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Comment: Re:pfftt... (Score 4, Insightful) 544

by TheLink (#43739043) Attached to: A Computer-based Smart Rifle With Incredible Accuracy, Now On Sale
I prefer using shoes. The "barefoot is superior" bunch are silly- just because you run with shoes doesn't mean you have to run the wrong style.

As for the long distance running adaptation, my hypothesis is we might have evolved that not mainly because of persistent hunting but because of war. There's not really much selection pressure for persistent hunting if you are a social animal (like humans and apes) you can hunt very successfully in groups - lions, hyenas, wolves, dogs, apes etc do it.

In contrast war could have produced rather significant selection pressures. In human-human wars, the predator and prey are the same species- whatever big advantage you have is likely to be in the next generation of survivors. Being able to run away from dozens of persistent enemies till you find a hiding place or till the sun sets keeps your genes alive. In contrast being able to sprint at 80kph for a minute when the enemy can also sprint at 80kph for a minute doesn't help much with your survival when there are many enemies. Being able to run long distances to attack an enemy or carry messages is also helpful.

Comment: Re:Non-human rights? (Score 1) 389

by TheLink (#43738985) Attached to: Why We Should Build a Supercomputer Replica of the Human Brain
I think we should start with replicas of a paramecium or an amoeba or a white blood cell to 99.99%.

Not a simplified model. An actual replica that behaves in a near identical fashion to the real thing (e.g. if you make a hole in its membrane, you can watch it repair itself etc). If we can't even do that yet why talk about replicating a human brain?

Once we can do single cells, try creatures with tens then hundreds, thousands of neurons and so on.

It may also turn out that some single celled creatures aren't that stupid- and they're as smart as a worm, if not smarter, and it's just that it's impractical to have a single neuron controlling the whole worm - no redundancy, no convenient interfaces.

Comment: Re:Funny to tap them on the neck (Score 1, Offtopic) 120

by TheLink (#43650975) Attached to: Oculus Rift Guillotine Simulation
Given the many advances of medical technology I'm sure that waterboarding is far from the worst.

You could probably hook stuff up and play a person like an instrument without killing them.

On a related note, if there really were hard to kill creatures like vampires, werewolves or those "highlander" bunch, they would certainly not want to ever get caught by a sadist.

Comment: Re:Hahahahahahahaha Muahaha (Score 1) 186

by TheLink (#43552481) Attached to: The Amazon Rainforest Wants Its TLD Back From Amazon.com

In contrast more than a decade ago I proposed a .here TLD (something like RFC1918 IPv4 addresses but for TLDs) to both the IETF: http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-yeoh-tldhere-01 and the ICANN.

People back then said use .local or .localhost. But:
1) AFAIK these weren't even officially reserved either! .local was only reserved as of Feb 2013.
2) .local etc would be more for "machine usage" - existing stuff already use these things in certain ways (Apple's Bonjour). .local might be filled by with hostnames, whereas .here might be filled with more human oriented stuff (e.g. jukebox.here, airconditioner.here, whats.here, whos.here).

Neither the IETF nor ICANN showed much interest. But I believe ".here" has a better reason to exist than .amazon. Especially if wearable computers take off - it could make it easier to refer to stuff ".here" in your current location and "plane of existence" (e.g. SSID).

After seeing the direction ICANN was taking, I realized that they were more about progressing their bank accounts than the Internet.

Comment: Re:And anybody who complains about the unsightly v (Score 1) 112

by TheLink (#43502439) Attached to: World's Largest Ocean Thermal Power Plant Planned For China

10MW seems very small though. How many such power plants can you fit in 1 square km and still produce more than 9MW in power each?

Coal and nuke plants are in hundreds of megawatts or even gigawatts.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_magnitude_(power)#megawatt_.28106_watts.29

Comment: Re:Don't like it? Don't use it. (Score 1) 124

by TheLink (#43502303) Attached to: Siri Keeps Your Data For Two Years
But are they really victims? We can tell them how much info Apple/Google/etc gathers on them but if they don't care or think its worth it what's the big problem? Most people don't care about such stuff.

It's like a friend eating his favourite fried chicken at his favourite dining place. It's bad for his health but is he a victim?

Comment: Re:Comparison with Google search? (Score 1) 124

by TheLink (#43502283) Attached to: Siri Keeps Your Data For Two Years

And I on the other hand have seen many advertisements that have been entertaining, amusing, funny and interesting.

That's legitimately helpful enough for me, even if I never intend to buy their products:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDGrfhJH1P4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDncfptDjPU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJNR2EpS0jw

Comment: Re: Focus all you want... (Score 3, Funny) 207

by TheLink (#43490931) Attached to: Kobo CEO Says Not Selling Washing Machines Key To Overtaking Amazon

Comment: Re:Mozilla Corporation - Fighting for Freedom agai (Score 3, Interesting) 123

I use certificate patrol. It basically warns you if a cert has changed suspiciously, or if the CA has changed.

It's flawed in that it only remembers one cert per domain for comparison and nowadays for whatever reasons companies like facebook and Google often use different certs signed by different CAs for the same domains and spread the load/connections amongst them. So you can get more warning prompts than you'd want.

This doesn't mean the concept is broken though, just that Certificate Patrol's particular implementation has room for improvement.

The desired case is, if at home you decide that the different certs you get from gmail or facebook are OK (and told the plugin to ignore them), then go to some foreign country and suddenly you get certs that are signed by TeliaSonera, you'd get a warning message and you'd know that something was up and choose not to login.

Same goes for logging in to your bank/corporate site while on a business trip to China. If the cert changes unexpectedly - from being signed by say Equifax to being signed by CNNIC, you should get a warning too.

If you are going to walk on thin ice, you may as well dance.

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