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Richard Stallman's Political Notes

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Tories war on drugs won't work

jeudi 9 décembre 2021 à 13:37

*Abstinence-based recovery nearly killed me — the Tories’ ‘war on drugs’ won’t work.*

Egypt released Patrick Zaki on bail

jeudi 9 décembre 2021 à 13:37

Egypt has released Patrick Zaki on bail. He still faces years in prison for publishing his experience confronting the prejudice against Egyptian Christians.

Someone commented "Thank God" about his release. I find that particularly ironic, given that religion is the cause of his problems.

Prediction of a person's appearance from DNA

jeudi 9 décembre 2021 à 13:37

It is now possible to predict a person's physical appearance fairly reliably from per DNA sequence.

Since our current knowledge of the significance of genes is imperfect, some people will not actually resemble the prediction. This may cause the wrong people to be questioned. At least it will be possible to prove, with their DNA, that they are not the suspect.

Other possible problems are not caused by inaccuracy of prediction. However, I don't think we should call it "racial profiling" when the state suspects people in racial group R because it is known that the culprit was in group R. If a witness says, "He was black" or "He was white", we would not call it "racial profiling" if that led to questioning blacks, or to questioning whites.

Real racial profiling is when cops jump to the conclusion that they should search for a certain group, not based on knowledge, but rather based on assuming that people in group R are likely to be criminals.

Republicans attack idea of law applying equally

jeudi 9 décembre 2021 à 13:37

Republicans attack the basic idea of having the law apply equally to everyone — and thereby the basic idea of public health rules that people are requires to obey to keep the public safe.

Ethereum power use

jeudi 9 décembre 2021 à 13:37

A meticulous approximation says that Ethereum uses around 2 to 3 gigawatts. That is equivalent to 2 to 3 coal-fired power plants, or 1/3 of what Americans use for watching TV.