DIVx0

I really like the simplicity and efficiency of Guaranteed Income. Social welfare is one of the 'costs of doing business' in a modern civilization. Cut the crap and just give everyone basic resources without reservations.

The way I see it if someone really does not want to work, they'll go to great lengths to cheat the system and the government will spend a great deal combating these people. Just giving the bum money will be cheaper for everyone.

More importantly a basic income will free up people who will take jobs just because they have to. This will actually open up jobs for people who want to work hard to rise above the basic level. It will give people freedom to explore things that would not be feasible otherwise. This will generate more art, more music, new science and philosophies.

Perhaps my thoughts are too idealistic but I think its more reasonable than trying to police welfare or telling everyone to just be more bootstrappy.

Some of these prices seem too good to be true. I know the accommodations on some of these are pretty sparse but the listings on some of these properties include transportation, guide, food for a price that would be reasonable at any hotel without the extras (guide, food, etc).

These locations and setup are compelling enough though. I'll have to put some research time into this, seems like just the sort of thing I'd want to do.

This was one of my favorite lab assignments when I was at university. If I recall correctly this lab was run back to back with another really fun one out of the same book. The other had to do with modifying code to take advantage of some compiler optimizations. Loop unrolling, array layout, stuff like that.

allow me to brag a bit: I was the only one in my class to not set off the bomb!

Over my lifetime riding bikes I have witnessed two major crashes where both non helmeted victims survived with life changing traumatic brain injuries.

One fell off a low bridge and the other was riding causally along and somehow ended up going over the bars and hitting her head on the curb.

Seeing just one of these was all the reason I needed to never ride without a helmet.

I wear a couple types depending on what sort of riding I'm doing (mountain, road, racing) they are MIPS equipped when ever available.

Some of the mega corps do have some really cool work going on. It's not all rank-and-file development, I'm not even talking about R&D. The cities are fairly small compared to other larger midwest cities and if you have a decent reputation as someone who can deliver code or pick up good work there is plenty of opportunity to shine very brightly at a large org and have your pick of projects to tackle.

Fortune 500 aside, there are a lot of smaller startups in the cities. They mostly focus on creating products aimed at the health insurance industry though, which in my experience is fairly dull work.

Minneapolis/St. Paul are not huge cities and having the benefit of growing up here I find that my professional network pretty much covers the greater metro area. It seems like everyone knows each other or is only a connection or two away.

With that being said, the best way is to pull on a professional network (natch) and the best way to build that network is to attend some of the tech focused meetups in either city. Ruby.mn is pretty popular if you're into Ruby (or just wanting to meet devs in general).

Otherwise the safest route is to join up with one of the large firms and build a network from there to branch out into more smaller gigs if thats your thing.

Our light rail and commuter rail system is a joke. I mean, they are nice to have but decades of NIMBYism and political interference delayed and morphed them into systems that work but are shadows of what they could have been.

IMO the one thing that saves our mass transit is that busses are allowed to ride on the shoulder bypassing most traffic. I lived in the north burbs and had a job downtown Minneapolis. I could take an express bus from a nice ramp facility to right into downtown with just one extra stop. 20 minute trip vs nearly an hour in a car.

However, forget about using mass transit if you're trying to get anywhere outside of downtown Minneapolis.

Also, the cities are bike friendly but not as friendly as most 'best places to bike' actually say they are. Most articles go by sum of miles of bike lanes, but many bike lanes here are pretty terrible. Not protected, poorly maintained, not plowed or light enforcement for cars badly parked. I'd say Minneapolis is as bike friendly as any other ubran area with a sizable health conscious population.

Minneapolis/St.Paul MN is right in the sweet spot. Tons of really good jobs out here, plenty of reasonably affordable and interesting housing in the sub/urban areas. Good education system, great music scene.

There are some downsides of course, the winters of course and there are some racial social issues (not addressing here to avoid derailing thread).

With all that being said I am looking to add some good software devs to my green field project at a very big local player in the medical insurance field.

I have a scratch folder full of stuff like this written in whatever scripting language is closest at hand, ruby, perl, python, etc. I'd wager most people here would have something similar.

I wonder if it would be an interesting project to comb though it all and see if any useful tools could be extracted. Probably not, like the code in this blog most of my one-offs are unashamedly terrible.

I'm in the same camp as you. I really like this hardware but I don't want to use Windows. I don't think we'll see any good support for all of the modes it can operate in on other operating systems though at least not for a long while and then in very limited capacity.

Me not wanting to use Windows is more about unfamiliarity with what modern windows is like for a non MS centric developer. My previous experience dates back to the XP days where trying to do anything other than MS things was a chore. I _really_ like the surfacebook, maybe it's time to take another look at windows?

pigoon balloon! I just finished re-reading the trilogy but Oryx and Crake was the best of the three.

I played this game a lot when it was still early access. I thought it was pretty fun but there were some bugs at the time that messed up several prisons i had built. I gave up playing shortly after that.

I assume those bugs have been fixed though! I should give this game another go.

I wonder how well this would work on carpeted stairs? Since the treads are gripping only the 'nose' of the stair is there the possibility of slippage on the pile? What if the padding gave way or the treads pulled the carpet away from the stair?

How well would this chair recover from scenarios like this? Or in any failure for that matter.

It certainly looks like it has a lot of promise!

A big part of the 'craft beer revolution' for me is supporting local businesses as many of my favorite brews are local to my sate or region. Also since macros have such a choke hold on distribution many of the best local crafts can only be had at taprooms or brew pubs which also plays nicely into 'supporting local' and they're fantastic social centers.

I don't think macros could ever really touch those aspects of the scene.

Besides locking your car into a garage, is there anything a VW owner can do to make it more difficult for these types of thefts to occur?

I did not really know what to expect but these photos are amazing and they're not even from the nearest approach!

Who knew the surface would be so crater free?

The jobs I've held have not been particularly 'mathy' but knowing linear algebra, numerical analysis and statistics have come in very handy over the years.

Knowing how to 'read' math has been helpful digesting Computer Science papers too.

Figuring out what to exactly click on in the 'interactive' video was far more challenging than the puzzle was.

Student wants to learn the vocational art of programming, discovers Computer Science is not about programming, drops out. Sounds like everything went the way it should have.

I majored in CS and there were no end of students complaining about discreet math or analyzing algorithms when all they wanted was to learn what ever the hot language was at the time.

Schools don't need to change CS programs, they need to better market an alternative software development curriculum.

It has been a couple years since I've given Pandora a fair try. I was a paid subscriber for a while but I ended up leaving the service because I thought their radio stations and library were too shallow. I'd request a station for an artist only to find it was not available or when available they'd only play a narrow spectrum of related songs.

Also their radio stations suffered the same problem as Spotify does. Trying to tune the station by giving feedback on dis/likes only caused the station to focus in.

I could give them a try again if they've expanded their selections.

Sure, i know what you're saying. The playlists I do subscribe to are indeed updated continuously. However updates are relatively minor. A few songs from artists already on the list, maybe one or two totally new-to-me artists every other week. I'm not saying it's nothing but I want more.

Spotify boasts a gigantic library, I cant imagine I've heard everything good (objectively) already. There has to be thousands of hours of material that I simply can't find that I'd otherwise love to hear.

I've tried many of their playlists. I've found some that are very good and was thrilled to find them, however the content was easy to exhaust and I ended up picking apart those playlists for new artists. Back to square 1 if you will.

I know it sounds like whining, but I really think the 'killer app' of music will be something that can effortlessly pick out the unknown gems from the ocean of new music. I'm continually surprised about the quality of new music but I don't like to have to dig around for it my self.

I'd pay $20/month or more for a service that:

* had high quality streams

* had gigantic library

* _biggest of all_ cracked the 'discovery' nut.

I listen to music all day, I don't like to listen to the same tracks more than a few times so I have a hard time keeping my queue full.

I'm a Spotify subscriber so I'll find an artist I think is interesting, play their whole discography and then start digging into 'related artists' to find new stuff.

This is a bit of a drag and is hit or miss. I don't necessarily want to find related music, but music that I might like. Spotify's radio feature is just about useless. Voting one way or the other will skew it to play pretty much _only_ the thumbs up'ed artist or avoid a genre entirely if you thumbs down a particular track.

I still think there is a killer music service waiting to be born. I don't think Tidal will be it.

I know it was just an aside arc to the main story but having just listened to an interview* of Sam Simon, he mentioned that he was the creator of Mr. Burns look. The original character was more 'fat cat' style but he turned Mr. Burns into more 'vulture' like after seeing the sketch.

* Marc Maron's WTF podcast.

Probably depends on the direction of the force and other conditions but I'd imagine the male part of the connector would break or bend in some scenarios.

Having been a long time laptop user, I've had several incidents where one of my large dogs get wrapped up in a cord and runs off with either my computer crashing to the floor or me hanging onto it while the charging pin breaks or bends. It is a big annoyance when that happens with magsafe still, I'll have to get up and fetch the cord again.. but i'd trade that annoyance with the alternative any day.

This new MacBook has nice battery life and if I had one I can see using it without needing to plug it in while i'm on the couch or something.

What worries me though is a precedent being set. I am not in the market for a MacBook or MacBook Air, however I do buy MacBook Pros. I do everything on them from software dev, video editing, playing games. Much of that use is not battery friendly so I will _need_ to plug those in while i'm on the couch or in a high traffic area. I love the idea of USB-C I just hope Apple keeps MagSafe around for form factors they are not trying to reduce to sheets of paper thickness.

I'm really sorry to see magsafe go. Between my dogs and kids I would have gone though a dozen macbooks without magsafe.

I sincerely hope this no magsafe or single port thing goes into the MBPs as well.

Same can be said for bananas, I always try to find local bananas (or other fruit) when ever i'm somewhere tropical. So much better.

With that said, I think I've only ever eaten Hass Avocados and I think they are delicious so my next trip to CA I'll be sure to seek out some local varieties.

I've been messing around with OpenSCAD for a little. I am working on some 'art' projects that would make heavy use of geometric shapes and I love the idea of generating these things in code.

Another alternative that I've found, and like a lot, is OpenJSCAD. Very similiar to OpenSCAD but with javascript:

http://openjscad.org/

As someone who also loves food and preparing it, I am also a consumer of Soylent.

While it takes away the joy of a well prepared meal it gives that back in time and convenience. I can't help but spend too much time in the kitchen when I'm making something. I go overboard and over do it to a fault.

With a food like Soylent I can get in and out in minutes. Eating Soylent does not mean you can't spend time making a great meal when you have the opportunity too. After several weeks on this new food I appreciate my home cooked meal much more than I had in the past. Win-Win as far as I'm concerned.