redsummer

IoT: what could go wrong: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsung_SGR-A1

When buying a washing machine, there is really no point in buying anything other than a Miele or Bosch product. The same is true of most other kitchen appliances. They may seem expensive, but it's a false economy to buy anything else.

I got between her and the attacker, together with a local homeless man. This was on a busy street in London. Everyone else was commuting home ignoring the situation.

He pushed and spat at her. He clearly thought his behaviour was normal, since the presence of others does did not deter him. "Why will you not come with me? Is it because I am Syrian? Are you a racist?"

Assuming there is really a signal.... The sum of the numbers 164595 is 30. The traditional 30th wedding anniversary gift is a pearl. I hereby name this planet Pearl.

I was in Greece recently and I noticed that all the apartment blocks had forests of aerials on top of them - one aerial for each apartment. In the UK, the forest is less dense. People are trusting enough to share their aerials.

Non-EU Norway and Switzerland are at the top of nearly every measure in Europe: standard of living, equality, economy, green issues, credit rating, social progress, democracy, lack of poverty, lack of corruption.

Non-EU Iceland and EU Greece both had severe economic problems. Iceland jailed the bankers, and has overcame it's difficulties. Greece has been jailed BY the bankers - and will now be in debt bondage for decades, and has seen a resurgence of Fascism. Children are digging through rubbish for something to eat. This is in the EU.

Even more eye-opening are these articles from Linh Dinh, mainly dealing with American poverty: http://www.unz.com/author/linh-dinh/

The latest is on an ex-programmer who has fallen into heroin addiction and poverty. I suspect there are a lot more stories like this than you would expect from reading articles on Hacker News.

Yum clams!

My background is Swedish. I would be happy to view video of Viking ancestors, for instance. I guess it's a question of the distance of time.

Any significant contact would wipe the Sentinelese out. Even a common cold infection would be the end of them. The anthropologists know this, but seem willing to risk this for their own ego.

If we wanted to learn anything about the Sentinelese, then perhaps we could use well-camouflaged camera traps, and other electronic eavesdropping devices. The moral considerations are difficult - it's a privacy breach, but the information would also be valuable not only to their descendants (should contact be made), but also to science generally.

Is there a spellchecker or style-checker which helps you write plain pre-Norman English (or another "pure" form of English)? In it's simplest form it could just be a dictionary of acceptable words. A more sophisticated version would suggest "pure" replacements of impure words.

Pronunciation.

"I don't see any moral justification for a software engineer earning more than someone collecting waste"

Garbage Disposal people earn over $100k. Software engineers earn about $80k. A job that can be outsourced or automated is not valuable. http://money.cnn.com/2016/02/24/news/economy/trash-workers-h...

Two points worth making:

1. The original Theranos scientist who started the project - Ian Gibbons - committed suicide after saying that "nothing was working" in 2013. After Gibbons wife spoke to the press, Theranos threatened to sue her.

2. The idea of a needle pricking the end of my finger, just to get one drop (not enough for analysis anyway) is horrible. Far better to get it from an area with less nerve endings which will get more blood - like the usual place in the crook of the arm. The whole idea was stupid to begin with.

The culture is 'to blame' if anything. The butt-kicking female entrepreneur / superhero is a standard trope now in Hollywood and TV. Being a young women, especially a blonde one, is catnip in "celebrity business". It's 'empowering'. It sells papers. It's also bullshit, but to think such a thing is a thought crime.

The funniest thing is all these 90 year old crinkly men being conned into investing. What could they possibly know about hi tech products ... they barely remember how to go to the toilet, or if they are even alive. It reminds me of old Cold War diplomats rapidly losing their mental faculties after a couple of smiles from an Eastern Bloc Anastasia. A pretty woman in a room of powerful men can rapidly turn them into fools.

"He also says he can’t send any bitcoin because they are now owned by a trust."

Well, the trust could create a new address, and send btc to itself. This above all makes me not believe him.

North Korea, Belarus and perhaps a few others are Orwell. The rest are Huxley. I've noticed that former Orwells, like East Germany and Poland, are thought to be warmer in character, have closer families, and are less atomised than the western consumerist equivalents.

Literally earth-shattering perhaps. Why have we never discovered alien life despite statisticians saying there must be thousands of alien civilisations? Probably because they blow themselves up looking for new particles.

An artist was given 6 months prison sentence in Sweden: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/22/swedish-artist-...

Similar things happen in France, Germany, Austria etc. It's usually for challenging anti-racist dogmas. In Germany, it can be for making fun of a foreign leader.

So soon after the bad financials ... seems odd.

(answering my own question)

- there is a glut of high-tech, mainly web, companies and employees.. when we would be better off having more traditional engineers.

- we are rushing to grab what’s left of this glut, before it falls apart.

- our work has no value. It's the spinning wheels of an exercise bike.

- technology is not progress, in the broader sense. quite often the reverse. but because of our jobs and interests, we fool ourselves that we are partaking in progress.

- technology is a man-made disaster. at best it is domesticating us. a moderate view would be that we are too dependant on it, and it’s getting too late to stop. it is oppressive and alienates us. at worst, it is enslaving us.

Can't you do this with tmux instead?

So a guy goes abroad and finds a wonderful culture, and immediately thinks of ways to destroy its culture with useless crap like the internet. Perhaps he can also import rampant inequality, junk food, greed, limitless porn, cars with designed obsolescence etc until everyone is as damaged and atomised as the average American.

I think I understand the concept. Extrapolating the example of Rainy and Sunny days, how would you model this over a year, where there is seasonal variation? In winter for instance, the rainy days would more likely to continue than sunny days. And what are the recommended methods for creating models from existing data?

Even Darwin had noticed this, when he described the differences between groups which (unbeknownst to him) had Neadenthal origins and those who don't.

"There is however no doubt that the various races when carefully compared and measured differ much from each other as in the texture of the hair, the relative proportions of all parts of the body, the capacity of the lungs the form, and capacity of the skull, and even in the convolutions of the brain. But it would be an endless task to specify the numerous points of difference. The races differ also in constitution in acclimatisation and in liability to certain diseases. Their mental characteristics are likewise very distinct chiefly as it would appear in their emotional but partly in their intellectual faculties. Every one who has had the opportunity of comparison must have been struck with the contrast between the taciturn, even morose, aborigines of S. America and the light-hearted talkative negroes."

And to think, some fundamentalists want to ban discussion of Darwinian evolution.