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youngianon Result of Giving Poor Households Computer Vouchers

I believe the graphs are all post-voucher numbers. In other words, those below the red line are the ones who qualified for the vouchers, thus the jumps in ownership. The punchline is that while computer games increased substantially because of the program, using computers for homework did not.

youngianon What's really driving the Toyota controversy?

Unfortunately in this case the attack was accurate. The article starts with a correct but not novel explanation of dumb political games, then veers abruptly into libertarian cheerleading. The author mentions things like "too big to fail" but ignores the fact that companies got this way through deregulation in the first place. All in all, a disappointingly shallow argument.

youngianon Unix recovery legend

http://code.google.com/p/trash-cli/

youngianon Good code needs few unit tests

So how do you write a test for a case you couldn't foresee?

You don't, but once you discover it, you write a regression test to make sure it doesn't come back.

However, IANATDD, I am not a test-driven developer - I don't see any reason to be dogmatic, but I do think unit tests can be extremely valuable. So this answer might not be TDD-approved.

youngianon How High Frequency Trading Benefits All Investors

I usually hate TL;DR comments, but if someone provided a short summary of the argument here (and for bonus points, a critique of the argument's strength), I would be very grateful.

youngianon HTML5's missing piece: The disclosure tag

Yeah, this screams microformat. Indicates a specific type of content, but doesn't have to make it into the spec and can be administered in a decentralized fashion.

http://microformats.org/

youngianon Internet Explorer 9: Platform Preview

The point is that those things are/were still in "draft" specification and so it's asking for trouble to implement them in a way that will prevent changes to the final spec. I'm sure once the standards are finalized the prefixes will be dropped (or really, deprecated).

youngianon We see so well because of snakes?

Agreed. Here's an interview with Isbell: http://www.rorotoko.com/index.php/article/lynne_isbell_book_...

From the pop science summaries I thought she was full of crap. But the details are actually quite interesting, and I can see why she has other scientists excited.

youngianon IE9 to support SVG and some CSS3

The knee-jerk answer is that the IE team's ideas often seem to come from a crack pipe. Not to say that every single one of their ideas has been bad, or that everyone else's ideas always turn out great, but IE has a lousy track record. There are more than a few instances where the IE version is either internally inconsistent (many of the IE6 CSS bugs) or provably worse than the competition (JS event handling springs to mind).

youngianon IE9 to support SVG and some CSS3

This was in reference to the pre-edit version, where he said it was to be based on IE6.

In comparison to that prospect, an IE7/8 mishmash is oddly comforting.

youngianon IE9 to support SVG and some CSS3

Please be wrong. Please be wrong. Please be wrong.

youngianon Ogg objections

This is something that OSS folks in general need to work on. People forget that tone does matter. Speaking your mind is good, but speaking your mind in a caustic fashion doesn't help your cause. Especially when the issue is a complex domain-specific one (like the convoluted world of AV containers and codecs), and the vast majority of people are not going to understand the fine technical nuances of your argument.

youngianon Confused Facebook user debacle not what it seems.

I liked this. There's a touch of empathy there for "stupid" users. But it's not denying the serious problem that these people represent, especially when they're in government, writing policy to control an entity that they aren't even close to understanding.

youngianon Schools Out, Forever

I disagree. Clarity was hurt. This title suggests multiple schools "out", which doesn't make a lot of sense (did the schools band together to out their gay friend? Or a corrupt politician?). Yes, obviously I can figure out what he meant. But there's a jarring half-second of confusion that disrupts my thinking, slows down my reading, and distracts me from what is being communicated.

I'm not rabid about grammar - the rules should be a bit malleable, depending on context. But most grammar exists so that we can understand each other. If you have poor grammar, I will have a harder time understanding you and we will have a harder time working together. In fact, I will be less likely to want to talk to you, because I could instead be talking to people with good grammar, and when I talk to them I don't have to pause for those cognitive potholes where I have to puzzle out what they're trying to say.

youngianon Schools Out, Forever

School's Out, Forever. "School is out" contracts to "School's out", with an apostrophe to indicate the contraction.

I could not bring myself to read an article about education being pointless that has a grammatical mistake in the title, no less. If you make that mistake while slagging on education, I simply cannot give your opinions any weight.

youngianon Showoff: Presentation software for software developers

I think this is a very neat project. I'm also curious what other alternatives exist for making simple, straightforward presentations in something that is not powerpoint.

youngianon Do you have a blog? And if so, why?

I still do have lofty ideas about writing interesting articles on mine, but amusingly the post that has attracted by far the most traffic is http://blog.iangreenleaf.com/2009/03/rsync-and-retrying-unti..., a simple little bash script for rsync. A good lesson on the power of filling a niche - clearly I wasn't the only one Googling for "rsync retry".

youngianon What personality is that blog?

Which gender is. Your gender is how you identify, so unless you are lying to a researcher who asks you what gender you identify as, it's objectively verifiable.

youngianon What personality is that blog?

Why couldn't patio11 be speaking of gender? In fact, I think a study measuring gender would identify with even more accuracy, although data collection would be harder (you would need the authors to report how they identified). Anyways, the linked study uses the word "gender" - it's probably conflating the two, as often happens.

youngianon Quality, a user problem

Poor old Arc90 needs to get some better hosting. Their server always seems to be coughing up blood. And Google doesn't have this one cached yet :(

youngianon On branching

http://code.google.com/p/trash-cli/

I don't know, maybe if you're old-fashioned you won't like the trash metaphor, but I love it. And every so often I just do trash-empty 30 to clean out anything older than a month.

youngianon Engadget - We're turning comments off for a bit

Bold. This makes me really happy. Comments sections are the cesspools of the Internet, so it's great to see someone say "This is going away until you think about what you did wrong."

P.S. Yes, I'm aware of the irony in that I'm commenting on a comment-centric site about how much I hate comments. Let's just say HN is the least cesspoolish place I've found so far.

youngianon Bill Watterson, creator of Calvin & Hobbes, first interview since 1989

It's not really about what we think would or wouldn't have been great. Watterson felt that a Hobbes toy wouldn't be true to the spirit of the strip - I'm sure he had his reasons, though I don't know what they are. And to choose that faithfulness to his vision over the millions he could have raked in by simply signing a piece of paper and sending it off to his syndicate - that's what I am calling artistic integrity.

youngianon Bill Watterson, creator of Calvin & Hobbes, first interview since 1989

"Q: What led you to resist merchandising Calvin and Hobbes?

A: For starters, I clearly miscalculated how popular it would be to show Calvin urinating on a Ford logo. . . . Actually, I wasn't against all merchandising when I started the strip, but each product I considered seemed to violate the spirit of the strip, contradict its message, and take me away from the work I loved. If my syndicate had let it go at that, the decision would have taken maybe 30 seconds of my life."

From another interview posted elsewhere in the comments. http://www.andrewsmcmeel.com/calvinandhobbes/interview.html

youngianon Bill Watterson, creator of Calvin & Hobbes, first interview since 1989

Everyone in the world would have loved a Hobbes animal. He could have made a mint off of that. Which makes his decision not to merchandise one of the most impressive displays of artistic integrity I know of.

youngianon The best running shoe may be nature's own

I'd be very interested to hear your results. I too am an over-pronator and while I'm curious about barefoot running, I'm hesitant to take the plunge without some knowledge of how it will affect my feet (+shins and joints).

youngianon Freakonomics: A Myth of Grass-Fed Beef

If I was an evil person working for the marketing department of an evil mega-factory-farm, I would hire you right this instant on the basis of that last comment alone. Evil genius.

youngianon How to keep track of who's talking about you

Awesome! I've been thinking about this recently. It's nice to have this coming from the perspective of someone with a definite online presence but no business empire or social marketing pyramid. Like he says, maybe you just want to know what people are saying about you or engage in a conversation.

youngianon Economics of Drinking

That paper is great! Why can't more public policy be based on sensible metrics like this?

(http://web.mit.edu/mariya/Public/Exploring%20Pharmacology%20...)

youngianon A new approach to China

I agree. It's practically a declaration of war. And someone on their PR team deserves some kudos for writing a release that makes some damning accusations very clear without ever stating them explicitly.