Given that methane has about 23 times greater of a greenhouse effect than carbon dioxide, cutting back on methane is also very important. And a large chunk of methane comes from agriculture, specifically the belches and farts of ruminant animals, though mostly cows.
If farmers raised fewer cattle, that would cut down on methane emissions. So eating less beef and less dairy can help reduce demand for cow products, and thus discourage raising so many of them, in turn decreasing methane emissions.
You can also call your member of the House of Representatives and your Senators, and urge them to pass cap and trade. You can protest in favor of such measures.
You can drive your car less often, and bike places if that's feasible - or take public transit, or carpool. You can buy fewer goods if you don't really need them, since the energy it took to make that good probably came from a fossil fuel.
There are surely other things one could do, but these are some easy ways for a person in a developed country to realistically reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
I'm not a fan of the term "free market" - for most people, they assume a free market means free of rules and regulations, and that this is somehow a good thing. Try playing a game of "free football" (no rules) and let me know how that works out.
What I want to see air COMPETITIVE markets. That means yes, rules and regulations, because they allow us to make a market fair/competitive. For instance, without antitrust (anti-monopoly) regulations, you get monopolies. Without environmental regulations, your rivers catch fire. Without labor regulations, your workers are destitute and getting chewed up by machinery in the factory.
My point here is that net neutrality is a framework of additional regulations. Regulations that ensure ISPs are not allowed to charge you more money to visit particular content, and that ensure ISPs don't throttle traffic to particular content. Rules like these promote competitive markets, because they ensure all businesses have equal opportunity to an online presence.
So next time you hear someone talk about how great free markets are, maybe you can encourage them to think about how much better competitive markets are. And how net neutrality leads to more competitive markets.
As far as I know, it doesn't matter as long as a hacker can read all of the packets a client is sending. Even if the hacker can't forge packets, being able to decrypt them can cause loss of data confidentiality. This wouldn't affect a protocol that already encrypted the data (e.g. https), but anything that is relying on the wireless to do the encryption and would otherwise be plaintext is vulnerable.
I think we're just clashing on semantics at this point. Whatever you want to call the brain - a neural network, or something else - I just don't see why a biological brain would be able to do something that couldn't be recreated/replicated through a computer.
I can't prove that there is nothing the brain can do which a computer can't, but so far I've seen nothing that proves otherwise.
We have a long way to go in understanding the human brain. But it's hard to imagine there is anything that a biological neural network could do that a non-biological neural network couldn't replicate. As such, it stands to reason that whatever humans are capable of, including wisdom, could be replicated by a non-biological neural network.
Agreed. It's not as if wisdom is some mystical quality that is only the product of human neuronal networks. It can and almost certainly will be something we see in AI at some point.
As far as I can tell, the synopsis is correct. From the article,
"The early evidence, presented at a recent volcanology conference, shows that Yellowstone’s most recent supereruption was sparked when new magma moved into the system only decades before the eruption. Previous estimates assumed that the geological process that led to the event took millenniums to occur...'We expected that there might be processes happening over thousands of years preceding the eruption,' said Christy Till, a geologist at Arizona State, and Ms. Shamloo’s dissertation adviser. Instead, the outer rims of the crystals revealed a clear uptick in temperature and a change in composition that occurred on a rapid time scale. That could mean the supereruption transpired only decades after an injection of fresh magma beneath the volcano."
In other words, once scientists detect that new magma is moving into a certain area underground, it could be only decades (not decades + 100 or more years) from then that the supereruption occurs. Granted the article also says,
"“It’s shocking how little time is required to take a volcanic system from being quiet and sitting there to the edge of an eruption,” said Ms. Shamloo, though she warned that there’s more work to do before scientists can verify a precise time scale."
So their estimate is that the certain flow of magma could indicated a supereruption is imminent within a few decades, BUT they have yet to verify if it really is decades.
We have antitrust laws (anti-monopoly or pro-competition laws) on the books to stop this kind of thing. The Sherman Antitrust Act (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherman_Antitrust_Act) is the first that comes to mind.
When will the US actually enforce laws like this to promote competition among markets? "The free market" rests on the notion that buyers and sellers in a marketplace have access to good information about what they're buying and selling, and that government creates reasonable rules by which the players play and compete. Allowing companies to gain such huge market share is definitely anti-competitive and hurts consumers.
Agreed! Glad to see there are still courts and judges that respect the Bill of Rights and the importance it plays in our legal system. The founders of this country knew that people with authority often abuse it, and wanted to be sure police have legitimate reasons to be tracking citizens.
I don't have Asperger's (that I know of!), although my social skills declined after I suffered a concussion at age 9. So during my teen years, I had a hard time starting conversations with strangers and even responding to certain social cues.
I learned social skills in part from the friends I had, but two other sources definitely helped me in my late high school/early college years. One is Dale Carnegie's "How to Win Friends and Influence People," which is well worth the read. Another source is David DeAngelo from "Double Your Dating." Though he is sort of in the "pickup artist" community, much of what he teaches is really about understanding and fixing yourself. Doing that can help your social skills, and skills with women, immensely. I recommend checking out both.
I would agree people could offer methods that help.
As much as people have been critical of her, my guess is they have their own ways in which they lack self-control. Maybe they overeat, eat junk food, don't exercise, etc.
These things - all aspects of one's self-control - are aided by engaging in meditation. Meditation isn't sitting in silence thinking of nothing. Meditation is exercise for your consciousness - you practice paying attention in various forms. Sometimes it's letting thoughts come and go without obsessing on them. Other times I practice trying to notice all sensory stimuli coming my way, consistently paying attention to everything that's going on around me, but without placing any value judgments.
Meditation is something that can help all of us, but especially someone dealing with issues controlling their reactions to stimuli and to their own desires. I think it's an essential practice tool in the digital age where distracting stimuli are abundant, and staying on task is as important as ever.
I agree with you here. Arbitration has also become exceedingly common when it comes to employment contracts. It seems to be something corporations love to implement because it gives them greater control over legal battles, and makes it harder for them to suffer legal consequences in cases where they misbehave.
I'm not a fan of Trump or Bannon on in the slightest. That said, I'm concerned that Bannon actually pushed Trump in the right direction on certain issues - namely, the US involvement in the rest of the world. From what I can tell, Bannon pushed Trump against war and military intervention in other countries, which is a good thing because in most cases US involvement is neither beneficial to the US, nor the country/people on whose behalf we're allegedly acting. Similarly, I understand that he pushed Trump to oppose free trade with other countries. Given that many of the countries with whom we engage in free trade have much lower environmental and labor standards than us, we are at a large disadvantage. Companies will naturally produce goods for less elsewhere if they can, and such agreements facilitate them doing that, thus hurting our economy.
On the other hand, Bannon is known as no friend of minorities or disadvantaged peoples. Most people here probably know he used to be in leadership at Breitbart, which courts the alt-right and bigots of many kinds with ridiculous and derogatory headlines, among other things.
I'm just curious to see if Trump engages in more saber-rattling and military intervention with Bannon gone. I certainly hope not.
Slashdot Mirror
Given that methane has about 23 times greater of a greenhouse effect than carbon dioxide, cutting back on methane is also very important. And a large chunk of methane comes from agriculture, specifically the belches and farts of ruminant animals, though mostly cows.
If farmers raised fewer cattle, that would cut down on methane emissions. So eating less beef and less dairy can help reduce demand for cow products, and thus discourage raising so many of them, in turn decreasing methane emissions.
You can also call your member of the House of Representatives and your Senators, and urge them to pass cap and trade. You can protest in favor of such measures.
You can drive your car less often, and bike places if that's feasible - or take public transit, or carpool. You can buy fewer goods if you don't really need them, since the energy it took to make that good probably came from a fossil fuel.
There are surely other things one could do, but these are some easy ways for a person in a developed country to realistically reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
I'm not a fan of the term "free market" - for most people, they assume a free market means free of rules and regulations, and that this is somehow a good thing. Try playing a game of "free football" (no rules) and let me know how that works out. What I want to see air COMPETITIVE markets. That means yes, rules and regulations, because they allow us to make a market fair/competitive. For instance, without antitrust (anti-monopoly) regulations, you get monopolies. Without environmental regulations, your rivers catch fire. Without labor regulations, your workers are destitute and getting chewed up by machinery in the factory.
My point here is that net neutrality is a framework of additional regulations. Regulations that ensure ISPs are not allowed to charge you more money to visit particular content, and that ensure ISPs don't throttle traffic to particular content. Rules like these promote competitive markets, because they ensure all businesses have equal opportunity to an online presence.
So next time you hear someone talk about how great free markets are, maybe you can encourage them to think about how much better competitive markets are. And how net neutrality leads to more competitive markets.
As far as I know, it doesn't matter as long as a hacker can read all of the packets a client is sending. Even if the hacker can't forge packets, being able to decrypt them can cause loss of data confidentiality. This wouldn't affect a protocol that already encrypted the data (e.g. https), but anything that is relying on the wireless to do the encryption and would otherwise be plaintext is vulnerable.
I think we're just clashing on semantics at this point. Whatever you want to call the brain - a neural network, or something else - I just don't see why a biological brain would be able to do something that couldn't be recreated/replicated through a computer.
I can't prove that there is nothing the brain can do which a computer can't, but so far I've seen nothing that proves otherwise.
We have a long way to go in understanding the human brain. But it's hard to imagine there is anything that a biological neural network could do that a non-biological neural network couldn't replicate. As such, it stands to reason that whatever humans are capable of, including wisdom, could be replicated by a non-biological neural network.
Agreed. It's not as if wisdom is some mystical quality that is only the product of human neuronal networks. It can and almost certainly will be something we see in AI at some point.
As far as I can tell, the synopsis is correct. From the article,
"The early evidence, presented at a recent volcanology conference, shows that Yellowstone’s most recent supereruption was sparked when new magma moved into the system only decades before the eruption. Previous estimates assumed that the geological process that led to the event took millenniums to occur...'We expected that there might be processes happening over thousands of years preceding the eruption,' said Christy Till, a geologist at Arizona State, and Ms. Shamloo’s dissertation adviser. Instead, the outer rims of the crystals revealed a clear uptick in temperature and a change in composition that occurred on a rapid time scale. That could mean the supereruption transpired only decades after an injection of fresh magma beneath the volcano."
In other words, once scientists detect that new magma is moving into a certain area underground, it could be only decades (not decades + 100 or more years) from then that the supereruption occurs. Granted the article also says,
"“It’s shocking how little time is required to take a volcanic system from being quiet and sitting there to the edge of an eruption,” said Ms. Shamloo, though she warned that there’s more work to do before scientists can verify a precise time scale."
So their estimate is that the certain flow of magma could indicated a supereruption is imminent within a few decades, BUT they have yet to verify if it really is decades.
We have antitrust laws (anti-monopoly or pro-competition laws) on the books to stop this kind of thing. The Sherman Antitrust Act (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherman_Antitrust_Act) is the first that comes to mind. When will the US actually enforce laws like this to promote competition among markets? "The free market" rests on the notion that buyers and sellers in a marketplace have access to good information about what they're buying and selling, and that government creates reasonable rules by which the players play and compete. Allowing companies to gain such huge market share is definitely anti-competitive and hurts consumers.
Agreed! Glad to see there are still courts and judges that respect the Bill of Rights and the importance it plays in our legal system. The founders of this country knew that people with authority often abuse it, and wanted to be sure police have legitimate reasons to be tracking citizens.
I don't have Asperger's (that I know of!), although my social skills declined after I suffered a concussion at age 9. So during my teen years, I had a hard time starting conversations with strangers and even responding to certain social cues.
I learned social skills in part from the friends I had, but two other sources definitely helped me in my late high school/early college years. One is Dale Carnegie's "How to Win Friends and Influence People," which is well worth the read. Another source is David DeAngelo from "Double Your Dating." Though he is sort of in the "pickup artist" community, much of what he teaches is really about understanding and fixing yourself. Doing that can help your social skills, and skills with women, immensely. I recommend checking out both.
I would agree people could offer methods that help. As much as people have been critical of her, my guess is they have their own ways in which they lack self-control. Maybe they overeat, eat junk food, don't exercise, etc. These things - all aspects of one's self-control - are aided by engaging in meditation. Meditation isn't sitting in silence thinking of nothing. Meditation is exercise for your consciousness - you practice paying attention in various forms. Sometimes it's letting thoughts come and go without obsessing on them. Other times I practice trying to notice all sensory stimuli coming my way, consistently paying attention to everything that's going on around me, but without placing any value judgments. Meditation is something that can help all of us, but especially someone dealing with issues controlling their reactions to stimuli and to their own desires. I think it's an essential practice tool in the digital age where distracting stimuli are abundant, and staying on task is as important as ever.
I agree with you here. Arbitration has also become exceedingly common when it comes to employment contracts. It seems to be something corporations love to implement because it gives them greater control over legal battles, and makes it harder for them to suffer legal consequences in cases where they misbehave.
I'm not a fan of Trump or Bannon on in the slightest. That said, I'm concerned that Bannon actually pushed Trump in the right direction on certain issues - namely, the US involvement in the rest of the world. From what I can tell, Bannon pushed Trump against war and military intervention in other countries, which is a good thing because in most cases US involvement is neither beneficial to the US, nor the country/people on whose behalf we're allegedly acting. Similarly, I understand that he pushed Trump to oppose free trade with other countries. Given that many of the countries with whom we engage in free trade have much lower environmental and labor standards than us, we are at a large disadvantage. Companies will naturally produce goods for less elsewhere if they can, and such agreements facilitate them doing that, thus hurting our economy. On the other hand, Bannon is known as no friend of minorities or disadvantaged peoples. Most people here probably know he used to be in leadership at Breitbart, which courts the alt-right and bigots of many kinds with ridiculous and derogatory headlines, among other things. I'm just curious to see if Trump engages in more saber-rattling and military intervention with Bannon gone. I certainly hope not.