zipwitch

30 ms·

271.
by zipwitch 9y ago
10 years ago, Wikileaks promised an imminent expose on the Russian government. It has never materialized. http://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2028283,00...
272.
by zipwitch 9y ago
You are missing the forest for the trees. You've described <i>how</i> such a project would be held up, not <i>why</i>. As a society, we here in the United States (and very broadly speaking, The West) h
273.
by zipwitch 9y ago
And even those who don't hold off-the-rack opinions may be inclined to pretend that they do, from fear of alienating others or getting hostile responses to heterodoxy, inability to communicate their position (due to their own or others
274.
by zipwitch 9y ago
Yep. My immediate read of the denial was, "the legal entity that is Facebook does not itself spy on users in this exact manner". Once they have a business model that does not revolve around selling data about their users to their
275.
by zipwitch 9y ago
It's a weird binary thing for me. And not fully under my control. It's like one of those perceptual illusions - sometimes I can stare at them with pleasant fascination, other times it's more a reflex "kill it with fire!&
276.
by zipwitch 9y ago
It's more than that. Look at the recent deal with Sri Lanka to resolve the debt owed to China for building a port there: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-sri-lanka-china-ports-idU...
277.
by zipwitch 9y ago
They launched their first domestically built carrier last April. (Technically, it hasn't completed what we'd call sea trials and commissioning.) https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/25/world/asia&#x2
278.
by zipwitch 9y ago
I've always thought this had more to do with change or attention blindess. The guard looks at identical cards so much that they just can't see that something isn't a card.
279.
by zipwitch 9y ago
I hadn't heard of the GPD (thanks for sharing). I have been keeping an eye on the Gemini: http://www.zdnet.com/article/a-retro-computer-brings-touch-t...
280.
by zipwitch 9y ago
I keep having similar thoughts as well. Something based around a raspberry pi, with a thinkpad style keyboard, including the pointer stick. Then have a small (~7inch) touchscreen and you're good to go. I've been inspired by this:
281.
by zipwitch 9y ago
It's somewhat of a recursive lemon problem. We (potential review purchasers) have no way to assure ourselves that we'd be paying for quality reviews and not some sort of fakes, in no small part because of the profusion of ever mor
282.
by zipwitch 9y ago
One of the challenges when it comes to assessing the full impact of anthropogenic climate change is that while it does drive extreme weather, it's far from the only input into such events. Combined with the limited number of such event
283.
by zipwitch 9y ago
Sci-fi is increasingly struggling to keep up with reality. Here's a novel with a similar premise (but more SF setting) that isn't even out yet: https://www.tor.com/2017/09/18/excerpts-annalee-newitz-
284.
by zipwitch 9y ago
The part tabletop RPGs it models really well is where the players and GM spend three hours arguing about the rules applicable to a single sword swing.
285.
by zipwitch 9y ago
Exactly. Comments about"costing jobs" always miss the point, partially or wholly. _Jobs are a cost._ They are what it takes to create _wealth_. At issue is how to best create and distribute wealth.
286.
by zipwitch 9y ago
Equating invasions, bombings, and direct material support for local factions to "make some objective history available to people who want to read it" is extremely disingenuous.
287.
by zipwitch 9y ago
I am not an anthropologist, but I believe that's a popular misconception. Many technologically primitive tribal cultures have low absolute numbers of violent deaths, but they also typically have very low populations compared to agricu
288.
by zipwitch 9y ago
Nice of him to publicly testify to their gross incompetence , though. (And under oath too?) Doubtless the various lawsuits will be coming back to this testimony for many years.
289.
by zipwitch 9y ago
Except abandoned cities won't magically go back to some idyllic paradise. They're full of value (shelter, metals, art, etc) that someone is going to want to extract. And they're also full of lots of potentially dangerous stuf
290.
by zipwitch 9y ago
Near Earth Orbit? How feasible is launching a constellation of bitcoin-mining microsats that will run on solar power?
291.
by zipwitch 9y ago
I am a fan of at least the idea of bitcoin, blockchain technology, and cryptocurrency, but I'm not sure it would be possible to describe bitcoin in a way that makes it sound more like a scam than you just did.
292.
by zipwitch 9y ago
They leaked far more than SSNs. This also raises a real question about scale and distributed harm. If killing someone is wrong, what is stealing one ten-thousandth of a lifespan (through stress and monetary loss) from a hundred million peop
293.
by zipwitch 9y ago
I don't know what shape the team's careers will take, but this is anything but sudden for them. Planning for this started about a decade ago. I remember years ago reading about all the options they were considering, including some
294.
by zipwitch 9y ago
As someone who isn't exposed (I have like .02 bitcoin from a fountain in the early days), but has been an interested observer, the possibility of a crash down to rock bottom does make it seem like a good time to at least be in position
295.
by zipwitch 9y ago
I thought breaking into systems they don't own for profit was something done by large nation-states and their proxies?
296.
by zipwitch 9y ago
Politicians aren't the problem. They don't exist in a vaccuum. They're a symptom. Democracy is only the problem insofar as we (here in the US) do not have one, we just pretend we do. Democracy and Republic both mean a governm
297.
by zipwitch 9y ago
If we (the US) did not waste so much time, energy and other forms of wealth on what is essentially busywork, we would be forced to deal with the full ramifications of how we have transformed our world.
298.
by zipwitch 9y ago
Customers also enjoy cigarettes. Which kill them. The Information Age revolution has empowered and freed us countless ways. But it has also freed us to make bad choices. And it has empowered us to do far more damage to ourselves, our civili
299.
by zipwitch 9y ago
You may want to check out OpenStreetMap. http://www.openstreetmap.org/
300.
by zipwitch 9y ago
I'm no expert on xenobiology, but it seems like in our search for life we're always looking for life like Earth's. Are we even looking for life at much different scales of size or time?

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