My job is mostly technical (animal nutrition, not IT), and I use it as a form of technical marketing. I post when Iâ(TM)ll be talking at a conference, articles that I want my customers to read, and links to videos Iâ(TM)ve made that describe aspects of how to use my products.
Iâ(TM)m connected on LinkedIn with customers, colleagues, and supervisors. Posting there has raised my visibility with upper management, which has helped me advocate for promotions and raises internally. It has also increased my visibility to recruiters. Innactive (cause Iâ(TM)m busy with real work) and I get a contact about a position quarterly. When Iâ(TM)m active I can get them monthly to almost weekly. Now, most positions I pass on on the first contact, but I have gotten several interesting opportunities brought to my attention via linked in that Iâ(TM)m not sure I would have gotten otherwise.
Notice that Iâ(TM)m active in my current role. Iâ(TM)m not sure how much benefit there is to being on there if you are unemployed and have not built a presence before now. I suspect that recruiters look at your past activity (and with greater detail that even you can get on your own activity) as part of their evaluation so a brand new account may not be worth much in the short term. It also may be that your industry doesnâ(TM)t use it as much as the recruiters in mine appear to. Good luck.
Not sure where you are getting your information, but the vast majority of farms are still family owned.
Yes, big farms are getting bigger, and they get subsidies. The thing is, the small farms are doomed for reasons that have nothing to do with subsidies or price supports. They lack economies of scale. Simple as that. When prices for their inputs go up, larger operations are more resilient to prolonged losses, and better positioned to capitalize on good prices. Thus the smaller guys go out of business.
It’s the same basic economics that mean most mom & pop business of any kind is more likely to fold during a recession than a national chain.
Second/. Article today based on an entirely flawed premise (the one claiming that concer crops are somehow new or experimental being the other one).
Back when the UNs IARC labelled processed meats as carcinogenic the good Dr Carroll (professor at IU Medical School) pointed out that the actual risk of eating significantly more bacon than you used to is rather small.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Itâ(TM)s not experimental. Itâ(TM)s common practice on many farms, and has been for a while. The fact that they refer to cover crops as experimental proves the authors have no fucking clue what they are talking about, or what modern farming actually looks like. Just an ignorant twit spreading FUD.
Everything described as new or different has been standard proceedure for decades. Not sure what they are selling (beyond FUD), but farmers routinely consider which crops to plant based on expected returns. They care for the soil (what do you think fertilizers are? Replacement nutrients for those extracted by last years crops). Cover crops are a very common way to care for soil if north west Indiana is any indication. Youâ(TM)ve been able to buy seeds with beneficial bacteria already applied for at least 5-10 years.
Depends on what you mean by "Reading". I read precious few physical books beyond rather try technical ones for work (Nutrient Requirements of Swine, 11th Revised Edition, 2012 is hardly a page turner).
If you include listening to audiobooks, then I can claim the following:
1. The Light of Life: The Cycle of Galand, Book 4 by Edward W. Robertson
2. The Ritualist: Completionist Chronicles, Book 1 by Dakota Krout
3. The Bad Food Bible: How and Why to Eat Sinfully by Aaron Carroll, MD
4. Dark Deeds: Keiko, Book 3 by Mike Brooks
5. Grant by Ron Chernow
The first 4 were finished in the last month (had a lot of time to spend listening due to travel), whereas the 5th has been on-again off-again for the better part of the year and I'm only about 1/3rd of the way done.
The Bad Food Bible was the most gratifying. The others are more recreational for me, but since I work in the field of nutrition, it was nice to finally find a book about nutrition that gets far more right than wrong. It has become my new go-to recommendation for anyone asking about nutrition, supplanting The Big Fat Surprise by Nina Teicholz. Still a good book, but Dr. Carroll's book is more broad yet a quicker read.
Ok, I did precisely the opposite in that I assumed:
A. you knew about the change in backfat thickness over the last couple of decades, and the amount work that represented
B. you were aware that CRSPR would make it possible to do this kind of manipulation on living animals, in your barn, without having to change sire selection
You turned the topic to experience and qualifications with this line
Based on your response I think you don't understand how genetic selection works and how GMOs work
At this point I chose to highlight that I am not ignorant of the subjects, but that I am no expert either. You then promptly took offense and doubled down with this line
Based on your entire response I get the feeling that you have a small understanding of genetics and that you're extremely overconfident in your understanding rather than actually understanding pigs and genetics. I've been doing this for decades. You're like the man pushing a pencil and thinking that he's farming.
.
If this conversation digressed into personal insults, it was you who started that slide. While I have not been perfectly polite, I have not attempted to insulted you, only to disagree with you. I only characterized your reaction as "Butt hurt" because you took irrational offense. I did also agreed to assume you are not aware of topics such as CRSPR and the mega trend in swine breeding toward lean genetics, but that was only after you decided to get incredibly pedantic and deliberately (if you are not genuinely ignorant) or accidently (if you are genuinely ignorant) miss the points I was trying to make. At the risk of further aggravating you I suggest you go back and really read both of our first couple of rounds of responses and reflect on why it is you are in a public forum looking for insults where there are none intended.
And in case you offended by the word "ignorant" I'd like to clarify that I am using ignorant in the technical sense, as to be unaware or unfamiliar, and not in the sense that I am call you or anyone else stupid. I am ignorant of a great many things, as are we all, but I did not assume ignorance on your part until you made it clear you were for whatever reason missing my point.
Then we go back to square one, but until/unless that happens, those animals that are immune will be better off. Nothing lasts forever, and we should stop expecting it to.
For other diseases we've used mass euthanasia with some sort of a loss support program to eradicate highly virulent diseases like Hoof and Mouth disease, with the goal of having an entire nation be considered "Free" of the disease. If a farm then eventually pops up positive, we do it all over again. We've not used this approach with PRRSv because it is too wide spread. The cost in destroyed animals is too high. However, if we were to generate a largely immune herd, an isolated outbreak of a mutated PRRSv may be amenable to this kind of "Scorched earth" containment strategy assuming it is quickly identified.
Ok, I was giving you the benefit of the doubt that your experience would not make it necessary to spell out that by millimeters I mean “less than 10 mm” and by feet I meant “6 to 12 inches”. Sorry, next time I will assume you are ignorant, and spell it all out as I would have for any other person on/.
I also wasn’t attempting to lecture, by which I mean “tell you something you don’t already know”, but to draw your attention to a major trend in swine breeding that I felt represented a compelling parallel. The massive change in swine genetics by selecting for leanness is an impressive, industry wide, multi generation undertaking of the sort we’d need to make this work. You appeared to have dismissed PRRS immunity as too hard, and I simply offered an example of something of similar difficulty that has already been accomplished in the same industry. Don’t find it compelling? That’s fine, though I’d be curious to know what not. That is generally the point of a conversation.
I’ve also mentioned several times the potential for CRISPR to make it possible for you to potentially “vaccinate” (not the right term, but I’m not sure we have a specific term for something like this) live animals, conferring immunity to every animal in your barn at once, and potentially their offspring as well. Would something like this change your “nothing to see here” view? I assumed you were familiar with the CRISPR topic as in relates to genetics, but if not I suggest you look into it.
As for my education vs your experience. There is no comparison. They are different, and are largely orthogonal to each other. I only trotted out my credentials because you questioned my familiarity with the topic. Not to intimidate you. The industry succeeds in tasks like the aforementioned transition to lean genetics because we have people with different expertise workin towards the same goals together. Not sure why what I said made you all butt hurt, but I was looking to converse, not trolling you.
The industry has embarked on massive changes in the emetics of pigs before. The average pig today measures back fat in milimeters at slaughter. A century ago we measured it in inches and routinely got around a foot of back fat. That change was driven primarily by genetic selection. I didnâ(TM)t say it would be fast, only that it was not so slow as to be unworkable.
As for the dig at the end about my experience. PhD in animal science from Purdue university and 10+ years in the field since then. Now, my graduate degrees are in nutrition, not genetics, so I would never claim to be an expert in that specifically, but I have more than a passing familiarity with the topic.
The generic manipulation event can be repeated in different lines of pigs. This is the promise of crispr, that we can tailor genetic manipulations on an individual basis.
This first attempt proves what is possible. To make a pig that is innately immune to PRRSv without killing it. There are additional steps to be sure, but they are not insurmountable, and the benefits are sufficient that many will try.
You don't have to throw out your progress. Just select sires and sows who are immune. Yes, that'll require some trade offs, but breeding selection has always required tradeoffs. Im sure you have not been able to select advantageously on all 33+ criteria simultaneously on each pairing.
It also appears as though you are operating under the assumption that what these researchers have achieved cannot be achieved in the breeds you draw from. If each of the primary breeders deliberately starts introducing (via molecular techniques or crossing) PRRS resistance into their herds, you will, eventually, be able to get it along with whatever else you are selecting on. Modern DNA manipulation is getting easier not harder. At lest from a technical perspective. The regulatory stuff is getting harder, but it looks like CRSPR is going to help a little on that front, and since this particular event is about removing/breaking a gene, it is practically tailor made for CRSPR.
Pigs naturally multiply, and depending on the dominance/recessive nature of the inheritance for this gene, all we'd need to do is replace the primary breeders stock. This would then flow down into the multiplier herds, and finally out into the commercial herds. Sure it'll take time, but we may not even need to have 100 percent coverage. It would probably be like vaccination, with herd immunity protecting those animals that are not themselves intrinsically immune. Also, as a farm in transition is infected with PRRS, those most likely to survive will be those who are intrinsically immune, thus accelerating the transition on that farm. Either due to opening spots to buy new PRRS immune sows, or to save breeding stock preferentially from the immune sows that survive unscathed.
This disease is HUGE in swine production. Producers have Faustian bargain to make.
Option 1: stay PRRS Free
Animals are healthier, perform better, and require less medical intervention. Great! However, biosecurity measures are prodigious, can be super expensive, and if they fail it will cost you a lot of animals and money.
A small University run operation I worked on sold ~500 nursery piglets every 2 weeks. When they broke with PRRS the number of viable pigs was cut in half in the first group. Bottomed our at 5 pigs surviving to weaning before it started to recover. All told we lost some where in the order of 2,000 piglets over about 2 months. We also lost about 10% of the sows over the same period. Mostly the younger ones.
Option 2. Manage a PRRS positive herd.
Animals are always a little sick, a little less productive, and require a little more TLC, but you mostly avoid the dramatic >90% losses of an accure outbreak. Flair ups top out closer to 25-50%.
Genetically immune pigs would save literally millions of pigsâ(TM) lives, improve their welfare at the same time, and improve the environmental impact of swine production by reducing waste (feed, medications, etc spent on pigs that die due to the disease). Will we forgo all of those advantages because GMO makes some people scared? I sure as hell hope not, but wonâ(TM)t be holding my breath.
All the UI candy in the world canâ(TM)t make up for lack of intuitive behavior, crashes, and a near complete lack of 3rd party software.
And for the record, they are NOT gone yet. My company is still using windows phone as the only cell phone option. They ugh they are finally supposed to be replaced second half of this year.
This strain of rats gets cancer at a high rate (45%) no matter what you do. This is literally the worst experimental model for determining if anything causes cancer as you cannot determine which cancers were going to happen anyway. However, this is the perfect model for generating click bait headlines that support your belief that something causes cancer without actually having to risk spending all of that money to find out you are wrong.
I think the ideological component is correlated to the degree that accounts affiliated with specific ideologies rely more or less on bots to inflate their following (knowingly or not). If twitter really wanted to enforce some sort of ideology, they could ban the president for the shit he posts. Instead they've chosen to pretty much ignore anything he says, suggesting they are not pushing a liberal ideology here so much as trying to reduce the overall signal to noise ratio (with bots = noise, regardless of ideology).
I think the lack of middle ground is a big part of the problem.
Despite the numerous examples of our current political landscape forcing binary "With us or against us" type view points where compromise and middle ground does actually exist (gun control for example), Encryption really is an all or nothing proposition. Not for the usual political posturing reasons, but because that is just how math works. Since they don't understand the reasons (Numeracy, particularly as it pertains to encryption, being largely orthogonal to political competence), they keep looking for some oxymoronic middle ground (responsible encryption) that simply cannot exist.
That they are probably unaware of widely available FOSS for encryption that is not answerable to US authorities doesn't really help.
The nominal tax rate in California tops out at 52%, that means the effective tax rate is much lower, and that's before you take into account the difference between gross income and taxable income (which is used to calculate effective tax rate IIRC).
I live nowhere near California, and I'm currently paying ~20% of my gross. When I first moved in I was paying over 1/3rd of my gross. What they are describing here is not that abnormal outside of Silicon Valley. I think the sticker shock factor comes from the fact that the salaries they are paid to work in Silicon Valley would be extravagant if they lived most any place else.
Also, does their income calculation account for stock grants or options? I know a guy at MSFT (yeah, I know, not Silicon Valley) who gets huge stock grants every year has part of his bonus. That's not salary, but it's a hell of a lot of money regardless. Depending on how they asked the question, people might not think to add in the value of their "other" compensation.
I agree that Googles quality has fallen. Lots of results on page one missing the first word in my search term, Lot of SEO garbage no one actually wants, etc. My biggest gripe is how they've managed to break the "Back" button. Use google to fine a page, click to it, decide to back, but the "Back" button just reload the current page because when you clicked on a google link it actually loaded 2 pages sequentially. Happens almost every day at work (where DDG isn't an option).
I use it as my default engine, and use Google as my fall back if DDG fails. It gives DDG the chance to be âoegood enoughâ, letâ(TM)s me find what I need when it isnâ(TM)t, and denies Google most of my everyday searches. It doesnâ(TM)t need to be the best to be worth using. I end up back at google infrequently unless Iâ(TM)m needing to find scientific writing.
After watching Trump administration officials repeatedly claim collective amnesia of important meetings and events of public record, I'd like to see it strengthened so that the penalty can be applied if to CEO, CIO etc. regardless of whether or not there is any evidence that they were actually told. It's too easy to erect barriers to communication that ensure deniability in the event of a scandal. However, if they are accountable regardless then they will be incentivized to ensure communication of data breaches of this sort is simple, quick and possibly automatic somehow. It'll never happen, but we can dream.
I thought of cellulosic ethanol, although It's been 10 years away for the last 25 years.
People often forget that corn based fuel ethanol was only supposed to be a bridge to cellulosic, but that was passed during the Bush administration, and yet here we are...
Yeah, it's a lot like during a poker tournament and one player at the table builds up a huge lead. They can then just lean on the other players and push them out one by one by virtue of being able to afford playing more aggressively. Murray and the POTUS (:Shudder::) have the benefit of money to burn, unlike the people they generally sue. And when they do sue someone with deep pockets, like HBO in this case, they have the benefit of knowing the lawyers for the other guy will be rational and do what's it their own financial interest, even if it means backing down. They win both cases because they are rich and don't give a fuck.
Ultimately, it is not Amazon's job to worry about ensuring employment for all of those people displaced by robots. That is a larger societal issue, that needs to be addressed by governments. Lots of intelligent non-techies have thought about how this might work:
1. Universal Basic Income. Several places are experimenting with this now. Basically, if you can't get a job, you get enough to live on, but not so much as to make working unattractive to those who can get a job.
2. Changes to working hours. For those jobs that still exist, reduce the definition of "Full time" to something less than the current 35 to 45 hr/week. If a company currently pays 100 people to work 40hr/week, they would instead pay 130 people to work 30 hours a week. This ignores the fixed costs of employment (benefits, etc.), but policies could be changed to shift much of that burden onto the government in exchange for taxes, making the per employee cost mostly variable costs ($/hr). Especially for jobs where people can work from home and therefore, there is no fixed cost associated with offices.
3. I'm sure there are others, but those are the 2 that came immediately to mind.
Society is more resilient than you seem to believe. It can be heavily modified, assuming we have the will to act, so as to weather the storm that is increasingly sophisticated automation. If it doesn't adapt, then we will be left behind and the nations that do adapt will prosper. The dominance of western culture/society is largely the result of beneficial adaptation to technologies.
Except that he is trying to get people to leave him alone. He sent the original cease and decist before the segment aired. According to Oliver, he and his company were going to be a small part of the piece, but his attempt to proactively gag the show resulted in his company making a larger part of the piece.
This guy doesn't want the bad press and public outcry that he knew would come from Olivers piece. That has backfired because the backlash against his industry is being eclipsed to some extent by backlash against him and his company specifically. Textbook Streisand Effect.
Slashdot Mirror
My job is mostly technical (animal nutrition, not IT), and I use it as a form of technical marketing. I post when Iâ(TM)ll be talking at a conference, articles that I want my customers to read, and links to videos Iâ(TM)ve made that describe aspects of how to use my products.
Iâ(TM)m connected on LinkedIn with customers, colleagues, and supervisors. Posting there has raised my visibility with upper management, which has helped me advocate for promotions and raises internally. It has also increased my visibility to recruiters. Innactive (cause Iâ(TM)m busy with real work) and I get a contact about a position quarterly. When Iâ(TM)m active I can get them monthly to almost weekly. Now, most positions I pass on on the first contact, but I have gotten several interesting opportunities brought to my attention via linked in that Iâ(TM)m not sure I would have gotten otherwise.
Notice that Iâ(TM)m active in my current role. Iâ(TM)m not sure how much benefit there is to being on there if you are unemployed and have not built a presence before now. I suspect that recruiters look at your past activity (and with greater detail that even you can get on your own activity) as part of their evaluation so a brand new account may not be worth much in the short term. It also may be that your industry doesnâ(TM)t use it as much as the recruiters in mine appear to. Good luck.
What part of âoerunnung out of money first because you have less of itâ do you consider to be public policy as opposed to basic arithmetic?
Not sure where you are getting your information, but the vast majority of farms are still family owned.
Yes, big farms are getting bigger, and they get subsidies. The thing is, the small farms are doomed for reasons that have nothing to do with subsidies or price supports. They lack economies of scale. Simple as that. When prices for their inputs go up, larger operations are more resilient to prolonged losses, and better positioned to capitalize on good prices. Thus the smaller guys go out of business.
It’s the same basic economics that mean most mom & pop business of any kind is more likely to fold during a recession than a national chain.
Second /. Article today based on an entirely flawed premise (the one claiming that concer crops are somehow new or experimental being the other one).
Back when the UNs IARC labelled processed meats as carcinogenic the good Dr Carroll (professor at IU Medical School) pointed out that the actual risk of eating significantly more bacon than you used to is rather small. https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Itâ(TM)s not experimental. Itâ(TM)s common practice on many farms, and has been for a while. The fact that they refer to cover crops as experimental proves the authors have no fucking clue what they are talking about, or what modern farming actually looks like. Just an ignorant twit spreading FUD.
Everything described as new or different has been standard proceedure for decades. Not sure what they are selling (beyond FUD), but farmers routinely consider which crops to plant based on expected returns. They care for the soil (what do you think fertilizers are? Replacement nutrients for those extracted by last years crops). Cover crops are a very common way to care for soil if north west Indiana is any indication. Youâ(TM)ve been able to buy seeds with beneficial bacteria already applied for at least 5-10 years.
Literally nothing to see here. Move along.
Depends on what you mean by "Reading". I read precious few physical books beyond rather try technical ones for work (Nutrient Requirements of Swine, 11th Revised Edition, 2012 is hardly a page turner).
If you include listening to audiobooks, then I can claim the following:
1. The Light of Life: The Cycle of Galand, Book 4 by Edward W. Robertson
2. The Ritualist: Completionist Chronicles, Book 1 by Dakota Krout
3. The Bad Food Bible: How and Why to Eat Sinfully by Aaron Carroll, MD
4. Dark Deeds: Keiko, Book 3 by Mike Brooks
5. Grant by Ron Chernow
The first 4 were finished in the last month (had a lot of time to spend listening due to travel), whereas the 5th has been on-again off-again for the better part of the year and I'm only about 1/3rd of the way done.
The Bad Food Bible was the most gratifying. The others are more recreational for me, but since I work in the field of nutrition, it was nice to finally find a book about nutrition that gets far more right than wrong. It has become my new go-to recommendation for anyone asking about nutrition, supplanting The Big Fat Surprise by Nina Teicholz. Still a good book, but Dr. Carroll's book is more broad yet a quicker read.
A. you knew about the change in backfat thickness over the last couple of decades, and the amount work that represented
B. you were aware that CRSPR would make it possible to do this kind of manipulation on living animals, in your barn, without having to change sire selection You turned the topic to experience and qualifications with this line
Based on your response I think you don't understand how genetic selection works and how GMOs work
At this point I chose to highlight that I am not ignorant of the subjects, but that I am no expert either. You then promptly took offense and doubled down with this line
Based on your entire response I get the feeling that you have a small understanding of genetics and that you're extremely overconfident in your understanding rather than actually understanding pigs and genetics. I've been doing this for decades. You're like the man pushing a pencil and thinking that he's farming.
. If this conversation digressed into personal insults, it was you who started that slide. While I have not been perfectly polite, I have not attempted to insulted you, only to disagree with you. I only characterized your reaction as "Butt hurt" because you took irrational offense. I did also agreed to assume you are not aware of topics such as CRSPR and the mega trend in swine breeding toward lean genetics, but that was only after you decided to get incredibly pedantic and deliberately (if you are not genuinely ignorant) or accidently (if you are genuinely ignorant) miss the points I was trying to make. At the risk of further aggravating you I suggest you go back and really read both of our first couple of rounds of responses and reflect on why it is you are in a public forum looking for insults where there are none intended.
And in case you offended by the word "ignorant" I'd like to clarify that I am using ignorant in the technical sense, as to be unaware or unfamiliar, and not in the sense that I am call you or anyone else stupid. I am ignorant of a great many things, as are we all, but I did not assume ignorance on your part until you made it clear you were for whatever reason missing my point.
Then we go back to square one, but until/unless that happens, those animals that are immune will be better off. Nothing lasts forever, and we should stop expecting it to.
For other diseases we've used mass euthanasia with some sort of a loss support program to eradicate highly virulent diseases like Hoof and Mouth disease, with the goal of having an entire nation be considered "Free" of the disease. If a farm then eventually pops up positive, we do it all over again. We've not used this approach with PRRSv because it is too wide spread. The cost in destroyed animals is too high. However, if we were to generate a largely immune herd, an isolated outbreak of a mutated PRRSv may be amenable to this kind of "Scorched earth" containment strategy assuming it is quickly identified.
Ok, I was giving you the benefit of the doubt that your experience would not make it necessary to spell out that by millimeters I mean “less than 10 mm” and by feet I meant “6 to 12 inches”. Sorry, next time I will assume you are ignorant, and spell it all out as I would have for any other person on /.
I also wasn’t attempting to lecture, by which I mean “tell you something you don’t already know”, but to draw your attention to a major trend in swine breeding that I felt represented a compelling parallel. The massive change in swine genetics by selecting for leanness is an impressive, industry wide, multi generation undertaking of the sort we’d need to make this work. You appeared to have dismissed PRRS immunity as too hard, and I simply offered an example of something of similar difficulty that has already been accomplished in the same industry. Don’t find it compelling? That’s fine, though I’d be curious to know what not. That is generally the point of a conversation.
I’ve also mentioned several times the potential for CRISPR to make it possible for you to potentially “vaccinate” (not the right term, but I’m not sure we have a specific term for something like this) live animals, conferring immunity to every animal in your barn at once, and potentially their offspring as well. Would something like this change your “nothing to see here” view? I assumed you were familiar with the CRISPR topic as in relates to genetics, but if not I suggest you look into it.
As for my education vs your experience. There is no comparison. They are different, and are largely orthogonal to each other. I only trotted out my credentials because you questioned my familiarity with the topic. Not to intimidate you. The industry succeeds in tasks like the aforementioned transition to lean genetics because we have people with different expertise workin towards the same goals together. Not sure why what I said made you all butt hurt, but I was looking to converse, not trolling you.
The industry has embarked on massive changes in the emetics of pigs before. The average pig today measures back fat in milimeters at slaughter. A century ago we measured it in inches and routinely got around a foot of back fat. That change was driven primarily by genetic selection. I didnâ(TM)t say it would be fast, only that it was not so slow as to be unworkable.
As for the dig at the end about my experience. PhD in animal science from Purdue university and 10+ years in the field since then. Now, my graduate degrees are in nutrition, not genetics, so I would never claim to be an expert in that specifically, but I have more than a passing familiarity with the topic.
The generic manipulation event can be repeated in different lines of pigs. This is the promise of crispr, that we can tailor genetic manipulations on an individual basis.
This first attempt proves what is possible. To make a pig that is innately immune to PRRSv without killing it. There are additional steps to be sure, but they are not insurmountable, and the benefits are sufficient that many will try.
You don't have to throw out your progress. Just select sires and sows who are immune. Yes, that'll require some trade offs, but breeding selection has always required tradeoffs. Im sure you have not been able to select advantageously on all 33+ criteria simultaneously on each pairing.
It also appears as though you are operating under the assumption that what these researchers have achieved cannot be achieved in the breeds you draw from. If each of the primary breeders deliberately starts introducing (via molecular techniques or crossing) PRRS resistance into their herds, you will, eventually, be able to get it along with whatever else you are selecting on. Modern DNA manipulation is getting easier not harder. At lest from a technical perspective. The regulatory stuff is getting harder, but it looks like CRSPR is going to help a little on that front, and since this particular event is about removing/breaking a gene, it is practically tailor made for CRSPR.
Pigs naturally multiply, and depending on the dominance/recessive nature of the inheritance for this gene, all we'd need to do is replace the primary breeders stock. This would then flow down into the multiplier herds, and finally out into the commercial herds. Sure it'll take time, but we may not even need to have 100 percent coverage. It would probably be like vaccination, with herd immunity protecting those animals that are not themselves intrinsically immune. Also, as a farm in transition is infected with PRRS, those most likely to survive will be those who are intrinsically immune, thus accelerating the transition on that farm. Either due to opening spots to buy new PRRS immune sows, or to save breeding stock preferentially from the immune sows that survive unscathed.
This disease is HUGE in swine production. Producers have Faustian bargain to make.
Option 1: stay PRRS Free
Animals are healthier, perform better, and require less medical intervention. Great! However, biosecurity measures are prodigious, can be super expensive, and if they fail it will cost you a lot of animals and money.
A small University run operation I worked on sold ~500 nursery piglets every 2 weeks. When they broke with PRRS the number of viable pigs was cut in half in the first group. Bottomed our at 5 pigs surviving to weaning before it started to recover. All told we lost some where in the order of 2,000 piglets over about 2 months. We also lost about 10% of the sows over the same period. Mostly the younger ones.
Option 2. Manage a PRRS positive herd.
Animals are always a little sick, a little less productive, and require a little more TLC, but you mostly avoid the dramatic >90% losses of an accure outbreak. Flair ups top out closer to 25-50%.
Genetically immune pigs would save literally millions of pigsâ(TM) lives, improve their welfare at the same time, and improve the environmental impact of swine production by reducing waste (feed, medications, etc spent on pigs that die due to the disease). Will we forgo all of those advantages because GMO makes some people scared? I sure as hell hope not, but wonâ(TM)t be holding my breath.
All the UI candy in the world canâ(TM)t make up for lack of intuitive behavior, crashes, and a near complete lack of 3rd party software.
And for the record, they are NOT gone yet. My company is still using windows phone as the only cell phone option. They ugh they are finally supposed to be replaced second half of this year.
This strain of rats gets cancer at a high rate (45%) no matter what you do. This is literally the worst experimental model for determining if anything causes cancer as you cannot determine which cancers were going to happen anyway. However, this is the perfect model for generating click bait headlines that support your belief that something causes cancer without actually having to risk spending all of that money to find out you are wrong.
I think the ideological component is correlated to the degree that accounts affiliated with specific ideologies rely more or less on bots to inflate their following (knowingly or not). If twitter really wanted to enforce some sort of ideology, they could ban the president for the shit he posts. Instead they've chosen to pretty much ignore anything he says, suggesting they are not pushing a liberal ideology here so much as trying to reduce the overall signal to noise ratio (with bots = noise, regardless of ideology).
I think the lack of middle ground is a big part of the problem.
Despite the numerous examples of our current political landscape forcing binary "With us or against us" type view points where compromise and middle ground does actually exist (gun control for example), Encryption really is an all or nothing proposition. Not for the usual political posturing reasons, but because that is just how math works. Since they don't understand the reasons (Numeracy, particularly as it pertains to encryption, being largely orthogonal to political competence), they keep looking for some oxymoronic middle ground (responsible encryption) that simply cannot exist.
That they are probably unaware of widely available FOSS for encryption that is not answerable to US authorities doesn't really help.
The nominal tax rate in California tops out at 52%, that means the effective tax rate is much lower, and that's before you take into account the difference between gross income and taxable income (which is used to calculate effective tax rate IIRC).
I live nowhere near California, and I'm currently paying ~20% of my gross. When I first moved in I was paying over 1/3rd of my gross. What they are describing here is not that abnormal outside of Silicon Valley. I think the sticker shock factor comes from the fact that the salaries they are paid to work in Silicon Valley would be extravagant if they lived most any place else.
Also, does their income calculation account for stock grants or options? I know a guy at MSFT (yeah, I know, not Silicon Valley) who gets huge stock grants every year has part of his bonus. That's not salary, but it's a hell of a lot of money regardless. Depending on how they asked the question, people might not think to add in the value of their "other" compensation.
I agree that Googles quality has fallen. Lots of results on page one missing the first word in my search term, Lot of SEO garbage no one actually wants, etc. My biggest gripe is how they've managed to break the "Back" button. Use google to fine a page, click to it, decide to back, but the "Back" button just reload the current page because when you clicked on a google link it actually loaded 2 pages sequentially. Happens almost every day at work (where DDG isn't an option).
I use it as my default engine, and use Google as my fall back if DDG fails. It gives DDG the chance to be âoegood enoughâ, letâ(TM)s me find what I need when it isnâ(TM)t, and denies Google most of my everyday searches. It doesnâ(TM)t need to be the best to be worth using. I end up back at google infrequently unless Iâ(TM)m needing to find scientific writing.
After watching Trump administration officials repeatedly claim collective amnesia of important meetings and events of public record, I'd like to see it strengthened so that the penalty can be applied if to CEO, CIO etc. regardless of whether or not there is any evidence that they were actually told. It's too easy to erect barriers to communication that ensure deniability in the event of a scandal. However, if they are accountable regardless then they will be incentivized to ensure communication of data breaches of this sort is simple, quick and possibly automatic somehow. It'll never happen, but we can dream.
I thought of cellulosic ethanol, although It's been 10 years away for the last 25 years.
People often forget that corn based fuel ethanol was only supposed to be a bridge to cellulosic, but that was passed during the Bush administration, and yet here we are...
Yeah, it's a lot like during a poker tournament and one player at the table builds up a huge lead. They can then just lean on the other players and push them out one by one by virtue of being able to afford playing more aggressively. Murray and the POTUS (:Shudder::) have the benefit of money to burn, unlike the people they generally sue. And when they do sue someone with deep pockets, like HBO in this case, they have the benefit of knowing the lawyers for the other guy will be rational and do what's it their own financial interest, even if it means backing down. They win both cases because they are rich and don't give a fuck.
Ultimately, it is not Amazon's job to worry about ensuring employment for all of those people displaced by robots. That is a larger societal issue, that needs to be addressed by governments. Lots of intelligent non-techies have thought about how this might work:
1. Universal Basic Income. Several places are experimenting with this now. Basically, if you can't get a job, you get enough to live on, but not so much as to make working unattractive to those who can get a job.
2. Changes to working hours. For those jobs that still exist, reduce the definition of "Full time" to something less than the current 35 to 45 hr/week. If a company currently pays 100 people to work 40hr/week, they would instead pay 130 people to work 30 hours a week. This ignores the fixed costs of employment (benefits, etc.), but policies could be changed to shift much of that burden onto the government in exchange for taxes, making the per employee cost mostly variable costs ($/hr). Especially for jobs where people can work from home and therefore, there is no fixed cost associated with offices.
3. I'm sure there are others, but those are the 2 that came immediately to mind.
Society is more resilient than you seem to believe. It can be heavily modified, assuming we have the will to act, so as to weather the storm that is increasingly sophisticated automation. If it doesn't adapt, then we will be left behind and the nations that do adapt will prosper. The dominance of western culture/society is largely the result of beneficial adaptation to technologies.
Except that he is trying to get people to leave him alone. He sent the original cease and decist before the segment aired. According to Oliver, he and his company were going to be a small part of the piece, but his attempt to proactively gag the show resulted in his company making a larger part of the piece.
This guy doesn't want the bad press and public outcry that he knew would come from Olivers piece. That has backfired because the backlash against his industry is being eclipsed to some extent by backlash against him and his company specifically. Textbook Streisand Effect.