tray5

>Is it not still possible that human populations increased

This doesn't seem convincing to me, Indigenous Australian populations maxed out around 1 million people, across the entire island. Considering the population density and ranges of these creatures, I don't see how they could physically do so.

> new (less mgafauna friendly) cultures emerged

It's important to remember Australia's isolation here and the cultures of Indigenous Australia. All Indigenous Australians were nomadic hunter gatherers, with a deep seated animalistic dreamtime belief system, it doesn't make sense that a new culture suddenly rose up and caused mass extinctions, as all of these cultures remained within their land ranges, and without evidence of widescale war in Indigenous Australia, I don't see how this would happen.

>or subsequent migrations caused one of these?

Not really, again 20,000 years and Australia is a big, big place. Like really big, and most of these creatures had wide ranges. I don't find the human hypothesis has enough stock to stand up under scrutiny, especially considering these extinctions happened at the end of an ice age.

>I really don't understand why it's so hard to accept that humans are the cause, it seems to be a part of the noble savage myth.

Because there's not enough evidence to make that claim. The structure of indigenous societies were nomadic hunter gatherers who were (as far as the evidence tells us) subsistence hunters. Truth is Indigenous Australians didn't have the population (or population density), nor the culture to hunt these creatures to extinction. Being largely nomadic within set ranges (i.e they travelled often but within their own nations land) it was suicidal to overhunt and deplete the resources, and this becomes a stronger point when you consider the timeframes on which the Aborigines existed on their land (again 20,000 years of overlap here). Also consider the sheer number of creatures that went extinct here, everything from Marsupial Lions to gigantic emus and echidnas, it doesn't match up with indigenous australians hunting behaviours that somehow they decided to overkill for this short period of time all these larger creatures, and then that behaviour suddenly stopped? (we have no evidence of Indigenous Australian's overhunting any other creatures to extinction).

To go even further, there's nothing in their oral history or paintings which gives the slightest hint that overhunting or hunting for status was ever present in any Indigenous Australian culture. Considering the ice age ended around the same time as the death of the last megafauna in Australia, I think its fair to evaluate every conclusion you make about the death of the megafauna within that context.

I'm not saying Indigenous Australians didn't have an effect on the death of the megafauna, anything being hunted in a time like a massive climate shift is going to affect population, but there's no direct evidence, nor indirect evidence about the behaviour and cultures of Indigenous Australia which point to mankind being the driver behind the numerous extinctions.

I've got a notebook of stone paper that I bought from a local office supplier which I use for general note taking. It's not the brand in the article however. Writing on stone paper feels quite amazing. The pen just glides over the paper, and the paper feels very high quality. It's waterproof and doesn't tear like normal paper (when you pull it apart it pulls like a flimsy elastic plastic that eventually rips). I thoroughly enjoy using it.

I agree that his comment didn't add all that much, but I think the snark on your end was a bit more distracting and irrelevant than his comment, and honestly his comment was kind of on topic. This site is thankfully strictly moderated and usually the discussion in the comments is very on topic, jumping at the chance to be smug like that degrades the quality of conversation much farther then being semi-relevant with a bit of a joke. Downvote and move on

No, wisdom and knowledge don't correlate linearly with time. Wisdom and knowledge come from insight, reflection and experience. Sure the 40 year old has most likely seen more and done more than the 20 year old, but that means nothing if he does nothing with what he has seen, and just seeing these things does not impart anyting but the most shallow definition of wisdom on a person. I've met 40 year olds far wiser than most 80 year olds, and I've meet 20 year olds far wiser than most 40 year olds. The length of time someone has been alive is not a valid excuse for dismissing what they say or the insight they've developed. Life is a subjective experience and the length of time involved means very little compared to what they've experienced and what they've gone through.

I meant the justification for dropping it from the Swedes

1 hour and 30 minutes from now for my lazy friends.

Correction: 23 minutes from now, thanks svip

Anyone know why they dropped it?

Nope, haven't watched Murdoch's media since the absolute rubbish involving their absolutely disgustingly biased election coverage a few years ago. According to Murdoch, the Liberals and co can do no wrong and everyone else is the problem! Haven't let that trash into my house in a long, long time. But it's a culture of disrespect and arrogance across the board from nearly every politician. Bunch of bastards the lot of them, especially since Trump has come up in America and we have spastic chumps like Hanson try and ride the wave of populism (thank god they're way waaaay too incompetent and divisive to truly capitalise on the anger at the system, their ugly policies will die out)

>The government who changed away from FTTP is the more conservative (and pro small government) of the two major parties.

There is no Australian political party with any momentum that is pro-small government. The Liberals just like making themselves and their friends rich, but they don't have any strong ideological backing. Especially considering 90% of Aussies are pretty content with the level of government involvement in stuff that would send shivers down the spines of most yanks.

>Seriously it is time for a citizens revolution. We need to take the country back from these idiots.

Couldn't agree more. I've yet to meet a single fellow Aussie that has anything but disdain for politicians from any party. Labor, Liberal, Greens, One Nation doesn't seem to matter, they're all a pack of self serving con artists, and unless the major political parties take a serious look at themselves over the next few years, this is exactly what they're going to be dealing with. Especially as Millennials take their first steps into adulthood in a country that does nothing but tread on them and dismiss them as nothing but avocado loving morons that don't know how to make it in "the real world".

It's impossible for economic policy to not be politicized. Look around the world, all political parties are distinctly grouped by their economic beliefs. If anything, the US political landscape needs to be more far more political on the economy. Differentiating republicans and democrats on their economic policies is almost impossible. Especially compared to literally every other country (excluding dictatorships). This almost identical belief about the economy has made an incredibly toxic and arbitrary system where people misplace their anger at each other because they have not been educated on what the true source of their anger is or what their alternatives are! It's made an ugly tribal political system where it's us vs them.

I don't wish to handwave, misconstrue or dismiss facts, in fact that's why I suggested you google those things!

You've obviously got strong feelings about communism, but your comment is factually incorrect. Can I recommend you google search anarchism and anarcho-communism? Hopefully they'll reveal to you more answers about the various economic systems and their shortcomings. I'd also recommend you search Juche which is the official economic system utilized by the North Koreans, and how it rejects communism.

>This should be enough evidence alone that free markets and capitalism is vastly superior.

North Korea is isolated from the entire world. I don't think any meaningful evaluation of economic systems can be made here beyond isolation from the worlds physical and intellectual resources makes for poor innovation.

>It is incredibly unlikely that a bacterial infection from tap water

It's not bacterial, it's amoebic.

I think you're being unduly skeptical and I can't find a reason beyond your own intuition, which doesn't really hold much weight against first hand accounts from individuals and trusted news sources without any clear bias or motivation to be misleading.

Yes, very certainly. When the cannibalism stopped, so did instances of Kuru. Although you can get Prion diseases from eating infected pig brain and nervous tissue, the instances discussed in the article were solely caused by ritual cannibalism.

Well how about the PiPhone? :P http://www.davidhunt.ie/piphone-a-raspberry-pi-based-smartph...

If that were true wouldn't we see greater results from C to X? Seems like people are moving away from C less often than Java or even Python strangely enough

>Heck maybe there's fewer because C devs don't get lulled into thinking the language has their back?

You make the serious mistake of assuming all or the majority of C devs know how powerful the language is, or how to properly use a language like C. All software has bugs, true. It's just that C bugs tend to be a wee bit more dangerous than a lot of other bugs because of the raw power of low level languages like C.

Writing secure code in low level languages is tough, and it requires knowledge of all the pitfalls and nasty corners of the language, which many devs don't have the time, interest or desire to learn.

Well the fact that C is going so strong guarantees we'll be dealing with easily preventable bugs for the next 100 years

I'm sorry to all Americans who may read this and get ruffled, but what the actual fuck is wrong with your political landscape and attitudes towards workers rights? Why don't you have unions? Why do Americans seem to hate unions? Why don't you have an active political party representing workers? Why don't you have an active movement to prevent your employer from becoming overseer of your entire life? All I see day in and day out from America is employers and capitalists finding another way to fuck the workers and there is not one iota of widespread organised resistance to this (or any of your other disgusting work legislation like "at will employment" or your complete desire to shoot yourselves in the foot with univ.healthcare) at all.

Seriously what is the problem with your country that you've managed to manoeuvre yourselves as employees into a position where you are totally unable to counter the repeated and ceaseless violation of your ability to live with some sort of security and expectation of privacy against your employer. Your country is amazing, your people are lovely. But your politics and attitudes towards work, workers and their rights is abhorrent and disgusting.

The thought of legislation like this arising in my country (Australia), where your employer is given free range to look into your genetic privacy is just unfathomable to me, and if it did happen there would be widespread protests organised by unions and political parties representing workers rights. Truly the attitude of seemingly the majority of Americans towards themselves and workers rights is gross, and frankly quite sad. You will only ever stop these sorts of gross violations of workers rights with even bargaining power between employee and employer, and there is only one way to achieve that (workers unionising)

Of course, but when the decision of where the workers pay is on that scale is taken out of the hands of the workers, it tends towards table scraps then full value.

Profit has to come from somewhere. You can't reimburse the workers the full value of their labour if you wish to make a profit. I'd say that counts as exploitation. Unfortunate, but thats the reality of capitalism.

Hope they find someone, nim is a very good language for how small and independent it is. Especially considering its operating in the same realm as heavyweights like rust and go.