planetguy

11 ms·

61.
by planetguy 14y ago
Good article. I'm trying to think of other products which inspire this sort of pointless religious war. Cars are the big one; try reading the comments section on autoblog one of these days. Typical Ford POS. Glad to see they haven't change
62.
by planetguy 14y ago
The US most definitively does not want cyber warfare, which is why a bunch of military types have been going around for years warning about the possibility and the need to harden systems against it. Cyber warfare is bad news for the US be
63.
by planetguy 14y ago
We're well into speculative territory here. Are we suggesting that the coroner was aware of his homosexuality but not of the fact he was a brilliant mathematician? I mean, the coroner must at least have known that he had a chemistry lab, wo
64.
by planetguy 14y ago
I've been reading large chunks of that and it's both good and bad. The good parts are where he sticks to his core strength of anthropology -- it's filled with fascinating descriptions of how commerce and law worked in various societies, anc
65.
by planetguy 14y ago
Actually I think a 50% drop in accidents is pretty good, especially given how many new dangerous things we've invented since then. Actually there was an article the other day about accidental death rates: death due to drug overdose has over
66.
by planetguy 14y ago
Note that Alzheimer's wasn't even "invented" as a diagnosis in 1900, though. I'm guessing that most of the folks dying of Alzheimer's in 1900 wound up getting classified into the "senility" box.
67.
by planetguy 14y ago
It was two hours. I've spent pretty much that trying to get through customs at Gatwick without suspicious items in my luggage. At least these guys probably had somewhere to sit while they were waiting.
68.
by planetguy 14y ago
> undeveloped real estate is owned by aggressive squatters Is this some unusual use of the word "squatter" of which I'm not aware, or are you using it wrong? Squatters tend not to be owners.
69.
by planetguy 14y ago
How much would it cost to buy up the whole blighted area and declare it a giant national park?
70.
by planetguy 14y ago
Honestly, there are people at the border whose entire job is to look for suspicious items. (It's not like the threat of a bomb attack in London is a purely hypothetical one, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents_in_...
71.
by planetguy 14y ago
I'd hoped to see more discussion on the specifics in HN rather than sweeping statements with an undercurrent of racism. It's a sweeping statement but it clearly has nothing to do with race. For instance, this dude would be happy in Singap
72.
by planetguy 14y ago
Fifteen years ago I thought of Pakistan as "that other India". Now I think of it as "that other Afghanistan". This doesn't seem like progress.
73.
by planetguy 14y ago
It makes all the difference in the world. If people are poor because that's the best they're genetically equipped to do , then there's not much we can do about it. Look at pigeons. They eat out of garbage cans. They die within a few years.
74.
by planetguy 14y ago
That is indeed true, and I thought about putting in a note about that in my original comment, but... c'mon folks, I don't think there can be any serious doubt about the idea that some people are born stupid, and that stupid people are mor
75.
by planetguy 14y ago
This shouldn't be in the least bit controversial; it's well known that a great many human characteristics are extremely heritable, and it would be absolutely shocking if none of these characteristics turned out to be helpful or harmful in b
76.
by planetguy 14y ago
Surely genetics plays a huge role, one that's ignored in this article.
77.
by planetguy 14y ago
Can we get a version of this story with a less editorialistic headline? This is clearly a "fits the narrative" type headline, hardy individual versus big bad bank; and I don't trust stories when they fit popular narratives. Tell me the fa
78.
by planetguy 14y ago
Perhaps, but he wouldn't have had a chance to protest about the stupid ongoing attempt to incorporate a pointless, one-use extra character into the English language. The Hawaiian language has never had a written form apart from the English
79.
by planetguy 14y ago
The fact that there isn't enough to go round is why we do have land ownership. See also: Tragedy of the Commons, et bloody cetera.
80.
by planetguy 14y ago
A 141 square mile golf course? What's it gonna be, par three thousand?
81.
by planetguy 14y ago
>Next up: "4chan flame comments are a terrible way to incrementally advance the state-of-the-art in a narrow academic field, presenting theorems, experimental data, and citations to closely-related work." Now I'm tempted to test that, b
82.
by planetguy 14y ago
There is no legal process for starting a country, because laws are made by countries, and once you're starting your own there's no legal framework to operate under. The practical process for starting a country is to control a piece of land
83.
by planetguy 14y ago
Another article says that the asking price had been previously reported as between 0.5 and 0.6 billion. Let's keep this in perspective. It may have a nice view, but it's only ninety thousand acres. That wouldn't even put him in the top hund
84.
by planetguy 14y ago
He just owns some land. The fact that the land happens to be on an island doesn't make it any different to the position of any other landholder. He doesn't even have his own county -- the land is in Maui County.
85.
by planetguy 14y ago
Concrete examples here would make this whole debate a lot clearer. It's important to realize that the choice isn't between "Computers have free speech" vs "The government can censor anything a computer does". The choice is between "existing
86.
by planetguy 14y ago
Richard Branson, Elon Musk. Even Larry, Sergey and Eric recently acquired a fighter jet. Then you've got Silvio Berlusconi, who bought himself the Prime Ministership of Italy and spent the whole time having what he called "Bunga Bunga Parti
87.
by planetguy 14y ago
If that's a legal question then no, no more than I can secede along with my backyard. The fact that your land happens to be surrounded by water doesn't give it any special legal status, the law of the United States does not allow landowne
88.
by planetguy 14y ago
>First prove that a computer is capable of 'free speech' and forming opinions Alright, let's try some plausible examples with present-day technology. Let's suppose I think people who use prostitutes are filthy perverts. I can say "Peo
89.
by planetguy 14y ago
Obviously the corporation is responsible for the acts or speeches of its tools. The question is, to what extent does a corporation have a right to free speech? Is it? Or is the programmer responsible for the speeches of the computer, an
90.
by planetguy 14y ago
I have bad news for you: it's made from the corpses of dead cows.

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