DarqWebster

I've used three apps to slowly teach myself a little Japanese. Human Japanese, Memrise, and Duolingo. And they all offer distinct advantages and disadvantages, and that's frustrating because a combined app would be far superior.

Human Japanese is great for gentle explanations of grammar, but its flashcards are horrible, so one can't get the spaced repetition needed to remember everything it throws at you. Memrise is fantastic for vocabulary with its spaced repetition, but I couldn't string a sentence together, as Memrise (at least the course I did) mostly ignores grammar. Duolingo is great for practicing reading and writing sentences, checking the comments for sanity if the sentence looks fishy. But it doesn't try and teach anything, just get it wrong until you get it right. Does sentence order matter? Why do we use "wa" here and "ga" there? Duolingo doesn't say.

An app that combines actual lessons with spaced practice sessions would make the whole process a lot smoother.

Slower not meaning safer is because a slower driver among faster drivers causes more lane-changes, which are a less-safe maneuver. Everyone travelling the same speed is the safest scenario, with slower then being safer, as impacts occur with less energy.

If everyone strictly obeyed the posted speed limit and treated it as both a minimum and a maximum speed, as driverless cars would likely aim to do, roads would be safer. The interim state of having both driverless and human-driven cars on the road at the same time is where problems may arise.

I understand that security is difficult, and that one can never be completely secure.

But is wanting to know what my processor is doing, or wanting it to be free of undocumented, obfuscated, proprietary code that runs at a higher priority than any software, really that extreme a view?

We base so much of human progress on these little wafers of silicon, it shouldn't be extreme to want to know what they do.

If one only considers power / speed and cost, then open will certainly mean worse.

However a processor with verifiable functionality has value. It's more trustworthy. It can be checked for accidental, or deliberate, security flaws.

In many scenarios, I don't care how fast a processor is, if it's leaking data then it's worthless.

Except in this case the regulation is saying that the ISP must just carry bits. It's not forcing the ISP to do something to be compliant, it's forcing the ISP to not do something. So the costs of compliance are low, if not zero.

There are short-term consumer benefits, in my country we have zero-rated services, where browsing certain sites costs no data. However this completely undermines the concept of the free market. Any competitor to the zero-rated service has a massive hurdle to overcome, either competing with free, or paying the ISP to have the same deal applied to their service.

And there are also cases of abuse. Mobile operators began charging roughly $2 per MB of data for any VOIP traffic, forcing consumers to use standard calls.

By refusing to subject ISPs to regulations, we subject the Internet to the whims of the ISPs.

When I was backpacking, I entered Germany without a definite exit date and with no onward travel booked. Upon hearing this, the immigration official gave me a hard stare, and let me sweat for what felt like ages. He then cracked a smile and told me to visit the Foreigners Office if I wanted to stay for longer, or look for work. While I doubt that's the normal experience, including finding an immigration official with a sense of humour, I found Germany to be pretty flexible in this regard.

That's Julian Assange, not Edward Snowden.

I was born over eight weeks premature, in 1989, in South Africa.

I got lucky, sure. But "any other country" letting premature babies die without intervention is perhaps too broad a claim.

Hang on, as much as I disagree with the man, this is not why.

The man realised, during the course of his relationship, that he was unhappy with his life. So he made a change that made him happier. At the same time he deposits the bulk of his paycheck into his wife's account and considers it his ethical duty to see his kids three to four times a week. All things considered, the man made the change in a rather respectable manner.

The alternative is to remain in the relationship, discontent, for the rest of his life. Is that what is expected of people? In the best case, one person is miserable. In the worst case, his unhappiness manifests in the relationships with his wife and kids. It seems reasonable that he steps aside before that can happen, leaving him and his family to pursue happiness elsewhere.

I disagree with him because of his premise that complete information creates a level playing field between people. Rather, the people who fall closer to the perceived "normal" gain power over those who are closer to the tails of the bell-curve.

In this particular instance though, according to the article, some negotiation was done between the two governments to reach a no-spy agreement.

As no agreement could be reached, an American company cannot offer the service required by the German government. Thus is it not reasonable for the contract to be cancelled?

This is not a shot at an innocent third party, this is the third party being constrained by American laws to the extent that it cannot offer a required service. Sure, it is unfortunate that a third party is adversely affected by this, but it cannot be portrayed as a deliberate act against them by the German government.

It's like crossing the street.

You might legally have the right of way. Pragmatically however, you need to get out of the way of the moving car.