For many years now, the side bar on the front page has been linked to DustyM's account but to my account on all of the secondary pages. This has been annoying and I've given feedback on it a few times with no response.
Does anyone know of a way to fix that damn sidebar? If not, I have been using the workaround for a long time now, but it is exceedingly irritating.
My great great grandmother wrote a biography of her three brothers killed in WW1. I'm typing it all into a LaTeX editor and will be adding a family tree along with a sketched outline of their lives and newspaper clippings.
A best-seller it ain't, but it may interest a few here as these guys show autistic traits and are geeks from just over a century ago.
TL;DR version: 80s dystopian techno-horror geekfest with relatively accurate portrayal of cryptography and hacking.
Long version: Pretty much the same as above. It's a low budget BBC production that scores highly on accuracy of methods, exploits and technology of the era, insofar as TV ever gets.
The premise: a low-rank civil servant, tracking down bank fraud, discovers a trail of blackmail, corruption by intelligence services, deliberate weaknesses in security and criminal gangs operating with impunity.
By season 2, he's keeping himself alive the same way the Wikileaks journalists did, his wife has what we would call severe PTSD and the body count isn't slowing down.
Given trauma was barely understood in the 80s, the portrayal there and the bouts of temporary insanity are extremely close to what happens, again allowing for this being TV drama and not a psychological documentary.
The storyline deals with cryptography, surveillance society, backdoors and institutional corruption. All hot button issues of today. It even covers the inevitable issues of DIY security.
The conspiracy aspect is a trifle OTT bit, again, it's TV. It has to be to have a program.
It's geared to nerds, geeks and dystopia lovers, though, rather than the mainstream. I saw more reviews in computer journals than in TV guides.
It's the sort of show that would really need updating to be watchable by modern audiences, but fans of older shows would likely enjoy it.
It wasn't unusual for the time, which is the great thing
The 80s were a time for really bleak geek television - Codename Icarus (for the younger viewers), Edge of Darkness, Terry Nation's Survivors, Threads - all productions in this decade.
(Even late 70s had some dark stuff, Blake's 7, The Omega Factor, Day of the Triffids, and ABC/Central's Sapphire & Steel were not light watching. You have to go back to the start of the decade and Doomwatch to see a plausible contemporary dystopia.)
The stuff of a thousand bad dreams, these shows.
There were, at one point, quite a few historical wargames (Britannia, Decline and Fall, etc) but they were mostly about large-scale strategy rather than the history itself (which was mostly an excuse for blowing up other people's counters). History lessons via roleplaying games sounds quite an interesting approach and could be used to cover all kinds of events.
The expansion pack isn't out yet (it's still in kickstart) but there's enough information about it to get a good feel for how much depth there is in there. If it's done well, it could be very effective in the same way "...and then the Huns came and beat the sh*t out of the Romans before leaving again" isn't. Unless you're a Hun.
I'd like to get people's views on the use of roleplaying games and which system would be best for such gaming. Rolemaster? Call of Cthulhu? The ever-present Dungeons and Dragons? ("My 20th level mage casts a fireball at the fleeing Scots" sounds ahistorical.)
Ok, so let's start be defining a few terms, as it is obvious from Facebook genetic genealogy groups that people are truly ignorant on the subject. (Not that I believe this is common on Slashdot, where we're all much more knowledgeable.)
First off, most genetic testing is NOT carried out by sequencing all of your DNA, a widespread belief that resulted in outrage on one Facebook group when I pointed that out.
The vast majority of consumer testing is done by SNP genotyping. They look at very specific genetic markers and see if those markers have changed from one base pair to another. That's the only type of mutation looked for and they typically look at only a few.
So we've our first way to group companies: sequencing vs genotyping.
SNPs (single nucleotide polymorphisms) are, as mentioned above, one type of mutation. Another is called STR (short tandem repeat), where a block of DNA is duplicated.
FamilyTreeDNA does both STR and SNP testing, STRs mostly for the Y chromosome. Both can be used for family history.
Most labs, though, use only SNP tests. It's quicker and cheaper than counting repeats but with many of the more interesting ones covered by patents or kept private by other means, there's a lot more secrecy involved.
(Note: This has doubtless led to a lot of unnecessary deaths, as genetic markers indicating a high probability of getting certain forms of cancer are being milked by private companies for profit. Few people get more than one test, so most people won't know if they carry such markers and can't take action in advance.)
So the second piece of jargon is SNP vs STR.
Finally, we come to the different areas of DNA. There are regions that are especially good for ancestrial reserch (mostly non-coding DNA), then there's the exome (which is where most of the protein coding takes place), you've telomeres (suicidal buffers between chromosomes, which have a function in longevity), and so on. I won't list them all.
The Y chromosome is particularly good for ancestry, but only has 9 coding genes left in it. It's possible it will vanish in time, but it seems to be fairly stable for right now.
Most companies test only DNA that is good for ancestral research in the autosomal regions (aDNA, the regions outside the sex chromosomes). This allows you to identify anyone who is genetically connected, but because you (on average) get just under 50% (remember, there's mutations in each generation and that DNA comes from neither parent) of your DNA from each parent, the distance you can track depends on how many markers are tested (very few). Reliability falls off sharply.
YDNA (Y chromosome DNA) tests only test for paternal ancestry, but if two people have a common paternal-line ancestor, it's a lot more precise once you're past about second cousins. It's popular with anthropologists as it's very good for tracking how men have migrated.
mtDNA (mitochondrial DNA) is only inherited through the maternal line. Again, it's very popular, this time for tracking how women have migrated. There are certain forms of mtDNA that are linked to health benefits and others to genetic diseases, so this one tends to be the most controversial of the ancestral DNA tests. It also changes very slowly, so you don't get high resolution on population movements.
These two (YDNA and mtDNA) tests can tell you a lot about whether societies are open or closed, and whether it was men who travelled to find partners, women, or both. So we can know something of the culture of even long-extinct societies.
The data I have been able to find is for 2019. It shows: Myheritage tests for 702,442 autosomal SNPS, AncestryDNA for 637,639, FTDNA for 612,272 and 23andme for 630,132. This is out of a total of 3 billion base pairs. So the best test that year looked at 0.0023% of the genome.
ISOGG produced a chart as well, but it's far older. Their chart is dated around 2013.
Since you inherit a random 50% from each parent, the assumption that this is statistically meaningful for such a small fraction of the DNA is questionable. It seems to work adequately, but I'm not sure what the error bars are.
FTDNA also tests up to 111 STRs on regular tests and 600+ STRs for their "BigY" (it depends on the quality of the genetic sample).
Companies that do sequencing sometimes offer partial kits (in the order of tens of millions of SNPs) or full sequencing (which is what the same suggests). These are rarer and more expensive.
Most DNA companies allow you to access the raw data, some only allow it if you pay vast sums of money, and some don't allow you to at all. Always check in advance.
When you download your own data, you can use public databases to search for matches (either for relatives or genetic conditions). The quality of public databases is less controlled, both in terms of privacy and quality of data. However, corporate databases will usually be smaller for both types of data and will also usually not contain data from rivals. If you want broad data sets, public databases are the way to go.
I've only tested with 23&Me, FamilyTreeDNA, CRI Genetics and Nebula Genomics, so can't tell you anything much about the quality of the other companies.
(Ok, I also tested with uBiome, a microbiome testing company in the US, but they had their computers seized some time back due to fraud. I have no idea what happened to my data on there, or whether there's a way to access it.)
The quality seems to be reasonable for all four.
FTDNA is the most expensive for a lot of things, but has less of a sticker shock than Nebula and gets more data than 23&Me. It looks like there are a few companies that are better for ancestry but it's one of the best and the one the Genomics Project used. They're the only ancestral company that gives you STRs AFAIK and they give you a much more detailed evaluation of haplogroups than anyone else I've tested with.
Nebula does up to medical grade (100x oversampling) DNA testing, so if you want results a hospital will trust, that's where you part with a vast amount of money.
23&Me is good for a lot of medical stuff and if you want to help with research is probably the best.
CRI Genetics produces a lot of data with much higher reliability than most of the others, but you can't access the raw data and their databases won't be as extensive. However, because you can't access the raw data, you have to test with them to compare against their database.
I have now passed the total of 30 different black teas. Not fruit, not spice, not herbal, not even green, white or red tea. Just black teas. No, blends like PG Tips and Yorkshire Gold don't count either.
Why so many? Aside from being my current monomania, it's because I'm fascinated by how different they are.
I couldn't tell you the chemistry that makes that difference, nor could I tell you what difference it makes in terms of the various compounds affecting alertness or sedation. (It contains both), in terms of health benefits or even in the simplest term of how water is retained in the body.
But I'm determined to find out at least some of this. It'll have to be on my own, as essentially no research is being done on the subject, and I've no idea of what that'll require beyond a very good gas spectrometer (I'm going to have to count molecules, not atoms).
But I think it would be fun to find out, and definitely worth doing as long as I can figure out how to (a) control the parameters, and (b) afford said piece of gear.
See Have Bruce Perens Keynote Your Confference at perens.com
Guess what? I am no longer a desperate single. I am married (and also expecting a daughter!).
It was hard to find someone who will expect me, being that geeky person.. most Israeli girls prefer tough guys. But I finally found the girl whom I want to live to the rest of my life.
YES YES!
But you are still allowed to hug me.
Hi world,
I'm currently trying out a new behavior trait: "going back to the way it was before." Sounds exciting, huh. Color me Facebook-less since 1.5 months and frankly, this is the first time since I feel the need to actually share something.
My idea was this: what if I would write down and re-visit the steps that lead up to that decision to leave the largest social network in the world? Why? Well, for one thing, I think the idea to go back to earlier practices (such as writing a full blown more than 140 character journal) is going to move slowly back into the center of our collective conscious over the next 5 years. People will start to realize it's the sane thing to do, or so at least that is my guess. But let's look into the dynamics of how I got there.
Many of us remember the so called "browser wars", the epic "os flame-wars", or even further down the burning question wether gnu or unix would be preferable, wether java would be worth it compared to c++, etc.. 30 or 40 years ago, these discussions were of a technical level and nerdism that few can aspire to imagine today. These discussions, much like today, were full of noise, trolls and the occasional insightful remark. These wars were fought in obscure IRC channels and BBS forums, but there was one thing pretty special about them. The technological limits were the only roadblock that stopped our brains from dumping their content in 7 or 8 bit streams that could be shared and read by our fellow peers and friends (and foes). After the browser war came the Napster incident, the BearShare and KaZaa incidents and many systems that predate our current torrent / tor p2p sharing infrastructure. Curiously, I never read about social network wars, which of course also happened. A quick look at the Wikipedia page shows a whopping 208 unique social network websites that attempt to capture our attention, every day life, pictures, personal data, emotions, furniture, love for smiling shit and everything else in between. Not every single one of them survived of course. Who remembers Myspace? Bolt? MS LiveSpaces? or Hyves? So yeah there were wars, but the concept of war was never prominently played, things just "evolved".
So there I was in December 2016, pondering if I still needed facebook. I struck me that I had refrained from posting personal things. In fact in multiple runs, I had slowly started to remove personal data, simply because it increasingly looked ridiculous. Would you start yelling your city of birth and birthday just about anyone in the street? Your marital status? Would you show all the pictures of all your travels and everything else to complete strangers? Of course not. Sure you can spend endless hours 'managing' all that information. Such fun. So much to re-post, so much 'news' to share.
Until you've had it with the latest policy change. Until you realize you are again indicating people they are sharing fake 'news' or hoaxes. Until you realize all your friends posts start with 'OMG'. Or that you can't include 2 images in one post that blatantly refute each-other, because, hey it's facebook. Until you realize that all posts shared say: "look, this is *really* interesting, but I'm just going to dump it here because I'm tired of pretending my shit is more interesting than yours. eat it or die."
Ego needs a cookie. I did truly post some interesting stuff. Stuff about stock markets that are indicative of how defunct our world is. Stuff from NOAA that says how fucked up our climate has become already. Stuff in research papers that tell something about the very structure of our universe. Stuff about brain functions, important findings on cellular level to fight disease, etc, etc.. Not that very many people ever reacted to 'my' shared crap. At best, people reacted because I reacted to their posts first.
On Januari 1st 2017, I stopped playing that pathetic me-me game, and went back to my previous behavior: I traded facebook with sleep. I read books. I started to play FinalFantasy again. I still check my news channels, but you know what.. somehow I'm getting better at finding new resources, new pointers. And I'm looking at much more meaningful content. See back of this post.
The date is not coincidental. On December 31st 2016, we were out for new-years-eve at my parents-in-law. It was a fairly modest get together with nice food, cozy dinner, and a bit of fireworks on TV. In Belgium and The Netherlands, there is a tradition to watch comedians that recount how they saw the past year, such as Wim Helsen or Michael Van Peel. Comparing them to John Stewart / Daily Show would do neither party any favors, but in my book they're equally good. In fact they're all best in their class.
While the evening shot past mid-night, we all wished each-other happy new year and stayed up for a while until the inevitable sleep and early morning came around. Nothing very shocking, but little did we know that at that very same time, somebody had cracked open the front door of our house and was going through all our possessions, stealing laptops, cameras, my bike I use daily with mounted child-seat, golden jewelry, and possibly other stuff, making a huge mess in the process. We were literally 100km south.
We arrived home at 7PM, found some people in front of our house gesturing at the break-in. After the initial shock, my cool kicks in. The first thing to do was to verify the house, call the police and go through the whole procedure. Yes, it's nerve wrecking and sleep-inducing at the same time. Our hope that the police finds the culprit is virtually nil, while at the same time you're supposed to be angry and mad, hopeful and rational. I can't do that emotion very convincingly. I just kept going until everyone was asleep.
When I finally sat down for a few minutes (or hours - the door was badly damaged, so I kept guard the whole night in freezing temperatures) I had time go over all the events. Time gives me oxygen. I'm slow like that, I step on the brakes when I'm going too fast. Given that laptops had been stolen, I decided it was time to change passwords. We still had our phones after all, android, so pretty vulnerable if they could hack into our stuff first. And then it suddenly occurred to me that selling this 'event' in my life on facebook was really the last thing I ever would want to do. Much like all the other important events in my life which I did not share. And so I dropped facebook and Google+ overnight. I'm searching with duckduckgo now. I haven't had a single moment of regret. I sometimes am curious of what is going on there of course, but I imagine it's just the same shit again and again, in different colors.
So what makes me share all this here then, you wonder? Well, all of this is old news, it's also much more digested, no images, no screaming. It's a wall of text full of close to logical long sentences. Those looking for quick fixes will be off running to their click pools after half a paragraph. Those reading this will probably not care and never comment. So who is left? It's me. And that's just fine.
Much in concordance with my earlier post, I pledge for us all to go back to earlier times, pick up things that were loved but lost in the fabric of spacetime. Let's go back and be ace at it. Hello world!
Greets,
ps: Forget Trump, check this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEwuGHFF7qE&t=10s&index=1&list=LL4dYPyntjgFh1JxPMFxCOsw
I don't expect anything from this site, this post, or you.
The only thing I offer is a gentle "Hi."
Yes. 2 more years of silence. I'm sure that time brought you various experiences of the short span of time we get to enjoy on this blue sphere, as it did for me. Like solving a giant puzzle game, with the solution running away in ever more dimensions with every step you take. Frustrations, yes, but no regrets, and rewards that warrant the journey.
The finality of the whole is gently setting in on me, which is probably why I came here to say hi. Take a break. It seems I often say hi without any finality involved..
I'm sure some neurons in my head are having a party now, as I'm typing in this old familiar all too often endlessly ranting journal. This is funny. To read my own age-old reflections again, I mean. So comforting.
Re-discover, then re-build once more. Embrace the change ad infinitum.
Wishing you the same, and kindness to all,
Little Darkness / Andr0meda / proud dad / loving husband / mad scientist / code dreamer
It's a happening place. There are upwards of 3, maybe 4 posts a day!
You should join us, if you like.
http://www.reddit.com/r/CircularRefuge
(message mods to join; can't let the riffraff on reddit in! Just our very own special riffraff.)
Posted a few comments on this Ask Slashdot article yesterday. Come back, and they've disappeared. They've not been deleted - I can still access them, from the recent comments area of my profile - and they've not been downmodded either. Not a Beta issue, as I'm not currently on it.
??????
Hey, Slashdot was instrumental in finding Twue Wuv for me, so I couldn't possibly leave it forever. The 14 day comment limit, however, is unfortunate for those of us who stop by only every 6-9 months.
I have read your updates and am interested in your lives and would love to leave a comment expressing as much.
So, hey, Red5, congratulations on the marriage and baby and stuff! And all the other babies that have happened in the past 5 years or so for everybody else! And marriages! And diplomas! And new jobs! And sorry/congrats about the divorces!
Just spotted that people are stuffing comments into various stories here for the sole purpose of complaining about the
Maybe it's because I only occasionally visit here, but are people really that hung up on the current design?
Hell, I can remember when
Having looked at the Beta, it seems to me a damn sight cleaner that some news sites I can think of*. Ok, the comment view controls could use some refining, but that's the whole point of beta-testing, right?
(*I still have nightmares about pre-2000s ZDNet. Makes the current design look almost pleasant by comparison.)
Had a failed date yesterday....
and.....
it's so sad...
I just want to find a girl who would love me. It's not fair that's it's so hard.
Kleeneness is next to Godelness.
