baxter

I'm not sure if my brain is failing me but... "I calculated a less than 0.001% chance of posts (content) making the front page of Reddit. That is a 1/1000 chance."

Surely 1% is a 1 in 100 chance, 0.1% is a 1 in 1,000 chance, 0.001% would be 1 in 100,000 chance. Have I made a critical error here?

As someone who was 13 years old in 1996, I take exception to this. It looks like it was made by an 11 year old in 1996.

The OP links to the Popular Mechanics article in the first paragraph. I don't think it was intended as a replacement for the Popular Mechanics article, but as an addition to it.

AFAICT they are a registered charity with the goal of promoting computer science education, so I suspect large profit margins matter less than if they were a business.

I would be surprised if his current keyboard had LCD keys.

That's an excellent point! Perhaps I will put something together anyway. Thanks for this :)

It's so strange, I was just playing with pathfinding algorithms in CoffeeScript this weekend and thought about putting something like this together, but you have beaten me to it :) Really nice work.

Since up votes are hidden now, just want to make it clear that I +1 this.

The original NASA article: http://www.nasa.gov/topics/solarsystem/features/dna-meteorit...

I wondered this when she said "WYSIWYG". There are a few points where the tone of her voice suggests she is either at the start or the end of a sentence, but in fact she isn't.

I hadn't heard of namecoin until you mentioned it. It looks interesting.

But shouldn't it be called bitname?

I think you mean phishing, not pishing. :)

Many cinema chains in the UK have offers like this. My girlfriend has a cinema card that costs her £15 a month and allows her to see any film she likes (although she has to pay about £1.50 extra to see 3D films). This is an offer that's been available for at least 8 or 9 years. Tickets for 2D films in the UK typically cost around £7.50 (higher in London).

Granted this cinema card is only useable in cinemas belonging to the same chain.

Do any US cinema chains offer similar services?

Yeah, just encountered the same problem.

Have a look at the diagram under the heading "History of National Debt".

http://www.economicshelp.org/blog/uk-economy/uk-national-deb...

The British welfare state, including the National Health Service, was created around 1948 at the height of Britain's debt.

Arguments along the lines of "we're in debt" don't really seem to make sense.

I'm getting a 509, bandwidth limit exceeded. Here's the Google Cache: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttp%...

You're right, it was an oversight, sorry about that. I've posted the source code to GitHub now.

https://github.com/baxter/csterrain

"Considered harmful" considered harmful?

"Google does not associate sensitive interest categories with your ads preferences."

Does this really mean "We know more about you, but we're not going to tell you what it is?"

Hadn't heard of this. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2151768

When this was first mentioned at E3 last June Tycho from Penny Arcade had this to say about it:

For people who game primarily on consoles, you might not know what it means to have Steamworks integration. It varies depending on the implementation, it's sort of a la carte, and the PSN itself delivers some features by default. But you wont be paying for DLC on Valve games, ever. That is not a thing that will happen. And since Microsoft won't allow you to charge for something that is free on another system (recall R6: Vegas, or Burnout Paradise) it's an end run that's given Valve a lot of leverage. To sum up, Portal 2 isn't the surprise - Steamworks is the surprise. The porous nature of the PSN's functionality is an amazing opportunity for a company whose platform practically defines "platforms." Plus, there's no license associated with its use. Think about what this means for other developers, up to and including first parties. Why Sony would cede this kind of power to a third party I couldn't say, and why they would undermine the Playstation Store as a venue for premium content I couldn't tell you. This is important; we should be paying attention.

http://www.penny-arcade.com/2010/6/16/

I think the reason for this is that when you move an object further away from a surface the shadow becomes less pronounced and more diffuse.

I agree that it doesn't look quite right, though.

With no description I almost didn't click on this link, but I'm glad that I did. The title of the paper it links to is "29+ Evidences for Macroevolution, The Scientific Case for Common Descent" and is worth a look.

I was under the impression that artificial speciation had been achieved. Have I misunderstood http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speciation#Artificial_speciatio...?

I always think that concave goes in, like a cave.

The blog post on "A Human Right" might answer some of the questions posted here: http://www.blog.ahumanright.org/2010/10/buy-that-satellite/

Agree with your point, but just wanted to clarify that Nintendo do not make a loss on the Wii.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_Wii#cite_ref-wiisalesp...

Based on reviews such as Ars Technica's[1], I'd say that the Air could be used as a primary machine provided you are happy with the modest CPU and willing to upgrade the RAM from 2GB to 4GB.

[1]: http://arstechnica.com/apple/reviews/2010/11/the-future-of-n...

This is excellent, I was very surprised at the result. It's made me rethink some basic assumptions. Thanks very much! :)

I tend to think in a similar way, but I also recognise that since something better is always around the corner I might never buy anything!