For all the people who believe that this is true, I think we should encourage them.

- Humans haven't evolved to travel faster than walking/riding speed, so they should eschew all forms of mechanical transport >30 mph.
- Humans haven't evolved to emotionally cope with communication without being in-person, so they need to give up cell phones
- Humans' eyes haven't evolved to cope with electronic text or really any text, so they should never read or go on the internet.

Personally, I agree, this would be a better world if they all did that. I know I'd be happier.

(in short, this is stupid; natural selection works as a RESULT of environmental and species' behavioral changes, not that we have to wait until we evolved to be able to cope with X before we can do it.)

(looks at the last 13 years of US conduct in the "war" on terror)
You think jurisdiction - or lack thereof - makes *any* substantial difference?

Seriously?

Maybe you missed my point about the earth going through pretty much this same scenario at least a dozen times in the last couple of million years?
Human CO2 is dwarfed by natural sources, and the greenhouse effect of WATER VAPOR is massively more than that. What AGW zealots are asserting is that the climate is balanced on some sort of knife-edge of conditions, that the slightest tip by human CO2 emissions will push it into a runaway spiral of effects.
We've got historical records of sudden higher CO2 and temps a dozen times; each time, feedback brought the system back to an equilibrium state. Why would we assert that "now" is somehow different from all of those previous examples?

You had it, and then you lost it.

You talked about feedback loops that restore a system to equilibrium (which, indeed, are amply demonstrated in everything from physical to biological systems on Earth), then (somehow) assume this isn't one.

As you mention, nature frequently has feedback loops that offset changing conditions. If the "sweet spot" comfort zone of the natural system on earth were anywhere near as desperately sensitive one as it's currently portrayed, then over the 4+ billion year history of life on earth - and the half dozen cataclysmic extinction events that wipe out 3/4+ of the extant species - the climate would have spun off into one of these feedback loops that are so desperately (hopefully?) projected and we'd have a lifeless Venus or a dessicated Mars. We don't, ergo the system is robust, QED.

To your specific point, we even have several historical examples in the ice records of (geologically) sudden 'pulses' in CO2 and temperature to levels comparable or exceeding today.* In every case the system has then returned to an equilibrium....DOZENS of times over the past couple of million years. The feedback loops you talk about are real; the cataclysmic FUD you're talking about negative feedback is, quite evidently, not. I'll post 4 billion years of actual historical record of far more substantial shocks to the climate of this planet, against 15 years of panicky hypochondriac environmentalists finally devising an issue with some purchase in the public mind.

*some might point out that it happens every 120k years so so, and the last one was about 120k years ago. Yet this specific instance, curiously, is deemed to be "caused by" humans? If I stood on a beach, and knew that the tide came in 10 times before, regularly, and now it is rising for an 11th time, what sort of a moron would I be to assume THIS TIME it's because I'm standing there?

The article itself states clearly that they have no idea how long these seeps have in fact been going on - while other seeps have been researched specifically for that and found NO BASIS for believing they're getting worse. So to automagically jump to the conclusion (which the article desperately tries to - "it's hard to prove they're the result of climate change" - as if that was the end goal of all research, right?) suggest at least faulty science, if not downright mendacity.
Want a feedback loop? How about this - the seeps are extremely sensitive to ocean temp and pressure. The article suggests that a warming ocean might(hopefully, again) be the cause. But if the planet is warming, and seas are rising, this is going to put those seeps under deeper water, which is in fact more likely to slow them down. And if they've been bubbling away forever (ie contributing steadily and unaccounted-for levels of methane to the atmosphere), this could be the mechanism that then reverses warming.

Because fearmongering about dirty, nasty predatory men is a lot more politically palatable than talking to young women about making bad choices and the consequences thereof. That's "substantiating the patriarchy".

The public narrative is about "victimization" not about "stupidity and carelessness".

Don't get me wrong, a man who takes advantage of a girl who's drunk is just as much a scumbag shit as someone who takes advantage of a girl who's been drugged.

But... I know that if I left my car running with the keys in it, even if the guy that (almost inevitably) would steal it should & would be prosecuted, simultaneously the insurance company isn't going to replace my car because of my own stupid choices.

Just sayin'.

Agreed.
I can't mod this + enough.
There seems to be a sort of collective dismissal of the power of government in hacker circles, as if the fact that some faceless bureaucrat in a lowly department failing to deploy a firewall to protect trivial information, or the FBI wasting billion$ on a worthless systems upgrade, were representative of the technological competency of the whole of the US gov't.

I doubt that's the case.

What people fail to understand is that the government is *huge* and as easy as it is to find laughable examples of waste, abuse, and outright incompetence, that's only one end of the bell curve.

The OTHER end has incredibly competent people, giant fat gobs of money, and a wealth of resources that beggar the imagination (ie if they need something and cannot ask for or buy it, they can resort to overt legalities like subpoenas, or not-so-legal methods like property condemnation, deportation, or IRS audits) to compel behavior in pursuit of their goals. Further, the great bulk of the US populace (ie not the very vocal 0.01% on internet chat boards) is IN FAVOR OF LAW AND ORDER, full stop, and will cheerfully volunteer cooperation to "the authorities" however they can. The US federal gov't has tremendous credibility with most of the population.

My point is enthusiastically reiterating the OP: it's one thing to hack some nerd-gamer servers, but when you attack the infrastructure of the US (and make no mistake, that's what this was) you will come to the attention of the 'sharp, pointy' end of the bellcurve.

Good luck with that.

"Mental hurdle aside, the reality is that anyone who plays games, regardless of the platform, is a gamer."

Maybe a teenage boy wrote this summary, because this sort of sophomoric pedantry would be part for the course for a teenager.

Yes, according to the literal meaning of the words, a "gamer" is someone who has ever played a game. In the vernacular, however, the commonly-accepted meaning is substantially narrower than that, implying someone who is an habitual player of video games, in this context, themselves being more involved than minsweeper, solitaire, or yes, kandy krush.

Lesson 1: if the company executives are bigger news than the company and more importantly, its products, then you're doing something seriously wrong.

I am a bibliophile, and much prefer to read a book to my kindle.
Nonetheless, I travel a lot and a kindle is inarguably an advantage for me.
I found the kindle was terribly distracting for at least the first month, until I settled down and didn't have to think at all about using it. So I would like to see this test done with experienced users.

No, I wouldn't pay a single penny.

See, I'm reasonably mature, and if someone says something that I don't like, I can choose to ignore them or, if I feel like it, engage.

It's as simple as clicking away (or even just closing my eyes).

Of course, this post might be labeled as a 'troll' because I'm deliberately being condescending, but that's a stylistic choice to convey that I believe someone, anyone, who claims to have been hooked by a troll 'against their will' needs to fucking grow up.

Dear Daimler,

You don't really seem to 'get' the value of emails. The point is that they can be processed whenever. To delete them is stupid. Essentially, by negating the time-independent aspect of email, you're reducing it to little more than a phone call in terms of utility.

I'm not sure if you noticed, but the rest of the world doesn't conform to your standards of vacation, and there are even alternate TIMEZONES in this world, so it's entirely reasonable that someone might send an email while you're not there.

I look forward to the first time a Daimler exec sends an email to someone out of the office for something important to be done when they get back from vacation.

Dumb fucks.

The key takeaway from the report is that nobody will be personally held to blame for the incompetence (at best; corruption and nepotism at worst) of the process and end result.

No punishments or consequences, all around!

First, where'd I use the word "race"?

Second, I keep hearing this "there's no genetic basis!" bullshit as if it's a fact. Are you asserting that there is no genetic basis for epicanthic folds or for melanin levels in the skin? Are you seriously saying that these characteristics are not heritable?

Because if they're heritable, there's a genetic basis for it, and (generally) vice versa.

Now, the problem with race is as much one of definition as of identification.
The human 'race' isn't like a bunch of different color legos - discrete and identifiably different. It's more like a river flowing into a fen - due to geography and history, there's a diffusion of the 'theoretical root human' into a myriad of generally-observable channels, but even THEN none of them were ever really discrete, and mixing is continual at the margins.

NEVERTHELESS, to therefore deny that there are what are generally recognized as ethnicities because of this pedantic insistence on focusing on boundary-cases is silly.

It's honestly not a bad idea, except for the 'problem of the mandarins'.

Because our society is exceptionally complex, even the role of 'managing the managers' assigned to execute tasks/policy is a major challenge, and no single person can be expected to have enough expertise to do everything.

So politicians rely on mandarins - unelected, professional bureaucrats that ostensibly just know how to push the levers and pull the strings to execute the mechanisms of government.

When a freshman politician arrives, these mandarins wield a great deal of power, as this politician is pretty much at their mercy. If there's nothing BUT 'freshmen' politicians, these bureaucrats essentially run the government. A long-service, professional politician at least has a chance of intuiting when policy is being deliberately interfered with.

Is that 'ability' to babysit the mandarins worth the permanent old boy network of back-scratching career politicos? That's really the question, isn't it?

If you don't like it, perhaps you should get your news from some other site that communicates with whatever measure you find more comforting?