Here's my question: how much due diligence did they do, ensuring that they are not accidentally catching people selling legit international editions (published by someone properly licensed)? Those exist, and first-sale doctrine in those cases was upheld.

That's cool. I guess. YT Link

Also, they can soon figure out who you are AND what you're stealing. Notice that last one is free code (One, Two) and even runs on a PHONE. (7:00)

And LOOK -- it's written in C, so it'll even be halfway understandable!

If anyone wants me, I'll be hiding under the covers.

No doubt that's commendable, however the current leader in the face recognition competition/arms race sells their product to pretty much anyone, including the government of Russia. I've seen how it works and it gives you the shivers.

You may find youtube videos about their tech quite fascinating and scary.

Special interest groups can try, but "better" usually wins in the end. It's true we can talk about stable ancient cultures that didn't develop technology much due to various social reasons (Egypt, China, Zulus, etc...), but there is a very long list of success for the "it just works better". In almost all cases, despite large groups of people decrying the downside and the loss of their job, better tech will win. Printing presses, knitting frames, computers, automobiles, and many other technical inventions nearly completely obsoleted their forgoing technologies over the objections and howls of many. However, I also believe entrenched powers can fight superior tech and win for a lot longer than you'd think was possible. My example there would how the Japanese managed to keep guns out of their country for hundreds of years, despite knowing of them, having some working examples, and possessing the tech to re-create them. So, the question is if the evil fucks who constitute the oil industry have enough power to do that. Chevron bought the patent to large format NiMH batteries to sit on it. So, there is some reason to believe you are right. I just question how long it could actually hold in the face of truly superior technology.

Which is a totally good thing. When you are alpha-testing new tech, you want wealthy early adopters to take the early risks.

Am I the only one to find this quite unexciting? And I am not just talking about a 20km difference. I mean, we are essentially talking about something that an aircraft from 1959 could do (nobody called it a spacecraft), without even having to be released from a significant height - and it's been in development for over a decade. And we can't even compare it to other private "space" ventures because as we know the hard part about getting into earth orbit which is what the others are doing is not the height, but the speed (required for the orbit), which is at least a magnitude higher than this Virgin craft does, hence so much harder.
I could see how an "edge of space" ride could be interesting tech, but it would have been "inspiring" if it had been delivered in the 00's. A 60 second powered flight in 2018 somehow seems "meh" to me. The "80km space" thing is just adding some insult ;)

You're assuming that just because they don't have the latest fab tech (because it will be expensive and large), that they can't do reasonably well with older, larger-process tech for which the machines are smaller and likely being dumped by commercial entities.

And when you say "a long time", who cares? If you're positing an 86,000 year journey, what's another few hundred or even few thousand before leaving?

I'm going to ignore the rest of the shocking ignorance of this post and ask what makes you think we have to halt all technological progress to correct AGW? The tech that is causing the problem was literally invented in the 19th century! If anything, combating AGW will force us to use 21st century tech.

Also, a little fact about the economy, it works best when the money keeps moving. Like when you replace all your old crap by buying new crap.

It seems to be impossible to read any post expressing a conservative viewpoint without the word "tax" appearing at least once in it.

Boy, you guys seem to really, really hate taxes, don't you ? In fact, you're beginning to sound like a broken record.

But still, I'll try to give an answer to your question:

Because the former has a legacy of tens of thousands of years of failure and division. Special interest groups (particularly the filthy rich ones, like the oil industry) will always make sure that fails. Always.

But I'll agree with you on one thing though: We really should try something new.

https://medium.com/@therealsex...

If you are *truly* an environmentalist you wouldn't want to risk further environmental damage from continuing to try and force other people into behaving environmentally responsible. The reason is because this clearly doesn't work. Big government or UN action has mostly failed. The last decent bit of legislation that made any real difference was the Clean Air Act in 1970. It's technology that has the best chance of preventing or mitigating negative effects of climate change. I'm an environmentalist, but I feel like I keep company with a bunch of idiots and facists who can only see one way to fix the problem: forced government coercion. Why not convince folks to switch to greener tech because it's *better*, rather than trying to ram it down their throats as a tax? The latter has a legacy of 40+ years of failure and division. Isn't it time to try something new? Just going by success/failure it appears conservation and green-research would be money and effort much better spent.

The American auto industry is barely moving forward on EVs -- not that they're the be all to end all, but c'mon. The tech has been around longer than gas-powered vehicles and yet, even with modern lithium-ion batteries, car companies don't offer more than two models each -- most only offer one.

It's going to take regulation to force their hand; that seems obvious. With the current administration kowtowing to big business, though, we won't be seeing any movement on this for at least another two years.

Also consider that cameras gain resolution all the time. Most of us who live in a city walk past multiple cameras in many situations. Humans don't have a very reflective tapetum in their eye, but some light still does get reflected out. A camera of sufficiently high resolution could capture your fingerprints, iris scan, and face with enough detail to reproduce any of the three. The are already good enough that a skilled sculptor could reproduce your face from. Fingerprints get left everywhere you go for anyone with a bit of graphite and a some clear-tape to use. So, I'll grant you that nobody is easily or frequently stealing your iris scan today, but that could change (and probably will) as imaging tech gets better. That's saying nothing about some irresponsible tech company getting hacked and losing an existing iris scan. Ultimately that machine is just scanning a 2D image that can be recreated.

How many tech companies does Mississippi have?

Then it must have already died in the real world

let me get this straight, this story is nothing more than a tv presenter getting confused at a kids tech forum?
why is it on slashdot?

Because the denials of the intent to deceive are just as ridiculously fake as most of the rest of what's on Russia's state-owned TV.

If it comes from a Russian — especially, a government-connected Russian — it is more likely to be false than true and any presumptions and doubt ought to be in that direction.

Umm, no. The reason Apple is interested is because there is a lot of tech talent already there and the city knows how to work with big tech companies productively. Furthermore Apple is ALREADY big in Austin with over 6000 employees currently. Any other reasons are minor in comparison. Taxes played at most a minor role in why tech talent is in Austin. Apple is interested in the area because a lot of other tech companies (Amazon, Dell, Intel, Oracle, IBM, Indeed, Electronic Arts, Facebook, National Instruments, etc) have already established there and they can get the talent they need. There also is a company that comparatively few have heard of called Trilogy that did a lot back around the dotcom boom to bring high level talent to the area.

Anybody who actually takes the time to read through my own comments will notice that Juan and I do not even share the same knowledge. We are talking about completely different matters: I discuss electrical cosmology and scientific controversies. Juan has expertise which runs well beyond my own on these topics of philosophy, Einstein and aether. This pretense that Juan and I are the same person is clearly intended to undermine Juan's technical remarks.

Slashdot moderators and participants need to carefully consider the issues which Juan is raising first of all because so much is at stake, but also for the simple reason that modern cosmology has failed to provide us with a coherent worldview. Albert Einstein never intended to create the anti-intellectual culture which currently dominates discussions of science on Slashdot. In fact, the tech community needs to take a hard look at its own anti-intellectual tendencies. Juan is obviously able to respond to every single challenge - yet he is treated as a second-class citizen on this site simply because he has arrived at a conclusion which differs from your own. He's fully able to respond to all challenges, and that should mean something. But, what we see instead is that the Slashdot community defines its tribe not according to how deeply a person is thinking about the big questions of science, but rather along how strictly a person adheres to modern science's incoherent ideology.

What does it even mean that the tech community fully embraces a universe that is 95% missing? You are treating this problem as though it is merely just another minor technical challenge, but the truth of the matter is that cosmologists have already tried and failed to solve this problem with the current framework. Those former efforts are how we have arrived at a universe that is 95% missing. It's time for the tech community to own up to the significance of cosmology's failure, and think more deeply about how their own culture has contributed to this obvious stagnation. Tech needs to decide if it will lead on these issues - or continue to mindlessly adopt the stagnation and incoherence which cosmologists have offered us.

The Work of Leadership
by Ronald A. Heifetz and Donald L. Laurie

"Adaptive work is required when our deeply held beliefs are challenged, when the values that made us successful become less relevant, and when legitimate yet competing perspectives emerge ...

adaptive change is distressing for the people going through it. They need to take on new roles, new relationships, new values, new behaviors, and new approaches to work. Many employees are ambivalent about the efforts and sacrifices required of them. They often look to the senior executive to take problems off their shoulders. But those expectations have to be unlearned. Rather than fulfilling the expectation that they will provide answers, leaders have to ask tough questions. Rather than protecting people from outside threats, leaders should allow them to feel the pinch of reality in order to stimulate them to adapt ...

Instead of orienting people to their current roles, leaders must disorient them so that new relationships can develop. Instead of quelling conflict, leaders have to draw the issues out. Instead of maintaining norms, leaders have to challenge 'the way we do business' and help others distinguish immutable values from historical practices that must go ...

Business leaders have to be able to view patterns as if they were on a balcony. It does them no good to be swept up in the field of action. Leaders have to see a context for change or create one. They should give employees a strong sense of the history of the enterprise and what's good about its past, as well as an idea of the market forces at work today and the responsibility people must take in shaping the future ...

When sterile conflict takes the place of dialogue, a leader has to step in and put the team to work on reframing the issues. She has to deepen the debate with questions, unbundling the issues into their parts rather than letting conflict remain polarized and superficial ...

Many managers treat adaptive challenges as if they were technical problems ...

Moving slowly in from the sea over 100-300 years isn't so difficult as buildings and roads age anyway, and 100-300 years from now, society will be less recognizable to today than today would be to people in 1900 or 1700.

I argue any draconian measures to arrest GW that slows technological progress will be of more harm than good.

I'd rather live in 2100 with year 2100 tech and gw than 2100 with a pristine environment and year 2080 tech, slowed due to drags on the economy.

The real enemy continues to be sickness and death.

Dissociated Press (DP) — FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Physicists identify new fundamental particle

May herald a new particle family and restructuring of the Standard Model

Geneva, Switzerland — December 3, 2018

Keywords: hypino, shinyon, blockchain

High energy particle physicists at the CERN (Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nullité) facility have confirmed the existence of the long-conjectured hypino (hy-PEE-no). It is thought to be the first member of a new class of particles known as shinyons (SHY-nee-ons), distinct from bosons and fermions.

Unlike other subatomic particles, hypinos carry no charge, and have neither rest nor relativistic mass. Their only defining quantum property is spin. Hypinos are thought to be the fundamental unit of marketing hyperbole. To date, hypinos are the only known members of the proposed class of shinyons, which are of especial interest to tech investors and holders of the MBA degree. Dr. Martin Waugh, of the Institute for Advanced Squander, further posits that the hypino may be the carrier of the so-called “weak-minded force”, a mutual repulsion between fools and their money. It is theorized that, upon sufficiently accelerated spin, hypinos transform into super-excited hyperinos, detectable only by Chief Information Officers.

The discovery of the hypino is recounted by Drs. Robert Crawford and Robert Jensen as follows:

“It was a Friday afternoon, and we and our colleagues were returning from a long lunch. Maintenance on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) was scheduled to start Saturday morning, and the apparatus would be unavailable for two months. We were in a ‘what the hell’ kind of mood, so we thought we'd take a fantasy shot, just for grins and giggles.

“We had a few leftover Higgs Bosons from 2012 on the shelf, so our lowly lab technician, Garth Dennis, breech-loaded them into the beast , set up a blockchain for the target, positioned the extremely sensitive Swindleometer at the intended point of collision, energized the superconducting electromagnets, and let it rip. Upon collision, the blockchain shattered into a shower of the elusive hypinos. Examination of the debris field revealed that the blockchain and all of our cash were gone! Apparently the hypinos were entangled with our funding.”

There may be natural sources of hypinos. The strongest natural emitters appear to be located in Redmond, Washington, and Armonk, New York.

The things that are attracting Apple to there - the low taxes and so forth - are due to the conservatism.

Remove the conservatism, you remove what is attracting them to there.

"We"? Speak for yourself and only for yourself. Your opinion is not widely shared in Austin. People have been moving to Austin in droves precisely because it is a good place to live, the city is (mostly) well run, and there are great jobs to be had there as a tech hub. If that's not your brand of vodka, fine but that's your problem.

A) You being uncomfortable with someone who isn't a conservative is your problem, not anyone else's
B) Evidently you've never actually been to Austin if you think it's overrun by conservatives. Hell I consider it a bastion of sanity in Texas.
C) The notion that Texas is uniformly conservative is a ridiculous myth. At most it's around 58%/42% skewing conservative based on recent election results.