TFA goes too far with this idea; which I think is confusing the issue here. While the article focuses on DNA chirality, I think that is going too far up the chain of evolution.

There were most likely replicating molecules before DNA, and many of the building blocks for life were likely set long before DNA became the preferred genetic coding system.

What this study says, in the bigger picture, is that the chirality of many classes of molecules in early life may have been influenced by this mild bias in the weak nuclear force. What that would mean is that organisms using building blocks of the 'wrong' chirality were --over the long term-- more likely to become extinct than their peers using the same building blocks with a different chirality. Over a couple of billion years that selection pressure would weed out organisms using the 'wrong' chirality because those molecules are more likely to break when exposed to low energy beta-decay.

Now, whether this mechanism specifically influenced the chirality of DNA... there is probably no way to tell. This mechanism of chirality selection works up and down the entire evolutionary chain. And it doesn't just select for right or left... it selects the chirality that is least likely to break from this source of pressure.

^^ THIS

My father and I had a rough time with my budding 'hacker nature' as you describe it. I was always tearing stuff apart to see what was inside. It pissed him off that in the process of exploring I would break stuff.

In some areas, electronics, chemistry, he had some input. But he had no idea how to encourage me, or help me. He was trying to teach me Maxwell when I couldn't even get long division to cross check reliably. I felt like an idiot because I couldn't understand what he was trying to teach me. I was willful hot head and he was a hot head.

Our 'bicycle incident' ended in a huge blowup when I was 13 that deeply scarred our relationship until I was in my late 20's. He flat out refused to help me rebuild my bike. I had no access to his experience, or to the correct tools. When my 20" sears special finally started falling apart after 6 years of hard use and abuse it was 'tough shit.' Then one night he did something really stupid he berated me about it. He told me I had allowed my bike to fall apart.

I reminded him that he never even gave any suggestions for how I should go about maintaining it, even when I asked for help. I reminded him that I was not born knowing how to repair stuff, nor did I know where to find good materiel on it. The books in the library focused on 'real bikes' (10-speeds and early BMX stuff) I had figured out the basics.. oiling bearings, replacing tubes and tires. But what do I do about cracked forks, a stripped gooseneck, or broken coaster-brake retaining strap? How do I re-true a rim? He knew! Where's the guidance.... Dad?

His response to that: A serious beat down.

I gave up on bikes. I still don't like messing with them even though I like riding a lot.

I also stumbled onto a mentor. Alton was a machinist who lived near by. That man could build almost anything out of metal, and repair everything else. He had the tools, patience and enough free time to teach me a lot... mostly by dragooning me into being an apprentice.

From Alton I learned the Art of Hacking.

Eventually my Dad got over whatever it was that set our relationship on a dark path, and I forgave him. By then, though, he wasn't really a guiding influence. If anything he helps me refine my teaching skills, because he wants to understand how wear-leveling on an SD card works... He knowns each cell in a FLASH array can be written to a few thousand times before they fail, and he knows better than I do WHY they fail. He wants to know how long to expect an SD card to last before he should replace it.

So.. take the time to teach your sons and daughters what you DO know... Try not to avoid the subjects just because you are tight on time, and their sudden interest in something catches you off guard. Don't expect them to get it the way you did. Don't expect that you are a good teacher of the subject, just because you are good at it.

One second is a long time, in combat situations. Mostly that 21 foot perimeter is about retaining a buffer space so that one doesn't run out of Perception->Prediction->Commit->Respond time by letting Red get too close because they only have a knife when Blue has drawn an appropriate ranged weapon.

Having had some personal experience in this type of situation, (training and SoHK experience) I can say that 21 feet would not be enough buffer to react to a reasonably fit opponent with some training, even if the target has good training.

YMMV.

This!

  I still have a 2001 G4 Titanium that sees use. It is still my go-to when I need a ruggedized laptop. That thing has literally been around the world with me, and it still works just fine.

It took roughly 2 million years after we diverged from proto-hominids to develop smelting. Along that 2 million years our lineage passed through the development stages we see now in Chimps and other modern primates. Due to the physiological changes our line experienced through 2000 centuries our line has advanced in ways this planet has never seen before. And yet there are creatures following their own lines on this planet that, long before Sol turns into a red giant might have their moment and long after we have ceased to be the top of the planetary food chain.

This planet has seen much more devastating disruption than Homo Sapiens, and were we to drive ourselves extinct there would be other organisms that show signs of getting to where we are in a very distant future.

I don't worry much for this blue green ball. But right now, it sucks to be human, knowing what we know, and knowing what we don't know.

add to this: Bonobos and Chimps can interbreed. The only reason they don't (very rare in the wild) is that their social systems are fundamentally incompatible, and their population ranges don't overlap much.

Erm, this was posted on April 1st... and the phone number has 840401 as the last 6 digits....denoting april 1st, and it also appears in the Posting-Version in two formats.

Nice one AC.

In WA it is sufficient to inform the party that a recording may be made. I know this because I was Director of Operations for an inbound call center.
The call flows announced at the beginning of the call, "This is Blah Blah Blah, your call is important to us. All agents are busy at this time, your wait time will be x minutes. This call may be recorded for Quality Assurance Purposes." Every call heard the entire greeting even if agents were available at the time the call was answered. I don't have a link but this was vetted by the staff attorney as best practice.

Also, the agent who answers the inbound call, or places an outbound call, knows that all calls are recorded. It is part of their training. I don't think there is any way that an entity like Comcast or CenturyLink would have a leg to stand on if the customer records the call without announcement. However, IANAL.. YMMV.

Can't make your shit out of tungsten so when you hit a teensy 8-inch pipe you don't fuck the drill head up?

They should be asking for a refund on their drill head. I've blown apart 8-inch pipes with 10 inch coring bits and did NOTHING to the bit, which itself was about 1/8th the thickness of the pipes inner walls.

Mohs hardness scale, do you even, motherfuckers?

The cutting discs(Tungsten) and the head face(hardened steel) are hardened materials.
The the cutting face was not damaged at all AIUI. It was the head support and bearing assemblies that got creamed by the head chewing through an 8" steel, well casing which is much thicker than el-cheapo galvanized pipe.

The damaged assemblies were designed to be supporting a much lower torque/vibration load cutting through relatively soft, water-saturated, landfill-slurry.

In Seattle I challenged a parking violation with photographic evidence. The magistrate accept the evidence into the record. After some back and forth over the interpretation of the evidence, she proffered a deal.
Magistrate: "I'll reduce the fine. $2.00."
Me: "The evidence clearly shows I was not in violation."
Magistrate: "You are more than welcome to take the matter up with a judge."
Me: "So this is really about getting a conviction, not about justice."
Magistrate: "$2.00. Take it, or leave it."
Me: *fuming* "$2.00 it is. Have a good day, Your Honor. *bowing*

throwing transistors at a nebulous problem does not make that problem go away. We don't have anything approaching consensus on what Intelligence is let alone how it might be replicated when we can put trillions of transistors on a die. The canvas has gotten bigger; the features smaller, and we still struggle just to compile a viable application unit with no AI in in sight.

This.

That 10 line PID control loop requires carefully chosen and manually tuned constants to maintain loop stability. Those are constants are determined through empirical evaluation of the system being controlled and its performance envelope. To dynamically adjust those PID constants would require a lot more lines of code and a persistent dataset used to evaluate how effective any adjustments to those constants were over time. That is not AI. Not. Even. Close.

  At best it would be an adaptive control system, and they are easily fooled by subsystem failures, aging sensors and other issues that make the approach unsuitable for many applications. Because an adaptive control system that makes these kinds of changes to that 10 line PID control loop can easily paint itself into an unsafe regime.

wooosh

Take a wander back to the first generation iPod, or the first iPhone. Apple did not invent those device classes.... they innovated them. They refined them.

  Small innovative MP3 players had been around for years before the iPod came out... iRiver had some of the best ones available at the time, and they went far beyond what the iPod started out as. But the innovation was embedding a mass storage device, and a well thought out user interface, and having a relatively seamless process to load media onto the device, and creating a media market place to reduce friction in media sales, and really great marketing and advertising....

Same thing with the iPhone. It wasn't the first smart phone.... it was the first rational smart phone. The first with a sensible UX story. The first with seamless media integration.

All of this evolved EVERYONES expectations of what a smart phone could be and ultimately SHOULD be.

As others have pointed out Apple did not invent the GUI even before XEROX there were bold steps in that direction that simply fell flat... Even the LISA... the first Apple attempt at what became the Macintosh was a bloated piece of crap. Apple didn't invent the laptop either. Their first attempt was the Macintosh Portable... IBM Selectrics weigh less and take up less desk space.... forget about using it on your lap... your legs would go to sleep before you got the thing to boot. Their second attempt in each case was full of win.... Mac 128K took off.... and in its time so did the PowerBook 100... the first practical laptop by any manufacturer.