Catch up on stories from the past week (and beyond) at the Slashdot story archive

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror

Comment Re:I'm not saying we're aliens (Score 1) 5

My take is completely different. If the building blocks of Life are so abundant, obviously, they are forming spontaneously without biological predecessor. We are built from ribose, nucleobases and phosphates, because they are everywhere. (And this throws a big wrench into the idea of Silicon based life, because we don't see the silicon equivalents of our base molecules appearing in comets and asteroids.)

Comment Re:Major privacy concerns (Score 1) 61

The escape of medical information is truly well under way already, independent of AI.

In the UK, most medical information will be classified as sensitive personal data, which means it has significant extra protections under our regular data protection law, in addition to the medical ethics implications of breaching patient confidentiality. Letting it escape is a big deal and potentially a serious threat to the business/career of any medical professional who does it. Fortunately the days of people sending that kind of data around over insecure email are finally giving way to more appropriate methods of communication as the technology improves. It's usually governments seeing pound signs and/or businesses who aren't providing direct care to the patients that are pushing for wider distribution (and also those organisations who act as if impossible claims about sanitising the data effectively before releasing it are true).

Comment Re:Pretend to be a customer for a new Subaru (Score 1) 134

I'm serious. I don't fucking pay for ads. Ever.

Good for you! Unfortunately, for a lot of people, having no car isn't really an option, so the answer to what happens next with your strategy is really that all of those people get an inferior product because there's no effective competition or regulation in the market to prevent that, while people like you don't get any product at all.

What should happen is that governments recognise a failure of the market to maintain adequate standards for customers and introduce regulation to enforce minimum acceptable standards accordingly. Whether that actually happens obviously depends on whether your government is more interested in looking out for the people or the businesses.

Comment Re:The old auto makers are fucked. (Score 1) 247

The cars I mentioned use 0W40. A car with shorter oil change intervals than 10K is probably not marketable where I live. Given that the average total time on the road is about 18 years, and the average yearly mileage about 10K, this would mean that the average car is driven for 180K miles with those long intervals.

Comment Re:The old auto makers are fucked. (Score 1) 247

Ask your company fleet manager why they get rid of them at 90K miles if they’re working fine.

Because it was a leasing car, and after 5 years, the leasing contract ran out and could not be extended. Colleagues of mine with more road trips put more than 125K miles on their cars before their contracts run out. And the local mechanic who was doing the oil change (five times during my run) was not laughing at all, because it was his everyday work. In fact, I went to the mechanic whenever the car engine light came up and demanded the oil change. Only one time, when I came in after 17K miles, he was a little wary because I was postponing the oil change for too long for his taste.

Comment Re:The old auto makers are fucked. (Score 2) 247

In most of the world, 10K oil changes are the norm. My last car had 15K oil change intervals, and got 60 mpg. Never had an engine problem. As this was a company car, I had to return it after 90K miles. Engine was an Volkswagen 1.6 liter TDI with 110 HP. Current car is owned by my wife, similar sized engine with similar range from Stellantis (1.6 liter HDI), 10K oil change interval, currently at 100K miles. Never had an engine problem.

I don't know what the U.S. car's problem is with those short oil change intervals. Low quality oil maybe?

Comment Re:I thought we were saving the planet? (Score 1) 195

Driving from Dublin to Donegal means that you take a short cut through Northern Ireland. Crossing the border is an everyday occurrence. And that border is one of the main reasons why a) Northern Ireland voted against Brexit and b) the Brexit negotiations were so complicated, as it is easier to levy tariffs on the ferries between Northern Ireland and Great Britain than between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.

Comment Re:Does it mean... (Score 1) 72

It always boils down to the question: Does it matter?

Does it matter if you have 9 or 10 dollars, if all you want is to buy an ice cone for $3.50?

Does it matter if there are 9 or 10 parking lots if you know 5 of them are occupied, and you want to park your car?

Sometimes, 9 or 10 is a question of life and death. Are there 9 or 10 people in the burning building, and have we account for all of them rescued from the fire? Sometimes it is totally irrelevant.

Same with Dark Matter. If we want to account for effects on cosmic scales, it is really important. For gravitational effects in our Solar system, not so much.

Slashdot Top Deals

"Love your country but never trust its government." -- from a hand-painted road sign in central Pennsylvania

Working...