What app do you use in the backcountry? I've honestly never found one that I've thought to be a satisfactory substitute for my Garmin.

If your funding is so bad that you can't afford anything newer than a P3 and a 17" CRT, I have to wonder just how good the research is that you do. Or maybe that you just don't understand how technology has changed.

I encountered the latter in my undergrad days. I was a psych major for a time, and as is tradition they force students to participate in experiments to get free subjects. So one of them was on Internet addiction. This was in the early 2000s, while broadband was not common it was not rare either and the university was of course on a dedicated link. All the questions were around "How long are you connected to the Internet?" and "How often do you log in?" and such things.

I tried to explain to the researcher such questions weren't meaningful to me, my computer was on all the time and I could just use it like any other program. They didn't understand, and figured I didn't understand and kept repeating the question. I tried to explain and demonstrate with their office computer. That failed though, because the thing was so slow it took the better part of a minute to launch IE, which they thought was dialing in to the Internet. For them it wasn't a seamless experience, they only used the Internet when they needed/wanted to since it was so slow. I could not communicate to them that for an ever increasing number of us, it wasn't like that, it was just a part of using a computer.

I've encountered things like this a number of additional times with psychology/sociology/behavioral researchers. Their grasp of computer technology is so poor that their studies are extremely flawed because they don't understand the tools they are using.

That aside, maybe this works, who knows without a link to the paper, but it seems like a more effective use of computers and dieting are the widespread calorie tracker apps. When people actually track what they take in, they often can do a much better job at preventing it from getting excessive.

They already have this. It's called Dance Dance Revolution. It can reach over 1500 calories burned per hour on heavy mode.

When I'm twerking, I can get up to 1750 per hour. But let me tell you, it's not pretty.

Put down the gadget and move your body.

Clearly, you've never watched me play video games. My wife says watching me play makes her tired.

Where I grew up, it was the same but the dick contest was with off road vehicles.

Where I grew up, we had our dick contests using our dicks. And let me tell you, that river's not only cold, but it's deep, too.

Why can't he use them? Does he not have any high ranking federal government officials within reasonable traveling distances? :)

No, it's because a 3D printed gun is not anywhere near as good as a gun made by a gunsmith. I guess if he has a need for a gun that will pass a metal detector or something (though a 3D printed gun probably wouldn't) then I guess he would find some actual use for one, but 3D guns are still not practical. If you want to shoot reliably, would you choose a 3D printed gun over something made by a professional?

Think about the cost of a 3D printer. Now think about the cost of a serious handgun (or as he said, an "assault rifle", though I doubt he knows what that actually is, or what it's for).

Can you think of a legitimate application for which a 3D-printed gun would be superior to a weapon made by a real gunsmith?

That's the thing that drive me nuts about this.

If something is legitimately libelous or defamatory, pretty much every country has a mechanism to have said content removed at the source. Remove the false content, and the next time Google spiders the site, it's gone from Google too. All the "right to be forgotten" is, is a method to censor the truth.

Why would you want to print anything else? Assault rifles and handguns.

Why not print something you can use?

I drive a pick-up with a perfect paint job and I think your attitude is sterotypically elitist.

So, you see your truck as more of a "lifestyle" purchase than a utilitarian one? I'm genuinely curious, because I see a lot of people with big shiny pickups with cargo beds that have never been exposed to the elements, much less scratched by having something placed in them. Their towing hitches are perfectly chromed and have obviously never seen anything like a trailer.

I see some of them commuting into downtown Chicago for their jobs in the financial district and wonder what went into their decisions to purchase such vehicles.

Saturn I - only ten launches, all successful

And that was more than half a century ago.

I suppose it was inevitable. My sex robot is going to make me sleep on the couch.

I may have to go back to doing things manually.

Pretty much my reaction, too.

Humans have no idea how the human, or any other brain, works, so we can hardly teach a machine how brains work. At best, Google is programming (not teaching) a computer to mimic the conversation of humans under highly constrained circumstances. And the methods used have nothing to do with true cognition.

We don't even know enough to make the assertions quoted above with any confidence. Where's the precise boundary between programming and learning anyway?

The prudent AI researcher takes a rain check to get back to you on that one, and meanwhile doesn't denigrate even the smallest achievements, humbly possessing far too little insight into what sequence of small achievements will ultimately end up advancing the main cause.

In our contemporary world where any sort of "promise of quality" is seen as quaint and most companies see their established brand names as something to be cashed in for executive bonuses, people are trained to not give any weight at all to brands. See the AC response for a great example of that.

Overcoming tribal belief sets, sometimes even nationwide backwater thinking, is one of the key obstacles to stemming the flow of disease on the African continent.

Tribal belief sets and backwater thinking is a problem in a lot of highly developed parts of the world too. (I'm looking at you, Southern USA)

But Most people want a car that looks fun and interesting and most electrics outside Tesla seem to have had designers who wouldn't know a good looking car if it drove over their foot.

Teslas won't get "fun and interesting" until they get cheap enough in a few years to start getting in the hands of the tuners.

Personally, I'm going to lower mine all around, give it some pneumatics and hang some big exhaust pipes off the back. Then, I'm going to get a recording of a 1969 Plymouth Super Bee and pipe it though the exhaust tips. I can't wait to see the faces of people at the stop lights.