121–130 of 206 posts
Urgh...I wish we could skip this whole awkward smart watch phase and just realize its a bad idea.
but the idea has feet and is probably a lot more useful than other technologies like google glass at a fraction of the cost
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> in my nation (India) being gay is illegal Sorry for the flame material, but why is it that this is rarely mentioned in western news media (at least in the countries whose news I follow)? For those who, like me, didn't know that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexuality_in_India
It is odd - there was uproar around the Russian propaganda laws regarding Homosexual relationships running up to the winter olympics (and rightly so! I am not suggesting otherwise). Yet, I (who, perhaps arrogantly, consider myself fairly well informed) had absolutely no idea that homosexuality is illegal in India. This is wtf-worthy.
The issue went to the supreme court and they said this matter is for the legislature to decide.
The good thing (unlike Russia) is that almost everyone from the ruling government, media, public, etc want this law abolished.
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Actually, what's really illegal is "carnal intercourse against the order of nature" which covers oral and anal sex - both heterosexual and homosexual.
Who on earth made that law? I mean seriously, what rational, feeling human being thinks: "Oral Sex? Ew! No thank you! Best make that illegal!" There's a world view I can't imagine.
Sadly, while the British have since got rid of the prudery, it continues here.
The government in power is keen to have the Supreme court strike it down, to avoid any voting backlash from the conservative population.
While one of the courts did strike it down, the Supreme Court later put the ball back into the Parliament's court, saying that only the Parliament can use its legislative powers to get rid of the law.
Thankfully, there have been very few convictions under the law, but it has been used for harassment of some people.
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http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html > In Comments >Be civil. Don't say things you wouldn't say in a face to face conversation. >When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. E.g. "That is an idiotic thing to say; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3." Public facing code shouldn't be closed source. Sure, if you want to run something on your own and for your self,…
I am sorry if that offended you but I take issue with the idea that adding more restrictions improves freedom. If you want to download possible malware that is your choice.
Perhaps we should have laws that guarantee some form of open-ness but allow closed source code to exist on some sort of semi-to-fully-anonymous fully-encrypted secondary communications network?
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Actually, what's really illegal is "carnal intercourse against the order of nature" which covers oral and anal sex - both heterosexual and homosexual.
Who on earth made that law? I mean seriously, what rational, feeling human being thinks: "Oral Sex? Ew! No thank you! Best make that illegal!" There's a world view I can't imagine.
When this law came up for review in the supreme court this year, it ruled that since the law criminalizes actions, not persons, it is not discriminatory and hence, not unconstitutional. As you can imagine, this was a very controversial judgment. But as things stand now, the supreme court has passed the ball back to the parliament to repeal/amend the law.
I am not sure when exactly the original law was amended in Britain.
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I find myself also questioning this often. It leads to me regularly switching between iOS and Android, Google services and Apple services. Ideally I would like privacy but I think as we go forward keeping privacy would leave you in the same kind of position someone like RMS is in by sticking to his Free Software philosophy so strongly. I'm always surprised at the number of friends and family I see who have their Face…
> It leads to me regularly switching between iOS and Android, Google services and Apple services. The difference between Apple and Google has recently occurred to me: with Apple, their secrets are in jeopardy. With Google, yours are.
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Moore's law is about transistor count; what does that have to do with battery life?
Everyone is interested in maintaining the growth in compute devices diversity and capabilities that Moore's Law has enabled in the past decade. To do that we need to continue to pack more and more transistors on chips. As you pointed out, todays problem is not the transistor size, but rather it is the energy consumption. Both dynamic and static power are not decreasing proportionally with node size, and therefore we…
If >10 GHz processors were available, that's where the excitement would be. Instead, because we've hit such a wall in raw compute power, the bleeding edge is in things like multiprocessor architectures, power consumption, and sensor integration.
Urgh...I wish we could skip this whole awkward smart watch phase and just realize its a bad idea.
It's going to be pretty great now that everyone has shown their "huge black square on the wrist" design before apple has shown anything. Looking forward to seeing them scramble to steal apples design.
I actually wonder if Apple will ever manage to come out with a wearable, because honestly they are in a can't win situation: everyone else is iterating through technologies and designs, and while these aren't for everyone (though everyone who it isn't for is sure that means it is for no one), they're getting better and more reasonable, while Apple needs to come out with some sort of God watch that will completely upend technology.
They can't win. They are absolutely bound to disappoint.
Nonetheless, though, I'm sure six months after they come out with something, you'll be on here proclaiming that everyone else is copying Apple.
I am in the position of being torn apart by two very strong feelings. One is the world where information flow due to companies like Google does a real service to humanity: for e.g. wearing devices that can keep us reminded of our meds or monitor sugar levels, to talk just about the possibilities in healthcare. Then I think of Edward Snowden and I now know that what Google knows, maybe America/Russia/China/WhatHaveYou…
More and more I'm thinking that some sort of Digital Bill of Rights is necessary to carry on in this technological-based World. At first I always thought of it as a nice thing, but perhaps a little too abstract or extreme to really do what it needs to do. However now we have some very large and real threats to our personal lives via this medium. I just feel like it makes a lot of good sense to produce something of th…
This is a (very) short story I wrote a while ago that is semi related: http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=eRNQYx21