In other words, the computer was unable to learn to distinguish beautiful people from ugly people.

Why should it do that? It was not the purpose of the experiment.

The future of fine art. Ugly pictures because those are the only ones not generated by an algorithm.

You've just described all the *ism movements at the beginning of the XX century. Your clock is 100 years late.

Now all pictures will tend to be the same with the algorithm telling the amateur photographer how to frame the shot.

You say that as if it was a bad thing.

ÂBlock (read as "micro-block") has smaller memory footprint than AdBlock (and therefore Adblock Edge), and can use the same major privacy lists (EasyList, EasyPrivacy, Peter Lowe's Ad Server).

Why do we want semi transparent smart devices?

Take a look at augmented reality.

I've come to agree on this. In cases of infrastructure free market forces don't work well enough to work for the good of the consumer. Telephone, internet, highways, etc. The costs of entry are so high there's not a real market and corruption etc as you've explained well take over. In that case I agree government is better than a natural monopoly, but I don't think government ownership is the only option. An in between option is possible where a independent government sanctioned organization owns the infrastructure but has a bit more flexibility and incentives to operate efficiently. Now it may not work, think the post office where poor government oversight hamstrings their ability to make decisions, but even there it's probably better than outright government ownership. The post office does actually do their job fairly efficiently and at low cost. But in that case you're basically asking for smart regulation, and that's tough to do. Not all regulation is bad, bad regulation is bad but smart regulation is hard to do. There's a chance though it can be better than outright government ownership and retain the benefits while still adding flexibility. The structure can be anywhere on a continuum from full government ownership to full independence or somewhere in between. The more freedom the more chance for more efficiency but the more chance for failure.

Yeah you sound like you know what you're talking about, except you don't. I know the studies you read make it sound easy, except it didn't turn out to be so easy. If it were that easy people would be investing billions into it to earn the profits that the oil companies are currently earning on petroleum. The studies you read, I read too, and they are smaller scale, talking about hoping to scale up. Optimistic pilot studies are practically legend and this seems to be a case. When trying to scale up, difficulties seem to have arisen. When you look into the companies that are trying to scale it up, it isn't working out as well. The contaminants are happening, the yields are lower, the costs are higher, etc.

Yeah you've repeated the rah rah promising sounding stuff from the decades old NREL reports. It sounds really great, I've read those too. But read them carefully--they're very initial studies that never scaled up. They are full of statements to the tune of "when scaled up to commercial volumes". Excepts it's been decades and no one has been able to do it. I've followed a number of the experiments of people trying and it doesn't seem to be as easy as the NREL papers made it sound. The open raceway ponds get contaminated with lower oil strains and don't produce the oil at the rate the papers hypothesized and the closed systems are expensive and difficult to operate. I'm not saying it's not possible, but the magical oil from algae to produce 100% of our transportation fuel isn't going to be nearly as easy as it seemed. Possible? Maybe yes, but probably not economical anytime soon. Think of it this way, if it worked, oil companies would be pouring billions into making it work rather than spending those billions drilling underwater or paying despotic dictators. They don't care where their oil comes from and if biodiesel from algae worked they'd be all over it to sell that to you cheaper than the other oil companies. They are researching it and possibly when crude oil is 4, 10, 20 or more times more expensive than it is now then algal biodiesel will be cost competitive. It wasn't when oil was over $100 a barrel, but it's possible something will be figured out that hasn't been in the last few decades to make it feasible by the time it gets back there. Or maybe it won't.

Unfortunately, the US does not have free market capitalism on broadband communications. In most areas it is either monopoly or duopoly

That's what a free market will usually naturally gravitate to. Competition is bad for all competitors, so cartels or monopolies are strong attractors in the system. If you want competition and choice you need market regulation to make it happen.

I kind of want the opposite. I've got a big, capable laptop at home, and several computers at work. When I go out, though, I'm not going to do any real programming or make a presentation or things like that when I'm at a cafe with my wife, or sitting on the train home from work. I'll surf the web, read a paper or play games. A tablet lets me do that just fine.

A small, light laptop has too many compromises; little memory, slow CPU (that gets throttled after more than a few seconds at 100%), small screen and keyboard. And it's still much heavier than the Tablet Z I carry. The tablet is light and thin enough that I really don't notice it in my bag at all.

We're all hunting for the impossible: a matchbox-size computer with the power of a workstation and a 40" screen. Instead we have to compromise. And we all end up with different compromises. I've even thought of cancelling my smartphone and go back to a small, light feature-phone. It's cheaper, more durable and the battery lasts for a week. Use only the tablet for apps.

Exactly this. A well encoded DVD is plenty good enough for anything other than very large screens and for people with insanely large screens they won't be buying 4k because it will cost more than their homes.

Nope. I have a 46" 1080p HDTV and sit around 10 feet from it. I have compared DVD and Blu-ray versions of some of the same movies that I bought on both mediums. The difference is night and day. If I watch on my 1080p computer monitor, 23" and I sit about 2 feet away, it is even more noticeable.

DVDs annoy the piss out of me because they are so blurry. Blu-rays might not be the high-resolution king anymore, but they are certainly not blurry.

There are over a hundred different altcoins by now. What makes this one so different that it's Slashdot-front-page worthy?

It has hit Slashdot front-page, therefore it has got exposure to some high profile geeks (or it would, if there were any high profile geeks left reading Slashdot).

May I suggest the Free Pascal Compiler with Lazarus as IDE. There's even a Lazarus add-on to automatically configure it for pupils/beginners.

Disclaimer: I am and have been one of the FPC developers for the past 17.5 years (also starting originally with Turbo Pascal, and then moving on to FPC once it became clear Borland wouldn't come out with a 32 bit DOS version).