When did expecting everything to be free become acceptable? Does your employer expect you to work for free?
Around the same time it became acceptable to preach the polar opposite.
But before we continue, about your snark: Does the advertiser expect you to become addicted to life to a product that causes lung decay and lung cancer? (Yes, actually. Yes, also, about some employers, if they could get it.)
Both sides of this debate lack nuance because advertising as micro-currency is a brain-damaged human enterprise.
It makes as much sense as expecting Olympic athletes to eat a giant BBQ-flavoured potato chip dunked in cream cheese in exchange for each coaching tip. Too bad about their beautiful, pristine bodies. Too bad about our formerly pristine minds. I have never seen the advertisement of an idea that didn't contain more junk calories than the non-advertisement form of the same idea.
If one enters this debate through the door of human potential, everything free makes more sense than everything paid for by ingesting mental junk food.
Modern society's marginal cost of sharing information is essentially zero. In view of the looming cognitive-automation labour surplus, is it actually such a necessity to recover up front capital costs as we are conditioned to think it is? Open source has already broken that model to a large degree. This could become a much more common effect in the post-participation economy.
More and more, as technology permits, advertisers will begin to insist that people viewing the ads actually follow through with substitution purchases (where the advertised good replaces a more cost-effective default alternative the consumer might have purchased otherwise). The IAB is already preaching full-circle consumer compliance.
That is the only sane position that closes the ludicrous intellectual gap between always free and always junk-laden. Note that merit-based product promotion does not require compulsory junk consumption (the natural domain of obtrusive advertising is to convince people to behave in ways their more rational self would otherwise reject.)
I was just using Google Maps, and it reminded me that on PC-BSD (both Chromium and FF) Google Maps only runs in Lite mode, despite having all the requirements.
You can fix this by spoofing your user agent string to an older browser version. As stated, PC-BSD rocks, but it's by no means a panacea (though no great fault of their own).
-1 Google web coders
Any Poettering haters out there who know someone who works at Google, please put the word out that this is not acceptable.
This story: Systemd Starts Killing Your Background Processes By Default
Previous story: Massive Backlash Building Over Windows 10 Upgrades
That's the best conjunction of two headlines that I've noticed in my many years here.
FWIW, I'm a happy PC-BSD user, not that this is a panacea by any means, but there does seem to be less of the "stupidity on a rampage" form of collateral damage.
I pay the price with a lot more "W?TF doesn't Firefox play this media type either?" and I find I have to page bounce to Chrome once or twice almost every day (my FF is plug-in central, my Chrome is naked install).
Unfortunately, I can't even brag that PC-BSD is a successful Poettering removal tool, as I still had to fight some nasty battles with PulseAudio due to rampant ecosystem taint in the package tree that PC-BSD doesn't have the resources to strip out (nor, sadly, does the entire *BSD Avenger collective). Get this, the GUI control I needed to mess with only appears if certain PulseAudio processes are active, but because of my debugging mode, those processes were timing out before I could visit all the places where I thought the GUI control might possibly show up (discoverability anti-pattern in anti-flagrante delicto).
Every large software ecosystem must eventually manage breakage. There are good ways to go about this, and there are bad ways to go about this, and then there are Poettering ways to go about this. It's the added ego problem that seems excessive.
How did my fingers add that apostrophe to the subject line, and nowhere else? It must be that "what Americans trust" feels subconsciously possessive.
It could also be that the Slashdot preview function doesn't preview the subject line. (Except to bitch about it being blank in cases where you deliberately wished to preview your post before deciding.)
The pilot episode, "Study Indicates Many Americans Don't Trust AA" was a real sleeper. Not many heard about it. In retrospect, it probably wasn't the best place to start, but they just couldn't work up enough bile for "Study Indicates Many Americans Don't Trust A" all the way through "Study Indicates Many Americans Don't Trust Z". Disappointing.
Similarly, AB through AH were all crossed out, though AC will later be spelled out as "air conditioning" and AG will make a reappearance in a future episode titled "Study Indicates Americans Don't Trust Volkswagon AG".
This brings us to "Study Indicates Americans Don't Trust AI", the alphabetically first arrow with any real wood behind it.
After this strong second effort, I eagerly await the rest of the series.
I'm a digital pack rat. I collect just about anything that raises my eyebrows in my personal wiki. It's a crazy thing, like people who build entire houses out of used beer cans, but for me, at least, it pleasantly passes the time.
I strongly prefer insight over outrage, so I was awfully slow off the mark in finally creating an "asshole" page (subpage "corporate asshole"), but having done so about six months ago, what a boon it has become.
Welcome Marvel.
Welcome DC Comics.
Allow me to make some introductions. On your left is Comcast, Marriott, General Mills, and Sony. You probably know most of those already. On your right there's FIFA, IOC, NCAA, and Voltage Pictures. Another cluster top heavy in the usual suspects. Across the room, there's Gawker Media and the IAB conferring in what appears to be an almost romantic tete-a-tete.
Be sure to pull up a chair while you have the opportunity. Word on the street is that we soon might need to suspend the fire code.
The Panetta Review had reached the same conclusions, on the basis of the same documents, that the Senate report later did. In other words, the CIA's own analysis of its records refuted all the cheerleading claims currently being trotted out by its team of publicists. Had the agency, in obstructing the report and spying on Senate investigators, finally overplayed its hand? "Nothing could be further from the truth," Brennan insisted, following in the footsteps of Michael Hayden, whom the report depicts as a kind of unflappable Pinocchio, fibbing under oath at every opportunity.
Yes, I understand why you might be puzzled not to find him here. The situation concerning Hayden is complicated. Innocent until proven guilty, and all that rot. His was a complex mandate. Many good minds suspect he's rather too full of himself in a bad way, but other perspectives remain credible.
It's not like you can simply go to Wikipedia and read the following:
The word 'superhero' dates to at least 1917. Antecedents of the archetype include such folkloric heroes as Robin Hood, who adventured in distinctive clothing. The 1903 play The Scarlet Pimpernel and its spinoffs popularized the idea of a masked avenger and the superhero trope of a secret identity. Shortly afterward, masked and costumed pulp-fiction characters such as Zorro (1919) and comic strip heroes such as the Phantom (1936) began appearing, as did non-costumed characters with super strength, including Patoruzu (1928), the comic-strip character Popeye (1929) and novelist Philip Wylie's protagonist Hugo Danner (1930).
Feel free to mingle among the assembled company of like minds.
Software businesses now must accelerate their move to the cloud where everything can be controlled as a service rather than software.
There are many people in control of IT budgets who don't (and won't ever) comprehend intellectual property law and license subtleties.
For these people, all the blather around the money shot is reasonable enough. For Oracle, adequate blather wrapped around a self-interested money shot has always been more than sufficient to run the presses.
I'm pretty sure *many* of the people who are nodding and agreeing with me on economics comments are just happy I touched their feel-good liberal or feel-good conservative standpoint in some aspect, so I get modded up for saying "minimum wage is bad" or "we need a better welfare system" with big words, instead of for actually being right.
Not that the same thing ever happens in scholastic peer review, or a movie studio, or presidential candidate selection.
The vagaries of social approval are more transparent in certain venues, such as Slashdot, making them A) easier targets to lampoon, and B) old news that the smart money already adequately renormalizes.
The reality of all this lies so far from conception (in all human spheres), as to call into question that moderation functions—even asymptotically, in the ideal—as a winnowing screen of meritocracy.
Our attentional filters seem, at best, to be universally biased toward recognition and archetype, with but a side of merit (on a good day). Turns out humans are generally unprepared to imbibe merit undiluted.
It always shocks me to see an otherwise brilliant person discuss the outcome of a debate within the psychological framework of "how could my adversary not denounce his own position right then and there under the onslaught of my imposing facts?" There's an element of this in both Dawkins and Sam Harris. Hitch was more complex in his views (perforce more realistic), while Dennett gets himself so embroiled in the subterfuge of subtlety I'm not sure he would notice if this were to actually happen on stage.
Faced with all the evidence in the world that this view does not accord with the human condition, they both persist, at least, in wishing it were otherwise.
Oracle may have asked for in damages could have been as much as $9 billion.
I love these stories. It's like opening a box of Cracker Jack and finding a free random number in the bottom. It's never prime, however. It's always of the form p * q * r * s.
Make that "bordering on the absurd" for cargo pant values of "bordering".
In the new world, the "explorers" were attempting to trade with the natives, and they offered up an iPhone or Android app "just as soon as we complete a mandatory oral ceremony around the camp fire" they'd be saying "just give us the fucking glass beads already!" long before this obligatory oratory concluded.
Google is hiring UX designers, perhaps you should join up?
Did the job openings begin with an internal conversation including the phrase "well, if you won't do this..."? Just wondering. Few recent changes to Google Maps these days arrive with the new car smell of employee self-esteem.
On the other hand, you did remind me of the biggest belly laugh I've ever had reading a grammar book.
From A Handbook of Good English by Edward D. Johnson.
Mary's and John's behavior at the office party was disgraceful is correct if the two misbehaved separately; Mary and John's behaviour is correct if they misbehaved together.
So, yes, I guess I'm an easy mark and, yes, eye contact matters.
This is one of many fine books you might consider owning if you someday decide to do something about that abject subject line. Section 2-29, pp. 173–180 in my edition. Guaranteed to cure off-the-cuff pedantry in record time.
For the Time 2 early bird, as of 11:15 there are "514 left of 10000" and I also discovered that this will set me back $169 plus another $15 for shipping.
I was going to jump on this but I couldn't find the formal specifications concerning watch dimensions, number of pixels, amount of storage. The early bird will be gone by the time I have this purchase fully triangulated, but I guess that's a formal element of the Kickstarter business model.
Once the early bird is gone, the discount for buying sight-unseen becomes even less attractive.
I have a non-circadian sleep disorder and my first Pebble watch was a big part of me finding a solution to control this. On that basis, it would be pretty easy for my to update my Pebble relationship. Unfortunately, Pebble doesn't focus much these days on their original hacker mojo. Instead you get promotional videos with rainbows in the background, and oblique filming angles so you can't really see how huge it looks on bikini girl's not-especially-slender wrist.
Moreover, now that I no longer need to custom program a 25.5 hour calendar day this is more a luxury (with an immense amount of nostalgia on top) than an essential purchase. I wanted to get one for my wife too, as a kind of thank-you gift for what she went through as I found my sleep solution. As someone who rides dressage, she has a way to make the watch look smaller on her wrist than it really is, up to a point.
Guess my appreciation gift will have to wait for the Pebble Steel Mini.
Update: At 11:30, now down to the last 106 on the Time 2 early bird.
The planning behind the NT kernel certainly dwarfed the care behind the accretion of Linux.
So too did the planning behind Nupedia dwarf the planning behind Wikipedia. One perseverated while the other iterated. Here's an entire EconTalk devoted to the common mental mistakes people make when talking about the best ways to plan and make decisions.
I liked the following passage, in which I learned that even the best surgeons iterate.
Atul Gawande talks a lot about how a surgeon needs a coach because surgery, as important as it is, it's a discrete event that takes a certain amount of time but at the end of which you usually have a fairly clear feedback of how well you did. You can then take that feedback onboard and try again.
Linus is forthright that his strategy has always been to prefer taking feedback on board over out-front planning. In feedback-rich environments, this can often be an optimal strategy.
Oh great, security by any number of diffuse signals you—the user—don't entirely trust and can't functionally verify against either Type I and type II errors.
Oxygen is the heavy half of the electrolysis reaction, by far. If you don't have to lug that around (in the form of O2 or H20 or CO2) that's a huge advantage. Internal combustion has this advantage, otherwise the energy density would only be half as attractive.
This ex-Tesla guy is such an idiot (addition by subtraction?), I can't be bothered to look up hydrogen cells to see what the oxygen cycle looks like.
Gradually I'm learning how to not give a shit about people spreading misinformation on the Internet.
John Oliver might say that nothing screams a two-digit IQ quite like beginning a headline with "terrorists no longer welcome"—unless you've actually located a Motel 6 manager who just painted over his "terrorists welcome" pool-side wall mural, and not just to test "wife beaters welcome" to see if it generates more patronage.
If there was a procedure to determine guilt in which the defendant was required to stand for an hour in a busy, public place with his or her genitals exposed to see whether his or her naughty bits turned bright purple—which incriminates but never exculpates—do you think prosecutors would rush to drop the tactic just because everyone knows the test will demonstrate nothing?
It's no small feature of the polygraph test that it forces the person being tested to endure a submissive stress position. Ever heard of a polygraph procedure in which the subject is permitted to make eye contact with the asshole asking the questions?
Do not underestimate. Half of the population cracks under the persistent provocation of a teenaged forum troll.
The polygraph is worse. I've hardly gone an hour in my adult life deprived of "what a stupid question" when the glove fits (I'm usually fine with the socially acceptable ways to put this idea across when permitted to speak at reasonable length).
If I had to go through lent giving up one of the three biggies of yes/no/what a stupid question, it sure wouldn't be the third option. The Japanese make do with one handy syllable covering all three, so I'm sure I could somehow manage my affairs well enough minus either "yes" or "no".
Between parking "what a stupid question" for an hour while being grilled on intimate matters by some smug asshole, or standing outside with my nut sack exposed, I'd have to give the matter genuine consideration.
"If I'm not paying for the product, I AM the product". Now, continue to repeat it, out loud if necessary, until it sticks.
Sure. But here's a question. What does Caveat Emptor 101 for Slow Learners actually buy you at the end of the day?
What it bought me is an Android cell phone with such a pathetically small number of data-enabled applications installed on it that I turned off my data modem six months ago and have yet to miss it.
Furthermore, actually paying for an application is no guarantee it doesn't partake in same additional revenue streams. If you were too busy shouting the take-away slogan from Caveat Emptor 101 from the nearest available e-rooftop to notice this ugly fact, you might want to check yourself into the horror show known as Caveat Emptor 102. No need to write "102" down on paper lest you forget.
No, just "continue to repeat it, out loud if necessary, until it sticks."
With hard work and persistence, eventually you'll become qualified to enroll in Houston We Have a Problem Here 400 or Privacy 911 (dissertation mandatory).
But what gasbaggery it was!... The two had a bitter rivalry in print, as ABC executives well knew, though rivalry is probably too mild a word. They loathed each other. The "analysis" they were hired to provide quickly became a oneupmanship of insults and ad hominem argument. It didn't take Vidal long to call Buckley the "Marie Antoinette of the right" and for Buckley to refer to Vidal, the author of the ambisexual novel Myra Breckinridge, as a "pornographer." Then things got personal.
The pressure rose till the gasket blew in an infamous exchange on the third night of the second (Democratic) convention. When Buckley defended the police in their violent encounters with demonstrators outside the convention hall, Vidal called him a "crypto-Nazi." Buckley responded by citing his own service against the Nazis in World War II, calling Vidal a "queer"—this used to be an insult—and volunteering to "punch you in your goddamn face," after which, Buckley went on, "you'll stay plastered."
For the rest of his life Buckley admitted to being ashamed of the moment—not merely for the lapse in manners but for allowing so crude a provocation to produce exactly the effect Vidal intended. But the two weeks of convention analysis, with a narrative arc of intensifying on-air hostility between two compelling characters and a tidy climax to round it off, was an excellent career move for them both. They dined out on it for decades—though never, of course, with each other. Their mutual contempt provided a Punch-and-Judy foreshadowing of what soon became known as the culture wars.
This is a lovely piece of writing, even if its sympathies are tilted in Buckley's favour. To think that W. had a speech writer of this caliber standing behind him. How could one possibly know after W. mangled his words?
That said, this particular cat fight was notable at the time for being the rare exception to the prevailing etiquette, rather than daily fare. So yes, it was a different time—one already rushing headlong in an all-too-familiar direction.
We've tried to cover up bigotry behind nice phrases and accommodations for too long. Better for it to be out in the open than hidden in niceties.
I must have been about 95% certain this passage was going to end with "hidden under mattresses" so the actual ending caught me short. What strange subconscious tricks the mind plays based on tenor and tone.
Slashdot Mirror
Around the same time it became acceptable to preach the polar opposite.
But before we continue, about your snark: Does the advertiser expect you to become addicted to life to a product that causes lung decay and lung cancer? (Yes, actually. Yes, also, about some employers, if they could get it.)
Rothenberg Says Ad Blocking Is a War against Diversity and Freedom of Expression
Both sides of this debate lack nuance because advertising as micro-currency is a brain-damaged human enterprise.
It makes as much sense as expecting Olympic athletes to eat a giant BBQ-flavoured potato chip dunked in cream cheese in exchange for each coaching tip. Too bad about their beautiful, pristine bodies. Too bad about our formerly pristine minds. I have never seen the advertisement of an idea that didn't contain more junk calories than the non-advertisement form of the same idea.
If one enters this debate through the door of human potential, everything free makes more sense than everything paid for by ingesting mental junk food.
Modern society's marginal cost of sharing information is essentially zero. In view of the looming cognitive-automation labour surplus, is it actually such a necessity to recover up front capital costs as we are conditioned to think it is? Open source has already broken that model to a large degree. This could become a much more common effect in the post-participation economy.
More and more, as technology permits, advertisers will begin to insist that people viewing the ads actually follow through with substitution purchases (where the advertised good replaces a more cost-effective default alternative the consumer might have purchased otherwise). The IAB is already preaching full-circle consumer compliance.
That is the only sane position that closes the ludicrous intellectual gap between always free and always junk-laden. Note that merit-based product promotion does not require compulsory junk consumption (the natural domain of obtrusive advertising is to convince people to behave in ways their more rational self would otherwise reject.)
Why does Google Maps on FreeBSD default to lite mode?
I was just using Google Maps, and it reminded me that on PC-BSD (both Chromium and FF) Google Maps only runs in Lite mode, despite having all the requirements.
You can fix this by spoofing your user agent string to an older browser version. As stated, PC-BSD rocks, but it's by no means a panacea (though no great fault of their own).
-1 Google web coders
Any Poettering haters out there who know someone who works at Google, please put the word out that this is not acceptable.
This story: Systemd Starts Killing Your Background Processes By Default
Previous story: Massive Backlash Building Over Windows 10 Upgrades
That's the best conjunction of two headlines that I've noticed in my many years here.
FWIW, I'm a happy PC-BSD user, not that this is a panacea by any means, but there does seem to be less of the "stupidity on a rampage" form of collateral damage.
I pay the price with a lot more "W?TF doesn't Firefox play this media type either?" and I find I have to page bounce to Chrome once or twice almost every day (my FF is plug-in central, my Chrome is naked install).
Unfortunately, I can't even brag that PC-BSD is a successful Poettering removal tool, as I still had to fight some nasty battles with PulseAudio due to rampant ecosystem taint in the package tree that PC-BSD doesn't have the resources to strip out (nor, sadly, does the entire *BSD Avenger collective). Get this, the GUI control I needed to mess with only appears if certain PulseAudio processes are active, but because of my debugging mode, those processes were timing out before I could visit all the places where I thought the GUI control might possibly show up (discoverability anti-pattern in anti-flagrante delicto).
Every large software ecosystem must eventually manage breakage. There are good ways to go about this, and there are bad ways to go about this, and then there are Poettering ways to go about this. It's the added ego problem that seems excessive.
How did my fingers add that apostrophe to the subject line, and nowhere else? It must be that "what Americans trust" feels subconsciously possessive.
It could also be that the Slashdot preview function doesn't preview the subject line. (Except to bitch about it being blank in cases where you deliberately wished to preview your post before deciding.)
Beneficent overlords, anyone out there?
The pilot episode, "Study Indicates Many Americans Don't Trust AA" was a real sleeper. Not many heard about it. In retrospect, it probably wasn't the best place to start, but they just couldn't work up enough bile for "Study Indicates Many Americans Don't Trust A" all the way through "Study Indicates Many Americans Don't Trust Z". Disappointing.
Similarly, AB through AH were all crossed out, though AC will later be spelled out as "air conditioning" and AG will make a reappearance in a future episode titled "Study Indicates Americans Don't Trust Volkswagon AG".
This brings us to "Study Indicates Americans Don't Trust AI", the alphabetically first arrow with any real wood behind it.
After this strong second effort, I eagerly await the rest of the series.
I'm a digital pack rat. I collect just about anything that raises my eyebrows in my personal wiki. It's a crazy thing, like people who build entire houses out of used beer cans, but for me, at least, it pleasantly passes the time.
I strongly prefer insight over outrage, so I was awfully slow off the mark in finally creating an "asshole" page (subpage "corporate asshole"), but having done so about six months ago, what a boon it has become.
Welcome Marvel.
Welcome DC Comics.
Allow me to make some introductions. On your left is Comcast, Marriott, General Mills, and Sony. You probably know most of those already. On your right there's FIFA, IOC, NCAA, and Voltage Pictures. Another cluster top heavy in the usual suspects. Across the room, there's Gawker Media and the IAB conferring in what appears to be an almost romantic tete-a-tete.
Be sure to pull up a chair while you have the opportunity. Word on the street is that we soon might need to suspend the fire code.
What's that, you say? Where's General Hayden?
Company Men: Torture, treachery, and the CIA
Yes, I understand why you might be puzzled not to find him here. The situation concerning Hayden is complicated. Innocent until proven guilty, and all that rot. His was a complex mandate. Many good minds suspect he's rather too full of himself in a bad way, but other perspectives remain credible.
It's not like you can simply go to Wikipedia and read the following:
Feel free to mingle among the assembled company of like minds.
There are many people in control of IT budgets who don't (and won't ever) comprehend intellectual property law and license subtleties.
For these people, all the blather around the money shot is reasonable enough. For Oracle, adequate blather wrapped around a self-interested money shot has always been more than sufficient to run the presses.
What's news here?
Brewster Kahle. Forever.
Your data, good for a thousand years
If that's not good enough, go back to sleep for another twenty years.
Eternal 5D data storage could record the history of humankind
Problem solved.
Not that the same thing ever happens in scholastic peer review, or a movie studio, or presidential candidate selection.
The vagaries of social approval are more transparent in certain venues, such as Slashdot, making them A) easier targets to lampoon, and B) old news that the smart money already adequately renormalizes.
The reality of all this lies so far from conception (in all human spheres), as to call into question that moderation functions—even asymptotically, in the ideal—as a winnowing screen of meritocracy.
Our attentional filters seem, at best, to be universally biased toward recognition and archetype, with but a side of merit (on a good day). Turns out humans are generally unprepared to imbibe merit undiluted.
It always shocks me to see an otherwise brilliant person discuss the outcome of a debate within the psychological framework of "how could my adversary not denounce his own position right then and there under the onslaught of my imposing facts?" There's an element of this in both Dawkins and Sam Harris. Hitch was more complex in his views (perforce more realistic), while Dennett gets himself so embroiled in the subterfuge of subtlety I'm not sure he would notice if this were to actually happen on stage.
Dawkins: Sadly, an Honest Creationist
Faced with all the evidence in the world that this view does not accord with the human condition, they both persist, at least, in wishing it were otherwise.
I love these stories. It's like opening a box of Cracker Jack and finding a free random number in the bottom. It's never prime, however. It's always of the form p * q * r * s.
Make that "bordering on the absurd" for cargo pant values of "bordering".
In the new world, the "explorers" were attempting to trade with the natives, and they offered up an iPhone or Android app "just as soon as we complete a mandatory oral ceremony around the camp fire" they'd be saying "just give us the fucking glass beads already!" long before this obligatory oratory concluded.
Not so different from today's youth.
Did the job openings begin with an internal conversation including the phrase "well, if you won't do this ..."? Just wondering. Few recent changes to Google Maps these days arrive with the new car smell of employee self-esteem.
+1 ironic subject line
On the other hand, you did remind me of the biggest belly laugh I've ever had reading a grammar book.
From A Handbook of Good English by Edward D. Johnson.
So, yes, I guess I'm an easy mark and, yes, eye contact matters.
This is one of many fine books you might consider owning if you someday decide to do something about that abject subject line. Section 2-29, pp. 173–180 in my edition. Guaranteed to cure off-the-cuff pedantry in record time.
By the way, I'm not counting the incremental search Google does before you press enter, because I only consider those results approximate.
If that's included, who gives a shit about this question in the first place?
200 trillion searches per year requires 10 billion clients making an average of 55 searches per day, 24/7/52.177.
Your estimation skills are very not impressive.
For the Time 2 early bird, as of 11:15 there are "514 left of 10000" and I also discovered that this will set me back $169 plus another $15 for shipping.
I was going to jump on this but I couldn't find the formal specifications concerning watch dimensions, number of pixels, amount of storage. The early bird will be gone by the time I have this purchase fully triangulated, but I guess that's a formal element of the Kickstarter business model.
Once the early bird is gone, the discount for buying sight-unseen becomes even less attractive.
I have a non-circadian sleep disorder and my first Pebble watch was a big part of me finding a solution to control this. On that basis, it would be pretty easy for my to update my Pebble relationship. Unfortunately, Pebble doesn't focus much these days on their original hacker mojo. Instead you get promotional videos with rainbows in the background, and oblique filming angles so you can't really see how huge it looks on bikini girl's not-especially-slender wrist.
Moreover, now that I no longer need to custom program a 25.5 hour calendar day this is more a luxury (with an immense amount of nostalgia on top) than an essential purchase. I wanted to get one for my wife too, as a kind of thank-you gift for what she went through as I found my sleep solution. As someone who rides dressage, she has a way to make the watch look smaller on her wrist than it really is, up to a point.
Guess my appreciation gift will have to wait for the Pebble Steel Mini.
Update: At 11:30, now down to the last 106 on the Time 2 early bird.
So too did the planning behind Nupedia dwarf the planning behind Wikipedia. One perseverated while the other iterated. Here's an entire EconTalk devoted to the common mental mistakes people make when talking about the best ways to plan and make decisions.
Phil Rosenzweig on Leadership, Decisions, and Behavioral Economics
I liked the following passage, in which I learned that even the best surgeons iterate.
Linus is forthright that his strategy has always been to prefer taking feedback on board over out-front planning. In feedback-rich environments, this can often be an optimal strategy.
Oh great, security by any number of diffuse signals you—the user—don't entirely trust and can't functionally verify against either Type I and type II errors.
Oxygen is the heavy half of the electrolysis reaction, by far. If you don't have to lug that around (in the form of O2 or H20 or CO2) that's a huge advantage. Internal combustion has this advantage, otherwise the energy density would only be half as attractive.
This ex-Tesla guy is such an idiot (addition by subtraction?), I can't be bothered to look up hydrogen cells to see what the oxygen cycle looks like.
Gradually I'm learning how to not give a shit about people spreading misinformation on the Internet.
John Oliver might say that nothing screams a two-digit IQ quite like beginning a headline with "terrorists no longer welcome"—unless you've actually located a Motel 6 manager who just painted over his "terrorists welcome" pool-side wall mural, and not just to test "wife beaters welcome" to see if it generates more patronage.
11th commandment:
Thou shalt not take grandiose claims made in grant applications (and associated bloviation) as representing the smart-money scientific consensus view.
If there was a procedure to determine guilt in which the defendant was required to stand for an hour in a busy, public place with his or her genitals exposed to see whether his or her naughty bits turned bright purple—which incriminates but never exculpates—do you think prosecutors would rush to drop the tactic just because everyone knows the test will demonstrate nothing?
It's no small feature of the polygraph test that it forces the person being tested to endure a submissive stress position. Ever heard of a polygraph procedure in which the subject is permitted to make eye contact with the asshole asking the questions?
Do not underestimate. Half of the population cracks under the persistent provocation of a teenaged forum troll.
The polygraph is worse. I've hardly gone an hour in my adult life deprived of "what a stupid question" when the glove fits (I'm usually fine with the socially acceptable ways to put this idea across when permitted to speak at reasonable length).
If I had to go through lent giving up one of the three biggies of yes/no/what a stupid question, it sure wouldn't be the third option. The Japanese make do with one handy syllable covering all three, so I'm sure I could somehow manage my affairs well enough minus either "yes" or "no".
Between parking "what a stupid question" for an hour while being grilled on intimate matters by some smug asshole, or standing outside with my nut sack exposed, I'd have to give the matter genuine consideration.
Seriously, which humiliation is less defensible?
Sure. But here's a question. What does Caveat Emptor 101 for Slow Learners actually buy you at the end of the day?
What it bought me is an Android cell phone with such a pathetically small number of data-enabled applications installed on it that I turned off my data modem six months ago and have yet to miss it.
Furthermore, actually paying for an application is no guarantee it doesn't partake in same additional revenue streams. If you were too busy shouting the take-away slogan from Caveat Emptor 101 from the nearest available e-rooftop to notice this ugly fact, you might want to check yourself into the horror show known as Caveat Emptor 102. No need to write "102" down on paper lest you forget.
No, just "continue to repeat it, out loud if necessary, until it sticks."
With hard work and persistence, eventually you'll become qualified to enroll in Houston We Have a Problem Here 400 or Privacy 911 (dissertation mandatory).
I'm not entirely unsympathetic to your point, but I think you need to be careful about what you wish for.
A Buckley Revival by Andrew Ferguson, August 2015
This is a lovely piece of writing, even if its sympathies are tilted in Buckley's favour. To think that W. had a speech writer of this caliber standing behind him. How could one possibly know after W. mangled his words?
That said, this particular cat fight was notable at the time for being the rare exception to the prevailing etiquette, rather than daily fare. So yes, it was a different time—one already rushing headlong in an all-too-familiar direction.
I must have been about 95% certain this passage was going to end with "hidden under mattresses" so the actual ending caught me short. What strange subconscious tricks the mind plays based on tenor and tone.