chicob

51 ms·

241.
by chicob 9y ago
I was not making a case for cannibalism.
242.
by chicob 9y ago
Although that is true, we do value the character of independence of a conscious existence. That argument would never hold regarding the killing of humans for food. When trying to properly answer the question "Is is acceptable to kill a
243.
by chicob 9y ago
In the article: "You gain no security, yet your customers lose clarity." Oh boohoo. Like it's not on the customers side to know which email it is and which password. And as many have said, one does gain privacy.
244.
by chicob 9y ago
Being Portuguese, I too am in favour of geographic indications. Like Port, or Madeira. There is no such thing as Champagne in Portugal. We too have sparkling wine, but we could not call it Champagne if we wanted. Unfortugnately, we now have
245.
by chicob 9y ago
Many languages are spoken in the EU (as anyone can check by the several translations available for the many documents published by the EU: https://curia.europa.eu ), so this sounds really silly. I say this because most meanings a
246.
by chicob 9y ago
Of course, I forgot vitamins. Who needs doctors when we have corporate nannies telling us how to eat healthily. I don't know about cancer, but food additives aren't always a good idea. Extra calcium is not really absorbed without
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by chicob 9y ago
There was a time in the US margarine had to be dyed pink, so that consumers wouldn't take it for butter. Of course no one would confuse the two: it's just a disingenuous way of using antitrust law against the very competition it&#
248.
by chicob 9y ago
People insist in considering almond milk (and many other vegetable based milks for that matter) as a mere substitute for cow milk, and not for a kind of food in its own right. Where I live, with the exception of oat milk, all soy, rice or a
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by chicob 9y ago
Exactly. Although I believe SBO does work, this is simply not the case for using it.
250.
by chicob 9y ago
Even if they didn't disclose the source code, they could always reverse engineer/brute force a single install. I guess the Pentagon not only did the same thing, it also secured its right to patch without HPE's knowledge or ap
251.
by chicob 9y ago
>Could this be prevented? Nope Pharmaceutical marketing has a role in antibiotics mis-usage, and it can be regulated a lot better. I know people that take AB for the flu, or simply don't take the whole prescription. But at least whe
252.
by chicob 9y ago
I used to live not far away from Casal Ventoso, in the 80's. Anyone crossing that neighborhood in those days would easily see hordes of alienated people, in soiled clothes, gazing idly, sitting in the sidewalk and sometimes even inject
253.
by chicob 9y ago
This is a bit like scientific illustration, where one has to portrait an archetype representing a whole species, in the form on a perfect individual that has all the important characteristics but doesn't exist and was never directly ob
254.
by chicob 9y ago
Like the article says, 'peixinhos da horta' can be literally translated as 'little fish from the vegetable garden'. And it's not just about Lent. Green beans are generally cut open on one rim of the pod, which makes
255.
by chicob 9y ago
Fission power's bad rep is bad for fusion power, the latter being way more safe in any respect. Anyway, although it is a serious issue, to this day no cities had to be evacuated permanently because of air pollution. Regretfully, nuclea
256.
by chicob 9y ago
>Reducing vehicle traffic will not make rail service better. I didn't said that less traffic leads to better rail service. It just seams irrational to me to avoid the cheaper, quicker alternative. However, it does mean better bus pe
257.
by chicob 9y ago
I would define selfishness as a car per person. Where I live, every time I go south, roughly 8-9 am, with opposing traffic, I see a >5 mile train of engines waiting in line. And I call it a train because in the exact same direction there
258.
by chicob 9y ago
I left this comment hanging for some reason, but here it goes. >Why do you worry about energy usage? It's not just CO2, but energy in general. If it never becomes arbitrarily cheap, it will always be a constraint. Also vehicle produ
259.
by chicob 9y ago
My issue with autonomous driving for personal vehicles is that it is the right answer to the wrong question. Isn't the biggest problem with individual cars the very fact that they're individual? Individual transportation is alread
260.
by chicob 9y ago
Portuguese guy here. The 'desenrascanço' culture in Portugal has two sides to it, because on one hand people do appreciate the art of finding quick hacks on the fly ('desenrasques'), but on the other it just overlooks th
261.
by chicob 9y ago
It's intuitive to me because I try not to fall for the human-scale numbers. The Drake equation does not give an estimate. It gives us a train of multiplying factors to which arbitrary values can be assigned, and with it a false sense o
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by chicob 9y ago
Exactly. And our expectations are in tune with our own parochial condition. Who is to tell what the rest of the entire Universe should look like? There are many things we don't know, so the default answer is, most of the time, "we
263.
by chicob 9y ago
But it is known that people have a bias towards tangible figures, like meaningful probabilities and round numbers. This heavily distorts the range of imaginable possibilities. Probabilities are real numbers between 0 and 1. For example, 1.E
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by chicob 9y ago
I mean, it is called a paradox, so it implies an expectation of a different reality.
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by chicob 9y ago
If you find one, can you please put the link here?
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by chicob 9y ago
Isn't it intuitive that there is a strong chance we are alone, or is it just me? I've always found the Fermi paradox quite unconvincing. And the Drake equation makes it even more obvious.
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by chicob 9y ago
Speaking of security, the new possibility of a Google Drive backup for WhatsApp messages and files has been quite overlooked imo. This backup is not e2ee, which means that if the other part is backing up data in Google Drive, then at least
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by chicob 9y ago
That directive might be related to what's happening. But let's not be naive: if Google will stop reading our emails in order to send us personalized ads, that's because it doesn't really need to. People share just enough
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Algae with modified gene store fats for biofuels(arstechnica.com)
1 points by chicob 9y ago|0 comments
270.
by chicob 9y ago
I would add that, in an age where old values fade away, people seem to be caught in a strange economy of visible virtue. By reducing moral relativism to the self and ignoring its role in relationships at large, individuality overcomes any c

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