Neanderthals had slightly larger brains... but then if you look at dolphins you'll see that part of their large brain size is due to FAT to keep their brain temperature up-- because temp is a really HUGE factor on brain function. I enjoyed the Neanderthal connection and how it upset so many white people... (I'm white) and I will enjoy the discovery that Neanderthals were fat headed too.

Not long ago there was some scientists claiming high testosterone levels were damaging to evolution so it lowered and probably allowed more brain development. Neanderthals could have had high testosterone levels... Neanderthals are known to be anti-social with small groups while the humans had tribes and could work as a group (or some tradition kept their bones together and Neanderthals bones apart) - and before people were forced to accept the interbreeding science the thought was that Neanderthals didn't stand a chance.

Also large human brains require a lot of PROTEIN in the diet. So does muscle. It would seem to me as brains became more important the protein in the diet migrated. I remember reading something about our ape ancestors moving to more meat in the diet and how that was needed for brain size. It wasn't out of desperation.

Also when one reads the science it becomes rather clear (but not provable) that brains were tiny all the way to the top of the food chain and the only pressure would have been competition between packs of the plains apes (which date far before Neanderthals.) There wasn't a food shortage as much as too much demand. That would also encourage them to spread out over a wide range. Just think about the facts-- humans have little hair, sweat out their whole body's skin, run efficiently on two legs, and are the best distance runners in the whole animal kingdom. We didn't become best for nothing. We ran in packs after lions etc. until they over heated and then anything made easy kill. A Cheetah may be way faster but it can't go out of your sight and a pack of healthy humans can jog after it for 20 miles without rest... if the Cheetah can even make it that far in the heat (plus having thumbs, throwing sticks and rocks is likely. Chimps still throw things to deter/herd... they just can't chase and don't need to compete.) Humans use less energy and muscle to propel themselves great distances than probably any other land animal; again the evolutionary pressure of jogging explains most everything.

Lactose intolerance is about the GUT bacteria not the genetics of the person. You can transplant gut bacteria and get rid of lactose intolerance. This has been known (not mainstream) for a long time already.

No evolution is involved except perhaps in the bacteria why exist to carry. Face it, you are the minority of your own body and those bacteria let you live so you can bring them food.

Authoritarianism applies to democracies and dictatorships as well as communism, socialism, and corporatism (which Mussolini called Fascism which is not the same as Nazi Fascism which is not definitive Fascism.)

China is quite corrupt but they've long used the democratic process. Communism doesn't exclude using the democratic process; there are lots of ways it can be done, limited, etc. Look at religious states like Iran or arguably Israel who are democracies but have hugely powerful religious forces at play (officially or unofficially.)

Then you have the USA which uses the democratic process but is no longer a functional democracy. So officially it has the label but practically it is too dysfunctional to really be one. Direct democracy is for annoying strict constructionist types who think there is only 1 kind of democracy.

Totally true. Human brains haven't evolved (sadly) and what got us to where we are today is a tiny group of scientists and some inventors who did exceptionally well with what we had and did in the past. Realistically, we need to focus on THOSE people and what made them possible instead of attempting to to a 1 size fits all solution with the silly dream of making everybody into an Einstein. (If you want to try doing that, you are going to have to leave Einsteins alone with 1900s education and place the rest into your human experiments.... until you end up with hundreds of education models where then the biggest problem will be inventing the Sorting Hat.)

Yes, farming was a big reason.

Summer cooling is expensive. Teachers should be paid more if they work more. Nobody would work 2 more months per year at the same pay. (Teachers end and start at different dates than the students.)

I learned a great deal during the summer vacation. Don't let school interfere any further with your child's education!

More children need to be allowed to FAIL... and spend their summer saving face so they can be with their peers again.

Not that anything matters when you have a system geared for rote learning to pass standardized multiple guess exams; ignoring all the less quantifiable education or things not deemed important enough to regiment into a rigid exam system.

Grandparent is wrong about CUTE solar. TFA was about an invention by the same people who invented a kind of solar cell and the grandparent naively thought that it wasn't an opportunity to show off their other tangentially related invention... it was only about being "cute."

Solar is not too expensive and it is extremely reliable!

1) Solar costs less than nuclear. It's upfront cost is high (like nuclear) but it has zero fuel costs for it's lifespan unlike everything else except wind and hydro. (Nuclear fuel is cheap. Spent fuel is another matter and becomes highly speculative as to the real costs.)

2) Solar is extremely reliable. Sunlight is predictable; humans knew precisely how much sun they'd see way before the discover of electricity; including the eclipses. How much sunlight... that is intermittent but it does not completely disappear; you still get energy. It is not dark everywhere all at once (except at night,) just as traditional power generation required a GRID which could shift power for frequent planned and unplanned downtime as well as shifts in demand; future power will require the same planning and mitigation but we will need MORE of it. 100s of miles from my 1 local coal and 1 nuclear plant are other fallback coal plants which are routinely relied upon. It is unlikely low solar output here is also low, we are not talking about running power any further than we already do.

3) Net costs are often ignored and people ALWAYS ignore the indirect costs such as the harm pollution causes. Asbestos and Pb paint are great but their indirect costs eventually were great enough to overcome the objections of industry. (Just look to Asbestos, Canada where they still defend Asbestos.) It cost more to transition away from them but we did. Investment in power storage has huge potential for side benefits while expensive "base load" investment does not.
Example: Making ICE for cooling is an already cheap way to buffer energy demands which handles the biggest spikes in demand and has been deployed for years to save money on the cheap coal powered grid in the USA; solar has nothing to do with it. Storage/buffering systems can save money on their own already and that market has barely started with no demand (other than some businesses wanting to save money) as energy becomes diversified and distributed the demand for buffering will grow. That is where the wise investment is.

High Schools are offering "college in the classroom" programs today. I think it reflects poorly on both that they can fill so much "wasted time" in high school with low level college courses which have degraded to the point of being near the more difficult end of high school curriculum.

If your mommy can bitch to your professor about your progress or grades, IT IS NOT COLLEGE!

Meanwhile we have high school kids entering who are so poorly prepared that the remedial courses are overloaded.

The culture is shifting and I do not think it has anything to do with embracing modern education "technology." First off, university is for the motivated - if you can't be serious then you shouldn't waste the money. I've even had people allude to the "A for effort" type reasoning... Also, I've had people who complain something was on an exam that wasn't covered in lecture! (As if there is an unspoken rule.) Homework IS required people!! Most students don't realize the reason 12 credits is FULL TIME is because the total time required is the same as a 40 hour per week job. So then I have to hear sob stories about how they have a full time job and 8-12 credits of coursework. You simply can't condense the same experience into that much less time, humans have not evolved, and education psychology has made little progress (something which I dabble in because I do make an extra effort to be effective.)

There is a great deal of pressure on staff to not flunk too many people or upset the "customer" too much-- as the admin brings in more high paid MBA types to tell us how the world is a business and their hammer experts are worth the high fees. Too many fear that it reflects badly upon them and you'd think a bunch of smart people would realize correlation is not causation (besides it takes more than 1 whole group flunking to even begin to do correlations.) No curve, if they all suck they must all flunk; it is the only way a quality standard is maintained.

Allowing the current behavior and culture continue will gradually produce worse results as the bar slowly lowers due to student pressure... It's like an evolutionary pressure... This is one area where "the market" should be forbidden because those forces lead to trite certifications by correspondence school (and we have such great respect for those... once we put "cloud" or "online" into the marketing.)

Speaking of which, the classroom has degraded to the point that students have no clue what a real functional classroom looks like... and the profs are not much better themselves. Most the tech encourages what is wrong with education today. Oddly, like how cell phones seem to have make people more distant than bring them together (in general. Sure I can email somebody far away but it also means I don't bother to see people next door because I can email them instead.)

End of rant. There are so many issues one could do a series of books.

Some waste, fraud, abuse and improper management happen in any system. Obviously too much is a problem but it is equally as bad to obsess over reaching 100% perfection.

Simply because they own a TV doesn't indicate a great deal; they could have previously had one, been given one, stole one, etc. It would be difficult and vindictive to make them sell everything they had in order to not starve. There are plenty of pawn shops all over the place so we must have plenty of victims for those vultures... not that one can get much money for those things used anyhow. If you only hand out food stamps to homeless naked people are you going to feel slighted because they have shoes? Sure, YOU won't (but not everybody) but you have to keep in mind that studies show that the poor are pretty bad with money as well as capable of finding ways around their troubles (actually proving capitalist ideals about being inventive) such as eating subgrade food or cutting other corners so they can save up and buy the TV they think they need. After all, TV IS THE DRUG OF THE NATION. Homeless starving addicts will skip meals for a fix.

As far as implying that a race is making up most the people on food stamps etc, it is likely not based in reality as the whites are usually higher in such numbers than other "races" and while it is true that as a % of the demographic the minorities may be doing worse but they are by definition a smaller population so the absolute numbers come out different. Now if one actually treated the whites equally I don't think their % would differ as much as it does and then the absolute numbers would explode (because their population is so much higher.)

Milk was not evolutionary; changes in gut bacteria allowed the drinking of milk because of stupid human behavior they were not eating properly so those children who could use milk lived at higher rates.

The solution to many problems would be changing the evolutionary pressure so that aggressive and likely testosterone high males do not have offspring. It may currently be unusual but it is NOT crewel to vasectomy rapists and other violent offenders.

Microsoft Ireland is STILL Microsoft -- it doesn't have it's own stock listing, it doesn't keep profits to itself etc.

THE Microsoft, USA Microsoft has to incorporate by law in Ireland to do the kind of business it wants to do in that nation. It is more akin to me having to get a permit, license to do something when I'm there that I already did in my home nation. They have different laws and regulations and if I want to do something in their nation I have to do whatever.

Multinationals should and need the complexities and limitations of trying to work over multiple boundaries... If they are big and powerful they can most definitely do this... and today they have so much they are above most laws.

The UK is extremely invasive and their people are OK with it. They DNA collect on their people as well as monitor them more than most nations. Their national health service provides them the cheapest means to access such info and statistics. Combine that with their monitoring system and you'll get the first serious genetic to behavior results.

US corporations or anything incorporated in the USA is going to fall under US law. To allow multinationals anymore exceptions above the law than they already have would be EXTREMELY foolish!

What wouldn't surprise me is how Microsoft could get away with stuff while humans in other countries can not... thinking of what they'll do to Assange or what they are doing to Kim Dot Com who are not under US jurisdiction but are/will be subject to it anyhow... along with anybody else the USA is upset with.

I was reading about more capable hacks back in 2005 back when there were people doing attacks against the generic device drivers for ... well, any type of USB device driver. Plus using it to pick up the keyboard or injecting data to mess with other devices on the bus.

TFA sounds to me like a much more limited attack and not all that creative since we've had a decade+ of USB devices that spoofed multiple devices -- I'm specifically thinking of those spoofed CD-ROM drives on some of those old Flash sticks.

Keyboards? doesn't sound all that useful at 1st glance... but finding a fool proof script to open up a terminal on a mac sounds like an interesting challenge. linux? too much variety. windows... getting to the run cmd is easy.

If you don't have a locked screen saver... which has been a MUST forever... a well written script could just be run from anywhere (just post it online, type in the URL and exec the file) which does most everything you need without admin access but could later also trigger some stuff to attempt privilege escalation attacks... like the police can already buy on usb flash (and whose software is signed by the OS vendor as trusted.)

What would really be interesting are attacks that unlock the screen saver... or some generic driver exploit that allows custom error messages to pop up on the OS... "The radiation shield on your monitor has broken, please sit back 4 ft to avoid being irradiated."

Although given the huge number of exploits and flaws in drivers--- I would like to see something push for greater quality and if that means popular USB stick exploits where it spoofs crap hardware to trigger automatic installation of crap drivers... would be nice to see hardware vendor drivers getting banned/noticed for poor quality.

I'm a rare advocate of preventing rapists from ever having children. Face it, rape worked for the whole evolution of humans. Those aggressive traits worked and the evolutionary pressures rewarded them. There is no reason society can't decide to finally do something about promotion of that behavior into the gene pool. Males are genetically evolved towards the behavior and you can't condition all of them properly from birth to get the results you demand (thank goodness we don't know how because those skills would be used to control people in bad ways... and what we know already is abused.) Perhaps this could lower the need to dominate as well and cut down on domestic abuse (another big source for rape and similar abuse... we don't even have good stats on raped partners because they don't report it or rationalize.) Geeks are probably better than most male demographics at controlling their urges - the anonymous tools free inhibitions for EVERYBODY not just geeks.

No, it is not a slippery slope to eugenics and if you think so you need to look up the slippery slope fallacy.

Mozilla asks for user data and people who do not opt-into that are not contributing data. Me being one of the many who do not-- I suspect intermediate and advanced users comprise the majority of this group. This means their data of people not using things like menu bars because they getting metrics from the most daft users of firefox.

Good designers will use metrics only as a factor not as a mindless system to think for you. Simplistic metrics are a whole issue in themselves along with improper use of statistics (on metrics) which is a common problem as well. Menu bars are never used heavily but they are extremely useful - of all times, in 2014 when phones have more screen space than a desktop did in the 90s we suddenly become obsessed with screen space??

Great designers also will accommodate advanced users and the large base of existing users by not arbitrarily pissing them off. Necessary changes can be done more gradually along with instructions on how to change the feature. (like making sure the user knows how to get to menus when you killed them... and to not foobar the pop-up menu version of the menubar... proper grouping and hierarchy make large things easier.) Also the current situation of "don't make me think" is likely a fad in the design world; I hope that users want to use their brains effectively in the future; otherwise, Edward Tufte etc. are irrelevant as we devolve.

If Mozilla wants to REALLY be a community they will let users choose and try something democratic, such as opt-in or opt-out of a major interface change. Since opt-in would never gain a majority of the users on these recent changes; the designers would naturally push for an opt-out policy but at least they could measure their failure by making opt-out easy to do (like force the user to use it for a few months before presenting the option.) At least then users at all skill levels feel empowered and PART OF SOMETHING (mozilla could even use the opportunity to leverage altruism and promote an organization image unlike the top-down corporate browsers.)

FURTHERMORE, it doesn't matter how many more daft users you have over the advanced users. Your software is not default like IE was. Users install Firefox because of people like slashdot readers. I have brought mozilla 100s of users and I can take them away, some already left for Chrome anyhow... but many do what their nerd or IT staff tells them to do (or whomever sets the default.)