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Comment Re:No Jesus was NOT as socialist (Score 0) 299

You missed the context. The apostles were setting up a *voluntary* community where those who joined gave up all they had to the community to enter, and in return, were granted to the community resources.

Ananias wanted to have access to the benefits of belonging to that community without actually meeting the stated requirements.

As the apostle pointed out, he could have kept everything for himself. He could have given half to the community and kept half for himself. Neither one of those would have lead to the dire outcome. (The new testament is full of wealthy people giving to the poor, and to the support of the church leaders. None of them were condemned for how little they gave!)

But Ananias wanted to *look* like a team player without actually being one. Christ's harshest condemnations were spoken against those who claimed to be holy, but used the very rules of their religion to abuse others (including their own parents).

I agree that it is impossible to *successfully* lie to God. That doesn't seem to stop people from trying to get away with it. It's one step beyond lying to yourself. You can deny reality all you want, but it always wins in the end.

And yes, I do object strongly to someone labeling Jesus a Socialist.

Regardless of what the philosopher's debate about socialism (small "s"), Socialism (capital "S") has been the means causing immense suffering and death in the 20th century. The most powerful "Socialist" governments of the 20th century caused more deaths than any other philosophical system in history.

People seem to forget that:

  • - the Chinese Communist Party calls their current system of government "Socialism with Chinese characteristics" (and are currently engaged in at least *two* genocides),
  • - the "S" in the USSR, is for Socialist,
  • - that the misery of the people of Venezuela is due to a Socialist government, and
  • - that NAZI stands for e National Socialist German Workers' Party

Those Socialist systems all claimed that they would benefit the poor. Instead they have created enormous misery and death.

Capitalism certainly has problems. It can also lead to concentrated money and power.

Small communities that work on the basis of sharing (socialism with a small "s") have been success to one extent or another (for example the kibbutz in Israel).

We don't seem to have any examples of large communities based on sharing. It seems that as soon as a community gets too big for people have personal relationships with all of the other members of the community it breaks down. It also seems to be essential that those who don't want participate have the option to leave.

I suspect that at our current level of civility, only small family-like groups can successfully practice communities based on sharing.

Comment No Jesus was NOT as socialist (Score 0, Troll) 299

Jesus was NOT a socialist.

Socialism (and Communism) are systems of GOVERMENT that take goods from some individuals to give to others, by force if necessary.

Jesus, on the other hand, emphasized that INDIVIDUALS should choose to love, bless, serve, and give to others. This is very explicit in the sermon on the mount in Matthew Chapters 5, 6, and 7

The account of Ananias and Sapphira in Mark 5 also focus on the choices of INDIVIDUALS. In specific, it shows the stark consequences of lying to God and his servants out of greed.

Both Socialism and Communism have more in common with the actions of Ananias and Sapphira than they do with the teachings of Jesus. Just pay attention to who ends up with the wealth in any socialist or communist society,

Submission + - Marines testing real-life aimbot (twz.com)

Submitted by timeOday
timeOday writes: The U.S. Marines are testing a system for standard service rifles that automatically fine-tunes the point of aim with the help of a powered buttstock as a new option to help shoot down drones. The service is in the midst of a broad push to acquire new capabilities to help every Marine better protect themselves from ever-growing uncrewed aerial threats...

ZeroMark’s system is not the first automated small arms targeting system the Marines have looked into in recent years with a particular eye toward helping engage drones. The service has also at least been evaluating SMASH 2000-series computerized optical sights from Israeli firm Smart Shooter. SMASH-series sights have the ability to detect and lock onto targets of interest, even ones on the move, and calculate an optimal aim point for the shooter. Depending on how the system is configured on a particular gun, it can even prevent the trigger from being pulled until the weapon is properly aimed at the target...

The targeting system in ZeroMark’s FCS is similar, in some very broad strokes, to that of the SMASH family. It uses an array of sensors, including electro-optical cameras and LIDAR, coupled with machine vision and advanced software algorithms, to acquire targets, according to the company. Where ZeroMark’s offering differs most substantially is in its motorized articulating buttstock, which uses the data from the sensors to help physically move the gun’s point of aim. This, in turn, helps the shooter engage the target with greater precision and speed...

“[The mechanized buttstock] doesn’t move the soldier’s arm, it creates a virtual pivot between shoulder pad and handheld positions that creates angular change of the bore axis (ultimately where the gun’s pointed),” ZeroMark CEO Joel Anderson said in an interview earlier this year, according to TechCrunch. “The control systems for it are modeled to compensate for all the human factors (proprioception, noise, movement, torque, etc.) as well as the drone’s movement. So if you point in the general direction of the drone such that you’d be in the vicinity of a drone, the system does the rest.”

Zeromark says it is also easy to install and uninstall as required on a wide variety of different rifle types. A promotional video seen earlier in this story shows prototypes or mock-ups of the system installed on rifles in the AK-47/AKM, AR-15/M16, and Tavor families...

Overall, ZeroMark says its FCS “makes hitting a small drone at 200 yards as easy as hitting a 60-foot-diameter circle” at the same range, per TechCrunch. At least for now, the company has said work on its targeting system is focused on the counter-drone role, but has acknowledged that its system could be adapted for use against a wider array of target types in the future.

Submission + - Restoring a 1986 DEC PDP/11 Minicomputer - Will it boot?? (youtube.com) 1

Submitted by Shayde
Shayde writes: I've been working on a PDP/11 I basically got as a 'barn find' from an estate sale a year ago. The project has absolutely had it's ups and downs, as the knowledgebase for these machines is aging quickly. I'm hoping to restore my own expertise with this build, but it's been challenging finding parts, technical details, and just plain information.

I leaned pretty heavily on the folks at the Vintage Computing Federation (vcfed.org), as well as connections I've made in the industry — and made some great progress.

The latest chapter in how it's going was just posted, check it out if you're keen on retrocomputing and old minicomputers and DEC gear.

Submission + - Underocean desalination resolve many problems (latimes.com)

Submitted by Bruce66423
Bruce66423 writes: Locating desalination plants at the bottom of the sea:

Reduces energy consumption because the sea itself provides the necessary osmotic pressure
Reduces brine production because it only removes 10% of fresh water from the salt water
Reduce land usage

Submission + - The 33rd First Annual Ig Nobel Prizes (improbable.com)

Submitted by Thorfinn.au
Thorfinn.au writes: CHEMISTRY and GEOLOGY PRIZE [POLAND, UK] — Jan Zalasiewicz, for explaining why many scientists like to lick rocks.
LITERATURE PRIZE [FRANCE, UK, MALAYSIA, FINLAND] — Chris Moulin, Nicole Bell, Merita Turunen, Arina Baharin, and Akira O’Connor for studying the sensations people feel when they repeat a single word many, many, many, many, many, many, many times.
MECHANICAL ENGINEERING PRIZE [INDIA, CHINA, MALAYSIA, USA] — Te Faye Yap, Zhen Liu, Anoop Rajappan, Trevor Shimokusu, and Daniel Preston, for re-animating dead spiders to use as mechanical gripping tools.
PUBLIC HEALTH PRIZE [SOUTH KOREA, USA] — Seung-min Park, for inventing the Stanford Toilet a computer vision system for defecation analysis et alia
COMMUNICATION PRIZE [ARGENTINA, SPAIN, COLOMBIA, CHILE, CHINA, USA] — María José Torres-Prioris, Diana López-Barroso, Estela Càmara, Sol Fittipaldi, Lucas Sedeño, Agustín Ibáñez, Marcelo Berthier, and Adolfo García, for studying the mental activities of people who are expert at speaking backward.
MEDICINE PRIZE [USA, CANADA, MACEDONIA, IRAN, VIETNAM] — Christine Pham, Bobak Hedayati, Kiana Hashemi, Ella Csuka, Tiana Mamaghani, Margit Juhasz, Jamie Wikenheiser, and Natasha Mesinkovska, for using cadavers to explore whether there is an equal number of hairs in each of a person’s two nostrils.
NUTRITION PRIZE [JAPAN] — Homei Miyashita and Hiromi Nakamura, for experiments to determine how electrified chopsticks and drinking straws can change the taste of food.
EDUCATION PRIZE [HONG KONG, CHINA, CANADA, UK, THE NETHERLANDS, IRELAND, USA, JAPAN] — Katy Tam, Cyanea Poon, Victoria Hui, Wijnand van Tilburg, Christy Wong, Vivian Kwong, Gigi Yuen, and Christian Chan, for methodically studying the boredom of teachers and students.
PSYCHOLOGY PRIZE [USA] — Stanley Milgram, Leonard Bickman, and Lawrence Berkowitz for experiments on a city street to see how many passersby stop to look upward when they see strangers looking upward
PHYSICS PRIZE [SPAIN, GALICIA, SWITZERLAND, FRANCE, UK] — Bieito Fernández Castro, Marian Peña, Enrique Nogueira, Miguel Gilcoto, Esperanza Broullón, Antonio Comesaña, Damien Bouffard, Alberto C. Naveira Garabato, and Beatriz Mouriño-Carballido, for measuring the extent to which ocean-water mixing is affected by the sexual activity of anchovies.

Submission + - TSMC Reportedly Looks To Raise a Second Arizona Chip Fab (theregister.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Taiwan's chipmaking giant TSMC is said to be preparing to build another semiconductor fabrication plant in Arizona, alongside the facility it completed this summer, in a move that may be seen as a vindication of the US government’s CHIPS Act funding. According to reports in the Wall Street Journal, TSMC is planning to announce in the near future that it will build a further factory for making cutting edge chips at a site just north of Phoenix, adjacent to the $12 billion Fab 21 plant the company decided to construct in 2020.

The new facility will be used to manufacture 3nm chips, according to the paper, which cites anonymous sources "familiar with the expansion plans." The scale of this project is expected to be comparable to the existing plant. Reports last year suggested that TSMC was already considering constructing up to five additional semiconductor factories in Arizona, on top of the one just completed, which is not scheduled to start up production of chips until 2024. The move to build another plant comes despite the Taiwanese chip behemoth announcing recently that it was cutting back on its capital investment budget in the face of a market slowdown which led to TSMC predicting that Q4 revenue growth will likely be flat. However, the fact that TSMC is still considering further facilities in Arizona could be seen as vindication that the US CHIPS Act, which includes subsidies and other incentives for semiconductor companies like TSMC to build on American soil, is having the desired effect.

Submission + - Meta Begins Mass Layoffs (wsj.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Meta Platforms Inc. will begin laying off employees on Wednesday morning, Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg told hundreds of executives on Tuesday. The coming cuts are expected to total many thousands of employees and will likely be the largest of the year to date in the tech sector, The Wall Street Journal previously reported. Mr. Zuckerberg appeared downcast in Tuesday’s meeting and said he was accountable for the company’s missteps, and that his over-optimism about growth had led to overstaffing, according to people familiar with the meeting. Meta’s head of human resources, Lori Goler, told the group that employees who lose their jobs will be provided with at least four months of salary as severance, according to people familiar with the meeting.

Mr. Zuckerberg described broad cuts and specifically mentioned the recruiting and business teams as among those facing layoffs. A general internal announcement of the company’s layoff plans is expected around 6 a.m. Eastern time on Wednesday, with the specific employees losing their jobs informed over the course of the morning. Following the meeting, company directors in numerous sections of the organization began notifying their subordinates of cuts and reorganizations. Inside Meta, employees have been seeking specifics about the coming layoffs for days and planning for the worst by forming external groups with current colleagues and discussing how to use benefits.

Meta reported more than 87,000 employees at the end of September. Company officials already told employees to cancel nonessential travel beginning this week, the Journal previously reported. The planned layoffs would be the first broad head-count reductions to occur in the company’s 18-year history.

Submission + - Lucid Dying: Patients Recall Near-Death Experiences During CPR

Submitted by InfiniteZero
InfiniteZero writes: A new study shows that around one in five people who survive cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) after cardiac arrest describe lucid experiences of death that occurred while they were seemingly unconscious and on the brink of death.

Survivors reported having unique lucid experiences, including a perception of separation from the body and observing events without pain or distress. They also reported a meaningful evaluation of life, including of their actions, intentions, and thoughts toward others. The researchers found these experiences of death to be different from hallucinations, dreams, delusions, illusions, or CPR-induced consciousness.

Tests for hidden brain activity were also included in the research. A key finding was the discovery of spikes of brain activity, including so-called gamma, delta, theta, alpha, and beta waves up to an hour into CPR. Some of these brain waves normally occur when people are conscious and performing higher mental functions, including thinking, memory retrieval, and conscious perception.

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