FactolSarin

My wife and I used IVF to get pregnant. The issue was on her side, so we used donor eggs. It was completely anonymous, of course, but lately I've been wondering what's going to happen if (let's be honest, when) my children decide to use a service like 23AndMe.

Will they want to get in touch with the donor or her family? What affect will that have on my wife, who probably would feel diminished as the mother if that happened? I don't know, and honestly it's not something we considered five years ago when we had our kids. Those services existed at the time, but they hadn't taken off like they have in the last few years.

I think it's something anyone considering sperm/egg donation (either as a recipient or a donor) has to consider. If one side wants to connect, it's probably going to happen.

Egypt doesn't control Gaza airspace or ports. Israel does.

Gaza doesn't have true autonomy, though. The people of Gaza can't actually vote in the elections that matter to them, i.e. those of Israel. Israel controls the airspace, the ports, and much of the land while claiming they've "disengaged."

There's no basis for a free government when the people can't exercise any kind of sovereignty.

First, you mean one of his staff. Mad scientists have underlings.

Second, you have literally no idea how much input he had into it. He may have come up with the name himself, or he may have directed his staff to come up with something pithy that spells out "Bezos" or he may have sat around with them spitballing ideas until they came up with something good. But in the end, he was the senator who introduced it, and he gets the credit.

Stuxnet was spread via a USB stick. You know what doesn't have a USB port? A computer from 1995. :)

An ancient piece of air-gaped hardware is pretty bulletproof. I bet the NSA would have more trouble hacking it than a fully up to date install of <modern OS> that is on the Internet.

It's very possible the biggest threat vector is leaving the door unlocked.

Was that computer connected to the Internet? If not, then no problem.

It's actually one of the security layers for America's nuclear arsenal

https://www.businessinsider.com/hacker-us-nukes-report-2016-...

Assuming a well-functioning democracy, they have whatever rights The populace wants them to have, including deciding what types of speech are acceptable.

I thought that was implicit in "I don't get it."

It's a matter of objective fact? Show me the experimental data that shows the American interpretation of freedom of speech is correct. Even Americans draw the line somewhere. For instance, the old "shouting fire in a theater." bit. Or, say, planning a murder.

Other people decide to draw the line different places. Sorry, but claiming the American legal interpretation is "objective fact" and, say, the German one is wrong is just crazy.

I disagree with the EU about their copyright legislation, but applaud their attempts at increasing privacy.

What I find odd about the conversation around EU internet legislation is the idea that "The Internet" is a single entity that has some kind of natural state, and further that natural state is for all information to be free and to be a place where anyone can say anything (or should be able to). I think this grows out of the American origins of the Internet, and the American concept of free speech.

But other countries have different views of how free speech should be. Should you be able to deny the holocaust? Should you be able to purchase unlimited political ads? Should you be able to spread misinformation? Americans tend to say yes, because the truth will sort itself out. I'm not going to make a judgement on whether that's true, but it is true that other societies make different judgements on where to draw the line on freedom of expression, and those countries have a right to implement those decisions for their people on the Internet just as much as Americans have a right to have wild-west style freedom of expression.

Oh, also, before someone straw-mans me, I'm not talking about repressive regimes. I'm talking about societies where the populace is making informed decisions about their leaders, and have collectively decided they draw the line on expression in a different place than Americans do.

Obviously it's a joke. But I didn't get it. I thought this was making fun of Helvetica, but as was pointed out elsewhere, apparently its not. This is basically "poorly kerned Helvetica." Which was the part I missed.

I don't get it. Helvetica is a perfectly okay font.

It seems his childhood doctor missed something. It's always worth getting second opinions.

A friend of mine got in a fight at his 10 year high school reunion (when, not ironically, confronting some bullies from back in the day). He went to the ER with his eye bleeding and the doctor there told him he would have to remove the eye. The surgeon wanted to do the operation right then.

My friend went home instead and saw another doctor the next day, who said "if you do everything I tell you to do, we can save the eye."

Today he's 48 and still has 20/20 vision.

Java: malware the moment you click install!

I have co-workers who work on a big intranet web application that runs on IIS, and they never touch it.

They recently finally switched to git for source control, and they want to do everything via GUI. I've tried to show them how some things are just easier/better from the command line, but if something isn't doable via GUI, they won't do it. One of them keeps committing line endings differently than everyone else, and he literally won't run git config --global core.autocrlf true because... I dunno why. He just doesn't want to, because it's the command line.

I don't think so. Maybe "modal ad"?

> there are a lot of projects that I don't finish...

You and me both. :)

This is only tangentially related to the article, but if you have small children I can't recommend Puffin Rock enough as a kids show. It teaches really simple environmental messages in a very subtle way while being absolutely adorable and fun to watch.

Hahahahahaha. No. The American legal system is so stacked in favor of insurance companies it's ridiculous.

Yeah, more like he qualifies for the "got some sympathetic media coverage" discount. That's not something most people can count on.

Less people will discover him. His site will seem sketchier to people wh haven't drunk the Kool-Aid.

I expect corporations to police their platforms. I don't expect NBC to air a documentary on why the Holocaust is fake, and I don't expect YouTube to host one either.

The truth doesn't necessarily rise to the top. Quite the opposite. As Terry Pratchett said, "A lie can run round the world before the truth has got its boots on." We can't just put the boring old truth on the same level as an exciting lie and expect everyone to figure out which is which. The current rise in conspiracy theories demonstrates that.

So like a normal office, then? :)

It says these are "copies" of the website. Were these full-stack copies, supplied with help from the states? I can't seem to find this information anywhere.

In another article I read about this, I saw it downnplayed as "well, these are just the vote tallies on the website, the real totals weren't affected," but I think that underestimates the fact that the distinction will be lost on most, and it'll undermine trust in the system if on election night the website says one thing while election officials say "ignore that, we got hacked."

Because, as we all know, no man has ever gained any fame by using his looks.

Similar things happen in unincorporated areas. I live out in the country, and I remember a year or two ago, a place-name appeared on Google Maps calling the area "Mary's Grove," which makes some kind of sense to me as a local, even though I've never heard anyone refer to the area as that, but it disappeared as mysteriously as it appeared after a while.

Now it says I live in "Warlick," and I have no clue where that name came from.

Sometimes I think I'm smart because I can configure WebPack, and then I read an article like this.

What happens when an idealized individual freedom collides with concrete societal need? What happens when "freedom of speech" is used to spread lies, disinformation, and injure the fabric of a country? Is the point of freedom of speech because it leads to a freer people? Or is it for its own sake? If the former, what happens if it's shown that limiting freedom of speech by banning purposeful misinformation helps society as a whole?

I kind of think we're there. I'm an ethical utilitarian (well, mix in some contractualism) and I think generally what's best is what benefits the most people most of the time. Maybe that's limiting the voices of those who are trying to deceive people and breed hate.

All morality is subjective, though. Facebook bans some kinds of speech, so the question isn't "should Facebook do that," but "where do we draw the line." Facebook allows almost anything right now, in part because it's a US company and has inherited the US propensity to allow pretty much all speech.

But that's not the only way to do it. Banning certain types of speech doesn't necessarily lead to a slippery slope. For instance, in Germany, you can't deny the holocaust and they haven't become some sort of dystopian Orwellian society. I would argue Facebook needs to move more toward that model. Conspiracy theories and misinformation are spreading right now. Hell, I personally know someone who I considered a pretty normal person who's become caught up in 9/11 and Sandy Hook conspiracy mongering. Banning groups that promote that kind of garbage make them seem illegitimate (as they are) and no, doing so doesn't infringe on any rights. They're free to make their own website somewhere and spout nonsense. But hey, maybe those kinds of things shouldn't be getting hosted by big media companies like YouTube and Facebook. That just makes them seem legitimate.

With great power comes great responsibility. Right now, it seems to me Facebook (and others) want to have the power, but not the responsibility and that's leading us into a new era of propaganda and idiocy.

I didn't realize we needed a word for this until just now