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Comment Re:Come on, we've been through this... (Score 1) 28

You're being silly. A method can find lots of errors that should be corrected without requiring a pentest. I'll admit, that there are lots of errors it probably won't find, but at least you can reduce the attack surface.

And the benefit of using an AI here SHOULD be that it de-emphasizes problems without any real effect. (Whether it is or not, I couldn't say, but if it doesn't, then why use an AI.)

Comment Re:Yes, the building is on fire. Don't panic. (Score 1) 56

The thing is, copyright, trademark, and patent are all useful laws...when in the proper proportion. Unfortunately, the powerful always want to extend them beyond all reason. E.g., the term of a copyright should be related to the up-front costs of developing the item patented. No law has EVER done that, or even really tried to do so. (It's probably hopeless to try, as the rewards for gaming the system would be too large.)

Comment Re:non coding != non functional (Score 2) 38

Current evidence seems to be that a lot of it actually *is* junk...or more accurately "background noise". Sometimes the only significant part is the length, so you can chop out the right piece, and sometimes even that doesn't seem to matter. (Within limits, of course.)

Actually, that would make evolution make a lot more sense. There's a high background noise level, and what evolution does is amplify the useful signal. It used to be thought that the cost of establishing one mutation in a population was so high that it couldn't be afforded except on EXTREMELY rare occasions...but that didn't match the data. Neutral drift explained a lot of that, but perhaps there's more reasons. E.g. that most of the viable mutations happen in areas outside the normal developmental path, and then occasionally one is found to be useful. But that *requires* a lot of "junk DNA".

Comment Re: Please, no (Score 1) 33

Well, it's got similarities to the steady state model, but that model didn't include ANY "big bangs". Everything happened in a very incremental fashion. I believe that Hoyle imagined individual Hydrogen atoms spontaneously appearing when stuff got too sparse, but he might have had protons and electrons appearing separately. This is more like the model in Jack Chalker's "Well of Souls" series...just without the "We're living in a simulation" aspect. (And without claiming that we're the result of manipulation by an elder race.)

Comment Re:Please, no (Score 3, Interesting) 33

My favorite answer is that the "big bang" is not unique. They don't occur often, but they do occur repeatedly. Possibly whenever the amount of matter within a light cone gets too sparse. So there would be *some* old pieces left around.

N.B.: Calling this a speculative model is giving it too much credit. It's just a Wild Ass Guess. But I don't know enough to convince myself that it's wrong.

Comment Re:Geothermal will save Iceland (Score 1) 81

The planning starts NOW. That will include rules governing construction. The AMOC stopping hasn't happened yet, and there's no firm estimate of when or even whether it will happen. If they start planning NOW, including changes in the rules governing construction, then handling the housing should be doable.

Also, doable doesn't mean easy or convenient. But the food supply is critical. So is the durability of their power generators. If they can't live there, they'll need some other way to adapt.
(Actually, I'm rather sure that housing is doable, since people have lived on snow fields since before the iron age. Snow based construction has a long and successful history. OTOH, I don't recall it ever being mixed with electricity.)

Comment Re:Anti-Vax attitudes will get people killed (Score 1) 247

It's not just the immune compromised. Vaccines aren't perfect, and the only reason they're so effective is that they enhance "herd immunity". They decrease the probability of catching the disease if exposed and also decrease the probability of spreading it to others once you catch it. So if nearly everybody is vaccinated, they're pretty effective. If only a few are vaccinated, they're a LOT less effective.

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