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I hope he'd appreciate the memetic irony that the word has taken on a life of its own

huxleyon Autodraw – Fast Drawing for Everyone

I remember seeing that on the Newton way back in the 20th century:

huxleyon The mystery surrounding a copy of Galileo’s pivotal treatise

I quite enjoyed "F is for Fake" by Orson Welles, which starts of as a documentary essay of sorts about an art forger. It discusses some of the same issues with authentication.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F_for_Fake

huxleyon Atmospheric CO2 levels accelerate upwards

Rocky Mountain Institute criticized Frank's paper and showed that it had many incorrect or outdated assumptions:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/amorylovins/2014/08/05/sowing-c...

http://www.rmi.org/Knowledge-Center/Library/2014-21_Frank-Re...

huxleyon Atmospheric CO2 levels accelerate upwards

The subsidy per KWh from Hinkley Point C is roughly equal to to the current market rate for electricity because of the guaranteed price needed to build the plant, so the electricity effectively costs twice as much.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/jul/13/hinkley-poin...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2016/07/13/hinkley-point...

huxleyon Atmospheric CO2 levels accelerate upwards

I get what you're trying to say but you're probably not old enough to remember (or weren't born yet), however environmental protection legislation was considered "hippie bullshit" well into the late 20th century.

huxleyon OS/2 2.0, Summer ’91 Edition

NEXTSTEP evolved into MacOS X and iOS so it wasn't a total failure

huxleyon Android devices can be fatally hacked by malicious Wi-Fi networks

Parent was referring to Windows on desktops and laptops

huxleyon Android devices can be fatally hacked by malicious Wi-Fi networks

I know many wouldn't see it as malicious (especially if it was done to someone else's device), but doing it without someone's knowledge or consent does seem to cross into that territory, especially if the user didn't understand or value the benefits.

huxleyon The Town of Innisfil partners with Uber for transit instead of buses

Innisfil seems ideal for a small busline, if I remember it correctly the "town" is a relatively small rural grid with big lots.

The density can't be great for Uber drivers.

huxleyon Android overtakes Windows as the internet’s most used operating system

A lot of Windows NT was based on work Dave Cutler had done on VMS and RSX-11, so while I'm sure most of the code was new, the ideas are of a similar vintage to Unix.

huxleyon Samsung’s biggest challenge now is Google software, not Apple hardware

It's part of the Samsung Accelerator, but do they actually own it?

huxleyon Earth is a ‘dwarf planet’ because it has not cleared its orbit

I wasn't aware that they'd discovered any Kuiper Belt Objects (KBO) bigger than Pluto.

From everything I can find, Eris is more massive, but Pluto still has the bigger diameter (as confirmed by New Horizons), and everything else is quite a bit smaller.

huxleyon Ted Chiang's Soulful Science Fiction

> the signal-to-noise ratio of quality-to-sub-par in certain genres is abhorrent

Sturgeon's Law, 90% of everything is crap

re: overnight success, Ted Chiang got a Nebula Award for "Tower of Babylon" (1990) which was his first published work when he was 23. He wasn't writing for extremely long before he was recognized for his talent.

huxleyon Disapproval of FCC regulations a significant blow against privacy protection

I don't believe SSL alone would protect you since ISPs would still have access to the DNS lookups, the fully qualified domain name of the server (which is sent in cleartext for SNI), and IP addresses for the person browsing, so there's still plenty of "meta-data" for them to sell.

Maybe if you use a third party DNS service, but then you need to trust them.

huxleyon About the security content of iOS 10.3

> Apple already uses C++ for device drivers, which allows for more safety oriented programming as straight C

Just to qualify that a bit, IOKit uses a restricted form of C++ based on Embedded C++

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embedded_C%2B%2B

https://developer.apple.com/library/content/documentation/De...

huxleyon A map of America’s migrations using genetic data from 770K saliva samples

With regards to later developments yes, but your thesis that Romania was democratic except for external pressures isn't tenable.

Yes, Romania eventually was put under the heel of both Nazi Germany and the Soviets, both had to use force to impose their control, but it looks to me like it was becoming a totalitarian state before that.

As I read more, King Carol II played off different factions within the country to advance his own dictatorial control of Romania. The 1938 coup seems to have been entirely internal and it may have been planned as early as 1937.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carol_II_of_Romania

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1938_Constitution_of_Romania

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Renaissance_Front

huxleyon A map of America’s migrations using genetic data from 770K saliva samples

I'm not an expert of the history of Romania and possibly I misunderstand a lot of details but external pressure doesn't really explain the Iron Guard/Mișcarea Legionară.

The Iron Guard as I understand it was an entirely homegrown and popular fascist movement in Romania which in the early days of WW2 was brought into government but then quashed by the assassination of its leadership and broken up through use of extra-judicial arrests by the Romanian government.

Romania seems to have brutally managed to avoid crossing that "very thick line" but the Iron Guard had a lot of support and could have taken over.

The line is actually razor thin as can be seen repeatedly in countries worldwide (I lived under a military dictatorship in Latin America in the 1970s and almost lost my father to a shakedown by soldiers on a roadside).

Sadly the populace can and will support totalitarianism given the right circumstances.

huxleyon The new £1 Coin

The bimetallic Toonie from Canada came out in 1996, but Italy beat everyone with their 500 Lire in 1982

huxleyon Why doesn’t the clock in the taskbar display seconds? (2003)

Neither Chrome or Firefox support HLS on the desktop despite providing support on mobile (since Android 3.0 I believe). They have categorically refused to add desktop support, if you have any complaints I would take it up with them.

huxleyon APFS does not normalize Unicode filenames

Interestingly that created its own annoyances for some since normalization occurs at a different stage.

Unicode and UTF-8 unify many Traditional & Simplified Chinese Characters as well as Japanese Kanji and Korean Hanja.

There were some extremely angry reactions to Han Character Unification[1], though efforts have been made to overcome many of the initial complaints.

[1] "Why Unicode Won’t Work on the Internet: Linguistic, Political, and Technical Limitations" http://www.hastingsresearch.com/net/04-unicode-limitations.s...

huxleyon Thousands of underground gas bubbles poised to 'explode' in Arctic

I can think of two counter-examples:

* Polio eradication

* The Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer/Vienna Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer

Both are examples of multi-state cooperation that dealt with serious world-spanning issues, the Polio eradication has had the most immediate impact, but Ozone Layer depletion has been checked and the numbers will trend down to 1980s levels over the next 20 years.

huxleyon A Brief History of the Grand Unified Theory of Physics

Both Hooke and Huygens both pioneered many ideas in universal gravitation, but the key difference as I understand it wasn't that Newton had a better theory but rather a better tool: calculus

huxleyon Struggling with Japan’s Nuclear Waste, Six Years After Disaster

The term is misleading and leads to poor decision-making

huxleyon Molten Salt Reactor Claims Melt Down Under Scrutiny

At the very least, if it doesn't match up with the basic physics, to do the legwork to show why they are right and the apparent contradictions with basic physics are incorrect.

huxleyon Isaac Asimov Laments the “Cult of Ignorance” in the United States (2016)

Ask very religious Americans if they think the laws of America should be more driven by Biblical principles, it isn't any different.

Besides, religious courts already exist in the US. For example, Halakha are religious courts run for Orthodox Jews, they exist in America and make many decisions on family law and civil disputes. But even among bigger groups, lots of disputes are dealt with within the religious community, Catholics have 200 diocesan tribunals, if you want to end your marriage and stay in communion, you pretty much have to ask for an annulment at a diocesan tribunal.

Lots more examples:

http://www.pewforum.org/2013/04/08/applying-gods-law-religio...

huxleyon Isaac Asimov Laments the “Cult of Ignorance” in the United States (2016)

Voting systems aren't a panacea.

Italy and Greece don't have FPTP voting but people there feel pretty disenfranchised even if they theoretically have more representation in government than an American or Canadian would.

huxleyon Why Is Gopher Still Relevant?

I wish that myth would die.

Yes, Jobs did a song-and-dance about web apps but not because they didn't want 3rd party apps but because Apple wasn't ready to support developers on what was a new platform. Apple plays it safe.

For one, it's not consistent with the timeline and secondly as the jailbreakers discovered there was quite a bit of infrastructure to support apps even in iPhone OS 1.0.

* iPhone release date: June 29, 2007

* iOS SDK Announced: October 17, 2007

* iOS SDK Released: March 6, 2008

* iPhone OS 2.0 release date: July 11, 2008

Apple had such a tough time providing enough support to developers that they restricted access to the paid developer program to just 4000 (Apple said 25000 tried to join).

There wasn't enough time for everything to happen (including relatively sophisticated tools like the iPhone Simulator) if it was just a reaction to jailbreaking.

huxleyon High US health care spending explained by its high material standard of living

Note: World Health Organization report is from 2000

huxleyon Study: Potatoes can grow on Mars

You may be able to grow potatoes on Mars, but growing them in the Andes doesn't really get you that much closer to Martian conditions.

Average pressure on Mars is about 0.6 kpa which is a trifle less than the pressure at Cusco which is approx 65 kpa pascals. Mt Everest is still about 37 kpa.

I believe you'd have to go about 50km above sea level to hit the average pressure of Mars.