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And should they ensure that encryption always has backdoors to enable this too?

It’s worth reading the article, it’s actually not bad! The key quote is probably:

“This is precisely the area that the researchers, from Imperial College in the UK, targeted with their gene drive system. Males that carry one or two copies of the edited version of the doublesex gene develop perfectly normally and are fertile. Females with only one copy also develop normally. In all these cases, these animals will experience gene editing, and all their offspring will end up receiving a copy of the edited version of the gene from them. And females where both copies have been edited develop with a mix of male and female traits and can't reproduce.”

So the majority of offspring carrying the trait can reproduce. The gene drive mechanism ensures that while the change reduces fitness, it still spreads through the population.

It does this, because even if the gene drive modification only exists on one chromosome, it will copy itself to the other chromosome.

I thought 20,000 seemed way to low, given the human population of Barcelona is 1.6 million.

200,000 still seems low. I wonder what fraction of the rat population lives outside the sewers.

I didn’t say it wasn’t. I noted the reasons why it might appear dystopian, and why other activities that could improve safety may also appear less than desirable.

Anything?

For me, there are things that might improve outcomes, but would be unacceptable.

For example, drugs that help with information retention. Mandatory memory enhancing brain implants. Drugs that adjust motivation/focus. Wires attached to eyelids to prevent you from closing your eyes.

The reason why VR used for training seems dystopian is that it removes choice. Or at least feels like it does.

Arguably the trade off is worth it in this case.

Could someone spell this out for me, I don’t really understand how speech is chilled here.

What is the purpose of this comment?

Most people, at any income level, would not find value in this book. The fraction of people who find value in the book maybe correlated with income.

There are a large number of people who might benefit from access to this book (or similar books) would can not afford to legitimately purchase it.

Given that only a small fraction of the world population can afford this book (I estimated 5%, happy entertain other estimates) it seems likely that the majority of people that could benefit from access to this book, could not afford to buy it.

I find that unfortunate.

You repeatedly call me “dude” and “bro”. You assume many people can afford a $40 book.

To me you pretty much typify what’s wrong with modern tech culture, a total lack of empathy or understanding that there is a world outside of that which you live.

Your definition of “many” is <5% of people, got it.

“If you wouldn't have bought it anyways, why is it worth your time stealing and reading it?”

This is literally the same thing as getting a book from a library. The exact same argument applies.

Throwing Latin around doesn’t progress a discussion.

Over 80% of the world population lives on less than $10/day. The percentage of the world population who can afford this book is very small.

Maybe 10%, 5%? Other than repeating this obviously wrong statement, would you like to provide some evidence that >20% of the world population can afford this book?

Libraries, the same arguments apply to libraries. Which by your logic are not morally justified.

The arguments you make could equally well be applied to libraries.

Libraries “steal” money from authors by making books more freely available, in largely the same way that piracy does.

They also make books available to people who otherwise couldn’t afford them.

Of course there is. But that’s neither what you said, nor the topic being discussed.

What you said is more than a select few could afford a $40 book.

The topic being discussed is, the morality of charging so much/piracy.

Good work plugging your github though!

When I grew up, we never ate at a restaurant... just would have been an extravagant expense. My parents probably earned <15000USD combined. This book would have been far too expensive to consider.

This is in the western world... imagine how many people in the world can’t afford this book. On a global scale... very few people could afford this book (or a 40USD video game).

It makes me kind of sad that you’d so casually suggest that this is not the case. Makes me think that perhaps people in the tech world don’t have a great understanding of how poor many people are...

I’m pretty fed up of seeing the “noodle bib” image recycled constantly.

It’s actually just a shower cap/hat to stop soap getting in kids eyes that’s quite common in Japan. Somebody just put it on their face... I guess as a joke in this instance.

I feel like there’s so much to say about this comment, that I don’t even know where to start.

So firstly I agree, $40 seems like a lot. I personally couldn’t justify it at the moment. Particularly when the reproduction cost is nearly zero.

But $40 also doesn’t seem like a lot to pay for a book that will probably not sell more than a few thousand copies. Most likely revenue generated won’t fully cover the time and effort required to create such a book.

But... the author is also a professor at MIT. I feel like if this work wasn’t somewhat publicly funded, it really should have been.

In the end, I’m left morally confused. But it feels like something is wrong in the world when a book like this is available only to a select few, when for the same capital outlay it could be available to everybody.

For Angels but what about seed funding? YCombinator/Other incubators?

My instinct tells me that this is a much better outcome for founders and many employees than “unicorns”.

It’s possibly not as good an outcome for investors, and they might actually view this as a bad exit.

Am I wrong? Would most investors be pretty happy with this? Would most founders/employees be better of going for creating a unicorn?

If you had near continuous location information for a license plate it would be relatively simple to use it to narrow it down to a small group of people.

I’d imagine it would be relatively easy to figure out where someone works and/or lives and just go find them.

Correlating across multiple public databases might make things even easier.

But I don’t think this is the point of the argument. The point is that those in power can gain more benefit from the information than the general population.

Let’s say all votes in elections become public. That information is more useful to a powerful political party than to the public at large, or a small unfunded group. If you don’t want that information abused, the argument goes, you should make sure it’s kept private.

Interestingly (because the parent is about Schneier). IIRC Schneier argues against this.

The argument is that even if everybody has access to all information, only a small group is able to exploit that access effectively.

So, you still end up with a small group abusing their access to the information. You should therefore aim for privacy of sensitive information.

I don’t know, but if you figure it out let me know!

I think you’re burnt out for sure. Ideally, you need some downtime to recover. The problem, I’d guess, is that it’s financially not feasible for you to get any.

I just want to say you’re doing really well to keep it together. You don’t need to be doing more right now.

Another commenter recommending making sure your sleep and health are in order. This has helped me for sure. If you can find something that helps give you a sense of achievement (which I’d guess you can’t get from work) that also could help. For me it was blogging, and the interactions that come with that.

I’m still figuring this stuff out too, and it’s not easy. You’re not alone, and don’t be too hard on yourself.

We should be able to trust our elected officials to do the right thing. And if we can’t, we need to fix our democratic systems so we can.

It’s not sustainable for a population to continually apply political pressure on each and every issue. Particularly to lobby against well funded opponents.

The result of a system where we can’t trust elected officals is going to be a failing system. Voters will understand they’re being screwed but won’t understand the issues. So they’re end up voting for someone offering simple solutions, like Trump.

I’ve not seen an idea suggested that solves all the issues Skype does in one package, and doesn’t add other baggage.

To be fair, Skype also appears to be trying to add a lot of baggage too.

People have given up believing that these laws are created for their benefit... I think this breakdown in trust is partly to blame for the current state of the US (and UK) political systems.

Fixing the issues you list, are part of regaining trust in the political system overall. If it doesn’t get fixed slowly and methodically thing will just get worse and worse until something snaps.

Page opens to geoip set language with no obvious way to change it... so I gave up.

So far, it’s clear from the replies there isn’t really an alternative with a similar feature set. I guess this is why Skype persists (anyone what to start up an alternative? :)).

What’s a good alternative, that has native apps for Mac/Windows/iOS/Android, and isn’t attached to a social network?

(Ideally with the ability of callout, buy a phone number etc)

The rental price quoted above (500USD/month) is probably near the average price I’ve paid to buy a car... I hope subscription is kind of less than this otherwise it seems like pretty bad news for the average consumer.

Oh my, that’s wonderful.

Yes when I was younger I would have absolutely refused (it is ridiculous). Now I’m old and cynical and think everything is insane anyway I’d sing it with all my heart... most places are insane, but few are this entertaining!