spingsprong
spingsprong on Hacker News
Have you ever had personal experience of working for some time at a commercial station?
Not specifically, but noScript + flashblock ends up blocking many adverts.
No, it really isn't. It's about getting viewers, selling newspapers, and getting clicks. And the best way to achieve that is by using strong emotion, usually negative. Fear, hatred, disgust, anger.
I'm not sure how a democracy is supposed to work, when the people voting are being given bad information on such a massive scale.
There are so many important areas when what people believe and what is true are miles apart.
There's a lot more to an earthquake than its magnitude on the Richter scale.
Their destructiveness can be increased by many factors, such as the type of ground that buildings are on and the depth of the earthquake.
Posted by
spingsprong on Thursday August 28, 2014 @12:42AM
from the bbc.co.uk dept.
With any new industry there's bound to be bugs in the system. Most other industries have laws regulating them going back decades or even over a century. You're not gonna get it perfect from day 1.
Politicians often don't have a clue about many subjects, but that's not necessarily too bad a thing.
Politicians should be generalists not specialists. What they should do is surround themselves with experts is specific fields, and consider the advice they give.
Unfortunately, in many nations the politicians more frequently listen to the distorted scare and panic the media has created that week and base their policies on that instead.
Posted by
spingsprong on Saturday August 23, 2014 @02:48AM
from the extremetech.com dept.
And this is why we landed on the moon.
Seriously. The Manhattan project involved 130,000 people at its peak and lasted four years, and it leaked.
The Apollo program involved 400,000 people at its peak and lasted eleven years.
The Japanese by contrast never developed truly effective airborne radar during WW2, so actually did select the pilots with the best night vision to fly their night fighters.
That percentage will probably be even worse than that, since windows aren't at the best angle or position for solar panels.
I've often wondered how fail safe these things are. If you're lifting 200kg and the system fails, is that 200kg load suddenly being put onto your body?
What happens if somebody wants to join, but the Leads refuse?
If a small minority of Leads can prevent people they don't like from joining, it seems like it risks reinforcing bigotry and intolerance.
I've been more annoyed by websites removing features than adding them.
Posted by
spingsprong on Tuesday August 12, 2014 @02:30AM
from the youtube.com dept.
"They're claiming to see a force one thousandth as big as the Chinese - probably because they are doing the experiment one thousand times more accurately. And still, some people are excited about this. "
I think he's slipping from skepticism to cynicism here.
Please be true, please be true!
How big is a two megawatt nuclear power source anyway? A quick search showed nuclear power plants are in the hundreds to low thousands of megawatt range, and RTGs are in the tens to hundreds of watt range. I have no idea what something that lies between those two would be.
One factor that makes Methane not quite as bad as it could be, is it has an atmospheric half-life around 10% of CO2's
So if a lot of Methane does get released into the atmosphere, in a couple of decades most of it will have broken down and disappeared.
Out of interest, what if Ireland says they must not hand over the info, and the US says they must?
I find that downvote really funny.
I didn't make any argument
Chinese censorship exists to protect the state.
EU right to be forgotten protects the individual.
That's a pretty huge difference.
Just out of interest, what would happen if US courts say they must hand over information, and European courts say they must not?
Couldn't you just as easily reverse that and say, bots have 360 degree vision, superior concentration and reaction times, I hope they're not going to waive that for the humans, even if they do have the ability to recognise potential hazards at a very early point.
Surely the point is to not kill people?
So which is more important, recognising potential hazards early, or unwavering attention and superior concentration? Because although I'm pretty sure it's the humans who're ahead at the moment, but I'm not sure it'll always stay that way. Bots may never match humans at a hazard perception test, but if bot reaction, vision and AI gets good enough, they may not need to.
Would this produce a new volcano?
Or would the magma just freeze as it travels through the relatively cool hole?
A couple of photos of what a smokescreen covering a city looks like
http://449th.org/ploesti.phpIt's for a German city, but it is the same idea.
Iron Dome calculates the probable impact point of rockets fired at Israel, and only intercepts rockets that are going towards inhabited areas.
Because thorium reactors don't exist?