Yes, I'm with your line of thinking. "Dozens" makes it sound like there were about 24 to 120 companies. If they sold access to 24, a company the size of Facebook likely sold it to 24,000. Dozens is probably designed to sound deliberately low whilst not being technically incorrect.
We do not know the name, but it was not a guy. It was a gal.
She languished at the encampment, be it hut or cave, as the seasons came and went, and had access to a varying amount of small objects.
As she laboured in her primitive lab, she had the intelligence, experience, opportunity and motive to experiment with combinations of adaptations and stumbled, early on, upon the idea that rolling was more efficient than dragging or pulling.
I don't see any point or purpose for Instagram. If I want to share photos, I have my web server or Smugmug. Photo editing? GIMP or other tools. Need an app? There are commercial ones for a few bucks which respect privacy.
I understand it is doing well, but what can Instagram do that other things cannot, other than slurp your data for resale in bulk, which is not something I consider a "feature" for me.
Well I wouldn't create an account with Instagram for the pure reason that it is owned by Facebook and I refuse to touch anything Facebook.
>which will always be the most suitable place for human habitation
Lets not make any assumptions - after a few million years of terraforming, Mars and Venus might be every bit as suitable - especially after being relocated to more hospitable orbits.
True- although even then they wouldn't be MORE suitable, only EQUALLY suitable. If we can terraform Mars and Venus we would also certainly have the technology to restore Earth to it's former glory pre any pollution and man made climate change.
If we had underground shelters in Madagascar, the heat might not be detectable above ground- our noise could be disguised, and even our waste products might not be recognizable as waste products to those in Madagascar if we're careful (incinerate it and pump it out into the ocean).
How advanced is Madagascar in this scenario- if they're not late 20th century, they probably wouldn't have sensitive listening devices or think there's anything strange in the chemical composition of the water.
Aliens could be living on Jupiter (I'm sure they're not- this is a hypothetical experiment), if we don't recognize their garbage, noise, and energy expenditures, even if we did see them we might think that they're natural by products of Jupiter and not the by-product of an alien species.
Been there seen that. We just had the cryptocrash and now we are looking for a new breed of tulip to plant.
I wouldn't call crypto a tulip scenario; when the bubble burst on bitcoin it lost 2/3rds of it's value but was still many times more valuable than where it had been a year before that... it's a long slow decline with some ups for bitcoin now.
I wouldn't call Instagram to be a tulip scenario either as their is no hype to invest in it,etc. "e products" are very volatile though, and Instagram could easily be worth half or less their value in a year... that's the way services like that go. Not that I expect them to nosedive. They'll probably be viable for a while longer.
Simple answer to the paradox is that space is just too big. Technology to visit other stars may not be possible, or be sufficiently rare that expansion can go undetected.
It could also be, that if you are travelling between stars or maintaining a high tech civilization you eventually realize, "Hey, Advertising our existence to the world may not be a good idea."
Even if you're not of the mindset to (wipe out your rivals before they wipe you out, just in case they're hostile) you will probably have the mindset: don't advertise your whereabouts just incase people who ARE of that mindset exist.
Should we move to Mars? It will be very expensive and mostly pointless.
How about we spend all that money looking after the place where conditions are suitable and we know we can survive?
Why not both? It certainly isn't "pointless" to want to expand the human condition and strive to create a backup for earth and all life as we know it.
It's not an either/or scenario. No-one is talking about moving the entire human population to mars- that would defeat the purpose. We can try to restore earth and maintain a population on Earth, which will always be the most suitable place for human habitation AND at the same time expand into the solar system- starting with Mars.
There's a lot of empty space in the Universe. Let's fill it up. Proxima 3 needs a Starbucks.
As long as your wife is real, and not just a wifi character. The days when someone will have a wedding ceremony with an AI character online are surely not too far away.
Back in the 1980's and 1990's we had Shareware. These were programs that you can download, copy with other and use. Some of them had a Trial Time Period, where you can use the full version for a period of time, then you have access to a reduced features, or not work at all. But most others Offered additional Levels, and other goodies if you were to actually purchase the software.
I see many of these free to play games with extra purchases as just an extension of the Shareware concept. However the problem that I feel is most concerning is the lack of a cap in how much you are going to pay for it. Say an $80 fee (The cost of a good console game) where everything is unlocked, and you can use the game and stay current. But that isn't the case, because it is easy to nickle and dime your way into people paying much more. Often for just something fun at the moment.
Granted this is still probably better then what people will pay for beer where they drink it, get a buzz, and then feel sick in the morning.
The old shareware games used to give you a pretty decent amount of playtime on the free version too. They didn't cut you off the moment it got slightly interesting; and it was usually a pay once and you get the whole thing when you did pay... it wasn't the constant microtransaction trickle that most places try to get nowadays.
CO2, soot, lead... Yeah I hold the oil companies responsible. Not least because when it became clear what was happening they were extremely slow to do anything about it, just like tobacco sellers.
Well, technically the oil companies don't produce CO2, soot, or lead. You can blame the power plants, and the car owners for that. Their industry, pumping out oil doesn't produce much more CO2 than many other industries. It's how consumers (power plants, car owners) use the product that cause the CO2. If consumers watered their lawn with oil instead of using it to power their car, they wouldn't release as much CO2.:)
On a more serious note though; for this to be comparable to tobacco the oil companies would have had to know BEFORE the public how harmful oil was- and actively try suppressing the truth. As far as I am aware- oil companies didn't find out before the public- and the public continued to use oil after learning of the dangers. Unlike tobacco who knew about the dangers of their product before the consumers did (and hid that information)- oil companies didn't hide anything. We've known as long as them how CO2 is linked to global warming.
It's also worth pointing out that it's hard to pinpoint how much blame goes to Oil as opposed to coal, deforestation, slash and burn, melting ice causing sequested CO2 and methane to be released.
That article is possibly the stupidest thing I have ever read in my life.
What would Benjamin Franklin have to say about the absurdity that Alaska, with less than a million inhabitants, has the same Senate power as California, a state with over 38 million people
He'd say, "Good". That's EXACTLY what the Senate was designed for... so that small states would be on an equal footing with the large states.
I can't comment on what Benjamin Franklin would have said then or now; however, it's worth noting that the US is a very different place than it was when the constitution was made.
Look at the name of the US- it's the United STATES; not the United PROVINCES. At the time of founding the states were viewed as... well, states aka NATIONS, not provinces. This was a coming together of different nations to become one. The original US was more of a confederacy than a single nation. Obviously over time the US has become a more united single country and states are now treated more like regions or provinces than independent countries.
Giving states equal footing in the senate was to prevent little states being bullied by larger states. (in the UN today, all countries get one representative and one vote despite some being larger than others).
Now that the US is almost universally agreed as one single country the idea that small states need protection is perhaps not as important. The two senators per state is probably an outdated concept- but I highly doubt it will ever go away. Small states wouldn't give up that extra power they have. I think 100 years from now you're more likely to see bigger states fracturing to give themselves more senate votes rather than see small states give up their advantage.
Oh sure, if you feed them grass and hay, Britain has that. But face it, Britain is an island with limited acreage for doing this, so they have a hard time producing a lot of cattle for slaughter.
The issue is it's hard/expensive to do the feed lot thing. You know, where the cattle stand around eating themselves silly on corn to put on as much weight as possible in the time allowed. Growing grains like corn takes a lot of space and feed lots take a lot of grain. Britain doesn't have the space or climate to grow all that grain.
As a result, they get mostly grass fed meat, which takes longer, makes the meat tougher with more connective tissue and less fat. Some folks like the stronger taste of grass fed, but most of us (in the USA at least) are predisposed to like what we normally get in the grocery store. Young fat cattle that are given growth hormones and fed lots of grain which is more tender and has a milder taste.
However, to their credit, they do grow a lot of sheep which are much better suited to their climate and are a bit more efficient when working from just grass. They have some good lamb over there, it just doesn't appeal to your average US beef and chicken eater....
You'd actually be surprised how much grains and agricultural land there is in the UK. Sure, the UK maybe only 1/50th the land area and houses 1/6th the population of the US; but cities are much more compact than in the US, and pretty much all the land is usable for agriculture- (at least until you get to Scotland). The mountain ranges are pretty tame and can even be farmed, it doesn't get very hot, but it actually doesn't get as cold as most of the US either, meaning a lot of things will grow in the UK better than the US. We have no deserts or tundra or salt plains taking up our land area. You're right, a larger portion is dedicated to sheep than in the US- but also: cows.
Pretty much all land in the UK is used for something. I was amazed when I moved to the US how little land seems to have been cultivated- there is so much unused land (which is a good thing for ecology)- Britain has used every square inch out of necessity.
Maize isn't ideally suited for the UK (although is still grown) - it can still be imported really cheap. Ever since Mr. Bush placed massive subsidies on maize, the US has had huge surpluses of cheap grain thanks to the US tax payers- that the rest of the world can get hold of cheap US grain that would otherwise just rot. Britain thanks the US tax payers for paying for most of the cost of their maize for them. (Note on use of the word corn- it's a regional word and is used generically in every country as the main grain crop- so corn means barley in Scotland, wheat in England, who knows what in Australia- probably poisonous 'drop bear spider weed').
Wheat and Barley grows fantastic in the UK. You're right though, Britain doesn't grow as many cows for beef as say, the US, and it probably is climate related: the TYPES of cows that do best in Britain ARE dairy cows. Friesians (dairy cows) are the most common in the UK. I believe these are closely related to the Schleswig-Holstein cows that the US also uses in places like Wisconin and Vermont.
10 million cows in the UK. 40 million in the US. Per capita (and certainly per square mile) there are more cows in the UK than the US. 1/4 the cows on 1/50th the land area.
Regarding grass fed; I think a lot of people prefer grass-fed cattle once they get used to it, although it is a personal preference. Here in the US it's a bit of a delicacy and people will pay more for it (they have to because it is more expensive). It's also much healthier it has a better fat composition since the cows are getting THEIR fat from leaves rather than seeds. Personally, I'm not much of a beef eater. Give me a pork chop, a lamb shank, a piece of salmon or a curried chicken over a beef steak any-day.
Slashdot Mirror
Sure. The NSA is purging data- just like Kim is purging North Korea's nuclear program. Both are very believable.
I'm sure the NSA is just making a show of deleting data whilst backing it up in another database with more stringent security needed to get access to.
Three million is "dozens". Lots and lots of dozens.
Don't be a dumb fuck.
Yes, I'm with your line of thinking. "Dozens" makes it sound like there were about 24 to 120 companies. If they sold access to 24, a company the size of Facebook likely sold it to 24,000. Dozens is probably designed to sound deliberately low whilst not being technically incorrect.
We do not know the name, but it was not a guy. It was a gal.
She languished at the encampment, be it hut or cave, as the seasons came and went, and had access to a varying amount of small objects.
As she laboured in her primitive lab, she had the intelligence, experience, opportunity and motive to experiment with combinations of adaptations and stumbled, early on, upon the idea that rolling was more efficient than dragging or pulling.
Was she hot though?
OK, fair enough. You would have thought he would have used at least two hands though.
He mentioned a few million years. If we're around in a few million years I can't even imagine what could be possible.
Do we even know the name of the guy who invented the wheel?
Wasn't it Al Gore?
Linus has created literally trillions in economic activity. Singlehanded. But techies worship Musk. Very odd.
Singlehanded huh? So he wrote every version of Linux, every fork, every application, and every improvement was his idea?
He is obviously the guy who kicked it all off, but to say he did it all singlehanded is selling thousands of people short.
I don't see any point or purpose for Instagram. If I want to share photos, I have my web server or Smugmug. Photo editing? GIMP or other tools. Need an app? There are commercial ones for a few bucks which respect privacy.
I understand it is doing well, but what can Instagram do that other things cannot, other than slurp your data for resale in bulk, which is not something I consider a "feature" for me.
Well I wouldn't create an account with Instagram for the pure reason that it is owned by Facebook and I refuse to touch anything Facebook.
The Beatles must be very happy. It's "Ryu-cy in the sky, with diamonds."
>which will always be the most suitable place for human habitation
Lets not make any assumptions - after a few million years of terraforming, Mars and Venus might be every bit as suitable - especially after being relocated to more hospitable orbits.
True- although even then they wouldn't be MORE suitable, only EQUALLY suitable. If we can terraform Mars and Venus we would also certainly have the technology to restore Earth to it's former glory pre any pollution and man made climate change.
If we had underground shelters in Madagascar, the heat might not be detectable above ground- our noise could be disguised, and even our waste products might not be recognizable as waste products to those in Madagascar if we're careful (incinerate it and pump it out into the ocean).
How advanced is Madagascar in this scenario- if they're not late 20th century, they probably wouldn't have sensitive listening devices or think there's anything strange in the chemical composition of the water.
Aliens could be living on Jupiter (I'm sure they're not- this is a hypothetical experiment), if we don't recognize their garbage, noise, and energy expenditures, even if we did see them we might think that they're natural by products of Jupiter and not the by-product of an alien species.
...his opponent's technique was cutting edge.
Stop being a hack: any way you slice it, it's too soon for using a sharp wit to mock his death.
I personally wouldn't go near a place called Fukuoka. That was his big mistake.
Been there seen that. We just had the cryptocrash and now we are looking for a new breed of tulip to plant.
I wouldn't call crypto a tulip scenario; when the bubble burst on bitcoin it lost 2/3rds of it's value but was still many times more valuable than where it had been a year before that... it's a long slow decline with some ups for bitcoin now.
I wouldn't call Instagram to be a tulip scenario either as their is no hype to invest in it,etc. "e products" are very volatile though, and Instagram could easily be worth half or less their value in a year... that's the way services like that go. Not that I expect them to nosedive. They'll probably be viable for a while longer.
Simple answer to the paradox is that space is just too big. Technology to visit other stars may not be possible, or be sufficiently rare that expansion can go undetected.
It could also be, that if you are travelling between stars or maintaining a high tech civilization you eventually realize, "Hey, Advertising our existence to the world may not be a good idea."
Even if you're not of the mindset to (wipe out your rivals before they wipe you out, just in case they're hostile) you will probably have the mindset: don't advertise your whereabouts just incase people who ARE of that mindset exist.
Should we move to Mars? It will be very expensive and mostly pointless.
How about we spend all that money looking after the place where conditions are suitable and we know we can survive?
Why not both? It certainly isn't "pointless" to want to expand the human condition and strive to create a backup for earth and all life as we know it.
It's not an either/or scenario. No-one is talking about moving the entire human population to mars- that would defeat the purpose. We can try to restore earth and maintain a population on Earth, which will always be the most suitable place for human habitation AND at the same time expand into the solar system- starting with Mars.
There's a lot of empty space in the Universe. Let's fill it up. Proxima 3 needs a Starbucks.
I think you mean G.I. Joe.
Was GI Joe's main mission to be dressed up in different clothes? I think that was GI MASH.
"My wife wears a fine cloth coat!"
"My wifi character wears a fine brown outfit!"
As long as your wife is real, and not just a wifi character. The days when someone will have a wedding ceremony with an AI character online are surely not too far away.
Back in the 1980's and 1990's we had Shareware. These were programs that you can download, copy with other and use. Some of them had a Trial Time Period, where you can use the full version for a period of time, then you have access to a reduced features, or not work at all. But most others Offered additional Levels, and other goodies if you were to actually purchase the software.
I see many of these free to play games with extra purchases as just an extension of the Shareware concept. However the problem that I feel is most concerning is the lack of a cap in how much you are going to pay for it. Say an $80 fee (The cost of a good console game) where everything is unlocked, and you can use the game and stay current. But that isn't the case, because it is easy to nickle and dime your way into people paying much more. Often for just something fun at the moment.
Granted this is still probably better then what people will pay for beer where they drink it, get a buzz, and then feel sick in the morning.
The old shareware games used to give you a pretty decent amount of playtime on the free version too. They didn't cut you off the moment it got slightly interesting; and it was usually a pay once and you get the whole thing when you did pay... it wasn't the constant microtransaction trickle that most places try to get nowadays.
It's a digital clothing store in the form of a video game.
So in many ways it's a virtual dress-up doll. All these teenage and pre-teen boys are paying money for a virtual Barbie (with a gun).
> at an acceptable cost.
the sea will rise approx. 200 feet. if all ice melts. is that acceptable ?
Even the worst case examples put forth by scientists don't predict ALL ice melting. Sea levels won't rise 200ft.
CO2, soot, lead... Yeah I hold the oil companies responsible. Not least because when it became clear what was happening they were extremely slow to do anything about it, just like tobacco sellers.
Well, technically the oil companies don't produce CO2, soot, or lead. You can blame the power plants, and the car owners for that. Their industry, pumping out oil doesn't produce much more CO2 than many other industries. It's how consumers (power plants, car owners) use the product that cause the CO2. If consumers watered their lawn with oil instead of using it to power their car, they wouldn't release as much CO2. :)
On a more serious note though; for this to be comparable to tobacco the oil companies would have had to know BEFORE the public how harmful oil was- and actively try suppressing the truth. As far as I am aware- oil companies didn't find out before the public- and the public continued to use oil after learning of the dangers. Unlike tobacco who knew about the dangers of their product before the consumers did (and hid that information)- oil companies didn't hide anything. We've known as long as them how CO2 is linked to global warming.
It's also worth pointing out that it's hard to pinpoint how much blame goes to Oil as opposed to coal, deforestation, slash and burn, melting ice causing sequested CO2 and methane to be released.
When it comes to beer quality is more important than quantity.
You're not from the UK are you?
I am actually.
That article is possibly the stupidest thing I have ever read in my life.
What would Benjamin Franklin have to say about the absurdity that Alaska, with less than a million inhabitants, has the same Senate power as California, a state with over 38 million people
He'd say, "Good". That's EXACTLY what the Senate was designed for... so that small states would be on an equal footing with the large states.
I can't comment on what Benjamin Franklin would have said then or now; however, it's worth noting that the US is a very different place than it was when the constitution was made.
Look at the name of the US- it's the United STATES; not the United PROVINCES. At the time of founding the states were viewed as... well, states aka NATIONS, not provinces. This was a coming together of different nations to become one. The original US was more of a confederacy than a single nation. Obviously over time the US has become a more united single country and states are now treated more like regions or provinces than independent countries.
Giving states equal footing in the senate was to prevent little states being bullied by larger states. (in the UN today, all countries get one representative and one vote despite some being larger than others).
Now that the US is almost universally agreed as one single country the idea that small states need protection is perhaps not as important. The two senators per state is probably an outdated concept- but I highly doubt it will ever go away. Small states wouldn't give up that extra power they have. I think 100 years from now you're more likely to see bigger states fracturing to give themselves more senate votes rather than see small states give up their advantage.
Oh sure, if you feed them grass and hay, Britain has that. But face it, Britain is an island with limited acreage for doing this, so they have a hard time producing a lot of cattle for slaughter.
The issue is it's hard/expensive to do the feed lot thing. You know, where the cattle stand around eating themselves silly on corn to put on as much weight as possible in the time allowed. Growing grains like corn takes a lot of space and feed lots take a lot of grain. Britain doesn't have the space or climate to grow all that grain.
As a result, they get mostly grass fed meat, which takes longer, makes the meat tougher with more connective tissue and less fat. Some folks like the stronger taste of grass fed, but most of us (in the USA at least) are predisposed to like what we normally get in the grocery store. Young fat cattle that are given growth hormones and fed lots of grain which is more tender and has a milder taste.
However, to their credit, they do grow a lot of sheep which are much better suited to their climate and are a bit more efficient when working from just grass. They have some good lamb over there, it just doesn't appeal to your average US beef and chicken eater....
You'd actually be surprised how much grains and agricultural land there is in the UK. Sure, the UK maybe only 1/50th the land area and houses 1/6th the population of the US; but cities are much more compact than in the US, and pretty much all the land is usable for agriculture- (at least until you get to Scotland). The mountain ranges are pretty tame and can even be farmed, it doesn't get very hot, but it actually doesn't get as cold as most of the US either, meaning a lot of things will grow in the UK better than the US. We have no deserts or tundra or salt plains taking up our land area. You're right, a larger portion is dedicated to sheep than in the US- but also: cows.
Pretty much all land in the UK is used for something. I was amazed when I moved to the US how little land seems to have been cultivated- there is so much unused land (which is a good thing for ecology)- Britain has used every square inch out of necessity.
Maize isn't ideally suited for the UK (although is still grown) - it can still be imported really cheap. Ever since Mr. Bush placed massive subsidies on maize, the US has had huge surpluses of cheap grain thanks to the US tax payers- that the rest of the world can get hold of cheap US grain that would otherwise just rot. Britain thanks the US tax payers for paying for most of the cost of their maize for them. (Note on use of the word corn- it's a regional word and is used generically in every country as the main grain crop- so corn means barley in Scotland, wheat in England, who knows what in Australia- probably poisonous 'drop bear spider weed').
Wheat and Barley grows fantastic in the UK. You're right though, Britain doesn't grow as many cows for beef as say, the US, and it probably is climate related: the TYPES of cows that do best in Britain ARE dairy cows. Friesians (dairy cows) are the most common in the UK. I believe these are closely related to the Schleswig-Holstein cows that the US also uses in places like Wisconin and Vermont.
10 million cows in the UK. 40 million in the US. Per capita (and certainly per square mile) there are more cows in the UK than the US. 1/4 the cows on 1/50th the land area.
Regarding grass fed; I think a lot of people prefer grass-fed cattle once they get used to it, although it is a personal preference. Here in the US it's a bit of a delicacy and people will pay more for it (they have to because it is more expensive). It's also much healthier it has a better fat composition since the cows are getting THEIR fat from leaves rather than seeds. Personally, I'm not much of a beef eater. Give me a pork chop, a lamb shank, a piece of salmon or a curried chicken over a beef steak any-day.