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Demon-Haunted World

locusmag.com

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Re: Demon-Haunted World

#51

Post by cr0sh »

iak8god wrote: post #45
MrZongle2 wrote: post #39

FTA: "Dieselgate killed people" What's the source for this claim?

Every year a shocking number of people die from illness caused by air pollution [1]. While it might be difficult or impossible to put a head count on "Dieselgate," the increased emissions certainly killed some. [1] http://news.mit.edu/2013/study-air-pollution-causes-200000-e...

If you go down that route, you farting contributed methane to the atmosphere, increasing global warming and thus contributed to killing someone somewhere.

So are we going to start banning the passing of gas at the dinner table?

Re: Demon-Haunted World

#52

Post by zackmorris »

Startup idea:

Form a company that explores new markets in legal liabilities. It could bring lawsuits with little risk where the payoff could be billions of dollars. Off the top of my head:

* Research whether channels were engineered into smartphones to allow water to leak in (since they have no moving parts and should self-evidently be watertight).

* Find the planned-obsolescence parts in things like car doors that were engineered too thin or out of plastic so that door and window handles fail after a certain number of uses.

* Find evidence that companies opted to use proprietary battery and charger form factors which drove up prices and prevented interoperability.

...the list is nearly endless. Most of these seem like they depend on research or whistleblowers. If the free market and regulations won't prevent this kind of widespread hacking then maybe lucrative opportunities could be found working within the courts!

Re: Demon-Haunted World

#53

Post by kondro »

SubiculumCode wrote: post #10

This is what I think about at the pump. More and more I see gas pumps ask if you want a receipt BEFORE the gas is dispensed. This seems risky. If you decline the receipt and then dispense gas, the pump could cheat on the amount of gas dispensed with less risk, as a papered record of the purchase amount and price is not produced. If on the other hand, the pump waits to ask if you desire a receipt until after the gasol…

And then kill everyone involved in the project to prevent them from whistleblowing.

Re: Demon-Haunted World

#54

Post by nradov »

captaincrowbar wrote: post #14

Doctorow mentions the cases where a printer company has made their software lie about how much ink was left in a cartridge to make consumers replace them more often. I always wondered why a manufacturer would want to do that. I mean, I understand the motive of making consumers buy ink more often, but from the manufacturer's point of view, why would they want to throw perfectly good ink away? Colour ink isn't as expen…

As a consumer I don't care how much ink is left or wasted. All that matters is the price per page. You can find those prices in any good printer review.

https://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2373165,00.asp

Re: Demon-Haunted World

#55

Post by thedailymail »

badloginagain wrote: post #20
lostmsu wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about this simple hypothesis: Android is suffering from the same problems all Windows had prior to Windows 7 - drive fragmentation. Cheap flash will not give you nice access times when data is fragmented, and over time fragmentation accumulates.

I have fond memories of several hour defrag sessions on old Windows machines.

Those were the days.

Re: Demon-Haunted World

#56

Post by WaxProlix »

MrZongle2 wrote: post #39

FTA: "Dieselgate killed people" What's the source for this claim?

Common sense? If some quantity of emissions n causes a number of illnesses resulting in death D(n), then n + x will result in D(n + x) illnesses/deaths. So, if 'dieselgate' resulted in some sizeable quantity of pollution increase, then it also resulted in increased illness/death.

The author seems to be asserting that, indeed, that x was positive and therefore people died as a result of dieselgate.

Re: Demon-Haunted World

#57

Post by SolarNet »

nradov wrote: post #54
captaincrowbar wrote: post #14

Doctorow mentions the cases where a printer company has made their software lie about how much ink was left in a cartridge to make consumers replace them more often. I always wondered why a manufacturer would want to do that. I mean, I understand the motive of making consumers buy ink more often, but from the manufacturer's point of view, why would they want to throw perfectly good ink away? Colour ink isn't as expen…

As a consumer I don't care how much ink is left or wasted. All that matters is the price per page. You can find those prices in any good printer review. https://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2373165,00.asp

Of course such a situation could be detected...

Re: Demon-Haunted World

#58

Post by chc »

lostmsu wrote: post #18
zaroth wrote: post #17

Why do our phones, which certainly felt damn snappy the day we bought them, inevitablely seem to slow down to the point of unusability after a couple dozen months? Even after a factory reset and installing no apps at all... I know it didn't take that long to open/close the built in apps when I bought that iPhone 4, 5, 5s... The only thing I can think of is the flash drive is slowing down as it wears. Or, the CPU cloc…

How about this simple hypothesis: Android is suffering from the same problems all Windows had prior to Windows 7 - drive fragmentation. Cheap flash will not give you nice access times when data is fragmented, and over time fragmentation accumulates.

Why wouldn't flash memory give good access times with fragmented data? It's not like it needs to move a head around like a hard disk. Shouldn't one block be as accessible as any other block?

Re: Demon-Haunted World

#59

Post by anyfoo »

zackmorris wrote: post #52

Startup idea: Form a company that explores new markets in legal liabilities. It could bring lawsuits with little risk where the payoff could be billions of dollars. Off the top of my head: * Research whether channels were engineered into smartphones to allow water to leak in (since they have no moving parts and should self-evidently be watertight). * Find the planned-obsolescence parts in things like car doors that w…

Minor nitpick: Speakers and microphones are moving parts. The speaker has even been used to expel water.

Re: Demon-Haunted World

#60

Post by AceJohnny2 »

adrianratnapala wrote: post #7

Hmm, I suspect the article is not really news to the people who frequent sites like this, and perhaps not even to the readership of a science-fiction mag like locus. But I would like a nice readable article like that to appear in more mainstream publications. It should make a good story, being both true and sensationalist and important at the same time.

> being both true and sensationalist and important at the same time

Doctorow has been sensationalist for as long as I've been reading him (15 years?), I think even moreso as time goes on. Too often, it detracts from his point, but sometimes he hits the nail on the head.

Also recommended by him, The Civil War over General Purpose Computing" (2012): https://boingboing.net/2012/08/23/civilwar.html

It's even truer in hindsight.

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