There's a classic phenomena whereby as soon as a problem considered to require AI is solved, it is defined away as "not really AI". This happened with Chess, with Go, with automated vehicles, with handwriting recognition, with facial recognition... every one was claimed to be the domain of "real intelligence", right up until computers could do them as well as humans.
Perhaps some people do this. I just hold to Alan Turing's original definitions in the Turing Test and his examples for what would constitute a kind of "passing" version of AI. Those are from 65 years ago.
My standard hasn't changed. If you're not familiar with what I'm talking about, go read the original description of the Turing Test and the kind of behavior and responses he expected from a competent AI. We're nowhere near that sort of thing.
I'd guess perhaps because it validates this sort of rude, narcissistic behavior rather than shames it?
I really don't understand this argument. Social norms are defined by communities. If people are in a community of like-minded people, who don't mind others' texting at movies, how are they being "rude" or "narcissistic"?
Don't get me wrong: I find such behavior in "normal" theaters to be obnoxious. But if they want to have their own theater where they can do this, why should it bother me? Why should I feel the need to shame someone who isn't even doing the behavior I find "shameful" in my presence?
I see this as no different from one restaurant having a "jackets required" policy and insisting on reasonable etiquette and decorum, while another restaurant allows people in with ripped jeans who like to swear and be rowdy as they have a good time.
Maybe I don't prefer the latter in my dining experience, but I know some people who might. If they're not doing it in my presence, why should I care if a restaurant offers that option?? They're only being "rude and narcissistic" if others around find them to be so.
Of course, if it ever got to the point that this behavior became the "norm" so it was impossible to find a theater that offered the "no texting" experience, I think that would be a loss. Or... well, actually, I don't go to movie theaters that much, so I probably would just stop going the few times that I do. They just lost my business. That's a choice.
Anyhow, I don't get the need to "shame" others for non-destructive, non-violent behavior that doesn't affect me and isn't even done in my presence. Just like I don't give a crap whether somebody uses the "wrong fork" to eat fish at a BBQ joint. Social norms and etiquette are defined by community and circumstance.
Who needs the scientific method when we have CONSENSUS? Let's just call it a day and go home now.
Consensus is PART of the scientific method. It's the only way we actually get to DO "science".
Imagine "science" without the possibility of consensus:
"Hey, that whole gravity thing could be bogus! I know other researchers have verified it thousands of times, but maybe they're wrong. Let's just do some calibration tests every day in the lab to be sure stuff doesn't randomly start floating UP instead of falling down. After all, we can't accept consensus!"
"Well, I was going to do a chemistry experiment today, but I don't really believe that whole atomic theory of matter. I mean, there's 'consensus' on the idea that molecules are made up of atoms, and a substance has consistent properties based on that. But maybe water isn't really made up of H2O. Maybe if I zap it with electricity, it will turn out that it's actually made of microscopic gnomes! The gnomes could be magically giving the illusion of molecular structure. Before I start my chem experiments, I need to be sure my hypothetical gnomes aren't going to ruin the properties of my solvent. So let's test for gnomes every day!"
Obviously these are ridiculous examples. But actual science in practice requires that we accept a bunch of "givens" to actually make progress. Those are generally derived through scientific consensus. Yes, sometimes even those fundamental assumptions are shown to be wrong, at which point we have a "paradigm shift" (in Thomas Kuhn's terms) or modify the "hard core of our research program" (in Imre Lakatos's terms).
But "normal science" simply couldn't operate without foundational assumptions. Acting like there's no role for consensus in science is just ridiculous.
Now -- I understand that there may be greater range for doubt in the scientific community about how climate change works exactly than, say, for the basic idea of gravity or that water molecules are H2O. That's reflected in TFA -- the numbers vary from 90% to 99% consensus... I assume for gravity and water the numbers would be more like 99.999%.
There's still room for people to try to question the foundational assumptions within normal science. But TFA notes that for most scientists, they consider questioning the assumption itself to be less worthy of attention than refining the models within the paradigm. That's how science works... in reality. The bizarre pseudo-Popperian nonsense that sometimes gets spouted around here that "every scientific fact is always up for falsification!" simply isn't true.
If your lab equipment seemed to indicate that your water was made of tiny gnomes, the vast majority of scientists would probably assume there was something wrong with the equipment -- or that someone was playing a prank. And that would be a heck of a lot more likely than that they had just falsified the atomic theory of matter by discovering tiny magical gnomes that produced the illusion of molecular structure. Realizing this is part of being a scientist, and that involves accepting current consensus about foundational concepts.
1. Over 90% of scientists think the Earth is more likely to be warming up than cooling down.
Yes, that's what TFA says.
Even skeptics usually agree with this.
Actually, the reason for studies like this is because there are plenty of "skeptics" (read, "deniers") who do NOT agree with this. Every time there's a story on Slashdot about climate change, there's a whole group of people who come out of the woodwork and try to cite how the data from the past X number of years is bad and the warming trend isn't real, etc. Or global cooling was a thing not so long ago. Or whatever.
Yes, legitimate "skeptics" about the role of humans in climate change do generally believe that the planet is still warming. But there are plenty of others who dispute that.
2. Most of these scientists said humans had some sort of impact on the climate, but exactly how much was under debate.
Actually, most of the studies cited in TFA required that the respondents committed to belief that humans were a "significant" contributor to climate change, and some asked respondents whether humans were the "dominant" cause. The wording varied from study to study, and you can read the details in the full metastudy.
Regardless, most of the studies in TFA imply something much stronger than your statement.
In fact, the consensus view at present is that the impact of CO2 is overestimated.
Nope. That's not the current consensus view. There have been some studies which have rejected the more dire models for CO2. But your links are a few years old. Basically, your links are referring to issues where models didn't predict the "slowdown" in climate change that happened in the early 2000s. It has now picked up again.
And this is likely just due to random elements in a chaotic system. Subsequent studies have suggested that randomness in the earth's climate from year-to-year probably has multiple times the amount of impact that alterations to the CO2 model (or other factors, like sunlight absorption models, ocean absorption models, etc.) have.
Bottom line: the validity of these models has to be judged over longer timespans, to avoid the year-to-year blips in a chaotic system. With that taken into account, the general CO2 models likely aren't that far off.
By the way, before anyone calls me out on this, I was somewhat joking about the title "assistant deputy key grip," making fun of the hierarchical set of titles often running within closing credits. Obviously anyone who knows much about film crews will know such a title is a bit nonsensical, though I wouldn't put it past someone in Hollywood to create such a position.
50% of people who have heart attacks have "normal" cholesterol levels. Just let that one sink in. And I know there are stats about everything, but that is a big one.
I don't actually know enough about the context here to evaluate that claim, but more importantly -- your statistic is insufficient to conclude anything.
A statement like "50% of people who have heart attacks have 'normal' cholesterol levels" is absolutely useless for evaluating the potential link between heart attacks and cholesterol without a sense of incidence of "high cholesterol" and "heart attacks" within the population.
Just for a quick statistical primer, imagine the following scenario:
1000 people
100 people have high cholesterol
100 people have heart attacks
Let's take your claim: 50% of people who had heart attacks had normal cholesterol. Knowing the above stats, that implies:
(1) 50% of heart attacks were people with high cholesterol.
(2) Thus, chances of having a heart attack with high cholesterol = 50/100 = 50%.
(3) Chances of having a heart attack without high cholesterol = 50/900 = 5.55%.
Overall, those with high cholesterol have about 9 times greater chance of having a heart attack. High cholesterol appears to be a VERY STRONG PREDICTOR of heart attacks.
(We could go even more extreme and imagine there were 200 people with heart attacks, in which case 100% of people with high cholesterol had heart attacks... even though your "50%" stat is still true. In that case, I think I'd be really concerned if someone had high cholesterol.)
Alternatively, consider a different scenario:
1000 people
400 people have high cholesterol
10 people have heart attacks
Again, using your assumption that 50% of heart attacks are in people with normal cholesterol, that means:
(1) Chances of having a heart attack with high cholesterol = 5/300 = 1.25%.
(2) Chances of having a heart attack with normal cholesterol = 5/600 = 0.83%.
In this case, things are much more equal -- high cholesterol has higher risk, but less than 50% higher.
In this case, heart attacks are much more rare, and high cholesterol might be a factor, but it seems there are a lot of other things to look at.
Bottom line -- your statistic is meaningless without context. Citing a rate of incidence for a subgroup tells you nothing about whether that subgroup is significant or not... you'd need more stats to evaluate your claim. Depending on the larger population stats, your "50%" statistic might even be incredibly strong evidence that high cholesterol is the best factor we have to predict heart attacks... which I think is the opposite point that you wanted us to have "sink in." (I don't think this latter hypothesis is true, merely that your stat is quite ambiguous.)
Recommendations where based on the best science we knew at at the time. However, that science was still in the very early stages.
No, that's not quite true. As with many studies in science, there were broad conclusions drawn on the basis of indirect data. It's very common to read a study that collected data on A and B, but the "discussion section" at the end notes that B is also potentially related to C and D.
Other articles note this potential association connecting A to C and D, and eventually that becomes dogma within a discipline... unless it is tested directly. Example in nutritional science is the old belief that all high-cholesterol foods (e.g., eggs) must be bad because high blood cholesterol levels seem to be bad. Except no one until recently really tried to consider whether high-cholesterol foods actually CAUSE high blood cholesterol levels. Turns out they have a relatively small impact, because the body manufactures most of the cholesterol within the body. So intake of cholesterol often has a relatively small impact compared to internal body regulation and function.
Thus, the "science" wasn't really "in the early stages." Instead, people made broad assumptions based on incorrect physical models. They measured a correlation between A and B, but assumed it must apply to cases involving C, D, E, and F, just because it seemed "intuitive." But "intuition" is not science, and models based on no empirical evidence (as many physiological assumptions were in the late 1800s and early 1900s, which laid the basis for nutrition science until recently) aren't very good science. It wasn't just "in the early stages" -- it was really incomplete and rife with unsupported conclusions.
There are lots of things we can say in general and while they are right on average within people of the similar descent they won't be anywhere close to absolute.
One of the fascinating things about biology is there are experiments I can do 100x and get almost that many different results. Biology has randomness, it has mutations, and nothing is every simple.
What you say is true -- and it is quite hard to design good experiments on something as broad as nutrition, which usually has huge numbers of uncontrolled variables. It's not just "randomness," though. It's that it's really expensive and difficult to do studies where you lock people up for a few years and control their complete dietary input... which is what you'd really need to do a proper test of many nutritional hypotheses. And you're right that there are variations in genetics and individuals that sometimes argue against generalizations.
On the other hand, many of the BIG failures in nutritional science weren't due to these little nuances of individuals. They were based on broad misinterpretations of data and drawing overly broad conclusions from that data... usually based on all sorts of underlying assumptions that were never tested directly.
These are flaws in the way scientific methods were applied. And they shouldn't just be "swept under the rug" because "humans are complex and we now realize that more."
Considering Deadpool has alone has made over $750 million dollars globally, on a budget of less than $60 million, and that's not counting big blockbusters of late like Star Wars VII and even Batman vs Superman, I think claims of the movie industry's demise are heavily overstated.
While I agree that the industry claims are overstated, it's important to note that the movies that make many times their budget are rather rare. The cost of making -- and often more importantly, marketing -- a movie these days are often quite significant. They don't have to be, and many "independent" films manage to be made on a shoestring budget with rather high quality nowadays.
But lots of mainstream Hollywood films have budgets in excess of $100 million, and they might spend that much or more on marketing. That's a lot of ticket sales to make up if the movie bombs... and many do.
Personally, I blame most of this on ridiculous salaries or profit deals paid to certain very elite groups -- the main producers, directors, high-profile writers, well-known actors, etc. Often the assistant deputy key grip isn't making huge amounts of money, and extras are often lucky to scrape together a part-time living.
If the industry were run more rationally, we'd probably have a lot more films made for a few million dollars, with the occasion mega hit that makes hundreds of millions. Instead, all these studio executives like to gamble big-time... thinking that hundreds of millions in investment will turn into billions in return. Sometimes they win, but often they lose. And with such a volatile market that's often completely unpredictable, they often struggle to maintain profits, despite a few blockbusters every year.
As the old saying goes, "Ya pays yer money; ya takes yer chances." Studio execs just seem to like gambling with huge amounts of money.
Pirating can (potentially - that's the whole point under discussion here) end up depriving the owner of the value of the thing they created,
if it results in insufficient interest in paying for the item. That's the whole point of copyright law. I'm always bugged by these analogies
to "regular" theft. Copyright violation is indeed different than stealing, but it is potentially similar with regard to depriving a creator or group of creators of
earned recompense for their effort.
THIS.
I think copyright law is really screwed up, fines are at ridiculous levels, and stuff should go into the public domain after 14 years (perhaps 28 at most, according to the original copyright act of 1790).
But all of this quibbling over whether or not it's REALLY "theft" or not is just nonsense. Yes, it's not like taking a unique piece of physical property. On the other hand, in some circumstances it can deprive the copyright owner of significant profits from his/her work.
If you wrote an awesome software application, and right after you finished it, I sneaked over to your desk and made a copy of it -- and then proceeded to sell it to make a million dollars before you realized anything happened... and then you were unable to build a customer base when you tried to release it yourself, I think it's reasonable to say that I "took" something from you.
But according to GP's argument, I only "made a copy," so I didn't "steal" anything. The point is that theft is not only about the taking of an actual item, but potential loss of revenue from that item too. If you stole my business car and totalled it, I could bring a civil suit not only for the cost to replace the car, but potentially for any loss of income I had due to losing use of my car. That latter is cost is directly connected to the theft and trying to claim that it isn't "really" theft kinda misses the point of what copyright law was originally designed for. (Despite the fact that the current copyright system is totally broken, yadda, yadda, yadda...)
How is striking going to convince a corporation to stop offshoring and automating jobs? It seems to me that it will convince them to do more.
Notice the groups mentioned in TFS, including an "Electrical Workers" union.
Verizon can't really "offshore" or "automate" electrical wire installations in houses or businesses, or electrical repairs that need to be tailored to a specific location.
Granted, some of the other striking workers may be in service applications that could theoretically be sent overseas, but as long as the workers who do actual work that is required to be physically located within the U.S. are standing in solidarity with the other workers, Verizon could be a heap of trouble without those folks.
Not every job can be offshored. Skilled trades that deal directly with customers' equipment at a physical location (electricians, plumbers, etc.) are harder to offshore than just about anything else... including management.
But it does seem as though local jurisdictions will be able to pass greater protections if they feel like it. (not about bathrooms though)
Umm, I don't see how you get that. From the very next sentence after you quoted from your own link:
The order doesnâ(TM)t change the provisions of HB2 that prohibit cities and counties from adopting broader anti-discrimination ordinances than state law, which doesnâ(TM)t include sexual orientation or gender identity protections.
I mean, if they aren't going to enforce it, what's the point of mentioning it?
Well... because most "terms of service" are "cover-your-ass" legalese, rather than something companies actively care about.
Seriously -- is this that hard to understand why a company wants to have a disclaimer like this in their terms? (e.g., By accepting the contract for our services, you agree not to use our services for illegal acts.) If you don't include that disclaimer, some idiot could come after you and say, "You facilitated the illegal actions of person X. Therefore you are partly responsible," either criminally or just in a civil lawsuit.
If you have this disclaimer, you can say, "Well, we told them this was not acceptable." This could be particularly important in cases with much higher stakes than copyright claims, e.g., child pornography cases, cases where an internet connection is used to coordinate violent crime or even terrorist attacks, etc.
This is of course, assuming that sufficient evidence of illegal activity exists in the first place.
Well, the issue isn't just "evidence of illegal activity," it's intent of the subscriber. That's why a lot of these copyright cases have ended up failing in courts. Was the subscriber to the service actually responsible for the copyright infringement, or did they have an open wifi (or one that was hacked), so the infringement was done by someone else?
And in any case, the terms of service usually don't state a mandatory response. They usually aren't, "If you do X, we will terminate your service." Instead they say something like, "X is prohibited and may be grounds for suspension or complete termination of service."
Whatever. The point is that internet service may not be a "right," but denial should be for a serious cause, say, coming out of a court declaration. Not just some vague accusation. Otherwise, we should start arguing that the local pizza joint should lose its phone service because of a rumor that some mobsters used the phone to coordinate a "hit."
You are incorrect as to who bought whom. Comcast bought Time-Warner
I'm really confused about why this post was modded up. (1) Comcast didn't actually buy Time Warner CABLE, as your links note. Charter is trying to buy Time Warner Cable, but the deal still needs approval. (2) This discussion seems to be about whether media companies buy cable companies or the reverse or whatever... except this purchase is only about Time Warner CABLE. Neither Comcast nor Charter has been buying Time Warner MEDIA, which has been a completely separate corporate entity from Time Warner CABLE since 2009.
However it is only recently that societies stopped punishing infidelity
There's a reasonably good chance that from an evoloutionary point of view that it's only recently that it started being punished.
How do you come to that conclusion? Your suggestive comment about penis shape only implies that non-monogamy may have been more common than we might think given modern social norms. But it doesn't necessarily imply that the social norms are recent.
Instead, it could imply that the typical evolutionary pattern was to avoid appearance of polygamy, even if it was happening in practice. In fact, that's part of the whole argument about "cuckolding" in biology -- a female gets the benefit of the public support of a "provider male" while also getting the strong genes of an "alpha male." That sort of practice could easily take place within a society that views polygamy negatively.
In most societies, human sexual practices tend to be "private" affairs. Even among nudists, it's often taboo to be too sexual "out in the open." Thus, there's no reason why official social mores necessarily conform to actual sexual practices in human societies -- in fact, there's very strong evidence that this is often NOT the case.
Moreover, your penis-shape argument actually contradicts your social argument. If society (usually dominated by males, in most human societies) was outwardly accepting of polygamous females, why would we have evolved a mechanism to remove other men's sperm? Shouldn't the men just have "been okay with" the polygamy and accept impregnation by others? The penis shape actually implies that men have strong genetic reasons to ensure their own paternity, which their bodies may naturally do physically and which they are probably likely to enforce by social norms once societies developed.
While many women would choose to adopt, especially if they cannot have children of their own many men will give serious consideration to changing their to one that is fertile rather than adopt or at least have a surrogate mother as they want the child's gene to be of their own.
Do you have any data to back up this assertion? Basically, you're implying that women are more likely to adopt regardless but men are more likely to want to pass on their genes.
But you're comparing infertile women with fertile men. Don't you think that infertile men would "choose to adopt," assuming that they are interested in raising children, just as infertile women would?
And do you really think that fertile women are more interested in raising other people's children than fertile men are? Women may be more likely to be willing to care for children in general, whether due to biological drives or cultural trends. But my experience with women is that they put a VERY high premium on having their own offspring where possible, which is why we see so many women today going for infertility treatments as the age of marriage goes up and more women are past the prime age to have kids.
Not to mention that almost every other day when there's an article on Slashdot about women and careers, someone brings up that female salaries are often lower because women end up taking a few years off to raise families -- and they do so while they are young so the kids can be their own. A 45-year-old or 50-year-old woman is generally perfectly capable of caring for an adopted child, but many women are very concerned about the "biological clock" issues and want to have their own kids earlier.
And I've personally known at least one situation where a woman broke up a marriage because of her husband's fertility issue -- only to remarry quickly and have kids with someone else. Not saying that this anecdote is proof of a trend, but I don't think there's as much truth to your sex-bias toward/away from adoption as you claim.
This is a good time to drop them a letter AND an email AND a phone call AND a fax while at it. Go on, do what's expected of you but too few of you actually do.
I don't give them money, so they don't care.
Well, they won't care AS MUCH. But if enough actual voters contact them about something, so that it appears to be an issue which could affect election, they might care.
Campaign financing money has a huge influence, as Oliver notes. But short of outright election fraud, representatives still do actually need enough real people (not just rich donors) voting to get elected.
Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Congressional Fundraising (HBO)
Well worth 21 min of your time.
I don't mean to be too critical, since I've watched this myself and agree with the problem -- but you know what would be a BETTER use of 21 minutes of your time? Write a letter AND an email AND a phone call AND a fax on an issue you actually care about.
Oliver's piece is only informative for people who don't know any better -- short version: in case you didn't already realize this, Congress people spend a huge chunk of time soliciting donations. And obviously those people who make big donations will probably get the ear of representatives more.
While Oliver can be entertaining at times, I'm not sure this message is really worth the 21 minutes -- better to actually get off your butt and do something. That's one of the problems I feel like happens with Oliver's program: he's drawing attention to big issues, but how many people end up just complaining about it on social media, but never go the extra step to try to fix anything? Or at least put forth a minimum effort to contact someone and complain about it?
Yeah, you're not going to get as much attention from your representative as a rich donor. But if hundreds or thousands of constituents contact a representative about the same issue, it will be noted.
It's the unnecessary attack on Trump that just isn't needed or valuable here.
This isn't an attack. It was a joke -- a ban pun, but mildly amusing. I don't read this even as a criticism of Trump's position: it was just making a joke using a candidate's well-known views.
I would suggest that it is you who are reading this as an "attack" or with malicious intent. If you are imagining a neutral statement of your candidate's position in the context of a stupid pun must be an "attack" -- well, maybe you should consider why you are so self-conscious and defensive. Maybe you're not as confident in you're candidate's superiority as you want to appear? Or maybe you're not really as confident in your support as you want to be?
I've seen, in effect, that when people post as themselves, and not anon that is when the problems start.
People will say and post things on FB that they would never say IRL to someone.
I think there are two separate issues related to what you bring up:
(1) People will say (and do!) nasty things to other people when they are disconnected from them. The more impersonal the medium of communication, the more aggressive people feel free to be. Witness the use of car horns, for example. The vast majority of times someone beeps at someone else, they probably wouldn't go around shouting at that person in real life. But they beep nonetheless.
(While I'm on this topic, I should note that I don't think anonymous posts solve this problem -- they actually exacerbate it. But you're right that they solve the social problem of not alienating your friends if you don't identify yourself by name.)
(2) Part of the problem is the platform itself. By default, most people tend to post to all their "friends," but that category has come to encompass not only close actual "friends" but random acquaintances, coworkers, business acquaintances/clients, your boss, your grandparents, etc. There are very few things you could ever say to such a diverse group of people that won't offend SOMEONE at SOME point.
And people know this in real life -- in real life, they wouldn't say a lot of these things to certain people. But they don't tend to worry about it as much on Facebook, because they're often posting to the people with whom they mostly interact on Facebook... not thinking about what a random acquaintance might think, because they probably don't really know them well enough. Nevertheless those posts are going out to them too.
The problem is that Facebook is a business masquerading as some altruistic touchy-feely social experiment. When its facade wears thin and people see how it treats them and their touchy-feely social things, they tend to pick up and take their business elsewhere.
While I'd LIKE to think that's true, I don't think it really is for most people. Most Facebook users seem not to give a crap about how terrible Facebook treats them, their data, their privacy, serving up ads, whatever. Slashdot users tend to be more sensitive to these sorts of things, but I really doubt that means much to the average person on Facebook. Sure, the Facebook "user experience" (such as it is) has degraded a bit, but I don't think it's bad enough to drive more than a small percentage away.
Instead, the current trend discussed in TFA is about Facebook becoming too FULL of people. What used to be a hangout for students and peers has now become a place for your grandparents and your boss.
For most people, socializing with your grandparents or with your boss is a very different thing from socializing with your close friends. But Facebook tries to smear it all together... and that's not working well as a "touchy-feely social experiment."
So was Facebook. For the first two and a half years of Facebook's existence, only people who could prove an affiliation with a participating university were eligible for a Facebook account.
Well, that's slightly different. It would be more accurate to say that Facebook was originally an "elite" club. Anyone with an email address at those institutions could get an account.
A better comparison to Google+ would be the Gmail roll-out, which was by invitation only.
Anyhow -- the "invite only" or "elite group only" stuff works well when you have a product that is SIGNIFICANTLY better than all competitors. Gmail was attractive because it was fast, clean, and offered 1 GB of storage back when that was an insane amount for free webmail. Facebook was attractive because it was really easy to use AND came pre-configured to interact with your college buddies at your institution.
Google+? It had marginal improvements over Facebook, but it was missing the main drive behind Facebook in the first place -- which is that your friends were likely already on it, because it started in elite institutions where waves of people joined at once.
They're using them as an identifier to connect with your actual currency.
Exactly. The title of the story is nonsensical. If it were true, I'd go out and buy a bottle of ink and a pad of post-it notes -- and start "printing my own money."
Because there were only roughly 400 million people on Earth in the 1500's, up to over 7 billion now. At roughly 140 pounds a piece (a lot more in western countries), well, we've added a huge amount of weight to the planet. We would have spun the Earth out of control either way.
I'm not sure whether you're serious or not, but I hope not.
The total mass of all humans on earth is somewhere between 300 and 400 megatons. The amount of ice that is melting off of Antarctica every year is something like 150 gigatons. (Note that much of this is replaced by increased snow and thickening of portions of the Antarctic ice sheets -- the exact amount is debated. But this gives a rough sense of scale -- the annual melting ice from Antarctica is perhaps 500 times the total mass of all humans.)
Just for comparison's sake: the total mass of the cryosphere (ice part of earth) is roughly 1/200,000th of the total mass of the earth. The total mass of all humans is about 1/20,000,000,000,000th of the total mass of the earth. (A difference of 8 orders of magnitude.)
We're really insignificant compared to the mass of the ice sheets.
Ultimately for me facebook has become a lot less useful as more people are on it. It used to be mostly my siblings, a few immediate friends and some of the more tech minded people i knew from work. That was great, I could ask a technical question there and have a discussion about it. Now if i post something like that the first response is usually "lulz i have no idea what you talking 'bout", so I don't bother with stuff like that. I use dropbox to share family photos with my immediate family since I don't want them to have distribution as wide as facebook. I know I *could* set up privacy rules to maintain that stuff better but I can't be bothered.
This is all true. The funny thing is that Facebook could have made it easier to do all of this. They could have made it easier for people to have online pseudonyms or multiple "personalities" (or whatever you want to call them) that allow you to easily group friends into various categories.
And they sort of do that now, but it's not intuitive. And there's no way to completely separate account details unless you violate Facebook's principle that you're only supposed to have one account per real person. (Otherwise, so Zuckerberg has argued, you're being deceptive or something... despite the fact that in real life we behave as "different people" depending on our audience.)
And you couple that with the various trends over the years where Facebook tried to deliberate undermine privacy settings you may have already made by progressively setting things to be more and more open.
I understand why Facebook did this: they thought the more content was shared with the widest audience, the more "data points" they could get to profile you, which is what they're really trying to get to sell to other businesses to make money. The more "likes" among random friends, the more data points. But if you're only sharing most of your posts with 5 close friends, that's much less new information for Facebook.
The problem is that people are realizing what this does -- it makes Facebook much less useful for the kind of socialization people want to do. They want to have clusters of friends -- the coworkers, the people you drink with after work, the people at church or the club or whatever. And they do NOT want that data to go between those groups. That's what most people do in real life.
And so Facebook is starting to lose. It's main market now is for teenagers who haven't yet figured out how stupid it is to post something online that will potentially follow you for your entire life. As the rest of the adult public realizes this, they will post less and less... and a medium that allows more personalized groups and doesn't insist on a "one profile with a real name for one person that's shared with everyone" policy will ultimately be more desirable.
True story... I kinda forgot that Netflix was only charging me $7.99. I thought the price was ten bucks.
Exactly. For those people who have been longtime Netflix users, I really don't care. I was on the 3-DVD-at-a-time plan back when I think it was $19.99/month. Then it was $17.99. Then, I think it was $12.99 or something. Then they split streaming and DVDs at some point, and it went down to $9.99 or $7.99 or something.
Whatever. I've been used to paying Netflix up to $20/month for more than a decade. The streaming selection isn't terrific, but it's much more convenient than mailing the DVDs, and $10/month is still well worth it to me... much more so than paying maybe 10x that much for a cable package with a bunch of crap and commercials I don't want.
Slashdot Mirror
There's a classic phenomena whereby as soon as a problem considered to require AI is solved, it is defined away as "not really AI". This happened with Chess, with Go, with automated vehicles, with handwriting recognition, with facial recognition... every one was claimed to be the domain of "real intelligence", right up until computers could do them as well as humans.
Perhaps some people do this. I just hold to Alan Turing's original definitions in the Turing Test and his examples for what would constitute a kind of "passing" version of AI. Those are from 65 years ago.
My standard hasn't changed. If you're not familiar with what I'm talking about, go read the original description of the Turing Test and the kind of behavior and responses he expected from a competent AI. We're nowhere near that sort of thing.
I'd guess perhaps because it validates this sort of rude, narcissistic behavior rather than shames it?
I really don't understand this argument. Social norms are defined by communities. If people are in a community of like-minded people, who don't mind others' texting at movies, how are they being "rude" or "narcissistic"?
Don't get me wrong: I find such behavior in "normal" theaters to be obnoxious. But if they want to have their own theater where they can do this, why should it bother me? Why should I feel the need to shame someone who isn't even doing the behavior I find "shameful" in my presence?
I see this as no different from one restaurant having a "jackets required" policy and insisting on reasonable etiquette and decorum, while another restaurant allows people in with ripped jeans who like to swear and be rowdy as they have a good time.
Maybe I don't prefer the latter in my dining experience, but I know some people who might. If they're not doing it in my presence, why should I care if a restaurant offers that option?? They're only being "rude and narcissistic" if others around find them to be so.
Of course, if it ever got to the point that this behavior became the "norm" so it was impossible to find a theater that offered the "no texting" experience, I think that would be a loss. Or... well, actually, I don't go to movie theaters that much, so I probably would just stop going the few times that I do. They just lost my business. That's a choice.
Anyhow, I don't get the need to "shame" others for non-destructive, non-violent behavior that doesn't affect me and isn't even done in my presence. Just like I don't give a crap whether somebody uses the "wrong fork" to eat fish at a BBQ joint. Social norms and etiquette are defined by community and circumstance.
Who needs the scientific method when we have CONSENSUS? Let's just call it a day and go home now.
Consensus is PART of the scientific method. It's the only way we actually get to DO "science".
Imagine "science" without the possibility of consensus:
"Hey, that whole gravity thing could be bogus! I know other researchers have verified it thousands of times, but maybe they're wrong. Let's just do some calibration tests every day in the lab to be sure stuff doesn't randomly start floating UP instead of falling down. After all, we can't accept consensus!"
"Well, I was going to do a chemistry experiment today, but I don't really believe that whole atomic theory of matter. I mean, there's 'consensus' on the idea that molecules are made up of atoms, and a substance has consistent properties based on that. But maybe water isn't really made up of H2O. Maybe if I zap it with electricity, it will turn out that it's actually made of microscopic gnomes! The gnomes could be magically giving the illusion of molecular structure. Before I start my chem experiments, I need to be sure my hypothetical gnomes aren't going to ruin the properties of my solvent. So let's test for gnomes every day!"
Obviously these are ridiculous examples. But actual science in practice requires that we accept a bunch of "givens" to actually make progress. Those are generally derived through scientific consensus. Yes, sometimes even those fundamental assumptions are shown to be wrong, at which point we have a "paradigm shift" (in Thomas Kuhn's terms) or modify the "hard core of our research program" (in Imre Lakatos's terms).
But "normal science" simply couldn't operate without foundational assumptions. Acting like there's no role for consensus in science is just ridiculous.
Now -- I understand that there may be greater range for doubt in the scientific community about how climate change works exactly than, say, for the basic idea of gravity or that water molecules are H2O. That's reflected in TFA -- the numbers vary from 90% to 99% consensus... I assume for gravity and water the numbers would be more like 99.999%.
There's still room for people to try to question the foundational assumptions within normal science. But TFA notes that for most scientists, they consider questioning the assumption itself to be less worthy of attention than refining the models within the paradigm. That's how science works... in reality. The bizarre pseudo-Popperian nonsense that sometimes gets spouted around here that "every scientific fact is always up for falsification!" simply isn't true.
If your lab equipment seemed to indicate that your water was made of tiny gnomes, the vast majority of scientists would probably assume there was something wrong with the equipment -- or that someone was playing a prank. And that would be a heck of a lot more likely than that they had just falsified the atomic theory of matter by discovering tiny magical gnomes that produced the illusion of molecular structure. Realizing this is part of being a scientist, and that involves accepting current consensus about foundational concepts.
A more accurate statement:
Not really.
1. Over 90% of scientists think the Earth is more likely to be warming up than cooling down.
Yes, that's what TFA says.
Even skeptics usually agree with this.
Actually, the reason for studies like this is because there are plenty of "skeptics" (read, "deniers") who do NOT agree with this. Every time there's a story on Slashdot about climate change, there's a whole group of people who come out of the woodwork and try to cite how the data from the past X number of years is bad and the warming trend isn't real, etc. Or global cooling was a thing not so long ago. Or whatever.
Yes, legitimate "skeptics" about the role of humans in climate change do generally believe that the planet is still warming. But there are plenty of others who dispute that.
2. Most of these scientists said humans had some sort of impact on the climate, but exactly how much was under debate.
Actually, most of the studies cited in TFA required that the respondents committed to belief that humans were a "significant" contributor to climate change, and some asked respondents whether humans were the "dominant" cause. The wording varied from study to study, and you can read the details in the full metastudy.
Regardless, most of the studies in TFA imply something much stronger than your statement.
In fact, the consensus view at present is that the impact of CO2 is overestimated.
Nope. That's not the current consensus view. There have been some studies which have rejected the more dire models for CO2. But your links are a few years old. Basically, your links are referring to issues where models didn't predict the "slowdown" in climate change that happened in the early 2000s. It has now picked up again.
And this is likely just due to random elements in a chaotic system. Subsequent studies have suggested that randomness in the earth's climate from year-to-year probably has multiple times the amount of impact that alterations to the CO2 model (or other factors, like sunlight absorption models, ocean absorption models, etc.) have.
Bottom line: the validity of these models has to be judged over longer timespans, to avoid the year-to-year blips in a chaotic system. With that taken into account, the general CO2 models likely aren't that far off.
Note -- in second scenario, there's a typo: it should obviously say 5/400 = 1.25% for high cholesterol, given the stats listed.
By the way, before anyone calls me out on this, I was somewhat joking about the title "assistant deputy key grip," making fun of the hierarchical set of titles often running within closing credits. Obviously anyone who knows much about film crews will know such a title is a bit nonsensical, though I wouldn't put it past someone in Hollywood to create such a position.
50% of people who have heart attacks have "normal" cholesterol levels. Just let that one sink in. And I know there are stats about everything, but that is a big one.
I don't actually know enough about the context here to evaluate that claim, but more importantly -- your statistic is insufficient to conclude anything.
A statement like "50% of people who have heart attacks have 'normal' cholesterol levels" is absolutely useless for evaluating the potential link between heart attacks and cholesterol without a sense of incidence of "high cholesterol" and "heart attacks" within the population.
Just for a quick statistical primer, imagine the following scenario:
1000 people
100 people have high cholesterol
100 people have heart attacks
Let's take your claim: 50% of people who had heart attacks had normal cholesterol. Knowing the above stats, that implies:
(1) 50% of heart attacks were people with high cholesterol.
(2) Thus, chances of having a heart attack with high cholesterol = 50/100 = 50%.
(3) Chances of having a heart attack without high cholesterol = 50/900 = 5.55%.
Overall, those with high cholesterol have about 9 times greater chance of having a heart attack. High cholesterol appears to be a VERY STRONG PREDICTOR of heart attacks.
(We could go even more extreme and imagine there were 200 people with heart attacks, in which case 100% of people with high cholesterol had heart attacks... even though your "50%" stat is still true. In that case, I think I'd be really concerned if someone had high cholesterol.)
Alternatively, consider a different scenario:
1000 people
400 people have high cholesterol
10 people have heart attacks
Again, using your assumption that 50% of heart attacks are in people with normal cholesterol, that means:
(1) Chances of having a heart attack with high cholesterol = 5/300 = 1.25%.
(2) Chances of having a heart attack with normal cholesterol = 5/600 = 0.83%.
In this case, things are much more equal -- high cholesterol has higher risk, but less than 50% higher.
In this case, heart attacks are much more rare, and high cholesterol might be a factor, but it seems there are a lot of other things to look at.
Bottom line -- your statistic is meaningless without context. Citing a rate of incidence for a subgroup tells you nothing about whether that subgroup is significant or not... you'd need more stats to evaluate your claim. Depending on the larger population stats, your "50%" statistic might even be incredibly strong evidence that high cholesterol is the best factor we have to predict heart attacks... which I think is the opposite point that you wanted us to have "sink in." (I don't think this latter hypothesis is true, merely that your stat is quite ambiguous.)
Recommendations where based on the best science we knew at at the time. However, that science was still in the very early stages.
No, that's not quite true. As with many studies in science, there were broad conclusions drawn on the basis of indirect data. It's very common to read a study that collected data on A and B, but the "discussion section" at the end notes that B is also potentially related to C and D.
Other articles note this potential association connecting A to C and D, and eventually that becomes dogma within a discipline... unless it is tested directly. Example in nutritional science is the old belief that all high-cholesterol foods (e.g., eggs) must be bad because high blood cholesterol levels seem to be bad. Except no one until recently really tried to consider whether high-cholesterol foods actually CAUSE high blood cholesterol levels. Turns out they have a relatively small impact, because the body manufactures most of the cholesterol within the body. So intake of cholesterol often has a relatively small impact compared to internal body regulation and function.
Thus, the "science" wasn't really "in the early stages." Instead, people made broad assumptions based on incorrect physical models. They measured a correlation between A and B, but assumed it must apply to cases involving C, D, E, and F, just because it seemed "intuitive." But "intuition" is not science, and models based on no empirical evidence (as many physiological assumptions were in the late 1800s and early 1900s, which laid the basis for nutrition science until recently) aren't very good science. It wasn't just "in the early stages" -- it was really incomplete and rife with unsupported conclusions.
There are lots of things we can say in general and while they are right on average within people of the similar descent they won't be anywhere close to absolute.
One of the fascinating things about biology is there are experiments I can do 100x and get almost that many different results. Biology has randomness, it has mutations, and nothing is every simple.
What you say is true -- and it is quite hard to design good experiments on something as broad as nutrition, which usually has huge numbers of uncontrolled variables. It's not just "randomness," though. It's that it's really expensive and difficult to do studies where you lock people up for a few years and control their complete dietary input... which is what you'd really need to do a proper test of many nutritional hypotheses. And you're right that there are variations in genetics and individuals that sometimes argue against generalizations.
On the other hand, many of the BIG failures in nutritional science weren't due to these little nuances of individuals. They were based on broad misinterpretations of data and drawing overly broad conclusions from that data... usually based on all sorts of underlying assumptions that were never tested directly.
These are flaws in the way scientific methods were applied. And they shouldn't just be "swept under the rug" because "humans are complex and we now realize that more."
Considering Deadpool has alone has made over $750 million dollars globally, on a budget of less than $60 million, and that's not counting big blockbusters of late like Star Wars VII and even Batman vs Superman, I think claims of the movie industry's demise are heavily overstated.
While I agree that the industry claims are overstated, it's important to note that the movies that make many times their budget are rather rare. The cost of making -- and often more importantly, marketing -- a movie these days are often quite significant. They don't have to be, and many "independent" films manage to be made on a shoestring budget with rather high quality nowadays.
But lots of mainstream Hollywood films have budgets in excess of $100 million, and they might spend that much or more on marketing. That's a lot of ticket sales to make up if the movie bombs... and many do.
Personally, I blame most of this on ridiculous salaries or profit deals paid to certain very elite groups -- the main producers, directors, high-profile writers, well-known actors, etc. Often the assistant deputy key grip isn't making huge amounts of money, and extras are often lucky to scrape together a part-time living.
If the industry were run more rationally, we'd probably have a lot more films made for a few million dollars, with the occasion mega hit that makes hundreds of millions. Instead, all these studio executives like to gamble big-time... thinking that hundreds of millions in investment will turn into billions in return. Sometimes they win, but often they lose. And with such a volatile market that's often completely unpredictable, they often struggle to maintain profits, despite a few blockbusters every year.
As the old saying goes, "Ya pays yer money; ya takes yer chances." Studio execs just seem to like gambling with huge amounts of money.
Pirating can (potentially - that's the whole point under discussion here) end up depriving the owner of the value of the thing they created, if it results in insufficient interest in paying for the item. That's the whole point of copyright law. I'm always bugged by these analogies to "regular" theft. Copyright violation is indeed different than stealing, but it is potentially similar with regard to depriving a creator or group of creators of earned recompense for their effort.
THIS.
I think copyright law is really screwed up, fines are at ridiculous levels, and stuff should go into the public domain after 14 years (perhaps 28 at most, according to the original copyright act of 1790).
But all of this quibbling over whether or not it's REALLY "theft" or not is just nonsense. Yes, it's not like taking a unique piece of physical property. On the other hand, in some circumstances it can deprive the copyright owner of significant profits from his/her work.
If you wrote an awesome software application, and right after you finished it, I sneaked over to your desk and made a copy of it -- and then proceeded to sell it to make a million dollars before you realized anything happened... and then you were unable to build a customer base when you tried to release it yourself, I think it's reasonable to say that I "took" something from you.
But according to GP's argument, I only "made a copy," so I didn't "steal" anything. The point is that theft is not only about the taking of an actual item, but potential loss of revenue from that item too. If you stole my business car and totalled it, I could bring a civil suit not only for the cost to replace the car, but potentially for any loss of income I had due to losing use of my car. That latter is cost is directly connected to the theft and trying to claim that it isn't "really" theft kinda misses the point of what copyright law was originally designed for. (Despite the fact that the current copyright system is totally broken, yadda, yadda, yadda...)
How is striking going to convince a corporation to stop offshoring and automating jobs? It seems to me that it will convince them to do more.
Notice the groups mentioned in TFS, including an "Electrical Workers" union.
Verizon can't really "offshore" or "automate" electrical wire installations in houses or businesses, or electrical repairs that need to be tailored to a specific location.
Granted, some of the other striking workers may be in service applications that could theoretically be sent overseas, but as long as the workers who do actual work that is required to be physically located within the U.S. are standing in solidarity with the other workers, Verizon could be a heap of trouble without those folks.
Not every job can be offshored. Skilled trades that deal directly with customers' equipment at a physical location (electricians, plumbers, etc.) are harder to offshore than just about anything else... including management.
But it does seem as though local jurisdictions will be able to pass greater protections if they feel like it. (not about bathrooms though)
Umm, I don't see how you get that. From the very next sentence after you quoted from your own link:
The order doesnâ(TM)t change the provisions of HB2 that prohibit cities and counties from adopting broader anti-discrimination ordinances than state law, which doesnâ(TM)t include sexual orientation or gender identity protections.
I mean, if they aren't going to enforce it, what's the point of mentioning it?
Well... because most "terms of service" are "cover-your-ass" legalese, rather than something companies actively care about.
Seriously -- is this that hard to understand why a company wants to have a disclaimer like this in their terms? (e.g., By accepting the contract for our services, you agree not to use our services for illegal acts.) If you don't include that disclaimer, some idiot could come after you and say, "You facilitated the illegal actions of person X. Therefore you are partly responsible," either criminally or just in a civil lawsuit.
If you have this disclaimer, you can say, "Well, we told them this was not acceptable." This could be particularly important in cases with much higher stakes than copyright claims, e.g., child pornography cases, cases where an internet connection is used to coordinate violent crime or even terrorist attacks, etc.
This is of course, assuming that sufficient evidence of illegal activity exists in the first place.
Well, the issue isn't just "evidence of illegal activity," it's intent of the subscriber. That's why a lot of these copyright cases have ended up failing in courts. Was the subscriber to the service actually responsible for the copyright infringement, or did they have an open wifi (or one that was hacked), so the infringement was done by someone else?
And in any case, the terms of service usually don't state a mandatory response. They usually aren't, "If you do X, we will terminate your service." Instead they say something like, "X is prohibited and may be grounds for suspension or complete termination of service."
Whatever. The point is that internet service may not be a "right," but denial should be for a serious cause, say, coming out of a court declaration. Not just some vague accusation. Otherwise, we should start arguing that the local pizza joint should lose its phone service because of a rumor that some mobsters used the phone to coordinate a "hit."
You are incorrect as to who bought whom. Comcast bought Time-Warner
I'm really confused about why this post was modded up. (1) Comcast didn't actually buy Time Warner CABLE, as your links note. Charter is trying to buy Time Warner Cable, but the deal still needs approval. (2) This discussion seems to be about whether media companies buy cable companies or the reverse or whatever... except this purchase is only about Time Warner CABLE. Neither Comcast nor Charter has been buying Time Warner MEDIA, which has been a completely separate corporate entity from Time Warner CABLE since 2009.
However it is only recently that societies stopped punishing infidelity
There's a reasonably good chance that from an evoloutionary point of view that it's only recently that it started being punished.
How do you come to that conclusion? Your suggestive comment about penis shape only implies that non-monogamy may have been more common than we might think given modern social norms. But it doesn't necessarily imply that the social norms are recent.
Instead, it could imply that the typical evolutionary pattern was to avoid appearance of polygamy, even if it was happening in practice. In fact, that's part of the whole argument about "cuckolding" in biology -- a female gets the benefit of the public support of a "provider male" while also getting the strong genes of an "alpha male." That sort of practice could easily take place within a society that views polygamy negatively.
In most societies, human sexual practices tend to be "private" affairs. Even among nudists, it's often taboo to be too sexual "out in the open." Thus, there's no reason why official social mores necessarily conform to actual sexual practices in human societies -- in fact, there's very strong evidence that this is often NOT the case.
Moreover, your penis-shape argument actually contradicts your social argument. If society (usually dominated by males, in most human societies) was outwardly accepting of polygamous females, why would we have evolved a mechanism to remove other men's sperm? Shouldn't the men just have "been okay with" the polygamy and accept impregnation by others? The penis shape actually implies that men have strong genetic reasons to ensure their own paternity, which their bodies may naturally do physically and which they are probably likely to enforce by social norms once societies developed.
While many women would choose to adopt, especially if they cannot have children of their own many men will give serious consideration to changing their to one that is fertile rather than adopt or at least have a surrogate mother as they want the child's gene to be of their own.
Do you have any data to back up this assertion? Basically, you're implying that women are more likely to adopt regardless but men are more likely to want to pass on their genes.
But you're comparing infertile women with fertile men. Don't you think that infertile men would "choose to adopt," assuming that they are interested in raising children, just as infertile women would?
And do you really think that fertile women are more interested in raising other people's children than fertile men are? Women may be more likely to be willing to care for children in general, whether due to biological drives or cultural trends. But my experience with women is that they put a VERY high premium on having their own offspring where possible, which is why we see so many women today going for infertility treatments as the age of marriage goes up and more women are past the prime age to have kids.
Not to mention that almost every other day when there's an article on Slashdot about women and careers, someone brings up that female salaries are often lower because women end up taking a few years off to raise families -- and they do so while they are young so the kids can be their own. A 45-year-old or 50-year-old woman is generally perfectly capable of caring for an adopted child, but many women are very concerned about the "biological clock" issues and want to have their own kids earlier.
And I've personally known at least one situation where a woman broke up a marriage because of her husband's fertility issue -- only to remarry quickly and have kids with someone else. Not saying that this anecdote is proof of a trend, but I don't think there's as much truth to your sex-bias toward/away from adoption as you claim.
This is a good time to drop them a letter AND an email AND a phone call AND a fax while at it. Go on, do what's expected of you but too few of you actually do.
I don't give them money, so they don't care.
Well, they won't care AS MUCH. But if enough actual voters contact them about something, so that it appears to be an issue which could affect election, they might care.
Campaign financing money has a huge influence, as Oliver notes. But short of outright election fraud, representatives still do actually need enough real people (not just rich donors) voting to get elected.
Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Congressional Fundraising (HBO)
Well worth 21 min of your time.
I don't mean to be too critical, since I've watched this myself and agree with the problem -- but you know what would be a BETTER use of 21 minutes of your time? Write a letter AND an email AND a phone call AND a fax on an issue you actually care about.
Oliver's piece is only informative for people who don't know any better -- short version: in case you didn't already realize this, Congress people spend a huge chunk of time soliciting donations. And obviously those people who make big donations will probably get the ear of representatives more.
While Oliver can be entertaining at times, I'm not sure this message is really worth the 21 minutes -- better to actually get off your butt and do something. That's one of the problems I feel like happens with Oliver's program: he's drawing attention to big issues, but how many people end up just complaining about it on social media, but never go the extra step to try to fix anything? Or at least put forth a minimum effort to contact someone and complain about it?
Yeah, you're not going to get as much attention from your representative as a rich donor. But if hundreds or thousands of constituents contact a representative about the same issue, it will be noted.
It's the unnecessary attack on Trump that just isn't needed or valuable here.
This isn't an attack. It was a joke -- a ban pun, but mildly amusing. I don't read this even as a criticism of Trump's position: it was just making a joke using a candidate's well-known views.
I would suggest that it is you who are reading this as an "attack" or with malicious intent. If you are imagining a neutral statement of your candidate's position in the context of a stupid pun must be an "attack" -- well, maybe you should consider why you are so self-conscious and defensive. Maybe you're not as confident in you're candidate's superiority as you want to appear? Or maybe you're not really as confident in your support as you want to be?
I've seen, in effect, that when people post as themselves, and not anon that is when the problems start.
People will say and post things on FB that they would never say IRL to someone.
I think there are two separate issues related to what you bring up:
(1) People will say (and do!) nasty things to other people when they are disconnected from them. The more impersonal the medium of communication, the more aggressive people feel free to be. Witness the use of car horns, for example. The vast majority of times someone beeps at someone else, they probably wouldn't go around shouting at that person in real life. But they beep nonetheless.
(While I'm on this topic, I should note that I don't think anonymous posts solve this problem -- they actually exacerbate it. But you're right that they solve the social problem of not alienating your friends if you don't identify yourself by name.)
(2) Part of the problem is the platform itself. By default, most people tend to post to all their "friends," but that category has come to encompass not only close actual "friends" but random acquaintances, coworkers, business acquaintances/clients, your boss, your grandparents, etc. There are very few things you could ever say to such a diverse group of people that won't offend SOMEONE at SOME point.
And people know this in real life -- in real life, they wouldn't say a lot of these things to certain people. But they don't tend to worry about it as much on Facebook, because they're often posting to the people with whom they mostly interact on Facebook... not thinking about what a random acquaintance might think, because they probably don't really know them well enough. Nevertheless those posts are going out to them too.
The problem is that Facebook is a business masquerading as some altruistic touchy-feely social experiment. When its facade wears thin and people see how it treats them and their touchy-feely social things, they tend to pick up and take their business elsewhere.
While I'd LIKE to think that's true, I don't think it really is for most people. Most Facebook users seem not to give a crap about how terrible Facebook treats them, their data, their privacy, serving up ads, whatever. Slashdot users tend to be more sensitive to these sorts of things, but I really doubt that means much to the average person on Facebook. Sure, the Facebook "user experience" (such as it is) has degraded a bit, but I don't think it's bad enough to drive more than a small percentage away.
Instead, the current trend discussed in TFA is about Facebook becoming too FULL of people. What used to be a hangout for students and peers has now become a place for your grandparents and your boss.
For most people, socializing with your grandparents or with your boss is a very different thing from socializing with your close friends. But Facebook tries to smear it all together... and that's not working well as a "touchy-feely social experiment."
It was invite only.
So was Facebook. For the first two and a half years of Facebook's existence, only people who could prove an affiliation with a participating university were eligible for a Facebook account.
Well, that's slightly different. It would be more accurate to say that Facebook was originally an "elite" club. Anyone with an email address at those institutions could get an account.
A better comparison to Google+ would be the Gmail roll-out, which was by invitation only.
Anyhow -- the "invite only" or "elite group only" stuff works well when you have a product that is SIGNIFICANTLY better than all competitors. Gmail was attractive because it was fast, clean, and offered 1 GB of storage back when that was an insane amount for free webmail. Facebook was attractive because it was really easy to use AND came pre-configured to interact with your college buddies at your institution.
Google+? It had marginal improvements over Facebook, but it was missing the main drive behind Facebook in the first place -- which is that your friends were likely already on it, because it started in elite institutions where waves of people joined at once.
They're using them as an identifier to connect with your actual currency.
Exactly. The title of the story is nonsensical. If it were true, I'd go out and buy a bottle of ink and a pad of post-it notes -- and start "printing my own money."
Because there were only roughly 400 million people on Earth in the 1500's, up to over 7 billion now. At roughly 140 pounds a piece (a lot more in western countries), well, we've added a huge amount of weight to the planet. We would have spun the Earth out of control either way.
I'm not sure whether you're serious or not, but I hope not.
The total mass of all humans on earth is somewhere between 300 and 400 megatons. The amount of ice that is melting off of Antarctica every year is something like 150 gigatons. (Note that much of this is replaced by increased snow and thickening of portions of the Antarctic ice sheets -- the exact amount is debated. But this gives a rough sense of scale -- the annual melting ice from Antarctica is perhaps 500 times the total mass of all humans.)
Just for comparison's sake: the total mass of the cryosphere (ice part of earth) is roughly 1/200,000th of the total mass of the earth. The total mass of all humans is about 1/20,000,000,000,000th of the total mass of the earth. (A difference of 8 orders of magnitude.)
We're really insignificant compared to the mass of the ice sheets.
Ultimately for me facebook has become a lot less useful as more people are on it. It used to be mostly my siblings, a few immediate friends and some of the more tech minded people i knew from work. That was great, I could ask a technical question there and have a discussion about it. Now if i post something like that the first response is usually "lulz i have no idea what you talking 'bout", so I don't bother with stuff like that. I use dropbox to share family photos with my immediate family since I don't want them to have distribution as wide as facebook. I know I *could* set up privacy rules to maintain that stuff better but I can't be bothered.
This is all true. The funny thing is that Facebook could have made it easier to do all of this. They could have made it easier for people to have online pseudonyms or multiple "personalities" (or whatever you want to call them) that allow you to easily group friends into various categories.
And they sort of do that now, but it's not intuitive. And there's no way to completely separate account details unless you violate Facebook's principle that you're only supposed to have one account per real person. (Otherwise, so Zuckerberg has argued, you're being deceptive or something... despite the fact that in real life we behave as "different people" depending on our audience.)
And you couple that with the various trends over the years where Facebook tried to deliberate undermine privacy settings you may have already made by progressively setting things to be more and more open.
I understand why Facebook did this: they thought the more content was shared with the widest audience, the more "data points" they could get to profile you, which is what they're really trying to get to sell to other businesses to make money. The more "likes" among random friends, the more data points. But if you're only sharing most of your posts with 5 close friends, that's much less new information for Facebook.
The problem is that people are realizing what this does -- it makes Facebook much less useful for the kind of socialization people want to do. They want to have clusters of friends -- the coworkers, the people you drink with after work, the people at church or the club or whatever. And they do NOT want that data to go between those groups. That's what most people do in real life.
And so Facebook is starting to lose. It's main market now is for teenagers who haven't yet figured out how stupid it is to post something online that will potentially follow you for your entire life. As the rest of the adult public realizes this, they will post less and less... and a medium that allows more personalized groups and doesn't insist on a "one profile with a real name for one person that's shared with everyone" policy will ultimately be more desirable.
True story ... I kinda forgot that Netflix was only charging me $7.99. I thought the price was ten bucks.
Exactly. For those people who have been longtime Netflix users, I really don't care. I was on the 3-DVD-at-a-time plan back when I think it was $19.99/month. Then it was $17.99. Then, I think it was $12.99 or something. Then they split streaming and DVDs at some point, and it went down to $9.99 or $7.99 or something.
Whatever. I've been used to paying Netflix up to $20/month for more than a decade. The streaming selection isn't terrific, but it's much more convenient than mailing the DVDs, and $10/month is still well worth it to me... much more so than paying maybe 10x that much for a cable package with a bunch of crap and commercials I don't want.