Yeah, because it's impossible that complex life could be protected by a different (better!) kind of UV shield like... water. From my understanding, it's not exactly rare in the universe.

Yeah, it was my impression that Google wanted Mozilla to be healthy, but instead of just giving them money directly, they basically "bought" top billing in the searchbox for the money they just wanted to give them. Yahoo is not paying for the good of the Mozilla project - they just can't afford to splash the cash like that. They want to buy traffic. But you know, I think it's a good thing, because the fact that this happened means that top billing in the searchbox is actually worth real money, and that Firefox is more than a charity case being kept alive by the good will of Google. That bodes well for Firefox's long-term prospects. The only thing that scares me is that Google might now look at Firefox and see an enemy - a Chrome competitor who is keeping users off Google's search engine. If Google goes to war against Firefox, Firefox will lose. Yahoo is not a true ally to anyone.

Seriously, a news for nerds site can't get the word electronic correct in a article headline? Amazing editing going on there, Slashdot.

The current state of x86_64 at Intel means that there is no reason to create a 32 bit only processor, it'd be a huge amount of architectural rework with little benefit.

Now, just because it's 64 bit capable doesn't mean that the OS will be 64 bit. In fact, given the low memory, that might be an option. This is all about SoC cost and low margins. That means each bump in memory really adds up. This isn't the same as just putting a more dense DIMM in a motherboard.

Also, given the target usage, one would have to argue why you would need more than 2G of ram. Seriously, I get away with it on a Windows 8.1 tablet for basic Office, etc. No reason Sailfish won't do even better.

The Wanam Xposed module lets you set any app to work as a window. Somehow I never actually end up using the multiwindow facility on my phone, though.

Of course, I saw all the expected arguments, and a lot of "but, Microsoft is the exact same company from 20 years ago, so this must be wrong, evil, etc." Well, companies change. Skepticism is good, but evaluating things as they are is good too.

The .Net ecosystem is a good environment to program in. They have great languages and frameworks. The Python Tools in VS are actually quite nice (they work fine with CPython). It is disappointing that the IronLanguages project has died off, but maybe this will spark some new interest.

And one of the main drawbacks to the platform in terms of target platforms is starting to be addressed in a real way.

It's a pragmatic decision. Microsoft has already benefited from open source projects (ASP .Net MVC, Entity Framework), and this is just an expansion of this. The hardest part will be getting resources to get people to really bang on it on other platforms.

I bet that internally at Microsoft, lots of people are happy about this, as they really do think they did great work and this gives them greater visibility.

I think the sources for "some populations on average are smarter than others" are needed. Same with the "superior social ability". I've seen nothing that suggests that either are true and that they can be attributed to a genetic difference and not to social or environment confounders. The consensus is that it's not worth studying. The genomic data shows that any influence or different in complex behaviors would be just noise and impossible to measure in the face of strong confounders. The point is that these perceived "differences" between races (a term that many argue has no scientific basis) are in fact incredibly small genetic despite their outward appearance.

The reason it's not correct to state that different genetic sub-groups might have different intelligence levels is that there is no evidence that there is any significant difference between any population or group overall genetically.

You mention anthropology. Yes, there is an interest in studying how our population grew and spread over the planet. To do this, they do sophisticated analysis to detect certain changes to try and model how the population moved.

Here's the problem, you've assumed that these grouping are significant outside population migration. They aren't. If you take the genome as a whole, these variations are nothing compared to individual variation.

It's not culture that has caused the problem not to be looked into. It has been, significantly, and some people in our culture refuse to accept the results. That our perception of race and racial differences are completely environmental, and there is no basis whatsoever in science to say that one population is smarter than the other.

Again, this is a lot of posturing to try and ignore that as a society, we systemically have placed a certain set of people at a large disadvantage for no reason than our fears. We only talk about black culture because our history caused us to set apart a population first as property, then as second-class citizens, and then as "different' when convenient to explain why a group is poor or lazy or ambitious or whatever bucket we try to force people into.

Here's the point. Every time genetic differences comes up, it's "Are blacks less intelligent?" "Are Asians better in school?" "Are Latinos less motivated" and so on. All these are dumb questions. But, never, never have I seen: "Are whites more prone to discriminate against other groups?" It's still a dumb question, but it doesn't come up, does it.

The summary seems a bit misleading. The main thrust of page I saw what that the push to replace work with automation can have consequences at a certain level. Does decision making really work well in automation, or does it lead to problems? There's evidence in both camps. An example, some traders on Wall Street have complained about removing people from the process, they that really do add value at times. And sure, it's hard to imagine a human would issue a massive amount of bad orders, but a computer model with a bit of glitch might. But, is that enough to slow things down. Just one example of many.

In my mind, critical thinking does have value, and no, there is nothing in data science, machine learning, etc. that really comes even close to what humans can do in that area. There's a big debate in Medicine about following best practices and if just following algorithms would work better. Some note it would reduce unneeded tests and procedures. Others have noted that actually, doctors are much better at noting when something is going really wrong and that following a script could lead to unnecessary deaths that would be avoided by relying on clinical judgment. Is there is a need for better data? Sure, but can you really automate judgment? And what real value is there of taking the craft out of everything for humanity as a whole?

The problem is that some people don't think software engineering, programming, coding, whatever requires critical thinking, or that there is a craft or art to programming. And you can increasingly do it that way. Cut and paste, copy from the web, and when things don't work out, post on the web and hope somebody answers.

What is lost is somebody has to have the skills to figure out what is going wrong or that it can be done better. Where do those answers come from on the web after all? At some point, somebody has to know how to actually approach the problem from the fundamentals and solve it, and that's when all those things that we (okay, at least me and my schoolmates) studied in CS come into play.

I'm on a project and they are just throwing idea after idea to figure out a performance problem. Sure, it's tricky, but I realize, they have a huge blind spot. They don't know how to attach a low-level debugger to a process, to monitor OS resources, or even realize that you can debug something without sources. Sure, it's a Java enterprise application, so that's another layer of hard, but it can be done. Cripes, we had to debug core dumps. I'm glad (thrilled) that I don't have to do it anymore, but the skills that I learned doing it were invaluable.

A related aside. The problem is not better tools, it is not knowing there are better (or any) tools or that you can make better tools.

What I don't get is why you think that as a casual player, you'll stand a better chance against 13 year old kids who take the time to master this game, as opposed to kids who take the time to master Counterstrike.

Ballot stuffing is actually pretty easy to protect against, and the method of voting doesn't do anything to change that equation. It's just as easy to telegraph votes on a voting machine versus paper. Also, voter fraud is really risky compared to the payoff. It's easy to get caught. It just takes one election judge to unravel a scheme to defraud. And it's much easier and less risky to disenfranchise voters to effect an outcome; history shows us that.

As to why the counts are off, in most cases, it's confusion over eligibility, not intentional fraud.

Oddly, given that it is Congressional gridlock, one would think to naturally look to Congress for a solution. But, this assumes that gridlock is viewed to be a problem.

Marked paper ballots. Done. Braille versions can be made for the blind, different language versions (what, voting based on a person's preferred language, that's just crazy) and so on. Optical scanning is old, tried and very well tested technology, and you can always fall back to hand counts.

I do have a problem with a lot of the for-profit schools this measure is attacking, but for different reasons. Because it is way overpriced vocational training, not an education.

As expected, the attacking the "college is stupid, why would anybody get a degree in {liberal arts field}, because you can't get a job with it" line thought was well represented. Congratulations, you'd just brought into the mindset that the economic and power elite wants; that nothing is valuable without dollar signs attached to it.

Yes, think that higher education isn't a public good (hint, that why there are state schools, and they were subsidized for a long time with tax dollars), but instead treat it as job training that employees, not employers have to pay for. Reduce and eliminate anything that require critical thinking or actual unique thought, because that's a luxury for the rich. I mean, we can't have tax dollars and contributions going to a bunch of intellectuals that aren't smart enough to teach at a "real university". That's a waste.

And forget college preparation in high school, because who needs to be able to write a original essay or be critical of, well, anything. Just funnel everybody in a public school into a job. If you aren't wealthy, you don't deserve to have ideas, you just deserve to work mindlessly. No pursuing higher ideas for you. I mean, those classes were so annoying. Having to process new ideas, having to study things that don't interest you, having to do things you don't like or want to do? What's the point in that? Being exposed to diversity? Pfft.

This story doesn't end well. Usually, it's violent and a lot of people die. If you are lucky, it's more peaceful, but still really bad for business. But, the reduction in real tax rates for the truly wealthy can't be stopped. Increasing taxes to restore revenues to schools and education? Insisting that corporations and those that profit from them have to contribute a better society? That's insane big government talk.

Hell, just send them to a code boot camp. Those are great jobs. If want to learn stuff, just go on the internet, because, all that stuff on the internet that is useful just came out of nowhere, right? The fact that PhDs are on food stamps and can't find jobs is a canary screeching in a coal mine. Damn straight college administration needs to answer for this, but we all have to answer; we need to value real education in this country.

It's a sign that years and years of mismanagement maybe didn't completely kill the ability for them to come up with interesting stuff This is exactly the kind of thing they need to do. Shore up HP Labs and solve some neat problems and ship cool stuff. Sure, let's be skeptical, but good for them for trying.