I see where you're going with that, but that's how it is with almost all philanthropists. It's a way for bad people to spin a positive legacy, and Rockefeller was the most prominent example of that. There's nothing wrong with that statement.

Or there wouldn't be, if the summary weren't talking about the Rockefeller Foundation, which is an NGO and not a philanthropist... So, in other words, everybody's wrong.

This is the same logic that's applied to any military secrets - keeping information out of the hands of the enemy means also keeping it out of the hands of citizens. That sometimes makes sense. Sometimes. But it fails when withholding this information makes the country and its residents less safe.

The trouble is that we tend to forget that these organizations do not exist to attack, they exist to protect. Just as our penal system has gone over almost wholly to revenge and punishment rather than rehabilitation, our "defense" agencies have gotten far more aggressive. This seems to be a pretty consistent failure of logic which we are collectively suffering through. From militarization of police to projection of military power to the fucking article - in which we are making ourselves more vulnerable in the name of also making other entities ("the enemy") more vulnerable.

Not that I'm disagreeing with the summary, but the idea that we're resting our hopes of protection from spying on a different group of spies is probably cause for concern. The government gets away with this thanks to voter apathy. The private companies get away with this thanks to consumer apathy... While more ubiquitous encryption is only something to celebrate, the real cause for celebration might simply be that its presence calls attention to itself and maybe possibly gets people to be slightly less apathetic.

All you have to do is remove the icon. Here.

Yes I don't like the Pocket integration either, but it's temporary, does no harm if you don't use it, and, this story inclusive, probably does no harm even if you do use it. It's just a useless icon. Get rid of it and put it behind you.

Well, sort of. He stated what he believed the law to be, but in fact until May of this year Minnesota had a criminal defamation law. Well after the police chief made those comments. Additionally, it's not defamation but a charge of criminal harm that the police chief was talking about. The idea being that saying something like this in a public forum about a teacher could incite some degree of panic among the parents of students at this school.

On the one hand, the above poster was wrong and that's not such a big deal. Happens to everybody. On the other hand, he called for the police chief to be fired based on his wrong assumption of the law and a wholly inadequate understanding of the story. Not to defend the jingoist to whom you replied, but that isn't okay.

Ten percent of the budget is going to the camera? Could never make a phone without a camera attached... that would be crazy.

Alfalfa plays a bigger role than almonds and people don't even eat it. It just gets fed to cows, with a notoriously poor food conversion ratio.

They suspended the Code of Conduct. Link.

Don't get all excited. A few bad actors did something bad, people complained, the issue was addressed. The Code of Conduct, at least that aspect of it, was never applied. Continuing to agitate about it as though the sky were falling does no one any good.

Yeah, I would expect to hear lots and lots of this sort of thing if he actually did this and won. Opposition pundit: "He's promised to resign so I'm going to put this big clock up behind me and talk about it constantly, reminding you all that he hasn't resigned yet and that, therefore, he's horrible, untrustworthy, and corrupt."

Then, at the first minor success towards achieving his goal: "Why hasn't he resigned yet? Why hasn't he resigned yet? Why hasn't he resigned yet? Why hasn't he resigned yet? Why hasn't he resigned yet? Why hasn't he resigned yet? Why hasn't he resigned yet? Why hasn't he resigned yet? Why hasn't he resigned yet? Why hasn't he resigned yet? Why hasn't he resigned yet? Why hasn't he resigned yet? Why hasn't he resigned yet? "

All of the problems about timing - early posts being more visible and thus getting modded higher, posts being sorted by time posted and thus the earlier ones being at the top, early posts being the only ones shown in a 500+ comment thread - all of those points are true and problematic. Don't blame the limited number of mod points or the limited number of mods though, those are things working in our favor. That, plus the low cap for up-mods and the fact that mods can't post, are reasons why Slashdot's system works better than Reddit's, et. al.

If we just change how comments are sorted it would go a long way towards addressing our moderation problems.

Well I hate the origin story thing, I'm with you there. Origin stories are usually weaker than stories with establish characters, just because there are so many balls to juggle. Also because the writers seem to feel compelled to shoehorn in certain things, like the characters' goofy names. The naming scene is almost always a bad one.

But burnout? No. Superhero movies / TV shows are very light, demanding almost no emotional investment. It's hard to get burned out on something which asks so little. Think of them as the light beer of cinema.

Shipping by truck is much much less efficient / more expensive than shipping by ship. Modernizing some ports would cost far less than this crazy bridge connecting nowhere Alaska to nowhere Siberia. Almost anything would cost less than this. This article isn't about a project which people are seriously considering, this is a Discovery Channel style "What if..." sort of article.

Web 2.0 was about JavaScript? I thought it was about user submitted content.

* "elderly and otherwise disinterested"

I did not intend that as a smear against the elderly, but rather a combination of being old enough to associate amusing yourself with physical cards and being sufficiently disinterested in video games to know that there are other options available.

Lots of people like solitaire, but the people who play it constantly don't tend to the most savvy. This is doubtless intended to capture money from the elderly and the otherwise disinterested, who are probably only vaguely aware that there are other video games available out there.