I would say spend some time on the 23 & Me discussion forums. They are rife with bad interpretations and information. Giving people data without properly informing them how to interpret the data can be a dangerous thing. I do NOT advocate locking the information away, only making sure that the end user fully understands what it does and does not mean. Otherwise you are creating a situation where, at the very least, undue stress and worry is put on the end user.

Of course not everything is on prime and if you compare the prime vs. non-prime price you will find that, no, the shipping isn't really free.

Also who the heck uses Discover cards?

Given the state of Linux graphics drivers in general I think you're nuts to use anything BUT Intel graphics in a laptop. Intel is the only company that seems to take it serious and ship stable and reliable drives that don't shit their bits when you dock, undock, suspend, resume, or change res. I guess if you absolutely have to have the most bleeding edge graphics performance maybe Intel isn't an option but then maybe a Linux laptop isn't the best choice for you.

Dell Latitude e6430 with Intel graphics. Ubuntu certified. I run Linux Mint that works perfectly too. Everything "just works". Highly configurable. Excellent service manual and easily serviceable without voiding your warranty. Standard parts. Docking station that, again, "just works" with Linux. Built like a tank. Available on refurb from Dell outlet. It's not the smallest or lightest or prettiest cheapest but those are not priorities for me. It's the corporate fleet laptop. I've yet to find something to complain about it.

1. I'll give you the license but they obviously no longer share much copyright as they have all been largly rewriten since the 386bsd days. If that were not true then they would all be the same.

2. That's like saying nothing differentiates us from monkeys because we share a common ancestor. I call BS. A common origin implies very little of practical value especially considering how much of the code has been rewritten.

3. So first you say they share a user land then you say the userlands have diverged. Which is it?

4. Overall LACK of quality due to not having a critical mass of developers, you mean?

5. I think they're ALL prima donna devs otherwise why are there so many forks? It's because everybody in the BSD camp wants to take their ball and go home instead of working together on a common goal.

I don't hate BSD or wish anybody ill. These are just my perceptions based on what I've seen.

You know, I hear a lot of folks complain about Linux fragmentation, tyrany of choice, etc. But at least we can say that, for the most part, there is one true canonical Linux kernel (Linus' tree) and all the other kernels are for the most part shallow forks tweaking a few things.

Now in BSD land we have NetBSD, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and DragonflyBSD, each with their own true kernel.

Why?

If the project goals have diverged so widely as to take the kernel off in a completely different direction from all the other BSD's why even call it BSD anymore?

What do the four big BSD distros have in commmon besides the name and a kernel they used to use years (decades?) ago?

I am admitedly ignorant and perhaps I am underestimating the degree of cooperation between these projects.

If you are looking for a sensational story, I'm pretty sure that somewhere on the german energy market you can find a provider who has a 35 cents offer.

And yes, energy efficiency has many reasons. Mostly it is how you build. The house I live in is almost a hundred years old, but it is built from bricks, not wood and aluminium.

Wow.
I pay around $100 a month for electricity.

So, maybe energy is cheaper for you if you measure by kwh, but taking everything into consideration, I pay a lot less for power than you do.

Even taking into consideration that I currently live by myself in an appartment (90 sqm) and not a house with a family, total energy cost is probably lower even if the living conditions were similar.

No, as long as you can prove it was there when you bought the car and you knew nothing of it. Good luck with that.

I know Florida has had a law on the books like this for a while and I'm sure other states do as well. I get why they think they need it but it's a serious abuse of our individual rights as it essentially makes it so you are assumed guilty.

So I just logged in and noticed a new drug trait posted for my profile:

Now, I don't take PPI's but I know enough to not mess with my dosage (if I did) base solely on this info. However I don't trust most others to have the same response, especially since PPIs are now over the counter drugs. The correct response to this info would be to discuss it with your doctor but how many people would see this and just up their dose themselves, based on one test that may indicate that you may metabolize the drug faster than the average population?

I really hope this post is subtle sarcasm, otherwise you are just proving the FDA's point. You MAY be RESISTANT to most COMMON strains of norovirus (which, btw, has nothing to do with influenza, aka the flu virus, or your ability to get infected by it). You did read the data for the error rates for the chip they use to do the test with right?

I think part of the problem is the results from these test can scare the shit out of the average Joe, and there really is no one sitting there with you explaining that your genetic results do not doom you to all these diseases you may have an increased risk for, according to the test. Sure, the site tries but I can see people freaking out, and how it could lead to unnecessary diagnostics and procedures when they batter their primary with the info.

Don't get me wrong, I think the inexpensive availability of these types of test has value, not to mention the research value of all of the data that they collect. However, I do get where the FDA is coming from. There should be an option to send these to your doctor* or at the very least a phone call before you get the results from a genetic councilor working for the company to walk you through what the tests really mean.

For the record I am a 23 & Me customer. My educational background is such that I understood how to interpret the data they provided (and then some, you can get your full results in a raw form from them as well).

*While protecting that data from being used by your current or future insurance companies. They are barred, in most states, from using it against you UNLESS you volunteer the information (i.e. you get the test yourself and it goes into your medical record vs a doctor orders the test).

They didn't invent the wheel here, they are using a bead chip from Illumina. I imagine accuracy information is already readily available.

I'm actually with them, part of the way.

Democracy, no we must be more precise: Representative Democracy has failed us.

If you lump 300 mio. people into 600 representatives (each one representing half a million people) then the main unintended consequence is that you have just created a massively optimized corruption center.

And if the income inequality is large enough that the very rich can spend more money on lobbying their wishes than half a million people can, then they always win.

No, see my other reply. I copied the wrong number. I pay 25 cents.

And the main reason for that is that our corrupt government has "exempted" pretty much every big industrial consumer of electrical energy from the taxes, so the private consumers have to share the whole burden. It could be much lower if everyone, including those who buy/bribe/fuck our politicians would pay their fair share, too.

Germany is generally a lot more energy-efficient. One of the reasons is that power is more expensive and the other reason is that we don't run A/C 24/7 and such stuff. A 4-person home is estimated to use on average 5000 kwh per year here.

So in a yearly sum, most germans pay a lot less than you do.