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Comment Re:Moon rocks (Score 1) 150

It is easy to get out of the earth-moon gravity well from the moon with a sled, but your load will still be stuck in a solar orbit similar to the Earth's.
To divert an asteroid, you would need to catch it early, on a near-miss pass of the Earth, and even then the orbit will still intersect our orbit.
If we detect a large object on a direct collision course, launching rocks at it from the moon is about as useful as throwing rocks by hand at an incoming ICBM.

Comment Re: News for nerds (Score 1) 866

try to grow a non-"Roundup Ready" (TM) crop in a field that has been sprayed with massive quantities of glyphosate for years.

Monsanto may well be evil, but glyphosate is incredibly useful, and safe compared to alternatives. Soil life is short, just wait a season if it is that bad.
Where do you get this absurd idea that it "poisons the soil"? I plant my veggies a couple of weeks after using glyphosate to kill all the weeds. They grow fine.

Comment Re:Privacy? (Score 1) 776

Are you really saying that children with learning disabilities or special needs should be denied an education?

I don't know the US, but in Australia a massive amount per-kid is spent on severely disabled children who learn little or nothing, and will never be independent.
It is a very expensive child-minding service, but with more paperwork.
They may get a full-time education assistant in the classroom, sharing a teacher with a few others, and no shortage of other resources. Then on their 18th birthday they get dumped back on their parents, with far more limited support.

The money could be far better spent spread over their lifetimes, or part on less disabled kids in regular schools, where it mighty achieve some lasting benefit.

Comment Re:Most basic feature still missing (Score 1) 202

The English Wikipedia should have user preferences to select UK / US spellings.

Why? I never heard of people having trouble with the alternative* spellings. So long as each article is internally consistent, who cares which it uses?

It would be trivial compared

Hardly! Then you will have to support Australian and Canadian spelling. And determine it by context - we program a computer, but read a TV programme.
Then there are the subtle grammar differences, and vocabulary. Would need to manually edit each page, then maintain the two in parallel.
Its one of those ideas that sounds OK - until you actually think about it.

(* or "alternate" as the en_US version of this comment would say.)

Comment Re:Not for animals or locations (Score 1) 186

Meh. Lyme disease is not recognized in Australia.

Lyme is not endemic here, same as malaria.
The problem is that for every genuine case of Lyme (e.g. returned tourists) there are a thousand self-diagnosed fools who saw a list of vague symptoms on the internet and think they have "chronic lyme". The symptoms are varied, and far from unique to Lyme. So doctors are understandably skeptical.
But if the patient has visited an endemic area, and symptoms match, testing is available, and appropriate antibiotics will be given. (Real testing, not the scam "lyme specialty" labs.)

Comment Re:Fuck this bullshit. (Score 1) 125

The online shop based in Australia can't avoid sales tax.
The online shop based outside Australia can avoid sales tax.

Not so simple. It is more if it is posted from overseas there is no tax. Many local companies have overseas subsidiaries that ship from Asia and do not collect GST. More expensive items (currently over $1000) will be taxed on arrival by customs.
Goods sent from overseas have the disadvantage of higher shipping cost and/or much longer delivery times, as well as loss of warranty (or expensive return shipping). So the scope is limited. It will never be like Amazon killing off local businesses in the US.
And when people order online, they expect to save a _lot_ more than the 10% GST.

Comment Re:Uber isn't collecting GST? (Score 2) 125

in Canada, you don't have to charge GST if you make less than $30,000 in revenue.

$75,000 in Australia. But passengers are paying Uber, not the driver. Uber is evading tax by operating across the border.
Of course they also pay no company tax, insurance, taxi-registration or comply in any way with industry regulation.

If Uber is forced to collect GST, it will then be in the drivers' interest to register for GST so they can claim GST deductions for expenses.

Comment Re:Citation please (Score 1) 187

Can you show that the correlation isn't to poverty, and not race?

All the data shows crime correlates to both of course. Are you confusing correlation with causality?
Suppose the race correlate disappear once controlling for poverty. How much difference would that make? Black people are poorer everywhere. It is not just a local US problem you can blame on the shameful history of slavery. There is no simple fix. But getting rid of handguns and legalising drugs would be a good start.

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