apcherry

I'd disagree - lane switching is not weaving though traffic. In advanced motorcycle training it's called "making progress". It's a skill to read the traffic flows, to understand what other drivers are going to do, the ability to anticipate what manoeuvres they will perform. You have to read and understand that flow, plan a route that gets you through the traffic safely and project far enough ahead to adjust to variations as they occur. So yes it is a skill indicative of a good driver, those "lane-switchers" that end up right next to you after 30 minutes are the ones who lack the skill to read the road far enough ahead. IMHO of course :)

but it'll be so much better the second time!! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22104506

I'd loved to see this bumped up so that it appears on the front page right next to the link on "Why do we fall into the rewrite trap?" for a nice little juxtaposition. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22106367

I wonder if it was proposed by a Neal Stephenson fan (DODO)?

A common fallacy I'm afraid - modern fighter planes are unstable for improved supersonic performance - reduced drag. So relaxed stability may benefit civil aircraft in terms of fuel efficiency. There is an argument that inherently unstable aircraft makes the manoeuvrability worse or harder. What many forget is that issue with manoeuvrability is actually at the end of the manoeuvre. The handling qualities aim is to point the nose in a new direction and an unstable aircraft makes the design challenge harder to stop the aircraft at the position required.

I don't even try to make it sound legitimate. e.g. How many sisters do you have? Anyone guessing will be trying a number between 0 and 5. I use a semi-random word, colour or car I associate with my sister(s), eg. Audi. When asked for a number no one guessing will respond with a car make.

We expect and accept a high false-negative rate. Our commenting system is optimised for zero false-positives at the cost of many false-negatives. This is a deliberate choice. So yes, I would expect to see a significant dropout of commenters who are clearly qualified.

The sort of people that we want to comment are likely to come back for another try anyway, and the long-term effect of this process seems to be doing what it was supposed to.

For me the "weird"/unusual/interesting thing is seeing the feathers bounce after hitting the ground.

Actually it doesn't matter - either version is correct, and in fact English spelling used organize long before it was adopted by the US.

http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2011/03/ize-or-ise/

In fact it appears more to be laziness on the part of the UK english. Whilst the 'ize' form is derived from the greek endings, certain english verbs had to end with 'ise'. As we were too lazy to remember which ended 'ize' or 'ise' we just took the pragmatic approach and used 'ise' version for all of them.

Sad news indeed.

In keeping with his macabre sense of humour I hope he has a suitable Culture Ship names for the coffin. Dwindling Gravitas (VFP)?