schizoidboy

The idea would be that when you send an email, you give it a category, like politics. Then at the bottom of each person's email, there are two links: 1) Unsubscribe from person X's emails about category Y, and 2) Unsubscribe from all of person X's emails from this system

So if that person clicked link #1, the token in the link is verified that it was created for that email address, and then it's noted in a database. In the future, if person X sends another email for that category, it won't go to that person. I'm thinking the sender wouldn't even know that the person unsubscribed

31 :-)

I miss the pen-pal days of emails between friends.

I was thinking primarily for close friends, but for broader contacts, I agree with you, so I was thinking of a system that would allow them to unsubscribe from certain topics (e.g. politics)

Not sure what you mean by clever baiting, but yeah, I guess I mean going back to the olden email days, at least for close friends

What if it is still 1-on-1 communication; so, imagine this: I use an app to write the email, select a group or set of contacts, and the system sends out a 1-on-1 style email to each one of those contacts?

What do people think about using email as an alternative to social networks - i.e. creating lists of email addresses (groups), and sending out photos, jokes, opinions, etc. to those groups (e.g. an "All" group to send life updates, a "Cool" group that can take any joke, etc.)?

Myplaceonline, an open source virtual life assistant: https://myplaceonline.com/

It's amorphous; just anything my roommate and I find useful for computers to automate. Latest feature is a way to share pictures and stories by email (with a way to unsubscribe).

There are a lot of GNU Social servers - any recommendations?

Out of curiosity, what's the evidence for 10x extinction rate?

Self-serving, but I'm working on an open source project which handles password storage using AES using symmetric key with the website password (many other features): https://github.com/myplaceonline/myplaceonline - you can run this locally or test out the beta version online (email me)

Specifically: https://github.com/myplaceonline/myplaceonline_rails/blob/af...

I think some of your ideas are very thought-provoking, especially the idea that most communication should start with more humility. It seems like a good idea that people should strive to start by laying out a landscape of where their ideas fit in, how speculative they are, potential biases, alternative ideas, etc., because then people can get some perspective.

Self-reflecting based on this: I should have started by saying that I probably have a bias for humility because it seems that the more I learn, the more I feel I was poorly prepared when I was younger by adults with their often grandiose, myopic, and uncomprehensive explanations about life, and I think this did me great damage. Alternatively, it's difficult to summarize many different viewpoints or give much context without too much detail. Nevertheless, it seems worth trying.

How do you define sustainability? Various metrics suggest human society has a likely chance of sustaining its most important trajectories: http://radicaloptimism.org/wiki/Human_Society

See also The Rational Optimist by Ridley, The Improving State of the World by Goklany, etc.

And ZeroClipboard

I've been working on a "virtual life assistant": https://myplaceonline.com/. It's in private beta since my target audience is just me right now, but the code is all open source: https://github.com/myplaceonline/myplaceonline

Two hypotheses:

1. Maybe nothing is wrong with you and the people that aren't reciprocating aren't the right people for you. In this case, consider ways to find new people, activities, etc., or try to be more comfortable with the fact that you're special and it may take some time to find the right people (but do as much as you can to increase your odds such as hobbies you love, etc.).

2. Maybe something is wrong with you in the sense that your brain is creating emotional pain in the same way that your body alerts you to physical pain. In this case, first be happy that your brain is trying to help you (even if the emotional pain is... well, painful). Next, consider exploring your emotional pains through philosophy, psychotherapy, positive psychology, exploring your childhood and close relationships, etc.

Each of these hypotheses branches out to many other hypotheses, most of which can be "tested." If one of them isn't yielding a good theory, move on to the next, and you may ultimately find something. Keep trying!

But if I use gpg, the default algorithm is CAST-5, so I'll probably still type AES in my code for --cipher-algo AES256 (or API equivalent) :-P (this is mostly in jest, I know that CAST-5 is usually a reasonable default)

In the Symmetric ciphers section, it ends with "This leaves 5-9 and 15" but why are 2-4 bad (aes128-cbc, aes192-cbc, aes256-cbc)? It seems the argument is that GCM is better than CBC, and CTR is okay. My general impression is that CBC is preferred (for example, Rails uses AES-256-CBC by default in its MessageEncryptor class).

Great project! Please also provide a yum repository and instructions (and any others you feel are popular enough). You may want to look at the way SSLMate does it, with an operating system drop down selection (Debian, Ubuntu, RedHat, Arch, Mac, Other).

Obligatory: http://www.dilbert.com/strips/comic/2013-03-28/

Anyone have issues with finger numbness with a standing desk? I used a GeekDesk for about 6 months and started to get numbness in either hand that I tried to use my mouse with. I guessed that it was related to the new pressure on the wrist, because my arm no longer rested on my chair's armest. I've went back to sitting most of the time and the numbness went away.

Good reference, thanks. I would add, for those that haven't read the Boldrin/Levine link yet, it only starts off with the myth of the lone inventor, but ultimately tackles the modern pharmaceutical industry as well, which is probably the more modern intellectual monopoly defense.

"It is often argued that the best case for patents is in the pharmaceutical industry. The fixed cost of innovation is large, with estimates of the average cost of bringing a single new drug to market as high as $800 million in current dollars... Indeed, according to industry surveys, the only industry in which patents are thought to play an important role in bringing new products to market is the pharmaceutical industry...

The pharmaceutical industry is a complicated beast to vivisect, which can be approached from many contradictory angles and viewpoints. We will stick to ours, narrow that it may be, and ask - how strong is the case for patents in pharmaceuticals? Is there substantial evidence that without patents we would not have the medicines we have, or at least we would have a lot fewer and worse medicines? Would the industry shut down and talent move to some other, more rewarding, enterprise if patents on drugs were more or less abolished, that is, if the world became like Switzerland until 1978 or Italy until a year later?"

Here is an interesting book arguing for total abolition:

Against Intellectual Monopoly, Michele Boldrin and David K. Levine, Professors of Economics, UCLA and Washington University, 2010, http://www.micheleboldrin.com/research/aim/anew.all.pdf

Thanks.

Pretty cool. Couple of ideas:

1. Ability to skip voting on a video (looks like you can click "watch videos" at the top to skip, but then it might come back)

2. Ability to suggest funny videos, since it seems the selection is limited (or the random generator is skewed!)

This could be a session crossover issue. Here's IBM's documentation on it:

"In rare situations, usually due to application errors, session data intended for one client might be seen by another client. This situation is referred to as session data crossover. When the DebugSessionCrossover custom property is set to true, code is enabled to detect and log instances of session data crossover. Checks are performed to verify that only the session associated with the request is accessed or referenced. Messages are logged if any discrepancies are detected. These messages provide a starting point for debugging this problem. This additional checking is only performed when running on the WebSphere-managed dispatch thread, not on any user-created threads."

http://www14.software.ibm.com/webapp/wsbroker/redirect?versi...

I doubt it because IBM has too much skin in the game. Few people are aware, but IBM produces its own JDK:

https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/java/jdk/

The "thread dump" feature should be an absolute requirement for any language runtime environment. Java has perfected this with the SIGQUIT signal. Thread dumps give you readable stacks of all threads with a simple user command (kill -3 on Linux/Unix, although a bit more difficult on Windows), without having to install symbol files, install additional software, run "scary" commands (for end users), etc.

This is a textbook example of taking a few thread dumps, a few minutes apart, immediately showing what is going on. IBM has one of these as their Performance or Hang "MustGather" script:

http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21115785...

.NET thread dumps suck -- you have to use adplus to attach and they're not easy to read. Native programs (e.g. C/C++) work better with symbols and are just too scary for end users. DTrace on Solaris with Ruby/Python/PHP extensions is nice, but too cumbersome to install, and again too scary for end users.

I'm not aware of built-in thread dumps-by-signal in other non-Java languages (please note in a comment if there is), but this feature is so basic and needs to be baked in to every runtime environment and easy enough for end users to use.

Firefox, being a native program, is in a bad problem determination position here and the haphazard nature of the problem determination process in the forum and bug report shows that. I suggest Firefox create something like IBM's MustGather scripts (starting with a performance one such as IBM's hang MustGather -- http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21115785 [click "Show Details" for the steps]). A hang MustGather should go through the process of installing symbol files, getting the thread stacks, submitting the information, etc. This will allow users to at least feel like they can do something valuable to help the developers fix the problem.

"Give it up for the standardization of the screw."

A memorable quote.

On a related note, there was an interesting C-SPAN BookTv program recently where the author talked about the revolutionary standardization of international freight shipping containers:

http://tinyurl.com/mwmrwq (booktv.org)

I asked a similar question about a week ago, and the responses I got were:

1) "I think because of [cloud computing and the recession], server hardware isn't worth what you think it is. Go lower." 2) Use traditional channels such as eBay, Craigslist, etc. 3) A few people that were interested provided their direct email addresses.

In the past 2 weeks, I've sold 3 servers (combination of Craigslist and eBay). The prices weren't horrible, but what surprised me was how small the demand was (i.e. number of inquiries and bids, respectively).

One interesting idea I heard recently from a friend of mine who runs a startup in NYC is to post the servers on SF Craigslist.

Otherwise, I've been sticking to Craigslist. There are no fees, and I seem to get similar demand volumes as eBay. My strategy has been to post an item on Craigslist at price X and lower the price by 1/4 after every 7 days (the default post expiration on Craigslist).

Good luck.

It would be nice to have something like antiscribd.com.