Those that install adware are less intelligent--no need to paper over that. Do the writers of educational shows for small children think it ironic that they are more intelligent than their customers?
Since adware often uses dark patterns to trick people into installing it I'm not sure you can draw any conclusions about intelligence. Ability to scrutinise every panel of an installation script, and check or uncheck a variety of boxes that might be described with double or tripple negatives -- and that's for the adware that is polite enough to tell you ot's going to install itself.
Ignoring for a moment all the adware that doesn't install toolbars -- superfish doesn't -- you seem to have no idea about actual users. Most people would not notice an extra toolbar, or would think it's part of the default browser.
Not knowing how to repair something can result in a form of learned helplessness, a belief that you are less of something than someone else.
There are efforts to show people that they don't need to buy a new computer, or install software that intentionally limits what their computer can do, or pretends to fix it for a fee. Even the programs that actually work to remove these kinds of threats (including AdAware and SD Search and Destroy) can blur the distinction between actions that are necessary to repair the problem and things that are a different kind of nuisance but not directly a threat to the operation of the computer (like tracking cookies). Software that makes installing it to use it optional is preferred, as the ongoing monitoring can often tax the computer as badly as the software being removed. (Note I'm talking only about anti-adware software here, not general anti-virus software.)
I would love to give a better option than re-install your operating system all of your software, and even that is often a difficult option since the re-installation mediums aren't even shipped with the computer in many cases. I don't want to direct a person to a service where they take the computer to be fixed that often charges more than seems fair for the hands-off approach they take to re-imaging.
Oh, on your last part, I've encountered more than one laptop where all of the installed browsers had been limited to a fraction of the screen being readable due to the number of toolbars, and general search engines being inaccessible or unusable due to the number of injection adds and popups.
Most adware is toolbar free. The only way a user would know the adware exists is by going to their extensions list.
And even now, that isn't the case anymore. More and more adware is moving over to being exclusively EXE based and proxying all HTTP traffic, or using DLLs, or doing something outside of the browser. The disclosures for the ads often times don't actually point to the name of the installed software.
I would agree that users with adware are less tech literate (sometimes), but the install screens are made to specifically trick people into installing.
Neat. I take Modafinil or its enantiomer Nuvigil sometimes to be smarter or compensate for lack of sleep. Officially, it's for sleep apnea, which I had to take a sleep test to show. I don't see zero risk for cosmetic surgery (note the issues with any surgery), so perhaps that can serve as an analogue as we look more into enhancing "normal" people.
Sure. I get great results from Adderall and have heard good things about Modafinil. Tried it once with little effect, but it was from an Indian pharmacy and who knows how pure it was. I can't draw any conclusions whatsoever from this. Similarly, some people swear by racetams but I have adverse reactions to them (tired, eye strain, bad moods).
The internet is chock full of anecdotes about various nootropics, but very little empirical data. Gwern (linked above) tries to blind himself in some of his experiments, which is good, but still N=1.
What needs to happen is, IMO, people interested in nootropics sign up for a "trial", pay for the drug and any minor equipment needed to test efficacy, the trial administrator gets a pure sample of the drug and sends it out blinded to the participants. Then the results could be collected and possibly even published (in a journal that doesn't have an IRB requirement).
It could go even further if people could cough up the cash for a cheap genetic variation test like 23andme, and then the efficacy could be correlated with genetic variants.
But as it is, we are in the absolute dark ages about our knowledge about nootropic efficacy in normals. It is complicated by the fact that the most likely candidates are often controlled substances.
Almighty Wikipedia: nootropics are "drugs, supplements, nutraceuticals, and functional foods that improve one or more aspects of mental function, such as working memory, motivation, and attention"
Potentially a very broad category, which absolutely includes, but is not limited to, stimulants (within a therapeutic dose range). Also, as you can see on the same Wikipedia page, there is an entire category of nootropic stimulants, including the widely used caffeine and nicotine.
Ah, thanks. Only had Adderall once, and it didn't feel the same. Modafinil had a much more subtle effect, with few downsides (just don't overdo caffeine while on it).
Oh no, will this become an ego thing? Parallelism must lie somewhere near abstraction as a premature optimization. Computers are hard, even single threaded.
Yes, tangent, but please support the movements in several states to abolish daylight savings time. Having time move out from under us has long been a pain for programming robust systems. Perhaps the 5th or 6th generation of Apple watch will not need to do such an archaic adjustment.
Daylight Savings Time has some ill effects, true, but if you think that making life easier for programmers is a point that should convince the general public, you're sorely out of touch. For one, it's not all that difficult in the scheme of things. For another, programmers dealing with dates in the past will always have to consider it. Lastly, the general perception is that programmers get paid quite well enough and can suck it up and deal with this minor annoyance.
//We have enough digits to print 1424978922 on a watch face - that is standard Unix time. Why humans can't just learn to read that simple number is beyond me
You really think people should be using 1424978922 instead of 5:30 or 9:30? That kind of thinking is what's beyond me..
I have worked on a fairly large scale distributed system where we had to deal with DST. The week before the switch was always the craziest. Until... we switched the boxes and the database to UTC. Even if DST is abolished, leap second will be something to deal with.
I have so many things I hate about DST - like switching all our cross timezone meetings but programming is not one of them - always set your machines and DB to UTC and do the conversion in your app.
You could even set your servers to TAI and adjust for leap seconds in your app, so that you don't have to worry about timestamps going backwards during leap seconds.
Does the headline writer not notice the irony at all? How about?
`Nobody really said Soylent was the end of food, despite what click-bait headlines claim`
>It was even detectable with a relatively small telescope, though researchers in China did have to ask for help from astronomers in Chile and the United States to get a higher-resolution look.
I have a feeling that "relatively small" telescopes which find new black holes to publish in Nature are still quite expensive by normal person standards.
