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170671690
comment
byCytotoxic
023 @06:14AM
(#63418598)
Attached to: San Francisco Faces 'Doom Loop' from Office Workers Staying Home, Gutting Tax Base
I am pretty sure they already have a solution under consideration.
They want to pay black people $5 million each.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/n...
If nobody leaves. This will cost $600,000 per person.
That should solve the housing problem
166086657
comment
byCytotoxic
13, 2022 @05:11AM
(#62876831)
Attached to: Biden To Hit China With Broader Curbs on US Chip and Tool Exports
Exactly. Gotta make sure the right people get their beaks wet.
139895948
comment
byCytotoxic
12, 2020 @10:07AM
(#60822584)
Attached to: Is Warner Bros' Shift To Streaming New Movies 'A Great Danger'?
Interesting thing about your point on books.... there was a Nova episode this year about paper and books that explained something in a way I had never heard.
During the Roman empire, books were not expensive. Well, not like they were later in the European "dark ages". Later in Europe, before the printing press, books were bespoke items, handcrafted at great expense. They were only available to the wealthy.
But a thousand years earlier, books (scrolls) were relatively cheap, sold at books stores and available from libraries. What happened?
Well, Nova had experts on talking about paper. The papyrus paper that was used in Egypt and Rome was smooth. The writing used was easy and flowed quickly on the slick paper. It made the job of copying a book fast - therefore the product was cheaper.
But with the collapse of parts of the Roman empire, access to papyrus was cut off.
So Europe switched to parchment, made from animal skins. It does not slide easily. Writing became slow, and letters changed to the block form familiar in medieval texts, because that careful printing was dictated by the type of paper used.
This took books out of the hands of any but the wealthy, significantly slowing the spread of information.
But it also had an advantage later. When it came time to invent moveable type, the font was already block and uniform. Hence the Guttenberg bible. Meanwhile, Arabic was developed on papyrus, which is slick and encourages a long, flowing hand. Developing a convincing typeface for this was exceedingly difficult, and printed copies of the Koran failed to catch on. They argue that this explains the Islamic world falling behind Europe.... the lack of a viable printing press business.
Really worth a watch.
138733614
comment
byCytotoxic
19, 2020 @01:08PM
(#60743470)
Attached to: Fearing Drama, Mozilla Opens Public Consultation Before Worldwide Firefox DoH Rollout
Why?
What if I want to use a separate DNS for an application? Suddenly it isn't my choice any more... because.... reasons?
136536280
comment
byCytotoxic
29, 2020 @09:03AM
(#60553662)
Attached to: Google Maps To Block Users From 'Virtual Visits' of Australian Uluru
I presume you invoke a novel variant of Godwin's law for the use of "Critical Theory" in his response? I'll admit that it is a bit of a stretch, but he does posit a direct correlation: "information wants to be free" springs from the enlightenment, and "Critical Theory" is the direct opposition to the enlightenment. He even posts a link to an extended screed on the topic.
So, let's hear some more detail. How is the invocation of "Critical Theory", which aims to undo the enlightenment and everything about it (among other things) the equivalent of crying "Hitler" in this situation.
136536088
comment
byCytotoxic
29, 2020 @08:58AM
(#60553644)
Attached to: Google Maps To Block Users From 'Virtual Visits' of Australian Uluru
That is impressive. I can make absolutely no connection between those comments. Would you care to elaborate upon your reasoning at length? I'd love to see what your thought process is on the matter.
136404296
comment
byCytotoxic
26, 2020 @07:26AM
(#60545322)
Attached to: Google Maps To Block Users From 'Virtual Visits' of Australian Uluru
It is just bizarre visiting Slashdot these days. This used to be the home of freedom for information, particularly on the internet. We bought T-Shirts with the RSA encryption algorithm on it to protest government censorship efforts. Google came along and was founded with the motto "don't be evil".
And now a preponderance of comments at Slash-freaking-dot are in *favor* of Google removing images? Of anything?
What in the ever-loving?
135306241
comment
byCytotoxic
2020 @01:32AM
(#60434609)
Attached to: SpaceX Now Valued at $46 Billion, Making It America's Top 'Unicorn'
Russia had one of these not too long ago... apparently it didn't even make much news around these parts. I guess when the launch escape system works, it kinda short circuits that news cycle.
135209283
comment
byCytotoxic
2020 @10:39AM
(#60426729)
Attached to: 750 Million Genetically Modified Mosquitoes Approved For Release In Florida Keys
What are the possibility and potential that your cat's soft hair gene will jump into other organisms? What are the potential and possibility that the genes for sense of smell in moles will spread to other animals?
That's not how it works. You have to have sex to spread genes. Sex that leads to viable offspring.
This gene specifically does not lead to viable offspring. It ain't spreading. That's the entire point.
And birds who eat mosquito don't make half-bird, half-mosquito babies.
Even postulating the extremely rare event of horizontal gene transfer wouldn't be a viable fear. It is not a gene that would confer any advantage to any offspring that acquired it, being that it is a gene that prevents reproduction.
This entire line of reasoning is spread by people who are not just ignorant of genetically modified organisms, but just plain stupid on top of it. Once you read "makes the next generation nonviable", you should kinda get the idea that it ain't spreading anywhere.
134231017
comment
byCytotoxic
2020 @02:00AM
(#60359551)
Attached to: Do Animals Really Anticipate Earthquakes? Sensors Hint They Do
18,000 tremors over 4 months is 6 1/4 times per hour.
They say they can detect anomalous behavior anywhere from 1-20 hours in advance. That's a hell of a window. With an average of 6 1/2 events occurring during their shortest window, and an average of 125 tremors during their longest window, how can they possibly tease a signal out of that noise? Even if they were actually responding to the tremors, how do they know that they are responding to the tremor 4 hours later and not the tremor 4 hours and 12 minutes later, or the tremor 3 hours and 37 minutes later, or the tremor 18 hours and six minutes later....... it just sounds like they came up with a fancy method for going anomaly hunting.
128574466
comment
byCytotoxic
020 @06:52AM
(#59912920)
Attached to: Elon Musk Shares a Video: Making Ventilators From Tesla Parts
Yeah, way, way more complex and way, way more dangerous.
Now, if you want less complex and less dangerous (in terms of invasive parts and lung damage), you'd do well to look to the past. There were "whole body" ventilators for patients of another viral epidemic - called "Iron Lungs". Dead simple and relatively safe. Cumbersome though.
127890574
comment
byCytotoxic
2020 @10:17PM
(#59868972)
Attached to: The Supreme Court Says States Cannot Be Sued For Copyright Infringement
Catch 22, FTW!
127890496
comment
byCytotoxic
2020 @10:16PM
(#59868968)
Attached to: The Supreme Court Says States Cannot Be Sued For Copyright Infringement
What he's pointing out is that the constitution specifically designates the power of copyright to the federal government. This should place federal law on the matter over the states, sovereign immunity or not.
The logic of this is pretty tortured. In this case, the constitution specifically grants control of copyrights to the federal government. But the courts say that doesn't bind the state government itself. Yet we say the 14th amendment's "incorporation" binds the state governments to all of the national constitution's limitations.
These two positions are at complete opposition.
The courts have a habit of backing in to whatever position they personally favor - see Wickard and Raiche for prime examples. In this case, states have sovereign immunity even though the constitution explicitly gives the federal government control of copyright law. But in the case of growing pot.. the feds have absolute control because... interstate commerce? Explicitly ruling that non-commercial growing of something that is never moved across any state line is interstate commerce in order to allow federal control of pot use is an excellent juxtaposition with the tortured logic of "the feds can't enforce copyright law on the states even though it is explicitly listed as a federal power in the constitution".
127889656
comment
byCytotoxic
2020 @10:03PM
(#59868956)
Attached to: The Supreme Court Says States Cannot Be Sued For Copyright Infringement
Instead of stealing from some random videographer, maybe they should just quit paying for licenses for MS products. I wonder how long it would take the courts to come to a different conclusion on that one. Or if Wyoming started making their own copies of Hollywood movies.
It seems that we don't recognize the sovereign immunity of foreign nations to ignore copyright. At least, we don't just take it lying down, even if you can't win anything from China in a US court.
Somehow I just don't see this case taking the same course if it wasn't just some dude who got ripped off, and instead it was Disney or Universal Studios.
California should seize on this to start manufacturing it's own drugs, ignoring the US patent laws. Sovereign immunity, FTW! Cali has been wanting to circumvent the drug pricing regime for decades, this seems like a great opportunity. Which brings up something else.... the same supreme court didn't recognize any sovereign immunity of the states to regulate marijuana, even going so far as to rule that someone growing pot for their own use was interstate commerce - because they would have had to buy it from interstate commerce if they didn't grow it themselves.
IOW, they'll rule any way they please on any topic, language of the law be damned. And as such, I'll bet that a different set of facts would have made a completely different ruling on the exact same law. Substitute Sony for "randome dude" and they'd jump through those same logical hoops to rule the exact opposite.
127424658
comment
byCytotoxic
020 @05:57PM
(#59838034)
Attached to: Ten-Minute Coronavirus Test For $1 Could Be Game Changer
This sounds like a simple antibody test - which is great for telling if you have been exposed and infected. But not so great at early detection. Your body has to mount an immune response first. So early on during the infection you'll show up negative. Kinda like that pregnancy test in the first 2 weeks.
The PCR test is extremely sensitive to current infections. It will amplify any genetic material from the target, telling you if there are circulating virus particles with extreme specificity and accuracy.
So if you have a bunch of Chinese workers and you want to screen them so they don't infect your crew, this 10 minute test won't help for the first couple of days that they might be viremic.
PCR will catch it as soon as the bugs are replicating in your body.
In that case, the 10 minutes isn't the major factor, it is the time from infection.
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