I think you are getting species and Genus mixed up. According to this, hundreds of species of 6 types of genus, do bite people, and at least one of them has hundreds of species per genus. 3 of those genus are common in the US.
Cool random facts on this link... I remember when those damn striped Asian tiger mosquitoes became a thing. We didn't have them till the 80s. Man that is so annoying.
I had no idea about that weird Four Pests Campaign. This tidbit from the wiki link says that that crazy campaign, which was intended to end disease, helped contribute to 20 to 45 million people dying. Wow.
"With no sparrows to eat them, locust populations ballooned, swarming the country and compounding the ecological problems already caused by the Great Leap Forward, including widespread deforestation and misuse of poisons and pesticides.[10] Ecological imbalance is credited with exacerbating the Great Chinese Famine, in which 20–45 million people died of starvation."
Magnifiers... I sure wish Slashdot would allow better font size control on mobile phones, because it is just a tiny bit too small for me to read comfortably... so I zoom and then scroll left and right constantly which gets old and so I dont read much on my phone from here.
Oh, and I should have put the Dune link about the built-in magnifier on this thread.:)
"The Orange Catholic bible is a syncretic work created far into our future, but also well into the past in Dune. This piece of technovelgy combines a set of inventions in one package. The pages are of a filament paper, to delicate to be touched - so the pages are moved by the book itself, using small static charges. I own a very small (2.5"x3.5") copy of the complete New Testament that has very thin pages - it's approximately 1/3" thick. The filament paper book also has an automatic paging system; it flips through itself. And, of course, a built-in magnifying glass."
"Before I go, I've a gift for you, something I came across in packing." He put an object on the table between them -- black, oblong, no larger than the end of Paul's thumb.
Paul looked at it. Yueh noted how the boy did not reach for it, and thought: How cautious he is.
"It's a very old Orange Catholic Bible made for space travelers. Not a filmbook, but actually printed on filament paper. It has its own magnifier and electrostatic charge system."
He picked it up, demonstrated. "The book is held closed by the charge, which forces against spring-locked covers. You press the edge -- thus, and the pages you've selected repel each other and the book opens."
"It's so small."
"But it has eighteen hundred pages. You press the edge -- thus, and so . . . and the charge moves ahead one page at a time as you read. Never touch the actual pages with your fingers. The filament tissue is too delicate." He closed the book, handed it to Paul. "Try it."
From Dune, by Frank Herbert. Published by Putnam in 1965 Additional resources -
Computers are great for what they are great at... not so great for note taking/giving/assignments for kids.
As a computer geek, I am shocked at all the computer pushing done in school. I mean... my kid wastes so much time trying to find assignments on their all over the place web interface/site, and then doing homework in google docs is so frustrating with all the random delays (is this normal for google docs or is it some crap-end free school servers they are giving them?)... I just about want to shoot myself when I am helping him.
In his English language class, everything is hand written. Guess what is easier, faster, and more to the point? Yeah, writing stuff down with a pencil and looking it up in your assignment notebook. I guess one thing that is better on the computer are lastyear's reading assignments... no low quality B&W printout to deal with. Then again, you can't take notes on the computer screen on a Chromebook the way their class is set up.
I know three rural households in my state that got broadband very recently. One was this year, another was about 3 years ago,... both from Charter cable. The third guy actually has a choice between Charter and ATT surprisingly enough.
So at least here, Charter seems to be trying to spend the money getting options out to people. Took them long enough though.
Hopefully benign. Someone needs to study if those micro plastics encourage bad gut bacteria when the plastics are passing through or getting stuck on the gut lining. How about the news about the parasitic worm that helps improve good gut bacteria?
What? I fly a fair bit... the facial compare to your passport/ID part is never the hold up. It is the bag scanning that holds up the lines. Are we talking about the same thing? TSA lines right?...not after you exit the plane in another country and go through customs, which is slow, granted.
Is it normal practice still in Microsoft (and other big shops) to have devs who write code as fast as possible with zero time spent on fixing broken code? They shuffle all the broken first pass code to their B team and have them try to figure it out, which much take forever since you have to figure out where the other person's mind was.
This just seems like it begs for bugs and issues. But it surely gets code out the door fast!!!
10 years ago we backed up using tapes. Always always always had issues with reliability of the data on them. Talking to peers, everyone experienced these problems. I don't see anybody talking about it here... am I missing something?
Rich bastards often rely on stupid people to give them a nice chunk of their paycheck over their lifetime. I'm surprised more rich bastards aren't banning anything to making people smarter. Maybe they think they will be able to pay for their offspring (well, the one that they care enough about because it's an incarnation of Mr. No.1 richbastard himself) to be made smarter.
The appendix to Dune also notes that the chief commandment of the Butlerian Jihad remains in the Orange Catholic Bible as "Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind."
We are seeing it also in the deep south in places that have had +/- 5% human population change in 50 years with plenty of nature and forests. There are definitely less flying insects of all kinds that I can think of... butterflies, lovebugs, june beetles, ladybugs, mosquitoes, moths, dragonflies, honeybees, bumblebees... and at least some if not all insectivorous bird species. I think wasps are about the same as they have been, but maybe that's because they congregate around human buildings so are easy to spot.
For instance, certain flowering trees at my parents' used to attract dozens of honeybees my entire childhood. Now, you are lucky to see over 5 bees per 2 trees during the same busy months. Lovebugs are not a big deal driving down country roads in August anymore, whereas before they would cover every car's front and windshield. Unless we are in a 10 year temporary slump, I am worried.
I've had similar notices here in the deep south of the US. Lovebugs are the ones you always have to deal with every summer. Now their numbers are a small fraction of what they used to be in areas that have had no major changes to forest or roads or anything. Something is doing it... a combination of insecticides and screwy weather patterns or diseases or straight up climate change. It is damn scary.
I don't know that it is climate change, but what explains Germany's 76% decline in flying insects in pristine nature preserve habitat? That shit has me worried.
"In 2014, an international team of biologists estimated that, in the past 35 years, the abundance of invertebrates such as beetles and bees had decreased by 45 percent. In places where long-term insect data are available, mainly in Europe, insect numbers are plummeting. A study last year showed a 76 percent decrease in flying insects in the past few decades in German nature preserves."
Agreed that habitat loss is not the problem in these studies, as they are going to heavily forested areas to look at trends. Germany is showing 76% flying insect loss in German nature preserves?!?! They have a ton of forests, 32% of Germany is covered in forest.
Anecdotally, from 30 years back to today we have I'd estimate about 1/20 the amount of bees in the three forested areas I frequent in my state (relatives live in the sticks). Butterflies are less than half. Mosquitoes are probably 1/5 of what they used to be. There are no new roads or change in human population in these areas... I assumed it was mostly pesticides that get sprayed for mosquitoes... but is it something more insidious? They aren't spraying to kill bugs in German forests or in Puerto Rico rain forests. This has me worried. If the insects die out, we are screwed. Insects and other arthropods by biomass, make up way more than say the billions of us big humans. They outweigh us easily... we are estimated at about 0.06 their mass. If that declines to 1/4 of what it used to be, shit is going to get messed up.
I wouldn't waste my money on renting something anyway, but stream screams laggy, which would make me scream in a continuous stream. Haha. But yeah, no thanks.
I partially agree with this. Not sure adjusting things is always the right kind of busywork, but yes until cars are 100% auto we need to be alert. Keeping your eyes moving on the road looking for other vehicles in every direction and looking for issues far ahead of you, etc. is something that will keep you out of wrecks. And I totally agree that if you are zoning out 99% of the time, that 1% of the time when you need to take control... it's not going to be pretty.
If you need to flash your lights a few times to warn oncoming cars of an emergency or hazard that you just passed by, you can do it... at least on the 3-series. It turns off the auto-beam option, but you can enable it again by pushing the stalk forward. That is unless another update has changed this feature, I gather.
Oh man, high-beams is not a manual option? How the hell is that a thing? It sounds like they have auto-highbeam options that are not close to perfect either. Yeah, I very much need my manual controls for things like that.
While I love Tesla's cars in a big big way, and considered getting one semi-recently... I still am not at all a fan of a screen that houses most basic controls. Headlights? I certainly use them manually every day, because my auto-headlights only come on at night or really dim conditions... and around here for making yourself visible to others you want your lights on any time you are driving except maybe around noontime because it is so bright outside other people won't notice you anyway. Maybe Tesla has an option for that, maybe not.
What about seat warmers? A/C? Radio (I'm guessing radio controls are on the steering wheel)? I am constantly adjusting that sort of thing, and I mean constantly. Recycle vs. outside AC air, change from upper vents to upper + lower. Fan speed up and down. Temp up and down. I find the fastest way on my car to get max AC is to turn it on automatic, then crank the temp dial down to the minimum. 4 minutes later I have to turn off auto and readjust all those settings manually. I can't buy a car with that stuff on a flat screen with no tactile feedback, I'd lose my mind.
You know that goofy high pitched in and out 70's stuff that would start to play every time shit was about to go down? Yeah, I'm hearing it over and over in my head right now.
Hell, this is a good point. I have to go out of my way not to hit squirrels. While squirrels might be the hardest to avoid over here, I sure as hell don't want robot vehicles hitting my cats!!!
Slashdot Mirror
I think you are getting species and Genus mixed up. According to this, hundreds of species of 6 types of genus, do bite people, and at least one of them has hundreds of species per genus. 3 of those genus are common in the US.
https://www.megacatch.com/mosq...
Cool random facts on this link... I remember when those damn striped Asian tiger mosquitoes became a thing. We didn't have them till the 80s. Man that is so annoying.
https://www.megacatch.com/mosq...
I had no idea about that weird Four Pests Campaign. This tidbit from the wiki link says that that crazy campaign, which was intended to end disease, helped contribute to 20 to 45 million people dying. Wow.
"With no sparrows to eat them, locust populations ballooned, swarming the country and compounding the ecological problems already caused by the Great Leap Forward, including widespread deforestation and misuse of poisons and pesticides.[10] Ecological imbalance is credited with exacerbating the Great Chinese Famine, in which 20–45 million people died of starvation."
Magnifiers... I sure wish Slashdot would allow better font size control on mobile phones, because it is just a tiny bit too small for me to read comfortably... so I zoom and then scroll left and right constantly which gets old and so I dont read much on my phone from here.
Oh, and I should have put the Dune link about the built-in magnifier on this thread. :)
http://technovelgy.com/ct/cont...
"The Orange Catholic bible is a syncretic work created far into our future, but also well into the past in Dune. This piece of technovelgy combines a set of inventions in one package. The pages are of a filament paper, to delicate to be touched - so the pages are moved by the book itself, using small static charges. I own a very small (2.5"x3.5") copy of the complete New Testament that has very thin pages - it's approximately 1/3" thick. The filament paper book also has an automatic paging system; it flips through itself. And, of course, a built-in magnifying glass."
http://technovelgy.com/ct/cont...
"Before I go, I've a gift for you, something I came across in packing." He put an object on the table between them -- black, oblong, no larger than the end of Paul's thumb.
Paul looked at it. Yueh noted how the boy did not reach for it, and thought: How cautious he is.
"It's a very old Orange Catholic Bible made for space travelers. Not a filmbook, but actually printed on filament paper. It has its own magnifier and electrostatic charge system."
He picked it up, demonstrated. "The book is held closed by the charge, which forces against spring-locked covers. You press the edge -- thus, and the pages you've selected repel each other and the book opens."
"It's so small."
"But it has eighteen hundred pages. You press the edge -- thus, and so . . . and the charge moves ahead one page at a time as you read. Never touch the actual pages with your fingers. The filament tissue is too delicate." He closed the book, handed it to Paul. "Try it."
From Dune, by Frank Herbert.
Published by Putnam in 1965
Additional resources -
Computers are great for what they are great at... not so great for note taking/giving/assignments for kids.
As a computer geek, I am shocked at all the computer pushing done in school. I mean... my kid wastes so much time trying to find assignments on their all over the place web interface/site, and then doing homework in google docs is so frustrating with all the random delays (is this normal for google docs or is it some crap-end free school servers they are giving them?)... I just about want to shoot myself when I am helping him.
In his English language class, everything is hand written. Guess what is easier, faster, and more to the point? Yeah, writing stuff down with a pencil and looking it up in your assignment notebook. I guess one thing that is better on the computer are lastyear's reading assignments... no low quality B&W printout to deal with. Then again, you can't take notes on the computer screen on a Chromebook the way their class is set up.
I know three rural households in my state that got broadband very recently. One was this year, another was about 3 years ago,... both from Charter cable. The third guy actually has a choice between Charter and ATT surprisingly enough.
So at least here, Charter seems to be trying to spend the money getting options out to people. Took them long enough though.
Hopefully benign. Someone needs to study if those micro plastics encourage bad gut bacteria when the plastics are passing through or getting stuck on the gut lining. How about the news about the parasitic worm that helps improve good gut bacteria?
https://www.the-scientist.com/...
https://www.sciencedaily.com/r...
What? I fly a fair bit... the facial compare to your passport/ID part is never the hold up. It is the bag scanning that holds up the lines. Are we talking about the same thing? TSA lines right? ...not after you exit the plane in another country and go through customs, which is slow, granted.
Is it normal practice still in Microsoft (and other big shops) to have devs who write code as fast as possible with zero time spent on fixing broken code? They shuffle all the broken first pass code to their B team and have them try to figure it out, which much take forever since you have to figure out where the other person's mind was.
This just seems like it begs for bugs and issues. But it surely gets code out the door fast!!!
10 years ago we backed up using tapes. Always always always had issues with reliability of the data on them. Talking to peers, everyone experienced these problems. I don't see anybody talking about it here... am I missing something?
Yep, was thinking the exact same thing. Amazing how an ecosystem needs all or most of its parts to work right! I hope they do it.
Love the game, hate the cheating... it's going to kill the whole thing.
Rich bastards often rely on stupid people to give them a nice chunk of their paycheck over their lifetime. I'm surprised more rich bastards aren't banning anything to making people smarter. Maybe they think they will be able to pay for their offspring (well, the one that they care enough about because it's an incarnation of Mr. No.1 richbastard himself) to be made smarter.
Wikipedia quote from "Dune":
The appendix to Dune also notes that the chief commandment of the Butlerian Jihad remains in the Orange Catholic Bible as "Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
We are seeing it also in the deep south in places that have had +/- 5% human population change in 50 years with plenty of nature and forests. There are definitely less flying insects of all kinds that I can think of... butterflies, lovebugs, june beetles, ladybugs, mosquitoes, moths, dragonflies, honeybees, bumblebees... and at least some if not all insectivorous bird species. I think wasps are about the same as they have been, but maybe that's because they congregate around human buildings so are easy to spot.
For instance, certain flowering trees at my parents' used to attract dozens of honeybees my entire childhood. Now, you are lucky to see over 5 bees per 2 trees during the same busy months. Lovebugs are not a big deal driving down country roads in August anymore, whereas before they would cover every car's front and windshield. Unless we are in a 10 year temporary slump, I am worried.
I've had similar notices here in the deep south of the US. Lovebugs are the ones you always have to deal with every summer. Now their numbers are a small fraction of what they used to be in areas that have had no major changes to forest or roads or anything. Something is doing it... a combination of insecticides and screwy weather patterns or diseases or straight up climate change. It is damn scary.
I don't know that it is climate change, but what explains Germany's 76% decline in flying insects in pristine nature preserve habitat? That shit has me worried.
"In 2014, an international team of biologists estimated that, in the past 35 years, the abundance of invertebrates such as beetles and bees had decreased by 45 percent. In places where long-term insect data are available, mainly in Europe, insect numbers are plummeting. A study last year showed a 76 percent decrease in flying insects in the past few decades in German nature preserves."
Agreed that habitat loss is not the problem in these studies, as they are going to heavily forested areas to look at trends. Germany is showing 76% flying insect loss in German nature preserves?!?! They have a ton of forests, 32% of Germany is covered in forest.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Anecdotally, from 30 years back to today we have I'd estimate about 1/20 the amount of bees in the three forested areas I frequent in my state (relatives live in the sticks). Butterflies are less than half. Mosquitoes are probably 1/5 of what they used to be. There are no new roads or change in human population in these areas... I assumed it was mostly pesticides that get sprayed for mosquitoes... but is it something more insidious? They aren't spraying to kill bugs in German forests or in Puerto Rico rain forests. This has me worried. If the insects die out, we are screwed. Insects and other arthropods by biomass, make up way more than say the billions of us big humans. They outweigh us easily... we are estimated at about 0.06 their mass. If that declines to 1/4 of what it used to be, shit is going to get messed up.
Number of species per organism category:
https://manoa.hawaii.edu/seale...
The biomass distribution on Earth graphic:
http://www.pnas.org/content/pn...
The biomass distribution on Earth:
http://www.pnas.org/content/ea...
I wouldn't waste my money on renting something anyway, but stream screams laggy, which would make me scream in a continuous stream. Haha. But yeah, no thanks.
I partially agree with this. Not sure adjusting things is always the right kind of busywork, but yes until cars are 100% auto we need to be alert. Keeping your eyes moving on the road looking for other vehicles in every direction and looking for issues far ahead of you, etc. is something that will keep you out of wrecks. And I totally agree that if you are zoning out 99% of the time, that 1% of the time when you need to take control... it's not going to be pretty.
Well hang on... this other discussion says you can do high/low beams with a "stalk" on the 3-series at least. This sounds pretty decent to me:
https://forums.tesla.com/forum...
If you need to flash your lights a few times to warn oncoming cars of an emergency or hazard that you just passed by, you can do it... at least on the 3-series. It turns off the auto-beam option, but you can enable it again by pushing the stalk forward. That is unless another update has changed this feature, I gather.
Oh man, high-beams is not a manual option? How the hell is that a thing? It sounds like they have auto-highbeam options that are not close to perfect either. Yeah, I very much need my manual controls for things like that.
Some discussion here on a Tesla forum:
https://forums.tesla.com/forum...
Still, Tesla is doing so many things right. They are close!!!
While I love Tesla's cars in a big big way, and considered getting one semi-recently... I still am not at all a fan of a screen that houses most basic controls. Headlights? I certainly use them manually every day, because my auto-headlights only come on at night or really dim conditions... and around here for making yourself visible to others you want your lights on any time you are driving except maybe around noontime because it is so bright outside other people won't notice you anyway. Maybe Tesla has an option for that, maybe not.
What about seat warmers? A/C? Radio (I'm guessing radio controls are on the steering wheel)? I am constantly adjusting that sort of thing, and I mean constantly. Recycle vs. outside AC air, change from upper vents to upper + lower. Fan speed up and down. Temp up and down. I find the fastest way on my car to get max AC is to turn it on automatic, then crank the temp dial down to the minimum. 4 minutes later I have to turn off auto and readjust all those settings manually. I can't buy a car with that stuff on a flat screen with no tactile feedback, I'd lose my mind.
You know that goofy high pitched in and out 70's stuff that would start to play every time shit was about to go down? Yeah, I'm hearing it over and over in my head right now.
From Ironside apparently:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Hell, this is a good point. I have to go out of my way not to hit squirrels. While squirrels might be the hardest to avoid over here, I sure as hell don't want robot vehicles hitting my cats!!!