SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Bears do it. Bats do it. Even European hedgehogs do it. And now it turns out that early human beings may also have been at it. They hibernated, according to fossil experts.
[...] [S]cientists argue that lesions and other signs of damage in fossilised bones of early humans are the same as those left in the bones of other animals that hibernate. These suggest that our predecessors coped with the ferocious winters at that time by slowing down their metabolisms and sleeping for months.
[...] In a paper published in the journal L'Anthropologie, Juan-Luis Arsuaga – who led the team that first excavated at the site – and Antonis Bartsiokas, of Democritus University of Thrace in Greece, [suggest that] these early humans found themselves "in metabolic states that helped them to survive for long periods of time in frigid conditions with limited supplies of food and enough stores of body fat".
[...] The researchers admit the notion "may sound like science fiction" but point out that many mammals including primates such as bushbabies and lemurs do this. "This suggests that the genetic basis and physiology for such a hypometabolism could be preserved in many mammalian species including humans," state Arsuaga and Bartsiokas.
The pattern of lesions found in the human bones at the Sima cave are consistent with lesions found in bones of hibernating mammals, including cave bears. "A strategy of hibernation would have been the only solution for them to survive having to spend months in a cave due to the frigid conditions," the authors state.
Journal Reference:
Antonis Bartsiokas, Juan-Luis Arsuaga, Hibernation in hominins from Atapuerca, Spain half a million years ago, L'Anthropologie (DOI: 10.1016/j.anthro.2020.102797)
(Score: 3, Interesting) by hemocyanin on Sunday January 03 2021, @05:14AM (22 children)
I propose that the text of items marked "spam" gets automatically put into the spoiler tags so that we don't have to scroll as much. I get that theoretically one could simply browse at 0 or +1, but the mod system here is used politically and so many interesting posts are often at -1 but obvious spam like the above should be dealt with somehow. Yes I can scroll on by, but this stuff is an ugly distraction and honestly, sometimes scrolling hurts my elbow due to old injuries and I'd rather do less of it. Anyway, the "spam" mod would be the perfect place to sweep this shit under the rug. If anyone wanted to check under the rug, they could. Of course, unfair spam mods should be met with consequences for the person doing the unfair mod (and I say this as a person who was once given a 30 day timeout from modding for unfairly using "spam").
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 03 2021, @05:18AM (8 children)
Yes, we pay in old age for the excessively enthusiastic wanking back in the day! But, we make up for it by watching Fox News, with extra blonde bimbos, and then voting Republican! That's the ticket! OK, Boomer Hemocyanist!!
(Score: 1) by hemocyanin on Sunday January 03 2021, @05:31AM (7 children)
Sorry -- Gen X, and I prefer brunettes.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 03 2021, @06:15AM (6 children)
Sorry to mis-generation you, but you did not specify pro-noughies. Burning out early, eh? So sad to see someone lose it so badly at such an early age!
(Score: 0, Offtopic) by hemocyanin on Sunday January 03 2021, @07:19AM (5 children)
Well, at least when I injured my elbow I was doing something deeply rewarding. Some things require a blood sacrifice and that's just the way it is.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 03 2021, @07:23AM (2 children)
You injured your elbow when you were whacking off.
(Score: 0, Offtopic) by hemocyanin on Sunday January 03 2021, @09:27AM (1 child)
No -- I hurt my right elbow, not my left. My left hand is just fine.
(Score: 2) by Tork on Monday January 04 2021, @04:30AM
🤡
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 03 2021, @07:53AM (1 child)
Nice story [soylentnews.org] you just submitted to the queue. I suppose that was also deeply rewarding.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by hemocyanin on Sunday January 03 2021, @09:25AM
I read the first couple lines and scrolled to the end. I hope it's just a copypasta search and replace thing. Otherwise, I'd be humbled by the effort, though not quite enough to read it through.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Sunday January 03 2021, @06:56PM (2 children)
I think I like that idea.
Nothing is censored, exactly. It's just all collapsed, so we don't have to scroll through it. Good thinking, hemocyanin!
(Score: 2) by Tork on Monday January 04 2021, @04:34AM (1 child)
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday January 04 2021, @05:50AM
Mehhh - I don't much like that idea. The collapsing thing should only apply to spam, that has first been moderated as such, then said moderation has been checked out and approved of staff.
If you collapse all comments from foes, it might look like you're talking to yourself!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 03 2021, @07:14PM
Super mods. Users with IP/User blocking mods. Ad a timeout of two days. Only trustworthy users and maybe two required to vote it.
I don't know.
(Score: 2) by fakefuck39 on Sunday January 03 2021, @11:01PM (8 children)
I guess the subject matter chiming in here... I don't think there's a great way out of this. I've got high karma/upvotes, but I opted out of moderation (not a fun activity). The people spamming though - they have accounts and politically downvote stuff, they just post anything that would lose them karma as AC.
What they'll switch to if your suggestion is taken (collapse spam mod by default), is start abusing that mod. Yes, they'll get banned. But that requires review by the guys in charge - that's some real annoying work to put on them. They already have to run this site, which is a bit of a thankless gig. And what'll happen is the autists will create a bunch of new accounts, gain upvotes, and start using those to moderate.
So that's literally introducing a continuous stream of neverending work to people like buzz.
Now if we had an AI! That fixes everything, or so I've heard. This AI would be simple though - just take a combination of parameters to collapse, and give option to disable. So like AC && SpamMod && (IP that's recorded 10 spam mods per month). There's only so many VPN servers in the world.
But that's a bit of code, and requires tracking mods and IPs. if marty/tachyon/buzztart want to hire someone to do this, like a cheap perl dev, I think the readers can contribute enough to pay for it. And to make it easier, whatever a dev costs, I'll pay half of the total.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by hemocyanin on Monday January 04 2021, @01:12AM (3 children)
It isn't very often that the spam mod gets abused and the person who abuses it gets a substantial timeout from moderation -- in my case it was 30 days. That timeout would limit the amount of abusive spam mods TPTB would have to deal with. The timeout could also escalate -- 30 days first offense, 60 days second, 120 third, etc. The account would quickly accumulate a lifetime moderation ban for abuse which would also keep the burden down.
(Score: 2) by fakefuck39 on Monday January 04 2021, @08:30AM (2 children)
No I get that. But then the guy just VPNs to a different server and creates another account - in fact he can create a bunch of accounts from different servers at the same time.
My main point is it sounds like the timeout thing is not automatic. Can you imagine just 2-3 of these methheads, on like 10 servers each? If that's a manual effort - that's a lot of work for the admins and should probably be replaced by a single page of perl.
(Score: 1) by hemocyanin on Monday January 04 2021, @10:16AM (1 child)
Do people instantly get mod points? I thought there was some minimum karma that must be built up to get mod privileges.
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by fakefuck39 on Monday January 04 2021, @10:36AM
From what I noticed, only when you get a bit of karma. When I had low karma shortly after creating the account, I didn't have mod points. After getting high karma I started getting bugged to moderate (so i opted out of moderation). The ACs modding probably have a normal account they use to build up karma to then mod politically. I can see that when I have a normal on-topic post that gets modded up as +4 informative, then a random single troll mod comes in. That's coming from one of these spammer's real accounts. Not exactly sure what they're trying to do, but it's a waste of time figuring out the logical train of thought of a chihuahua on adderall.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday January 04 2021, @01:23AM (3 children)
Some of the VPN servers are already banned for AC posts and such. I know, because I've logged in through some of them.
(Score: 2) by fakefuck39 on Monday January 04 2021, @08:27AM (2 children)
lol never change runaway.
I'm actually a full supporter of AC spam - it's fun to read, and it's nostalgic a bit from crapdot. It's like pepper on your steak. The issue is, the dude pastes pages and pages of the same thing like 50 times. Like it was funny the first time, come up with new shit.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 04 2021, @09:56AM (1 child)
You and your friends did a lot of that on Slashdot. It was obnoxious then and it's every bit as asinine here and now. I don't actually give a shit about creimer, but when those comments were spammed 10 or 20 times in a single article in reply to numerous on-topic posts, it was far too disruptive. The problem with the spam here isn't just that the trolling is repetitive, but that it's also angry and vile.
I'm not sure I agree on the particulars of this statement, but I agree in principle that AC spam isn't necessarily bad. Much of the AC spam from old school Slashdot wasn't actually from ACs but from troll accounts with karma so low they automatically posted at -1.
For me, the distinction is something that's light-hearted and silly, perhaps dumb, versus something that's malicious and mean-spirited. A lot of the light-hearted AC spam became a part of Slashdot culture. I'm talking about Natalie Portman and hot grits, IN SOVIET RUSSIA, Can you imagine a Beowulf cluster of these?, ALL YOUR ____ ARE BELONG TO US, *BSD is dying, the app appers guy, the cows guy, and so on. Even the IF I EVER MEET YOU, I WILL KICK YOUR ASS GUY was actually pretty damn funny. Even tricking people into clicking goatsex links eventually became a part of the culture of that site to the point that occasionally goatsex links would be modded +5 funny.
Trolls posted these comments frequently enough, once per story, but across many stories, that they because part of the culture of the community. The problem is that trolls doing the same thing here, posting these light-hearted comments in many stories, would quickly bring out the spam mod. There's no opportunity for the light-hearted trolls to be repeated often enough that they become recurring jokes.
If you want the AC spam that you fondly remember -- and I agree with you, by the way -- then the definition of the spam mod needs to change. It needs to be restricted to malicious comments like APK's spam and not to stupid light-hearted trolling. I do give APK a bit of credit for finding a way around the lameness filter to post ASCII goatsex, he just shouldn't have posted it in like 20 articles. Now, if 10 IN SOVIET RUSSIA comments show up in one article, sure, spam mod them. But as long as it's not excessive in a single article, light-hearted trolling that's repeated across different articles should be exempt from the spam mod.
I can get behind what you're suggesting provided the spam mod criteria are changed a bit.
(Score: 2) by fakefuck39 on Monday January 04 2021, @10:17AM
Every post I made on slashdot was original content. The guy literally posted many times that the reason he is on slashdot was to spam the articles and create sales on his amazon page, which he vigorously advertised. People had enough, and we used all methods at our disposal to successfully get his account banned. We removed the spammer. But none of that was by spamming ourselves, or pasting the same crap over and over the comments.
We attacked the spammer, not the readers. What's going on here is the opposite.
Let's say this spammer AC wants to attack me. Flooding the articles with repetitive copypasta does zezo to me, I literally don't care. I read it the first time, laugh, then I have to click collapse when I see it again - like everyone else who reads at -1. This is an annoyance to everyone - albeit a minor one.
the lameness filter sucks though - ASCII goatsex is funny, there's no reason to filter it. It adds humor and flavor to the discussion. It's the repetitive shit that needs to go.
Maybe the real simple solution is just to not allow posts that are completely identical? It's an easy grep filter, and this will at least make the spammer have to spend more time to modify each post? That's a low hanging fruit if I ever saw one.