rustynails

Also, with an increase in women in tertiary education, you have greater chance of like-minded couples meeting and having children.

I have a few random thoughts as a parent of an autistic child. I recognise they are anecdotal.

The head doctor of an Autism centre told me there was a strong correlation between autism and genetics. I mentioned my wife (and her father) were almost certainly autistic but never diagnosed. This was confirmed as very common: one side or both usually have a history.

My wife and I met at University, doing the same degree. She was had a very logical and analytical mind, which is what attracted me to her.

We have an autistic child with a very strong aptitude for language conventions and solid mathematical reasoning (although the real strength is in language which is very common in Aspergers - a now defunct classification that I believe added value in understanding and finding like-minded children who were compatible socially).

My wife and I do not look alike, nor are we from a common ethnic background, unless you consider different parts of Western Europe to be sufficiently common genetics.

Anecdotally: I have spoken with quite a few Aspergers mums and dads. Most dads are in engineering or mathematics based jobs. Most of the mums I can recall are logical and have good analytical skills (employment status varies for mums). When I've met parents of Autistic children that were not Aspergers, I did not find a consistency of logical thinking. However, this could be my own selection bias. I've tried not to have bias, but I can't discount it.

Every person is on the spectrum. There are significant variations in the group defined as Autistic. It would be interesting to know if this group in the statistics were higher functioning (HFA) and to compare the results from HFA vs non-HFA.

What I found interesting is that teachers assumed my child had learning difficulties until we booked a formal assessment (classification: gifted or near gifted). My father in law was overlooked in a similar way and paid the penalty (at least, career wise).

I didn't listen to the audio blog, but I read the article.

My family has dropped a few devices in water over the years. We managed to recover all tablets and phones. One of these devices is still running five years after being dropped by my youngest in a toilet for several minutes.

If the water was salty or dirty, I washed the device out with with clean water (eg. Under a tap). Using filtered water may cause problems as the more pure water is, the better it is as a solvent. I know the article suggests rubbing alcohol (which should be better, but I didn't have it on hand and water has worked for me, so I've stuck with it).

I let the water drain out of the device (maybe 30 minutes or so). I then put the device on the dashboard of the car for 1-2 days while parked in the sun. This removes the residual liquid quickly but not too quickly, but, it's bad for the battery. Remove the battery if possible.

I never try to turn the device on while its wet. Just wait the few days, then test it.

I make no guarantees this will work. I was offered this advice by a friend who repairs electronics for a living.

I may be stating the obvious, but good HMI design is not a good example of empathy. HMI design deals with consistency, clarity efficiency and aesthetics. I do not associate these with empathy, which I normally associate with emotions and welfare of others.

This was a good read. I enjoyed the different take on the children of WWII. I also noted the parallels with the stolen generation of Aboriginals in Australia that was mentioned in the article. The stolen generation had good and bad points.

While it's not a short article, it doesn't do the topic the justice it deserves.

There are many overlapping concepts with competing priorities: ethics, morality, benevolence, empathy, political correctness. Some of these (to my mind) are less desirable. For example, political correctness rejects one set of prejudices and replaced them with another set of prejudices. Alternatively, benevolence talks about the welfare of all and is far more logical and meaningful to me. I've never agreed that people deserve different treatment based on gender or skin colour (which is the heart of political correctness to do so, eg. 50% of women MUST be in IT).

The article takes several swipes at Peter Singer without explaining his views adequately. I feel that Singer believes in prioritising where best to help. You do that by applying a level of logic to empathy. While this doesn't work for some, it provides a basis for collectively prioritising effort and attention for the broader community.

There is a lot of confusion around empathy. I suspect the hateful and intolerant campaign against Matt Taylor for his shirt was driven by people with good intentions who believe themselves to be empathetic. Yet, their behaviour lacked empathy and is more aptly described as intolerance and bullying. I lead this back to Singer's point of view about applying logic and reason with empathy. The author of the article talks about the need for both and appears to discount Singer as having no empathy, just reason.

Ultimately, any empathy that is applied equally (eg. Across genders, skin colours, sexual orientations, etc ) is a good thing. The reasoning is also helpful as it avoids morality judgements and allows us to prioritise our efforts.

If a family is struggling financially, a sugar tax could easily push them over the edge. This strikes me as an increase in taxes for the poor as the impact relative to their income (as a %) would be significantly higher. So, the financial strain and stress would likely offset any benefit from reduced sugar for the poor. There were good posts about people on the poverty line on HN yesterday as a case in point.

That was my impression. It seemed to be a scientific critique (without the value add), but by the end it was clearly a promotion for Randall's book. I'm still scratching my head why it made front page.

I feel I've missed something in this article.

"Science, after all, isn’t merely about advancing information — it’s about advancing understanding. Its task is to disentangle the opinions and the claims from the facts in the service of truth. But beyond the “what” of truth, successful science writing tells a complete story of the “how” — the methodical marvel building up to the “why” — and Randall does just that."

I saw a lot of speculation and little substance. I couldn't even appreciate why dark matter had such a profound impact on the theory of the meteorite that hit the Earth.

Can someone please elaborate why this book is worthy of making the front page? I'm sure there was something between the lines I missed.

It is unfair to say that a meritocracy believes the poor "deserve" to be without. I'm not sure what's started this campaign against merit (eg. Qualifications, years of experience, etc) - was it political correctness?

Society can either pull back those that achieve (to level the playing field) or there will be winners and losers. However, there are still welfare programs and taxation to offset those at the lower end (at least in some parts of the world).

However, the current system is imbalanced with the rich getting richer. As the rich get richer, Everyone else gets poorer. Taxation was "meant" to level that playing field, but tax havens and vested interest by politicians to give tax breaks to the wealthy have allowed the horse to bolt.

That's a sad inditement on his attitude. It sounds like a self-fulfilling prophecy. I would hope most women would not tolerate such an attitude, nor would most men seek it.

No self doubt (despite their being controversy and some that support alpha male classifications) can be interpreted a number of ways.

http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/going-ape/galleries/al...

National Geographic have a different view to your extremely confident statement. There are those that support and reject your assertion. I'm not so quick to dismiss.

I am being nagged continually about IOS updates. It's even suggesting that it can do it overnight. It's not forced, but it's getting pushy.

>Anybody who wants more control won't be running Windows 10 or probably running an alternative OS.

Please don't confuse more control with privacy.

My last foray into Ubuntu and Mint (for more control) was a miserable failure on several levels, so I went back to Microsoft Windows.

There are many people that would like an alternative, but Mac OS and Linux aren't suitable (walled garden and stability issues). Having to hack around security concerns is still my preferred alternative at this time.

Jdownloader automatically extracts archives, no fancy scripts needed.

From my observation, most downloads are rar format (95% at a guess), but it doesn't really matter if it's rar or 7z as the differences in resource usage are negligible.

The good news is that most archives support free extraction of both formats.

Cafes are a great place to socialise. I took up coffee drinking a few years ago to be a part of this ecosystem. It took me 2 years of 5 coffees a week (close to 1 a day) to get used to caffeine. I experienced increased heart rate, sweating, delayed sleep (even 8 hours after a coffee). These days, I still need to drink coffee at least 6h before sleep, but I don't find myself getting wound up after 1 cup anymore. Two cups is a different matter.

I find value in the popularity of a comment because it gives me some insight to how a community thinks, collectively.

I've observed a number of times that the most popular web sites and the most popular news sites (as ranked by web traffic) are the most controversial (eg. sexist) and least informative. Hence, trusting the average person is like trusting populist politics.. The Kardadhians rule. Aka race to the bottom, aka McDonalds journalism.

I do not use social networking like Twitter, Facebook, linked in, etc. however, of all of these systems, I prefer Twitter because it's the least invasive. If I want to hear what a particular person has to say, I opt in. I find that an appealing concept. It's almost the antithesis of Facebook.

The author was challenging the technical competency of the author using Ars as a comparison. While Ars is involved in a journalistic race race to the bottom (someone used a drone/need a ghostbusters movie with 4 women in it/etc), their technical articles are very good. I think it's a weak comparison to criticise 1 article and dismiss all others.

While I question the effectiveness of current practices, a number of people identified the ringleader but it was ignored.

I suspect he was identified because there was a person on the ground, talking and interacting with real people. Anyone that thinks this war will be won in an armchair using a PC or by dropping bombs is deluding themselves.

I found this to be a very interesting article on ISIS with insights to their communications,

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/11/-sp-isis-the-in...

When people left Bucca, they had written each other's names & numbers on the elastic of their underwear.

They also responded to Anonymous' threat toward ISIS by suggesting techniques to secure Comms and what to avoid.

http://www.businessinsider.com.au/isis-anonymous-statement-2...

I would suggest that this cell did not use protection but I am confident the larger ISIS network is not so transparent. My suspicions would be that most Comms is via word of mouth.

Identifying 1 candidate is a shaky argument. Even if the majority of popular candidates had an anti-Mexican (immigration) stance, you could not say for certain why they were popular without more analysis.

It's quite feasible that other criteria (taxes, job creation, etc) contribute more to a candidate's popularity.

I learnt French, German and Italian in school. Those languages may have complexities (eg. In German, Gender for a table is male, a fly is female). However, if you heard a word, you could spell it and vice versa.

English has many inconsistencies: Spelling vs pronunciation, completely different words for tenses (eg. Go/went), inconsistent pluralisation rules (look up fish vs fishes as one example), "me and" vs "and I" rules, etc.

I've heard many people say that English is one of the hardest European languages to learn. Supposedly, Japanese and Chinese are a different league altogether.

This is fantastic news! This is the best news I've heard in a while. I have friends who don't like Muslims because "Muslim = terrorism". I've always struggled to argue the lack of denouncing terrorism by Muslim leaders. While there is protest by the Muslim community, the message is never driven home. I also want to add that some disgusting people posted some hateful messages toward all Muslims on Al Jazeera. It just re-enforces my beliefs that trash comes from all religions and genders.

I think something has happened at Apple. I would consider a playlist or dynamic filter (eg. Rock songs or Beatles songs) would be a beginner's desire. It's one step beyond "play". Yet, the new Apple Music app is highly cryptic. It's been engineered to steer you toward the new subscription service. Usability for novices and pros has been crippled. I could say similar about Apple maps. It just doesn't work properly. Google has really taken the crown here. It's sad to see Apple lose focus when they've held the benchmark so high for so long.

This is both a great article and a mediocre article. I agree with others that the marriage aspect is the weakest part.

As a parent, I constantly think back to the 70s as a benchmark for open mindedness and freedom with my children. In my honest opinion, we've lost a lot of perspective and become much less tolerant. In Australia, someone called the police because children walked a short distance to the local park by themselves. Taking a photo at a swimming carnival is taboo. None of these attitudes were around in the 70s.

I felt the relationship aspects between adults missed the mark. Not only the relationship breakdown aspects, but the women and sex. That reminds me of the woman who runs she++ (a sexist business name that no one calls out) who said in a Forbes interview that sex was bad and a man thing. There is a social stigma in admitting that women can like sex. Even Sam Mechkovich from Ars commented about bond women not falling for bond in his Spectre review, because that's not a woman thing to like sex. My response to these people is "what's wrong with it?" Most of the women I know and respect are open about sex. That doesn't mean free sex, it means being open minded and confident in yourself to be free to speak your mind. My sort of people...

Ultimately, I lump all these social and parental problems down to Political Correctness. For the nay sayers, you can treat people with respect and not be PC. PC is a set of perverted rules that bully people into what to think.

The good thing is that most kids will reject a career path placed on them. My older but young child does not have my love of software development but loves mechanical and electrical design. He 'hates' programming. My other slightly younger child loves writing stories, although he is gifted (as per WISC) with mathematical reasoning (if I recall the term correctly). He has shown a natural understanding of programming, but no interest. I consider his thinking much broader.

I love my kids different interests. I think the 'learn programming in school' is highly overrated, unless it's a component of something bigger eg. Logic, technology).

Looking at dietary benefits is very complex. For example, there is one study that suggests there are no known benefits to yogurt. http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/292809.php

The point is that when I see numbers of test subjects, duration, measures of benefit, etc I feel more confident that some thought has gone into understanding benefits. However, Unless a test subjects only ate that one product or all test subject diets were controlled, it's difficult to measure benefits.

After reading this article, I was unsure of how rigorous this research was. Despite many references, the strength of the data wasn't analysed in a way that was quantifiable. This article isn't alone. One of the few miracle vitamins (vitamin c) also has its critics when it comes to potential benefits.

In summary, I wasn't convinced one way or another by this research.

New Zealand copyright laws extended from 50 to 70 years with grandfather clause. While it aligns with the Mickey Mouse clause used by other countries, it goes against the original intent to benefit society as people can't extend or make use of copyright works for an extra 20 years.

There is also provision to unlock DVDs purchased overseas that is still retained.

I could not see provision to restrict tax free havens or to curb tax avoidance by multinational corporations.

I know little about this topic. Can you please help me understand. Wikipedia says the act applies to banks and securities, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass%E2%80%93Steagall_Legis...

I thought AIG provided securities. I'm sure I'm missing something obvious as it's not something I know anything about

The term y-fronts is also used in Australia (the article mentions UK only usage). I think of them as old fashioned, but that may be my own interpretation.

I put together some slang definitions for a Quiz Night earlier this year. I noticed Australia has a lot more in common with the UK than the US when it comes to slang. This may change with the Internet in the next decade or so.