There are two kinds of incremental change - small changes in gene expression/abundance/variation that give small outward changes, and small mutations that have big outward effects, e.g. six fingers on one hand, downs syndrome, sickle cell anemia. All those originally came from a single genetic misfire during replication. Who's to say wings didn't start from a physical step change that was a single base pair?

So you mean google does care about me?

And this is why courting gamers to do good for humanity is always going to be a flaky prospect.

Quit your whining. They have X number of people, and I'd rather they develop software for protein folding than email back individual people who complained about things probably already on a to-do list. For most software projects I'd consider my response a little harsh, but you're advocating an approach where resources used to CURE AIDS are being diverted to "not offending trovingslosh". The least you can do is forgive them, discard your own pettiness, and re-harness your natural ability to spend your gaming time productively. It's a rare skill you have and that project needs people like you.

Hey, nice to see someone open about ASD who isn't a whiny internet shutin - Those guys have negatively stereotyped us to the point where I never talk about it any more. You raise an important point, which is that we are essentially learning how to win friends and influence people, not subconsciously as part of our character, but as a learned discipline. It scares me sometimes. Is this what sociopaths do also? I learn to smile and laugh with someone as they talk because I want to express the inner feelings that normal people can do with laughing and smiling - it doesn't matter if the impression I'm trying to force is an accurate picture of my own mental state, but it's still manipulation. Is this something we're worthy and responsible enough to wield?

Not that it undermines the main thrust of your argument, but I feel that sloppy investigating on your part makes you look weak - Specifically:

Google's the world leader in face recognition technology. It uses this technology to identify faces in streetview and blur them out. The best you can rant about is that Google themselves may have a private database of times when people who've been tagged elsewhere in Google have wandered past a streetview car at a particular time. For the rest of us, there's always "that's blatantly your shirt in streetview!"

Or, you can calibrate it *on* yourself: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMPtj71xGzY

The best thing that comes out of all these breaches is the consequences of assuming the worst - Gary McKinnon, looks for UFOs, causes 6-figure damages because any machine he was within 1000 miles of pinging got tossed into a shredder. Likewise, with this, you know there's some hacker out there who's all like "shit, I missed that database, I was only in there for info on the PS4"

I was always under the impression that -Os made sense in a lot of contexts because of the smaller binary size fitting into the CPU cache more easily and speeding up some kind of switching process that apparently happens a lot during execution and not just when you launch the program - but I'm obviously far from an expert on these matters.

It sounds like you think that's a statement about the pi they've calculated here, where the words immediately preceeding your quote, found at the top of this page, are "pi to 40 digits". Any of us could comfortably calculate that on paper in a day, or half an hour with a 10-digit solar powered calculator. I fear you may be guilty of slashdot-itis - an impulse to try and prove yourself smart by demolishing a strawman built from the headline, or the summary if we're lucky. Sometimes, the fail is too epic not to rebuke.

I had a food load for 10 people delivered to the middle of the yorkshire dales on New Years Eve, so I have a new respect for tesco's universal delivery policy. I think some of the scottish isles you'd be out of luck but it's a lifeline for remote people too!

So where do you stand on the idea of set-top boxes and cable modems? Would you respect the right of loanership there?

Oh internet, how short your memory. Hans Rosling has already comprehensively debunked fears of a population explosion, all we need to do is elevate the third world out of poverty and the population will stabilise permanently at 9-12 billion.

http://www.gapminder.org/videos/hans-rosling-ted-2006-debunking-myths-about-the-third-world/

The problem with earth-arians in politics is the same with openly-religious parties. There's always an unpleasant undertone of connection/endorsement of extremist views. If the party ignores the extremists, everyone continues to whisper. If they openly distance themselves from the extremists, they're adrift and directionless. Lose/lose.

Specifically, enviromentalism/animal rights/veganism all point to the extreme viewpoint that human lives are *not* the pinnacle of importance, and that killing 80% of all humans would do a lot of good for the ecosystem. With that pallor hanging over the Greens, the mere suggestion that a family goes from 3 cars to 2 is seen as a slippery slope to death camps.