Borogravia

Oh, we're still paying attention to Sean Parker?

Oh, look - it's the "help twitchy white people feel safe" app. Illustrative that we're making this kind of thing, rather than anything that might actually help make neighborhoods safer.

Imagine my surprise to learn that this utopia of privatization literally dumps shit on the poor people who live there.

People have been doing "google bombs" like this for about a decade, haven't they?

Beyond parody.

>That one is on Obama

Well, no. Bush had a glorious, golden opportunity in the wake of 9/11 to turn this huge wave of international goodwill into something that could have actually made the world a safer place.

Instead, he did precisely what the terrorists hoped he would do - Bush not only invaded Afghanistan, he lied the country into a breathtakingly stupid and pointless war with Iraq, single-handedly destabilizing the entire region and creating the ideal climate for terrorism to flourish.

The fact that Obama hasn't been able to put the toothpaste back in the tube doesn't mean that it's all his fault - it just means he was unable to clean up the global catastrophe that Bush created in eight years.

It's going to be funny as hell when the Chinese version dramatically outperforms the great-at-nothing boondoggle we've talked ourselves into buying.

Of course America isn't the worst case - but the point is kind of at the heart of the matter, and minimizing the issue just because the issue is even worse elsewhere is nonsensical.

You're not kidding - calling le Carre a "pop novelist" to begin with, let alone lumping him in with a hack like Tom Clancy, is selling him desperately short.

Uber are a bunch of assholes, but I don't think anybody's arguing that established taxi monopolies aren't also a bunch of assholes.

Google PR are such a bunch of fucking clowns.

Because nobody else in politics ever did this.

Strongly disagree. Inelegant, but effective.

Something something tech bubble, something something are you kidding me...

Fascinating.

Great piece.

Actually, Uber already did exactly what the article was talking about, to a Buzzfeed reporter. You should probably read more carefully.

Depending on the country you live in and what your race/religion/sexual orientation is, a company selling your information to somebody else could also get you killed.

Like CocaKoala, I have no idea what Gaming on Linux is, and the article wasn't at all helpful in explaining it. It must have been those "high editorial standards" getting in the way. Let's take this from the top:

* It's hard to know where to start with the primary image here. First, it's a terrible, low-res social network profile pic. Second, it's a crappy photoshop. Third, it includes a profanity that ranges from "very rude" in most of the English-speaking world to "extremely offensive" in other parts. Very bad on multiple levels.

* The article contains a large number of simple grammar and usage mistakes, making it all the more troubling that the author is apparently also the editor of this publication. Many nouns are capitalized for no apparent reason. The author appears to believe - incorrectly - that ellipsis is an acceptable substitute for the common period.

Linux distro names are italicized for some reason. Phrases are bold-faced for emphasis, as though on a teenager's LiveJournal. The list of mystifying errors is long.

* As if the basic mechanical problems in the piece weren't enough, the author's actual writing focuses heavily on childish invective and name-calling, to the near-exclusion of basic facts and narrative. He veers wildly among topics, stopping here to heap abuse on people who have nothing to do with the article he's writing, and pausing there to - unwisely - foreground his own editorial prowess.

In short - this is an amateurish, mean-spirited and frankly quite depressing excuse for a piece of online journalism, written with a breathtaking lack of skill by an author for whom the term "hack" is far too good.

Nobody ever explains why people comment before reading articles, yet here we are.

Completely agree. As a hack writer who periodically takes a swing at writing sci-fi, I struggle badly when trying to get both realism and excitement into space combat.

Wormholes, man. Wormholes. It's still not the same, of course - a game where you don't really "fly" your ship, like EVE, is never going to be immersive in the same way an Elite game is - but it's damned addictive in its way.

Gee, that sure sounds like a scientific way to make such a determination.

Beta backer here, have already wasted a ton of time in this game. "Fly-by-wire" is called "flight assist" in the game, and it works essentially the way you describe.

You mostly get the sort of gravity effects you're describing in the fast-traveling "supercruise" mode, where the proximity of a large mass severely slows you down. The effect is handy for slowing to approach speed close to stations, since they're generally close to a planet or a moon.

No, I think the author has every right to be insulted and angry over the presumption that he should work for free. Just saying "well, that's the way it is" is intellectually lazy, and portraying a dominant middleman like HuffPo as a healthy part of a genuinely free market is simply wrong.

Just imagine how many lives it will save once Google is allowed to implant Maps directly into our parietal lobes.

To add to the WW2 examples - The German Bf-109 wasn't the best fighter of the war by most standards, yet it got flown by arguably the best fighter pilots in history (thanks to the insane Luftwaffe policy of keeping the best pilots on the front line in perpetuity), and so is responsible for more aerial victories than any other aircraft.

Also small, also cheap, and the Germans built scads of them. You could really see the difference in training and experience, however, toward the end of the war, where badly trained German pilots were thoroughly outclassed by their Allied opponents.

Oh, you know, just a few things:

http://valleywag.gawker.com/uber-used-the-boston-bombing-ann...

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/03/28/uber-s-bigg...

http://pando.com/2012/10/24/travis-shrugged/

http://www.nbcchicago.com/investigations/Ride-Service-May-Po...

http://pando.com/2014/04/24/uberx-allegedly-hired-a-convicte...

http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Uber-sued-over-girl-s-...

I agree with your point, but do you really find it that surprising?

Yes, I read the article - did you understand it? He talked about building a better AFFILIATE service, which works by tilting nominally non-promotional Google results the way someone with money wants them to go.

Then he said, "don't hate the player, hate the game," in the grand tradition of self-justifying sleazebags everywhere. Then he talked about losing Diablo 2 characters like that's some kind of moment of personal growth.