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Comment "Smaller than a hair" - no (Score 1) 15

If you read the article carefully, they are talking about lenses THINNER than a hair. I see several of the posts here thinking the width/radius of the lenses is this small, a reasonable mistake given the way this was written. Having a radius that small would severely reduce their light gathering ability, requiring very bright light or very dim images or very long exposure times.

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Comment A boon for the generations toostupid to read (Score 1) 59

Britannica has been around for over two hundred years. I sold a LOT of sets i my day. Unfortunately, there are huge numbers of people who can't or don't read. In my old age, I find myself tutoring/coaching people on how to think and how to study. This last year, I have been coaching 4 people, WITH MULTIPLE DEGREES, who read only about 150 words-per-minute and can't remember what they read. (In my generation , boomer, the average reading speed was 200-250 wpm w/70% comprehension.) A report by abtaba (https://www.abtaba.com/blog/59-reading-statistics) says that 42% of college graduates never read a book after college. Judging from what I see in this forum, I suspect that a lot of them haunt /.

This is a waste of resources! If a person reading 250 wpm reads for an hour a day they could easily read a 100,000 word book each week. If they did that every week that would be over 50 books in a year. If only half those books were on a subject they were interested in, they would have acquired the knowledge/book requirement for a BA/BS degree about every two years. (Assuming they learned how to think somewhere along the way.)

However, letting AI set the standards for learning come with compliance, not thinking. Encyclopaedia Britannica is a proper name. (Notice how I spelled it EncyclopAEdia?) However much a writer tries to include the ligature "ash" (ae) in his text, Ignorant spell-checker, ignorant editors, and ignorant AI will insist on changing it to a simple "e".

Britannica jumped the gun: AI is not ready to improve on an encyclopedia designed to accumulate facts for reader's consumption.

Comment What did they contribute? (Score 1) 167

It is true that the rich got richer. The question is: "Did they get richer by creating more wealth for others and shaving a portion for themselves? or did they get richer by plundering the resources of other people?"

It is not like the very, very rich keep their money in a huge money vault like Scrooge McDuck. You can only do two things with money: Either spend it or invest it. If you spend it, you are creating jobs and making things better for the people who make those products and services you spend money on, whether it is the lower-paid worker who has a job or the higher paid executive and investor that puts the process together. If you invest it, you are providing the resources that enable others to produce goods and services, which provides jobs and income for other people to who can circulate the money through the economy by buying the goods and services they need or want. Being rich does not automatically make you guilty of exploitation, and stealing someone's wealth by government intervention of force should be reserved for those who are guilty of exploitation or theft.

So some smarty is going to say, "Well, what if the person DID keep it in a vault instead of spending it? What if he kept it under his mattress? What if he burned it? From an Economic point of view, those are simply bad investments....

Comment This is not my submission. (Score 5, Informative) 373

I am the submission author.

This is not what I submitted.

Slashdot changed the content and formatting of my submission.

The content changes are significant

Here is a screenshot of my version of the submission.

In my opinion the content Slashdot chose over mine significantly changes the message(s).

I would rather have had the suggestion rejected than have something else substituted in under my username.

Happy Sunday.

Comment Samsara (Score 2) 106

Like a person trapped in a cycle of reincarnation this story has been reincarnated on Slashdot for decades.

Queue all of the predictable comments about how this story isn't accurate, add in some bitching about some common languages, and heated defenses on how that isn't fair.

Comment Re:And yet (Score 1) 139

It isn't just corporate greed.

The livestock industry contributes more to the greenshouse effect than transportation.

Post an article about that, you will get hostile replies, snark, and jokes.

The hottest day reports nobody likes to get are about corporate greed AND the personal failures of many people to make even small adjustments to the way they live.

Queue the real life copies of the comic book store owner from the Simpsons to lecture us why he is top of the food chain, and smugly should not even be told that his habits might be a problem.

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