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Comment A win for democracy (Score 3, Insightful) 372

Resolving ambiguities in the law is what judges are for. The existing system is all about writing vague laws and then appointing "agency experts" to fill in the blanks without having to bother with that whole annoying democracy thing to change the law. Some people like it that way though, the submitter seems pretty upset at the idea of lawmaking involving things like voting or separation of powers.

Comment Terrible analogy (Score 4, Informative) 271

If he wants to go with a car analogy, an iPhone is like a car where opening the hood requires a key that's only available to the dealership mechanics. It keeps clueless users from messing around in there, and protects the manufacturer's income stream. Android, on the other hand, is like a car that lets end users and third party mechanics open the hood and install potentially non-OEM parts in there.
Science

Scientists' Brains Shrank a Bit After an Extended Stay in Antarctica (sciencenews.org) 49

Socially isolated and faced with a persistently white polar landscape, a long-term crew of an Antarctic research station saw a portion of their brains shrink during their stay, a small study finds. From a report: "It's very exciting to see the white desert at the beginning," says physiologist Alexander Stahn, who began the research while at Charite-Universitatsmedizin Berlin. "But then it's always the same." The crew of eight scientists and researchers and a cook lived and worked at the German research station Neumayer III for 14 months. Although joined by other scientists during the summer, the crew alone endured the long darkness of the polar winter, when temperatures can plummet as low as -50 Celsius and evacuation is impossible. That social isolation and monotonous environment is the closest thing on Earth to what a space explorer on a long mission may experience, says Stahn, who is interested in researching what effect such travel would have on the brain. Animal studies have revealed that similar conditions can harm the hippocampus, a brain area crucial for memory and navigation. For example, rats are better at learning when the animals are housed with companions or in an enriched environment than when alone or in a bare cage, Stahn says. But whether this is true for a person's brain is unknown.

Comment Climate change (Score 5, Insightful) 237

The rejecting of climate change is pretty easy to account for. A lot of people use climate change to push whatever their personal agenda is:

The climate is changing so we need to...

  • Massively raise taxes
  • Adopt a socialist economy
  • Become vegetarians
  • Abandon privately owned vehicles
  • Switch to more expensive energy sources

Instead of debating all the kooky non-sequitur solutions are being proposed in the name of climate change, it's easier to just throw the ball back in their court by questioning whether the climate is even changing at all. If debating an actual climate scientist, this might not work very well, but when confronted by people who know little about science and are just using it to lend urgency to their pet cause, this is effective at shutting down their rant about how we must do such-and-such in the name of global warming.

People do this sort of thing in other areas as well. For instance, when faced with someone proselytizing religion, an agnostic might not want to get into some long discussion about what concepts of the divine they are and are not open to considering, and instead just say they don't believe in God at all, even if their private views on spirituality happen to be more nuanced.

Sometimes people take a hard line position just to shut up people they don't want to deal with.

Comment Overpriced downgrade (Score 1, Insightful) 86

Having no headphone jack (which I use every day) makes this a downgrade not just from my existing phone, but from the first-gen iPhone I had over a decade ago. Sure, you could use a dongle, but why?

The lack of a Bixby button is lame too. Bixby itself is useless, but having a remappable physical button is very handy. I use the one on my Note 8 to turn the flashlight on and off, much quicker and more convenient than doing it through the GUI.

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