angdis

I was a "transient" in Allentown for 2 years because of work. Allentown has a profound sadness about it that I've seen in other rust-belt cities. Gentrification is very much a positive reaction to the vacuum that was created after years of dis-investment. The city has good bones, housing stock that can be restored to stunning with a little love, and a location and infrastructure that is excellent for business. People are only starting realize this now after moving to the exburbs and finding that they don't like driving 10 - 50 miles for virtually all excursions. Hope that Allentown makes it, it never deserved to be abandoned.

Plenty of modern cities with highly functional urban cores do just fine with public mass transit. DC should be able to do the same.

It is a matter of fixing the right things rather than giving up and handing it over to private industry. Sadly too many interests in the USA are trigger-happy about throttling any/all public transit.

I think the videos serve as an introduction to some basic concepts intended to bring some clarity for further in-depth study. The video is much like the "front matter" to a chapter in a book.

Of course, the _REAL_ learning work starts when the student suffers through countless problems and proofs. This is no replacement for that. One doesn't learn math by passively watching videos or listening to lectures. That's the way it is and that is the way it will always be. This just provides a clear 30,000 foot view of the topic, a little motivation and background and, yes, some eye candy (and that's OK too).

The reality is actually the opposite of what you're thinking. "Beyond reasonable doubt" is taken by MANY jurors to mean that _any_ doubt no matter how remote means "not guilty".

You're right that some things don't come easy and require hard work.

But how many folks fail to make progress, or check themselves out of even starting an endeavor simply because they've convinced themselves it is "too hard"?

Do we always need yet more reminders one must do "hard work" to accomplish something?

Many times just getting starting on a path is enough of a psychological win to increase motivation and later on achieve mastery.

There's nothing particularly magical about "100 hours" and the article indicated that.

It really is just saying that individuals _can_ make significant progress towards competency in a new skill by putting in a MODICUM of time, effort and attention.

The projects in which Brett Victor is involved have serious implications for HCI. Implementing them in a way that makes them impactful requires ubiquity and that NECESSARILY takes hundreds of man-years across many companies/products/individuals.

It would be a waste of his time to do more "implementing" than quick sketches for the purpose of communicating the ideas. His ideas are his "product".

There's a more to a car trip than just going through a highway. Trips have endpoints. If you increase the size of your pipe into the city, you also have to increase the volume of the parking within the city. That means parking garages, lots of them. In addition to more costs for everybody, you're then deteriorating the urban fabric and making drivers within the city miserable in process (whether they recognize it or not).

As far as # of daily metro rides. My point is that if the metro were shutdown, the highways in and around DC would be a nightmare and people would not enjoy travelling in or through it. Getting around in DC, without the metro, would BE INTRACTABLE.

As for developers, while it is not "their job" to plan for infrastructure, it is very disturbing that they can simply buy land for cheap, put down and sell thousands of homes and walk away while forcing the nearby cities to deal with the mess they made. In response, many localities are now pushing "smart growth", we simply can't allow developers to make short-term selfish choices and pass the long-term costs onto everyone else.

It all depends on the individuals and what they're receptive to, regardless of whether you're talking about kids OR adults.

Sure, some kids are going to have a meltdown if you drag them through MOMA. Wait until they're older, or structure the experience with some preparation or get professional help (kid-friendly tours).

I don't think that the great museums should bend-over-backwards to appease cranky children. Many already do a great job providing age-appropriate activities and that's enough. How much more do we need from these museums?

Every once in a while, I hear about FPAA's (field programmable _analog_ arrays), but the concept never seems to take off despite serious efforts, even by Motorola in the 90's.

Isn't the GPAC the same thing?

I suppose the reason these aren't popular is because the use-cases are rather narrow (or at least usually implementable with an ordinary digital approach)?

DC actually did plan for growth when they build the metro. Everyday it transports a staggering number of people which would be intractable for ANY highway system if these same people drove.

What they failed to account for, however, is the growth of exburbs like Ashburn VA and other places even further out like Frederick MD.

These remote places are built by developers who literally put ZERO thought into infrastructure and what will happen to traffic and many other things when thousands of well-paid people move into their McMansions in the middle of nowhere.

They just buy up farmland from farmers who want to retire, sell a fake dream of idyllic rural living, plop down a bunch of cookie-cutter houses, then take the money and do all over again somewhere else. People have been finally getting wise to this anti-pattern (it was known in Maryland since the 90's) and the citylab article is an example.

I really admire that someone is doing this, but I just don't understand where these things would be useful. Other than as a novelty/nostalgia object, why?

What "use-case" does a calculator have these days?

What are they going to this time? Prank-order a hundred pizza's again?

Curious, why do you say bootcamp is "garbage"? It works just fine.

It really isn't about the software. Software isn't what keeps people from using macs. You can boot windows on a MAC with bootcamp and it runs as a very nice PC with no limitations that I am aware of.

The real reason is COST. Macs are more expensive for any given spec. It is that simple.

Says, me, the visual studio user that has an iMac.

It certainly is possible, but there's more to making the operation of a synth "tactile" than adding knobs and sliders. If you're changing the parameters of something making a sound using a DSP, it is _REALLY_ hard to get instantaneous response and no digital artifacts in the sound. People who deign to make digital synths that truly act like modulars have a lot of DSP homework to do to get it right.

"Faraday", come on, can't they have chosen a more original name than yet another dead scientist, Musk used up that one already.

Loved it! Spent many hours on that cartridge. I remember trying to follow the "supply ship" that came out of the base, squirrely MOFO never went anywhere!

Ben Carson is perhaps the best example ever to support the old adage, "Don't quit your day job."

You're right, of course, it DID predate BWP. But it did not inspire a genre. Perhaps because so few people saw Cannibal Holocaust when it first released? It was a film that gained an audience gradually, on video for many years after it came out.

NO!

BWP was a solid innovative film that inspired a whole sub-genre of horror films. It was great, but there have been really outstanding horror films since then.

I am thinking, in particular, of "It Follows". THAT was a revelation of what can be possible in horror.

I buy one big loaf of "pain au levain" (French style sourdough) once a week. As much as no-knead bread has convenience, it just can't measure up in flavor and consistency to something made with a starter, kneaded, risen, and backed to perfection by a pro.

On the other hand most cities have at least some "real" bakeries where you can get a nice loaf of bread with proper crumb and flavor.

Most supermarket bread is virtually inedible to folks that have a taste for good bread. Aside from the insane ingredient list, the sickly softness of it and the lack of any decent crust and crumb makes me wonder what market forces influenced industrial bread makers. How can anyone that has tasted a traditional loaf of freshly baked bread stand for that stuff in the supermarket?

When these stories discuss "processed meat" they always show bacon.

But is bacon really processed? It is just cured pork belly, right?

This is actually a good thing, it gives more opportunity for smaller, up-and-coming businesses to recruit elite students from non-elite schools.

That "car-wrap" thing-- NOT a good look! Where's the gleaming aluminum?

My "rule-of-thumb" indicator: whether or not there are a lot of check-cashing, bail-bond and furniture rental establishments.

Oh what a shocking surprise: a hedge fund guy is pouring money into the GOP.

Well, yes, but I would say that the desire to "play with a new thing" is very much tied to career development.

I can't help but think that much of the intent behind "cargo-culting" is simply people building up their resumes for future career development.

If you want to work in a sexy new technology, but you need to develop experience in that new stuff to be marketable it is totally understandable to try to build up skills by forcing the implementation of over-sized solutions.

In other words, many employers aren't willing to take on folks if they don't have the requisite experience on some new stack and that compels folks to gain that experience anyway they can, including "cargo-culting" stuff that isn't necessary just for the experience gain.