No, I'm not really sure. But I do know that there were a lot of Moors in continental Europe, back in 1000. The Moors seem to have been a mixture of every possible skin color, but at least some of them were described in contemporary accounts as being "as black as a raven". And there were plenty of well-traveled trade routes between Britain and the rest of Europe.

Then, as I mentioned, there are all the "cameo appearances"-- there's a picture of a Black guy in the Domesday Abbreviato (1241), there was the Fairford skeleton of a North African female (dates to about 1000 AD), there are the Ipswich skeletons (13th century), etc.

Not saying that Black people were at all commonplace in medieval England, but the OP's estimate of "there were maybe a dozen" seems unlikely.

I know it's completely irrelevant to the main point, but as a casual history nerd... I think "12 black-skinned people in all of England" is hard to believe. I have no idea what the correct estimate would be, but something like 500-1000 might be more plausible. This is based on the fact that Africans make a lot of cameo appearances in pre-Norman British history (all the way back to Roman times), and also on the fact that we've found a number of British skeletons from this era which appear to be African.

In one of his (multiple) autobiographies, Leonard Nimoy talks about looking at Star Trek fan art and seeing some "extremely realistic" paintings of himself cavorting in the nude. Usually with Captain Kirk. He thought it was pretty amusing.

Ain't nothing new here, except that the requirement for artistic talent has been removed.

Yes, I do get it that this sort of thing might seem a whole lot less amusing to the subject, when the subject is a woman. But to describe it as a "safety" issue? Eff off.

I'm as close to a free-speech absolutist as you're likely to find (check my posting history), but I don't agree at all with this interpretation. In fact, this law reminds me of the famous quote by Louis Brandeis: "the remedy [for problematic speech] is more speech, not enforced silence".

I've suggested many times that this is the kind of solution social media should use to cope with "problematic" speech (posts by Russian bots, so-called "fake" news stories, etc). Don't hide the posts or ban the posts-- just attach a label explaining where you think the post came from or why you think it's misleading, and I'll come to my own conclusions, thankyouverymuch.

Agree 100%-- as I was reading through the list of surveillance techniques, I thought to myself "One of these things is NOT like the others". Even the staunchest privacy advocate must admit that there is no "expectation of privacy" when you are talking to a police officer.

As a resident of Chicago-- which is legendary for its police corruption and abuse-- I believe that police should always be required to wear bodycams. Any time a policeman's bodycam is absent or "not working", this should be treated as a disciplinary matter and a cause for grave suspicion. The EFF's arguments for distrusting bodycams (which you have quoted) are simply incoherent nonsense.

It's too bad, because in other respects, I greatly admire what the EFF is doing here.

From what I've seen, the laptop computers are absolute crap from a learning standpoint. "Learning modules" are used as half-assed substitutes for textbooks. The "modules" are confusing to access or navigate. They tend to require a fast, always-on Internet connection to do anything at all (in one case, my kid was unable to even *edit* an already-opened document when the Internet went down). They often have spellcheck enabled by default, which is not a good idea if you're trying to learn to spell. And, as other posters have pointed out, they are generally cheap $200 Chromebooks (designed with "expiration dates" that turn them into useless e-waste after two years).

Books and paper probably tend to be a little more expensive, with the cost of textbooks being what it is, but there's no question that they work better than this crap.

Well in the first place, Israel doesn't have a constitution. In the second place, it's hard to imagine that you could prevent war crimes by declaring "We're not going to do war crimes" in the constitution.

I agree with those who say that Israel has committed a lot of war crimes over the years (I also agree with those who say that the US has committed a lot of war crimes, although we tend to be less obvious about it). Hamas has also committed a lot of war crimes, of course. An interesting cultural difference is that Israel (and the US) will always hotly deny that they have committed war crimes, and Hamas doesn't bother with denying it. This does not really make one morally better than the other, IMO.

If you have a suggestion about how to more effectively prevent war crimes, of course we'd all like to hear it. But I don't think that you can solve the problem by simply performing a "hard reboot" where you throw the entire government in jail (including the left-wing parties, I suppose?) and start fresh with a new constitution.

Before the latest hostilities, more than half of Gaza's population faced food insecurity, and 80% were dependent on aid. As I said, they were desperately poor. Certainly, it's gotten much worse since the Israelis stopped letting food in-- no argument there.

Yes, ethnic Germans were kicked out of various regions of Europe after WW2, but there is a rather obvious difference: The Germans had a homeland to return to. (Actually, two different ones). They weren't simply handed a suitcase, pointed at the border, and told to start walking.

The idea of simply telling Palestinians to "go away" is a non-starter, because there is nowhere for them to go. (Also, unlike most of the Germans in your example, they have been living in the Palestinian territories for many generations). There is no plausible scenario in which 5 million Palestinians are simply going to move someplace else.

Also, just to state the obvious, there is no plausible chain of events in which 9 million Israelis are going to pack their things and leave Israel.

These kinds of proposed solutions are a fantasy.

World War 2? The American Civil War? The English Civil War?

Generally speaking, when you win a war, the terms of surrender do not include "Everybody on the losing side has to pack up their things and relocate to Timbuktu".

When has "being able to feed your own people" ever, in human history, been a prerequisite for starting a war?

Also, Hamas wasn't doing so great on that front, even before the current flare-up. Most residents of the Gaza strip are desperately poor. (On top of being poor, they were paying high taxes to Hamas-- taxes are a significant part of their funding).

No, you misunderstand me, I didn't say that; I said it sounded like the "motion artifact removal" tech was at least potentially patentable. That is to say, it's not obvious BS (or an attempt to patent "existing technology but on a smartwatch").

I also said that personally, I wouldn't care whether my smartwatch had motion artifact removal or not. But I suppose some consumers would complain if it wasn't there, so it has some commercial value.

Maybe 80-lb pulse oximeters exist somewhere, but I've never seen one. Most oximeters are self-contained devices which are designed to slip over your finger. The OP was right to be skeptical about patentability, he's asking the same question I wondered about when I saw the headline.

Reading the Masimo link: it sounds like the "innovative" or patentable part is that they figured out a better way to get rid of motion artifacts. (They published an article on their tech way back in 1996: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.go...)

I would think that, for most Apple Watch use cases, motion artifacts don't really matter. (They matter more in a hospital setting, where you might be setting an alarm to go off whenever the saturation drops). Eliminating motion artifacts is a "gee I guess that's neat" feature, like saying your watch is resistant to 300 meters.

I know someone is going to say "But I want to measure my O2 sats during a workout!", so let me just ask-- *why* do you want to do this? Are you worried your O2 sat is going to be "too low"? (If it's too low, you won't need an Apple Watch to tell you). Are you aiming for a specific level of desaturation (the way you might aim for a specific elevation in pulse rate)? Why? What's the "target" level you are aiming for?

The main uses I see for oximeter-on-a-smartwatch are 1) figuring out if someone who is short of breath needs to go to the ER, 2) keeping an eye on Grandma, and 3) screening for sleep apnea. All three of these goals can be accomplished even if your oximeter has motion artifacts.

Not quite true. The fries obviously have more fat, since they absorb some of the fat they're fried in. A baked potato has almost no fat at all. And even if you cook the fries in a "healthy" oil, the oil undergoes a variety of chemical changes when it's heated for a long time, which makes it less healthy.

Although you could argue that if you load up the baked potato with butter or sour cream, it becomes less healthy than the fries.

Obligatory xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1294/