wgren

One word (or few word) posts like "Troll", "Fanboy", "This", or "LOL" are frowned on at Hacker News because they don't add anything to the discussion.

NFC can be used for more things than just payments. You could get your monthly bus card sent to your phone instead of needing to carry a separate card. When entering the subway/bus/traingates, put your phone near the reader.

Since it works offline, it can also be of value to businesses. For instance, if you have a secure service station, you could send the rights to open the door lock to a technicians phone over the air, and set the credentials to be valid for a limited time (say a day).

>Human biology is not that quick to change.

No, but a lot of things with regards to our current expected behaviour of genders is in fact social, not biological. A lot of 18th century male behaviour would today be regarded as effeminate. Red was once the color of choice for baby boys, and blue for girls.

>Artificially boosting the career success of women just causes misery on the long run for men

Hang on, did anyone propose affirmative action here or something? All the blog talked about was trying to praise girls for their smarts rather than their looks. If this is enough to cause misery for you, I think you have self-esteem issues. (Edit: Oops, that was needlessly confrontational and personal. Apologies for last sentence.)

>I thought that the girl in your story was very smart, and even if people had treated her like a pretty doll for her entire life she would still be the same. Intelligent, critical and capable.

Perhaps, but as mentioned in the article, some girls as young as 5 think they are "too fat" and try to go on a diet. It is clearly an issue for some.

It's a blog post, not a research paper. If course it will use anecdotes. Do you have any counter examples to show an exceptional bias in their "hand-picking"?

>But when you see someone for the first time appearances are the first thing you notice... unless you can read minds.

Yet when talking to boys, people generally don't say - "Oh, what a handsome boy you are, and how nicely you dress!" as an opening phrase. We don't sell these kind of tshirts to boys: http://boingboing.net/2011/08/31/jc-penny-t-shirt-now-pulled...

>Looks are important. [...] no amount of telling you your appearance is a great asset is going to make you dumber.

No, but it tells you what you should spend your time and energy on improving. Again, something we only do for girls.

>"So, when Clojure calls a function, it either already has the instance in its entirety (a lambda) or it finds it by dereferencing a binding. Since all functions are instances that implement IFn, the implementation can then call invokeinterface, which is very efficient. "

Perhaps, but from my understanding with InvokeDynamic, for a function that ends up with for instance adding two numbers, we can guarantee the types even though the code is dynamic. This means the JVM can perform optimizations like inlining. This invokeinterface call could then be replaced with an "iadd" bytecode at the call site, which in turn can get JITed, and so on.

>if [a JVM thread] reads a field of an object, and another thread writes to the same field of the same object, then the program will see either the old value, or the new value, but not something else entirely

Nitpick: unless the field in questions is a "long" or "double". In those cases the operation becomes two bytecodes and you can in fact see something else entirely if you are unlucky. At least it used to be like that.

An interesting read is "Remembering Satan", about a small community torn apart by accusations of sexual abuse and satanic rituals. Many people confessed, some were convicted, no evidence was ever produced.

http://www.amazon.com/Remembering-Satan-Tragic-Recovered-Mem...

On one hand, other Android based phone manufacturers are clearly going to face an uphill struggle if Google are going to release new versions of the OS on their own devices first.

On the other hand, it will hopefully provide some protection against being sued by Apple+Microsoft.

It was in a rented apartment, so it could soon be someone else's kitchen. Currently he had small amounts of radioactive matter, but what what if had gotten hold of more? Radiation goes through walls, no matter who owns them.

I think this happened sometimes during the last 15 years. I was surprised when I came to the US and was exposed to Fox news, I was surprised that they were using the word incorrectly all the time. "The forces were decimated in a surprise attack..."

If enough people use it that way, it becomes the correct usage, of course. It is how languages (d)evolve.

From studying sediments and vegetation - quite a lot actually.

That is a false dichotomy - lots of people suggest we rely on science and technology, that is not what many people dislike about Lomborg. Well, it is not what I dislike about him anyway, I can't speak for everyone.

Arguing against him is not arguing against science. Actually, it is my respect for science that makes me wary of him. He always seem to suggest simple populist solutions to complex problems.

>in fact some people claimed that the PS3 had nearly “unlimited power”

These people are known as "marketers".

Politicians taking on jobs in industries they regulated: amakudari, "descent from heaven".

It is a powerful speech to be sure, but it also contains some of the things I didn't like about the book and her philosophy. For instance - cultist thinking:

>Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper's bell of an approaching looter.

Again and again she exhorts people to feel disgust and hatred for people with different opinions, and to shun them. This is the black&white and us&them thinking common in religious cults.

> To love money is to know and love the fact that money is the creation of the best power within you, and your passkey to trade your effort for the effort of the best among men.

Those I've met who love money the most are those who have experienced deprivation. Money represents safety to them. It has very little to do with the creativity, intelligence or passion in creating. And in fact, since some of them (now I speak in the general sense, not people I know) believe their survival depends on it, they are willing to do all sorts of stuff to get hold of it.

>It does actually have to be so, especially for developing nations like China and India

No, it doesn't actually have to be so. Knowledge and technology transfer, more efficient markets, and alternative energy sources combined can ensure continued growth without increased emissions. It is fascinating that some free-market proponents believe in the amazing ability of human imagination and drive to surmount any dificulty (as I do). But as soon as we make any attempt to include environmental externalities when calculating the cost of something, the whole market will appearently collapse and billions die!

>thousands of Swedens and their (frankly) mediocre efforts

It is of course impossible for Sweden to offset the emissions of everyone else. The point is that everyone else can learn from Sweden and do the same. A 9% decrease in carbon emissions over 20 years combined wth healthy growth and high living standards? What would you consider not mediocre?

>destroying the planet that there really is very little we can do to stop it without encroaching on the human rights of every person on the planet.

So destroying the planet is not encroaching on their rights in any way then?

>claiming that the only possible solution is to pretty much destroy our way of life.

That is what many climate warming deniers like to claim will happen. Doesn't have to be so, Sweden for instance has increased its wealth steadily while at the same time reduced its environmental impact.

>I certainly prefer the Myhrvold approach, of thinking outside the box and challenging others to react, than the Gore fear-mongering.

What Al Gore does is also challenging people to react.

It's part of HTCs Sense weather/clock widget. You can disable the snow/rain/sun lensflare effects in the settings for the widget.

Agreed, but as Aaronontheweb said, take a look at Fallout New Vegas. Several of the people involved with the original Fallouts now work AT Obsidian, and it seems they want to bring a lot of the old feel back. Just to take a single example, Stimpacks will be very rare now, and will slowly give back hitpoints - they won't give you +100hp in the middle of a gunfight. Radiation will be a lot more lethal too.

This article reminded me of something I've thought about - does any game developer use high level languages for AI or core game engine? It seems they all use C/C++ for most everything.

A few games have embedded Lua or Python for user scripting (i.e. Vampire:Bloodlines used Python for dialoges and quest creation), and a couple of games have started to require having .Net runtime installed... but does anyone know of a core game engine in high level languages, and C/C++ is only used for graphics?

If you like choice & consequeces kind of RPGs, take a look at Vampire:Bloodlines (available on Steam, install the fan patches), the Witcher, and Obsidian's recently released Alpha Protocol.

What all these games (old and new) have in common is that they are often described as unpolished. And they are technically unpolished, because creating the enormous amount of content takes time and resources, and makes playtesting and balancing extremely difficult. On the other hand, the stories and characters of these games are often very polished compared to the the paper-thin stuff in most games. These days, the demand for better graphics gamers have these days makes the equation almost impossible - it is just too expensive to create the contents, lots of it which many gamers won't even see.

Witness the number of reviews that call the graphics of Alpha Protocol poor. Personally I think the graphics are amazing.

Right you are jbellis. Had forgotten that Dalvik isn't just a small JVM but a completely different architecture (register based, etc).

But anyway, what nimrody suggested is what they are doing - using platform neutral Dalvik bytecode and then transition to native through JIT.

The handset maker verifies that the update works with their models and customizations, and they makes the new files available to the MNO (Mobile Network Operator). The MNO then decide if/when the OTA push happens.

That is basically what JIT is. Why reinvent the wheel when they can use the resources that has been poured into JVM research?

"Games are usually like movies: a lot of sales in the opening weeks followed by a quick convergence to zero as they fall off the radar."

Is that still true though? I can see this being the case with physical copies having to fight for top shelf space in stores, but it may have changed a bit with online distribution channels. A few month old games that get a price reduction, or classics that get a special campaign price, regularly go to the top of the Steam sales list for a couple of days. Especially those who have gained a positive word of mouth reputation online. Long tail phenomenon?

"HOTU is evidence enough of that"

Hordes of the Underdark? puzzled. Oh, Home of the Underdogs. :)

You are allowed pay just a penny, no one is stopping you, but don't you think it is a bit... not-nice? The payment services will take that penny in charges (maybe even more? Don't know who gets stuck with negative, but you are possibly causing indie devs and charities to LOSE money.), plus you are going to cost Wolfire some bandwidth on top of that.

Il faut cultiver notre jardin.

I think gardening is pretty nice. Poking around in the garden feels meditative, and nothing is so relaxing to me as sitting in a garden and smelling the flowers.

You get to be creative, and possibly make something that can give you enjoyment for decades.

Maybe I'm just becoming middle aged though. :)

I guess you should try to see every time you fail to do a Pomodoro what it was that caused you to lose focus, and seek to eliminate that distraction.

For me, losing flow due to long compile times, having to download libraries or something is a sure focus killer.

And as I said, just idle web browsing is a problem that I should try to take care of. :)

I am trying to use the Pomodoro technique - focus hard for 25 minutes, then relax for 5. This of course requires closing down mail, Twitter etc apps while a Pomodor is running.

Unfortunately I still have problems, it is far too easy to open up a browser window and start looking at Hacker News, Digg, Engadget etc. I am thinking about making my own Pomodoro script which puts all my favourite timewasting sites in /etc/hosts where I can't reach them.