Scientists tend to have tunnel vision and have made mistakes with global impact in the past.

People have tunnel vision and have made mistakes with global impact in the past.

If you think you can make a case for how this is a thing specific to scientists, or that scientists have an even slightly-above-average tendency to be like that, please make your case. We're listening.

I think scientists have a below average tendency to be like that, so they're less likely than most people, to have tunnel vision and make mistakes with global impact. The reason I think this, is that scientists have a system, however imperfect, for finding and correcting mistakes. And scientists love doing just that, even to their closest peers. Most non-scientists don't have such a system. And then when someone does find a mistake, there are social pressures for hiding the truth. Outside of science, those social pressures are called "being a pal" and are generally encouraged. In science, those social pressures are considered the one and only unforgiveable sin, and are always spoken of as being totally repugnant. (Thus: scientists are more likely to find a mistake, and then are also more likely to try to correct the mistake.)

That's my argument, at least. Perhaps you have a better argument for your counter-intuitive (but perhaps correct!) assertion. Let's hear it.

My understanding is that what you're talking about, is how these services are claiming to work. Trust is still happening, but it's moved from trusting a data service to not provide keys to adversaries, to trusting a code repository (i.e. the user trusts Apple/Google/Microsoft to have not included (or include in an automatic update) a backdoor in the user's OS, which causes your computer to give up keys upon request).

That's a step in the right direction.

And I think people can see the obvious next step from there, which is that it's undesirable to be getting any locally-run code from any of the service providers that you use. (e.g. if you use Apple's storage services then you shouldn't be running Apple code to access it. And same for Google, Microsoft, etc.)

If that worked, then it would work for every "criminal mastermind" ever prosecuted.

"You say I hatched this ingenious plan! But if I were that clever, you never would have caught me!"

The nice thing about WordPress is the EAV antipattern. I hope you love shitloads of joins and aliases to the same table over and over and over and over and over again. There's nothing like taking what ought to be a tiny query and having to write an unreadable 3000 character monstrosity, to make non-techies think you are a Database God when they see the resulting strings.

I tell people, "I can teach you SQL" and then they look at my repetitious ".. join foo_metakeys as alias234523 on .." and nope, you ain't teachin' me nothin'.

I swear, all because of one fucking wordpress site I inherited, everyone in my company thinks thinks I can built a working 747 out of paperclips and rubber bands.

Wordpress is one of the most expensive things I have ever seen. I struggle to think of a better believable way to multiply the cost of a project.

Yep. Global warming might be confirmed through repeated observations, but just like the existence of electrons or the existence of gravity, there's always the chance it might some day be falsified.

Alas, the hypothesis has no competition. Things like global-warming-denial and creationism will never, and can never, be falsified. Spread thermometers across every square meter of Earth and taking reading every second for the next hundred years, and in 2115 no matter what the observations are, global-warming-denial will still be just as viable, and the reasons for choosing it will be just as compelling, as today.

Faith manages. Those who underestimate the power of the blue pill, will never understand this.

Either way, I predict a massive revolt about 365 days after the upgrade is released.

Let me guess: this "revolt" will consist of a bunch of people saying slightly unpleasant things on web forums, while also continuing to use and install applications that keep them locked into Windows APIs. That way, they get to play the victim card again in the future, the next time they get angry at Microsoft.

I think it's kind of un-American to imply that the sex of chicken shouldn't be subject to democracy. Would you prefer the sex of the chicken by determined by an unaccountable, autocratic out-of-touch socialist-in-a-bubble dictator?!

I read the PDF and the law doesn't seem to say anything about suspected bullies being required to do certain things (other than abstain from bullying, of course).

My best guess is that someone read the part about how the government requires the school to have a process for investigating what happened (d), and misread that as meaning that other parties (e.g. students) are required to have a process for assisting such investigations.

If it weren't so stupid, it would be clever. Imagine if the First Amendment could be overturned, not by a law that prohibits printing presses, but by having a law that cops are required to have processes for destroying printing presses. The cops would say to the people, "our problem is your problem" and I guess the people would say "aw, poor cops, I guess we have no choice to help you out, so we'll voluntarily destroy our own printing presses to keep you guys from having orders you're unable to obey."

You're supposed to be able to simply employee-start and employee-stop for whatever instances you currently need. People who complain that employee-create takes too long to run, just need to read up on how the snapshotting system works. This is way better than trying to guess the right values of StartEmployees, MinSpareEmployees and MaxSpareEmployees and trying to mitigate burnout by tuning MaxRequestsPerEmployee (as though each one needs the same setting!).

At least he didn't make things worse. The funny thing about this one, is the the "debate" about paranormal beliefs starts off at absolute maximum conceivable stupidity. It has nowhere to go, but up.

when VMWare first came out, and there was all this amazement about all the cool things you could do with Virtual Machines. Very little mention anywhere that these were things you could do for decades already on mainframes.

This is probably due to the fact that for most values of "you," you don't have a mainframe. So the cool things switched from "things a-few-people-who-aren't-me can do" to "things I can do." That increases relevance.

Yes, blame the voters for refusing to vote

Ok, I do.

Get some candidates that are to the left of Reagan's corpse and we'll talk, mmmkay?

There are approximately-but-literally around a hundred million people in this country who fit that description and are just as qualified as the Republicans whom the voters gave the election to. I bet you can find one. I bet you are one. So stop bitching about lack of candidates (it's just totally absurd) and either accept ridiculous leadership, or do something about it.

This is democracy, and democracy is participatory. If you're going to sit around waiting for some party to give you a candidate, you might as well advocate monarchy or anything else, because democracy isn't a good fit for your personality.

You know why it tweaks people? Because the only reason you use it is because you consider it an insult.

But he has to call him "Hussein," because when he tried to drive people into a rage by calling the president "nigger," it actually made someone angry and the coward doesn't ever want to face a situation like that again.

Your comment has evidencist bias. Their (stated) point of view is that they're right and science will not back them up, because the very essence of science is deception.

You can't trust your senses; they will lie to you. Listen to the voice in your head.

While you're probably right that they're liars, they claim to be merely batshit insane.

But what percentage of the nuclear warheads do they have? What fraction of aircraft carriers and army divisions do they have? There's more than one way to measure who has the "most powerful political force." ;-)