All this could play out in a mere 20 to 50 years -- much too quickly for humanity to adapt.
Humanity can adapt to changes on a far more rapid timescale than this. We don't have to hang around until we evolve gills we just move to higher ground and rebuild. This will involve social and economic upheaval and a reduction in the standard of living on a short timescale but that does not mean we cannot adapt to the change.
This would make a lot of sense in an era of declining educational standards at schools. It used to be that getting good grades at secondary school meant that you had put in a decent amount of work and commitment. However, now that it is no longer politically correct to fail school kids the qualification has become enormously devalued and it is no wonder that employees no longer rely on it. In fact, even universities are now beginning to question whether using high school marks to determine which admit students is reliable.
It's my understanding that many people believe that the USA won that war
Try looking at the facts. The US declared war on Britain after multiple provocations by the UK who were trying to stop the US providing Napoleon with supplies. The US's aim in the war was to try and conquer British North America (as it was then) and the British aim in the war was to stop the US supplying Napoleon. At the end of the war the border remained unchanged and there was no need to worry about Napoleon because he had been defeated. So the US did not achieve anything and the UK got what it wanted by default after completely blockading the US during the war. So it's hard to say whether anyone really won but if someone did it was definitely not the US.
THat idiot, as you call him, built his own rocket using steam power.
Any idiot can build a steam rocket. They have been around since the first century AD. The trick is to build one powerful enough to carry a person and with enough control to safely fly and then land without killing that person. He hasn't even shown that his rocket works, let alone that it is powerful enough and can fly safely.
What have you fucking built?
Lots of things but how about we go for part of one of the experiments which found the Higgs boson. How about yourself?
No not at all like Wernher von Braun. von Braun had a degree in engineering and took part in liquid-fueled rockets tests while a student at TU Berlin. So he was not really self-taught and he clearly believed in science and knew what it was. This idiot is not a scientist, he just using formulae without grasping the big picture of what is going on which is dangerous because there is no guarantee that he has applied them correctly.
I disagree. We live in a culture that highly encourages freedom of speech and at one time used to respect it. Google, in particular, had a reputation for this sort of behaviour and apparently set up tools to act as safe spaces within the company to exchange ideas freely. Using this to express ideas in an area where you have some formal training but that many people might disagree with and think are wrong perhaps shows a certain naivety in actually believing your employer and society but I think stops well short of cognitive impairment.
Arguably, though, the worst example fo cognitive impairment is in those at Google carefully constructing their own thought echo chamber. If you cannot abide to have your own beliefs challenged in a polite, reasoned manner either you already are mentally impaired or soon will be. The correct response to him would have been an equally reasoned reply pointing out studies which contradict his claims that way he, and others, could have learnt something.
Actually, now that employee discounts are considered a taxable benefit here
First they are not - it was proposed to tax employee discounts and then shot down. Secondly, even if that were the case it would have no effect. Grants and scholarships are specifically tax exempt and there is absolutely no tuition remission: we pay our TAs (which usually counts as a scholarship) and they pay the tuition out of their salary. So there is no discount to tax.
I don't think there is any political system in the world that allows the 'best and the brightest' to rise to the top and run things in a way that benefits from their superior way of viewing the world.
There are far more important reasons for that than corruption. We don't all agree on who the "best and brightest" are and we certainly do not all agree that their views are superior. Then there is the fact that the even those whom you think are the best and brightest may not want to go into politics because they usually have a good job that they enjoy and are unwilling to give it up for the uncertainty of elections and the type of job they will have if they do win.
If our education system ran off of immigrant dollars, that was never sustainable or good, and we should celebrate its departure.
I suspect that any celebration of the departure of your education system will ultimately turn out to be a very short-lived one once the consequences of not having one start to hit home.
No. It's almost exactly the same idea as the "the universe is a simulation" hypothesis. These are not scientific hypotheses since they make no testable predictions. The only way you could confirm these sorts of theories is if the alien entity makes a mistake and even then the mistake has to be of such a nature that it defies any logical explanation e.g. an electron's mass is slightly larger on the first thursday of every month or something equally bizarre and unconnected to a physical cycle like days of the week.
The result is that these sorts of theories should be classed as a religious belief and not science. Like a religion, they explain the physical laws of the universe and/or the universe itself as being created by some intelligence. As such they put that intelligence beyond our framework of existence and so are completely untestable unless that intelligence reveals itself to us - either deliberately or accidentally.
Just install Windows 10 and try it. I moved from mac just under a year ago and my last experience with Windows was Win95 on a machine which mainly ran Linux. Win10 is far more mac-like than I was expecting. While interfaces are not as well thought out and designed as mac everything tends to work very well and it's easy to google what you need if you can't find it.
I can also recommend the Windows Linux subsystem which gives you a full Ubuntu installation running under the Windows kernel which gives a great approximation to the mac terminal.
More importantly, the energy required to create the baryons in the first place is 1-2 orders of magnitude more than the fusion releases and you get more energy just waiting for them to decay.
Unfortunately, unlike nuclear fusion where the things you want to fuse can be found lying around because they are stable, exotic baryons containing c or b quarks have to be created. Since their mass is several thousand MeV - even more if you are using baryons with b-quarks - this will require vastly more energy than this fusion will release.
In fact, just the decay of these baryons releases far more energy that this fusion process so it's not the short lifetime that prevents practical application it's making the constituents in the first place and, even if you find someway to do that, you are better off just waiting for them to decay.
If nobody looks at the image, or, as some have suggested, the hash is computed client side (so nobody would be able to look at the image) it would be ripe for abuse.
There is a very easy fix for this - the first time the hash matches the takedown requires human approval. This way someone only looks at the image if the image is already uploaded for people to look at and you can't abuse the system by filing takedowns for random pictures. This would even reduce Facebook's work because instead of checking every upload they only have to check ones which match.
No, there are a crap-ton of online collaboration tools but none of them are better at email when it comes to convenience and reach. If I have to tell hundreds of undergrad students or colleagues at remote institutes to install application X before I can communicate with them it is not going to work because either: it doesn't exist for their personal platform; the install fails somehow and/or the app does not work; or they just will not bother.
Slashdot Mirror
All this could play out in a mere 20 to 50 years -- much too quickly for humanity to adapt.
Humanity can adapt to changes on a far more rapid timescale than this. We don't have to hang around until we evolve gills we just move to higher ground and rebuild. This will involve social and economic upheaval and a reduction in the standard of living on a short timescale but that does not mean we cannot adapt to the change.
That does not explain why the same phenomenon is occurring everywhere outside the US though.
This would make a lot of sense in an era of declining educational standards at schools. It used to be that getting good grades at secondary school meant that you had put in a decent amount of work and commitment. However, now that it is no longer politically correct to fail school kids the qualification has become enormously devalued and it is no wonder that employees no longer rely on it. In fact, even universities are now beginning to question whether using high school marks to determine which admit students is reliable.
I'm not sure stories have morale but it does suggest that EA's morale and morals are both pretty low.
Clearly they "won the battle but lost the war" something which happens so often in history there is actually a saying for it!
It's my understanding that many people believe that the USA won that war
Try looking at the facts. The US declared war on Britain after multiple provocations by the UK who were trying to stop the US providing Napoleon with supplies. The US's aim in the war was to try and conquer British North America (as it was then) and the British aim in the war was to stop the US supplying Napoleon. At the end of the war the border remained unchanged and there was no need to worry about Napoleon because he had been defeated. So the US did not achieve anything and the UK got what it wanted by default after completely blockading the US during the war. So it's hard to say whether anyone really won but if someone did it was definitely not the US.
Even more than that US Thanksgiving is not a holiday anywhere but the US so this is no different than striking on any other random day of the year.
THat idiot, as you call him, built his own rocket using steam power.
Any idiot can build a steam rocket. They have been around since the first century AD. The trick is to build one powerful enough to carry a person and with enough control to safely fly and then land without killing that person. He hasn't even shown that his rocket works, let alone that it is powerful enough and can fly safely.
What have you fucking built?
Lots of things but how about we go for part of one of the experiments which found the Higgs boson. How about yourself?
...he'll be known as a two bit(coin) bandit.
Like Wernher von Braun?
No not at all like Wernher von Braun. von Braun had a degree in engineering and took part in liquid-fueled rockets tests while a student at TU Berlin. So he was not really self-taught and he clearly believed in science and knew what it was. This idiot is not a scientist, he just using formulae without grasping the big picture of what is going on which is dangerous because there is no guarantee that he has applied them correctly.
They had 'confidence game' right in their name folks.
Yes, but to be fair it does sound like they were aiming to con dogs rather than humans.
I disagree. We live in a culture that highly encourages freedom of speech and at one time used to respect it. Google, in particular, had a reputation for this sort of behaviour and apparently set up tools to act as safe spaces within the company to exchange ideas freely. Using this to express ideas in an area where you have some formal training but that many people might disagree with and think are wrong perhaps shows a certain naivety in actually believing your employer and society but I think stops well short of cognitive impairment.
Arguably, though, the worst example fo cognitive impairment is in those at Google carefully constructing their own thought echo chamber. If you cannot abide to have your own beliefs challenged in a polite, reasoned manner either you already are mentally impaired or soon will be. The correct response to him would have been an equally reasoned reply pointing out studies which contradict his claims that way he, and others, could have learnt something.
Actually, now that employee discounts are considered a taxable benefit here
First they are not - it was proposed to tax employee discounts and then shot down. Secondly, even if that were the case it would have no effect. Grants and scholarships are specifically tax exempt and there is absolutely no tuition remission: we pay our TAs (which usually counts as a scholarship) and they pay the tuition out of their salary. So there is no discount to tax.
Here tuition is tax deductible, scholarships and grants are tax exempt and most if not all of your TA pay counts as a scholarship.
I don't think there is any political system in the world that allows the 'best and the brightest' to rise to the top and run things in a way that benefits from their superior way of viewing the world.
There are far more important reasons for that than corruption. We don't all agree on who the "best and brightest" are and we certainly do not all agree that their views are superior. Then there is the fact that the even those whom you think are the best and brightest may not want to go into politics because they usually have a good job that they enjoy and are unwilling to give it up for the uncertainty of elections and the type of job they will have if they do win.
If our education system ran off of immigrant dollars, that was never sustainable or good, and we should celebrate its departure.
I suspect that any celebration of the departure of your education system will ultimately turn out to be a very short-lived one once the consequences of not having one start to hit home.
Well, I don't know who did it but I suspect they may have applied the pseudo-scientific method the article outlines to decide that it was a good idea.
No. It's almost exactly the same idea as the "the universe is a simulation" hypothesis. These are not scientific hypotheses since they make no testable predictions. The only way you could confirm these sorts of theories is if the alien entity makes a mistake and even then the mistake has to be of such a nature that it defies any logical explanation e.g. an electron's mass is slightly larger on the first thursday of every month or something equally bizarre and unconnected to a physical cycle like days of the week.
The result is that these sorts of theories should be classed as a religious belief and not science. Like a religion, they explain the physical laws of the universe and/or the universe itself as being created by some intelligence. As such they put that intelligence beyond our framework of existence and so are completely untestable unless that intelligence reveals itself to us - either deliberately or accidentally.
Just install Windows 10 and try it. I moved from mac just under a year ago and my last experience with Windows was Win95 on a machine which mainly ran Linux. Win10 is far more mac-like than I was expecting. While interfaces are not as well thought out and designed as mac everything tends to work very well and it's easy to google what you need if you can't find it.
I can also recommend the Windows Linux subsystem which gives you a full Ubuntu installation running under the Windows kernel which gives a great approximation to the mac terminal.
No, you need about -13.8 billion years.
This is NOT a usable source of energy.
More importantly, the energy required to create the baryons in the first place is 1-2 orders of magnitude more than the fusion releases and you get more energy just waiting for them to decay.
Unfortunately, unlike nuclear fusion where the things you want to fuse can be found lying around because they are stable, exotic baryons containing c or b quarks have to be created. Since their mass is several thousand MeV - even more if you are using baryons with b-quarks - this will require vastly more energy than this fusion will release.
In fact, just the decay of these baryons releases far more energy that this fusion process so it's not the short lifetime that prevents practical application it's making the constituents in the first place and, even if you find someway to do that, you are better off just waiting for them to decay.
...your post is lacking any truth or beauty!
If nobody looks at the image, or, as some have suggested, the hash is computed client side (so nobody would be able to look at the image) it would be ripe for abuse.
There is a very easy fix for this - the first time the hash matches the takedown requires human approval. This way someone only looks at the image if the image is already uploaded for people to look at and you can't abuse the system by filing takedowns for random pictures. This would even reduce Facebook's work because instead of checking every upload they only have to check ones which match.
No, there are a crap-ton of online collaboration tools but none of them are better at email when it comes to convenience and reach. If I have to tell hundreds of undergrad students or colleagues at remote institutes to install application X before I can communicate with them it is not going to work because either: it doesn't exist for their personal platform; the install fails somehow and/or the app does not work; or they just will not bother.