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posted by on Wednesday May 10 2017, @03:08PM   Printer-friendly
from the picture-this dept.

The Telegraph reports on work published in Current Biology (DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2017.03.076) in which researchers

[...] propose that a risk factor for seizures in patients with photosensitive epilepsy is engagement of the circuitry that produces gamma oscillations.

Gamma oscillations are brain waves that oscillate at frequencies in the 30 to 80 Hz range. One researcher told the Telegraph:

Our findings imply that in designing buildings, it may be important to avoid the types of visual patterns that can activate this circuit and cause discomfort, migraines, or seizures [...] Even perfectly healthy people may feel modest discomfort from the images that are most likely to trigger seizures in photosensitive epilepsy.

Related stories:
Migraine, Epilepsy Drug Caused Serious Birth Defects in Thousands of French Children
Epilepsy-Triggering Suspect Charged, More Details on the Arrest
Alleged Epilepsy-Triggering Troll Arrested by the FBI
Epilepsy Patient Assaulted Via Twitter
Easing Epilepsy With Battery Power


Original Submission

Related Stories

Easing Epilepsy With Battery Power 4 comments

mendax writes:

The New York Times published an article on a new device that can be implanted which can stop epileptic attacks in their tracks.

Just approved by the Food and Drug Administration, the long-awaited device, called the RNS System, aims to reduce seizures and to improve the lives of an estimated 400,000 Americans whose epilepsy cannot be treated with drugs or brain surgery.

The device, which requires a battery change every two to three years, works only for people whose seizures start in one or two places in their brain. Electrical stimulation delivered through thin wires placed precisely at those places helps prevent an incipient seizure from spreading.

Epilepsy Patient Assaulted Via Twitter 74 comments

Newsweek journalist Kurt Eichenwald, who is known to be suffering from epilepsy, reported on twitter that someone tweeted him a seizure-inducing image. This is not the first time it happened, but this attempt was (apparently) successful in triggering a seizure.

This might be the first physical attack on a person perpetrated via the internet. A sad point in history, in my view.

Links: coverage from Ars Technica, Eichenwald's Twitter feed. I'm not linking to the offending image - you're big enough to find it on your own and apparently it is quite horrible even for people who do not suffer from epilepsy.

Eichenwald has tweeted that he is involving law enforcement.

Any ideas on how hard it would be to filter out seizure-inducing media (make it click-to-view/play)?


Original Submission

Alleged Epilepsy-Triggering Troll Arrested by the FBI 35 comments

Three months after a journalist reported being attacked by a troll who posted a seizure-inducing image on Twitter, a suspect has been arrested:

A man accused of triggering an epileptic seizure of senior Newsweek writer Kurt Eichenwald through a tweet was arrested by the FBI on Friday morning. An FBI spokesman said the name of the suspect has not been released but confirmed that an arrest was made, Dallas News reported.

The arrest comes three months after Eichenwald said he suffered a seizure after someone sent him a video clip of a flashing strobe light in an intentional effort to trigger his epilepsy. A Twitter account called @jew_goldstein — which has since been suspended — responded to Eichenwald with a gif of flashing strobe lights and a message: "You deserve a seizure for that post." Shortly after, Eichenwald's account tweeted: "This is his wife, you caused a seizure. I have your information and have called the police to report the assault."

From the Dallas News article:

The agency announced that John Rayne Rivello, 29, of Salisbury, Md., was arrested Friday morning in Maryland on a cyberstalking charge.

[...] Eichenwald's attorney, Steven Liberman, told Newsweek that "What Mr. Rivello did with his Twitter message was no different from someone sending a bomb in the mail or sending an envelope filled with anthrax spores."

[...] According to a criminal complaint, messages sent from Rivello's Twitter account mentioned Eichenwald, saying "I know he has epilepsy," "I hope this sends him into a seizure" and "let's see if he dies."

Authorities also found an screenshot of Eichenwald's Wikipedia page on Rivello's iCloud account, the criminal complaint said, altered to list his date of death as Dec. 16, 2016. Other files on the iCloud account include a list of things that trigger epileptic seizures and a screenshot of a Dallas Observer article about Eichenwald's attempts to find the person who tweeted at him.

[...] On Friday, Eichenwald said that more than 40 people sent him strobes once they found out that they could trigger seizures.


Original Submission

Epilepsy-Triggering Suspect Charged, More Details on the Arrest 27 comments

Previously: Alleged Epilepsy-Triggering Troll Arrested by the FBI.

The man accused of triggering an epileptic seizure by tweeting was caught when authorities obtained phone records and access to an iCloud account:

Court documents show that a search warrant to Twitter concerning the @jew_goldstein handle provided the authorities with information that the account was created on December 11 with a "PhoneDevice." Twitter also divulged the device's phone number and said that the carrier was AT&T. Some of the direct messages to other Twitter users on the account, according to the documents, said, "I know he has epilepsy," "I hope this sends him into a seizure," and "...let's see if he dies." The Dallas authorities next obtained information from AT&T that the telephone number used to start the Twitter account was a burner SIM card with a Tracfone prepaid account "with no subscriber information." "However, a review of the AT&T toll records showed an associated Apple iPhone 6A Model 1586 (Apple iPhone)," Nathan Hopp, an FBI agent in Dallas, wrote in the criminal complaint (PDF).

The police then sent a search warrant to Apple "for the iCloud account associated to the telephone number" used to open the Twitter account. Apple provided a wealth of information that ultimately doomed Rivello. Cupertino gave the Dallas Police Department his Apple ID e-mail address, his name, home address, and registration IP address when the account was created in 2012.

John Rayne Rivello has been charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon "enhanced as a hate crime". One of the images obtained from the iCloud account included an image of Rivello posing with his driver's license. The animated GIF that Rivello allegedly tweeted was a generic one that had already been posted on places such as 4chan for years.


Original Submission

Migraine, Epilepsy Drug Caused Serious Birth Defects in Thousands of French Children 10 comments

In France, roughly one in a thousand pregnant women take valproate, a drug used in treating epilepsy (brand name Depakine) and bipolar disorder (brand names Depakote or Depamide). According to a study [original source, French, BBC] released by France's drug regulator, the children of those mothers are at serious risk of being born with severe congenital malformations: between 2 (Depakote, Depamide) and 4 (Depakine) times more likely than the general population.

The drug, of pharmaceutical company Sanofi, has been sold in a number of global markets, including the US, China and the UK. In a number of countries, including the US, it is also being used in the prevention of migraine (see 4th para), according to the European Medical Agency (EMA).

The French study estimates the total number of victims at between 2,150 and 4,100 over the period the drug was sold in France, starting from 1967. A rough extrapolation based on population size only, indicates that there could be between 10,000 and 20,000 similar victims in the US. While the French regulator will release a detailed study on the congenital defects (neural tube defects, cleft palate) only in September, EMA already registered delayed walking and talking, memory problems, difficulty with speech and language, lower intellectual ability, increased risk of autistic spectrum disorder and a higher likelihood of ADHD symptoms.

Sanofi itself has warned since 2011 that the drug should not be taken during pregnancy. Both the US FDA, in 2013, and the EU's EMA, in 2014, have warned healthcare professionals that valproate sodium and related products, valproic acid and divalproex sodium, should not be prescribed to pregnant women or women who are trying to get pregnant, unless no substitute is available.


Original Submission

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 10 2017, @03:15PM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 10 2017, @03:15PM (#507573)

    It is proved: The American Flag is bad for your health! ;-)

    • (Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Wednesday May 10 2017, @03:58PM (2 children)

      by AthanasiusKircher (5291) on Wednesday May 10 2017, @03:58PM (#507597) Journal

      Horizontal stripes supposedly also make you look fat, which perhaps is contributing to the obesity epidemic in the U.S. Even our flag appears "plus-sized"! I too often get a headache when thinking about the growing number of "horizontally enhanced" folks. :)

      [In all seriousness, although the horizontal stripe thing is "common knowledge" about fashion; it's not actually true [psychologytoday.com].]

      • (Score: 2) by frojack on Wednesday May 10 2017, @05:57PM (1 child)

        by frojack (1554) on Wednesday May 10 2017, @05:57PM (#507657) Journal

        Horizontal stripes supposedly also make you look fat,

        Another reader who didn't click the Telegraph Link in the story...

        --
        No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 10 2017, @07:48PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 10 2017, @07:48PM (#507705)

          They also make you look convicted.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 10 2017, @03:34PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 10 2017, @03:34PM (#507581)

    I hate zebra.

  • (Score: 2) by Snospar on Wednesday May 10 2017, @03:44PM (2 children)

    by Snospar (5366) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday May 10 2017, @03:44PM (#507586)

    I was hoping for some exciting "trigger" images in the article but if anything I found the Red/Green arrows more annoying than their test patterns. Seems weird suspicious that we'd have some sort of natural mechanism that was triggered by perfectly vertical or horizontal lines - have we developed something to warn us that something obviously man-made is heading toward us?

    Maybe these just cause some sort of internal moiré effect in the optical processing system... which takes me to one of my favourite XKCD comics [xkcd.com].

    --
    Huge thanks to all the Soylent volunteers without whom this community (and this post) would not be possible.
    • (Score: 5, Funny) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday May 10 2017, @03:55PM

      by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Wednesday May 10 2017, @03:55PM (#507593) Journal

      When a grid's out of line
      With another behind
      That's a moire~!

      --
      I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
    • (Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Wednesday May 10 2017, @09:38PM

      by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Wednesday May 10 2017, @09:38PM (#507762) Homepage

      My theory is that viewing vertical stripes (as well as other styles of periodicity such as rapid blinking images or cartoons) creates some kind of undesired positive feedback in the Gamma wave oscillation mechanism.

      Also, groan, XKCD being unfunny yet again. XKCD "punchlines" have been known to cause involuntary defecation, but the exact mechanism of action is yet unknown.

  • (Score: 4, Funny) by ikanreed on Wednesday May 10 2017, @03:48PM

    by ikanreed (3164) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday May 10 2017, @03:48PM (#507588) Journal

    But it is going to cause that inconvenient headache when we get back from our date tonight, honey.

  • (Score: 2) by fishybell on Wednesday May 10 2017, @04:18PM (5 children)

    by fishybell (3156) on Wednesday May 10 2017, @04:18PM (#507616)

    Almost all of the images they put up there — not the out-of-focus fence or the lady's dress — make my brain buzz in an odd way. Admittedly, I am particularly sensitive to flickering lights, etc., but I've noticed this some brain buzz on striped images before. The more vertical, contrasting, and consistent the stripes, the worse the effect; for me at least. The radiator in particular was difficult to look at for more than a few seconds.

    • (Score: 2) by frojack on Wednesday May 10 2017, @06:13PM (4 children)

      by frojack (1554) on Wednesday May 10 2017, @06:13PM (#507666) Journal

      There's another (perhaps related?) buzzing thing that some people are susceptible called Ocular Migraine [allaboutvision.com] where some people see stripes when none exist. Can cause the image you see to "buzz".

      Ocular migraines are painless, temporary visual disturbances that can affect one or both eyes. Though they can be frightening, ocular migraines typically are harmless and self-resolve without medication within 20 to 30 minutes.

      Sample Images [google.com].

      I occasionally get these as do a couple other programmer types I've worked with. It can come and go in 20 minutes and may not re-occur for weeks or months. But in my case, its almost impossible to read a line of code when happening. Not at all painful. Don't think it has anything to do with coding, just that the other folks I know who have seen this are programmers.

      --
      No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
      • (Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Wednesday May 10 2017, @09:44PM (3 children)

        by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Wednesday May 10 2017, @09:44PM (#507767) Homepage

        My friend who had migraines used to call those "halos."

        Something like this [drstevensoong.com] looks a lot like when you wake up in the middle of a heavy dream and see those flickering patterns briefly before your mind starts waking up.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 11 2017, @03:21AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 11 2017, @03:21AM (#507909)

          Interesting. I have ocular migraines, but I've never had that waking up from a dream.

          The examples from you and GP are pretty accurate. Imagine them shimmering and very, very slowly changing shape and creeping across the field of vision. Annoying as hell if I'm working on a programming problem when it happens. Seems to be unresponsive to weed as well. But yeah, absolutely painless.

          Sometimes I can go months without one occurring, and sometimes a couple will happen in the same week. I'm not sure, but I think it might be related to my chronically low sodium. Whenever other indications start appearing in my body that my blood sodium level is starting to get too low, it seems like I have ocular migraines more frequently, but the ocular migraines seem otherwise independent from the usual cluster of symptoms that tells me I need to add some salt to my next glass of water.

          (Doctor ordered gatorade or similar, but salt in a glass of water is a ton cheaper and seems effective. Correlation is not causation, ymmv, IANAMedicalDoctor etc.)

          Since we're talking about stripes, I looked through the examples given and the radiator was the only one I had difficulty looking at. Did not trigger an episode.

        • (Score: 1) by anubi on Thursday May 11 2017, @07:36AM (1 child)

          by anubi (2828) on Thursday May 11 2017, @07:36AM (#507972) Journal

          About the image [drstevensoong.com] you referenced.

          Now that you have pointed it out to me, I now have something to query Google with. Images of migraine. Yet I have no correlation to migraine. Google has found scores of similar images on the keyword "images of migraine". Thanks to you, I may yet find out the mystery of these weird apparitions that occur to me occasionally.

          I have seen stuff just like that. For years. And when wide awake.

          There is nothing else in my field of vision unusual. Last time I saw those ( that same kind of stripe pattern bounded by the crescent shape ) I was outside walking down the street to Del Taco.

          It looked almost like some sort of image overlay as I would do in digital image manipulation software.

          Almost like a scene right out of Star Trek with a malfunctioning holographic projector.

          What I found so unusual is the crescent was static in my field of view, and the jagged lines in it were perfectly straight, but flashing on, off, and moving around in an unpredictable pattern, other than being bounded by the crescent. Black and white, too... exactly like the artwork depicted.

          I am very puzzled over it. Why such a complex pattern... of *straight* lines? Precisely bounded by a crescent? This apparition seems too un-natural for me to subconsciously brew up.

          Last time I witnessed this, it ran for about 30 minutes, there whether I had my eyes open or closed. Definitely superimposed on the retina or visual cortex somehow, as it did not appear as something in the neighbor's lawn I could approach or possibly try to touch.

          I thought this was peculiar to me. Some sort of minor visual-optical malfunction. I never thought I would see a picture of it drawn by someone else.

          That artwork depicted exactly the same thing. I have no idea what it is or what causes it. It comes and goes. Mostly not there.

          There was no headache or *any* other discomfort present. Just the visual anomaly. I could not detect anything else on me malfunctioning. I was thinking maybe a sun reflection off a passing car had caused it - but for the life of me could not recall such.

          I cannot correlate it with any thing I have eaten, nor any state of mind.

          Yet I have seen this same anomaly come and go for many years. Seems harmless enough. I figured it much like an itch that has no apparent cause.

          I submit this for whoever may be doing any research into it.

          Could it have been some sort of "mini-stroke"?

          Yet I have not noted any other kind of stroke-like phenomena, nor does it run in the family.

          --
          "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
          • (Score: 1) by anubi on Thursday May 11 2017, @11:37AM

            by anubi (2828) on Thursday May 11 2017, @11:37AM (#508035) Journal

            Addendum to my above post.

            I have spent the last several hours researching this phenomena.

            Thanks to the image link posted by Ethanol, I now know what I have been experiencing. It's called an "ocular migraine".

            Quite a few other reports on the internet confirm what I have experienced. In several languages, no less.

            They note its likely genetic. My mom had migraines. But hers were painful. Mine are not. I just get the light show. I do not know if mom was getting those displays. I thought she had that same kind of head hurting I normally get when I smell too much gasoline or motor oil or hear the horizontal flyback coil of an old TV too long.

            But at least I am now at peace with what this is.

            Thanks for posting that image, Ethanol! That was the first time I had ever seen an actual image of what I saw.

            --
            "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
  • (Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday May 10 2017, @04:26PM (1 child)

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday May 10 2017, @04:26PM (#507617)

    oscillate at frequencies in the 30 to 80 Hz range

    Thats no fun at all.

    Thats almost every non-thermal non-phosphor electric light source ever made. TV. A bit higher than movies.

    Maybe its a sensitization thing where being exposed to that for hours per day primes the pump and then a minor ADDITIONAL source sets off a seizure.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 10 2017, @09:56PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 10 2017, @09:56PM (#507774)

      Non-thermal, non-phosphor? So... carbon-arc lights, some discharge lamps, and what else? Oh, monochromatic or RGB LEDs. Is that it?

      CRTs are phosphor, but still flicker in that range. So do some other display technologies, but that's about it; I can't think of any technology used to any great extent for general-purpose lighting that does.

      Fluorescent lights are phosphor based, just like "normal" LEDs. In both cases the phosphor is generally fast enough to let such low frequencies show up anyhow. And in both cases (and also for non-phosphor LEDs), you can drive them a simple, inefficient circuit that makes them flicker at 100 or 120 Hz (twice mains frequency), but these days most of them either flicker at >1 kHz or not at all. Incandescents (though thermal) also flicker at twice mains frequency, but in most cases have enough thermal mass to make this flicker imperceptible at ordinary frequencies.

      (Yes, LEDs are diodes, and thus in the crudest driving arrangement, only light up on one half-cycle of AC. But since the reverse voltage would fry the LED on the other half-cycle, you need more components to put all the LEDs on a fixture the same way around -- it's cheapest and easiest to wire two LEDs in antiparallel, so one lights each half-cycle. And like I said, most of them, by far, use a constant or high-frequency driver, rather than run straight off mains.)

      I'm not an expert on discharge lamps, but I think the ones normally used for lighting purposes are AC, and thus would, worst-case, flicker at 100-120 Hz; DC discharge lamps, which are in my understanding used mainly for projectors and such, could be driven off half-wave recitified AC, for flicker at mains frequency, but generally aren't.

  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 10 2017, @04:50PM (5 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 10 2017, @04:50PM (#507630)

    The only time I had something like a headache is when I worked for the gov. A new rule came down that the fluorescent bulbs in the ceiling needed to be "energy saving", so maintenance came by and put in the new bulbs. For whatever reason, one was not compatible with the wiring in one of the rooms I was working in so it flickered constantly.

    It was a federal crime (tampering with federal property or something) to swap the bulb by ourselves and maintenance would not show up for whatever reason (to give you an idea, at this place people would put in requests to change locks that would get filled 7 years later, leaving whoever was now there unexpectedly locked out of their room...).

    Eventually everyone got tired of trying to get the bulb fixed by maintenance, but no one wanted to do the "tampering", so we just worked under the flickering light when needed. I only needed to go in there every now and then, but one time I suddenly felt nauseous and had to leave the room. Right after I had what I can only describe as a hangover (muddle-headed, etc) for the rest of the day. I never get any headaches at all, let alone migraines, but this sounds like a migraine to me. So check your bulbs.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 10 2017, @05:06PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 10 2017, @05:06PM (#507639)

      Maybe you should have reported that due to the unusual behaviour of the light, you suspect that there was a spy device installed. Then they might have taken it out for examination.

      On the other hand, it might have resulted in sitting in the dark. ;-)

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 10 2017, @07:44PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 10 2017, @07:44PM (#507700)

        I'm trying to come up with a guess as to how the spy device idea would have gone down, but it is difficult to make up stories as crazy as would really happen. The key is that every solution to a problem needs to make it even harder to get the original work done.

        Its possible that would have lead to them locking up the room and moving that activity to some other currently abandoned room. Then we'd need to be walking back and forth half a mile up/down the hall multiple times a day, further reducing productivity.

    • (Score: 1) by anubi on Thursday May 11 2017, @10:00AM

      by anubi (2828) on Thursday May 11 2017, @10:00AM (#508006) Journal

      I could definitely see the flickering light affecting you. Does me too.

      Makes me see colors and things that aren't there.

      Also makes it really hard to read anything. The characters keep morphing into other characters.

      ( The psychedelic stroboscopes of the 60's era did exactly the same thing. )

      Seemed like frequencies from about 5 Hz to around 70Hz would cause me to hallucinate. I had a lab strobe to experiment with.

      On certain frequencies, the patterns I would get were very similar to the sharp black and white jagged line patterns I described in an earlier post in this forum, sans the crescent.

      Which is why my seeing this hallucination prompted curiosity in me, not fear. I had seen it before, but I had to trigger it with a stroboscope or observe it when watching a light through a fan, or in a car while passing by a tree farm at sunset ( equally spaced trees blocking the sun ). It was a curiosity to me as to why I would perceive nothing more than a blinking light as such a vivid display of color patterns.

      Google "spinning disk color illusion" and "Benham's disk" to see this phenomena has been known to exist for quite some time.

      I believe I got my first Benham disk from cutting one out of the side of a box of cereal. That thing really piqued my interest.

      As a kid, I had configured a toy motor to spin disks I made using "marsh" pens, trying to figure out just what was going on.

      I got more fun playing with that than the toy the motor was in.

      No, I never dropped acid or messed with any psychedelic chemicals.

      --
      "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 11 2017, @11:11AM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 11 2017, @11:11AM (#508028)

      why the hell didn't you break it? Then you'd have a valid reason for bringing in a lamp or something, and the problem would be solved.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 12 2017, @09:34AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 12 2017, @09:34AM (#508553)

        That would be tampering with federal property.

  • (Score: 2) by art guerrilla on Wednesday May 10 2017, @08:25PM (3 children)

    by art guerrilla (3082) on Wednesday May 10 2017, @08:25PM (#507721)

    and, thus, the evolutionary branch of homo eloi is started...
    sometimes i think spartans had the right idea...

    • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday May 12 2017, @03:33AM (2 children)

      by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Friday May 12 2017, @03:33AM (#508451) Journal

      Er...pederasty, cultural vandalism, and exclusion of all forms of self improvement save for fighting and bulking up? Might wanna rethink that one, unless your idea of "peak human" is basically a murderous frat boy...

      --
      I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
      • (Score: 2) by art guerrilla on Saturday May 13 2017, @10:45AM (1 child)

        by art guerrilla (3082) on Saturday May 13 2017, @10:45AM (#509084)

        um, wait a minute, are we talking about sparta, or US ? ? ?
        we do all the other crap you mention, why not put the newborn on the side of the mountain, too ? ? ?
        just sayin...
        .
        (i'd get into the 'eugenics' angle, but i don't think we can discuss what we are doing to the overall fitness of our species when we let otherwise fatally flawed replicants continue to breed only because society has evolved to the point where otherwise non-viable human beans can be supported by the rest of the tribe... we can't talk about that...)

        • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday May 13 2017, @05:29PM

          by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Saturday May 13 2017, @05:29PM (#509209) Journal

          So, I was born with astigmatism and a hearing loss of about 60dB in both ears. Are you saying I should have been aborted? Because I've also got an IQ of about 145 and some serious talent for languages. Think really carefully here before you answer...

          --
          I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
  • (Score: 2) by requerdanos on Thursday May 11 2017, @01:16AM

    by requerdanos (5997) Subscriber Badge on Thursday May 11 2017, @01:16AM (#507854) Journal

    Some years ago, I worked at a site where we were testing some Lucent managed network switches.

    They worked great, except for what Lucent assured me was a very, very small problem: If you attempted to telnet to a switch using the telnet client shipped with Windows 2000, the switch would reboot, dropping all connections. Lucent's fix was... use a different telnet client.

    I, on the other hand, assured Lucent that any piece of supposed network management hardware with such a showstopping problem built right in was not worth the effort to scrape it off your shoe once having stepped in it. We didn't choose Lucent switches.

    Where I am going with this is that the problem was something unexpected that would happen when you tried to use the hardware as per normal. Unexpected and "bad".

    Now, if using the eyeball-brain system as per normal to view and interpret the environment in real time results in bugs like "discomfort" or "migraines" or "seizures", some even in non-epileptics, then that's a somewhat similar thing... And the solution ("don't do that") sounds kind of similar as well.

    Is this a known bug in the human vision system?

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