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ScipioAfricanus

Re:Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet on Monday March 12, 2018 @02:00PM (#16570032)
Ok so some random person is saying something you find offensive or hurtful. You can block them so you don't have to see what they post.

It's a decentralized solution to a decentralized problem.

Re:Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet on Monday March 12, 2018 @01:56PM (#16569992)
No one needs to change anything. The internet existed for years without this being an issue.

If you encounter someone on the internet who is annoying you, most platforms give you the option to block them. You do that, then move on with your life. It's not hard.

Re:Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet on Monday March 12, 2018 @01:50PM (#16569930)
It's not that the "trolls are winning", it's that people are allowing the trolls to bother them. Trolls have always existed; it's our heightened sensitivity and inability to just shrug them off or laugh in the face of their obscenity that's letting them "win".
Re:Palantir Wins $876M U.S. Army Contract on Saturday March 10, 2018 @05:00PM (#16560391)
How about you ask the people that US soldiers protect, like the people liberated from living under the dictatorship of Saddam, whether they're cool with US soldiers?

It's so funny to see people ignore all the tremendous amount of good that US soldiers and the military have done in the modern era for different peoples and nations and obsessively focus on the relatively few individual bad actors and examples of clear military wrongdoing. It's naive.

It's a good quote, but you should know you're really quoting the zeigeist there, as was your professor.
It's hard to fully comprehend the impact of new energy sources on civilization. So much of what we do is only possible because we have the necessary energy at our disposal.

When civilization finds new energy sources, most other technologies level up as well.

Consider one of the biggest problems with desalinization systems: pumping water inland. The actual separation of salt from seawater isn't the most energy intensive part of the process. Desalinization works great for wealthy coastal communities.

But a large nation like the US or China would never be able to fulfill the water demand of its people through desalinization alone because the cost of transporting coastal water inland would be prohibitive.

Enter something like fusion, which is orders of magnitude more efficient on a per pound of fuel basis than fossil fuels and something like distributing water to everyone in the US from the coasts becomes possible.

Re:Can any composer equal Bach? on Friday March 09, 2018 @09:59PM (#16556846)
Do yourself a favor and find The Canadian Brass' recording of Bach's glorious Art of Fugue. My God it's beautiful.
It's really not something I've ever found myself bothered by. I've only learned in the past few years that some people actually have a problem with it, to the point of calling it "madness" apparently.

Really people? This seems to be more a symptom of complainers needing something to complain about and clickbait machines churning than anything else.