Though autism probably isn't one consistent, monolithic thing, it's long been suspected that one's autistic fate is potentially sealed before birth. A quick search yields: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p...

"CIA inspector general officials deleted an uploaded computer file with the report and then accidentally destroyed a disk that also contained the document. Then, while carrying the computer from which the file was deleted, officials tripped and dropped it into an MRI scanner's powerful magnet. In an effort to free the computer it was struck repeatedly with a rubber mallet. Once freed, being alarmingly warm, the computer was submerged in water to cool. Later, the computer fell from the horse that was transporting it and it was trampled to pieces. The pieces were cast into the volcano."

Are we caring about that?

(Why is this appearing on Slashdot?)

"Decimated nearly half the population" means less than 5%. You can't just ignore the prefix 'deci' because everyone uses it incorrectly, dictionary.

Plenty of alternates to be found.

Article: "The timeline for all this to come to pass is very long, hundreds of trillions of years." Or a "few". Sure. Whatever, I'll be gone either way.

We need to ban ads immediately to protect ourselves from this threat. We cannot sit idly by any longer. Ads have been attacking our computers for too long. The time to act is now!

"It turns out car buyers don't want their EVs to look different from regular cars."

Lexus nailed it with this one. The only thing that distinguishes their hybrids (visually) is a lower-case 'h' at the end of the model number.

We can all have a good laugh at our lessers who don't know how to use computers, but some of them are in very powerful positions to do great harm to those they perceive as engaging in "criminal" activity.

*CSB*

A few years back a man with a badge came to my door and said that a threatening e-mail to the governor had been traced to my IP address. It took me a moment, but I recalled a sarcastic e-mail I had sent some months prior to the governor's office congratulating their efforts to take the state's education ranking from 49th to 50th with budget cuts. I used my university issued e-mail address, with my name and position clearly spelled out in the e-mail signature. I don't know if it was just the guy at my door who was ignorant of the facts of my particular case, or if that's what was really written down in their file. Basically some secretary dragged my unconstructive criticism to the "bad" folder and later I'm being questioned and accused of a crime (though not charged).

*/CSB*

People in law enforcement may not realize how dangerous their ignorance can be to the general public. One can only hope by the time you're facing a judge you'll have at last found someone in the system with the freedom to act reasonably in the face of such ignorance.

... perhaps now they can hire at least one person to work on the many long-standing issues with their interface. It shouldn't be too difficult; media players all the way back to the original Winamp had features that Spotify is still lacking.

I just got back from a scientific conference with thousands of attendees from around the world. There were plenty of women around (still less than half, of course), but virtually no black people, and not too many Hispanics either. Lots of white people and Europeans and Asians. Just an observation - I'm not trying to emphasize any particular issue or value anything over anything else.

I have no intention of ever casting a vote for a Democrat or Republican, but I will vote on local and state measures. There is a middle ground between refusing to participate in a broken system and exercising what little agency you have over your government.

I knew a Professor (of biomedical engineering) who suggested it would be best to teach introductory programming outside of any language. Teach the concepts in their most general, basic form before allowing an individual language to force understanding into an arbitrary syntax.

I first learned in C++, then later relearned and made extensive use of Visual Basic, then switched to Matlab, and now I'm just starting to learn Python. I personally had a very difficult time with C++ and found Visual Basic to be much easier to grasp. That is likely the result of many things, only one of which is the specific languages I experienced.

In my opinion what's more important than the first language you learn is that you learn a few languages early on, all at once - the more varied the better. Seems to work for learning statistical analyses.

This is usually the response I get from folks who have been through big storms (and sometimes zero earthquakes). At least with earthquakes, it's been my experience that people who've been through one are much less anxious about them than those who haven't. I suspect the same can be said for big storms. The main difference that comes up between earthquakes and storms is the predictability or prior warning. While it is certainly true that you can see a storm coming, I would guess that earthquake prone areas have a much smaller damage cost average over time compared to storm prone areas (both in lives and dollars).

Given that lots of people live in earthquake and storm prone areas, I suspect the differences in impact between these types of disasters are largely psychological. Perhaps people from parts of the world where fatalities to such things are more common would have a different sense of which was 'worse'. In the developed world, preparation and building codes have relegated potential disaster choice to a largely financial decision.

I was in Reno for the small swarm mentioned in the article; only a couple were even perceptible. I've also lived through a couple large earthquakes. I'd prefer little tremors all year round over the more damaging one-offs.

Of course, I'm also the type of person who would rather be in (another) earthquake than a tornado or hurricane (neither of which I've experienced). The devil you know, I suppose.