bnegreve

In both cases, one person is outraged by some comment made by someone undetermined on the internet.

It was most likely downvoted because comparing people from Paris Commune with Adolf Hitler is a ridiculous comparison.

Not if you include the cost of the employee scanning the bar codes.

Even if the customers does it, it still takes a lot more time and space than scanning a basket full of RFIDs labels. It literally takes seconds.

Errors are fine when they are due to a random process. When the press pick up claims because they are likely to attract readers it's a different story. Errors are not random, they are the result of an optimization process and are very unlikely to happen on the other side of the claim. (For example consider the overwhelming number of articles that have been published with the title "Scientist may have found life on mars" over the past 30 years)

For this reason, "may" in a press article, doesn't carry the same meaning regarding uncertainty than "may" in common language. Which is why I disagree with your comment:

> I've never understood the value of simply repeating the definition of uncertainty words like "may."

In the contrary, I think it is worth reminding people what may actually means here.

Now, I agree with what you and others have said about the usefulness of discussing uncertain claims, and I don't think there is a real disagreement here.

I'm saying the incentive to publish articles that make strong claims with little evidence may be problematic.

Not every correlation deserves to be published in the press. If you think about it, it is weird that they even make articles out of statements that only "may" be true.

Some people may not agree. The more options the better.

I keep the previous backup for one month and then delete it. So eventually the file is lost yes, but this is inevitable if you assume finite amount of storage.

> rsync can delete remote files with --delete or --delete-after

Yes but I don't use it precisely because that lets me recover files that I have accidentally deleted. I assume it's the intended default behavior of rsync.

I have a cron script that rsync my entire home directory every day with a remote server. Since rsync doesn't remove remote files, I re-create a backup from scratch the first day of each month and store a copy of the previous one.

Using old standardized open source tools means it survives system updates without having to fix anything for years. I got my laptop stolen/lost 3 times over the past 15 years, and I have always been able to restore everything the next day on a new laptop, in the time it takes to transfer the files over the network.

I haven't given much thought, I'm sure there is a realistic scenario where this strategy would fails but I haven't found it yet.

> They are struggling with what they're drawing looking wrong to them, until they're fairly far along and the shapes are fairly complete.

In general I agree, but I have a counter example. I have a friend that has always been very good at drawing, and when he draws, it's immediately obvious that he has a very precise idea of what is going to happen. People often gather around him because it is entertaining to look at the drawing and suddenly understand what it represents. It's a similar experience to uncovering a photo frame covered with dust.

I assume that this ability is not uncommon among professional drawers.

> Blame the consumers.

The consumer is not a single person, and until we (the consumers) all coordinate, our individual incentive is to not pay (Classical prisoner dilemma).

So "voting with your wallet" doesn't maximize your personal interest.