Foy

Ebeling...

Riding the public interest wave about the attacks in Paris makes making click-bait easier than ever!

Additionally the article can be summarized as: "We don't know how the attacks were co-ordinated... so maybe strong encryption, and by proxy, Snowden, are to blame?"

There are some strange superstitions w.r.t. death in Japanese culture. In Japanese the number 4 sounds sort of like death so it's a number they avoid a lot (it's missing from many elevator options, similar to how 13 is skipped sometimes) and patterns of squares are sometimes avoided to prevent having 4 corners meet (especially with straw mats).

I had never heard of this, though. The class of untouchables who work close to death. Really interesting stuff.

The only real "issue" that article seems to take with the movies was that (A) it used a term that doesn't exist to describe a condition that does have an actual name and (B) it was a cheesy romcom. But I mean, do you really expect any Adam Sandler movie to get to the real grit of living with a terrible disease?

Fighting a somewhat reasonable request with fraud seems right out of the gray zone and solidly in the territory of immorality.

Out of curiosity what are some of the things wrong with it?

>he wakes up every morning believing he is still in Germany in 2005, waiting to visit the dentist. Without a record of new experiences, the passing of time means nothing to him. Today, he only knows that there is a problem because he and his wife have written detailed notes on his smartphone, in a file labelled “First thing – read this”.

Literally 50 First Dates...

Just today I was actually thinking laziness was one of my greatest assets as a developer. Always trying to find a way to make my work do as much of itself as it can, haha.

"I shall probably do little more but be content to admire the strides others made in Science." - Charles Darwin

Understatement of the millenia?

Anecdotal, but I chat with a friend from San Francisco and he was telling me recently that he was feeling down because a funeral was coming up. It was about the 6th or 7th death of someone close to him that he had experienced, about half of them being suicides.

I can't even begin to fathom what that must feel like, I don't know anyone but older family members who have passed away.

High school guidance counselors strongly encourage students into pursuing university.

When I was in high school it didn't seem like there even was a viable option other than Computer Science, which I know now is largely unrelated to most software development. Of course, you could argue I didn't do my due diligence, but it was the guidance counselor's job to guide me and I trusted them implicitly. In retrospect, that in and of itself taught me a valuable lesson about critical thinking.

Everyone I've talked to has said they haven't used a single bit of calculus in a professional capacity since graduating. I may be succumbing to confirmation bias, but I've never heard to the contrary.

Oh man... https://www.google.com/search?q=tilt#q=ling+rush&safe=off

>Boo, scary websites want to know where you are.

Nothing wrong with being alarmed by a site that automatically plays music and wants to know where you live.

If the cashier at Subway or any other stranger with whom you had minor contact one day asked where you lived wouldn't you be more than just a little alarmed?

Don't forget they told him this after they had rejected it twice previously on technical grounds.

I think that this was clearly their issue but they tried to dissuade him with bogus technical reasons first to give him the runaround. After he "fixed" whatever technical issues were there not once, but twice, they finally told him the real reason they wouldn't accept it. I think that's what really frustrates me the most about this story.

Clearly, having your password on the clipboard is a security issue. Storing your password in plain text, however, isn't.

Gotta love half-assed security measures. :)

Kind of funny that the most perfect sphere ever observed in nature was staring us in the face this whole time. :)

Also, how is it that this was only measured just recently? Astronomers suspected it was wider at the equator, like Jupiter, but never bothered to check?

Anyone who argues that because it costs $0.99 it should just be free isn't worth debating with.

On the other hand there are documented cases where charging more like $9.99 instead of $0.99 increase sales because the higher costs increases it's perceived value. People are familiar with the saying: "you get what you pay for."

It actually is about Starbucks, not the coffee or the price.

It's about you knowing that Starbucks is Starbucks no matter which street, city, state or country you find yourself in. Whether you love or hate it, it's at least consistent.

That's why it's not a gamble.

But it's not a gamble because it's the same every time. It's high quality every time. It has the weight of a quality brand behind it. Maybe it's a small gamble the first time you buy it, but after that it's not a gamble. The argument isn't about the price of your app or their first cup of Starbucks coffee, it's about the price of your app or another Starbucks coffee.

People know Starbucks; people know Starbucks coffee. It's a very stable and well known experience to regular customers.

People don't know you; people don't know your software. I don't know if buying your software will actually cause me more inconvenience than convenience. (Buggy, bad UX, hard to uninstall, installs additional crap like browser plugins)

That's why buying an app is a gamble, and buying coffee isn't. That's why you cant make a good argument by comparing the price of your app to the price of a coffee.

EDIT: Actually I guess the $4 drinks are a gamble afterall. My only Starbucks experience is "normal" coffee. Which I guess is more in the $2 - $3 range.

Yay Opera!

Also, if you're really using >= 256 classes in your CSS you may have more systemic problems than just cross-brwoser compatibility.

This is the kind of rage-inducing stuff that makes you want to choke a flight attendant.

I cannot even imagine what it would feel like to be told over the phone that the company lost your child, and the baggage, and that they don't really care... or even think it's a big deal.

It'd be neat... but it would certainly be awkward to have to "empty" the toilet every week or so...

I wonder if it's possible to make it fertilizer but with a minty fresh smell...

Playing devil's advocate here, but in his defense, he DOES usually answer the questions in the first sentence or two but then goes on to support his point of view as a whole in the next paragraph or two.

(Keep in mind I do not support Patent Trolling, or most software patents at all, for that matter.)

From what I can see, Myhrvold views himself as a 21st century Robin Hood. He's stealing from the rich tech industry and giving to... well.. preparing to give to the poor.

In his answer on why he doesn't become more transparent with his patents he answer partly with: "The truth of the matter is that big technology companies use patents as a strategic tool." I think that is the whole answer to the question. For his company, patents are used to strategically used to acquire funds for "God's work".

Of course, this begs the question, is Myhrvold really focused on "the good of the world" or personal gain?

... and people wonder why Canadians are largely happy with health care and don't like the idea of health insurance...

Insurance companies scare me. To think they'd defend their client's killers in court after you've been paying them for years... it's appalling. This, in my opinion, is an order of magnitude worse than patent trolling.

EDIT: I know life, auto, and health insurance are all slightly different things... but come on, they really are all identical except they have different details. The methodology is the same! Pay a constant rate, get paid* a lump sum if something bad happens.

* Haha, as if you'll get paid.

While I wonder about the specific numbers (his "150" is probably more like 20 for me) I have to admit it's certainly not much of a controversial statement to say that the person with >200 friends on Facebook isn't really friends with all of them.

Scary! How dare they try to take such a nice approach to employee retention.

I guarantee you that I have a book I have loaned out more than once.. a couple times, in fact. Amazon only lets you lend it once, for up to a maximum of, what, 2 weeks?

In meatspace I can sell my book to a friend... or give it away.

Why is it that with ebooks some authors feel enititled to a sale for each and every person who wants to read their book? That is never how books worked in the past.

I thought all this information technology would liberate information, not restrict it to such an extent.

You say that a site allowing lenders to be matched to borrows would... what? You can only loan each book once.

But those lendable books could only be lent once, right?

So if you buy a book that's lendable you'd be able to "trade" your lend for someone else's lend. At best you're only getting one free read for every purchase.

That's a far cry better than some people I know who only read books they borrow from friends. Which, in meatspace, you can lend an infinite number of times.

This technology "inventor" made no money.

He merely ran an unprofitable service that helped lenders lend their books in exchange for being lent a book. Also, he got lynched for it.

I almost cannot imagine the amount of stress this must be causing him.

If this is used for anonymity it is completely understandable for potential customers to want to know EXACTLY how anonymous this makes the number.

That's like Sony saying "give us your personal info, CC numbers, etc... don't worry we'll take care of the rest" and they turn around and store it in plaintext or md5 on an insecure database.

Also, if it turns out that this service is somehow unlawful or could get shut down / interrupted by law enforcement then I want to know that before I invest in them as a customer.

TL;DR - It's never wrong to question something; especially something like this. If they can't answer the hard questions now then they don't deserve our trust.