I understand and appreciate what you're saying. I enjoy hearing the reasoning of others and think that truth is found through dialogue. I agree that we should each try to produce less pollution. I defaulted to a criticism of China's role, as a nation, in reducing global Co2 emissions because...well, that's how the Paris Accord differentiated between the signatories, as well as that being a fairly logical division, i.e. the largest defacto groupings able to decide environmental policy. What a nightmare it would be to have 7.5 billion individuals each come up with their own plan to lessen their own carbon footprint, and then get everyone to sign on.

I know that opinions will differ between what's ideal and what's realistic. Some will say that realistically we'll need to let the undeveloped and "developing" nations catch up by allowing them to increase and continue emitting Co2. Some will say that it's idealistic to assume that our planet's climate will be that forgiving re. the additional damage and time taken to attempt international equity. Others might transpose those two opinions, or come up with yet another view. I'm more than happy to listen carefully and respond thoughtfully.

My own take on all of this isn't fully formulated. But I do wish my home country, the USA, would do more. I wish we didn't have The Donald. And I wish China's rising nationalism would morph into a detente so that every nation could better allocate the necessary resources to mitigating this climate crisis.

It's possible that the '98 Corolla sold in Australia did not have airbags as a default option, whereas the '98 Corolla sold in North America did include them in all models.

Chomsky\s position doesn't surprise me in the least and I think is much more easily explainable than you want to make it. Chomsky is taking the default most anti-American position that he can. Part of that includes not letting Russia be painted any more black or dark than America. There's nothing new, surprising or different in his opinion here, he's just expressing it in a way that goes against the democrats which throws people that hadn't seen Chomsky that way before when he was mostly condemning right leaning America. It's pretty much the exact same thing as the shift in opinion towards wikileaks before and after they ran a freight train over Hillary. When they were releasing secrets damaging to the right end of the spectrum they were doing the lord's work. The explicit and sole focus on western evils was ok until suddenly the left end of the west got included. Now suddenly a pro-Russian conspiracy was visible to left leaning folks. You know, the now that it's affecting me it's a problem viewpoint.

The language family tree for Europe.

I agree that NoScript tends to make it a hassle to get basic functionality out of the vast majority of the web. You have to play around with allowing scripts from some domains and not others, on pretty much every page you visit.

...Which is pretty scary, if you think about it. Are all of those cross-site scripts beneficial or even necessary from a user standpoint? Hell no. Users stand to gain nothing from all that crap running. From our perspective, they just increase load times and data usage, often compounded with auto-reloading. We should have control over that stuff in all circumstances, but it becomes absolutely critical in mobile internet where we generally don't have as much processing power AND the vast majority of people have data usage caps.

Basically what I'm saying is, the admitted fact that NoScript tends to make the web unusable is a symptom of a deeper problem with how the web is constructed these days.

If you like the idea of NoScript, but generally find it too high-maintenance, you might want to try Privacy Badger. It requires somewhat less user input with regards to which trackers/scripts get blocked, instead going with defaults based on "trustworthiness" as measured by algorithms from the EFF. Those defaults can be tweaked if you desire, also.

I usually run a Firefox (or Pale Moon) client that is extremely locked down. UBlock Origin, NoScript, Privacy Badger, Self-Destructing Cookies, sometimes Ghostery, etc. I use that as my default browser, and take the time to fine-tune the controls in NoScript, element hiding in uBlock, etc. for sites that I visit regularly.

But frequently, I'll find a link to some article that I want to read and notice that the page content won't load at all since it requires some nonsensical script. In those cases, if I don't want to take the time to fiddle with NoScript etc. permissions, I copy the URL and fire up Chrome in incognito mode, with only uBlock Origin.

Probably not worth the hassle for most people, but I guess I'm kicking and screaming my way into this brave new world.

Not true.
The treasury borrows money from those with money to invest, other nations, and corporations by issuing and selling treasury bonds...interest bearing IOUs. That's why, when Trump suggests defaulting on them, it's a disastrous suggestion. If we even hint we won't pay on our debt, no one will buy bonds anymore (they aren't a great investment, but are considered "safe" as is, but not if we default) and our government grinds to a halt with no cash and no credit.

The federal reserve is not the only agency to lend money, the treasury prints more of it for the government, making every dollar worth less, but creating the numerical dollars needed to pay for our debts without actually collecting any. This is actually a flat tax, because it takes the same amount of every dollar that exists with no loopholes or escape for anyone with a dollar. If we want to stop this type of taxation, we need to return to the gold standard and stop playing fast and loose with the value of a dollar....imo.

Awesome to have real concrete information presented in a way that seems very distinct from what you'd get from sources on the far ends of the spectrum, like High Times or the DEA.

I'm quite surprised that smoking pot seems to carry an increased risk of bronchitis, like tobacco, but apparently NOT lung cancer (unlike tobacco). Are the carcinogens in tobacco cigarettes all from additional ingredients? Could people be growing their own tobacco and rolling their own cigarettes and avoiding one of the biggest health consequences? If so, shouldn't there be a market for tobacco cigarettes without any added ingredients?


I have never smoked pot OR tobacco. A lot of my reasons for avoiding either come down to a hatred of and pretty real sensitivity to / negative reactions to exposure to smoke. Some of my bias against that transfers into bias against pot in general, since smoking it is the default method.

At the same time, it seems ridiculous to me that pot is double-secret schedule 1 illegal while alcohol and tobacco are both perfectly legal. Especially when it seems apparent (although I don't really know what I'm talking about since I've never used it myself) that the intoxicating effects of pot are comparable to but generally LESS dangerous than alcohol, and the negative health consequences of pot are FAR LESS than either alcohol OR tobacco.

Getting real facts and knowledge out there like this video is doing has to have a positive effect on that very questionable policy.

At the end of the day, we are talking about an unarmed teen girl. There are levels of reasonable force and levels of excessive force. This is clearly in the excessive region.

The sad thing is, it seems to be a maneuver that cops are wont to default to with kids. In the related video, a school officer body slammed a 12 year old girl. Elsewhere in Texas, an officer bodyslammed a teen girl for being at a pool party without a pass. That case is being taken to court, by the way, with the taxpayers possibly on the hook for 5 million.

We are doing something wrong when the only move that an officer can do to take an underage individual down is a bodyslam. This isn't fake wrestling, that isn't a canvas ring with some shock absorbing capabilities, and she isn't an actor who knows how to take a fall. Real and permanent damage could happen.

It's a bit sad to say that the bigger cities were less "good". It's basically why I'll never live anywhere with more than half a million people. I find big cities cause people to be self centered and less empathetic. Big cities are constructs of wealth, not community . Humans react this way as a default. What this video shows is basic humanity. Cram them together and something is lost, the same basic humanity becomes an effort, rather than the usual reaction.

Yeah, this is way to short to cover the topic.

Freedom / choice is worth considering but people need to treat home buying as an investment because it is often the biggest single investment they ever make. Buy low and sell high. Putting that out of your mind because you're planning to never sell is a huge mistake. You would think that other countries would have learnt the lessons of the US, but housing markets in places like Canada, Australia, big Chinese cities are just waiting to pop. The mantra of 'house prices always rise' continues.

The most obvious measure broadly is price to median incomes. Here in Sydney (and some of the other Australian capitals) it's at eye watering levels. Buying a house here right now is basically banking on preferential tax treatment (in our case, called negative gearing), restricted supply continuing forever (the main driver of house prices by the way), and heroic increases in income to forestall the inevitability of prices simply becoming unaffordable.

It's gotten to the point here where lenders are asking home buyers (who want a loan to value ratio of over 80%!) to pay so-called lender's mortgage insurance (LMI) which adds a substantial amount to their loan and guarantees the bank (not the home buyer) if the borrower defaults. The insurance company who issued the insurance contract then goes after the defaulted home buyer to recoup the payout to the bank:

http://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2016/09/7-30-report-lenders-mortgage-insurance/

From what I understand there is still plenty of reasonably priced property in the US (in some cities) but even there you have plenty of places that have become ridiculously overpriced.

IANAMD. My understanding is that contrary to intuitions, deceleration on a motor cycle is more dangerous than acceleration. Maintaining stability is your primary concern, less so velocity of impact. You also don't want to be overtaken by faster traffic, you'd rather see your threats. My friends who do ride motorcycles tell me they are taught to drive aggressively by default. I don't think braking is your first instinct in tight quarters.

I will never understand why Windows defaults to hiding filename extensions... Not that it would have helped most User = ID10T problems like that, but at least displaying extensions encourages some degree of curiosity and diligence.

Third year?

Wow... in my third year of animation I knew how objects move.

Mind you, I'd been working professionally for 2 of those years.

This guy hasn't got a clue. Both the pendulum effect and the way objects move in the air is completely off. The pendulum is especially sad, since most 3d animation programs have a default movement curve which perfectly simulates that sort of motion.

The inherently chaotic event that exists in the otherwise predictable / trainable environment of driving a car is the unplanned / unmeasured disturbance. In control systems that are adaptive or self learning, the unplanned disturbance is the killer - a short duration, unpredictable event for which the system is unable to respond to within the control limits that have been defined through training, programming and/or adaptation. The response to an unplanned disturbance is often to default to an instruction that is very much human derived (ie. stop, exit gracefully, terminate instruction, wait until conditions return to controllable boundary conditions or freeze in place) which, depending on the disturbance, can be catastrophic. In our world, with humans behind the wheel, let's call the unplanned disturbance the "mistake". A tire blows, a load comes undone, an object falls out of or off of another vehicle (human, dog, watermelon, gas cylinder) etc.

The concern from my perspective (and I work directly with adaptive / learning control systems every day - fundamental models, adaptive neural type predictors, genetic algorithms etc. ) is the response to these short duration / short response time unplanned disturbances. The videos I've seen and the examples that I have reviewed don't deal with these very short timescale events and how to manage the response, which in many cases is an event dependent response. I would guess that the 1st dead person that results from the actions or inaction of self driving vehicles will put a major dent if not halt to the program. Humans may be fallible, but we are remarkably (infinitely?) more adaptive in combined conscious / subconscious responses than any computer is or will be in the near future in both appropriateness of response and the time scale of generating that response.

In the partially controlled environment (ie. there is no such thing as 100%) of a automated warehouse and distribution center, self driving works. In the partially controlled environment where ONLY self driving vehicles are present on the roadways, then again, this technology will likely succeed. The mixed environment with self driving co-mingled with humans (see "fallible" above) is not presently viable, and I don't think will be in the next decade or two, partially due to safety risk and partially due to management of these short timescale unplanned disturbances that can call for vastly different responses depending upon the specific situation at hand. In the flow of traffic we encounter the majority of the time, would agree that this may not be an issue to some (in 44 years of driving, I've been in 2 accidents, so I'll leave the risk assessment to the actuaries). But one death, and we'll see how high the knees jerk. And it will happen.

My 2 cents.
TB