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  1. Alvin on Scientists Discover Hidden Deep-Sea Coral Reef Off South Carolina Coast (cnn.com) · · Score: 3, Interesting

    One thing I thought interesting about this was something mentioned in the story in passing, the use of the submersible Alvin which has been in use longer than most /. readers have been alive. It was launched in 1964. It is something like the Ship of Theseus though, it has been through many upgrades and replacements including a new titanium pressure hull in 1973.

  2. Re:To limit RFI? on Tourism is Compromising the World's Largest Telescope (wired.com) · · Score: 2

    Plus: You'd think the siftware largest telescope in the world could filter out 3.5GHz during the daytime.

    So, scientists should just not observe the CH bond in molecular clouds, which has spectral lines at 3.4 GHZ because tourists want to gab on their phones?

    This assumes that all of the phones that tourists carry are precisely engineered to not emit any signals at all outside of their assigned band, an assumption that is known to be wrong. And it assumes that none of the tourists have multi-mode phones that are emitting at the wrong frequency. We are talking consumer electronics of every variety and quality and (mis)configuration here. Radio telescopes are extremely sensitive, any signal leakage is liable to interfere.

    Not sure why you specify "daytime". You know radio telescopes work in the day, right? And that if the object being observed in the sky is only above the horizon in daytime, that they have no choice but to observe it then, right?

  3. Government Will Do Science When It Wants on Tourism is Compromising the World's Largest Telescope (wired.com) · · Score: 2

    In an authoritarian state, that could forcibly relocate thousands to build the telescope, decides it wants to actually do science, as opposed to promoting its project, it can impose the effective EM silence that is needed. Simply enforce the existing no-electronics zone, collecting all non-conforming electronics at the zone edge. I am sure they can offer "selfie services" at the telescope for a price, downloadable at home. This is an easy fix for them.

  4. Re:Uhm, duh on It's Not Technology That's Disrupting Our Jobs (nytimes.com) · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Indeed I just looked up the key paper defining this concept (in English) which is De Vries, J. (1994). "The Industrial Revolution and the Industrious Revolution. The Journal of Economic History", 54(02), 249–270 (doi:10.1017/s0022050700014467, you can get it with Sci-hub).

    There is nothing in this paper about workers being herded into workshops. Instead the claimed "industrious revolution" is asserted to be increased intensity of work in the home for market (as I described above) to purchase goods from outside. Here is a key statement of this from the paper (p. 262):

    A shift from relative self-sufficiency toward market-oriented production by all or most household members necessarily involves a reduction of typically female-supplied home-produced goods and their replacement by commercially produced goods. At the same time, the wife was likely to become an autonomous earner.

  5. Re:Why? Data doesn't support on Sea Level Rise Already Causing Billions in Home Value To Disappear (axios.com) · · Score: 3, Informative

    Oddly enough this site you link to documents that sea levels are rising, and accelerating, most everywhere, except were post-glacial rebounding is occurring (the home page helpfully mentions this -- "glacial isostatic adjustment"). A single spot like Battery Park in Manhattan only shows that Battery Park in Manhattan is not showing the long term rise to be accelerating, perhaps due to local subsidence.

  6. Re:Problem for rich people on Sea Level Rise Already Causing Billions in Home Value To Disappear (axios.com) · · Score: 1

    Primarily rich people and real estate investors wild be hit, while the middde class homes a bit farther inland will increase in value. Win/win.

    There was a story on this recently in the Washington Post.

    The study found the drop in prices appears to be driven primarily by investors buying multiple properties or second homes. Such buyers tend to be wealthier and better educated than owners who occupy their coastal homes, said Ryan Lewis, an assistant professor of finance at the University of Colorado and a co-author of the study.

    “Sophisticated buyers ... demand a discount to bear the risk of future sea level rise,” Lewis said in an email.

    So the rich people and the real estate investors are the ones getting properties cheap(er).

  7. Re:Uhm, duh on It's Not Technology That's Disrupting Our Jobs (nytimes.com) · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The Industrial Revolution didn't start in the 19th century, it started in the 18th century.

    This isn't a real story. It is a story about an academic who selected some niche terminology to make normal stuff sound like something new. But a new phrasing is something new in the present, not something newly discovered about the past.

    You are right there is a big problem with this guys story - though not quite what you are saying.

    I have been a student of the Industrial Revolution, and how it started, for a long time. And the concept of the "industrious revolution" has some validity I think, but it is nothing like what this guy describes.

    In the industrious revolution, however, manufacturers gathered workers under one roof, where the labor could be divided and supervised. For the first time on a large scale, home life and work life were separated. People no longer controlled how they worked, and they received a wage instead of sharing directly in the profits of their efforts. This was a necessary precondition for the Industrial Revolution.

    This. Didn't. Happen. There is no other way to put it. No, textile workers were not gathered into big pre-industrial workshops to spin thread, or weave cloth. They did this at home. The "industrious" part was the high degree of organization that this distributed textile industry achieved -- "putters out" distributed raw cotton to households, collected the thread that was spun, passed it on to homes were weaving was done, then collected the cloth. Businessmen in London financed this vast operation, and would later put their capital into factories. This large scale system of central organization, and the increased output it generated are the real "industrious revolution", along with the growing sophistication in the mechanical arts, which was the prerequisite for building factory machinery.

    This was a necessary precondition for the Industrial Revolution. While factory technology would consolidate this development, the creation of factory technology was possible only because people’s relationship to work had already changed. A power loom would have served no purpose for networks of farmers making cloth at home.

    Quite so. Which is why it wasn't invented until textile factories had been in operation for 15 years (1785) and first factory to use them wasn't built until 1790. The first factories didn't weave cloth, they spun thread, a much simpler process. Thread spinning factories put everyone did it on a spinning wheel out of work in the 1770s. The spinning jenny was invented in 1764, and factories using it (and Arkwright's water frame) started going up by 1770.

    Home weavers took it on the chin full force 1810-1820 when weaving machines that could handle the many weights of fabric and weaving patterns became available. It was around 1811 that the Ned Ludd legend arose, with the Luddites.

    And yes there was a pre-existing process that was changing the relationship to work. It was called "enclosure". Common fields that had been used by farmers for centuries were reorganized into estates that could be sold (or mortgaged), which created a new class of unemployed people - who could be put to work in factories.

    The problem for the textile craftswomen and men of England was not that they were herded into workshops or factories, it was that factory equipment was something like 100 times as productive as spinning wheels (and later looms), so it required very few people to operate. Everyone else was simply put out of work.

    Seriously this guy's article is a fun-house mirror version of real history. He is "an economic historian"? Dear Lord.

  8. Re: Well Fuck on No Healthy Level of Alcohol Consumption, Says Major Study (theguardian.com) · · Score: 3, Informative

    Smoking pot is not as safe as you think.

    Depends on how "safe you think" it is doesn't it? Notice there are no numbers in the item, indications of prevalence, to allow one to assess the putative risks. Although the American Lung Association is a fine organization genuinely devoted to public health, and focused on one subject, minimizing the prevalence of lung injury, they are - by the same token - not interested in giving a balanced presentation of what is known about risks.

    Here is the abstract from the current gold-standard study of this subject:

    Regular smoking of marijuana by itself causes visible and microscopic injury to the large airways that is consistently associated with an increased likelihood of symptoms of chronic bronchitis that subside after cessation of use. On the other hand, habitual use of marijuana alone does not appear to lead to significant abnormalities in lung function when assessed either cross-sectionally or longitudinally, except for possible increases in lung volumes and modest increases in airway resistance of unclear clinical significance. Therefore, no clear link to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease has been established. Although marijuana smoke contains a number of carcinogens and cocarcinogens, findings from a limited number of well-designed epidemiological studies do not suggest an increased risk for the development of either lung or upper airway cancer from light or moderate use, although evidence is mixed concerning possible carcinogenic risks of heavy, long-term use. Although regular marijuana smoking leads to bronchial epithelial ciliary loss and impairs the microbicidal function of alveolar macrophages, evidence is inconclusive regarding possible associated risks for lower respiratory tract infection. Several case reports have implicated marijuana smoking as an etiologic factor in pneumothorax/pneumomediastinum and bullous lung disease, although evidence of a possible causal link from epidemiologic studies is lacking. In summary, the accumulated weight of evidence implies far lower risks for pulmonary complications of even regular heavy use of marijuana compared with the grave pulmonary consequences of tobacco.

    This is a balanced assessment. Yes, you will see the same concerns mentioned by the ALA -- but not the counterbalancing factor (for example) that there are no significant abnormalities in lung function which is kind of an important fact here.

    Of course vaping cannabis is very popular now, so actual smoking of the material is surely on a steep decline.

    One factor that explains why the numerous studies that have been done have failed to find any increase in lung cancer with cannabis use (aside from the fact that cannabis smokers consume far less material than tobacco smokers) is that nicotine is a cancer promoter, while THC suppresses cancer! You won't ever find that mentioned on an ALA page.

  9. One Size Does Not Fit All... on No Healthy Level of Alcohol Consumption, Says Major Study (theguardian.com) · · Score: 1

    This is really a population level meta-analysis rather than universal recommendations for individuals.

    To illustrate a specific population that is under study that is not captured in a broad assessment like this there is the University of California Irvine study of the "Oldest Old".

    Researchers from The 90+ Study have published many scientific papers in premier journals.
    Some of the major findings are:
    People who drank moderate amounts of alcohol or coffee lived longer than those who abstained.
    People who were overweight in their 70s lived longer than normal or underweight people did.

    A very interesting thing about the alcohol consumption part is that it is not just a correlation. It was effective as an intervention -- that is people who did not drink, but started moderate alcohol consumption after the age of 70 (which this study investigated) lived longer than those who never drank!

    But maybe you need to wait until you are 70.

    Also the benefit from coffee appears to actually be the benefit of consuming caffeine and does not matter what form. You get the optimum benefit consuming 100 mg a day.

  10. Yep He Signed A Policy Memo - We're Almost There! on VP Pence Talks Moon Return and Mars Mission at NASA · · Score: 3, Funny

    On 11 December 2017 Donald Trump signed Space Policy Directive 1, the operative part of which is:

    The paragraph beginning “Set far-reaching exploration milestones” is deleted and replaced with the following:

    “Lead an innovative and sustainable program of exploration with commercial and international partners to enable human expansion across the solar system and to bring back to Earth new knowledge and opportunities. Beginning with missions beyond low-Earth orbit, the United States will lead the return of humans to the Moon for long-term exploration and utilization, followed by human missions to Mars and other destinations;”.

    Now that Trump has done all the heavy lifting, signing a policy declaration, his work is done.

    All of the stuff about having an actual program with funding and such are just minor details.

  11. Re:Really? on Encrypted Communications Apps Failed To Protect Michael Cohen (fastcompany.com) · · Score: 4, Informative

    This is a textbook case of the Ad Hominem Fallacy.

    Train0987 addresses none of the points raised by the AC to which he was replying, but only attacked the motivations behind Cohen's plea and the prosecutors. Earlier here he had been willing to attempt to defend Trump by raising points, which the AC refuted. Instead of defending his own argument he switched to rhetorical fallacies.

    The reader can draw his or her own conclusions about Train0987's honesty and integrity from this.

    Expect to see much, much more of these attacks as more evidence against Trump comes to light.

  12. Didn't Even Need The Wrench (or the Drugs) on Encrypted Communications Apps Failed To Protect Michael Cohen (fastcompany.com) · · Score: 2, Insightful
  13. ... there have been a number of incidents where police dealt with an unstable person brandishing a gun by having a police sniper shoot the gun out of their hands. In those incidents, you typically hear that there were minor injuries from gun fragments. Meaning that the bullet broke the gun.

    Any links to such an actual incident?

    In sounds plausible, but I have never run across such an incident that I recall. But I question very much that they report that there are "minor injuries from gun fragments". I would believe minor injuries from bullet fragments however.

  14. Re:Only two months? Bullshit on Volkswagen's CEO Was Told About Emissions Software Months Before Scandal, Says Report (reuters.com) · · Score: 4, Interesting

    You are most certainly correct. In reading a number of histories of geopolitical affairs (the machinations leading to WWI, Soviet decisions during the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Mideast Crisis that led to the Six Day War, the Invasion of Afghanistan) and repeatedly in Israel's nuclear weapons program, decisions were made in closed meetings with no notes taken. It was enough that the lieutants tasked with carrying out the plans and who were present, knew what that were supposed to do.

    This is certainly the case here. Top management orchestrated and approved this, but made sure no records were kept.

  15. Encryption is Key on Does Gmail's 'Confidential Mode' Go Far Enough? (engadget.com) · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Every other secure mail service or add-on of which I am aware, Lavabit, Protonmail, PGP add-ons, etc., regard encryption is the very foundation of private email.

    Without that there really is no security that really matters.

  16. Re:The true cost of mining on Nvidia Is Giving Up On the Cryptocurrency Mining Market (latimes.com) · · Score: 5, Funny

    Which is why hyperinflation from "printing" too much money has been a persistent problem with all fiat currencies around the world, hitting every nation repeatedly, including of course the United States. We desperately need blockchain to finally rein in the incessant hyperinflation!

    Oh wait... this hasn't happened. Only a few failed (or near-failed) states have actually experienced anything like this. Never mind.

  17. Tesla are unrepairable. If it brakes you have to throw it out and buy a new one.

    Wow! Using the brakes ruins the car! Who knew?

  18. And that the Gramm, Leach, and Bliley act (all hard right Republicans) was passed by a nearly unanimous Republican vote, and with enough Democrats to make the act veto-proof. Sure Clinton could have just let it pass into law unsigned, but he could not have stopped it. Blaming the act as the work of Clinton is just a deranged lie.

  19. So.. you are saying it is currently silent as it plots its next move?

  20. Duplicate From Three Days Ago on Wifi Could Be Used To Detect Guns and Bombs, Researchers Say (bbc.co.uk) · · Score: 1

    Same story.

    I thought I need to refresh my browser. And this was a weak-tea story anyway.

  21. Re:As long as it's voluntary on This Company Embeds Microchips in Its Employees, and They Love It (technologyreview.com) · · Score: 2

    Ah, the Ed Meese school of employer rights (employees have none). Everyone who is employed should routinely have their body fluids screened for whatever substances employers choose to test for (goodbye medical privacy), and employers can and should monitor what employees do outside the place of employment and make employment decisions based on these words and deeds.

  22. Re:Mandatory chips for UBI. on This Company Embeds Microchips in Its Employees, and They Love It (technologyreview.com) · · Score: 2

    How is this any different from normal black listing?

    Blocking Credit Cards, telling business to reject your services? Heck if they want to make it easy they just arrest you and put you in Jail.

    Valid points, but the lower you place the bar for ease of abuse, the more often that abuse will occur. Arresting and jailing is the hardest and most expensive approach, giving authorities easier options for control mean those will be used, and far more often.

  23. Re:walking, talking cyborgs on This Company Embeds Microchips in Its Employees, and They Love It (technologyreview.com) · · Score: 1

    They're not "walking, talking cyborgs". They are just chipped like cats and dogs.

    Sssh... my cyborg cat will hear you!

  24. That's $21M that goes back into the economy instead of an offshore hedge fund.

    Perhaps that's a good argument for reducing the tax rates in those brackets in order to make it more profitable to reinvest the money in the American economy as opposed to overseas.

    Since money that is reinvested by a business is not taxed, this argument turns the actual logic of the situation on its head. Low tax rates encourage pulling money out for non-productive uses.

  25. For some reason there a dozen or more posts here referencing this famous answer by the (as a result famous) contestant with no one mentioning her name, or providing a link to it. She is Caitlin Upton and this does not seem to have damaged her modelling career.