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Comment The silver lining (Score 1) 111

The silver lining in this debacle is that LLVMs are known to provide substantive information that is not actually correct. So anybody who asks it how to make explosives or crack may end up with a recipe that goes wrong and kills them instead. They will have no way to tell if the recipe it provides is trustworthy or not, other than to try and download a real one from somewhere else on the Internet and compare them. And if they can do that, what's the point of asking an LLVM at all?

Comment investor morality (Score 1) 301

This tells us everything we need to know about the big banks and other wealthy investors. They are fine with investing in new coal mines and oil fields, even though it is clear that we must stop using fossil fuels as quickly as possible to avoid ruining our planet. Apparently it's moral to ruin the world for profit, but immoral to show yourself having sex for profit.

Comment Re:The demise of alkaline recycling might help too (Score 1) 106

I just haven't been able to pick a rechargeable system yet that I like; clearly the time to do so has come.

I was in that position for a long time, but I finally found a rechargeable system that I like: https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpaleblueearth.com%2Fcoll... This company has finally gotten rechargeable batteries right! I highly recommend them.

Comment scientific illiteracy (Score 1) 114

I wish that journalists would be expected to know at least a high-school level of science before being detailed to write about scientific discoveries. The K-T boundary does not mark "the end of the Cretacious Era", because there is no such thing. The K-T boundary marks the end of the Cretaceous Period, and also the end of the Mesozoic Era.

Comment I don't really have office hours. (Score 1) 140

I work in an academic research lab, and one of the advantages is that I can work according to my own schedule. Sometimes that means working until 11pm. Sometimes it means going home at 2pm. Sometimes it means not showing up until 2pm. My colleagues know that they shouldn't expect me to respond to e-mail right away. They might get a reply in the middle of the night, or not until tomorrow afternoon. The only thing that will get me to log on immediately is if I get a text saying that our server is down.

Comment beyond the pale (Score 1) 269

A very long time ago, I had a lot of admiration for Julian Assange. The last of that just evaporated completely. At this point, I hope that the Ecuadorian embassy kicks him out so that he can be extradited to the U.S. If Podesta's personal files have indeed been wiped out, I hope the scum who did it get prosecuted as well. No matter which side you are supporting in the election, there is no excuse for that kind of behavior.

Comment No good guys (Score 2) 246

Wow. What a mess. I don't think there are any "good guys" here at all.

1. I think that Maria Schneider is actually correct in her main point. Google is absolutely abusing their power to get away with behavior that has been deemed criminal on the part of less powerful organizations, Megaupload being a prime example. I think that she makes a good case for calling their behavior "racketeering".

2. The RIAA (and their individual corporate members) have clearly demonstrated that they cannot be trusted to apply the "takedown" provisions of the DMCA in a non-abusive way, and it would be crazy to give them any more power in this regard. They also whine incessantly about how the artists are getting screwed, and then they turn around and screw the artists as hard as they can get away with.

3. The artists have been complaining for decades now that it is much harder for them to make a living than it used to be, and they are right. But by and large their proposed solution is "let's go back to the way things were", ignoring the fact that the public simply will not put up with that, and ignoring the fact that the Internet has changed the whole enterprise of music irrevocably.

4. The public has now gotten used to getting their music for free (or for almost nothing) without any consideration for how the artists are going to actually make a living. It's not clear how much longer "being a musician" will be a viable career except for a tiny group of superstars, unless people start accepting that they have to actually pay *something* for the privilege of listening to the latest music.

None of these groups seems to have any inclination to compromise, nor is showing any consideration for anybody's welfare except their own. What a mess.

Comment Re:There is no vaccine for the worst diseases (Score 1) 1051

This logic was used to ban Vioxx, which was an enormous help to a lot of arthritic people, because its side effects were awful for a very few people. It's not just vaccines, and sometimes the ban-everything-that-isn't-100%-safe-no-matter-the-consequences mentality wins.

Vioxx was banned for two reasons:

  1. 1) More than "a few people" were harmed. The damage it does is subtle and hard to detect until a heart attack occurs, and there was a strong suspicion that the damage detected was just the tip of the iceberg, that millions of people using the drug were having their hearts slowly and irreversibly damaged.
  2. 2) Merck out-and-out LIED to their patients, the government, and the public at large about both the safety and efficacy of the drug. Not only did they conceal evidence that the drug was dangerous and not any more effective than other similar drugs, but they repeatedly made deliberate false statements to the contrary. That kind of behavior simply cannot be tolerated.

Please keep in mind that the FDA is funded primarily by the drug industry (through drug-approval fees) and that most of the leaders of the agency are former drug industry executives. They hate to ban any drug, and will only do so as a last resort or in a particularly egregious situation. Merck pulled the drug voluntarily, because it was clear that the FDA were actually going to do their job in this case.

Comment Look for academic programming (not teaching) jobs (Score 1) 479

I am in a similar situation to you, and bagged a great job as a "senior research programmer" at a university. I work for the department of geoscience, maintaining and extending a research database. I don't make as much money as I would if I were working in industry, but: the hours are great, the benefits are top-notch, the people I work with value my knowledge and experience, including particularly my Ph.D. in computer science, and I am happy to be using all of that laboriously acquired knowledge and experience for the purpose I had originally intended: to help make the world a better place through scientific research. Here's the best part: the professors I work with were overjoyed at being able to hire me, because they have a hard time attracting qualified applicants for these kinds of positions! So here's my advice: figure out where in the country you'd like to work, and peruse the job listings at the local universities for "research programmer" jobs in various academic departments.

Comment In other news... (Score 1) 117

In other news, 95% of people surveyed are putting their identities at risk by sharing their house and car keys with friends, family and colleagues. "As we lead more and more of our lives in houses and cars, our identities need to be effectively protected – worryingly, it appears that this is not the case at the moment", he continued. "It's not surprising consumers are taking shortcuts such as putting all of their identity cards into a single "wallet" or "purse" that is easily lost, stolen or hacked. It's time for stronger authentication and more sophisticated forms of identity."

The research revealed that consumers are not only sharing keys, but also potentially putting their personal and sensitive information at risk by leaving these "wallets" in easily-visible locations with over half of those who take showers admitting that they leave their wallet on a dresser or table while they do so.

Comment Re:Was this cheaper or more productive than ... (Score 5, Interesting) 89

These images contain irreproducible (and thus priceless) data. They show the moon as it appeared in 1966, which allows comparisons to be made to the same lunar areas today. Although the surface of the moon changes very very slowly, it does change. And these pictures may allow us to measure that change. Furthermore, as the article points out, some of the pictures also show the earth as of 1966, allowing comparisons to be made with the earth of today (i.e. the extent of Arctic ice).

Comment Re:When Egypt or Libya does it, it's bad, of cours (Score 1) 513

To put the issue into historical context, this has been standard procedure since 1861. At the outbreak of the Civil War, Lincoln ordered the War Department to seize the (privately owned and operated) telegraph offices in Washington and other cities. Military officers were installed in each office to censor private communication, to ensure the secrecy of military communication, and to make sure that military traffic had priority.

I can certainly imagine circumstances in the modern era where a President would want to take similar actions.

However, I am an adamant foe of the use of such powers in peacetime, and an adamant foe of the continual, indefinite, undeclared state of war that has been imposed on us and the rest of the world by the Bush and Obama administrations over the past decade.

United Kingdom

Dogs Can Be Pessimistic 99

Not that it will change anything, but researchers at Bristol University say that your dog might be a gloom-monger. In addition to the downer dogs, the study also found a few that seemed happy no matter how uncaring the world around them was. "We know that people's emotional states affect their judgments and that happy people are more likely to judge an ambiguous situation positively. What our study has shown is that this applies similarly to dogs," said professor Mike Mendl, an author of the study and head of animal welfare and behavior at Bristol University.

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