"Then there is the question of physical activity. During the stone age, getting too fat and/or being too inactive, were probably the least of your worries."

OPs most important point... Part of just a bunch of ignorance? Or did you intend to go on and cover that too?

What's with the first link? BS? The second link is about DEA. We all know DEA is chasing marijuana crime because the legislative branch needs to pass better pot sale laws. Do I think the DEA is tracking my political opinions? No. Could they with this software? Yeah. But let's fix the marijuana laws before we freak out and tell the government to stop tracking "crime".

Here is a website where you can see how your android phone tracks your movement. You have to be logged in, which means it's about as private as a gmail account, however private that is. Tracked me in Europe last month, where I only used the wifi and GPS (but drew point-to-point crow flies lines, as compared to USA highway lines) https://maps.google.com/locati...

I have a non-profit association which uploaded dozens of videos of repair geeks in several countries on Viddler.com, a "free" video storage back in 2007, 2008. Viddler, like Youtube and Vimeo, was in the video storage space, and had trouble making any money vs. Youtube. First thing they had to do was to drop "source files" in 2010, when all the original quality was lost to make space. Then last April they gave members about a month to either pay up monthly or lose all their videos.

This was really disturbing and it's my main concern about dropbox. If they suddenly change the price, and we have years of space stored, how realistic is it to download? Viddler did not offer any mass-download, we had to do it file by file. They cut us a break in the end but it would have been very appreciated if the EULA agreements allowed for something other than retroactive storage negotiations. At this point we choose where to put files not just based on monthly price, but the future monthly price and the ease of moving out. The latter is the most important, I'd never put material on the cloud again which took 2 minutes per file to get back off.

And we reduce resource consumption as well for the sake of achievement? Keep in mind that cost savings have driven most of the conservation as well as most of the extraction of earth resources. Risking capital investment for the sake of achievement isn't something many would buy into.

Thanks, and thanks tandis, anubus iv, and exomundo. Slashdot editors can't really be blamed for letting this slide through, as it was reported as such even if the reporter was a UF grad or something. Shows the worst and best of the internet. Worst is someone composes a tweet or thought or joke or stereotype and it's reported as "news" EVERYWHERE. Best is that fellow nerds on /. are essentially acting as background checkers and via internet have the tools to out the hyperbole quickly.

"There is a wide consensus that the racial categories that are common in everyday usage are socially constructed, and that racial groups cannot be biologically defined" - wikipedia

There's simply no scientific basis or definition of "race" as Nicolas Wade uses the term. People in the bookstore will presume he's talking about melanin. Three hundred years ago Spaniards were considered a different "race" than Anglo Saxons or Greeks. To suggest that the "learning gene" is somehow incompatible or cannot be passed on in combination with a certain skin color / melanin gene seems obnoxious if that's not what the data show. Most "races" as defined by book-buying public are hetero-genetic, it may indeed seem to some either reckless or cynical of Wade to work "melanin and intelligence" into the book title. If I inherit dark melanin from my father and intelligence from my mother, I'd be more than just "politically correct" to be pissed off at Wade for implying that my dad's skin color negates mom's smarts.

It is controversial enough that tendency for intelligence can be inherited. The fact that skin color can also be inherited is true. Height can also be inherited, and hairlines. To insinuate, through the title of the book, that "race" is more correlated than height/hairline may be true (or not, I don't know), but if it's not determinative of intelligence, it doesn't belong it the title. Some people objecting may indeed object out of so-called "political correctness", but unless the skin color gene is somehow genetically incompatible with intelligence, it's just creating a non-useful stereotype.

Since there is no link to the letter of objection, those /.ers whining about "political correctness" are merely guessing at the motive of behind the letter of objection. My personal guess is, "don't take years of our scientific data and pick two traits - melanin and learning - and imply that those two traits, out of thousands of other traits, are tied together in some way just to promote your book sales."

... as credit card companies have been keeping on us since the 1980s?

The blog about the second link (2013 in particular http://www.heri.ucla.edu/brief...) doesn't really add much value.

The UCLA report, however, is pretty interesting. Many of the application strategies described were the same my daughter (entering college in September) and wife and I adapted. We told her that the mortgage crisis of 2008 was triggered by a bunch of adults who were told at 17-18 that signing student debt notes for university was rational and wise, and that it so confused people that it's no surprise they never saved to buy cars or houses and brought the whole economy down. We figured that more and more applicants were coming from overseas, which is a good thing as otherwise the middle tier colleges in the USA will collapse. Like the averages in the report, we told her to apply to many more colleges, as the cost of the application (about $100 per college) was probably less than the standard deviation between financial aid offers from the 1/4-1/3 of institutions she'd get admitted to.

If you are going to apply to college, or have kids headed that way, the report is definitely worth reading. We managed to find a way to get the full cost down to about $15K including room and board. All the things people were told to consider in choosing a college 20-30 years ago don't matter. You can choose based on selectivity, class size, strength of degree programs, etc. but aside from geography the only thing you will remember is people - roomates, classmates, bandmates, workmates, and professors - and there's no way to analyze that in advance, so just take the deal you can afford.

The "curse of natural resources", also known as the paradox of plenty, refers to the paradox that countries and regions with an abundance of natural resources, specifically point-source non-renewable resources like minerals and fuels, tend to have less economic growth and worse development outcomes than countries with fewer natural resources. The skills to succeed are in government control of billion dollar resource control contracts, and being related to people with sharp elbows.

By contrast, nations which have succeeded despite having few natural resources - Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, etc. - usually develop from import for repair and refurbishment. Fixer economies reward problem solving skills and education. "Good enough" tech. I like Hartree's phrase "like locking the toolbox until the car is fixed" (mod him up please)

"Every man is, no doubt, by nature, first and principally recommended to his own care; and as he is fitter to take care of himself than of any other person, it is fit and right that it should be so." - Adam Smith

I moderated /. (emitted my energy). But the world is not more enlightened, because I was counter-moderated (anti-doesn't-matter). We may need this device/material to more accurately graph our lack of enlightenment, given the energy (carbon) submitted. Already available, BTW, on /. beta.

It's well established that plenty of consumers discard or donate hard disks without taking any precautions, and are playing roulette with their identity. It's also well established that hundreds of millions of tons of this equipment is replaced, resold, stolen or discarded, and most people who wind up with the secondary device lack either the time, money, or effort to scavenge data off the phone. If in fact someone is in the identity theft business by buying phones on ebay, they'd profile themselves pretty well after a dozen phone purchases (what do these data-theft-victims have in common?). And who knows how many phones they'd have to buy which had been wiped in some way (and required more time, money and effort)?

This isn't a bad article in that it birddogs simple things you can do before selling your used phone, and if it elevates the perception of risk in order to get people to do something easy, that's appropriate. But in response to people who are shooting and burning their devices to be "100% sure" that no one spends the time, money and effort to follow them... that's appropriate if you are a high risk target. If you have stuff on your phone of interest to the FBI or KGB, the amount of time+money+effort may be less than or = the amount of risk. Your call.

But there is a lot of hyperbole out there about the percentage of identity theft which is traced to secondary market devices, and the billions of dollars in secondary market sales on sites like ebay represent time+money+effort interest in new product makers to spend fanning flames. Again it's appropriate that the article raises concerns and then points to simple efforts a consumer can take to increase the barrier-to-entry to their personal data. But the army of ebay buyers getting their porn fixes by buying and then de-encrypting cell phones to retrieve ugly selfies seems exaggerated. Warn people about sharks if they are swimming in shark infested waters, don't tell people that most swimmers will be attacked by sharks.

Tear your mail in 8 pieces and someone could dig it out of the trash and tape it together, but the time+money+effort that represents is significant. I remember people selling paper shredding equipment in the 1990s who described armies of Iranian students or Chinese peasants who could be buying torn paper and taping it back together. If they know it's the President of the USA's mail, they no doubt will expend that time+money+effort... Presidents should assume they are swimming in a shark tank. For most of us, ebay resales are a swimming pool, and warnings of shark attacks get tiresome.