ambler0's comments

"trying to keep everyone happy when that is an impossibility."

This is something I think we can all agree upon.

There's no need to denigrate people who may feel triggered or are offended, though. Reddit just needs to decide what's most important to them. If they want to give a platform to anyone, regardless of how vile their speech, that's totally fine! But, they should not also expect widespread adoption of their site. Most people are not vile and will be happy to move along to less hateful pastures.

Last I checked, Reddit was hosted on private servers. Hence, what you can say on their site is dictated by their TOS. The Internet is not a place where you can "say anything you want". It's a collection of servers. If you want the ability to say anything you want, start your own server. Reddit is not the government; it is not their obligation to protect free speech.

I think the clone I'm semi-remembering was a PC game. Regarding your second question: There were very many unlicensed Nintendo games. I don't know how many of these Nintendo fought. They very famously battled Tengen over this issue in the courts.

I seemed to recall such Mario clones as well. Nintendo is quite protective of their IP, so I have to think that they must have threatened legal action. Does anyone know? Is there precedent for legally protecting the layout of a level?

This statement surprised me. Is it really true? It appears that there is conflicting precedent:

"The first approach is from the 2nd circuit "The Subtractive Approach" (Altai, Nichols) and the other approach is "The Concept and Feel Approach" (Ruth Greeting Cards, Krofft)"

http://www.newmediarights.org/guide/legal/Video_Games_law_Co...?

I am curious to know what would happen if someone decided to clone the exact level design of a game but changed all the audio/visual assets.

In any case, it doesn't hurt to try and grow some milkweed in one's own yard, which many of us in my area do.

For anyone who, like me, was unfamiliar with this reference: http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Darmok_%28episode%29

I'm all for correcting oversimplified news stories, but I don't understand why you call this "significantly less direct". As far as I can see, it's exactly one step less direct, i.e. as close as you can get without killing them directly. As you say, milkweed is essential for them. It's literally the only plant this species lays its eggs upon.

It seems likely that for the people designing such web sites, these "bugs" are actually features, since they get paid by the click, accidental or not.

Could you please explain this comment? (I apologize if it is addressed in the article, which I have only been able to quickly skim since I'm at work)

Ignoring all the other things that affect cancer rates, a difference between Argentinian and American beef does come time mind: I believe that grass fed beef is still the norm in Argentina, whereas most US beef is grain fed.

I get this in Firefox (I'm at work):

An error occurred during a connection to www.wordsapi.com.

The server rejected the handshake because the client downgraded to a lower TLS version than the server supports.

(Error code: ssl_error_inappropriate_fallback_alert)

"The subjects were eight long-term Buddhist practitioners (mean age, 49 ± 15 years) and 10 healthy student volunteers (mean age, 21 ± 1.5 years)"

Why not recruit older controls?

Actually I'm sure that elites feel a sense of moral duty, for example to their family members and friends. That's a problem we all have: Extending our ethical intuitions to everyone. It's much easier to act ethically with respect to the person right next to you, harder to act ethically to the person on the other side of the planet. But consider also that an egalitarian ethics is a much easier sell to working people, whereas an ethics of nobility is a more natural fit for the ruling class. There's a lot of power to that old idea that economic conditions determine systems of beliefs. Anyway, my point is that it’s not that elites don’t have morals, they just have different ones.

Thanks for bringing this up for the people who aren't familiar with the history of the term. In my opinion, "cargo cult" is overused and overly specific. We have a perfectly good word for these kinds of behaviors, i.e. "superstition"

You're lumping them all together again, but each issue deserves to be discussed by itself.

Regarding GMOs, what is interesting is not the fact that an organism was geneticially modified in a lab. What one wants to know is why it was modified. You can bet that your Roundup Ready crop is going to be slathered in ...Roundup. It's up to you to decide whether or not that's a big deal. The point is that this isn't superstition, it's basic fact-finding about the food we eat.

I never claimed that organic produce is more nutritous than non-organic produce. I did suggest that it's a reasonable working hypothesis that it is safer because of lower pesticide levels.

If anything on your list deserves your derisive attitude, it's the gluten-free craze. I have very little interest in that one; it strikes me as another diet fad and the testimonials are reiminiscent of other bogus complaints, e.g. re MSG. Which is too bad, since celiac disease is real and these patients are now being taken less seriously.

"the amount of money" Spending 10 cents more per pound for the organic fair-trade bananas so I can practice the precautionary principle and possibly help improve the lot of the serfs that pick them seems OK to me.

"You would think it cured cancer" Well, it is one of the things people are hoping to prevent...

Of course, none of this touches on the other reasons one might be picky about how their food is sourced, namely environmental and labor concerns.

What frustrates me so much about your post is that you see people doing things for stupid reasons and conclude from this that there aren't good reasons for doing these things. There are plenty of smart, dare I say skeptical (seems to be one of the fetishes on HN), people thinking about these issues who don't share your perspective.

Of course eating non-organic produce is better than eating no produce at all. Eating only organic is a straw man position.

Whether or not an organic diet (whatever that may be exactly) ultimately proves to be healthier, it's wrong to describe the movement to eat such food as a "ridiculous cargo cult". It's clear what people are worried about (dangerous pesticides, environmental pollutants) and the expectation that food labeled as organic is better in this respect is not unreasonable. Whether or not labeling food "certified organic" makes enough of a difference is a different discussion; clearly there is no substitute for knowing where your food comes from.

The fact that you lump this in with gluten-free and anti-GMO, which are themselves interesting and unique topics of discussion that have in common only their faddishness, and then lump all three of these in with a charlatan like Dr. Oz, shows to me that you have an oversimplified view of these issues.

But you can get a lot of that out of your tap water with a filter, which in my opinion makes tap water the healthier choice.

Alan Alda has done a great job of bringing charisma and humor to science shows without dumbing anything down. The key is to find a comedian/actor/whatever who has a genuine interest in the material.