Hacker News Reader

FrameworkFredon Apple has threatened to remove Amphetamine from the App Store

I don't have a dog in the fight since I'm no longer a Mac user and, when I was, I didn't use the app.

But, when I read the name, it didn't register as offensive to me. Amphetamines are a class of drugs and there are both legal and illegal ones...it doesn't immediately equate in my mind to crystal meth. But it does immediately equate to "keeps you awake", which seems appropriate.

It also seems a bit unfair after 6 years and 500k downloads. Had Apple made an issue of it originally, the author might have built all the goodwill and ratings with some other, more acceptable name.

The internet is a pretty big place to have to launch a product. Picking a name that suggests a purpose seems like a big win to me and coming up with a string of words that won't offend someone is a pretty big challenge these days.

FrameworkFredon Are the brain’s electromagnetic fields the seat of consciousness?

^This...exactly.

This seems all kinds of testable. Construct apparatus to significantly interfere with the fields, turn it one, then look for changes...if it's really something fundamental to consciousness, that should be discernible one way or another.

FrameworkFredon The Hart Island Project

I like the idea of an annotated life :)

FrameworkFredon What Does Space Smell Like? (2011)

lol, you beat me to it :)

FrameworkFredon What Does Space Smell Like? (2011)

Phish! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ieddjSFFuCU

FrameworkFredon Fork Bomb

I did this exact thing with Perl, 1993...I'd just switched majors from English to CS. Very much expected an invitation to switch back.

FrameworkFredon Not long ago, the center of the Milky Way exploded

WOWWW...that's super cool. If you could find multiple reflections of the same source [edit: after a second look, that's actually what they did which is even more amazing], you could start piecing together a sequence.

But, darn it, now we're going to have to map the cosmic background light pollution. :)

FrameworkFredon Not long ago, the center of the Milky Way exploded

Given that we're able to aim telescopes at things that are billions of light years away, I wonder how close we are to being able to see the reflection of such a thing when it actually happens on some celestial body 3.5 million light years away.

FrameworkFredon Microsoft intercepting Firefox, Chrome installation on Windows 10 Insider build

People still run windows?

FrameworkFredon A College Student Who Decoded the Data Hidden in Inca Knots

Disagree.

To me, it looks like a data structure. It would be really cool to find evidence of them using it to calculate taxes or maybe social status, level of political influence, property rights, etc.

...or to figure out whether or knot the interpreter would halt ;)