beeworker

For now. RIP.

It's a tempting thing, given the sun will eventually burn out.

I don't use the Surface Pro 3, but my friend does. He used it as his work "laptop" for the duration of a gig at one company. The dock attachment is a good addition if you want it for that purpose, but its tablet form factor makes it work better than any laptop I've seen for being productive off the office desk, like sitting in front of the fireplace and writing a bunch of text. His use has convinced me that if I ever need to get a new personal laptop (my company provides me with the only one I use) I would get the Pro 3.

Ah, but how would you easily access the number 6 out of the nested list '((((5 4 3 2 1) 6) 7) 8 9) without one of the cute compositions of "car" and "cdr"? In this case, "cadaar". (Rhetorical question. "car" and "cdr" are neat for their cute composition, but I would never inflict that on someone first learning the language.)

> There are dynamical reasons to argue for the fact that a planet has to have cleared it's orbit

Maybe so, but as the wiki article points out in its criticism section, this excludes Earth, Mars, Jupiter, and Neptune from being planets.

I don't think it's so much folly as much as a waste of everyone's time. "Planet" isn't a natural thing like the speed of light, if astrophysicists want to be more specific about which orbiting bodies they're talking about, which "dynamical processes" they're talking about, they should come up with a new term instead of dragging literally everyone (including the children!) into an argument over definitions. It's like a scientist insisting that "sound" can only refer to this vague thing a brain experiences, and it can't refer to generic vibrations in the air, but some people are still on the fence about whether it can refer to vibrations in water.

I also have the same reaction, but not so much for the irrationality of being excited. Generally it feels good to win, and it feels good to watch someone you like win, regardless of why you like them. What I really really dislike about the affair is group signaling. (Which is a signal of my belonging to the small group of people who detest group-signaling, but nevertheless...) Enjoy watching the game all you want, even as a crowd, but the moment the "we" comes out I have that reaction. I see so many society-wide problems stemming from mere classification of people into groups, and the so-natural next step of individuals of those groups making the group part of their identity. One of the creepiest social experiments I know about is the Robber's Cave experiment: http://lesswrong.com/lw/lt/the_robbers_cave_experiment/

Yes, sometimes the problem is that a cell refuses to die. SENS has come up with a list of 7 general problems (it's increasingly unlikely to be any more) that collectively form the problem of "aging" and need to collectively be addressed to cure aging. Death-resistant cells is just one of the 7. http://sens.org/research/introduction-to-sens-research

Huge may be an overstatement... http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/v...

Just about everything is better than Go. Nim, Rust, OCaml, Haskell... Did you read the submission? And for further enlightenment, the link to the previous post on the blog about what makes Nim special? Here's a link to a rant comparing Go and Rust, which includes some links of its own highlighting further issues with Go: http://www.quora.com/How-do-Go-and-Rust-languages-compare

For the sake of argument let's assume the only person you hurt by watching porn is yourself, and let's not worry yet about the degree of harm or the potential mitigation from "responsible" usage. (This applies to various drugs, too.) Why would a government that cares about its citizens not step in when there are simple counter-measures with significant gains that stop the majority from doing self-inflicted damage? Even if that majority can come up with rationalizations for the damage? (Like self-flagellation to get closer to God, or brain-cell killing substances "to take the edge off".) I'm not advocating for draconian measures to try and prevent 100% of the people from doing X, and those are impossible anyway when X is readily produced (like alcohol) but there's a middle ground between that and doing nothing while your population withers.

Antarctica is a herring. (And similar analogies like building an underwater city.) It's inhospitable, but land usage rights are tied up among the international community (not for bad reasons) so you can't just take a ship of pilgrims and supplies there and start building and hunting penguins as you please. And even if you could, you'd still have to worry about outsiders. Mars is an entirely unowned dead planet and the first-mover advantages will be huge. If you can get things there, tools and people, no one's going to stop you from doing what you want.

If these numbers are believed, less than the Iraq War: http://www.quora.com/How-much-money-did-World-War-II-cost

(Also efficient wars cost less time, and that one was even against a much more formidable enemy.)

Ah, but most of the US debt is denominated in US currency... It's a convenient loophole to use if it ever becomes a more serious problem.

sago hits the nail on the head to answer the "why". When the People have any sort of influence at all, everything becomes politicized, and those who don't want the system to crumble insist that all voters be educated in an ever-increasing set of things in order to vote sanely about them. To question the need to learn a particular thing that's already been politicized like evolution is to question democracy itself.

Or even just CS bachelors.

Worst case scenario: you die, or you die after lots of torture. Why not look at the most probable case, which is nothing happens? There's a quote from Richard Stallman that applies here: "They seem to have learned the habit of cowering before authority even when not actually threatened. How very nice for authority. I decided not to learn this particular lesson."

Personally, I fear writing certain things with a username that's easily associated to my real name by the public at large, not the government with their clever tools. That's because I know the real and not-so-improbable consequences of doing so[0]: losing my job and getting blacklisted from the entire industry I've spent most my life trying to improve in and contribute to. It can be economic death. The threat of the mob is much realer to me than the threat of the government.

[0] https://handleshaus.wordpress.com/2013/12/26/bullied-and-bad...

What's your lifeboat for our species?

I rarely get that experience of being tiny -- just as the balancing look at the fundamental particles rarely gives me the experience of being gigantic. When I look, I see a great hand reaching into the stars, humanity's hand, humanity's future destiny. Maybe I'll be lucky enough to be there too.

But hey, like, that's just my opinion, man. De gustibus non est disputandum.

It would also be good if users could install the app but without approving the full set of permissions. Developers would have to catch an exception, but it's worth it. (Supposedly with one of the recent Android releases this feature was planned and made it to some users but Google quickly reverted.)

So? They could be arguably much worse. It doesn't matter. You only need to be good enough to notice asymmetries (such as your (b), or certain mathematical asymmetries as another example) and set them up in your favor. There are plenty in existence for both sides. When the asymmetries are powerful enough, it doesn't matter how well-equipped or intellectually superior your opponent is.

I believe you mean Putin removed Syria's declared chemical weapon stock pile (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destruction_of_Syria%27s_chemic...) -- without Russia the US could have officially gone to war with Syria. The continued meddling Obama's supported in the middle east, and the utter failure in taking ISIS seriously, should be enough to strip him of any peace price.

When you don't include short-term discouraged workers, it's easier to get better headline numbers even if the overall trend is about the same. Adding an estimate for long-term discouraged workers, it's not quite as clear that unemployment is reducing: http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/unemployment-chart...

If you read my comment carefully you'll see I don't advocate this strategy, I'm just exploring it. Extermination can be an attractive strategy, it just doesn't work very well against endless foes. The part you quote is sufficient for casting doubt on its efficacy -- that I didn't make the slam dunk of pointing out who's left seems irrelevant. Thanks for reminding me of that additional detail, though.

Getting enforcers to quit or be fired is the general idea of focusing in on them -- if there are no enforcers then nothing is enforced regardless what the policy makers say. It's another solution to solving the problem of bad policy besides the one of changing the policy. One could argue its results. The strategy seems to make a lot of TSA employees feel bad, so the turnover there is quite high, but enough people need any job just to make ends meet that the overall effect to their workforce isn't very much. But this just suggests an alteration: focus on individuals of the loathed organizations, which has had success in the form of social justice warriors being quite successful at getting individuals, even "powerful", higher-up-the-ladder individuals, fired for things they've said or done.