evantish

> which is in fine print and not concise.

Not to excuse poor web design practices, but this is what CTRL+ or ⌘+ is for in most modern browsers.

Osage orange produces wood that is the 2nd hardest in America, behind the live oak. It's exceptionally resistant to decay and insect attack. I've seen osage fence posts that are at least 70 years old and are none the worse for wear. If we could breed a variety that grew straight, it'd be a great source of dense decay resistant timber. Interestingly, the common mulberry is one of its closest relatives, and its wood has similar properties (but usually smaller and not quite as hard / dense). It's too bad there isn't more research being done around osage orange and its potential commercial value. Perhaps genetic modification will help.

How naive we were to think that Assange/Wikileaks kept sources strictly private. /s

If you're looking for some insights into why it's like that, you should make some time to read American Nations [0]. It connects a lot of dots. Probably the best book I read/listened to last year.

[0] www.amazon.com/American-Nations-History-Regional-Cultures/dp/0143122029

"I no longer live there..."

Not saying it isn't a complex problem, but you're not exactly helping to enrich the area and stem the likely brain drain. And, I am not judging you or others like you. It's completely rational to avoid suffering and seek out an environment where you can thrive.

Diffusing positive cultural influencers instead of hoarding them in cities or places like SV would probably help. But, I really doubt that's a practical solution. It may just be that we need to build out from the bright spots rather than spread ourselves too thin with a sweeping social experiment. We may be stuck with deserts of backwardness for a while.

"State choice" and urban migration strikes me as similar (albeit with a slower generational period) to school choice. Some areas will attract more "good" students and teachers while others will slouch and drag behind in a fractal failure. How far are we obligated to go? Similar questions came up in the wake of Katrina. Personally, I think replacing vicious cycles with virtuous ones will almost always be a good investment.

> Why use regex? It's much simpler to write a URL validator by hand...

I actually have a use-case. I am firming up a feature right now that detects when a user types a url into a text field and replaces it on the fly with a footnote-style reference number (much like your comment above). This is done to (1) minimize input string length, (2) draw the benefits of a consistent interface, and (3) avoid screwing around with the fragility of url shortening nonsense.

I may regret this, but here's a link to my dev environment for this feature (please be gentle), to see it in action:

https://cloudcity.tenfourgood.com/cloudcity

...just start typing in the big text box and add in some urls.

It uses a fairly ugly-looking regular expression[0].

If you take out the unicode mumbojumbo, it's not really THAT tricky of a pattern. It does fail on IP addresses and it may be a little over-aggressive on matching, but, I wanted it to catch things like "abc.com" and "//xyz.com".

Edit: Formatting and clarity. Removed the explicit regular expression because it predictably got garbled.

[0] http://regexr.com/38vsq not exactly the same one I'm currently using, but it's pretty close. See source for most up-to-date version.

This is a symptom of psychopathy. A double edged sword in terms of societal value. While I find the argument in favor of psychological diversity compelling, I can't can't help but be revolted by psychopaths.

Check out: http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0374291357

Thanks for the info. Do you know of a thread that contains this Google-lead debate? Or, are we talking about poking around the Chromium Github commits and reading between the lines?

It sounds like, with the shadow DOM, a lot of the discussion is about performance. I'd be curious how an element like a checkbox could have that much impact on performance even on mobile.

It's not a specific "how do I..." question. I have a lot of front-end experience and have always wondered why inputs present so many styling challenges. I'm aware there are some properties you can control, but, they're inconsistent, limited, and apparently arbitrary. For instance, try indenting the text of a select box option. That seems like it should be easy with CSS, but it's not. You have to manually (pre/ap)pend characters or go with a JS replacement approach. There are a lot of those little gotchas, and I'm curious if there are general reasons why that exist in a layer below what I'm used to working with.

typeof fusion !== typeof fission

"it would imply that we live in a deterministic universe..."

You say this as though it's impossible. You may not believe we live in a deterministic universe, but, that's just, like, your opinion, man. The rational stance (I think) is to: (1) admit you don't know, (2) acknowledge the possibility of a deterministic universe, (3) for whatever chance the universe is deterministic, delude yourself into believing that it's not, because the illusion of free will is probably good for your mental health.

I think you're doing #3 really well, but skipped over #1 and #2.

I've read almost every popular book on the subject of (pscho/socio)pathy. I think "Wisdom of Psychopaths" [1] would be one that you might enjoy.

> ...are there millions of Ted Bundys out there who never actually killed anyone and even lead productive lives?

I think the answer to this is probably yes-ish. The thing about people like Ted Bundy is that he wasn't JUST a psychopath. He was also sadistic, and probably some other characteristics [2]. The reason I say "yes" though is that there are certainly a lot of psychopaths (however you want to define the parameters of the definition) out there leading productive and "normal" lives without killing anyone.

Now, if I may indulge my own pet ideas...

Psychopaths have certainly been with us forever. Having no empathy, conscience or remorse and also being sexually promiscuous makes for a fairly effective survival and reproductive strategy outside of the modern context (see the Ghengis Khan effect [3]). On the flip side, they also probably killed each other off pretty regularly too (which would have had some possible cyclical effects). This leads one to ponder what role the psychopath might play in modernity. And it doesn't take too long to get some unsurprising / interesting results [4][5]. I'd say that one of the features of capitalism is that it can effectively (but not perfectly) convert volatile/psychopathic personalities into value for society. Where a psychopath might have been an Attila the Hun in historical past, he might be Steve Jobs today. Of course, as someone else pointed out, he might also be Dick Cheney too. Thankfully, nations have adopted political and governing structures designed to mitigate the damage one psychopathic person can do. When I see things like extreme inequality in America I wonder what role psychopaths are playing and if perhaps we're entering a phase where we may have to institute some enduring controls on the more emergent(?) psychopathic tendencies in our economic systems (as presaged by "The Corporation"?[6]). Anyway, don't want to beat a dead horse. Suffice to say, I find it amusing (and admittedly dangerous) to view history and current events through a lens of who-are-the-likely-psychopaths. Thought I'd share.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/The-Wisdom-Psychopaths-Killers-Success...

[2] There are groups of traits that, when combined, don't form Captain Planet. Instead they're associated with bad mojo. See the Dark Triad (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_triad) and the MacDonald Triad (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macdonald_triad).

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descent_from_Genghis_Khan#DNA_e...

[4] http://www.spring.org.uk/2013/07/which-professions-have-the-...

[5] http://www.fbi.gov/stats-services/publications/law-enforceme...

[6] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xHrhqtY2khc

I don't understand where the Coanda effect is coming into play here. From the first cutaway drawing (http://goo.gl/QKOJy), it appears that the outer disk rotates independently of the main hub--possibly powered by the central turbines forcing air outward to the wing? It also shows the air in-take port(s) where you would expect outward thrusting air. And, it seems, like the Coanda effect relies on a more spherical shape, as opposed to the very flat sketch shown. How would that design produce the Coanda effect?

I am basing my questions on what I could glean from Wikipedia and a couple Youtube videos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPUAq3QObp4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqxJe-RMUsI