Forgot your password?
typodupeerror

Comment Re:This is the plot for "The Blob", isn't it? (Score 1) 59

There are tons and tons of pathogens with high mortality rates without medical intervention. There are tons of pathogens that only see minimal death rates without active medical intervention because vaccination reduced the penetration that those pathogens have into the community and may have even forced evolution for increased transmissibility in lieu of virulence in order to spread at all.

Comment Re:The US needs to get on board too (Score 2) 84

Middle-range drones are in use because anti-aircraft measures have gotten so good.

No. The lack of anti-aircraft measures is why middle-range drones are being used so extensively. Ukraine put a lot time and effort into degrading Russian AA, whether radar systems, S-300/400/500, Pantsir, or anything else. The last number I saw was about 1,700 AA of all types damaged or destroyed.

Once AA is reduced, this opens corridors for drones/missiles, which is exactly what Ukraine is doing. Crimea is now essentially an island, with supplies rapidly dwindling and people fleeing while they can. Moscow has three rings of AA to try (and faling) to protect itself. Meanwhile, oil refineries the length and breadth of Russia are going up in flames each week.

Ukraine does have Baba Yaga drones (heavy drones which can carry multiple, large mortars/bombs), and those are being used to take out fortified positions.

Single-use drones are stil highly in use, which is what a middle-range drone is.

Comment Re:Don't look! Don't look! (Score 5, Interesting) 78

Damn, I looked. Who else would be self important enough to continuously log their location? And then stupid enough to rob a bank?

Just because someone is stupid doesn't mean that they aren't subject to specific protections under law.

Ernesto Miranda, for whom the Miranda Warning is named, was by accounts a terrible person. Miranda's conviction was thrown out on those technical grounds that his confession should not have been permitted, then he was retried and convicted of the crime without his confession as evidence. Once he was released from prison he died in a bar fight.

The point of protections are that they apply to everyone, guilty or innocent, and are supposed to regulate the way that the legal system all the way from the patrolman to the attorney general behave. That doesn't mean that criminals aren't still criminals, but it does mean that the government has to provide proper justification for its actions against persons. If someone really did commit a crime then the government should be able to show cause, and this keeps everyone else from being scrutinized when the government has no business scrutinizing.

Comment Not surprising (Score 2) 328

Almost got plowed into by one of these oversized trucks a few days ago. I was walking in the driving lane between rows and a guy in one of these oversized pickups drove through the parking spots into the lane. He stopped only a few feet from me, then admitted he didn't see me.

Aside from the oversized truck, this is why you don't drive through parking spots.

Comment Re:Before someone says it (Score 1) 134

True, misinformation coming from "trusted" sources is much more damaging than some idiot with a blog posting nonsense, simply by the fact that it's framed as something trusted by so many others.

False dichotomy. Nobody here is talking about an idiot with a blog posting nonsense.

False information coming from sources that "look" trustable but are actually not are very damaging - on purpose, as that is literally the intent.

Incomplete/biased information from trustable sources that are not deliberately attempting to mislead (as in sources that adhere to the ethics of not presenting information that is factually false, even if the picture is not "complete" as you suggest) is a slight wrong, and has existed since the dawn of the printed word - it's editorial in nature - but its effects on creating social problems pales in comparison to weaponized disinformation campaigns.

Hand-wringing about the later as if it's some kind of new thing, or something most people don't know about strikes me as super naive. The insidiousness of the former is simply that people don't appreciate the scale to which it's happening.

Slashdot Top Deals

The reason that every major university maintains a department of mathematics is that it's cheaper than institutionalizing all those people.

Working...