Not that I particularly pursued an answer, mind you.

And this here nicely sums up anti-vaccination movement and most other problems in modern society.

Oh well, another 10 millenia and perhaps humans will actually get competent enough with abstract thought that it'll happen automatically without needing a constant reminder, such as sick children, on sight.

You seem to think a corporation is a sentient being or something.

In a sense, it is. A corporation is an interacting organization of information-handling units, and your brain is an interacting organization of information-handling units. The difference is that employees have much greater internal than external bandwidth, and don't exist solely in the context of the corporation; nonetheless, a corporation typically has its own culture - it's own personality - separate from any one individual.

This is true of other organizations too, and is the reason why it makes sense to be talking about "China" and "USA" like they were living things. Sure, every action they actually take is taken by someone on their behalf, but there's an entity authorizing that, dispersed in little bits and pieces into millions of humans. It could be described as a lifeform inhabiting the noosphere, and since the capacity to produce said sphere of culture is very new and unoptimized, evolutionarily speaking, the entity is pretty primitive yet. Of course, as we continue to evolve, so do our shadows, and it might be an interesting experiment to make those pieces better able to communicate and see if that might result in true self-awareness.

If you looked, they would show that for each indicator, one or two SNPs were involved. These would be identified, along with the standard values and your values.

To determine actual probability, you must multiply (not add) the probability for each indicator, remembering that not all indicators are known.

In the case of Alzheimer's, where external chemicals (aluminium being one) are involved, the indicators mean nothing until you exceed toxic levels of the chemicals. There is nothing to trigger. 100% probability with no neurotoxin is the same as 0% with no neurotoxin. Don't blame me for poor schooling given to people.

23&Me could have done a lot better, I don't consider it faultless, but when PEBKAC, there's nothing they can do.

23&Me are very slow on updating ancestry information and weren't lightning fast on health data. Nonetheless, their data was clearly presented and had clearly stated confidence levels.

Promethease are less well-known to me. I've used their service but I know nothing about the quality of their results, frequency of updates, reaction times when new studies are published, etc. If anyone could fill me in on that, that would be great.

In fact, if 23&Me just moved their health system to an external website with import facility, you'd have the same configuration as with 23&Me + Promethease but with a data set that could evolve through self-reporting. Result - no change from b before, but legal because the DNA company just provides data.

Thank you! There are indeed lots of choices, which makes things interesting. How to balance/optimize the internal and external brain fragments could be an interesting problem and may even be the basis of another generation of culture wars.

Once the consciousness is externalized, then so long as the API and real-time constraints are consistent, you could have multiple physical bodies. You want to go for a drive? Be the person, then become the car. Eliminates any need for mechanical controls (unreliable) and turns the fully networked car into something useful.

It would be interesting to fully explore the impact on the mind. Sorry, Matrix and Neuromancer - excellent fiction though they were - really didn't scratch the surface. However, to say my writing varies is like saying gravity isn't uniform. I can usually manage a decent-sized chapter before fading, but I would need help getting out either a book on the general theory of mind or a story based on such a concept.

P.S. This box contains infinite commas. Be warned, they are freshly baked and may stick to each other. []

Huh. Well, how do we make it stop? Clearly voting isn't working.

'In the RP paradigm, you can create complex applications from a series of simple declarative statements. Many of the details of implementation and work of gluing together various sorts of application constructs can be hidden because of the declarative approach.'

Sounds like another wishy-washy piece of shit language designed to be "easy", "fast", and "human readable" that will end up being kludgey, slow, and a pain in the ass.

No he isn't. And your comma is incorrect.

WRONG:
You are missing a comma there, after 'shit'.

CORRECT
You are missing a comma there - after 'shit'.

CORRECT
You are missing a comma there (after 'shit').

I also find your use of single quotation marks (') disturbing. You should be using double quotation marks (").

After the first month, you know exactly how long it takes to charge and how low batteries are after 51 miles.

Not necessarily. It depends not only on your driving pattern but also the ambient temperature (which obviously varies according to season unless maybe you live in the tropics).

But why doesn't Android sandbox apps in a way that the app is unaware of? Just present all apps with an empty contact list, a fake GPS location, an empty drive, etc and the user grants permissions to substitute the real ones as needed.

Same reason your PC doesn't: developers and users have a natural conflict of interests, and developers have the control.

Do you use a car everyday? I don't.

Then you're not the market for a Tesla. Not only because batteries degrade over time (whether you're using them or not, I think), but also because if you only use a car occasionally then it's stupid for you to buy an expensive car.

So just to be clear, Mr. ordinary self-interested citizen of the USA, as long as your criminal Stasi organizations and the douche politicians that enable them are only spying on the ordinary, law-abiding people outside your borders, you're good to go?

While that view might be hypocritical and selfish, it's not irrational.

you'd be pissing furious if you found out the GCHQ had recorded all of your conversations for the last few years

But not furious at GCHQ for attempting to spy on us, but rather furious at the NSA counterintelligence unit for failing to prevent GCHQ from succeeding. (And then infinitely more furious at the NSA for accepting the resulting data about US citizens in order to circumvent the 4th Amendment.)

Because the rebels themselves are saying so, FSA included?

A recent example. An earlier one.

Or are you saying that al-Nusra is not radical Islamist?

There is a way to "self censor" the app, which is to download it, mark it 1 star and give a crappy review. Enough people do that, and the app fades into obscurity. Crappy apps should be named and shamed this way.

Wealth becomes decentralized, not the cartels. The cartels held centralized wealth. And I meant viability, mega super star acts are going to be increasingly rare, as good or even great groups compete for loyal fans.

I can see Nickelback for $100 or see two local bands that are equal or better for $50, guess which one I'm gonna pick? ;)