Sensitivity to poisons also varies from one poison to another. Why would something be selected for use as an insecticide if it harmed humans more than it did insects? An insecticide would be chosen because insects are sensitive to it whereas humans are not -- that's what makes it an 'insecticide'.
Funny how the same people tend to happily buy in to the next big vitamin/superfood/diet fad, by the ones peddling them. AFAIK, GMO foods were never promoted as being superior (to consumers) over regular foods. Who ever thought sugar was healthy? I think you're thinking of high-carb diets. Traditionally, foods considered safe tend to be continued to be considered safe, unless there's some new research giving good reason why they might not be. New hybrids/cultivars are created all the time and assumed to still be safe, even thought a random mutation could make it toxic. The situation is reactive (recalls) with little done proactively. Of course that can lead to issues like with trans fats being banned over a century after their introduction to the market.
The farmer owning the field next to mine was growing switchgrass to make biofuel, and the seeds blew over into my field and took it over. I want to sue the company that sold those switchgrass seeds!
The better solution is to sue the farmer, which will cause a market effect of lowered demand for switchgrass seeds, and/or increase demand for seeds with terminator genes.
the ire directed at "big government" and "the deep state" should instead be directed at
This is the internet. There's enough ire for EVERYBODY!
Sounds like "communism" to me where the big powerful folk running your life tell you what you are allowed to do
Communism is an economic system where a central authority controls the distribution and production of goods and services. Other than that, you're free to live however you want, at least as far as communism is concerned. You may be thinking of Totalitarianism, which is absolute control of every other aspect of a society. For reasons that should be obvious, totalitarian states tend to like communism.
Phone books are (were) given away for free. Their business model is selling ads for businesses in the phone book. Now it's all online though, although you may be able to request a paper phone book.
If $1billion built a 1gigawatt plant (pretty sure it's not usually that rosy), that'd be $1/watt. Didn't photovoltaic pass the $1/watt threshold a few years ago? Solar panels are scaleable and mass-produced, whereas nuclear requires years of building before you get the first watt of power. Might photovoltaic + energy storage be cheaper than nuclear?
I've suspected for a long time that music preferences correlate with personality traits. I recall reading how people with different jobs were found to have different music preferences. This also seems to back up the concept, at least broadly (state of mind). Instead of just looking at tempo, I wonder what they could find correlating with other aspects of music, like dynamic range of volume, number of chords in the song, scale, or time signature. You'd probably need to filter out traditional music in order to get useful results, though.
Also Blizzard and Overwatch. It started out as an MMORPG called 'Titan' but the assets got reused for a completely different type of game. Blizzard and Nintendo have similar reputations for all of their games being extremely polished and high-quality. I'm sure Nintendo doesn't want another 'Other M', and would rather start over than run the franchise into the ground. It's already pretty coolly received in Japan, and noone at Nintendo wants to touch it since its creator Gunpei Yokoi died. Mercury Steam did a great job with Samus Returns, so maybe they would've been a better choice than Retro Studios for new ideas, although I don't fault Nintendo for not wanting to risk restarting development twice.
For a turn-based game, particularly when you can see what the artificial stupidity is doing, you're right. In a realtime game like Starcraft 2 there's so much that could be done, that doing nothing with a particular thing at a given moment is a reasonable move. If you want to make the suspension of disbelief better, you can teach it what mistakes humans make, and allow it to repeat them when desired. AFAIK teaching a deep-learning algorithm how to fail like a human has received little research.
Playing a multiplayer game with bots used to be seen as an inferior experience to playing with real humans. Now imagine that instead of something like AlphaStar's utility function being set to trying to win, it's set to trying to make the human opponents have the most fun. Of course it'd need some understanding of the mindset of the player; they might not want to always win, or always have close matches, or possibly they're a sore loser. However, this could be inferred somewhat by player behavior (even outside of the match proper, e.g. in menus).
Put that in a game and ship it, and that could be a killer feature. People might prefer to play with a bot that'll guarantee a fun time, over a human that might rage quit or be an unfair match that leads to a one-sided game. #MakeGamesSinglePlayerAgain
Guess I misremembered. Swear I read a Slashdot headline several years ago where economists found the unemployment rate would never go above X% because at that point people will be willing to take any job in exchange for food. The Great Depression was used as an example of this. Of course I can't find it now.
The Great Depression never had the unemployment rate go much over 10%. Imagine what would happen to a society with a permanent 25% unemployment rate. Most companies are already one down quarter away from massive layoffs, so don't expect them to absorb the losses. The unemployment would also hit all consumer-oriented businesses, leading to a vicious cycle. We won't cleanly have full employment one day, then a SOTU address saying "Good news, you don't have to come in to work tomorrow. ALL jobs have been fully automated." There'll be a loooong transition period where people are either twiddling their thumbs with no idea what to do with the structurally unemployed, or saying 'fuck you I got mine.' And that transition is going to be 'interesting times' as the Chinese would say.
I dunno, I'm pretty sure "vote for this and we'll donate to your reelection campaign" beats out "we're angry, do X" no matter who is standing in front of you; at least for people who lack empathy (which is probably most politicians).
The worst laws pass unanimously (see: USA PATRIOT ACT, DMCA) and the President can unilaterally cause plenty of chaos by themselves, so this strategy isn't working out so well for us. Getting partisanship out of Congress seems like a better bet. What we want is dialectics, but what we have is debate ruled by tribalism.
I like a modified form of the British Parliament idea: a House of Commons (lay people, like average Joe voter), and a separate House of Lords (only replacing the Nobility with experts in various fields like the sciences, including social sciences.) The former could be filled with people selected for service at random, like jury duty, only they wouldn't be paid a pittance. Representatives should be far more 'representative' if they're chosen at random rather than all being rich to start.
Is 30,000 really the 'magic number'? Has any research been done on if citizen representation is improved by having 1 rep per 30,000 versus 1 rep for 300,000? Could district area/dimensions be more important than the population it contains? The real "while we're at it" should be nonpartisan redistricting, to slay the Gerrymander (which will probably require a Constitutional amendment).
It takes CO2 as an input? But that's food for plants! Won't someone please think of the plants?! They remove greenhouse gas from the atmosphere, leave them alone!/s
This raises the question of what's going to happen to video ads once broadcast TV goes away. If everyone's watching commercial-free services like Netflix, then where are people going to see these things? Are advertisers just going to rely on other types of ads, like on web pages? Print is dying as fast, although some audio streaming services have audio ads. Maybe it'll move to sponsorships, with the content producer talking about the product or having product placement.
Slashdot Mirror
Sensitivity to poisons also varies from one poison to another. Why would something be selected for use as an insecticide if it harmed humans more than it did insects? An insecticide would be chosen because insects are sensitive to it whereas humans are not -- that's what makes it an 'insecticide'.
He meant 'sheaf' but didn't know how to spell it.
Funny how the same people tend to happily buy in to the next big vitamin/superfood/diet fad, by the ones peddling them.
AFAIK, GMO foods were never promoted as being superior (to consumers) over regular foods. Who ever thought sugar was healthy? I think you're thinking of high-carb diets.
Traditionally, foods considered safe tend to be continued to be considered safe, unless there's some new research giving good reason why they might not be. New hybrids/cultivars are created all the time and assumed to still be safe, even thought a random mutation could make it toxic. The situation is reactive (recalls) with little done proactively. Of course that can lead to issues like with trans fats being banned over a century after their introduction to the market.
The farmer owning the field next to mine was growing switchgrass to make biofuel, and the seeds blew over into my field and took it over. I want to sue the company that sold those switchgrass seeds!
The better solution is to sue the farmer, which will cause a market effect of lowered demand for switchgrass seeds, and/or increase demand for seeds with terminator genes.
the ire directed at "big government" and "the deep state" should instead be directed at
This is the internet. There's enough ire for EVERYBODY!
Sounds like "communism" to me where the big powerful folk running your life tell you what you are allowed to do
Communism is an economic system where a central authority controls the distribution and production of goods and services. Other than that, you're free to live however you want, at least as far as communism is concerned. You may be thinking of Totalitarianism, which is absolute control of every other aspect of a society. For reasons that should be obvious, totalitarian states tend to like communism.
Phone books are (were) given away for free. Their business model is selling ads for businesses in the phone book. Now it's all online though, although you may be able to request a paper phone book.
If $1billion built a 1gigawatt plant (pretty sure it's not usually that rosy), that'd be $1/watt. Didn't photovoltaic pass the $1/watt threshold a few years ago? Solar panels are scaleable and mass-produced, whereas nuclear requires years of building before you get the first watt of power. Might photovoltaic + energy storage be cheaper than nuclear?
I modded you up on accident so am posting to undo mod
I've suspected for a long time that music preferences correlate with personality traits. I recall reading how people with different jobs were found to have different music preferences. This also seems to back up the concept, at least broadly (state of mind). Instead of just looking at tempo, I wonder what they could find correlating with other aspects of music, like dynamic range of volume, number of chords in the song, scale, or time signature. You'd probably need to filter out traditional music in order to get useful results, though.
Not true. Beelzebub gives you something you want when you sell him your soul.
Facebook is now for seniors who WISH they could be busy living their lives.
Also Blizzard and Overwatch. It started out as an MMORPG called 'Titan' but the assets got reused for a completely different type of game. Blizzard and Nintendo have similar reputations for all of their games being extremely polished and high-quality. I'm sure Nintendo doesn't want another 'Other M', and would rather start over than run the franchise into the ground. It's already pretty coolly received in Japan, and noone at Nintendo wants to touch it since its creator Gunpei Yokoi died. Mercury Steam did a great job with Samus Returns, so maybe they would've been a better choice than Retro Studios for new ideas, although I don't fault Nintendo for not wanting to risk restarting development twice.
For a turn-based game, particularly when you can see what the artificial stupidity is doing, you're right. In a realtime game like Starcraft 2 there's so much that could be done, that doing nothing with a particular thing at a given moment is a reasonable move. If you want to make the suspension of disbelief better, you can teach it what mistakes humans make, and allow it to repeat them when desired. AFAIK teaching a deep-learning algorithm how to fail like a human has received little research.
Playing a multiplayer game with bots used to be seen as an inferior experience to playing with real humans. Now imagine that instead of something like AlphaStar's utility function being set to trying to win, it's set to trying to make the human opponents have the most fun. Of course it'd need some understanding of the mindset of the player; they might not want to always win, or always have close matches, or possibly they're a sore loser. However, this could be inferred somewhat by player behavior (even outside of the match proper, e.g. in menus).
Put that in a game and ship it, and that could be a killer feature. People might prefer to play with a bot that'll guarantee a fun time, over a human that might rage quit or be an unfair match that leads to a one-sided game.
#MakeGamesSinglePlayerAgain
Guess I misremembered. Swear I read a Slashdot headline several years ago where economists found the unemployment rate would never go above X% because at that point people will be willing to take any job in exchange for food. The Great Depression was used as an example of this. Of course I can't find it now.
But there are solar winds.
The Great Depression never had the unemployment rate go much over 10%. Imagine what would happen to a society with a permanent 25% unemployment rate. Most companies are already one down quarter away from massive layoffs, so don't expect them to absorb the losses. The unemployment would also hit all consumer-oriented businesses, leading to a vicious cycle. We won't cleanly have full employment one day, then a SOTU address saying "Good news, you don't have to come in to work tomorrow. ALL jobs have been fully automated." There'll be a loooong transition period where people are either twiddling their thumbs with no idea what to do with the structurally unemployed, or saying 'fuck you I got mine.' And that transition is going to be 'interesting times' as the Chinese would say.
I dunno, I'm pretty sure "vote for this and we'll donate to your reelection campaign" beats out "we're angry, do X" no matter who is standing in front of you; at least for people who lack empathy (which is probably most politicians).
The worst laws pass unanimously (see: USA PATRIOT ACT, DMCA) and the President can unilaterally cause plenty of chaos by themselves, so this strategy isn't working out so well for us. Getting partisanship out of Congress seems like a better bet. What we want is dialectics, but what we have is debate ruled by tribalism.
I like a modified form of the British Parliament idea: a House of Commons (lay people, like average Joe voter), and a separate House of Lords (only replacing the Nobility with experts in various fields like the sciences, including social sciences.) The former could be filled with people selected for service at random, like jury duty, only they wouldn't be paid a pittance. Representatives should be far more 'representative' if they're chosen at random rather than all being rich to start.
Is 30,000 really the 'magic number'? Has any research been done on if citizen representation is improved by having 1 rep per 30,000 versus 1 rep for 300,000? Could district area/dimensions be more important than the population it contains? The real "while we're at it" should be nonpartisan redistricting, to slay the Gerrymander (which will probably require a Constitutional amendment).
Not to worry, electrolysis can be used to separate sodium from salt. Just apply some electricity to some abundant seawater...
Oh, wait...
It takes CO2 as an input? But that's food for plants! Won't someone please think of the plants?! They remove greenhouse gas from the atmosphere, leave them alone! /s
Chromium is itself open-source, and some forks will likely retain the webRequest API.
This raises the question of what's going to happen to video ads once broadcast TV goes away. If everyone's watching commercial-free services like Netflix, then where are people going to see these things? Are advertisers just going to rely on other types of ads, like on web pages? Print is dying as fast, although some audio streaming services have audio ads. Maybe it'll move to sponsorships, with the content producer talking about the product or having product placement.