The fact it's about a book rather than a scientific article makes me suspicious. Finding people who are untreated and struggling is common. So what's the point of it being a book? Other than cashing in on the "it's all in your head" sentiment? Claiming it's real in a small aside just seems like ass covering.
I'm generally not fond of this sort of article and this one is no exception. They present a case that drug companies like selling drugs but we knew that. What they don't do is present a good case that ADHD is actually overdiagnosed. The world in general is not very good at accepting psychological conditions. ADHD is commonly regarded as "youth", "laziness", or "lacking discipline". Watching a loved one fight to focus continually is just heartbreaking. We still have quite a number of cases where people are stuck fumbling without help.
I think if you're marking up text, you really want to be using markdown one of the other wiki like formats. For writing you're much more likely to run into non-technical people who will be severely impacted by syntax errors.
Forth's simplicity is very beautiful. But that simplicity is also why it's a dead end. Simplicity is not a worthwhile goal in and of itself. People use computers to get things done. Ultimately the goal is to empower people. All those complicated bits are part of what empowers people. We need things like filesystems, network stacks, operating systems and standards to tie it all together. Foregoing all of that in the modern age effectively leaves you with a computer that might as well be a cog. Which may be fine for some classes of embedded systems but that is increasingly not enough.
Speed ties to "not awkward". Awkwardness is probably very important. Anytime something is awkward there is a decent chance it will trigger a mental interrupt. Personally, I've been cutting back on anything that adds mental load not related to the thing I'm actually trying to do.
Yeah personally, I like my split keyboard. Until, I got a split keyboard I couldn't really touch type. I think the problem is the arrangement of keys for the left index finger on traditional keyboards. So now that I have a split keyboard, I can touch type. Though, I'm still slower than I would like.
All that said, I fully encourage any mucking about with keyboard layouts. There are quite a few variables that can be tweaked.
I would love to have my AC unit controllable by my computer. Then I could automatically scale the temperature settings between comfortable and good enough for the cat. The real payoff would be the bedroom since our sleeping hours aren't consistent.
Those all have significant hurdles to be overcome. Wind and solar both require significant infrastructure along. Nuclear has political issues and even without them the build out would/should be slow. Hydrogen is horribly inefficient. Hydro is very dependent on the terrain and has environmental impact problems.
I'm not saying they aren't part of the solution. But, we need to recognize the scale and complexity of the problem. Solving or at least weathering it will require multiple angles of attack, significant time, effort, engineering work and quite likely scientific advancement.
It is literally a problem of not having good enough alternatives. Fossil fuels have an energy density of 30-40MJ/kg. Also they provide power on demand. Ignoring climate effects, they are pretty close to ideal. Lithium ion batteries have less than 10% the density. Teslas only work by making up for the horrible inefficiency of passenger cars, and by devoting significantly more of the car's mass to energy storage. So far I haven't heard much at all about battery powered freight transportation.
Because the data went from something you have to dig around and scrounge to find to a downloadable database. And that is a very big distinction when it comes to who will seek it out and why.
My primary issue with Vi and Emacs isn't really about lack. They are quite powerful tools. The primary problem is that they impose a certain amount of mental overhead. Emacs was a bit worse in that regard since many of its key bindings are actually sequences. Sublime Text is rather powerful but in terms of features it's probably the one that is lacking of the 3. The win was in unloading the overhead from my normal work patterns.
<rant>I've used Vi and Emacs as my primary editor. Now I've moved on to Sublime Text 3. Despite being powerful tools Vi and Emacs have probably harmed the state of Unix text editing. They've kept antiquated UIs from before keyboards were an text editing UIs were standardized. It's kinda sad that MS Dos, Windows and MacOS have all had a plethora of powerful editors with convenient standard user interface meanwhile the Unix world is anchored to Vi and Emacs. It seems like they've managed to starve out a good chunk of innovation on this front.
I've learned the hard way that the only legitimate use for XML is to maintain compatibility with things that already use XML. It doesn't have a direct translation to any sensible data structure other than DOM. It sucks as a markup language since document writers find syntax errors anathema. I've seen the idea of XSD schemas used as a defense since then you at least have a schema unlike JSON. However, experience has taught me that in practice everyone does XML wrong so that's of limited value at best. I guess there is a limited situation in which you have pre-existing XSLT to translate between two pre-existing XML interfaces but eww.
Phones are doomed by their UI restrictions to be primarily consumption devices. The primary restriction in computers has always been in how well they communicate with the user. Smartphone screens are limited to what will fit in our pocket so the bandwidth to the user is limited by that and halves once the on screen keyboard pops up. The situation is actually worse for user to computer bandwidth. You cannot do proper multi-finger touch typing on a smartphone. Your finger just can't approach the resolution of a mouse. Also you don't have multiple buttons like a mouse, the only action is touch. So the machine is stuck trying to separate a touch, swipe, and potentially a long touch. That's error prone so phones are often doing things people don't want them to.
That's not to say smart phones suck. I love mine. All the disadvantages have to be weighed against the value of having a network connected computer in your pocket wherever you go. There is quite a bit of latency involved in sitting down at computer compared with pulling a smartphone out of one's pocket.
I tried using OpenSCAD to design a mug to be 3D printed as a family Christmas present recently. It seemed to me like there were missing tools. Up until now I've done my hobby "CAD" work using the Diagrams library in Haskell. It works really nice for 2D work that will get sent to a laser cutter. The 3D portion of Diagrams though is still under development. So I tried working with OpenSCAD. I think if I were doing more traditional work it would have worked out ok. There were 2 basic issues I ran into.
The first may have been just my wimpy computer but as I approached what I wanted the whole process got slower and slower. Some of that could be combatted by adding tunable resolution parameters to keep the number of polygons down. It should be pointed out that OpenSCAD doesn't really do curves. Everything is polygons which at least in the roughing you design out phase are rather visible.
The second issue I ran into is that some of the way things are done makes it harder to work than you would like. Complex data structures aren't really a thing. If I remember rightly there are arrays but nothing more complex. You can't iterate over the points in a shape. There doesn't appear to be a way to extract dimension data from a shape. CSG is nice but sometimes you want more.
These may not have been that much of an issue if I were doing something different. Trying to wrap a 3D model around another non-uniformly curved 3D model just isn't really what the tool was designed for. And to be fair, I couldn't get AutoDesk's free tools to do what I wanted either. That is probably due partially to a lack of experience in the area and probably pushing the tools to do things they just didn't have in mind.
I've tried a couple of times to play with Ocaml. In seem like something that should be great but it just falls short. Some of that is tooling that isn't fully baked. Another issue is the syntax. The weird split between the interface description file and the code file. The lack of a unified DB interface. The lack of proper Windows support.
I work for a large mega corp and we do this all the time. It's because we have a contractor who we want to convert into a real employee. You can't just say "This person has been working with us for a couple of years. Can we make them a real employee so we can keep them and they get benefits?". There is a whole process advertising the position internally and externally even though you already have someone.
I suspect it helps to remove shitty window managers like Unity or Gnome3 and go to something more basic like xfce. I just set up an example Ubuntu VM today. Unity is annoyingly laggy. My primary VM with xfce is fine.
This. I don't regret the time I spend just thinking. I do however regret the time lost to boredom. They're not the same thing. Boredom to me is a state of wanting to do something but either not being able to or not knowing what that something is.
If Microsoft is going to get solid hold on Mobile, it will be through tablets. The Surface line is relatively well liked. The number one detractor for Windows in mobile is the lack of apps. If Microsoft can use their desktop dominance to push their way into tablets. Life could get very uncomfortable for Google and Apple.
Most of the innovation in consumer clocks is aesthetic. Anyone can pick up a clock from Walmart that does everything they need and will last for years for cheap. Displaying the numbers by manipulating magnetic fluid is an interesting and pleasing way to do things. It's never going to be cheaper, more reliable, or more efficient than and LCD display. However, it doesn't have to be. That's not the point.
It's also important to note that these rules are made for critical control systems that tend to be low level. The cost benefit trade offs aren't going to be the same as in typical business software.
Regardless of where the line is, there needs to be some standard of ethical behaviour for both researchers and industry in general. Medicine already has these rules. Moreover without a viable code of ethics, Congress is just going to do what the first corporate lobbyist suggests.
Judging by the last "going to Mars"thing I saw, I got the impression there isn't a Mars project so much as a set of projects that could help us go to Mars but also provide other benefits.