I read "Targeting" as an allusion to weapons - taking aim with a firearm or dropped munitions.
The framing implies "very bad", so it makes sense to feel outraged when cigarette makers "target" teenagers, or liquor sellers "target" young adults, or spammers "target" old people.
Let's put this in perspective: HBO, Amazon, and Netflix aren't "targeting" kids, they are taking over a product that kids like. There's no evidence that Sesame Street is bad for kids in any realistic way.
On the flip side, if Game of Thrones is any indication, Sesame Street will be even higher quality than it is now, except that every episode a character will die:-)
A friend of mine was looking into buying/managing a lithium cell factory.
He mentioned that one limiting problem with big packs (ie - electric vehicles) is heat dissipation. He opined that if you could make "shaped" cells you could put many of them in the interstitial spaces in a vehicle, such as between roof panels and in the columns that hold the windshield and in the quarter panels and so on.
(Okay, maybe not the roof because that gets hot in the summer sun, but you get the idea...)
The theory being that a large, flat battery has better heat dissipation than a rolled-up-newspaper cell packed snugly with many others.
So maybe you could put shaped batteries inside a drone frame, or a curved battery as part of a watch band.
Anyone know more about this? It'd be an interesting innovation to be able to get shaped batteries, in the same way one can get shaped plastic extruded pieces.
Of course, all this is fraud, and you can be arrested for it if you get caught.
You can get arrested for retweeting someone else's comment.
If you do something they don't like (such as mounting a pistol to a drone, or putting coins in someone else's parking meter), they will find a law that can be extended to cover it.
They can use illegal means to get evidence, then use parallel construction to build a legal case. You can get arrested for anything nowadays.
I wouldn't worry about actions - law in this country has become discretionary, frivolous, and inconsistent. It's not based on harm any more.
Worry instead about getting noticed - that seems to start the process.
Ya know, instead of listening to what the politicians *say*, we could look at what the politicians *do*.
The two biggies I can think of are job outsourcing and civil rights. Let's see what Hillary has been doing for the last few years:
Voted YES on reauthorizing the PATRIOT Act. (Mar 2006) Voted YES on establishing a Guest Worker program. (May 2006) Voted YES on allowing illegal aliens to participate in Social Security. (May 2006) Opposes illegal immigration, but doesn’t vote to follow up. (Jun 2007) Sponsored bill funding social services for noncitizens. (May 2006) Voted YES on loosening restrictions on cell phone wiretapping. (Oct 2001) Rated 60% by the ACLU, indicating a mixed civil rights voting record. (Dec 2002)
Overall, a mixed bag of non-caring of our jobs and rights.
Do we want yet another president that doesn't care about the people?
1) The Chinese grab a database of our personnel, which lets them impersonate anyone (in the database), find spies and ongoing projects, blackmail federal workers for more information... and no one is charged with incompetence, fired, or even blamed.
2) David Petraeus, former director of the CIA, gave classified information to his biographer/mistress to make him seem more powerful... he pleads guilty, gets a $40,000 fine and 2 years probation.
3) Edward Snowden releases summary information about widespread illegal activity by the U.S. spy services. No specifics about operations or personnel were leaked, resulting in no deaths and no aborted operations(*)...he's banished from the U.S.
4) Chelsea [nee Bradley] Manning releases video evidence of war crimes committed by the U.S. military, literally gunning down members of the international press and other civilians with no provocation... was subjected to months of cruel and unusual punishment (tortured, per U.N. definition of torture), sentenced to 35 years in prison, and given dishonourable discharge.
(*) Quoth the office of the president: "Mr. Snowden's dangerous decision to steal and disclose classified information had severe consequences for the security of our country..."
and just because many things in the west that are OK or even normal are viewed as being criminal in certain countries is the fault. Oh what a web of lies we must tell ourselves so we can sleep at night knowing our product kills innocents.
Okay then, let's look at this from the perspective of morality.
One very good theory of morality is based on suffering.
The exploits of Hacking Team have greatly increased the suffering of a large number of people, while other actions they could have taken (such as reporting their exploits so that vendors can fix them) would have reduced that same suffering.
This is the definition of evil under the that theory: when your actions cause increased suffering of many people, it's evil.
Yes, there are corner cases and nuanced situations (such as the suffering of a caught criminal), but overall it's a good working definition and under that definition Hacking Team is [was] evil.
Or we could look at this from the perspective of Christian ethics.
According to Father Guido Sarducci, sins have penitant value. Lying is worth a dollar, killing is worth $50,000, and masturbation is something like $0.50.
(Yes, I'm referring to the selling of indulgances by the Catholic church.)
The exploits of Hacking Team have caused the torture and death of people. Hacking Team probably has an ecumenical debt worth millions of dollars.
This is the definition of sin under the that theory: when your actions damage society so much that you must atone by donating large sums of money to charity.
This is another good working definition and under that definition Hacking Team has racked up an enormous bank account of sin.
Hacking Team should vanish, we'd be all the better for it.
If you're on public land, you don't get an expectation of privacy.
I've often heard this repeated, but is it actually true?
Suppose I'm in a public space (say, a park) having a quiet conversation with someone, and keeping track of passersby: If someone walks up we stop talking.
Does this mean that someone (from the government) with a parabolic mic can eavesdrop on my conversations without a warrant?
The argument is that it's only what a policeman would hear if he walked up and listened, but in that case we would stop talking.
I have every expectation of privacy if I take steps to ensure that privacy: looking around to make sure no one can see me, for instance. Does this mean that the police can video-tape the sidewalk from the window of any office building without a warrant?
I also note that there's no expectation of privacy *in your home* if you don't have the drapes closed. The implication is that we don't have an expectation of privacy *anywhere*, except in our homes and only if we're concealed.
Does that sound like a free country?
If you're on public land, you don't get an expectation of privacy.
In any event, we shouldn't be mindlessly repeating that meme as if it's the "law of the land". The more you say it, it only makes more people believe it.
Instead, we should be mindlessly repeating things things that sway public perception in a better direction.
and I'll say it again - technology INCREASES jobs, never decreases it - over the long term. Over the short term it can make certain skills worthless, putting some people out of work, but that's it.
If your position is correct, the number of jobs in Agriculture has increased over the long term.
So, for instance, the number of people working on farms has increased over the last century or so.
Is this something you've noticed anecdotally, or do you have a screen scraping program that loads and interprets slashdot conversations? (Or something else?)
I'd be very interested in statistics about this sort of thing. Anything that throws light on how certain subjects get modded up, correlations of moderator accounts that don't post, and so on.
There's a lot of activity here that seems anecdotally suspicious. It'd be nice to know whether this is due to random clustering or some type of organized push.
Want to really fight ISIS? We'll need Iran and Syria as allies if you actually want to win.
Why do we have to fight ISIS at all?
Everyone over there hates us, other first world countries won't lend a hand, and in the long run the barbarism of ISIS won't withstand the onslaught of more developed ideas.
Thinking that we will prevent the conflict from coming over here is fantasy storytelling: all our draconian infrastructure didn't prevent the shoe bomber, underwear bomber, or marathon bomber - even when we were warned about those specific threats beforehand.
What's the compelling reason to do anything in the middle east? If the ISIS neighbor countries are good with it, if the European nations think it's none of their business, if it's extremely expensive, if meddling in their affairs will only make them hate us more... why not just ignore ISIS?
While it is true that there are doctors working while they themselves are not feeling well, you guys gotta understand that doctors have to face sick people ALL THE TIME, which means they have higher chance of getting infected with diseases, which means they have to spend more times feeling unwell
It is always so easy to criticize someone of doing something but why is it there is no mention of what makes that someone do that something in the first place?
Because doing so implies that it's OK because it has a justification. "Hey, it's OK for doctors putting us at risk, because they have a really good reason".
This is a clear-cut example of that "needs of the many" thing. Yes, doctors encounter sickness more often then average. Yes, that probably means they get sick more often. Yes, their work is really hard.
Does the inconvenience of one doctor outweigh the inconvenience of 5 patients catching what he's got?
I once read a study where doctors refuse to use checklists, despite abundant evidence that doing so would reduce the incidence of hospital errors.
The reason? Doctors simply didn't want to use them - they felt that they were good enough not to need them.
(That was awhile ago - now checklists are starting to catch on.)
So, I'm all for grow local, but when there's sun shining right outside - this doesn't make a heck of a lot of sense to me... unless you are a company that sells grow lights.
You have a point, but you also have to consider the context of comparison.
Plants grown outdoors face an array of problems that the farmer has to account for. Keeping insects off, keeping weeds at bay, keeping the plants watered and fertilized - all this comes at a cost to the farmer.
Indoor farming requires a more expensive infrastructure (the building, trays, and plumbing) but has great savings in some of the other areas. It's easier to keep weeds and insects out, for instance.
Of particular note, outdoors you can't recycle unused water or fertilizer, but this can be done indoors. Collect any unused water after the plants have drunk their fill, remove waste products, top off the fertilizer, and reuse.
So the economic question is this: is the extra money/effort spent on generating light compensated for by the savings in insecticides, roundup, fertilizer, and water?
I think the answer is probably "yes", given that LED lights are incredibly efficient. (Also of note: less of the environment is damaged by excess fertilizer and water drainage. Damaging the environment indirectly costs money.)
Then the next question is with the building: does it make sense to have big windows and use mostly solar light, and adjust as needed with indoor lighting?
Windows cost more than walls, they require extra heating and/or air conditioning, they're not as structurally sound, and the light isn't used efficiently in the 3-d volume; meaning, you can't grow corn on each story of a 5-story building, because the first layer will shade the ones below it. (And windows break, they have to be cleaned, they tend to leak, &c.)
It may be more economically sensible to grow corn in a 5-story warehouse close to a city simply because it reduces the transport costs. It also reduces the amount of land used - allowing more plots to go back to the wild.
And on top of all of this, researchers I've talked to are doing clever things with the light recipe they're giving to plants.
Some plants detect the reddening of the sun and "go to sleep" at sunset. By adjusting the light color, you can keep the plants growing 18 hours a day and then blast them with excess red light to get them to quickly go into night mode. This increases yield by reducing the growing period of their crops.
(A bunch of other experiments are really interesting, such as: hitting the crops with a particular frequency of light to cause their ripening flavors to go into overdrive, making a crop that is inordinately tasty.)
So in summary, we should do the economic experiment and see if it's viable, but in toto there's a lot to recommend indoor industrial gardening.
[... long rambling personal attack against Assange...]
He's a douche, so much a douche that even France thinks he's a douche. How sad do you have to be when even France doesn't capitulate?
Apropos of nothing, where are you getting your information?
Your post reads almost like one of those sock puppet things, you know? Paid to promote a particular point of view, without regard to truth or logic.
I'm not saying you're a sock puppet, mind you. It just that your post was a little one-sided, overly emotional and outspoken for the scope of the incident.
Sort of like the "say it loud enough and often enough" propaganda type of post.
How has this incident personally affected you, that you get so riled up about it?
The problem arises when you make bad associations over the years.
Your brain is an association engine - it silently catalogs all the feelings you get when doing something, and uses this information for prediction in the planning [brain] section.
Over the years, you've built up associations between programming and discomfort in various forms. Now, when you consider going to do some program, your brain automatically recalls all the pain and discomfort that this brings.
The planning section uses the risk/reward equation, and there's usually other values to consider. Normally, the "value" you get from programming is enough to outweigh the discomfort you get. You get rewards for doing it, like interacting with people, figuring out problems, and so on. Getting money is more of an intellectual reward - there's no "feeling" associated with money per-se. (Unless you're Scrooge McDuck and feel joy over just having money. Most people aren't like that.)
Over time, the negative value of the discomfort has grown, relative to the positive value you get from completing goals, learning new things, or social interactions.
It's the same as a lathe operator who gets back pain from stooping over all day long. He'll eventually get tired of doing something he once loved, even if he doesn't remember the pain.
It's *very* difficult to reverse this. You have to build up positive associations, and enough of these to compensate for the negative history.
You can try adjusting your work environment ergonomically: make it more physically comfortable to type, for instance.
You can try getting into a new field: switch from web work to microcontrollers, for instance.
You can try switching to a new environment: shop your resume around, and join a small company with a manager/people you really like.
You can try rewarding yourself for completing goals: promise yourself a slice of pie if you complete such-and-so task today. (Make sure you realize "this pie is because I completed such-and-so" task while you're eating it.)
You can try taking a vacation, but that won't fix the underlying problem.
Stubbing one's toe is a potentially life-threatening incident.
Did the paper address this? I would think that the risk of stubbing one's toe would be much higher while wearing AR glasses.
We need more papers like this one. The complete and total characterization of all potential safety issues should be a reasonable goal before anyone is allowed to sell (or wear) one of these devices.
Maybe the FDA should issue a ban while it considers common-sense regulation (like the FAA did for drones).
How is this at all what Wikileaks is supposed to be for? At this point it seems more like crass voyeurism than any type of serious attempt to shine a light on corporate misconduct.
Sony has done a lot of evil in the past (remember rootkits?). By dumping this dataset, Wikileaks is doing two things:
1) Airing Sony's misdeeds, with the possibility of bringing them to justice. Possibly getting tried in the court of public opinion.
2) Encouraging other companies to not be evil. If everyone knows that their illegal activities might come to light, it'll act as a deterrent.
Note that the 4K stuff was picked up by Apple Insider, and consider their mandate.
Hold off a bit before passing judgement. If a more journalistic outlet finds something newsworthy, it might paint the data dump as worthwhile.
There's a lot of snake oil outside of traditional medicine, but there's a lot of it *within* traditional medicine as well.
One of the really obvious low-hanging fruit that I've seen is the Burzynski Clinic.
To summarize, Stanislaw Burzynski (a doctor in Texas) claims to have invented a new cancer treatment that's better than Chemo. Someone made a movie "Cancer is serious business" which shows lots and lots of case file evidence that this is true.
We have a claim, and we have evidence. Is this bunkum or a scientific breakthrough?
It's usually easy to figure this out: interview the patients, see if they were treated, if they got better (or not), and if they are happy with the treatment. Examine the evidence and see if it's consistent with the claims.
In most cases of "bunkum", you'll find that the patients feel they were cheated, the treatment had no effect, they were also on traditional treatments, and so on and so on. It's pretty easy to separate the wheat from the chaff by examining the evidence.
In the case of Stanislaw Burzynski, no one does this. Read up on the reports and find that no one addresses the evidence directly: it's all ad-hominem attacks ("he's not a real doctor, he's not a cancer researcher"), indirect rationalizations ("it can't work because it doesn't fit my model", he doesn't have an explanation for *why* it works, it must be bunkum because it's too good), administrative accusations, and so on and so on.
One particularly salient point, brought up by many, is that the treatment is "untested". His treatment doesn't work because there are no studies to confirm this.
No one addresses the evidence.
I think what medical science, and science at large, have to realize is that people are starting to wise up to these "absence of evidence" statements. Just having a doctor say "there are no studies showing it's effective" won't cut it any more - it's seen as a verbal hand-waving to support schools of thought. It's "absence of evidence is evidence of absence".
This is what happened with Homeopathy. People had a rationalization for *why* it works and there was some historical evidence. Add in some first-hand accounts, and suddenly you've got a miracle cure that science can't explain (but really works!).
Not every crazy theory needs a full-fledged study, but I suspect a lot of good could be done by taking the top "fad" populist beliefs and making simple, definitive studies. I'd feel a lot more comfortable if a doctor could say "we studied it and there's no effect" instead of "there's no evidence that this has any effect".
The prior shows a logical certainty, the latter is rationalization.
Scientists have eliminated smallpox from the world, and we're about 5 years shy of eliminating polio. I read about new strategies for malaria each year (making stronger mosquitos that resist the malaria infection, for instance).
Muhammad Yunus is a PhD scientist who started the Grameen Bank, in 1999 had reduced poverty by 40% worldwide(*). His TED talk is interesting.
Everybody is working towards new energy sources: wind and wave, solar (in various forms), and even nuclear. There's a Hackaday prize on the theme of "save the world, build something that matters" with over 500 entries.
We're putting up cell phone towers in Africa, giving clean water to the Bangladeshi, inventing pot-in-pot refrigerators, and helping people use propane instead of charcoal (with attendant improvements in health).
I don't hear scientists talk like this, and that's fine, it's probably not their place. But evidence isn't enough to actually move people to action, you do actually have talk about right and wrong, and why this thing is wrong and must be stopped.
What the heck are you talking about?
Scientists move the world.
Clinging to some outdated religion is what holds us back.
(*) According to a Scientific American article that I am citing from memory, and my memory of the article may be flawed, and it's really old information.
Slashdot Mirror
I read "Targeting" as an allusion to weapons - taking aim with a firearm or dropped munitions.
The framing implies "very bad", so it makes sense to feel outraged when cigarette makers "target" teenagers, or liquor sellers "target" young adults, or spammers "target" old people.
Let's put this in perspective: HBO, Amazon, and Netflix aren't "targeting" kids, they are taking over a product that kids like. There's no evidence that Sesame Street is bad for kids in any realistic way.
On the flip side, if Game of Thrones is any indication, Sesame Street will be even higher quality than it is now, except that every episode a character will die :-)
A friend of mine was looking into buying/managing a lithium cell factory.
He mentioned that one limiting problem with big packs (ie - electric vehicles) is heat dissipation. He opined that if you could make "shaped" cells you could put many of them in the interstitial spaces in a vehicle, such as between roof panels and in the columns that hold the windshield and in the quarter panels and so on.
(Okay, maybe not the roof because that gets hot in the summer sun, but you get the idea...)
The theory being that a large, flat battery has better heat dissipation than a rolled-up-newspaper cell packed snugly with many others.
So maybe you could put shaped batteries inside a drone frame, or a curved battery as part of a watch band.
Anyone know more about this? It'd be an interesting innovation to be able to get shaped batteries, in the same way one can get shaped plastic extruded pieces.
IOW it's a teleoperated waldo and not a robot.
Haven't you heard?
Anything that can skitter across the table is a robot.
Anything with eyes and moveable facial parts is a robot.
Any machine that looks like an arm is a robot.
A robot is anything that looks remotely like it's alive, or a piece of something alive.
Get with the program!
Of course, all this is fraud, and you can be arrested for it if you get caught.
You can get arrested for retweeting someone else's comment.
If you do something they don't like (such as mounting a pistol to a drone, or putting coins in someone else's parking meter), they will find a law that can be extended to cover it.
They can use illegal means to get evidence, then use parallel construction to build a legal case. You can get arrested for anything nowadays.
I wouldn't worry about actions - law in this country has become discretionary, frivolous, and inconsistent. It's not based on harm any more.
Worry instead about getting noticed - that seems to start the process.
Ya know, instead of listening to what the politicians *say*, we could look at what the politicians *do*.
The two biggies I can think of are job outsourcing and civil rights. Let's see what Hillary has been doing for the last few years:
Voted YES on reauthorizing the PATRIOT Act. (Mar 2006)
Voted YES on establishing a Guest Worker program. (May 2006)
Voted YES on allowing illegal aliens to participate in Social Security. (May 2006)
Opposes illegal immigration, but doesn’t vote to follow up. (Jun 2007)
Sponsored bill funding social services for noncitizens. (May 2006)
Voted YES on loosening restrictions on cell phone wiretapping. (Oct 2001)
Rated 60% by the ACLU, indicating a mixed civil rights voting record. (Dec 2002)
Overall, a mixed bag of non-caring of our jobs and rights.
Do we want yet another president that doesn't care about the people?
Just to put recent events in perspective:
1) The Chinese grab a database of our personnel, which lets them impersonate anyone (in the database), find spies and ongoing projects, blackmail federal workers for more information... and no one is charged with incompetence, fired, or even blamed.
2) David Petraeus, former director of the CIA, gave classified information to his biographer/mistress to make him seem more powerful... he pleads guilty, gets a $40,000 fine and 2 years probation.
3) Edward Snowden releases summary information about widespread illegal activity by the U.S. spy services. No specifics about operations or personnel were leaked, resulting in no deaths and no aborted operations(*) ...he's banished from the U.S.
4) Chelsea [nee Bradley] Manning releases video evidence of war crimes committed by the U.S. military, literally gunning down members of the international press and other civilians with no provocation... was subjected to months of cruel and unusual punishment (tortured, per U.N. definition of torture), sentenced to 35 years in prison, and given dishonourable discharge.
(*) Quoth the office of the president: "Mr. Snowden's dangerous decision to steal and disclose classified information had severe consequences for the security of our country..."
I had to look it up also.
An "interstitial" pops up before the page you want, or a few seconds after.
It's a speed-bump in reading the website: stop, grab the mouse, find the close mark, get rid of the thing, and continue.
It's basically adding mosquitoes to your browsing experience.
(Some of them don't even have the "X" corner icon. You have to choose one of the presented links to close.)
and just because many things in the west that are OK or even normal are viewed as being criminal in certain countries is the fault. Oh what a web of lies we must tell ourselves so we can sleep at night knowing our product kills innocents.
Okay then, let's look at this from the perspective of morality.
One very good theory of morality is based on suffering.
The exploits of Hacking Team have greatly increased the suffering of a large number of people, while other actions they could have taken (such as reporting their exploits so that vendors can fix them) would have reduced that same suffering.
This is the definition of evil under the that theory: when your actions cause increased suffering of many people, it's evil.
Yes, there are corner cases and nuanced situations (such as the suffering of a caught criminal), but overall it's a good working definition and under that definition Hacking Team is [was] evil.
Or we could look at this from the perspective of Christian ethics.
According to Father Guido Sarducci, sins have penitant value. Lying is worth a dollar, killing is worth $50,000, and masturbation is something like $0.50.
(Yes, I'm referring to the selling of indulgances by the Catholic church.)
The exploits of Hacking Team have caused the torture and death of people. Hacking Team probably has an ecumenical debt worth millions of dollars.
This is the definition of sin under the that theory: when your actions damage society so much that you must atone by donating large sums of money to charity.
This is another good working definition and under that definition Hacking Team has racked up an enormous bank account of sin.
Hacking Team should vanish, we'd be all the better for it.
If you're on public land, you don't get an expectation of privacy.
I've often heard this repeated, but is it actually true?
Suppose I'm in a public space (say, a park) having a quiet conversation with someone, and keeping track of passersby: If someone walks up we stop talking.
Does this mean that someone (from the government) with a parabolic mic can eavesdrop on my conversations without a warrant?
The argument is that it's only what a policeman would hear if he walked up and listened, but in that case we would stop talking.
I have every expectation of privacy if I take steps to ensure that privacy: looking around to make sure no one can see me, for instance. Does this mean that the police can video-tape the sidewalk from the window of any office building without a warrant?
I also note that there's no expectation of privacy *in your home* if you don't have the drapes closed. The implication is that we don't have an expectation of privacy *anywhere*, except in our homes and only if we're concealed.
Does that sound like a free country?
If you're on public land, you don't get an expectation of privacy.
In any event, we shouldn't be mindlessly repeating that meme as if it's the "law of the land". The more you say it, it only makes more people believe it.
Instead, we should be mindlessly repeating things things that sway public perception in a better direction.
[Neutrinos] travel at the speed of light...
They don't.
Oh, it gets better.
We don't know if there's even a *difference* between a neutrino and an antineutrino. It may in fact be its own antiparticle.
And then there's this thing about how they each oscillate among three types.
and I'll say it again - technology INCREASES jobs, never decreases it - over the long term. Over the short term it can make certain skills worthless, putting some people out of work, but that's it.
If your position is correct, the number of jobs in Agriculture has increased over the long term.
So, for instance, the number of people working on farms has increased over the last century or so.
Yes?
He and his within 5 second +5 'insightful' posse.
I'm curious about what you said.
Is this something you've noticed anecdotally, or do you have a screen scraping program that loads and interprets slashdot conversations? (Or something else?)
I'd be very interested in statistics about this sort of thing. Anything that throws light on how certain subjects get modded up, correlations of moderator accounts that don't post, and so on.
There's a lot of activity here that seems anecdotally suspicious. It'd be nice to know whether this is due to random clustering or some type of organized push.
Do you have any statistical support?
Want to really fight ISIS? We'll need Iran and Syria as allies if you actually want to win.
Why do we have to fight ISIS at all?
Everyone over there hates us, other first world countries won't lend a hand, and in the long run the barbarism of ISIS won't withstand the onslaught of more developed ideas.
Thinking that we will prevent the conflict from coming over here is fantasy storytelling: all our draconian infrastructure didn't prevent the shoe bomber, underwear bomber, or marathon bomber - even when we were warned about those specific threats beforehand.
What's the compelling reason to do anything in the middle east? If the ISIS neighbor countries are good with it, if the European nations think it's none of their business, if it's extremely expensive, if meddling in their affairs will only make them hate us more... why not just ignore ISIS?
What's the benefit in fighting ISIS?
Isn't Yuggoth supposed to be Pluto?
That's where the Mi-go are.
Nah - probably some primitive type of fungi.
While it is true that there are doctors working while they themselves are not feeling well, you guys gotta understand that doctors have to face sick people ALL THE TIME, which means they have higher chance of getting infected with diseases, which means they have to spend more times feeling unwell
It is always so easy to criticize someone of doing something but why is it there is no mention of what makes that someone do that something in the first place?
Because doing so implies that it's OK because it has a justification. "Hey, it's OK for doctors putting us at risk, because they have a really good reason".
This is a clear-cut example of that "needs of the many" thing. Yes, doctors encounter sickness more often then average. Yes, that probably means they get sick more often. Yes, their work is really hard.
Does the inconvenience of one doctor outweigh the inconvenience of 5 patients catching what he's got?
I once read a study where doctors refuse to use checklists, despite abundant evidence that doing so would reduce the incidence of hospital errors.
The reason? Doctors simply didn't want to use them - they felt that they were good enough not to need them.
(That was awhile ago - now checklists are starting to catch on.)
So, I'm all for grow local, but when there's sun shining right outside - this doesn't make a heck of a lot of sense to me... unless you are a company that sells grow lights.
You have a point, but you also have to consider the context of comparison.
Plants grown outdoors face an array of problems that the farmer has to account for. Keeping insects off, keeping weeds at bay, keeping the plants watered and fertilized - all this comes at a cost to the farmer.
Indoor farming requires a more expensive infrastructure (the building, trays, and plumbing) but has great savings in some of the other areas. It's easier to keep weeds and insects out, for instance.
Of particular note, outdoors you can't recycle unused water or fertilizer, but this can be done indoors. Collect any unused water after the plants have drunk their fill, remove waste products, top off the fertilizer, and reuse.
So the economic question is this: is the extra money/effort spent on generating light compensated for by the savings in insecticides, roundup, fertilizer, and water?
I think the answer is probably "yes", given that LED lights are incredibly efficient. (Also of note: less of the environment is damaged by excess fertilizer and water drainage. Damaging the environment indirectly costs money.)
Then the next question is with the building: does it make sense to have big windows and use mostly solar light, and adjust as needed with indoor lighting?
Windows cost more than walls, they require extra heating and/or air conditioning, they're not as structurally sound, and the light isn't used efficiently in the 3-d volume; meaning, you can't grow corn on each story of a 5-story building, because the first layer will shade the ones below it. (And windows break, they have to be cleaned, they tend to leak, &c.)
It may be more economically sensible to grow corn in a 5-story warehouse close to a city simply because it reduces the transport costs. It also reduces the amount of land used - allowing more plots to go back to the wild.
And on top of all of this, researchers I've talked to are doing clever things with the light recipe they're giving to plants.
Some plants detect the reddening of the sun and "go to sleep" at sunset. By adjusting the light color, you can keep the plants growing 18 hours a day and then blast them with excess red light to get them to quickly go into night mode. This increases yield by reducing the growing period of their crops.
(A bunch of other experiments are really interesting, such as: hitting the crops with a particular frequency of light to cause their ripening flavors to go into overdrive, making a crop that is inordinately tasty.)
So in summary, we should do the economic experiment and see if it's viable, but in toto there's a lot to recommend indoor industrial gardening.
True wisdom requires the humility to see the universe for what it is... a step beyond our reason... always and forever.
I heartily endorse that statement, and encourage you to teach it to your children.
(My children, on the other hand, will be competing with yours in the global society and I want to give them the best chance of success.)
[... long rambling personal attack against Assange...]
He's a douche, so much a douche that even France thinks he's a douche. How sad do you have to be when even France doesn't capitulate?
Apropos of nothing, where are you getting your information?
Your post reads almost like one of those sock puppet things, you know? Paid to promote a particular point of view, without regard to truth or logic.
I'm not saying you're a sock puppet, mind you. It just that your post was a little one-sided, overly emotional and outspoken for the scope of the incident.
Sort of like the "say it loud enough and often enough" propaganda type of post.
How has this incident personally affected you, that you get so riled up about it?
As many people have pointed out, it's straightforward to set up a honeypot that triggers the exploit, pay the ransom, and then follow the money.
Many people are affected by ransomware. If the US made fixing this problem a priority, many *people* would be relieved of anguish and suffering.
Instead, the feds look into crimes against corporations. How's that investigation into fiber cutting in San Francisco coming along?
Or crimes against authority. What was the cost versus benefit of the Silk Road investigation?
If the US made *people* a priority, it would get done.
(And for the record, Bitcoin is not anonymous and we have agreements with other countries for criminal activity. )
The problem arises when you make bad associations over the years.
Your brain is an association engine - it silently catalogs all the feelings you get when doing something, and uses this information for prediction in the planning [brain] section.
Over the years, you've built up associations between programming and discomfort in various forms. Now, when you consider going to do some program, your brain automatically recalls all the pain and discomfort that this brings.
The planning section uses the risk/reward equation, and there's usually other values to consider. Normally, the "value" you get from programming is enough to outweigh the discomfort you get. You get rewards for doing it, like interacting with people, figuring out problems, and so on. Getting money is more of an intellectual reward - there's no "feeling" associated with money per-se. (Unless you're Scrooge McDuck and feel joy over just having money. Most people aren't like that.)
Over time, the negative value of the discomfort has grown, relative to the positive value you get from completing goals, learning new things, or social interactions.
It's the same as a lathe operator who gets back pain from stooping over all day long. He'll eventually get tired of doing something he once loved, even if he doesn't remember the pain.
It's *very* difficult to reverse this. You have to build up positive associations, and enough of these to compensate for the negative history.
You can try adjusting your work environment ergonomically: make it more physically comfortable to type, for instance.
You can try getting into a new field: switch from web work to microcontrollers, for instance.
You can try switching to a new environment: shop your resume around, and join a small company with a manager/people you really like.
You can try rewarding yourself for completing goals: promise yourself a slice of pie if you complete such-and-so task today. (Make sure you realize "this pie is because I completed such-and-so" task while you're eating it.)
You can try taking a vacation, but that won't fix the underlying problem.
Good luck!
Stubbing one's toe is a potentially life-threatening incident.
Did the paper address this? I would think that the risk of stubbing one's toe would be much higher while wearing AR glasses.
We need more papers like this one. The complete and total characterization of all potential safety issues should be a reasonable goal before anyone is allowed to sell (or wear) one of these devices.
Maybe the FDA should issue a ban while it considers common-sense regulation (like the FAA did for drones).
How is this at all what Wikileaks is supposed to be for? At this point it seems more like crass voyeurism than any type of serious attempt to shine a light on corporate misconduct.
Sony has done a lot of evil in the past (remember rootkits?). By dumping this dataset, Wikileaks is doing two things:
1) Airing Sony's misdeeds, with the possibility of bringing them to justice. Possibly getting tried in the court of public opinion.
2) Encouraging other companies to not be evil. If everyone knows that their illegal activities might come to light, it'll act as a deterrent.
Note that the 4K stuff was picked up by Apple Insider, and consider their mandate.
Hold off a bit before passing judgement. If a more journalistic outlet finds something newsworthy, it might paint the data dump as worthwhile.
There's a lot of snake oil outside of traditional medicine, but there's a lot of it *within* traditional medicine as well.
One of the really obvious low-hanging fruit that I've seen is the Burzynski Clinic.
To summarize, Stanislaw Burzynski (a doctor in Texas) claims to have invented a new cancer treatment that's better than Chemo. Someone made a movie "Cancer is serious business" which shows lots and lots of case file evidence that this is true.
We have a claim, and we have evidence. Is this bunkum or a scientific breakthrough?
It's usually easy to figure this out: interview the patients, see if they were treated, if they got better (or not), and if they are happy with the treatment. Examine the evidence and see if it's consistent with the claims.
In most cases of "bunkum", you'll find that the patients feel they were cheated, the treatment had no effect, they were also on traditional treatments, and so on and so on. It's pretty easy to separate the wheat from the chaff by examining the evidence.
In the case of Stanislaw Burzynski, no one does this. Read up on the reports and find that no one addresses the evidence directly: it's all ad-hominem attacks ("he's not a real doctor, he's not a cancer researcher"), indirect rationalizations ("it can't work because it doesn't fit my model", he doesn't have an explanation for *why* it works, it must be bunkum because it's too good), administrative accusations, and so on and so on.
One particularly salient point, brought up by many, is that the treatment is "untested". His treatment doesn't work because there are no studies to confirm this.
No one addresses the evidence.
I think what medical science, and science at large, have to realize is that people are starting to wise up to these "absence of evidence" statements. Just having a doctor say "there are no studies showing it's effective" won't cut it any more - it's seen as a verbal hand-waving to support schools of thought. It's "absence of evidence is evidence of absence".
This is what happened with Homeopathy. People had a rationalization for *why* it works and there was some historical evidence. Add in some first-hand accounts, and suddenly you've got a miracle cure that science can't explain (but really works!).
Not every crazy theory needs a full-fledged study, but I suspect a lot of good could be done by taking the top "fad" populist beliefs and making simple, definitive studies. I'd feel a lot more comfortable if a doctor could say "we studied it and there's no effect" instead of "there's no evidence that this has any effect".
The prior shows a logical certainty, the latter is rationalization.
Scientists have eliminated smallpox from the world, and we're about 5 years shy of eliminating polio. I read about new strategies for malaria each year (making stronger mosquitos that resist the malaria infection, for instance).
Muhammad Yunus is a PhD scientist who started the Grameen Bank, in 1999 had reduced poverty by 40% worldwide(*). His TED talk is interesting.
Everybody is working towards new energy sources: wind and wave, solar (in various forms), and even nuclear. There's a Hackaday prize on the theme of "save the world, build something that matters" with over 500 entries.
We're putting up cell phone towers in Africa, giving clean water to the Bangladeshi, inventing pot-in-pot refrigerators, and helping people use propane instead of charcoal (with attendant improvements in health).
I don't hear scientists talk like this, and that's fine, it's probably not their place. But evidence isn't enough to actually move people to action, you do actually have talk about right and wrong, and why this thing is wrong and must be stopped.
What the heck are you talking about?
Scientists move the world.
Clinging to some outdated religion is what holds us back.
(*) According to a Scientific American article that I am citing from memory, and my memory of the article may be flawed, and it's really old information.