The hostile responses to your comment only further prove your point - slashdot really seems to collectively hate bitcoin for some reason. I've also been reading the comments here for years, and for every article about an all time high has comments warning of an impending crash, and every article about a huge crash (like this one) is full of collective schadenfreude, while conveniently ignoring the gains made over the last year or two. iTS a BuBbLe! Well if it's a bubble, it never really pops, it maybe loses half of it's radius every few years, and eventually grows to a new all time high within a year or two after the deflation. I mean if someone with the "bitcoinhater" handle can admit that, maybe there's some hope for the rest of the haters here, but I'm not holding my breath.

About the only thing I somewhat disagree with this post, is the transfer of wealth from Big Finance to geeks here; I think Big Finance did finally get into crypto, which is why we saw such a massive gain up until the last couple of weeks. But we're on the brink of another financial crisis and they've been forced to liquidate their crypto holdings to avoid getting margin called on worthless commercial mortgage backed securities (from pandemic), redditors getting wise on naked short selling on memestocks and continuing to hold, reverse repo at an insane high.. there's more to this indicative of an imminent financial crisis, but the point is it's highly likely the big financial players have been mostly selling crypto (combined with triggered panic selling).

But whether you agree with that speculation or not, bitcoin (and most of the other main cryptos now; etherium, ripple, cardano, hell maybe even dogecoin) WILL rise again when this crash bottoms out, which might even be in the next couple of weeks once the big players cash out. They'll buy in once the dust has settled, so will retail traders, and in another 3 to 6 months after we inevitably see them rise again, I'm sure we'll see another article on slashdot about the crypto rebound (full of hater comments lol). And for what it's worth, I finally got into crypto a few months ago and did feel the burn and cashed out at around a 25% total loss (before it tanked to what it's at now). Certainly stings a little, but I would be even more of a fool if I didn't buy back in once the dust has settled and it inevitably starts rising again.

Perhaps this isn't intentional on your part, but calling black people "blacks" is dehumanizing and racist. The subtle difference implies they're not even people, they're just "the blacks". This is especially egregious when you're using both terms in the same sentence, and pretty ironic in a statement claiming that "Different rules for different groups" are wrong.

Have to heartily disagree with that comment. I've worked a couple of different IT positions in healthcare, and the main reason doctors "hate computers" is they tend to be heavily resistant to any sort of change, and the nature of software is change. Years ago I had a gig upgrading computers in a hospitals and the doctors were by far the most hostile towards mandatory upgrades (compared to nurses and receptionists, who were generally eager to get a new computer). God forbid their desktop icons were rearranged, or something didn't work exactly like it did. Most EMRs (software for maintaining electronic records) still have a Win 3.x look and feel, you can't make any changes to the software they use without risking major conflict with your BAs and the doctors they have to deal with.

I can only speculate as to why doctors are particularly against any sort of progress change, or as to why they are absolutely set in their ways. Perhaps any sort of short term loss in efficiency / patient care is unacceptable - like some sort of variant of the Trolley Problem where "pulling a level" hurts patients in the short term? Because their existing systems are working, they don't want to take any sort of risk that may reduce their down time?

Software updates would be another concern to account for too. If you're buying a generator, a weed trimmer or toaster - they'll come with a manual, because the functionality isn't going to change for that device or equipment, ever. How an Android phone or laptop works is almost entirely dependent on the software or operating system being used, and those are constantly changing with updates. Slightly different icons or a minor rearrangement is enough to confuse users, and now all the printed manuals are useless or misleading.

I used to think that too when I was younger; "I'd sure live forever if I could!". Or even 500 years or something if the technology was possible. But after reading several sci-fi books on the topic of immortality (and watched few episodes of black mirror), I think I've changed my outlook - death doesn't seem so bad. Sure it would be nice to be immortal and safely observe the earth for a while (maybe?), but if you're immortal, you have to think that opens up the possibility to live some sort of hellish existence in some sort of purgatory or torture. Regardless of how you achieve that immortality (upgraded flesh body, consciousness transfer to machine), there's some possibility you'll be in some state worse than death. Perhaps your consciousness is in some empty space simulation, or you're in some rich guy / alien private museum for hundreds of thousands of years.

The animated film Ninja Scroll comes to mind - near the end of the film, there's an immortal antagonist fighting the protagonist on a ship full of gold. The gold turns to molten (from a fire), covers the antagonist who sinks to the bottom of the ocean encased in gold (presumably, spending the rest of eternity blind, deaf, mute and immobile). Maybe you're better off being dead in that case!

Oh, it would be *SOOO* much better to have a system like the US where only the wealthy can afford healthcare, even if they happen to be obese smokers that'll die a few years after getting the surgery anyway.

Man, what is with these horrible death panels in these socialist countries with single payer plans? When there's a limited amount of surgeries that can be performed on patients, they have the audacity to ensure the patients they choose are more likely to live longer, therefore making each surgery more worth the investment (as opposed to randomly selecting patients, first come first serve, or not letting poor people get surgery). What kind of sick system is this!??!?

I'm not trying to downplay the importance of taxonomy in biology, but this is a really incredulous scenario in the first few paragraphs of this article. Was this the best "real-life" scenario the author could come up with where taxonomy somehow results in a potential life-or-death situation?

Seriously, who the hell would walk into a hospital and simply mention the genus of the snake that bit them? Someone mauled by a bear arriving at a hospital wouldn't say a member of the Ursus genus mauled me. Assuming they had enough time to wiki-search the snake while they're rushed to the hospital, they'd barge in with a picture of the snake that bit them and ask for an antidote. If for some reason, the bitten victim is in some sort of delirious Hodor-like state and is unable to communicate any words other than "Spracklandus, Spracklandus , Spracklandus !!", then we'd also have to assume the doctor is unable to research this and gets the wrong snake. And then we'd have to assume that the confirmed snake that bit the patient is visually close enough for the confirmation to be technically the wrong snake, but somehow the anti-venom that's administered is too different to be effective from the actual snake, and the patient dies. And then if this did happen, it would happen once as a freak accident, and policy would change to avoid this scenario from happening in the future.

There's so many levels of unbelievably stupid with this possible scenario. If this is the best worst scenario they can come up with to reassure the readers of the importance of taxonomy - well this leads me to believe it's far less important than I originally assumed.

Any sort of condemnation of a tech company by a U.S. Intelligence agency should be easily spun into a positive selling feature for said company. If the CIA / NSA / 3 letter agency is publicly denouncing your organization, then it's almost certain that they're unable to install their backdoors / rootkit / keyloggers on whatever that company has to sell.

I'm not too convinced this will be useful, especially for casual facebook users. that are actually safe during a crisis but fail to mark themselves as "safe" with this feature. Say there is a crisis in your location, and you're using this to see who's OK in your friend list. 75/100 friends are safe. Phew. What about the other 25? Or even if it's only 8/10 that you really care about. Are they dead because they didn't check in? Or maybe they just forgot their phone that day. As this feature becomes more ubiquitous on facebook, it will increase the worry factor for those not on facebook enough to use it via "false negatives".

The point the GP was making wasn't the point that "if something can be used for EVIL, so we should hold the manufacturer liable if it is". The point was that if you manufacture something with no good or legitimate purpose or if it's obvious the intent is *PURELY* for malice or criminal activities, then the creator should be held liable. This software wasn't something designed for white hats to find security vulnerabilities.

A considerable number of slashdot readers seem to have this weird quasi-libertarian notion that creating something with the intention of malice or subverting the law is just fine and dandy, and the creators should be absolved of responsibility - see The Pirate Bay and Silk Road. "What??? I just created the dark net trading platform that's hidden to authorities!! It's not MYYYY fault if people use it for CP, assassination attempts and selling slaves... It's not like I did the actual crimes!". If your creation has 99% illegitimate uses or is used by 99% of the users for illegitimate & illegal purposes, then maybe you totally knew that when you created it and should be held responsible.

Reminds me of that Death Ray quote from futurama "Amy, technology isn't intrinsically good or evil. It's how it's used. Like the Death Ray.". But even the fucking death ray sounds like it has more legitimate uses than this malware (like potentially killing cancel cells, parasites, or warding off an invading force from Omicron Persei 8)

Hardly a "massive" social turbulence. The number of births where the expected father isn't the real father is somewhere in the neighborhood of 2% (Find your own sources). This wouldn't even be a blip on the radar.

Imagine if pornhub, xhamster, etc... decided to band together and block all access from Congress (or even all of Washington D.C) for 24 hours from accessing their sites. Bonus points if they add some sort of family-values message to their site ("We at [website] have taken the necessary steps to prevent our elected representatives from accessing the ungodly smut they claim is destroying this great nation. You're welcome").

Now that might actually trigger some change!

The phrase "take it to the bank" - this is meant to emphasize something that is certain, or known for sure. But then this is followed by the phrase "phishing them for 3 million" right afterwards. So by using jargon that emphasizes certainty followed by a relatively new English language word (phishing) which technically means attempt (but maybe most readers directly associate this with scammed) - this heavily implies that Mattel was indeed fleeced, robbed, scammed, looted, pillaged, phished or whatever word you want to use.

And technically, they were phished/scammed. The voluntarily handed over the money - they just happened to catch on quickly enough and the money was returned to them. The money was in the other account by then. If someone comes to your door claiming to be a PC repair guy and you voluntarily give them your computer and they leave; guess what - you were scammed. It doesn't matter that you managed to catch on 2 minutes later and chase their vehicle down, or 2 days later to find your PC in the pawn shop - you were scammed. The confusing issue here is that nothing in the title implies that the money was returned, and simply gives the first half of the story (Mattel phished) without indicating the money was returned successfully. But that's hardly the fault of the slashdot editor here, this title is taken verbatim from the CSO article. I hardly think it's the slashdot moderator's job to edit the summary for the titles for potential confusion.

Maybe the NSA could be convinced to do a special TV show appearance on Hoarders. Have some other agencies come together in an intervention to help 'em let go.

DOJ: So NSA... we've got some recorded phone calls here from August 3rd, 2003 between a Darlene [redacted] and her grandson [redacted]
NSA: Yes.. she's born in 1948, lives in Arlington, TX and her SSN is [redacted]. I remember when we first collected those calls.
DOJ: Well then, we listened to this a few times, and it sounds like some fairly innocuous conversation. Nothing criminal whatsoever.
NSA: Right
DHS: So... do you think we can delete these calls then? I mean, there's no..
NSA: NOOOOOO!! There could still be connections to terrorism in those calls... somehow! You never know what we might find on meta-data analysis
DEA: Look... we've identified all the phone references with mentions of drugs, and made copies of those for investigations. We never use the rest of those recordings, and I'm the only one here that really uses those at all. Maybe we could just.. y'know.. delete...
NSA: Don't touch that data! It's mine! I own it!

Help! Help! A giant social network monster is attacking me! It's asking me if I want to join, and it's eaten most of my friends! Ahhhhhh, not my metadata! Now it knows I like cats and anime! That could be used to *gasp* send me targeted ads one day!