realradicalwash

> As far as I am concerned main stream journalism has sold its sold and it cannot die fast enough.

To be replaced by what though? How will one get the right input that is needed to create and inform one's opinion?

this constant urge to check your phone, I don't think it's much different from an OCD. OCDs constantly interrupt the normal flow of one's thought processes with obsessive, intrusive interjections ("you are dirty", "did I do x/y?", "maybe you are gay", etc).

that's what apps have instilled into our minds: a constant urge that interrupts our thought processes, so that we check fb, WA, gmail, etc.

I switched all notifications off and I still have this, less than previously, but still. I am thinking of going back to a brick phone because of that.

if transactions were done in btc, each transaction would amass the typical fees - which are pretty high at the moment.

converting btc to fiat to pay your visa card bill at the end of the month would be one transaction per month.

that's a huge difference.

Bitcoin was created with the use case currency in mind and it was used like that by the earlier adopters. I think this is what OP was pointing at with "Many have forgotten why we used cryptocurrencies in the first place" and certainly with the qualifier "many", I think OP is correct: That's how we initially used Bitcoin and other cryptos.

_Now_ many (most?) people use bitcoin as a store of value. But I think this is more out of necessity: Bitcoin as a currency is semi-dysfunctional.

> the westerners that seem to be almost rooting for their own society to collapse just to have another reason to use Bitcoin

I have not met a single person in my life with that motivation. However, I have met people who want to see the current system collapse, but mainly because it's not working for them.

We are dealing with 5+ papers that are fraudulent and another 5+ newer papers that are most likely fraudulent, too. That is, there have been 20, 25+ reviewers looking at those papers. Their job was to carefully read them and double check the numbers. All of them gave those papers a pass. I am at a loss here.

The authors' behaviour is outrageous, but this story is also about a broken reviewing process, partly due to wrong incentives.

> driving a huge battery around will burn more fuel

and driving around two engines. also, equally important, having to produce two engines gives hybrids an extra co2 footprint even before their first km. this way, the total co2 footprint over the entire life cycle of a hybrid car can be just the same as that of the same car with a combustion engine.

The academic 'controversy' aside -which I think is BS, at least as it is presented in the article-, two things truly amaze me:

1) How beautiful of a city Wuppertal was in 1902. I have been to Wuppertal about 5 years ago, and it's ... well, not beautiful. Great people, though! 2) The appetite for engineering, for creating things, and the audacity of the late 19th century, early 20th century. A freaking flying train for a city of less than half a million of people. Contrast this to the changes over the past two decades in my hometown, which is about the same size as Wuppertal. The changes were marginal; a cancelled train route is what pops to mind.

being in academia myself, this hits home so hard :/ the field picks some rockstars, which imv is to a good extent based on charisma, and then goes with that.

one of 'our' rockstars has pushed a certain hypothesis for more than 10 years. it is plausible on a conceptual level, but I have yet to see systematic, large-scale evidence for it. it would not be entirely trivial, but also not that hard to test.

here is what happened: that person has fallen from grace due to some troublesome accusations. those accusations did not stick up in court btw. the case was made public 2017, the court case was closed this year. still that person's reputation is tarnished, so is their rockstar aura.

here comes the kicker: just this year, the first study comes out, presenting results that that hypothesis does not hold up, certainly in some contexts. i know for a fact that at least one more team has had similar results a few years ago - but when they first presented the results informally, they felt pressured to shelf the project.

Great article. A snippet from the conclusion that I found particularly interesting: "History of science all too often highlights "superstar" scientists who have illustrious careers, overcoming great obstacles and resistance to new ideas, leading to a public vindication, sometimes followed by a Nobel Prize. Miescher’s story is different. There was no immediate recognition nor ultimate vindication in his case, yet his discovery proved fundamental for the whole of modern biology. Excavating stories such as his from the past, and incorporating them into the history of genetics, helps us portray the process of science more realistically."

Aren't other countries that have already ratified UP in violation of those agreements, too? I.e., how is this about Germany in particular and not about the European patent system itself?

I am hesitant to take the lack of the ability to embed as a fact. My impression is that Everett had a theory in mind when he surveyed Piraha and that he sought to confirm his theory. That is, I am worried that this account is subverted by "theory selects data". So I think what we need is a lot more data, ideally collected by someone who the field views as (relatively) neutral.

> how can you call it social "science" if you can't reproduce it?

NB: this is not specific to the social sciences. psychology, cognitive sciences, medicine(!), and other fields have a 'replication crisis' also. there are some really good papers on this. i am not aware of systematic queries into CS/ML/DL papers, but from my own experience: when you pick up a paper that claims 9x% accuracy, the chance that you are able to replicate that number is in line with replication % in other fields.

think about steam whatever you want, but they've done some real fantastic work there with their linux support. the other day i installed forged alliance -from 2007, only supports win natively- on my linux machine and it was easy as pie: after a few mins of downloading and installing, the game was up and running.