https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43508817

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48588081

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48500335

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48546189

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45430201

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45470998

That's a helluva prediction.

Thorium reactors would be practically limitless in fuel supply, but we aren't getting them without seriously funded nuclear research. That is far less likely during a band on commercial stations.

It's a pretty common effect, and frankly trivial. Lensless holographic focusing lenses on sea star exoskeletons are a bit less surprising... but only because they actually evolved, not because it could happen.

"Aggressively follow up" is a completely meaningless phrase. It could just mean they put an "angry face" emoji in their email. You might disagree, but courts would likely judge it an irrelevant phrase.

In short: there's No Way to scrub yourself off the web, and no one who wants to abuse information that should remain private will ever respect a take-down request, without the menace of fines and prison.

Sadly, this idiot won an award before I was able to see their work, so they had the confusion of receiving an award, and THEN being told they were being spanked for unacceptable behavior. Since they were too stupid to hide the most blatant clues, they had a hard time comprehending this duality.

I saw a Facebook copypasta piece that claimed that Einstein's first wife came up with many or most of his ideas, and never got credit because of sexism. No proof whatsoever, other than she was a mathematician and physicist.

But "it could have happened!" is more important than even a microshred of evidence for highly emotional, online topics.

This anecdote nicely pokes a hole in that conspiracy theory: he was thoughtful enough to share credit with a layman work associate, but (supposedly) not the most important woman in his life - that seems even less likely.

My case in point: A neighbor's child was violently mentally ill. I have made my house a safe haven for her children on occasion, and at times have gone into her house to discreetly escort them out past the violent child.

Then the police show up, either because she was able to call them, or I did.

At that point, a refusal to provide witness information to the police would increase the danger for both the child (who I stress is mentally ill, not simply being a violent asshole), the mother, and the police.

In situations involving the police reacting to 911 calls to that house, I always answer their questions. At this point, I get "I remember this guy - you're a neighbor, right?" - because we've done this dance so many times.

Another instance - I noted someone hiding (with really obvious peaks around the corner) at the side of a house while driving home. Found multiple police cars parked on and near my block. I walked up and told the first cop I met where the "hide-and-go-seek" loser was, and answered their questions about his appearance. Hell yes I wanted to answer them.

Rando policeman stopping you and asking you questions is very different from having a local emergency, and wanting your locale to be safer. Yeah, maybe in some fantasy situation the cops could have arrested me for something during that domestic situation at my neighbors, but I value her life and her kids' lives above that paranoid outlook.

I think it's something peculiar to their society, for some reason.

Medieval Europeans had several times as many sorts of herbs and vegetables as we do. I can forage 20-100 species on my block alone in the city; none of those species are in our markets.

Our supermarkets specialize in those that provide maximum bang-for-buck, including transport costs. That really thins the selection.

Even the poor wore colored clothing, not the uniform drab depicted in movies. Dyeing cloth with common weeds is a worldwide custom.

All but the truly poor lived indoors with a fire, either in a fireplace or centrally located beneath a peak smoke hole in the roof.

In all but the leanest times, chickens were easily raised by most people. Hogs were also common - there are even laws about raising them inside cities! That being said, its possible many meals were meatless, but the prevalence of meatless fasting rules suggest most people had access to meat - you can't "prove your faith through deprivation" if you're always deprived. Furthermore, serfs had access to the low-grade meats from butchering, and could keep it fresh with fat preservation, salting, or smoking.

> Capsaicin, the compound that makes chili peppers hot is an evolutionary filter designed to punish mammals and reward birds.

This is an outdated assumption, with no data behind it. (Yes, birds are immune, but that's not enough to prove this is why peppers evolved capsaicin, and in high levels.)

Capsaicin is a fungicide, and a survey showed that Scoville Heat Units (SHU), a measure of how much capsaicin is in a pepper (or hot sauce), varied quite reliably with local levels of a wild fungus that plagues pepper plants.

Surviving infection is far more important than selecting for slightly better distributors of the seeds.