and sites displaying pornographic images and representations of minors ".

yes but in China you social credit score effects things like your ability to get an education, travel and well... live. It is the anatomy of evil, unless of coarse you are an atheist, in which case it is a incredibly innovative tool for properly ordering society.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Every country should stop doing business with china until they end it.

Housing costs are up in some markets due to the return to normal interest rates thanks to the thriving economy and very low unemployment rate.

The problem isn't that so much as they aren't builing entry-level housing anymore. Where I live(where I bought my home 4 years ago for less than $200k) the cheapest a new build is going for now is $350k for a townhome. And I am on the outer edge of a major metro area, a good 30-40 minutes outside the city limits.
 

But read up on some of the things that happened during the first 50 years of USA history - how about the Vice President shooting one of his political rivals?

History degree holder here (I know, queue the usual Slashdot derision for liberal arts majors-to make it worse I even have a polisci graduate degree!). I'd much rather go back to how we used to do it. No tickets-winner became President, second place became VP. Oh, and everyone in Congress still had to actually work for a living, legislating was just their side gig.

That technique is over a century old and is referred to as "Pepper's Ghost". It is well established technique used in illusion and other entertainment.

A hologram is a *THREE* dimensional image, not a two-dimensional one projected onto glass.

As you move relative to the position of a hologram, your perspective of it changes just as it would if you were to move around an actual 3-dimensional object, and even the differences between what your left eye sees and right eye sees will be different enough at close distances that your brain will tell you you are looking at something with actual depth.

No so-called "hologram" of Tupac ever did that.

Housing costs are up in some markets due to the return to normal interest rates thanks to the thriving economy and very low unemployment rate.

The gig economy is tiny, not a factor at all.

I agree with you about government partisanship, it's always been a mess although it seems to have gotten worse over the last 25 years. But read up on some of the things that happened during the first 50 years of USA history - how about the Vice President shooting one of his political rivals?

Of course there will be a recession at some point in the future, just no signs of one today.

No, the actual DNA is not changed, but it is tagged in certain places, so the cells can adjust the amount of proteins they generate depending on requirement. This happens all the time. If you go exercising or change your diet, then your gene expression is also modified.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Yeah, While they write gene expression, probably 75 percent of us think "gene mutation".

I was impressed that after that period in space, that Kelly is back to normal.

A projection on a transparent screen is not a hologram.

TL;DR: The star becomes unstable and doesn't live very long.

In the end, we have a pretty good model which puts surface temperature, mass, brightness and lifetime of a star in a single formula. And it tells us, that large stars 10 to 20 times the mass of the Sun will burn through their fusionable material in very short time (1 to 10 million years). Stars even heavier will be unstable, as their emitted energy is not enough to keep the outer shells of the star from falling down into the core, heating it up even more and causing further fusion processes to start, which in turn will cause an explosion of the star. It gets much brighter, pushes its outer shells into space and then cools down, until the remaining star contracts again under its own weight, causing the core to heat up again. Thats why stars of the size of 80 to 200 times the mass of the Sun are called LBVs, Luminous Blue Variables. Because of their heat, they shine in a blue light, and they constantly blow up, reach their peak of brightness, explode, cool down, contract and heat up again.

Stars much larger would be so unstable, that they don't live long enough to be even called stars. They will just collapse under their own weight and turn their core into a neutron star immediately, as the pressure at their core is strong enough to destroy all the electron shells, and push the electrons into the cores, turning protons into neutrons. The energy released will pushing the complete outer regions of the stars into space in a big explosion.

The largest stars we know so far have masses of around 200 times the mass of the Sun, e.g. Eta Carinae. Eta Carinae has about 150 to 250 times the mass of the Sun, but it shines between 1,000,000 million to 5,000,000 million times brighter (the brightness actually fluctuates).

There is a huge new building in Utah, with its own 65 megawatt electrical grid, that is ALL hard drives. You'll not get a tour of that though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

No, the actual DNA is not changed, but it is tagged in certain places, so the cells can adjust the amount of proteins they generate depending on requirement. This happens all the time. If you go exercising or change your diet, then your gene expression is also modified.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

LOL, Rei on suicide watch.
Let's refresh memory about Rei one month ago:
"I have no issue with them stating that they expect to be level 4 by the end of the year."
BTW level 4 means the driver may fall asleep in perfect safety.