omnius19

With that framing, I agree. However, I don’t think it needs to be. I’m hoping it’s more that virtual reality is where to go to interact professionally and you’ll take off the goggles for your personal time.

If, instead of needing to live in close proximity to work opportunities, often in an expensive and crowded city with a long commute, people could live wherever they want and commute virtually, that would be a huge positive in my book. That is already possible for some professions, such as software development. But good VR/AR will open the door to other professions that still require in person collaboration today and will improve those that are already remote capable. Then, at the end of the day, you take off your headset and live your life wherever/however you choose.

I’m assuming that running multiple 5-6k monitors will still require multiple cables/ports though. One thunderbolt port per monitor.

I’m still waiting for the day we can hook 2 5k monitors + peripherals up to a thunderbolt dock and then hook that up to a MacBook using a single cable.

Yikes

I generally see that rational applied to whaling only when discussing indigenous populations such as the Inuit in Alaska. They are whaling in small boats and canoes using traditional techniques. Japan’s excuse for whaling is “scientific study.” I don’t think they are claiming to whale for cultural reasons, nor are they whaling for subsistence, which is allowed under international law.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aboriginal_whaling

There are two reasons why you should absolutely boil your water instead of purifying with the sun on a backpacking trip.

1. Fuel is light, water is heavy.

A liter of water weighs roughly 2.2 pounds. That is not including the weight of the containers holding the water. Assuming a person is hiking from 8AM until 12PM, and drinking approximately 1 liter of water an hour, they will consume approximately 4 liters of water on their hike. Then, they will likely need at least 3 liters of water at camp for cooking, cleaning, and drinking (I use about 2 liters on average in camp for solo trips but I hike until sundown so I'm adding some extra drinking water for sitting in camp during the hottest part of the day). So, using a fairly conservative water estimate, a hiker like you described would need about 7 liters of water in a day, which would weight about 15.4 pounds plus the weight of containers.

Using the sunlight method you are advocating, the person will need to carry all of that weight during their hike. Even worse, the sun is unreliable. On cloudy days, it could take up to 48 hours to purify the water. So the hiker would want to carry 2 days worth of water (14 liters at 30.8 pounds plus container weight) to ensure a steady supply unless absolutely guaranteed a perfectly sunny weather window (which is rarely a guarantee that can be reasonably made). Adding in the last piece, container weight, makes the situation worse. An average empty 1 liter SmartWater bottle (a good analog for the coke bottles you mentioned and a commonly used option by the backpacker community) weighs 1.3 ounces. So to carry 14 liters of water, you will need 14 bottles, weighting 18.2 ounces or 1.13 pounds. The total weight of water carried for a leisurely backpacking trip using your proposed method would be a shade under 32 pounds.

Now to the boiling method. Using a modern backpacking canister stove, you can boil a liter of water with about 15-20 grams of fuel depending on elevation, temperature, and wind conditions. Lets say 20 grams to be conservative. So to boil that 2 day supply of 14 liters of water, you would need to carry 280 grams worth of fuel, which is about 0.6 pounds. This is not including the weight of the fuel container because I am assuming the hiker is already bringing a canister stove for other purposes, as most backpackers do. Other stove types such as alcohol and esbit weigh even less. By bringing this 0.6 pounds of fuel, you no longer need to carry most of the water during your hike. The majority of long distance hikes in the US and around the world have regular sources of water along the route. Most hikers will only carry 1-2 liters of water during the day, filling up and purifying along the route. Then they top off shortly before making camp for the night. So now, with a faster purification method, the hiker only needs to carry 2 liters of water, which weighs 4.6 pounds with containers. Add the fuel weight and the hiker will be carrying 5.2 pounds total for their water system, a weight savings of 26.4 pounds over your method. Even adding a few more liters of water for more water scarce routes (such as the southern portion of the Pacific Crest Trail) will result in double digit weight savings.

When most backpackers these days are aiming to keep their total pack weight under 30 pounds for most trips, this weight savings is a HUGE deal.

2. Boiling is reliable, sunlight is not.

When you boil water, you can be reasonable assured that your water has been properly purified. Sunlight purifying is not so simple. As you said in your first post, the sunlight method requires variable amounts of time based on weather conditions. This causes scheduling problems on a backpacking trip because you need to wait longer for your water to be drinkable in bad weather. As I mentioned above, this forces the hiker to carry more water to account for bad weather.

But even worse, there is no concrete sign with sunlight purifying that your water is ready to drink. Assuming you can figure out how to strap 14 liters of water to the outside of your pack while you are walking so that they all get equal sun exposure (which is probably not possible) and it is a sunny day, you could hope that the water would be ready to drink in 6 hours. And maybe it is. Or maybe you were walking through shadier paths than you realized, or your shadow from your hiking hat blocked some sunlight, or 1 of 100 other things happened to prevent your water from being exposed to the sun properly. Then the water is not ready in 6 hours, but you drink it thinking it is. Now you are vulnerable to all the same problems you would be if you didn't purify at all.

If you boil your water for 3 minutes, it is always pure. If you use sunlight purifying, you are playing a dangerous lottery while out in the wilderness far from medical assistance.

*

Finally, a note about using sunlight purifying as an emergency method in the backcountry. You are right that it could potentially be used in such a way. However, this would very rarely be necessary or practical. Most backpackers brings 2-3 methods of water filtration with them. Usually those methods are a filter/steripen/etc, filtration tablets as a backup (because they weigh almost nothing and work in less than 30 minutes), and their stove to boil water as a last resort. The situation where you are in an emergency situation and all 3 of your purification methods are inaccessible would be extremely rare. The only instance I could think of would be if you lost your pack, maps, the trail, and had no idea where you were going but were otherwise uninjured (so you could handle trips to a water source and carry large amounts of water to sunny purifying locations) and had access to containers to hold large amounts of water. Then maybe, hunkering down and purifying water with sunlight would be the right move while waiting for rescue. However, the odds of this happening are extremely rare. I have hiked thousands (probably tens of thousands) of miles in my life in very remote places. I have never had such a situation happen to me or anyone else I know who is a backcountry enthusiast. You should absolutely be more prepared than that!

In most instances, an emergency situation involves you being lost of injured. If you are lost, hunker down, make yourself visible, activate your beacon (which you should have in particularly remote areas away from trafficked trails) and wait for help while you use your normal filtration methods (1 of 3 at least should work). Rescue should come within a day or 2. Same thing if you are slightly injured and don't think you can walk out under your own power. Or if you can walk, just get out as fast as you can. If you are severely injured and lost your pack (maybe from a severe fall or bear attack), make it to a water source if possible and just drink the water. If you don't get help within a day or 2, you are probably dead anyway from your injuries. The most important thing is to stay hydrated and make yourself visible, not sit around waiting for your water to purify for 6-48 hours. I'd rather be found alive and deal with Giardia for a month than be found dead with some nice clean water next to me.

*

TLDR: PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE don't rely on sunlight as a method of backcountry water purification. It is well suited for purifying water cheaply in water troubled villages, but uniquely unsuitable for backpacking. Always learn proper backpacking techniques for water filtration (along with first aid, navigation, camping, etc), know your physical limits, thoroughly research your route, and have the right gear before setting out into the backcountry. My mountain community buried 9 people last year who died in the backcountry. Most of those deaths were caused by inexperience and were completely preventable. Please don't add to that number.

The mathematics standards for Common Core were released in June 2010. So college freshmen this year would have been in 5th grade (seniors in 8th grade) at the earliest when introduced to Common Core style mathematics. Probably later, since schools needed time to adapt to the new curriculum and train teachers in the new methods. Seeing as how Common Core places a heavy emphasis on developing skills in grades 1-8, I don’t think that current college students are a good benchmark for the Common Core standards. Talk to some college students in 5-10 years to get a better idea of how things are progressing.

This is also why Imodium is included in most thru-hikers first aid kits. It decreases the effects of diarrhea to keep you hydrated long enough to reach civilization if you get giardia in the backcountry.

Sure but this is a highly impractical method when you are hiking from dawn to dusk and consuming 1L of the water an hour on a backpacking trip. For most backcountry excursions, water purification methods must not only be effective, but also reasonably time efficient. It’s a different story if you are setting up camp somewhere for a prolonged period of time, but then you can just boil water.

I like this interpretation. It’s been a while since I saw Interstellar, but from my somewhat fuzzy memory of the film, that does seem to resolve everything nicely.

Telcos in the US have localized monopolies. Their customers are a captive audience. The incentive in that situation is for the telcos to wring as much money out of its customers as possible since they have nowhere else to go. Apple is very far from a monopoly. It sells in highly competitive markets and as such, is incentivized to appeal to its customers so that those customers do not choose another option for their hardware purchases.

Fair enough and I apologize for adding that assumption. It was unnecessary for making my point and disrespectful to you. I will leave it in for context but please disregard it.

You're right, the Guardian and the Intercept have done some very good investigative journalism in the last few years, particularly around Snowden and the US surveillance state. However they are certainly not the only ones producing impactful journalism.

http://www.cjr.org/criticism/best_journalism_of_2016.php

Here is a good list of some great journalism from the last year. Some of the media outlets are "mainstream" (note I really dislike that term as it is usually used by people being adversarial towards the media for their own gain). Some are small local papers. Some have what is perceived to be a left leaning ideological bent, and some have a right.

I find that many people laud the journalism and outlets that support their viewpoint. However, they avoid or actively denigrate good journalism and outlets that oppose their viewpoint. From your reading choices, I'm guessing that you probably don't read the Wall Street Journal or other sources with a perceived conservative bent. If not, you should try. And try some sources such as the Associated Press and Reuters which focus on producing content for many media outlets with different viewpoints and biases. Good journalism is being done across the spectrum. It should be supported, regardless of your political leanings, as the basis of a shared reality in which we as humans can make good decisions.

You may be right, but if so, that is quite a self-defeating and unproductive stance to take. If I accidentally start a fire on my stove, I don't say "screw it" and let my whole house burn down. I pull out a fire extinguisher and try to put it out.

There are comfy media bubbles on both sides of the ideological spectrum and it is a serious problem. It is easy to criticize the other bubble while sitting comfortably in your own (please note I don't mean you personally, just a general person). One important step to popping those bubbles is to keep the stream of good journalism flowing. This means protecting the fourth estate from unwarranted attacks and trying to restore people's faith in the media and a basic shared reality.

However that is not the only issue causing these bubbles. People are segregating themselves, both socially and geographically along ideological lines. Print media is increasingly losing subscribers to generally less informative mediums such as tv. Technological advances, many brought about by my own field of software engineering, make it easier and easier for people to wall themselves off from ideas that make them uncomfortable. These are much more difficult problems to solve, and I certainly have no definitive answers for them.

So I start where I can, trying to encourage strangers on the internet (and in real life) to step out of their bubble and read the truly important journalism that still exists in our world. In the meantime, I hope someone much smarter than me can fix the divide in the US that causes these ideological bubbles. Because right now we are sitting on a powder keg, and the media isn't the cause... it's an effect.

Your question is a red herring. Of course the owners of news organizations have biases, as do the reporters, editors, readers, and everyone else in society. Sometimes the bias is political. Sometimes it is sensationalism. Sometimes the writer doesn't like the color blue.

Every reputable news organization follows the journalistic code of ethics that puts institutional barriers in the way to counteract bias. Reputable outlets require multiple sources to corroborate stories before they go to print. They require printed or verbal disclaimers on any story that could pose a conflict of interest for the outlet or author. They require prompt retractions to be printed if an initial story is found to be factually inaccurate in any way.

It's not a perfect system. No system is. Bad articles can still slip through. Some organizations can adhere to it more than others. But it is way better than anything else humans have come up with to keep the news honest. Most journalists take their roles as arbiters of information very seriously and try to keep their biases out of it, even if they are not always completely successful. That is all anyone could reasonably ask.

Instead of labelling all news media as generically biased and therefore not to be trusted, try to understand that all information will have a bias and learn to identify specific incidents of it. Then learn to work around it by reading other sources with different biases, thereby getting the whole picture of a story. It is the news media's job to TRY to be as unbiased as possible. It is the news reader's job to TRY and be as informed as possible by reading varied news from different sources. Neither side will be perfect, as both are full of imperfect human elements, but overall it leads to a reasonably informed and educated populace, which of course is the goal of journalism.

And if you do not agree with what I have said here, I have a follow up question for you... if the current news organizations are so terrible and inherently biased, what alternative would you propose? What is your idea of a perfect, unbiased media landscape? And would your alternative truly lead to a less biased media or just a media with biases you happen to agree with?

I would posit that you haven't looked very hard...

http://www.pulitzer.org/prize-winners-by-category/206

Many people, myself included, have supported the media long before Trump became president. It is easy to forget now, but Obama was also known at times for having an adversarial relationship with the media. Of course there are click bait articles and examples of bad journalism to look at. Just as there are examples of good and bad work in every profession. But pointing out singular incidents of questionable journalism to prove that the news media is "all hype and no substance," meanwhile ignoring the important, significant, and often times dangerous work that journalists do to keep the public informed is, at best, ill advised.

Go and read the Pulitzer prize winning journalism that has come out in the last two years. I would be shocked if you could walk away saying it is hype. Or even look at another story from the last few weeks, Michael Flynn's pre-election sanction discussions with the Russian Ambassador and subsequent firing. People might have different opinions on the issue or different feelings on the way the information was leaked, but it can't be argued that it was a serious story of national importance. Meat loaf isn't the only thing out there.

Your criticisms of some media practices are valid and have been made many times before. They will and should be made again. But finding a bad article and saying "see the media is terrible don't trust them" is not the answer. If you see an article that seems silly, look at other sources to find one that's not. If you see an article that seems biased, read about the story from several other sources to get the full picture. Or even better, do that even if you don't think the initial source seems biased. Become a savvy news consumer who stays outside of ideological bubbles by purposely popping them.

And I will also say this... when something important is under attack, it is possible to try and save it even if you have concerns about certain aspects of how it functions. It's hard to prune weeds from a garden that has been burned to the ground.

I completely agree. It is one thing to give reasonable criticism of a specific incidence of news media misconduct. It is another thing to blanket condemn every news organization based on inaccurate hypotheticals and personal opinions with no proof. Democracy is in trouble when people lose faith in the media and independent journalism is suppressed. By all means, be a skeptical and informed consumer of the news, but don't contribute to the discrediting of the fourth estate without good reason.

Edit: I made this comment before the parent added a bunch of, mostly grammatical, complaints about the article. I agree with other posters that those are mostly superficial.

Good catch! Its always good when your typos completely invalidate the argument you are making.

If we are going to go down this road, then very well...

Being the descendant of Isildur does not, by birth right, make Aragorn king. When the two kingdoms of the Dunedin were formed in Middle Earth after the fall of Numenor, the North Kingdom of Arnor was ruled by the High King Elendil, and the South Kingdom of Gondor was ruled by his sons, Isildur and Anarion. [1][2]

During the first war of the ring against Sauron, Elendil and Anarion were both slain. After the war, Isildur, as the oldest surviving member of his line, became high king of the two kingdoms. However, when he left Gondor the year after the war and travelled north to Arnor, he installed his brother's son Meneldil as King of Gondor. On his journey north, Isildur was killed by a band of Orcs. The crown of Arnor was then passed to Isildur's only surviving son, Valandil. [3]

Valandil never made a claim to the thrown of Gondor. As a result the two kingdoms were separated. It was accepted in both kingdoms that Isildur, by installing Meneldil to the throne of Gondor, had forsaken his claim. From that point forward, Arnor was ruled by the line of Isildur and Gondor was ruled by the line of his brother Anarion. [1][2]

At one point in Gondor's history, the current king died without any obvious heir. At that time, Arvedui, king of Arnor, claimed the kingship of Gondor as the descendent of Isildur. Gondor refused the claim, saying that Isildur had granted the kingdom to his brother's line and only direct descendants of Anarion could be king. [4] Another later attempt at reunification was also rebuffed.

After the Second War of the Ring, where Sauron was finally destroyed, Aragorn again claimed lordship of both Arnor (which was destroyed but he hoped to rebuild) and Gondor. He was a direct descendant of Arvedui, who was rebuffed thousands of years before when he tried to reunite the kingdoms. [5] Throughout the Lord of the Rings, Aragorn is nervous about returning to Gondor because his claim is not assured.

The people of Gondor accept Aragorn's claim to the throne and he becomes the first High King of the Reunited Kingdom. [5] His lineage does play a part in their acceptance. However, the same lineage had been rebuffed several times in Gondor's past and was not seen as a mandate to rule.

Aragorn's actions during the war played a much larger role in the people accepting him as king. Much of this was due to an old prophecy, saying that "the hands of the king are the hands of a healer, and so shall the rightful king be known." When Aragorn healed the people wounded by the Black Breath of the Nazgul during the Battle of Pellenor Fields, the rumor went around the city that the king had returned. When he defeated Sauron, the people accepted him. [6]

So there you have it. Aragorn was considered a possible match for the Kingship due to being a descendant of Isildur. However, his lineage did not give him the right to claim the role on its own. The people of Gondor chose to disregard their ancient rules about the rights of succession in order to appoint him king. They did so because of his actions during the war and the prophecies he fulfilled. The main prophecy that planted the seed of him returning as king was his healing of the wounded in Minas Tirith. The article is more correct than you.

You know... if you want to be pedantic about it.

Sources:

1. http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Gondor

2. http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Arnor

3. http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Isildur

4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Kings_of_Arnor_and_Gondor

5. http://lotr.wikia.com/wiki/King_of_the_Reunited_Kingdom

6. http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Aragorn#Reign_as_Elessar

Edit: Fixed typo.

Thanks so much! This is really exciting.

Oh it can definitely be applied to computer science classes. At my college, most computer science classes had optional lectures and were heavily project based. Some of the slower or less experienced students went to lecture (usually less than 1/3 of the class) but most students skipped it. Instead, we would work on our projects and go to office hours for one on one assistance with a ta or prof if we needed help. This was expected behavior and they made tons of hours open to the students so it worked great.