dlytle

I made a half-arsed attempt at replicating this a while back. The stuff I noted for my next attempt:

As your vacuum increases, the hand/wrist will be pulled further into the chamber. You have to have something to hold inside the chamber that is anchored to the chamber, or a container where having the fist jammed up against the back wall is reasonably comfortable. (My original attempt: using juice concentrate cans rather than flowing water through a handle. I wanted to avoid flowing water if at all possible.)

Due to the whole "arm getting pulled inside" thing, the wrist seal is more troublesome than I hoped. My next try is going to use a dry diving suit wrist-seal.

You want as small an interior volume as possible if using a manual air pump. It's much more time consuming than you'd think to hand-pump the air out and achieve the desired vacuum. I wouldn't want to risk using an automatic air pump in this case, myself, so I'm sticking with the hand pump while reducing the interior space of the container.

Let me know if you have success with this; or, heck, even if you don't, because you'll probably have some good advice as a result.

I have a refurb Humanscale Freedom that I got for $350 in fantastic condition. I really like it, but I think I should have gotten a fixed-back chair instead for my primary work chair. It was extremely comfortable for the first year or so, but it's been getting progressively more uncomfortable. Part of this is probably due to an old back injury.

Thanks for the detailed breakout. I hope he posts the original request; it'd be interesting to see what specs prompted this response.

Slightly offtopic, does anyone happen to know of a site where people can post code for feedback? Something like StackOverflow but specifically along the lines of "please help me with my sucky code"?

(edit: artmageddon beat me to the punch below.)

What I found most depressing about this post were the comments. Yes, it's bad code. But just declaring that it's bad code isn't at all productive.

What would be useful is a breakdown of where problems exist, even in brief, and what the problem was; pointing out where it fails in each area. That would be a potential learning/teaching tool. Right now, it's just an easily forgotten "WTF" that more experienced coders can use to feel good about themselves.

I've been wondering if there's a good way to test this on a personal basis using something like compounding interest, only with candy.

For example, keeping a bag of Reese's Pieces, and every consecutive (time period) you go without breaking goal X, you add (# of time periods) pieces of candy to a jar. Then at the end of the day, you cash out your jar.

So, longer periods of self control would result in a larger reward, and a physical/visual representation of your progress so far would help reinforce your motivation to remain on track.

Maybe if using candy, you get to eat half of what you'd put in immediately, and take advantage of the gradually escalating amount of sugar to help reinforce your willpower reserves?

Mostly just brainstorming here. :P

You're absolutely not alone in this experience, Panos.

A pair of my friends work for online colleges; one for a state college with a pretty good reputation, and another for a for-profit school with a decent reputation. Neither are tenured.

Both of them have had serious issues with student cheating. The one at the state college got support from one of her superiors, and was not penalized for fighting plagiarism, but it was still very time consuming. Another one of her superiors (in previous years) did not support her in any way, and she had to cut back on enforcing academic honesty to help protect her job, save for the most blatant cases.

The other one (at the for-profit college) stopped crusading against cheating when she found out that she'd (effectively) be fired if she continued. Pass rates are a sizable portion of what's used to determine which teachers are given which classes. In one class, more than half of her students should have been failed for academic honesty violations by the halfway point of the year. However, if she did that, her pass rates would have been low enough that it was extremely likely that she would not be given any classes next semester. (Not technically fired, but functionally so.)

So, you are not the only person encountering this, and you're not alone in realizing that fighting cheating can be hazardous to your career. It's a damn shame.

I would be very surprised if this sort of thing was not intentional.

Most of the sales I've seen coming through from Groupon and Livingsocial feel like they could be impulse purchase material. Eliminating the second thoughts of a "confirm your purchase" page probably adds a nice amount to their sales, even if it's hard to quantify how much from the outside.

He also withheld information from the investigators. If you blow the whistle, you're expected to give everything up, not just the stuff that doesn't make you look bad. THAT'S why they nailed him to a cross; he tried to double-deal.

I never understood what was interesting about sports or sports journalism until I moved back to Nebraska.

I've been watching Nebrasketball, the mandatory Huskers games in the evenings, and roller derby, all with a group of very sports-aware people and one aspiring sports journalist. His commentary on the football/basketball games converted me from a bored observer to actually enjoying the sports.

I'm impressed by what this site is generating, but I'm not too worried about it displacing actual writers. It's the difference between a local news affiliate press release, and an article in the New Yorker or the Atlantic, or BBC reporting. There's still something that a passionate human can bring to the equation that will be almost impossible to automate.

That said, StatSheet is really damn impressive.

Agreed, but being able to present useful information in a context that makes people more receptive, rather than hostile, is also a handy skill.

It's easy to deliberately overlook rudeness, but it still unconsciously colors a person's responses and thoughts, which could have a negative impact on the message.

My guess is a not insignificant chunk of that 50% is people being willing to stay in an unhappy marriage because the social, legal,and financial consequences of divorce are so destructive.

I don't think there are many people on the internet who haven't written anything "stupid" at one point or another. Especially when involved in commenting on a social news site.

I wonder what percentage of Digg/Reddit/Slashdot/HN readers have made at least one comment that could justify investigation? Keeping in mind that even a vague statement like "I wish someone would kill (x)" has been considered justification for some police departments to investigate the author. Probably a nice big percentage.

The series in question is the Dresden Files by Jim Butcher, read by James Marsters, If you're an audiobook fan, I also recommend looking into GraphicAudio. Unabridged audiobooks with a full voice cast, music, and sound effects.

The Night Angel trilogy by Brent Weeks is good in GraphicAudio, as is Warbreaker by Brandon Sanderson. Warbreaker is stand-alone, so it may be a good starting point.

There are a few rough bits, but there always are; some sections with awkward musical choices, some re-used recognizable sound effects, but they're no more common than errors in standard audiobooks.

(Disclaimer: GraphicAudio books are abridged, but functionally unabridged. If it's raining, they play the sound of rain instead of having the narrator say "it was raining". By definition, that makes them abridged, despite no loss of content.)

I helped my friends pirate the first 10 audiobooks of a series I love, by handing them a flash drive with the MP3s on it, and the condition that if they liked the series they should buy the new ones as they come out.

Now 6 of my friends (who never would have been hooked on the series otherwise) own legal versions of the two most recent novels starring our favorite wizard-detective.

Those sales would not have been made if they hadn't gotten a taste of the series beforehand. Sure, this situation isn't the rule, and they pirated 5x the books they've purchased... but 2 sales each is better than 0, and with 8-10 more books coming in the series, the author/publisher have come out far ahead.

It is possible to print the paper at home, if you have a color laser printer. (600+ dpi required, but I haven't seen any lately that aren't at least 600.)

Newegg has printers that fit the bill starting at $150-ish. No special toner required, although Anoto does make some sort of custom ink you can buy for the purpose.

So it is possible to avoid buying their paper, just possibly annoying.

It feels like I'm watching someone try to act out the part of a character in a spy novel. Big encrypted files called Insurance, twittering about being followed by government agents, sensationalizing the things they post...

I think they have good reasons for what they're doing (or at least good intentions), and I do like the concept behind WikiLeaks.

I just think they're getting a bit caught up in the whole drama/mystique, and their credibility and ethical standing is suffering as a result, which could be dangerous for the "open leak repository" movement.

I was diagnosed ADHD before it became a fad, and I've gone through a number of different medications for the disorder. Every one affected my ADHD in distinctly different ways. and Ritalin in particular did exactly what the comic describes. (Productivity at the expense of creativity.)

The three that had any sort of effect were Ritalin, Strattera, and Adderall.

* Ritalin was robot mode. I'd get work done, but only in areas that were analytical, not creative. Off the Ritalin, my problem with creative writing was being easily distracted and procrastination, but my papers were (reported as being) entertaining with a sense of "flow". On the Ritalin, I was so analytical that my teachers started accusing me of plagarism, because it looked like I was writing for an encyclopedia.

* Strattera: Strattera had very little effect on my concentration or procrastination. Where it had a dramatic effect was my impulse control; it inserted a short buffer of introspection between thought/desire and action that had sometimes been missing. Off the Strattera, I'd buy a box of cookies I'd never tried before, because they looked interesting; no second thoughts would emerge at all. On the Strattera, I would think that I didn't need the calories, they were just a different arrangement of chocolate and biscuit, and a waste of money in any case. Didn't help with my schoolwork, but it did have a very positive effect. (Especially on my diet and my entertainment budget.)

* Adderall: Adderall is what I use now. It gives me extremely intense focus on whatever I am doing, without reducing my enthusiasm for the task or my level of creativity. The primary downside is that it allows that focus on anything I'm doing when it kicks in. If I'm doing the dishes when it starts to work, I'll do all the dishes, then clean the kitchen, reorganize the cupboards, clean the fridge, and only then start working. My tactic is to take the pill with my coffee, set a timer for 1 hour and play some casual games, then start on a problem for my job. When it kicks in, I'll be set. Adderall is notably different in SR and XR varieties as well; SR is a short intense spike that lasts 2-4 hours, whereas XR works after an hour and a half and keeps rolling for 5-9 hours, depending on food/caffeine intake.

Part of the problem is that the movie industry has proven time and time again that they can't be trusted in this area. You'd have to be an incredible optimist or on the industry's dime to really believe their claims.

Steam is an example of a service that has done this exact thing incredibly well, and it would absolutely not have worked without Valve building up a reputation for integrity and professionalism.

If Valve came out with UltraViolet, I'd be chomping at the bit for it because I trust them to honor their agreements and plan accordingly to do so into the distant future.

I wouldn't trust the movie industry at all, let alone enough to sign onto a service like this. They may never be able to regain the potential for consumer trust, and it's their own damn fault.

Absolutely agreed. I want Steam for movies and music. I'd actually start spending money DVDs and TV series if a service like Steam existed. (Well, more money than my current "buy Supernatural on DVD and nothing else" policy, anyway.)

This case isn't about a traffic provocateur; it's about a traffic provocateur being charged with wiretapping laws for taping his police encounter.

To be more exact, the problem is that instead of facing a speeding ticket or (at most) a misdemeanor traffic violation, he's going to have to fight a charge that could carry 16 years of imprisonment.

Maybe I'm just cynical, but it seems like working behind the scenes with the vendor doesn't seem to bear fruit very often. It's pretty frequent to read about companies that have ignored vulnerabilities until they're fully disclosed. Plus, AT&T doesn't exactly have a recent track record for keeping their network or services in good order.

Of course, the vulnerabilities that are fixed by working directly with vendors never end up the topic of news articles, so I'm sure it's not as cut and dry as an outside perspective would indicate.

If his claims are accurate, and only minimally influenced by hyperbole, it appears he's at the center of a massive miscarriage of justice.

I'd be interested to see an analysis by someone who knows more about the law than I do.

There's been a really strong and justified precedent set for using regulation for this; drunk driving. In fact, regulation for impaired elderly drivers may be even more justified than it is for drunk driving. (I'm not defending drunk drivers, here, just to get that out of the way. Driving while drunk is an incredibly stupid decision.)

Drunk drivers are only impaired some of the time, whereas many elderly drivers are impaired all the time. Because of this, it's possible to test, in advance, whether or not an elderly driver is safe behind the wheel. You can't give a drunk a sobriety test every 12 months to certify them safe to drive; you could do that for elderly drivers.

Enforcing testing for elderly drivers also has the advantage of being a largely preventative measure, rather than a punitive one. The demographic it targets is also more likely to obey or respect that law, generally has more options for free or cheap transit, and is likely to be more deterred by the prospect of a sentence.

The downside, of course, is that being old is not a preventable condition; ompaired elderly drivers don't go out to the Frothing Otter on weeknights for bottled arthritis. Drunk driving can be easily demonized because the drunk driver made a choice to be impaired. The elderly can't be demonized for being too old or crippled, so it would be hard to push anything through. They're also extremely sympathetic defendants.

Elderly driving certification is certainly bad PR. But it's as justified as the original drunk driving laws. (Original meaning before they evolved into the nightmare they are today.)

It depends on how Apple provides those ads. If they handle the ad selection on their end, and don't provide any information back to the advertiser, it's functionally anonymous.

Saying "here's this guy's address, provide an ad for him" is very different from "send me ads for this area, and I'll show them to people who are near there".

It's probably on the basis of that one asshole, and the experiences of other people he knows.

I personally know several people who have been taken advantage of by their professors, so I'm inclined to believe him.

Also, "taken advantage of" is exactly the right term in my friends' cases. Both are classic Aspergers cases (actual Aspergers, not just an excuse for bad behavior), and their professors seem to be taking advantage of the trouble they have mounting an effective resistance.

A friend of mine is in the same situation you describe. She teaches for a fairly well known for-profit online school, and is in a position where she has to ignore plagiarism or lose her job.

A huge percentage of her students turn in plagiarized papers; so many that, if she were to follow the school's guidelines on them all, would result in 1/2 to 3/4 of her students failing. The teacher's pass/fail percentage is one of the criteria used to determine whether a teacher gets any more classes, and does not take into account students failed for plagiarism.

So, if she were to fail those students, she would not get any more classes to teach, thus she'd be out of a job. She's forced to keep track of who she's failed what paper for, to spread the bad grades across as many of the plagiarizers as possible, to cut down on the number that outright fail (and thus impact her).

She has gotten absolutely no support from her superiors about this issue. However, another teacher I know at the same school has a slightly milder version of the same problem, but her superiors are more supportive of her, meaning she's not always worried about her position.

It's pretty fucked up, and kind of depressing.

Unfortunately, most college students have been misled for years about their degrees. I know 3 people with degrees in drama and theater who were told by every professor, advisor, and student loan officer that what mattered was having any 4 year degree, regardless of what it was in.

I think that's a relic from the time when just having a degree did matter, but those days are over, and people are just starting to realize it. That being said, there's still a big problem with the ridiculous amount you have to pay for a degree these days.

Part of that has to do with the enormous fixed costs of running a college. For example; every walking path at a Maryland college I attended must be kept clear of snow and ice at all times. Including in the middle of a blizzard. This results in a friend of mine (and his whole department) working 16 hours a day during all snowstorms to keep the paths clear. During a blizzard, he makes hazard pay the first 8, then overtime hazard pay the second eight, and sleeps on campus. He paid his mortgage this year with just snow crew money.

So clearly cutting costs and unnecessary "services" would help. Cutting executive salaries would help too. But until student loans can be discharged in bankruptcy (thus forcing lenders and schools to actually cut tuition to match the value of a degree) nothing is likely to force schools to make the hard decisions.

From what I read, the plant is practically a self-contained city; most of the workers actually live at the plant.

Obviously that's something that's really hard to adjust for, living at your place of work, but the best start would be to identify if all the people who committed suicide at the plant, also lived at the plant

(I may be grossly incorrect here; I'm about to doze off, and my memory sucks most of the time anyway. If I'm wrong, my apologies.)

"These bastards need to be killed"? Seriously?

Those bastards need to be prosecuted under whatever laws exist to punish this behavior. Killed is pretty damn extreme, regardless of the events in that video.

Those kinds of sentiments get you lumped into the "psycho" category that contains people who talk about killing abortion doctors. That's not a category any movement should want to be part of.

It's only negatively impacting the artist if they didn't get a cut of his original purchase.

In this scenario, the only person who has ended up without something they initially had is the consumer. At worst the artist lost a potential future sale, which very likely wouldn't have been made due to the consumer having paid for the content previously. The consumer who paid for the ability to listen to their music, had it taken away, and pirates it as a result, is simply regaining access to content they had been deprived of.

Now, if the artist got an insufficient or unfair cut from the original Lala purchase, that's between the artist and their publisher. Also not something the consumer is responsible for.