AlexDanger

I thought MS was (quietly) killing WPF and burying it next to Silverlight? Not soon enough I think. Nice idea, headache inducing implementation.

There arent currently alternatives in the x86 market. Certainly Intel were the biggest back then, but the market share was around 70-75% not 85%+ that is it now.

I remember when this FDIV bug happened in ~94-95, at the time there were plenty of x86 manufacturers. AMD presented probably the biggest competitive threat to Intel. IBM, Cyrix, VIA were all cheap-and-cheerful CPUs that found their way into plenty of office desktops via OEMs.

AMD were a serious problem for Intel around 1998-2001 with their K7 architecture. The Athlons and Durons were incredible bang for buck and owned the desktop high-end mindshare. Anyway that's a discussion for another time :)

Back to phones - Samsung dominate the Android phone space. Time will tell if people move away but history suggests they'll be perfectly fine. People still drive Toyota despite product defects killing people.

I guarantee in 12 months people wont give a shit if the latest Samsung phone is a top performer. Phones are a status symbol. Safety rarely trumps fashion in the consumer retail world.

Oh I agree this is not malice. Sounds like some battery supplier to Samsung screwed up. No excuses from Samsung QA but presumably the battery supplier really screwed up their QA or manufacturing processes.

Even with the news that the Note 7 is effectively dead....I dont think this will be more than a blip on Samsung's history and some uncomfortable quarterly financial reports. I am certain they are not 'finished' in the sense that consumers will stop purchasing Samsung phones. Time will tell.

And yet I dont see anyone complaining about Intel processors being unable to do FP calculations. People made jokes for a while with the FDIV bug but Intel just did the recall and moved on.

Samsung will get over it. So will consumers. The brand is a juggernaut.

So was it just one particular Asrock motherboard that allows this type of overclocking? Whilst my hardcore overclocking days are behind me, I have an i5-6500 and some kind of Asus mobo...I'm curious to take it for a test drive.

I agree this sounds a great candidate for YC. I hope you are looking to take this global. The cost/benefit in health outcomes would be enormous.

Most importantly, I think a system like this must be non-profit and freely available for global usage. Privacy issues can be solved with careful ETL process. Ideally a single global platform...although political realities may force multiple instances.

Regardless of implementation details - this seems to fit the YC Research charter in terms of medium/long horizons and big 'change the world' payoffs.

Hi, I have not tried Polarr before.

It looks great, and i'll probably give it a go. However it doesnt improve my workflow - I still have to download my photos from Gmail (or random websites or whatever) and open them in Polarr.

Recall I'm looking for integration with a browser. If it was a Chrome extension, and I could right click on any image, on any webpage, and select 'Open with Polarr', that would be a great start.

Looks pretty good. Have you considered turning this into a Chrome extension?

I've not found a simple photo editor extension that I can use within Chrome. Ideally I'd just like to right click on photos, do simple crop/resize/quality/colour conversions and have the results available for insertion into gmail attachments or form uploads (via a temp URL perhaps?).

This would replace my current workflow...often I find myself receiving a set of images in gmail, downloading them, performing trivial manipulation with Windows photo editor or paintbrush, saving the results with sensible encoding/quality (some ppl forward me bitmaps...) then re-uploading the results.

Hi. I like the site, well done. It was clear within 30 seconds of visiting your site that you are passionate about knives and stand behind what you sell. That impression is very clear and a very positive sales pitch. I trust you.

I am not in the market for a knife at the moment but I'd be happy ordering from your site.

One question: is there any issue shipping knives internationally? I live in Australia and know we have some fairly strict import laws around explosives and sharp things. If customs decide your item is prohibited it can be a real headache getting it released.

What is the metallic taste? I've experienced this before during fasting periods. Anyway to get rid of it without sugary fruit juice?

I'm always impressed with people who invent things like this. Well done. It inspires me to push my own skills, particularly when things get complacent at work.

Not sure how it is in USA/Europe - but in Australia, some of the biggest banks/telcos still ring up customers (from private numbers) and ask for all your personal details to confirm your identity before proceeding with the call. Some even ask for plaintext passwords over the phone. At the same time they have big warnings on their webpages about phishing and how they'll never ask for personal details over email.

More than once I've explained that providing all my details in this fashion directly contradicts the security policy of the banks, but it takes some convincing to get the phone operators to give you a number you can confirm is legitimate and call them back. Its clearly not on the call center script and they dont understand why I am being so pedantic.

>Tap water tastes funny

In Australia the tap water has very strict monitoring and is tested often. The water here tastes fine.

What is absolutely staggering is that bottled water is not monitored as strictly as tap water, yet costs about 1000x more. All those pictures of pristine waterfalls and bubbling springs are absolute bullshit. You are far more likely to get a hefty dose of chlorine or other containment from bottled water.

They are downright evil but kudos to the Coke marketing department. Who was the genius that pitched the idea of selling sub-standard water at 1000x the price of what we get from the tap? I'd have said its a ridiculous idea. Clearly I was wrong.

Personally, I use a soda-stream at home if I get a soda craving. Cheap, no health concerns, convenient and less impact on the environment. If I really feel I need some sugar I'll squeeze an orange into a litre of fizzy water. Still a bit of sugar but nothing compared to a coke.

You can bet Madagascar will be the first to close their borders.

>No. In the case of oil, there's low elasticity of substitution. Trillions of dollars of infrastructure run on oil, not alternative fuels.

Is this elasticity of substitution quantified? I'd like to read more about it if you have a link. My gut feeling is that this elasticity is improving (despite increasing oil consumption) due to general technological advancement and a high-speed globalised economy.

How well can we respond to a price spike now versus 30 years ago? Can we mitigate the economic impact of a price spike faster than we could 30 years ago? These are the trends I am interested in investigating.

What happened to all the typewriter repairmen when computers became ubiquitous?

Certainly there will be upheaval in the labor market. I can certainly see unions and lobby groups pushing back against autonomous vehicles and delaying adoption.

But I dont think its significantly different to other technological revolutions (the wheel, the transistor, the computer, the internet).

I think you miss the point and are being overly semantic.

All I'm trying to convey is my feeling (shared by many) that autonomous vehicles represent a technological step change that will change the way we live. Similar to how the internal combustion engine, radio, antibiotics, transistors, telephones and the internet have changed the way we live.

Do you think a child today would consider it bizarre and surprising that in 1850, if you got the flu, you'd probably die and it might take 3-4 days of travelling to arrive at a medical centre?

>I really don't understand this love affair people have with the idea that we should let some corporate computer network decide when and if we're allowed to leave our homes.

I should have read this first, you're just being silly. No one is suggesting this is the case.

I really feel autonomous cars are a prime candidate for Next Big Thing over the coming 10-25 years.

Combined with transportation platforms such as Uber, I wouldnt be surprised to see fleets of robotic taxis exclusively servicing dense urban areas in the next 15 years. Its one of those great problems that can scale locally if an enthusiastic city council or government get behind it. Something like an extension of what London has done with their congestion charge: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_congestion_charge

Just imagine the transition to an inner city driverless fleet. No more parking problems in metro areas. Massive swathes of real estate become available as parking bays are no longer required. Markedly faster travel from A->B as networked cars work together to ensure optimal traffic flow. Once all the meatspace human drivers are off the grid, you can remove traffic lights.

Australia is well placed from a rural transportation perspective - we have many small towns 500km apart and plenty of road freight. Accidents on these roads are usually from driver fatigue, speeding or hitting wildlife. These roads are 'easy' for driverless cards - long and straight, not many surprises (except the odd kangaroo which I think the cold heart of an AI would handle better - the worst thing you can do is swerve to avoid them and roll your vehicle).

I think when the kids of 2150 sit down in history class to study the 20th century, they'll laugh at the idea that every family invested significant money into 1-2 expensive hunks of steel for transportation. We fling these big dirty hunks of steel around at 100mph for perhaps 5% of the day. It can get quite dangerous! Then we waste huge amounts of land by storing them for the other 95% of the day. How bizarre is that?

I've had quality issues with some of their previous keyboard mouse combos, particularly bluetooth mice and perishing rubber.

However currently I use a M325 wireless mouse and its very tough. Carry it in my dusty laptop bag, dropped it a few times - no problems at all. No issues with rubber degradation. Highly recommended and works with unifying receivers.

International students coming to Australia for their education is a very big business. In total its about 22% of the student population, up to 40% at some institutions.

https://aei.gov.au/research/International-Student-Data/Docum...

http://www.australianuniversities.com.au/directory/student-n...

Domestic university students in Australia have no upfront tuition fees. We have a student loan type system called HECS (Higher Education Contribution Scheme) which is sort of like a student loan but effectively interest free (it rises with inflation via the CPI). Payments are made automatically from your salary but only when you reach a thresholded salary (~$50k). Its been a very good system in that it achieves a specific objective - accessibility of higher education to most Australians.* If your parents arent rich you can still go to a good university.

https://www.ato.gov.au/rates/help-repayment-thresholds-and-r...

International students are not eligible for this system and pay full tuition fees. Fees vary considerably but you are looking at $50k-$250k depending on whether you are going for an arts degree or full medical school. It is a massive source of funding for universities in Australia.

There are occassionally some minor scandals, for instance every now and then an academic passes an overseas student that should have failed because of administrative pressure. There is also a real concern that research is second place and the institutions are becoming undergrad sausage factories churning out graduates. Universities here are certainly more like businesses than they were 20 years ago (see comment below about our current government). But overall I think its been very positive for Australia. It aids multicultural thinking and integration with Asia. It also subsidises the cost of education for domestic students.

* the current government are trying to change this so we have a system more like the USA. They have a fight on their hands.

Putting aside the cost/hours of recovering the money, is this the only reason its 'untraceable'?

I understand it becomes tedious to unravel the transactions, but is it still a tractable problem? Or do these people eventually shift the money into offshore banks that refuse to co-operate with authorities? It seems such a bank would be quickly cut off from the rest of the world if it existed.

I strongly disagree with the assertion that gaming is a lemon market. The information asymmetry doesn't exist and I think the analogy is flawed in this case.

The key part of Akerlof's used-car market is the information asymmetry that exists for every instance of a car. Two caryards may have the exact same year/model/colour of Toyota camry. One has no serious flaws and is priced at $1000. The other is priced at $500 but has lots of hidden problems and is a real lemon. To the consumer they look the same, and the logical choice is the $500 car. The $1000 car never gets sold. This is the lemon market in action.

Software is different because when you sell 100k units of software, its a reasonable assumption to believe that all of these 100k units are the same piece of software[1]. A game being reviewed, or upvoted on reddit, or aggregated on metacritic - this is the same software I will recieve if I choose to purchase it. Thus there is no information asymmetry.

If anything, the market has become better in this regard. It is easier now to choose a high quality game. When I was a kid, and lucky enough to have enough dollars in my hand to purchase a video game - I had to make my decision based on the cover art of the SEGA cartridge. Perhaps if I was lucky I would have some entirely objective (cough) information from the Official SEGA Magazine.

[1] Yes, some people will experience the game differently because of device compatibility issues, but that information is also shared (ie Google Play filters reviews by people with the same device as you).

You should read Transition Dreams by Greg Egan. I've linked to Amazon in the posts above.

There may be some interesting side effects when you 'copy' a concious entity.

Here for $2.99:

http://www.amazon.com/Luminous-Greg-Egan-ebook/dp/B00E84BABW...

Get this collection as well:

http://www.amazon.com/Axiomatic-Greg-Egan-ebook/dp/B00FDWOBZ...

Alas no. I read a range of sci-fi but am not aware of other authors who write such amazing speculative fiction. He really takes sci-fi ideas to unpredictable yet believable conclusions. It is real hard sci-fi.

If you do discover similar authors, please let me know.

Recommended reading:

All his short stories are amazing. I'd highly recommend them:

http://www.amazon.com/Luminous-Greg-Egan-ebook/dp/B00E84BABW

http://www.amazon.com/Axiomatic-Greg-Egan-ebook/dp/B00FDWOBZ...

Some of his novels are hit and miss, but certainly worth checking out. This is probably my favourite:

http://www.amazon.com/Permutation-City-Greg-Egan-ebook/dp/B0...

The author Greg Egan addresses these types of themes extremely well.

One of my favourite short stories is specifically related to the idea expressed in your post: http://ttapress.com/553/crystal-nights-by-greg-egan/

On a tangential note, he has another short story (Transition Dreams) that examines the process of 'uploading' a human brain from its natural substrate to a computer. He raises some thought-provoking points about this process.

Interesting, I did not know that. Which GPS did you end up using?

Consumer GPS devices have some interesting lock-down rules built into them. They shut themselves down if they detect you are travelling around Mach 2 or above 18000 metres altitude.

The reasoning is fairly obvious - they dont want to see dumb missiles getting upgraded to a DIY guided ballistic missile thanks to a $100 Garmin gaffa taped to the side and a cheap flight control computer.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CoCom

Thank you for your kind words. I strongly agree with you about fostering a positive work environment at the peer level. I think it compliments rather than interferes with the responsibilities of management. I've found that simply maintaining a strong team focus and a generous attitude to knowledge sharing makes a big difference. I'm glad to see some research that backs this up:

http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/organization/givers_take_al...

http://www.fas.org/irp/dni/isb/analytic.pdf

Brilliant, i'll check it out.

Can you recommend further academic publications or research on this type of toxic behaviour in the workplace? What is the term for these people? Some of them are psychopaths but that seems a bit extreme for this range of behavioural traits.