conroe64

Sorry, that line was erroneous, but didn't affect the rest of the calculation as far as I can tell. I have removed it.

Makes sense.

Another thought: Barnaby Jack was one of the top speakers and was to speak on a very controversial subject. I would guess that out of the 5000 speeches that were presented in your scenario only a few of them, maybe 2%, would contain information controversial enough that foul play would appear as a reasonable scenario to an outside observer (and this is being generous).

  Let F = foul play occurred in order to disrupt a conference,
    D = death of speaker one month before conference

  Let P(D) = (.02 deaths per year for 25-35 y.o) / (12 months in a year) = 0.0017
  Let P(F|D) = .001 (assuming 1 in 1000 chance foul play was involved given a death of a speaker at a conference)
    P(F) = P(F|^D) * P(^D) + P(F|D) * P(D) 
         = 0 * 0.98 + 0.001 * .02
         = 0.00002
  Let P(D|F) = 1 (chance of death if foul play is involved, assumed 100%)

  So Bayes theorem gives us:

  P(F|D) = P(D|F)*P(F)/P(D)
       = 1 * 0.00002 / 0.0017 
       = 0.018 (chance of foul play for a single speech given the speaker died 1 month before)

  Let P(C) = 0.02 (probability of a controversial speech)
  P(D) = .0017 (from above)

  Let P(C&D|F) = .5 (assuming there is a 50% chance the speech was controversial given foul play did occur, and death always occurs from foul play)
  P(C&D) = .02 * 0.0017 = 0.000034
  P(F) = 0.00002 (from above)

  P(F|C&D) = P(C&D|F) * P(F) / P(C&D)
         = 0.5 * 0.00002 / .000034
         = around a 30% foul play was involved in Barnaby Jack's death

There are a lot of assumptions here that could adjust the final figure up or down, but if I did my math right, foul play does seem a reasonable scenario, (but not a foregone conclusion).

edit: removed line "P(F|D) = 0.00058 (from above)" as pointed out by user 0003. End result didn't change, though.

That doesn't consider that the age and economic status of conference speakers isn't representative of the U.S. as a whole. Not that it's impossible for it to be an accident, but the odds are certainly less than 49%, given that the crowd is mostly urban professionals.

Ben, pat yourself on the back... you potentially thwarted a world renowned, best-of-class spy agency from collecting invasive personal data from your very lifeblood, your children. This may be the difference between your kids being ordinary nerds taking pictures of themselves hiking through a wildlife sanctuary while uploading their location to foursquare and being falsely implicated in a plot to overthrow the government and thrown into Guantanamo Bay.

And thankfully, you didn't stop at merely declining getting your kids' DNA tested, ignoring the peer pressure of all your cool yuppie friends who did so with their kids. Instead, you blogged your decision, and thereby recording your extreme intelligence and wit in a free permanent form for the masses to consume and benefit from.

I salute you, sir. A freedom fighter to which we all should bow to.

By putting another letter inside that may or may not contain another letter ad infinitum, where each letter is sent to a random address except the most inner letter which is sent to the actual address. In each outer letter you put a five dollar bill and the words "Mail this or else, I know where you live!"

"How can you read that and write that alcohol is the "preferred substance for [promoting] oxidation"? The study says precisely the opposite, hence the title "Ethanol causes acute inhibition of carbohydrate, fat, and protein oxidation and insulin resistance.""

How can you tread what I wrote and add "promoting" in there. That completely changes the meaning of what I said! I meant that alcohol is burned in preference to other carbohydrates first. I'm not clear on the details, but lets face it, the known details of how alcohol is processed isn't enough to indicate that it makes you fat. Which is the very center of my argument, shown to be true by the study I have cited, and which you seem to dance around with anecdotal evidence, and comparisons of joe six pack vs a well trained athlete. Well there are other differences between Joe six pack and an athlete, too. In other words, correlation does not imply causation. Fat people drinking alcohol does not necessarily mean alcohol makes you fat.

The point I was trying to make if there is a correlation between drinking alcohol and living longer, then being suspicious that consumption of alcohol is less healthy then anything else is unwarranted. I was simply refuting your conclusion, that's all, not going for the hook shot of defeating your arguments and asserting another argument at the same time.

How are you sure that the reason that alcohol lengthens life is because of the antioxidants that come along in the beverage that contains it? How do you know which components are promoting health, when it certainly isn't settled scientifically?

Finally, I am not "pretending" when I say that there is no solid evidence one way or another whether eating fish is healthier than drinking alcohol, or vice versa, and there isn't any rational reason to be worried about eating either, or both, in moderation.

1. From your link "We conclude that ethanol was a preferred fuel preventing fat, and to lesser degrees, CHO and protein, from being oxidized." So for the few hours that alcohol is in your system, it is the preferred substance for oxidation. It's quite a leap to take that to development of a beer belly.

From mine, "Alcohol contains calories, but drinking alcohol doesn't lead to weight gain, according to extensive medical research, and some studies report a small reduction in weight for women who drink" This is about as clear as you can get that alcohol doesn't lead to weight gain. Care to directly address this?

2. That's a false dichotomy, You can eat fish and drink wine, too.

Also, you seem to be shifting goal posts. First you write that alcohol can't be considered "perfectly healthy", and now you write that it is premature to be suggest that it can be considered "perfectly healthy" and will lengthen your life.

Why does something need to extend your life to be perfectly healthy?

Regarding point 4, most of the calories that come from red wine is alcohol. Alcohol isn't metabolized the same way as other foods, so comparing calories from alcohol to other foods is misleading.

http://www2.potsdam.edu/hansondj/AlcoholCaloriesAndWeight.ht...

The rest of what you write doesn't really validate your conclusion. Actually, there has been a study indicating the reverse. People who drink live longer.

http://www.mnn.com/food/beverages/stories/study-abstaining-f...

That would only apply if people used the map within the game. Specifically, if when they wanted to find how to get somewhere by subway they actually turned on the game, navigated the character to where the map was in-game, and then studied it to find the best route.

What this is more akin to is someone posting a youtube movie including in-game footage of Last of Us. And Naughty Dog extends a ton of grace when it comes to this. Even allowing videos of the whole game being played through.

Regarding the modding, I guess the group think is still in the doe eyed fanatical allegiance phase.. and hasn't reached the bitter disappointment and finger pointing stage yet.

There probably won't be any prosecution because Snowden most likely defected to the Chinese government. It may have been his plan all along. I'm sure there are a lot of people out there who would love to leave their families, and be considered a hero by the general public, and live their life comfortably in another country. Given all the secrets he probably has that he hasn't released, he would be a very valuable resource to China.

This is something someone in his position would know how to do, safely, and with a great reward to himself, given that he's probably read the outcomes of hundreds of informants defecting to other countries.

And given his CIA background, he knew enough about propaganda to know how to sell it to keep his family from being shamed by being related to a defector.

The idea that a guy that's smart enough to make 6 figures after not graduating high school can't plan far enough ahead to explain why he went to China is ludicrous. He's simply not telling the truth about his motives.

It could be that Eric Snowden is really just a cynical bastard who was trying to get away from his family and defect to China, bargaining with the rest of the secrets he knows to live a comfortable life.

Releasing the information to the public might be just to make up for it by doing something he thinks is the right thing to do. It would also distract everyone from the truth. If they never hear from him again, they may assume he got killed or imprisoned, and this makes him look like a martyr. This alternate story will keep his family from feeling the shame of being related to a defector.

And, maybe at the same time he wanted to say a big fuck you to his former employer, the US government.

It may seem far fetched, but with the information he has, he probably knows what happens to people who defected to China, and could evaluate whether it was a good idea or bad.

I guess we'll see if any ever hears from him again. If not, it fits right into this idea.

I've stayed there, too. I felt like I was living in the movie Blade Runner.

China is a big player here, too. And they don't shy away from kidnapping.

I still would question why he didn't then hop on a flight from Hong Kong to Iceland before he let the cat out of the bag.

Edit: Maybe he left Hong Kong after the interview but before they published it?

That quote should be, "I didn't speak out because I saw what happens to those that do."

What bothers me is that Apple and Microsoft have both been cooperative. It's not much of a leap to think that the NSA has a backdoor into Windows, MacOS, and iOS now either.

Not only that, but Microsoft and Apple? The same companies who make the most popular OS's and phone OS's in the world?

It's not much of a leap to think that the NSA has backdoors into each of these OS's, too.

It's really hard not to leak information. This is just a guess, but if they see you doing something they don't like but can't decrypt, they can check their huge PRISM database for your ip. Even if you do a good job at hiding who you are, communication outside of the encrypted channel you are using might reveal yourself.

Also they have their hooks in Microsoft and Apple. It stands to reason that means a backdoor in each of the operating systems, as well.

You'd have to really be paranoid to avoid this. Using an opensource OS find an open access point, with no surveillance cameras anywhere, use it only for your encrypted communication and nothing else, and then leave and never come back. And obviously, don't bring a cellphone with you.

Considering this was top secret, I would bet that a lot of persons of interest didn't know about PRISM either, making it a lot harder to realize that they fucked up.

Here is a quick tip, especially for those non confrontational types. When the company makes an offer, just say "Hmm.." and pause for a bit. If the person offering the job is insecure in what they are proposing, they may think you are about to decline and this may provoke them into upping the offer.

If they don't up the offer, it's easy to just say yes after whatever they say next. So, you aren't really risking anything.

That's what I thought it was, too, at first glance. It would be some gnarly math to figure out how to make the storage reliable, since clients could arbitrarily connect and disconnect at any time (carrying a portion of your data with it). I suppose it would be an algorithm similar to RAID, except that there would be an algorithm that would detect damage, such as not enough backups online for a certain time, and the risk the data would no longer be available, and then in response create another RAID node.

Bandwidth could be an issue, too. Maybe clients could get bandwidth and storage karma, if they accept a lot of data from other users and a lot of changes to that data.

Interesting idea, anyway.

Edit: maybe you could even sell your processing power for karma, too. And maybe even extract that karma to sell/trade/give to others.

<quote>So somehow, these abductors managed to leave no physical evidence at all and no witnesses?</quote> You are saying that it's impossible to hide your tracks when abducting someone? So, all the successful abductions that occurred were all due to lazy police work?

So why do you think that an AI could do any better? You really think it's too complicated for people to figure out how distribute wealth fairly enough and that's why it failed? All an AI tasked with making things fair for everybody can do is create a plan. It cannot execute it, it cannot enforce it.

Why would people follow it? Why would some rich and powerful guy with connections forgo all his power to some CPAI that was set up? How would he maintain his ego when the world no longer shakes from his every footstep? How would he repay all the favors he made to those that got him there?

AI is just a tool, like the gun, the ship or the railroad. It's not some panacea that is going to protect human nature from itself.

A central planning AI to impose fairness and the right to basic survival could only come about and remain standing if there was enough support for it from those already in power to allow this. How would you suppose this would come about?

The future will hold a very different scenario than a typical first-world country today where the populous actually produces useful work. As a leader, instead you have a population who who in-fight amongst themselves for the best of the consumable goods and produce absolutely nothing of value for you. To make matters worse, they continually attempt to push their boundaries, growing bigger and bigger if not thwarted (as life normally does).

My other point, that techno-baron A will want to fight/defend himself against techno-baron B still applies. Won't anything that techno-baron A needs to do to defend himself against techno-baron B trump the humanitarian concerns for maintaining the lifestyle of his subjects that give absolutely nothing back to him?

Even if techno-baron A is morally inclined to do so, there will be others that are more brutal and would not. And even if the moral techo-baron A is able to completely conquer the world (seems very unlikely considering how schizophrenically both brutal and compassionate he would have to be), then his hold on it will at some time cease, probably under duress from threat(s) within.

This idea fails because we had the resources to feed everybody today yet it doesn't happen. In the future, when techno-baron A sees that techno-baron B is getting ahead, techno-baron A consumes more resources in order to defeat techno-baron B. If people are in the way of that, and they are of no use to any techno-barons they are pushed aside.

There was "post-scarcity for basic survival needs" for millions of years already. When life first formed on earth, there was food enough for every organism. That didn't prevent organisms from fighting each other.

Competition and the extinction of the losers has been a central theme of life since it began. Being at the top of the food pyramid, and in a first-world country has made us forget that fact. The idea that humanity can rise above this, formed from living in this social-economic bubble for far too long, is just hubris.

So, post singularity, people with no wealth or ability to work will be prevented from starving? There are many people that are dying from starvation today. Why would this change?

In minecraft, you can chat with other people within the world. So there is communication. If you raze someones creation (which may or may not be possible depending on the access you've been given), someone else may react to that and tell you to stop. In extreme cases, you may be booted or banned from the server. Likewise, if you help other people in the game, they will likely praise you and be willing to help you on your own creations.

In real life, if you destroy or hurt someone else as a child, you are told that was bad and why. In extreme cases, you may be put on a time out, or forcefully removed from the situation. If you help other people, you make friends who will be more willing to help you.

So what is the fundamental differentiating factor, as far as emotional development goes, between minecraft and real life? Both have comparable consequences to a person's actions as it regards other people's feelings.

What do you mean by "does not invite the player to explore ideas and concepts that are going within the game at the same time"? And why is this so important to a child's development that without it, "overall the child is no better off"?

The thing is that a lot of what people do in minecraft is not towards a single goal or accomplishment that is pre laid out by the minecraft developer(s). If you haven't played it before, it's a vast 3D world of detachable bricks that are created using a procedural algorithm. There are other entities in the world the user can fight against. But, the dominant part of the game is crafting your own creations using the 3D bricks not necessarily for any purpose at all besides one that you come up with. It's a lot like Legos in that respect. One user built a life size model of the Star Ship Enterprise (for no in-game reward at all) http://www.pcgamer.com/2010/09/28/somebody-built-the-starshi...

So because of that, minecraft does do more than watching TV, or most other goal oriented video games. If it doesn't, you'll have to elaborate on what you mean by "the underlying issues being avoided".

I don't understand what you are saying? Playing minecraft or watching amateurs' videos of themselves playing is conditioning? By who, and how?