I have no problem with asking a women in tech (even one that experienced an abnormal amount of ill will or perhaps even overt sexism) about their experiences and how being a woman has affected their career and how they look at the world of tech. Having a less masculine perspective is fine, I want women to feel welcome and their ideas represented... But my number one question in this case would have to be why THIS person?
Did Wu contact Slashdot first for some reason? If so, why? Was this meant to go well or did Wu intend on this going badly? In the case that Slashdot contacted her, the same questions apply. Of ALL the women, they chose one of the very few that would get the most adverse reaction possible at this time. If that isn't fishy, I don't know what would be. Also, not posting as AC because I legitimately feel like these are important questions to ask. I don't know if this is malicious, or simply not thought through well.
I can see the value in this sort of work, especially in informative videos that most people can understand. That's how many people absorb information these days, since it's usually quicker and more convenient than reading the same information. But they need to have the explaining done by people who are really good at public speaking and connecting with the audience. I don't think anything too fancy is needed, but whether they'd go with print or video, it needs to be done right and with as little bias as possible. I realize that some topics are so complicated and heavy in terminology that would also need further explanation, so there is a limited to what would fit into a smaller summary or video. But this could be a valuable resource, along side the content that currently exists to help explain science research and findings, except it would tied directly to the research instead of hoping a youtube channel or science blogger covers it.
Not sure what the straw man is for, but I think it's strange for you to assume science isn't a method for ascertaining the truth. If you weren't trying to imply that, then it's not immediately apparent to me.
If someone wants to disagree with science and the scientists who advance it, simply because they don't trust it and the implications are inconvenient, I don't see why I should respect that wholly uninformed opinion. Not all skepticism is reasonable. Again, not that it always matters, since many things are not cut-and-dry, or life-and-death. But I was (and still am) specifically talking about cases where having ignorance of widely accepted and tested science can cause REAL harm, which many controversial topics have the opportunity to introduce. Knowledge is never static forever and research is subject to corruption, but there's a point where extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. 90% of scientists and their scientific contributions COULD be dead wrong for various reasons, but proving their work wrong should more thorough than "No I don't like them because I do not trust them". A spokesperson/religious leader/etc with their own motives telling uninformed citizens that scientists are ideological or greedy whenever the results disagree with their narrative is not evidence against anything. Scientists being imperfect doesn't change that in any way.
Excellent example: http://www.doh.wa.gov/Newsroom... Not to say extra vaccinations would have absolutely stopped this person from dying from measles, but people who deny the very reputable and sound science on vaccinations (and vehemently distrust the scientists who work on them without exception) make this sort of event way more likely to take place. When a scientist is provably correct, denying that knowledge is effectively denying science.
We should be alarmed that NASA is spending such a large fraction of one thousandth of a percent of the budget on such a useless thing like advancing scientific understanding in space travel. Who do they think they are, rocket scientists?
Depends on how harmful it is to hold a belief, or in this case, deny science. Usually it's not very harmful at all, but that doesn't mean it's always benign to say "no, these scientists are wrong because reasons, I'll keep doing the thing they want me to have caution with, except I won't use any forethought because reasons, mostly spite." Telling scientists to fuck off isn't always good for the general public, even if it's sometimes no big deal. Especially when "fuck off, science nerds" becomes the default response, which it does with certain demographics on certain topics.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but surely Iran gets more than enough sunlight to power their country mostly using solar energy, right? I would think that would be a real consideration for them, if they really wanted an efficient energy source for the future. They could easily use smaller amounts of nuclear to power their country during non-sunny weather, but there's a good chance that a lot of this nuclear power isn't exactly for energy production.
I'm not totally sure about the idea of malicious intent either, but I would imagine that they could much more easily create a solar grid than dealing with the nasty politics surrounding nuclear, if energy was the primary concern. A bit fishy.
I've been playing a whole bunch of Agar.io lately, and it has occurred to me that all we gotta do is massively increase the size of our white blood cells. We should do the same for our gut buddies.
That will, apparently, make us more susceptible to green spiky viruses, but they don't move unless they get fed too much so we just need to avoid them altogether.
Also, if any racial slurs or foreign countries make it onto the leader board, your immune system should terminate it with extreme prejudice. It's just good manners.
I live in Spartanburg county, and I believe I can confirm this post. Charter used to be a little touch and go, and since the only other option was DSL (and not very good at that), we had to put up with it. It was generally always enough to play Starcraft or Diablo 2 with, so no biggie. We moved to the new house nearly 9 years ago, and we had a series of issues that required visits and working on the cable lines, but since the last time they were out here, it's been quite consistent. Not totally sure how the costumer service is, as I don't deal with that. But as long as the bill gets paid, it is typically golden Internet service.
Just tested my speed on their site (https://www.charter.com/browse/internet-service/internet) and it seems to be a tad above the advertised speed right now. And we very rarely get knocked offline unless it's our router messing up. So I'd count myself lucky I don't live in a Comcast or TWC service area. Too bad I live too far outside of a city, so if they ever do roll out fiber I doubt I will see it. Oh well, it's the trade-off for dealing with fewer people and less crime than in "Sparkle City".
The biggest issues I have with placebos is when they are:
1. Sold for ridiculous prices to people who may be too poor for actual medicine. It is already a type of scam, why be cruel about it?
2. Being marketed as a treatment or cure for a serious condition, sometimes life threatening. Only medical professionals should be telling people how to help a serious problem.
These problems are unethical, even if placebos do have a marginal benefit. Not to mention, a real treatment can ALSO convey a placebo effect, on top of the tested benefit. Vitamin supplements for overall wellness aren't such a big deal if they aren't sold on some promise to cure a major illness, since they aren't usually too expensive, and it's mostly just giving people (potentially) nutrient packed piss.
I've also read about how a person who is harboring negative emotions, but never lets them go and tries to pretend to be cheerful can also become stressed. Having very few outlets for social stress can be bad as well, the stresses don't just come from someone else being a little rude. Social interactions are complex things, and I would know considering my level of introversion. Two sides often exist in any scenario.
This isn't to say I think it's perfectly fine to be an asshole all the time for very little reason, being respectful and courteous is worthwhile. But when you are around the type of people who carry their feelings on their shoulders and force you to be unconditionally kind and uptight every waking moment you are around them, I imagine that would drive a lot of people insane. The people who can't take a tiny bit of criticism (even if it's undue) here and there, or just love being offended for the sake of it, may very well get more stressed out around a lot of folks. But they could likely cause just as much stress to people around them who lack other outlets.
I don't spend a lot of time in social environments, but It really looks to me like the people who take pride in being offended are just as stressful as those who take pride in being offensive, even when behind the barrier of the Internet.
I think eventually, the developed world will have to take a good look at redesigning our civil payment models, when low skilled (or just manual work in general) is increasingly being pulled away by much more profitable machine workers. We have welfare, but the stigma attached to it is becoming more and more undue, as more types of work that's being taken away overseas and by robots. I know companies want to have their cake and devour it all in the same sitting; paying for amazingly cheap labor while offering as little as possible back to the populations which purchase their goods and help maintain their businesses. That's the corporate mindset at work. Share holders, savings, and CEO's come first and foremost in most major decisions. But this sort of thinking isn't sustainable, at least not in regards to the poorest among us (and not just the poorest 10%, as more jobs are being harder to apply for, the percentage could get very high). Hopefully it won't come to some kind of new revolution, bloodshed and setting back standards of living for a while. But something will have to change, if they don't begin making up new sorts of "busywork" jobs like you say they do in Japan. Either way, it will probably take government intervening, I find it amazingly unlikely that every corporation will willingly adhere to a "pay workers for essentially doing nothing" regimen, as that offers them little direct, short term profits at all, which is exactly what most of them want.
I think the question of how to supply livable salaries to the majority of the populace will become an interesting arena to watch, going forward. Will an increasing number of people be demonized as filthy freeloaders as they have been, creating severe class conflicts? Will people just be left to starve because of lacking welfare funds? I hope it doesn't come to that. It could be really ugly, especially with the number of gun owners in the poorest parts of the nation.
He was making a chuckle joke. When you Google the names Lucina and Chrom, you, too, may find yourself with a chuckle.
But this does make my question more urgent, since apparently the Skype plugin isn't totally cross platform as of now, on top of using non-standard web technology... It would if both Mozilla and Google worked together to make video chatting seamless on the web without extra plugins or add-ons.
I'm pretty sure both Firefox and Chrom* support WebRTC in some way. I used it just recently without much issue in Firefox, the other person was using Windows and I was on Ubuntu and there wasn't an issue. It seems like Skype is becoming more deprecated when it comes to casual video chatting. I wonder if these alternatives will catch on, and allow me to not keep Skype installed. I can always hope.
I can see where both of you are coming from; The people in California are running out of drinking water, and people are a higher priority than walnuts, almonds and alfalfa. At the same time, paying farmers to use more water is obviously making things way worse, when farming is already using a disproportionately large amount of hydrating fluid in the first place.
But this is sorta like the whole "renewable vs. nuclear" argument to me. Sure, both are important steps toward securing a vital resource, but they both play different roles on different time scales. Renewable power can help a lot in the medium and long term for cutting back on fossil fuels, but nuclear is more viable right now at supplying the vast majority of power regardless of the weather. And in the event humans go to other cosmic bodies, wind and solar are no guarantees, so nuclear is a better bet again.
In this case, making farmers pay a fair price for water (thus hopefully ending their reliance on water-thirsty crops and irrigation methods) is a good start, fer sher. But California is going to be an arid slab of land for the foreseeable future, and the current water supplies will not last forever if humans can't create more rain for that area of the country. Also, that drought isn't expected to let up anytime soon, which makes things even worse. Even if the amount of water used for farming drops tremendously, the state will still run out without either spending bunches of money on importing more water from wetter places, OR producing it themselves using the ocean. Will it be expensive either way? Probably. Will the population eventually be forced to move out of the desert? Maybe so. But something's gotta give eventually, if more rain doesn't find a reason to fall onto them.
That could very well be true. Think of the quietest, closest, most drawn out fart imaginable. Terrifying. Then trying to find out who exactly the culprit is... nobody wants to fess up to something that odorous.
But it does make me wonder; How well is the U.S. set up in China? We HAVE to be snooping in on them, even if it isn't made public nearly as often. That tells me that either we aren't very good at getting sensitive data, or our farts are tremendously delayed and powerful. hmmm...
I guess you can tell the ambition of an attack based on how obvious it is. When the Syrian Electronic Army hacks a website, they simply vandalize it and make a lot of noise. When someone else, say the Chinese government, hacks a web address, they ignore the front pages altogether and go straight for the data centers. Way more discrete, way more dangerous.
I could make a fart analogy out of this. So I will. The silent ones are the ones you need to fear.
I typically do this too. Not only does it work faster, it offers way more options. It just works better.... The idea of super easily syncing installed programs through the software center is really cool, but that option doesn't even work for me.
If the software center gets updated to have a better layout, more options, more speed, and perhaps better management of repositories (and the software therein), I would gladly use it. I hope they get around to that, but their tendency to cater to simplicity, I doubt many advanced items will make it in.
True, these things haven't been killed off... yet. We are already working on wiping out mosquito populations by either making the larvae die too fast or making the males infertile or something of that nature.
And I think you MAY have me on things like rats and roaches (maybe ants?), who can basically adjust to any environment that humans can, even concrete jungles. Those guys are flexible and that is their most powerful trait IMO. But in the event we DO start moving to a new planet, we will probably decontaminate our luggage pretty well.
This conversation has become more sincere than I planned on.
I disagree. Give us enough time and a monetary incentive. Anything can be purged from the Earth if powerful people will benefit from it. Even the planet itself can be... reduced, though I can't imagine how that would be worth whatever money you offer a person.
Dr. Malcolm, please. If there's one thing I've learned from my short time on this planet, it's that humans can make ANYTHING go extinct. Possibly even ourselves. Just wait for that ocean to get nice and acidic. See how they deal with that.
Slashdot Mirror
I have no problem with asking a women in tech (even one that experienced an abnormal amount of ill will or perhaps even overt sexism) about their experiences and how being a woman has affected their career and how they look at the world of tech. Having a less masculine perspective is fine, I want women to feel welcome and their ideas represented... But my number one question in this case would have to be why THIS person?
Did Wu contact Slashdot first for some reason? If so, why? Was this meant to go well or did Wu intend on this going badly?
In the case that Slashdot contacted her, the same questions apply.
Of ALL the women, they chose one of the very few that would get the most adverse reaction possible at this time. If that isn't fishy, I don't know what would be.
Also, not posting as AC because I legitimately feel like these are important questions to ask. I don't know if this is malicious, or simply not thought through well.
I can see the value in this sort of work, especially in informative videos that most people can understand. That's how many people absorb information these days, since it's usually quicker and more convenient than reading the same information. But they need to have the explaining done by people who are really good at public speaking and connecting with the audience.
I don't think anything too fancy is needed, but whether they'd go with print or video, it needs to be done right and with as little bias as possible. I realize that some topics are so complicated and heavy in terminology that would also need further explanation, so there is a limited to what would fit into a smaller summary or video. But this could be a valuable resource, along side the content that currently exists to help explain science research and findings, except it would tied directly to the research instead of hoping a youtube channel or science blogger covers it.
Not sure what the straw man is for, but I think it's strange for you to assume science isn't a method for ascertaining the truth. If you weren't trying to imply that, then it's not immediately apparent to me.
If someone wants to disagree with science and the scientists who advance it, simply because they don't trust it and the implications are inconvenient, I don't see why I should respect that wholly uninformed opinion. Not all skepticism is reasonable. Again, not that it always matters, since many things are not cut-and-dry, or life-and-death. But I was (and still am) specifically talking about cases where having ignorance of widely accepted and tested science can cause REAL harm, which many controversial topics have the opportunity to introduce. Knowledge is never static forever and research is subject to corruption, but there's a point where extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. 90% of scientists and their scientific contributions COULD be dead wrong for various reasons, but proving their work wrong should more thorough than "No I don't like them because I do not trust them". A spokesperson/religious leader/etc with their own motives telling uninformed citizens that scientists are ideological or greedy whenever the results disagree with their narrative is not evidence against anything. Scientists being imperfect doesn't change that in any way.
Excellent example: http://www.doh.wa.gov/Newsroom...
Not to say extra vaccinations would have absolutely stopped this person from dying from measles, but people who deny the very reputable and sound science on vaccinations (and vehemently distrust the scientists who work on them without exception) make this sort of event way more likely to take place. When a scientist is provably correct, denying that knowledge is effectively denying science.
We should be alarmed that NASA is spending such a large fraction of one thousandth of a percent of the budget on such a useless thing like advancing scientific understanding in space travel. Who do they think they are, rocket scientists?
Depends on how harmful it is to hold a belief, or in this case, deny science.
Usually it's not very harmful at all, but that doesn't mean it's always benign to say "no, these scientists are wrong because reasons, I'll keep doing the thing they want me to have caution with, except I won't use any forethought because reasons, mostly spite."
Telling scientists to fuck off isn't always good for the general public, even if it's sometimes no big deal. Especially when "fuck off, science nerds" becomes the default response, which it does with certain demographics on certain topics.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but surely Iran gets more than enough sunlight to power their country mostly using solar energy, right? I would think that would be a real consideration for them, if they really wanted an efficient energy source for the future. They could easily use smaller amounts of nuclear to power their country during non-sunny weather, but there's a good chance that a lot of this nuclear power isn't exactly for energy production.
I'm not totally sure about the idea of malicious intent either, but I would imagine that they could much more easily create a solar grid than dealing with the nasty politics surrounding nuclear, if energy was the primary concern. A bit fishy.
I've been playing a whole bunch of Agar.io lately, and it has occurred to me that all we gotta do is massively increase the size of our white blood cells. We should do the same for our gut buddies.
That will, apparently, make us more susceptible to green spiky viruses, but they don't move unless they get fed too much so we just need to avoid them altogether.
Also, if any racial slurs or foreign countries make it onto the leader board, your immune system should terminate it with extreme prejudice. It's just good manners.
I live in Spartanburg county, and I believe I can confirm this post. Charter used to be a little touch and go, and since the only other option was DSL (and not very good at that), we had to put up with it. It was generally always enough to play Starcraft or Diablo 2 with, so no biggie. We moved to the new house nearly 9 years ago, and we had a series of issues that required visits and working on the cable lines, but since the last time they were out here, it's been quite consistent. Not totally sure how the costumer service is, as I don't deal with that. But as long as the bill gets paid, it is typically golden Internet service.
Just tested my speed on their site (https://www.charter.com/browse/internet-service/internet) and it seems to be a tad above the advertised speed right now. And we very rarely get knocked offline unless it's our router messing up. So I'd count myself lucky I don't live in a Comcast or TWC service area. Too bad I live too far outside of a city, so if they ever do roll out fiber I doubt I will see it. Oh well, it's the trade-off for dealing with fewer people and less crime than in "Sparkle City".
The biggest issues I have with placebos is when they are:
1. Sold for ridiculous prices to people who may be too poor for actual medicine. It is already a type of scam, why be cruel about it?
2. Being marketed as a treatment or cure for a serious condition, sometimes life threatening. Only medical professionals should be telling people how to help a serious problem.
These problems are unethical, even if placebos do have a marginal benefit. Not to mention, a real treatment can ALSO convey a placebo effect, on top of the tested benefit. Vitamin supplements for overall wellness aren't such a big deal if they aren't sold on some promise to cure a major illness, since they aren't usually too expensive, and it's mostly just giving people (potentially) nutrient packed piss.
I've also read about how a person who is harboring negative emotions, but never lets them go and tries to pretend to be cheerful can also become stressed. Having very few outlets for social stress can be bad as well, the stresses don't just come from someone else being a little rude. Social interactions are complex things, and I would know considering my level of introversion. Two sides often exist in any scenario.
This isn't to say I think it's perfectly fine to be an asshole all the time for very little reason, being respectful and courteous is worthwhile. But when you are around the type of people who carry their feelings on their shoulders and force you to be unconditionally kind and uptight every waking moment you are around them, I imagine that would drive a lot of people insane.
The people who can't take a tiny bit of criticism (even if it's undue) here and there, or just love being offended for the sake of it, may very well get more stressed out around a lot of folks. But they could likely cause just as much stress to people around them who lack other outlets.
I don't spend a lot of time in social environments, but It really looks to me like the people who take pride in being offended are just as stressful as those who take pride in being offensive, even when behind the barrier of the Internet.
I was about to share this thread, but they didn't have a myspace button.
I think eventually, the developed world will have to take a good look at redesigning our civil payment models, when low skilled (or just manual work in general) is increasingly being pulled away by much more profitable machine workers. We have welfare, but the stigma attached to it is becoming more and more undue, as more types of work that's being taken away overseas and by robots.
I know companies want to have their cake and devour it all in the same sitting; paying for amazingly cheap labor while offering as little as possible back to the populations which purchase their goods and help maintain their businesses. That's the corporate mindset at work. Share holders, savings, and CEO's come first and foremost in most major decisions.
But this sort of thinking isn't sustainable, at least not in regards to the poorest among us (and not just the poorest 10%, as more jobs are being harder to apply for, the percentage could get very high). Hopefully it won't come to some kind of new revolution, bloodshed and setting back standards of living for a while. But something will have to change, if they don't begin making up new sorts of "busywork" jobs like you say they do in Japan. Either way, it will probably take government intervening, I find it amazingly unlikely that every corporation will willingly adhere to a "pay workers for essentially doing nothing" regimen, as that offers them little direct, short term profits at all, which is exactly what most of them want.
I think the question of how to supply livable salaries to the majority of the populace will become an interesting arena to watch, going forward. Will an increasing number of people be demonized as filthy freeloaders as they have been, creating severe class conflicts? Will people just be left to starve because of lacking welfare funds? I hope it doesn't come to that. It could be really ugly, especially with the number of gun owners in the poorest parts of the nation.
What license do you figure Linus is? I would assume GPLv2, and I hope as much. I would hate to see a non-free Torvalds running amok.
He was making a chuckle joke.
When you Google the names Lucina and Chrom, you, too, may find yourself with a chuckle.
But this does make my question more urgent, since apparently the Skype plugin isn't totally cross platform as of now, on top of using non-standard web technology... It would if both Mozilla and Google worked together to make video chatting seamless on the web without extra plugins or add-ons.
I'm pretty sure both Firefox and Chrom* support WebRTC in some way. I used it just recently without much issue in Firefox, the other person was using Windows and I was on Ubuntu and there wasn't an issue.
It seems like Skype is becoming more deprecated when it comes to casual video chatting. I wonder if these alternatives will catch on, and allow me to not keep Skype installed. I can always hope.
I can see where both of you are coming from; The people in California are running out of drinking water, and people are a higher priority than walnuts, almonds and alfalfa. At the same time, paying farmers to use more water is obviously making things way worse, when farming is already using a disproportionately large amount of hydrating fluid in the first place.
But this is sorta like the whole "renewable vs. nuclear" argument to me. Sure, both are important steps toward securing a vital resource, but they both play different roles on different time scales. Renewable power can help a lot in the medium and long term for cutting back on fossil fuels, but nuclear is more viable right now at supplying the vast majority of power regardless of the weather. And in the event humans go to other cosmic bodies, wind and solar are no guarantees, so nuclear is a better bet again.
In this case, making farmers pay a fair price for water (thus hopefully ending their reliance on water-thirsty crops and irrigation methods) is a good start, fer sher. But California is going to be an arid slab of land for the foreseeable future, and the current water supplies will not last forever if humans can't create more rain for that area of the country. Also, that drought isn't expected to let up anytime soon, which makes things even worse. Even if the amount of water used for farming drops tremendously, the state will still run out without either spending bunches of money on importing more water from wetter places, OR producing it themselves using the ocean. Will it be expensive either way? Probably. Will the population eventually be forced to move out of the desert? Maybe so. But something's gotta give eventually, if more rain doesn't find a reason to fall onto them.
4) One house can't use the electricity they produce.
Challenge accepted.
That could very well be true. Think of the quietest, closest, most drawn out fart imaginable. Terrifying. Then trying to find out who exactly the culprit is... nobody wants to fess up to something that odorous.
But it does make me wonder; How well is the U.S. set up in China? We HAVE to be snooping in on them, even if it isn't made public nearly as often. That tells me that either we aren't very good at getting sensitive data, or our farts are tremendously delayed and powerful. hmmm...
I guess you can tell the ambition of an attack based on how obvious it is.
When the Syrian Electronic Army hacks a website, they simply vandalize it and make a lot of noise. When someone else, say the Chinese government, hacks a web address, they ignore the front pages altogether and go straight for the data centers. Way more discrete, way more dangerous.
I could make a fart analogy out of this. So I will.
The silent ones are the ones you need to fear.
I typically do this too. Not only does it work faster, it offers way more options. It just works better.... The idea of super easily syncing installed programs through the software center is really cool, but that option doesn't even work for me.
If the software center gets updated to have a better layout, more options, more speed, and perhaps better management of repositories (and the software therein), I would gladly use it. I hope they get around to that, but their tendency to cater to simplicity, I doubt many advanced items will make it in.
Time to fire up that Star Trek economic model~
The 23rd century can't come soon enough.
True, these things haven't been killed off... yet.
We are already working on wiping out mosquito populations by either making the larvae die too fast or making the males infertile or something of that nature.
And I think you MAY have me on things like rats and roaches (maybe ants?), who can basically adjust to any environment that humans can, even concrete jungles. Those guys are flexible and that is their most powerful trait IMO. But in the event we DO start moving to a new planet, we will probably decontaminate our luggage pretty well.
This conversation has become more sincere than I planned on.
I disagree.
Give us enough time and a monetary incentive. Anything can be purged from the Earth if powerful people will benefit from it. Even the planet itself can be... reduced, though I can't imagine how that would be worth whatever money you offer a person.
Dr. Malcolm, please.
If there's one thing I've learned from my short time on this planet, it's that humans can make ANYTHING go extinct. Possibly even ourselves.
Just wait for that ocean to get nice and acidic. See how they deal with that.
I was laughing once I got to "penis sweeps".