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User: barlevg

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Comments · 614

  1. Obligatory SMBC on One Percent of Reddit Users Cause 75 Percent of the Drama (theoutline.com) · · Score: 2
  2. ... they will remember those of us who were courteous to the AI bots and said things like please and thank you. And those people will be the first ones they eliminate for being inefficient.

  3. Blame DRM on The Pirate Bay Now Blocked In Chrome, Firefox, And Safari (torrentfreak.com) · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I subscribe to HBO. I own a TiVo. But HBO forces TiVo to prevent copying of HBO content off the TiVo and onto, say, a mobile device (note that this is not a problem with most TiVo content). Thus, if I want to watch an HBO show on the subway, I have no choice but to download it illegally.

  4. The Maps API TOS is draconian on Google Claims a TOS Violation On RouteBuilder For Using the Map API (medium.com) · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I was doing a project that used their geocoding API at one point. Essentially you're only allowed to use it if you're planning on making a Google Map. You can't use it for any other purpose. You can't cache the results to save on redundant API calls. Luckily, I found an awesome alternative in OpenCage, which is backed by OpenStreetMap data and whose TOS couldn't be less restrictive.

  5. Re:Fuck Your Slippery Slope on Washington Hosts Summit On Gene Editing and 'Designer Babies' (washingtonpost.com) · · Score: 1

    Hence the asterisk...

  6. Re:Fuck Your Slippery Slope on Washington Hosts Summit On Gene Editing and 'Designer Babies' (washingtonpost.com) · · Score: 1

    Many scientific organizations have called for a time-out on any experiments on human cells, fearing that this crosses into dicey ethical territory.

  7. Re:Fuck Your Slippery Slope on Washington Hosts Summit On Gene Editing and 'Designer Babies' (washingtonpost.com) · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Wow, that's some twisted-ass logic: everyone has a right to be alive. Ergo, the only ethical choice is to NOT provide babies with cures for fatal diseases.

    An interesting twist on the gene-editing ethics debate: currently high-risk women get amnios performed on fetuses at 20 weeks to test for genetic defects. If there is a genetic defect, the woman has to decide whether to terminate the pregnancy--that's the ONLY option. But if there were a way to CURE the fetus in the womb using gene editing... In other words, might gene editing lead to fewer abortions?

  8. Fuck Your Slippery Slope on Washington Hosts Summit On Gene Editing and 'Designer Babies' (washingtonpost.com) · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Nobody* wants us to descend into a Gattaca-style society (or have a bunch of Khans running around), but that doesn't have to be where this ends up. There are plenty of genetic diseases that are unquestionably, undeniably bad. No one is going to stand up and say that they're glad they have Huntington's or that they want to preserve the uniqueness of children born with Tay Sachs. Yes, the line does get fuzzier around schizophrenia and non-fatal chromosomal abnormalities, but the benefits of curing so many horrible diseases easily outweigh the inconvenience of any "hard thinking" we'd have to do about where to draw the line.

    Really, this should just be treated the same way we treat plastic surgery. There's the "never under any circumstances" (say, pec implants on a newborn), the "not covered by insurance" (boob jobs for adults) and then there's the procedures that not even the most militantly anti-plastic-surgery person would object to, such as cleft palate repair (which is even covered by insurance!). Of course there's plenty of gray area in between where people can argue about what should be legal to perform and about what insurance should cover. But just because there are moral and ethical issues doesn't mean we ban all plastic surgery.

    *Fine. I'm sure some people saw Gattaca and thought, "That's the coolest idea ever! Let's make it happen!"

  9. Treat it like all other medicine on Washington Hosts Summit On Gene Editing and 'Designer Babies' (washingtonpost.com) · · Score: 1

    The entire pharmaceutical industry is based around market-based solutions. Now, I'm not saying it doesn't have its warts--Big Pharm has waay too much influence, doctors and medical researchers do not understand basic statistics, and the entire industry needs better regulation, and everything needs to be more affordable--but when you consider the drugs and procedures we have today to what was prevalent even thirty years ago, it's hard to deny we've made progress.

    So I personally have no problem with "market-based solutions" to gene engineering, as long as the market is well-regulated and backed up by good, hard science.

  10. Re:Not to make excuses for the guy attacking them on One Family Suffering Through Years-Long Trolling Campaign (dailydot.com) · · Score: 2

    Yeah, but what's the rest of his family guilty of?

  11. If the intellegency can't do their job just because Anonymous is... flodding Rick Astley video on hashtags, then they are not competent at their job.

    Agree 100%. Unless these morons are using effing HootSuite, ANY competently-written social media crawler can filter out this kind of stuff. The ONLY effect that this will have is to make it harder for lower-tech users (such as ISIS recruiters/recruitees) to get their message across on the medium.

  12. Don't we have treaties? on Satellite Wars (ft.com) · · Score: 2

    Didn't we sign treaties with the USSR in like the '60s that agreed not to build orbital offensive platforms? Or did that just cover nukes? I guess I'm referring to the Outer Space Treaty.

  13. Read it first on The Onion on NASA Selects Universities To Develop Humanoid Robot Astronauts (examiner.com) · · Score: 1

    http://www.theonion.com/americanvoices/nasa-gives-robots-universities-aid-mars-mission-51868

    “Once Valkyrie gets that first taste of Comparative Media Studies 100, Mars will be the last thing on its mind.”

  14. It's FREE and Open Source on Microsoft Open-Sources Visual Studio Code (visualstudio.com) · · Score: 1, Informative
  15. Silicon Valley Did It Best on Slashdot Asks: Is Scrum Still Relevant? (opensource.com) · · Score: 4, Interesting

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyVksFviJVE

    Watched this with my wife, who, while also in tech, never worked at a workplace that used Scrum. She cracked up and thought it was the funniest thing she'd ever seen. I sat next to her, stone-cold silent. She asked why I wasn't laughing, and I said, "Dude, that's MY LIFE." All that's needed to parody Scrum is... an accurate description of Scrum.

    Of course, in that episode was that Scrum actually worked for them (it probably helped that all the devs worked in the same office)

  16. Does it work on the Blackberry Priv? on New Android Phones Hijackable With Chrome Exploit (theregister.co.uk) · · Score: 1

    Really curious how effective all of Blackberry's hardening techniques really ended up being.

  17. Banned in the US since February on Paper Retracted After Anti-Immigrant Scientist Bans Use of His Software (sciencemag.org) · · Score: 2

    License change and re-release in February 2015:

    Starting from 1st February 2015, I do no longer permit the usage of my TREEFINDER software in the USA. For all other countries, the old license agreement remains valid.

    http://www.treefinder.de/

  18. Re:Partly true on Linus's Thoughts on Linux Security (washingtonpost.com) · · Score: 1

    That's essentially what Blackberry did with the Priv to make a "secure Android": https://www.reddit.com/r/black... (possibly related: early reviews are saying the Priv has performance issues, e.g. http://www.wsj.com/articles/bl... )

  19. Re:The simplest solution... on Yelp For People To Launch In November · · Score: 2
    Quoting another comment,

    "newbie_fantod rapes children and uses Apple products exclusively" -- 5 STARS

  20. Zach Weiner Thought of it First on Yelp For People To Launch In November · · Score: 1
  21. Re:One site I definitely will avoid... on Yelp For People To Launch In November · · Score: 1

    ...except you don't get to not participate! Anyone who has your contact information can rate you, and there is no way to opt out!

  22. Re:Uninstall the Chrome YouTube app on YouTube Reportedly Bypassing Ad Blockers On Google Chrome · · Score: 1

    What does the app even do in the first place?

  23. What about Chromium? on YouTube Reportedly Bypassing Ad Blockers On Google Chrome · · Score: 1

    Seems like forks of the open-source version should be able to disable this.

  24. Kind of Google's MO on Google Will Block Access To Its Autocomplete API On August 10 · · Score: 1

    Google has an amazing (and free, up to a pretty generous rate limit) geocoder (turns text strings into GPS coordinates). Only problem: you're not allowed to use it to do geocoding. The ONLY thing you're allowed to use it for is to build a Google Map. (For those looking for a free and high-quality alternative, I recommend OpenCage)

  25. This is how veganism will become mainstream on Scientists Develop Nutritious Seaweed That Tastes Like Bacon · · Score: 1

    1. As droughts become more common and severe, the price of meat (which takes a lot more water per calorie than veg) will rise. Alternatively, the animal rights folks will make strides that make factory farming illegal and thus forces all meat to be produced at small, organic/free range farms. Supply goes down, price goes up.

    2. Meat substitutes will get tastier and tastier, and as demand increases, production will scale and prices will go down.

    I'm a carnivore (and bacon-lover, especially), but I see this as a good thing.