I was aware but as the old saying goes:
To err is human, but to really foul things up you need a computer.

The same applies to traditional breeding vs GMOs. Genetic modification is a much more powerful tool than the various sources of random mutation. As such we're going to create new classes of risks that we don't understand yet. We don't exactly have the healthiest environment right now and farms aren't sealed labs, before we inject massive numbers of plants with several novel and powerful traits into an ecosystem we need to understand what the effects of those actions are.

The tone sounds like you're disagreeing him but it sounds like you're actually agreeing with him and debating my point.

Whatever the source of "natural" evolution (selective breeding, random mutation, horizontal gene transfer) we've been dealing with it for thousands of years and understand the risks. To use your example it's pretty easy to evaluate the safety of a fallen tree bridge. But with manmade bridges it took a while before we learned to avoid things like the Tacoma Narrows Bridge.

I'd fully support removing any barriers to that. They'll surely get charged out the nose, but it's a reasonable proposal. What's not reasonable is having regular drivers subsidize Uber drivers by letting Uber drivers do commercial work on non-commercial insurance.

These aren't just slightly confidential, state of the art spy satellites is top secret business. They'll be worrying that a SpaceX employee can plant something to steal technology, reveal capabilities, damage or compromise the satellite once the payload is installed. I'm guessing you need just a microscopic amount of C4 if it can hook into the antenna and wait for a self-destruct signal so that when you need them the most they go boom and the screens go dark.

And the developer generally means game engine developer, not game developer. If you want to write your own engine that's a pretty big job by itself.

They're allowed to have an opinion, too, and they are scientists, after all, which means we might actually want at least to consider what they have to say. We're free to disagree with them, but we really should have some good reasons for that.

Those who aspire to become nuclear physics do not study a "nuclear scientific method"; they learn how to apply the scientific method to the field of nuclear physics. Folks who want to become climate scientists do not study a "climate-scientific method"; they learn how to apply the scientific method to the field of climate science.

Do you see where I'm going with this? Would I pay attention to a similar group of medical doctors, or chemists? Sure, why not?

> Who knows about the bitcoin mining because that's all nonsense anyway.

Nobody in their right mind uses GPUs to mine bitcoin any more. They use custom mining chips (ASICs) which are about 100 times more efficient, because the calculations are done entirely in hardware, and being fairly simple, can be parallelized much more than graphics cores.

As far as bitcoin being nonsense, the New York Stock Exchange and a large bank just invested in a bitcoin company: http://blog.coinbase.com/post/..., and Microsoft accepts bitcoins: https://commerce.microsoft.com... . Evidently they don't think it is nonsense.

> But I'll bet their little programs that they run using $1 of electricity to get 50 cents in bitcoins

I did mine at a loss sometimes back in the day, but it was in the background, for a graphics card I was already using in this PC. So I only had to pay for the incremental electricity of the card running full bore instead lower levels. The $60 of extra electricity is worth $680 in bitcoins today. I stopped mining in mid-2013 when the custom chips started going into volume production. Not all of us are idiots.

No, but money changing hands (commerce) impacts whether it is "commercial", and requires a commercial license.

"Impacts", perhaps. But it's not definitive. Especially in California.

For instance: I bought a pickup truck, to use as a tow vehicle for my camper and my wife's boat. Then I discovered that CA requires pickup trucks to be tagged with a (VERY pricey) commercial license, regardless of whether they're used for business. (You CAN petition to tag a particular pickup truck as a personal vehicle - but are then subject to being issued a very pricey ticket if you are ever caught carrying anything in the truck bed - even if it's personal belongings or groceries, and regardless of whether you're being paid to do it. (Since part of the POINT of having a pickup truck is to carry stuff home from the store this would substantially reduce its utility.)

The one upside is that I get to park for short times in loading zones.

If we aren't going to require commercial licenses for commercial driving, then why even have them at all?

And if we ARE going to require them for clearly personal, non-commercial vehicles that happen to be "trucks", why NOT impose this requirement on putatively commercial vehicles that happen to be cars as well?

The real answer to your question is "because the state wants the tax money, and the legislators and bureaucrats will seek it in any way that doesn't threaten their reelection, reappointment, or election to higher office" - in the most jerrymandered state in the Union. The Uber case is one where an appraent public outcry arose, bringing the bureaucrats' actions, and public outcry about them, to the attention of elected officials.

The full form of the so-called "Chinese curse" is: "May you live in interesting times and come to the attention of people in high places."

I think the labelling thing is nonsense since I don't think health risks are a big concern but I am a bit more cautious about the long term environmental effects as I suspect we're underestimating the probability of black swan events.

I think of selective breeding vs GMOs is a bit like traditional medicine vs modern medicine. Traditional medicine generally ranges from slightly beneficial to mildly harmful, you're not going to do yourself much harm, but you're not going to help much either. By contrast modern medicine is devastatingly effective in good ways and bad.

Right now you'd be a fool to choose traditional medicine over modern medicine, especially if you have a serious health issue, the benefits are too strong and we know how to manage the nasty side effects.

But at the dawn of modern medicine? You're probably better off dealing with the traditional stuff, a lot of people died because modern medicine was an incredibly powerful tool and people didn't know enough about that tool to use it safely.

I worry we're at that stage with GMOs and the environment. We don't really understand what it does to the ecosystem when we introduce new traits at that speed and effectiveness. We really can't know until we've done it a while. I'm sure GMO crops are the answer for the future, but I'm worried our capabilities are outstripping our knowledge.

The bit about Skype is also not quite true. MS have done horrid/idiotic things with the UI, especially in the mobile versions, but I use the Linux desktop version almost daily and it works just fine for its intended purpose.

Even MySQL supports 64-character identifiers for databases and tables.

You cannot change the license after the fact.

You can take your GPL project closed, but anyone who obtained your code under GPL license prior to that can continue to use, modify, and redistribute that code under terms of said license.

Most politicians who are up to date on their PR/Marketing consider branding to be a key part of their campaign strategy.

As a native son of the Great State of Kentucky, it is my solemn duty to inform you that the squirrel is already our state bird.