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User: interkin3tic

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  1. Re:What about... on DNA Detectives Count Thousands of Fish Using a Glass of Water · · Score: 1

    This technique will be used to identify them. It's already being used to that end. I went to a seminar talk years ago which was taking samples of sea water and sequencing every bit of DNA they could amplify from them, much like this. There's a problem in microbiology where what you can see under a microscope doesn't match what you can grow on an agar dish (which is necessary to really study something: you can't very well study a single bacterium cell.)

    The take home message was we don't know anything about the vast majority of microbes in the ocean. Given that oceans cover most of the world, and most life on the planet in terms of variety and biomass IS microbes, that's a mind blowing amount about biology we don't know.

  2. Re:He who fails to learn from history... on Canadian Government Trucking Generations of Scientific Data To the Dump · · Score: 1

    I don't know, I suspect the rate of people saying their civilization is in decline isn't really correlated with actual decline. I have no idea how one would measure that. But either way, I don't think we can use an opinion poll to determine if things are actually going downhill.

  3. Re:The race is on on Why the World Needs OpenStreetMap · · Score: 1

    Sadly, I think it's more likely that apple maps will somehow win by providing even fewer features.

  4. Re:He who fails to learn from history... on Canadian Government Trucking Generations of Scientific Data To the Dump · · Score: 1

    I think many people have, throughout the history of civilization, gotten that impression, yes.

  5. Re:This is goddamned appalling on Canadian Government Trucking Generations of Scientific Data To the Dump · · Score: 3, Insightful

    No, but it's symbolic of what the Harper government has been doing (from my understanding anyway.) Canadian scientists would be smart to make a big deal of it even if it's not. I mean, making a big deal of "You're writing laws to favor your special interests when we're telling you it's causing huge problems with the climate" didn't resonate with voters evidently. Maybe this will, and they can use it to help stuff that does matter.

  6. Re:Only in America on Man Shot To Death For Texting During Movie · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Indeed. Look at the rate of gun homicides per capita. The US is 13th on that list (when you sort by decreasing homicides).

    The countries ahead of us: Honduras, El Salvador, Jamaica, Swaziland, Guatemala, Colombia, Brazil, South Africa , Panama, Mexico, Paraguay, Nicaragua, Costa Rica

    The US has 6 gun homicides per 100k people, the closest country we'd consider "safe" and "developed: is Luxembourg with 0.6. You'll also notice that a lot of countries on the list ahead of us are countries where we're funding and arming both sides of a drug war.

    There's a lot of likely contributors to that number. Full blown cancer isn't caused by one mutation, the economic collapse wasn't caused by one thing... relatively high gun violence in the US isn't caused by one thing like gun culture or wealth inequality either.

  7. Re:Double bind on Man Shot To Death For Texting During Movie · · Score: 1

    Actually, GP was sheer genius because he did more than crack a joke in 14 words. He made several comments about our society if you look deeper: people being rude to one another (in this case, texting at the movies), a person mentally unable to have a gun has a gun, an ex-cop who can't handle a gun properly, police brutality in today's society,

    All those statements in 14 words and yet he said nothing of any value on any of them...

    I agree that it was funny, but "Texter gets what he deserves" is just a stupid statement no matter how you feel about people being rude. The movie hadn't started. And police brutality wasn't an issue: the guy was retired. He was not acting as a cop.

  8. Re:Another reason I don't go to the movies anymore on Man Shot To Death For Texting During Movie · · Score: 1

    That sounds like two reasons. And why are they mutually exclusive?

  9. Re:"I WILL have a third cup!" on Experiment Shows Caffeine Boosts Long Term Memory · · Score: 1

    If there are significant negative effects of drinking coffee then I'd have thought we'd have found out about it by now.

    Look at the current study: here's a positive effect of drinking coffee that we didn't know about. What makes negative effects more obvious than positive effects? Negative effects can be subtle and hard to detect, especially given how noisy data from humans is, and especially when talking about long-term effects.

    Look at how long it took for us to realize that tobacco was bad for you overall. People had been smoking that for centuries, yet it's only been in the last few decades that the link to cancer has been really known, and that's a huge increase in the chances of emphysema, lung cancer, and high blood pressure.

  10. Re:or maybe on If I Had a Hammer · · Score: 1

    12 people built and ran instagram before it was bought out by facebook. They created $1.2 billion dollars of value.

    I'd argue that pictures of food shared between friends can't possibly add up to 1.2 DOLLARS in value, let alone 1.2 billion...

  11. Re:Isn't this the ultimate goal? on If I Had a Hammer · · Score: 1

    Why don't we have 95% of the population exploring one branch of science or another?

    Speaking as a scientist, GOD NO! I wouldn't be able to browse the internet NEARLY as much and keep my job!

  12. Re:Track your every move on Google Buys Home Automation Company Nest · · Score: 2

    Remember how the e-mails in question were completely unsecured and literally being broadcast out for anyone to read easily? I'm all for treating corporations like evil bastards, but that's a shitty example. If your unencrypted e-mail was picked up by google, that's on you for beaming it out to anyone to pick up.

    Stay cynical about google, yes, definitely, but don't bring up bullshit like the street view thing.

  13. Re:Not sure this is a "Cave" on EA Caves: SimCity Offline Mode Coming · · Score: 1

    It is a cave though: they tried to claim it wasn't possible to run the game offline.

  14. Re:"I WILL have a third cup!" on Experiment Shows Caffeine Boosts Long Term Memory · · Score: 2

    Also keep in mind that as a nearly universal rule, nothing has completely good effects, and many effects on the brain are subtle. It's unlikely that there aren't long term effects of caffeine that you wouldn't like. Unknown long term negative effects aren't a reason anyone should stop drinking coffee of course, just saying lets not be shocked if researchers find out it, say, decreases your IQ in your senior years or something. It appears to DECREASE your chances of getting alzheimers, which is good, but it's clearly having some permanent effects on the brain. It can't be all beneficial.

  15. Re:Citation Needed on Google Co-Opts Whale-Watching Boat To Ferry Employees · · Score: 1

    I've said it before, Google REALLY needs to change their slogan. Not because they actually are more or less evil or anything like that, just that people go to great lengths to construe everything google does as evil just to sound clever because of that motto.

    They should change their motto to "Murder children with rusty screwdrivers, literally shit on the constitution, and end the world with fire." Then people wouldn't give them SHIT for doing stuff like this.

  16. Re:Assuming ... on New Class of "Hypervelocity Stars" Discovered Escaping the Galaxy · · Score: 1

    TFA says these were calculations done on the Sloan Digital Sky Survey data, which was released to the world in 2008 according to their homepage, so the actual observations are already "confirmed" in that sense. I'm assuming the current study released their calculations and methods so anyone can double check them.

  17. Re:Won't be the manufacturer ... on Who Is Liable When a Self-Driving Car Crashes? · · Score: 1

    No one has deemed those "road-worthy," and no human is 100% reliable either. I'm suggesting that automated systems can be made which are more reliable than a human.

  18. Re:interesting on New Class of "Hypervelocity Stars" Discovered Escaping the Galaxy · · Score: 1

    All it would take is galaxies spinning at different angles passing each other to spit off a few stars from the fringe edge.

    Isn't it known whether galaxies are close enough for that to be a factor? TFA doesn't say "and it's right next to the closest galaxy, so that's probably the reason." Furthermore, galaxies are mostly empty space, so it seems like how individual stars would interact to spin each other out would still be an interesting observation problem.

  19. Re:Why does Ford need this data? on Ford Exec: 'We Know Everyone Who Breaks the Law' Thanks To Our GPS In Your Car · · Score: 2

    Why does Ford need this data?

    If I'm being paranoid (and I find that's the best course of action when talking about giant groups of people with lots of power and government influence, such as a corporation), then I'd guess Ford would like to sell that data to the government. It would probably start with the ability to do an amber alert plus: you'd find the car in question by remotely turning on GPS.

    But like ONLY for child molesters! You can't possibly be in FAVOR of making child molesting kidnappers' lives easier, can you?!? If you're not kidnapping children, you've got nothing to fear from this, and Ford gets a few thousand for every bounty they collect, win win win!

    Terror suspects too. The DHS will give an unspecified amount of money to Ford for the data too. Other three letter agencies may or may not help the companies bottom line, and might throw up some red tape for Ford if they don't play ball.

    Then it will be, hey, the child molesters are just going to buy non-fords, so better require every car has them. Maybe Ford has some patents over the putting of a GPS on a car and reporting it to the police. Makes sense, Ford is innovating there, so they'd need to get a lot of money for everyone else doing it.

    Then since every car has GPS on it, why not just go ahead and tax based on how far you drive. Don't worry, it will only be reported to the IRS and DOT. And the police again if you're a child molester. And if you're a terror suspect. And with a court order from divorce proceedings.

    Then ford will allow you to tie your car to foursquare, facebook, twitter, etc. Then it will move to an opt out rather than an opt in. Unless Ford decides it can sell your data to advertisers directly and make more money that way.

  20. Re:Won't be the manufacturer ... on Who Is Liable When a Self-Driving Car Crashes? · · Score: 1

    I don't know you, AC, and no offense, but I'd much rather be in traffic with a thousand autonomous cars that google has deemed road worthy than one of you.

  21. Re:laws change on Who Is Liable When a Self-Driving Car Crashes? · · Score: 1

    You mock a question intended to get a discussion going for not being news. You must be fun at parties.

    Victim: "So, MozeeToby, I hear you're thinking of moving into your own place?"
    MozeeToby: "Oh yeah, like I'm the ONLY PERSON EVER to live in their mother's basement! FUCK OFF!"

  22. Re:Efficiency. on Who Is Liable When a Self-Driving Car Crashes? · · Score: 1

    I agree, and that's important to point out to counter idiots from being paranoid about these things (if it's possible). Unfortunately, it will also be more efficient for lawyers to get the people making these cars, who will have bigger pockets than your average driver, into court than it will be for human drivers, hence the question.

  23. Re:Bitcoin is vulernable to government manipulatio on A Rebuttal To Charles Stross About Bitcoin · · Score: 1

    I'm thoroughly confused and I suspect you may be too. The thread so far from my understanding:
    Alpha_wolf: Bitcoins are not a ponzi scheme because people don't have to keep buying in in order to prevent it from collapsing
    You: Yes it is: because bitcoins will take more money to mine, people will stop mining them
    Me: You don't need to keep mining them for bitcoins to keep their value
    You: People WILL keep mining bitcoins.

    You appear to contradict yourself, but the original point didn't make sense to me anyway, so I don't know what you're driving at.

  24. Re:Canada is already America's bitch. on Canada Quietly Offering Sanctuary To Data From the US · · Score: 2

    I guess the question is, will Canada's citizens be more likely than US citizens to demand that their rights be upheld? Honest question: I know the likelihood of the US getting rid of the NSA is low. And 9/11 didn't happen directly to you guys. Not that one freak incident justifies 15 years of cowardice, but plenty of US citizens and politicians seem to think it does.

  25. Although at the moment it looks like we (USA! USA!) will be the ones using them. So contact your Congress Critters and make sure they know that you'll support them if they vote to ban our usage of these.

    And while you're at it, land mines kill something like 70 civilians every day, including a lot of children. Remind your congressman that land mines are barbaric, that the US should be opposed to children's legs getting blown off. Urge them to sign the Ottawa treaty. Other non-signatories are the usual countries we think we're morally superior to: Russia, China, Myanmar, United Arab Emirates, Cuba, Egypt, and Iran. (Israel too, but they might think that Israel is also a good guy and take that as a sign that it's the right side, so maybe don't mention Israel.)