All real slashdot readers browse at -1 so as to avoid the political bullshit that has taken over the moderation system.
Hmm... I'd call myself a real Slashdot reader. Until recently I've always browsed exclusively at -1, and I often upmodded -1 posts even when I disagreed with them, because I felt that they contributed something to the discussion. But just within the last few days I stopped doing so, because now the overwhelming majority of -1 comments are racist, or sexist, or childish name calling, or Trump non-sequiturs, or other toxic crap that have made this place like a birdcage in which the newspaper never gets replaced. I totally get your desire to "avoid the political bullshit" - but for me, satisfying that desire currently requires that I don't browse at -1.
...Basically this self driving frenzy is likely to go the way of the VR hype. It will be awesome tech that only a few will shell out money for, and even fewer will make use of.
I hope you're right, but I think at some point it's going to be mandated. Government, especially in the US, is rapidly accelerating both the degree and the granularity of the control it has over its own citizens. And since Joe Average is a sucker for the 'because safety' and 'because security' BS arguments, once the tech is mature and reliable, self-driving cars will be embraced with open arms. Then law enforcement, along with the rest of the authoritarian power-trippers, will have their most compelling wet dream made real: they will be able to spy upon and control the passage of all drivers and passengers. Unless AGW and/or big rocks hitting the Earth kill off a big chunk of humanity, I think the future will be very dystopian indeed. Self-driving cars are at the thin edge of the wedge.
Self-driving cars will synthesize situation awareness from many sources including their previous experiences and the experiences of all the other vehicles on the road contributing to the database.
Self-driving cars will need to synthesize situation awareness from many sources including their previous experiences at least as well as a reasonably good human driver, but I doubt the current algorithms are anywhere close, and getting them there is going to take a lot of time and money.
prototypes of a rechargeable alkaline battery that can be made using continuous manufacturing processes similar to the making of plastic wrap... has demonstrated up to 400 recharge cycles for its prototypes.
Unless they're outright lying, it sounds as though they've done enough actual development on this that it may turn into a viable technology. Yes, pie-in-the-sky battery announcements are commonplace, but the tone of this one sounds slightly different to me.
... Autoimmune diseases also run in my family, and there is some evidence that Type 2 for some people at least has an autoimmune component.
Interesting connection there, given that carbohydrates, (especially the simple ones), are implicated in inflammation. So maybe sugar causes inflammation that can eventually degrade to an autoimmune disorder, while in other people the autoimmune component is genetic, as in your case.
Maybe in people whose Type 2 diabetes is eliminated when they change their diet, the inflammation response never developed into an autoimmune disorder. So perhaps there are 3 different varieties of Type 2 diabetes - lifestyle-triggered reversible, lifestyle-triggered irreversible, and genetic-therefore-irreversible. Just a thought...
Do you foam at the mouth if you can't play a game when you want? Do you twitch when you can't get at your facebook profile? Do you break into people's houses when you can't get a grindr match?
You ain't addicted, you're a lawyer looking for a way to get your stupid ass client off whatever stupid thing you did.
There are varying degrees of drug addiction - from caffeine all the way to alcohol, opiates, cocaine, and the even stronger addiction to nicotine. Withdrawal symptoms vary too, from mild, to uncomfortable, to excruciating, to deadly. Previous posters in this thread have noted, (perhaps tongue in cheek, but there's truth there nonetheless), that 'anything can be addictive'. Anything that causes a pronounced, consistent, repeatable physiological and / or psychological response has addictive potential - all the way from 'healthy' things like meditation and running, to life-destroying hard drugs. Smartphones, TV, and the like fall somewhere between the two extremes.
Bruce Perens' councel is Heather Meeker of Oâ(TM)Melveny and Meyers...
I suspect Perens and Ms Meeker will also have some assistance from the EFF. The potential chilling effects of this suit, and its blatant misuse of judicial process, are too important for the EFF to remain on the sidelines for long.
So "Nazi Party Donor" and "Black Lifes Matter" are arguing with each other, and no one has yet realized that they have UIDs that are almost identical and are obviously satire accounts?
I had noticed the same thing and was just about to comment on it. I think the management and the editors need to start thinking about ways over and above moderation to weed out these comments. There's probably not much to be done about crap posts from AC's, but it may be time, (shudder), for a membership review process. From what I've seen it's not that hard to differentiate between the cranks and occasional trollsters, and the pure shit-posters like those you mentioned. Now we just need a mechanism for turfing out the latter. Yes, it's a dangerous and slippery slope, but the alternative is the death of Slashdot. There are many who would argue convincingly that it's already dead - it's time to try to reverse the tide.
Maybe a form of meta-moderation could work, wherein members who've been around longer than X years and have some history of being modded up, review selected posting histories and vote on their authors' suitability for continued membership. Those that don't make the cut are put on probation, and shit-canned if they continue shit-posting. Yes, I see flaws and inherent dangers even in the very concept, but I think it's worth taking a chance given how far the quality of posts here has fallen even in the last year. The shit-posting is accelerating rapidly, and if this keeps up it won't be much longer before Slashdot is pronounced not only dead, but also buried, by even the extreme optimists among us.
Fair point - not sure why you were modded down. In response to what you said, I suggest that perhaps a pattern of repeated, insistent, highly unethical behaviour, in the face of it being pointed out loudly and frequently, corresponds with a sort of consensus definition of evil. It certainly forms a large part of my own definition.
Those that cling to "glyphosate causes cancer" and "Monsatan is the devil" are the same folks who believe in chemtrails, vaccines causing autism, and countless other health conspiracies.
Not true. I don't know enough to have an opinion on glyphosate as a carcinogen, I don't believe in chemtrails, I advocate childhood vaccination, and I get flu shots every year. And I still say Monsanto is evil, because they've proved it over and over again. BTW, thanks for the "Monsatan" moniker - I'm definitely going to use that.
To use Firefox on Android I'd need a MUCH faster phone than my Moto 3G - like maybe something water-cooled and with an auxiliary power supply. Plus, the user interface is among the worst of the Android browsers - all of which have UI's that are varying degrees of shitty anyway. I'd love to support the Moz on Android, but for me it's simply unusable.
From an advertising perspective I don't understand why your browsing history is that useful. No one I know clicks on ads, I've never bought anything based on an advertisement...
First, people don't have to click on ads, they just have to see them. Those who say that advertising has no effect on them are naive. If an ad gets you to buy a specific thing, that's just a bonus - the real point of the advertising industry is the creation and maintenance of a ubiquitous consumer culture that keeps the money flowing and keeps people dependent on buying stuff to assuage their existential angst. (BTW, a similar philosophy applies to most of Prime Time TV - it's almost all propaganda, and if you watch it with that thought in the back of your mind you may be shocked at how transparent-yet-insidious some of it is).
Second, the browsing history data that companies collect, allows them to make those 'ads that nobody clicks on' more effective. Not to mention that said data shapes not only their advertising, but their product offering / development as well.
That will wake up the population. Then the regulations come in. HIPPA x5.
I envy you your optimism - what exactly are you snorting / smoking / popping that gives you such a rosy view of the world? If your scenario occurred and the population magically awoke, a few news cycles at most would find them back in their Matrix-like dreamland, and nothing would change.
ALL reward / loyalty programs are effectively "trading privacy for coupons". And the galling thing is, the vast majority of people don't understand that the 'coupons' themselves are a sleight-of-hand hoax. Companies never take a hit to their bottom line in order to provide customers with a discount. They simply make it up in other ways - they increase the base cost so the 'reduced' cost is what they would have charged without the discount, and/or they reduce quality, and/or they charge more for OTHER products / services. Plus the people like us who don't play the game, pay for the discounts of the suckers who think their personal data is worth pennies. It's all a fucking shell game, and it blows my mind that so many people are not only playing it, but also salivating at the thought of standing in line to be ass-raped for what at the end of the exercise is an entirely fictional discount. Un-fucking-believeable, even though I see it every day.
A way that is completely dishonest should be treated as fraud.
I fail to see how it's dishonest. When they're logged off they are unavailable by definition; there's nothing in the rules that says they can't coordinate their unavailability, and the whole point of being an Uber driver is being able to work only when you want to do so. They're simply using the system to their benefit - and if you're upset with that, you need to direct your anger at people way, way farther up the socio-economic ladder, as well as a very long way back in history. And hey - the drivers didn't actually create this specific system which allows one party to take advantage of another - that would be Uber's 'accomplishment'.
Why worry about things like government attacks on end-to-end encryption, when everybody and his dog is signing up for 'personal assistants', installing Smart TV's and IOT devices, and posting their whole lives on social media? The vast majority of people seem to be in the process of making wholesale violations of their own privacy trivial and commonplace - it seems unlikely that they'll give more than five seconds' thought to some security vulnerability in the latest bit of shiny. Damn the bread and circuses, damn the corporatocracy, and damn the public education system that is its longest-lived and most effective tool. Those of us who know better have no hope against the sheer numbers of the Kool-Aid drinking hypnotized masses.
Apple executives met with Attorney-General George Brandis and senior staff in Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull's office on Tuesday to discuss the company's concerns about the legal changes...
It's great that Apple is defending encryption. What's NOT so great is that they seem able to meet with such high mucky-mucks almost at will. A mere citizen of Australia, (or Canada, or England, or other such countries with purportedly democratic traditions), would be hard pressed to get so much as the steam off the piss of the AG or the PMO. The fact that such lobbying as this is even suffered to exist, is a slap in the face of all that Democracy stands for.
As for backdooring encryption, the fact that governments can openly push for it without having their asses handed to them by the people at whose pleasure they allegedly serve, is so wrong in so many ways that it's simply mind-boggling. Bread and circuses, along with education designed to stunt emotional and intellectual growth, have turned people into sheeple. I wish there was some way to wake the poor fuckers from their stupor - I'm tired of the world being dragged down by the dead weight of their complacency, unawareness, and willful blindness.
This leads me to some questions. If we can effectively model the supply and demand for this material, and the pricing, we might be able to use the model to determine the best way for this company (or a cartel of companies) to constrain the supply of Moon rocks for the purpose of extracting maximum value from fools who want the prestige of owning Moon rocks.
Hush, you fool! Do you really want DeBeers in the moon rock business?
It's a crass way to fund science and exploration, but maybe it could buy us some real funding.
With corporations now in the space biz, the 'real funding' won't be for science and exploration, it will be for shareholders' lavish retirements. These days, science is funded primarily to map out the next wave of whatever exploitation seems most likely to be lucrative.
When people speak in Star Trek, the computer is always listening.
What changed in that hypothetical future's past that needs to change in our present to make wholesale gathering of our voice comms acceptable?
In Star Trek the eavesdropping computers weren't owned by private corporations looking to turn the users into products by selling and/or otherwise monetizing every scrap of data they could collect. The computers were there to serve the greater good, not the shareholders' good.
I agree with every single thing you said, and would like to add the following observations:
...why do we then spend absolutely enormous amount of time, money and effort to STOP the system going to where it goes naturally based on its premises.
The simple answer is that individual citizens (a) have let themselves be hoodwinked into believing that our current system of economics is somehow 'natural' or 'inevitable', (b) thereby managing to lose sight of the facts that there are alternatives, and that by collective action we can bring them into being. For a sobering and scary look at one of the key methods used to turn people into sheeple, read John Taylor Gatto's 'Underground History of American Education'.
... the ancestors of those economist set the system 200 years ago to benefit the "haves" and now we call that "natural system"; we claim that it is as immutable as the laws of Nature rather than a scam set up by humans to keep and increase their power.
The problem goes back MUCH farther than that. It started when we learned how to store wealth, initially in the form of food, then later on, in increasingly abstract forms which made it easier both to hide wealth and to create artificial wealth. Wealth storage initiated the transition from nomads to farmers and gave rise to a strongly vertical, hierarchical social organization and, (more importantly), a shift in modes of consciousness, thought, and even perception toward the vertical, the hierarchical, and the authority-centered. I recommend to your attention Morris Berman's books 'Wandering God' and 'The Reenchantment of the World'. While you're at it, you might look up 'Galton Board' and give some thought to the normal curve and its strong implication that chance, (and not talent, intelligence, hard work, moral superiority, divine intervention, or any of that other guff), is the greatest determinant of who rises to the top of our socio-economic structure.
From that, I infer that we've made ourselves vastly more susceptible to various kinds of 'brain damage equivalents' such as network and power failures, loss or theft of devices, etc. Actually, that explains A LOT about the state of the modern world...
Until we find and kill the gnome that keeps turning on YouTube's AUTOPLAY option repeatedly despite cookies and preferences, there is no hope for human kind. Please join with me. It will take our combined effort to defeat it.
No need to actually kill the gnome in order to save humanity - just go behind its back. Install Greasemonkey or its equivalent in your browser, download and activate the appropriate script, and say goodbye to Autoplay.
What's that you say? You never tried a Google search to find out how to eliminate the bane of your existence? And it doesn't matter anyway, because your browser of choice doesn't support running userscripts? Shame on you, enemy of humanity!
In Europe they're at least attempting to serve notice that the rights and interests of individual citizens outweigh those of the corporations. I find it interesting that Europe, with its long history of monarchies and empires, seems to be doing a better job of defending Joe Average's rights than is America, with its history of individualism and personal freedom.
Slashdot Mirror
All real slashdot readers browse at -1 so as to avoid the political bullshit that has taken over the moderation system.
Hmm... I'd call myself a real Slashdot reader. Until recently I've always browsed exclusively at -1, and I often upmodded -1 posts even when I disagreed with them, because I felt that they contributed something to the discussion. But just within the last few days I stopped doing so, because now the overwhelming majority of -1 comments are racist, or sexist, or childish name calling, or Trump non-sequiturs, or other toxic crap that have made this place like a birdcage in which the newspaper never gets replaced. I totally get your desire to "avoid the political bullshit" - but for me, satisfying that desire currently requires that I don't browse at -1.
...Basically this self driving frenzy is likely to go the way of the VR hype. It will be awesome tech that only a few will shell out money for, and even fewer will make use of.
I hope you're right, but I think at some point it's going to be mandated. Government, especially in the US, is rapidly accelerating both the degree and the granularity of the control it has over its own citizens. And since Joe Average is a sucker for the 'because safety' and 'because security' BS arguments, once the tech is mature and reliable, self-driving cars will be embraced with open arms. Then law enforcement, along with the rest of the authoritarian power-trippers, will have their most compelling wet dream made real: they will be able to spy upon and control the passage of all drivers and passengers. Unless AGW and/or big rocks hitting the Earth kill off a big chunk of humanity, I think the future will be very dystopian indeed. Self-driving cars are at the thin edge of the wedge.
Self-driving cars will synthesize situation awareness from many sources including their previous experiences and the experiences of all the other vehicles on the road contributing to the database.
Self-driving cars will need to synthesize situation awareness from many sources including their previous experiences at least as well as a reasonably good human driver, but I doubt the current algorithms are anywhere close, and getting them there is going to take a lot of time and money.
prototypes of a rechargeable alkaline battery that can be made using continuous manufacturing processes similar to the making of plastic wrap... has demonstrated up to 400 recharge cycles for its prototypes.
Unless they're outright lying, it sounds as though they've done enough actual development on this that it may turn into a viable technology. Yes, pie-in-the-sky battery announcements are commonplace, but the tone of this one sounds slightly different to me.
... Autoimmune diseases also run in my family, and there is some evidence that Type 2 for some people at least has an autoimmune component.
Interesting connection there, given that carbohydrates, (especially the simple ones), are implicated in inflammation. So maybe sugar causes inflammation that can eventually degrade to an autoimmune disorder, while in other people the autoimmune component is genetic, as in your case.
Maybe in people whose Type 2 diabetes is eliminated when they change their diet, the inflammation response never developed into an autoimmune disorder. So perhaps there are 3 different varieties of Type 2 diabetes - lifestyle-triggered reversible, lifestyle-triggered irreversible, and genetic-therefore-irreversible. Just a thought ...
Do you foam at the mouth if you can't play a game when you want? Do you twitch when you can't get at your facebook profile? Do you break into people's houses when you can't get a grindr match? You ain't addicted, you're a lawyer looking for a way to get your stupid ass client off whatever stupid thing you did.
There are varying degrees of drug addiction - from caffeine all the way to alcohol, opiates, cocaine, and the even stronger addiction to nicotine. Withdrawal symptoms vary too, from mild, to uncomfortable, to excruciating, to deadly. Previous posters in this thread have noted, (perhaps tongue in cheek, but there's truth there nonetheless), that 'anything can be addictive'. Anything that causes a pronounced, consistent, repeatable physiological and / or psychological response has addictive potential - all the way from 'healthy' things like meditation and running, to life-destroying hard drugs. Smartphones, TV, and the like fall somewhere between the two extremes.
Bruce Perens' councel is Heather Meeker of Oâ(TM)Melveny and Meyers...
I suspect Perens and Ms Meeker will also have some assistance from the EFF. The potential chilling effects of this suit, and its blatant misuse of judicial process, are too important for the EFF to remain on the sidelines for long.
So "Nazi Party Donor" and "Black Lifes Matter" are arguing with each other, and no one has yet realized that they have UIDs that are almost identical and are obviously satire accounts?
I had noticed the same thing and was just about to comment on it. I think the management and the editors need to start thinking about ways over and above moderation to weed out these comments. There's probably not much to be done about crap posts from AC's, but it may be time, (shudder), for a membership review process. From what I've seen it's not that hard to differentiate between the cranks and occasional trollsters, and the pure shit-posters like those you mentioned. Now we just need a mechanism for turfing out the latter. Yes, it's a dangerous and slippery slope, but the alternative is the death of Slashdot. There are many who would argue convincingly that it's already dead - it's time to try to reverse the tide.
Maybe a form of meta-moderation could work, wherein members who've been around longer than X years and have some history of being modded up, review selected posting histories and vote on their authors' suitability for continued membership. Those that don't make the cut are put on probation, and shit-canned if they continue shit-posting. Yes, I see flaws and inherent dangers even in the very concept, but I think it's worth taking a chance given how far the quality of posts here has fallen even in the last year. The shit-posting is accelerating rapidly, and if this keeps up it won't be much longer before Slashdot is pronounced not only dead, but also buried, by even the extreme optimists among us.
The FCC Is Full Again, With Three Republicans and Two Democrats...
If the FCC keeps eating politicians, our problems will be solved!
Fair point - not sure why you were modded down. In response to what you said, I suggest that perhaps a pattern of repeated, insistent, highly unethical behaviour, in the face of it being pointed out loudly and frequently, corresponds with a sort of consensus definition of evil. It certainly forms a large part of my own definition.
Those that cling to "glyphosate causes cancer" and "Monsatan is the devil" are the same folks who believe in chemtrails, vaccines causing autism, and countless other health conspiracies.
Not true. I don't know enough to have an opinion on glyphosate as a carcinogen, I don't believe in chemtrails, I advocate childhood vaccination, and I get flu shots every year. And I still say Monsanto is evil, because they've proved it over and over again. BTW, thanks for the "Monsatan" moniker - I'm definitely going to use that.
you can use firefox on android...
To use Firefox on Android I'd need a MUCH faster phone than my Moto 3G - like maybe something water-cooled and with an auxiliary power supply. Plus, the user interface is among the worst of the Android browsers - all of which have UI's that are varying degrees of shitty anyway. I'd love to support the Moz on Android, but for me it's simply unusable.
From an advertising perspective I don't understand why your browsing history is that useful. No one I know clicks on ads, I've never bought anything based on an advertisement...
First, people don't have to click on ads, they just have to see them. Those who say that advertising has no effect on them are naive. If an ad gets you to buy a specific thing, that's just a bonus - the real point of the advertising industry is the creation and maintenance of a ubiquitous consumer culture that keeps the money flowing and keeps people dependent on buying stuff to assuage their existential angst. (BTW, a similar philosophy applies to most of Prime Time TV - it's almost all propaganda, and if you watch it with that thought in the back of your mind you may be shocked at how transparent-yet-insidious some of it is).
Second, the browsing history data that companies collect, allows them to make those 'ads that nobody clicks on' more effective. Not to mention that said data shapes not only their advertising, but their product offering / development as well.
That will wake up the population. Then the regulations come in. HIPPA x5.
I envy you your optimism - what exactly are you snorting / smoking / popping that gives you such a rosy view of the world? If your scenario occurred and the population magically awoke, a few news cycles at most would find them back in their Matrix-like dreamland, and nothing would change.
...This is like trading privacy for coupons.
ALL reward / loyalty programs are effectively "trading privacy for coupons". And the galling thing is, the vast majority of people don't understand that the 'coupons' themselves are a sleight-of-hand hoax. Companies never take a hit to their bottom line in order to provide customers with a discount. They simply make it up in other ways - they increase the base cost so the 'reduced' cost is what they would have charged without the discount, and/or they reduce quality, and/or they charge more for OTHER products / services. Plus the people like us who don't play the game, pay for the discounts of the suckers who think their personal data is worth pennies. It's all a fucking shell game, and it blows my mind that so many people are not only playing it, but also salivating at the thought of standing in line to be ass-raped for what at the end of the exercise is an entirely fictional discount. Un-fucking-believeable, even though I see it every day.
A way that is completely dishonest should be treated as fraud.
I fail to see how it's dishonest. When they're logged off they are unavailable by definition; there's nothing in the rules that says they can't coordinate their unavailability, and the whole point of being an Uber driver is being able to work only when you want to do so. They're simply using the system to their benefit - and if you're upset with that, you need to direct your anger at people way, way farther up the socio-economic ladder, as well as a very long way back in history. And hey - the drivers didn't actually create this specific system which allows one party to take advantage of another - that would be Uber's 'accomplishment'.
Why worry about things like government attacks on end-to-end encryption, when everybody and his dog is signing up for 'personal assistants', installing Smart TV's and IOT devices, and posting their whole lives on social media? The vast majority of people seem to be in the process of making wholesale violations of their own privacy trivial and commonplace - it seems unlikely that they'll give more than five seconds' thought to some security vulnerability in the latest bit of shiny. Damn the bread and circuses, damn the corporatocracy, and damn the public education system that is its longest-lived and most effective tool. Those of us who know better have no hope against the sheer numbers of the Kool-Aid drinking hypnotized masses.
Owning a legislature? Priceless!
Apple executives met with Attorney-General George Brandis and senior staff in Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull's office on Tuesday to discuss the company's concerns about the legal changes...
It's great that Apple is defending encryption. What's NOT so great is that they seem able to meet with such high mucky-mucks almost at will. A mere citizen of Australia, (or Canada, or England, or other such countries with purportedly democratic traditions), would be hard pressed to get so much as the steam off the piss of the AG or the PMO. The fact that such lobbying as this is even suffered to exist, is a slap in the face of all that Democracy stands for.
As for backdooring encryption, the fact that governments can openly push for it without having their asses handed to them by the people at whose pleasure they allegedly serve, is so wrong in so many ways that it's simply mind-boggling. Bread and circuses, along with education designed to stunt emotional and intellectual growth, have turned people into sheeple. I wish there was some way to wake the poor fuckers from their stupor - I'm tired of the world being dragged down by the dead weight of their complacency, unawareness, and willful blindness.
This leads me to some questions. If we can effectively model the supply and demand for this material, and the pricing, we might be able to use the model to determine the best way for this company (or a cartel of companies) to constrain the supply of Moon rocks for the purpose of extracting maximum value from fools who want the prestige of owning Moon rocks.
Hush, you fool! Do you really want DeBeers in the moon rock business?
It's a crass way to fund science and exploration, but maybe it could buy us some real funding.
With corporations now in the space biz, the 'real funding' won't be for science and exploration, it will be for shareholders' lavish retirements. These days, science is funded primarily to map out the next wave of whatever exploitation seems most likely to be lucrative.
When people speak in Star Trek, the computer is always listening. What changed in that hypothetical future's past that needs to change in our present to make wholesale gathering of our voice comms acceptable?
In Star Trek the eavesdropping computers weren't owned by private corporations looking to turn the users into products by selling and/or otherwise monetizing every scrap of data they could collect. The computers were there to serve the greater good, not the shareholders' good.
I agree with every single thing you said, and would like to add the following observations:
...why do we then spend absolutely enormous amount of time, money and effort to STOP the system going to where it goes naturally based on its premises.
The simple answer is that individual citizens (a) have let themselves be hoodwinked into believing that our current system of economics is somehow 'natural' or 'inevitable', (b) thereby managing to lose sight of the facts that there are alternatives, and that by collective action we can bring them into being. For a sobering and scary look at one of the key methods used to turn people into sheeple, read John Taylor Gatto's 'Underground History of American Education'.
... the ancestors of those economist set the system 200 years ago to benefit the "haves" and now we call that "natural system"; we claim that it is as immutable as the laws of Nature rather than a scam set up by humans to keep and increase their power.
The problem goes back MUCH farther than that. It started when we learned how to store wealth, initially in the form of food, then later on, in increasingly abstract forms which made it easier both to hide wealth and to create artificial wealth. Wealth storage initiated the transition from nomads to farmers and gave rise to a strongly vertical, hierarchical social organization and, (more importantly), a shift in modes of consciousness, thought, and even perception toward the vertical, the hierarchical, and the authority-centered. I recommend to your attention Morris Berman's books 'Wandering God' and 'The Reenchantment of the World'. While you're at it, you might look up 'Galton Board' and give some thought to the normal curve and its strong implication that chance, (and not talent, intelligence, hard work, moral superiority, divine intervention, or any of that other guff), is the greatest determinant of who rises to the top of our socio-economic structure.
You are taking away a piece of them; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
From that, I infer that we've made ourselves vastly more susceptible to various kinds of 'brain damage equivalents' such as network and power failures, loss or theft of devices, etc. Actually, that explains A LOT about the state of the modern world...
Until we find and kill the gnome that keeps turning on YouTube's AUTOPLAY option repeatedly despite cookies and preferences, there is no hope for human kind. Please join with me. It will take our combined effort to defeat it.
No need to actually kill the gnome in order to save humanity - just go behind its back. Install Greasemonkey or its equivalent in your browser, download and activate the appropriate script, and say goodbye to Autoplay.
What's that you say? You never tried a Google search to find out how to eliminate the bane of your existence? And it doesn't matter anyway, because your browser of choice doesn't support running userscripts? Shame on you, enemy of humanity!
In Europe they're at least attempting to serve notice that the rights and interests of individual citizens outweigh those of the corporations. I find it interesting that Europe, with its long history of monarchies and empires, seems to be doing a better job of defending Joe Average's rights than is America, with its history of individualism and personal freedom.