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Comment Re:need to get over the "cult of macho programming (Score 1) 231

Shit happens to the best programmers. The only thing to prevent such things is to check the code. Therefore, you need another person trying to test the code and you need a specification for the code so you can really check the code against another artifact. But obviously nobody bothered. That's why in housing the architect plans the building and at least two structural designer check the design (at least in Germany that is).

Comment Re:But...but... "there's no such thing as race" LO (Score 1) 69

There is no such thing as race in conjunction with humans, as this would imply selective breeding. The equality of people do not mean that we are all equal in genes. That would be quite confusing, if everybody would look the same. We are all different and equal in rights.

Comment Re:That's Racist (Score 1) 69

No it is not. Read the fine (nature) article. Furthermore, there are no human races. Race implies human-driven selective breeding.

BTW: A racist implies that there are certain groups of humans which are better (on an absolute scale) than other and that they are therefore superior and should rule over the other or even exterminate (greeting from the daleks) those other humans. In reality we are all different and in that property we are all equal, especially in rights. At least in theory that is. In Reality we are only worth our stock of gold pressed latinum.

Comment Re:True (Score 1) 499

They show that the stuff you bought have, for example, a high salt concentration. Naturally, you would not eat so much of the stuff that it would be harmful. However, this might not be so clear for other product or for other people. Anyway, the label alerts you to the fact that this food has a high salt concentration.

BTW: Many people have a distorted relationship to food. They eat two bags of potato chips together with 2 liter of coke during a TV session. The idea is to inform them more drastically that the stuff they eat has high concentration of salt, fat etc.

Comment True (Score 2) 499

This has been found out over and over again, but the food industry will always lobby against anything which would reduce their market. They even lobby against labels. In the EU, there was an initiative which wanted to color code the amount of fat, sugar, salt and other carbohydrates with (green = low, yellow = medium, and red = high) together with numerical values. It was stopped after massive lobbying. So now these labels are all white or black, require reading, and the values are distorted in different ways.

So this is an uphill battle. What helps, is buying at a local market instead of a supermarket. And do not watch TV adverts.

Comment Discrimination (Score 2) 231

The whole point of big data is to identify common properties of groups of people to be able to exploit them. While big data could also be used to find diseases, protect us from natural disasters, its is only utilized to such efforts when their is a financial gain or a gain in control of the population. For companies, it is only used for exploitation. Now wondering about that is hypocritical.

Comment Re:Sharing is common outside the west (Score 2) 331

First, the unpopularity is not evenly distributed in all classes of society. Second, a lot of people defend capitalism, because they mistake it for market economy. Third, a large person think capitalism is freedom and any change is dictatorship, like Russia. They confuse economic system and political system. Communism and democracy could be combined (in theory), where all goods belong to everyone. And we all decide over its use. I personally doubt that such concept would work. Other concepts have worked in the past and present which have different states of ownerships.

Still. Those who control the states in Western country are in favor of the present economy. We all life in an oligarchy, just like the Russians and Ukrainians. The major difference, we have to freedom of speech and they do not. However, we are ignored, while they get all the attention of the state.

Comment Re:Insecurity (Score 1) 331

A negative income tax would either require higher taxes for the middle class, which would result in no impact or a minimal impact on the economy at large, as money is transferred between those who have not much to those who have nothing. Or you have to tax the rich resulting in a transfer from savings to the poor who spend it. This would have a positive effect on the economy, increasing jobs (for short), and increase inflation (a bit), however this would not find the approval of your oligarchic overlords in the US. And raising taxes for the middle class would be used in "elections" to destroy an opponent in an election. Therefore, both options will not happen.

Comment Re:Sharing is common outside the west (Score 1) 331

Sharing is and even more was also very common in the West (from a European point of view). However, that deteriorated over the past decades (starting in the 1970ies). Now we at an all time low. And as wealth is generally decreasing,sharing start to become interesting again. Furthermore, capitalism is no longer that popular.

Comment Sharing is nothing new (Score 2) 331

In previous decades people shared stuff a lot. They shared tools, e.g., when they build houses. They shared land. They shared knowledge. Farmers, share their equipment for a long time, as it was expensive all the time. For example, harvesters are shared even today through farmers cooperatives. The "new" share economy is, therefore, not new. The only new thing is that the sharing platform is now a company and not a joint organisation making profit out of sharing. Furthermore, consumers are now able to share their goods with people over a larger area. And true, people would have led their car in the past only to people they know of. Now they share it with people who pay for it.

In the past sharing was a social act. Now it is a business. However, traditional sharing is also increasing. And traditional sharing requires people to like each other. Therefore, they have to build working relationships, which is definitively a step in the right direction.

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