bittermang

I think the worst thing about gym is that I didn't learn anything there.

I didn't learn about calories, or healthy eating. I didn't learn about basic cardio, why it's good for you, or how often to do it. I didn't learn about how to build muscle, what reps or sets were.

Gym amounts to mindless busywork. Do stuff or you get an F. It could serve as a foundation of knowledge to set yourself up for healthy habits for the rest of your life. Instead, it has the opposite effect of training you to hate fitness.

So you're telling me I can't make my old Pentium immune to bullets?

Well that's disappointing.

The ONE good thing about Bank of America, and it was only available on their credit cards but not debit cards, and I don't even know if they still offer it: You could generate new credit card numbers on demand, and set a hard spending limit on them, and their expiration date could be set by you.

This was pitched by their marketing as a way to make online shopping safer, because even if they did get the card and the expiry date and everything, they couldn't spend more than the limit which you likely already hit when you bought your item. But the hidden feature was it made cancelling difficult services a breeze, because you could just log in to your banking portal and kill the temporary card you made for that service.

The chat networks do.

As well as several of the methods outlined for protecting/locating the dead drops. WiFi hotspots, bluetooth beacons, etc.

The elephant in the room that this article highlights, but never addresses.

A mobile phone has become a de facto a requirement for illegal commerce, as described, and to me presents a pretty huge single point of failure.

And yes, I know, EVERYBODY has a phone. But I don't. Why would I want to carry a police officer in my pocket? Especially if I'm a criminal.

Sometimes it is.

Listen. I'm from the Midwest, so for all you #WestCoast refugees seeking asylum here. Sometimes you gotta drive a half an hour, and you'll find a really shiny gem sleeping just outside your 'burb.

All I ask is that you please don't ruin this land for the rest of us. We've enjoyed our lives here quite well, while you mock us for being "fly over country".

Yeah, the article goes on to explain why the premise of the headline is wrong. But it is a fascinating unintended consequence of the algorithm none the less.

A few months after seeking help for my mental illness, I had this moment of clarity. All the relationships that laid broken, all the opportunities that were missed. I could suddenly see and understand how my illness had contributed to these failures. How warped perceptions and erratic behavior just let to ruin.

There is this stigma around pills, in society, but also in my family. I would go to the hospital if I had bronchitis, but seeking help for mental issues was completely off the table. You get told to suck it up, stop whining, be a man, but all these actions really do is internalize and compound the illness.

If you're struggling with mental issues, and you're reading this, I just want you to know that it doesn't have to be that way. There is help. You can get help. It does not make you less of a person. It's just an illness, like any other. If you have a cold, you wouldn't think twice about grabbing a cough drop. This is the same. Seeking help isn't giving in or giving power to your illness, it's you taking power over it, and gaining control of your life back from it.

Just as a counter to your anecdote. I'm 35. My mother wouldn't let me so much as cross the street. I live in a small rural town with little to no crime.

Well that explains it. I wanted exciting new news in the world of squashed rocks, dammit.

That sure was a lot of words to once again raise the question, "Why hasn't the LHC found what we thought it would?" And I never did get to the point, if there even was any, that the headline about squished rocks led me to click.

The article kind of answers itself, when it talks about dark matter. It's a placeholder for what we don't know. We work off what we do know, and have confirmed through scientific rigor. From this, we have math models that show us where we think things should be. But we haven't found them. And we keep beating our heads into the wall that the LHC hasn't found them, so who do we blame?

I just feel like it doesn't work that way. Eureka moments and scientific breakthroughs have never been a product of budget and man hours. You have a question, you do your research, you come with your answer based on your information, and you test. And with a machine the scale of the LHC, tests aren't as simple as a baking soda volcano in your kitchen. And with the kind of questions we're asking, maybe the LHC isn't the machine that will find the answers, no matter how many people we throw at it and particles we shoot through it.

So, from my (completely amateur and unqualified) understanding, either the question we're asking is wrong, the methods and devices of the test are flawed, or the hypothesis itself is wrong and no one wants to accept what that means to particle physics.

But even if the only thing that comes out of the LHC is confirmation and understanding of the Higgs, that's more than plenty enough to satisfy me. I'm just so exhausted by all of these articles railing against the LHC. I get it, you're mad at progress in the scientific community, but don't take it out on the equipment. It's done more than well enough, so far.

I've known this since I was a young boy and Tetris was new.

Knocking out 200 lines is faster acting and more effective for me than Hydroxozine, and I think that pill has done wonders for me for as needed anxiety.

There's a lot of factors. Music. The rhythm and speed of the game. Lower levels let you get in to a relaxing pace, while speed increases over the course of the game force you to become sharper and more attentive on the game.

But I think the solo experience of it is what I like the most. It's me against myself. Old high scores or speed runs. I watched the end of the Tetris World Championships this year, and I'm confident I could make a run at it, but would the competitive atmosphere and head to head play ruin it for me? Would it remove the therapy of the game for me, and actually bring about more anxiety?

Comedy Central is doing a similar but different thing. They're adding more commercials to a commercial break, so now a 30 minute block is like 34 minutes, creating a weird stagger in the schedule. MTV does this too, but they play catch up on the occasional episode by cutting out the intro completely, and their schedule stays on the half hour. Both are Viacom networks.

TBS has been doing this for YEARS. They use every trick in the book, but messing with the timing of episodes is the most jarring. And frankly, ruins a lot of shows, comedy is all about timing after all.

Despite RSS' cult status among Hacker News readers, I'm sorry to be the one to tell you that RSS is already dead. It's been dead. I would even go so far as to say it was dead on arrival, because the average user was never able to make any sense of it.

RSS always made more sense to me in a mail client than a browser. Live bookmarks were useless to me.

"Launch all the nukes"

Switching to Arch was revelatory, and I've been using some form of Linux at work or home since 2001.

It's hard for me to describe, or quantify. But it's almost like, with a distro that embraces the Linux-ness of Linux, one that's not trying to be like Mac OS or Windows, you're able to cut to the heart of your user experience and make it your own.

Plus, rolling release, bro. I don't need monolithic version releases, I just have Arch now.

Because where I come from, a crime has a victim. Even traffic and moving violations have a kind of victim, in that they help maintain safety on the roads.

A thought can never be a crime. When ideas are criminal, the entire advancement of the human species grinds to a halt.

I once saw a very drunk woman drive her car at full throttle into the corner of a hotel.

It's like he describes it, snapshots. My brain throttled hard, and locked up at the amount of information there was to process all at once. That can't be right, she just drove into the side of that building. No, she slammed into it. She might have been trying to drive through it? No, that's silly.

But one clear piece is the unmistakable sound of an automatic transmission with the pedal hard to the floor. And the crash, an onomatopoetic word of itself, it sounded like a crash.

It was complicated by the fact that moments ago, I was loading wedding gifts in to a van. Not mine, just helping the Niece after the reception. But what a stark and sudden turn for a day, to witness something like that. What if she had turned her wheel this way or that when entering the parking lot before hitting the building? Would she have gone through me, and right in to the lobby? Would she have missed the building wide and ramped off the escarpment overlooking the Interstate?

And I was just frozen in that moment of time. Slack jawed and wide eyed while I watched by buddy Timmy organize the available bystanders and check on the driver. I believe he shut the ignition off, but I believe that is something he would do, I have no proof that is what actually happened next.

It's weird, the kind of stuff that goes through your head, and you find out about when something like that happens.

Oh, look at them rush to White Knight their own bubble. "Not OUR echo chamber, no! We're different, you see, because reasons."

That's an interesting point I hadn't heard before.

Exactly.

Because why would they? Why would we even need speed limits, if the computer it in control and proven safe at X speed, because it has a Y reaction time vs a human's Z reaction time.

We haven't even begun.

Gearheads will refuse to let go of their cars. They love driving and maintaining their vehicle. They'll argue that no robot can drive better than they can, no matter how wrong they are.

Imagine a world where police no longer pull you over for speeding, running red lights, or other traffic infractions. The legal fight will be huge, as those easy revenue sources suddenly disappear.

There are hundreds of more fights and scenarios like this we haven't even begun to imagine, that will tie up progress in the courts for decades.

We're going to need a concentrated force focusing on this tech as the next thing we are going to do, and able to get out in front of these issues. Right now, I see autonomous driving as a thing that a few groups are seriously working on, while everyone else takes a passive stance, or dips their toes into the idea as a passing fancy and not a serious milestone to tackle. We need to move it past a novel toy, and in to a serious undertaking that we all need to be vested in shaping the future of.

Because in my opinion, the automobile is the most efficient and prolific human killing machine we have ever invented. I feel autonomous driving is a step toward fixing that issue.

Very excellent write up, Jasper. Thank you.

Your closing paragraphs are spot on. I remember a magazine review of Metroid Prime 3 said "Wii games aren't supposed to look this good." Supposed to? Said who? Nintendo's technique, process, and approach to design and development shows a lot of passion for the medium. It shines through in how beautiful each and every Nintendo made game performs on such small hardware.

Nintendo games capture your wonder and imagination. Technical bits like this are why, and how, they are able to do it.

Pryor was an all time master. Period.

Anecdotally, if I've learned anything from watching comedians like John Stewart: self deprecation is the keystone of their entire act.

Every comedian seems to have some level of it, because not taking yourself too seriously is like a vital component of turning comedy in to a job. But Jewish comedians go to that well a lot more than, for example, Black comedians like Katt Williams.

Would it be inappropriate to ask for the black banner, in recognition of Mosfet?

Just reading the article, you can tell what a pillar of love he was for everyone at Adafruit. I'm sitting here crying for a cat I never met, because I can feel the love for him bleeding through my screen. He was a hell of a guy, and a hell of a friend to everyone he knew.

If we can give a Britsh navy cat (Simon) a medal in recognition for his service, then I say we can also respect and give tribute to Mosfet as a great developer and hacker, in his own cat way.

I feel like pets are an indispensable friend for a young kid to have.

An animal can teach a child about unconditional love, in a way nothing else really can. And about loss. And really, life itself.

Last time I was in Detroit the roads were the worst I'd ever seen. You couldn't even call them pot holes, they were just scars in the earth. For a place nicknamed The Motor City, it was a sad state of affairs.

And that's the crux of it. It's not just the money, in fact it's never the money for me. It's a total quality of life scenario. Being across a bridge from Windsor Canada is cool, the Detroit museum is a great place, and the area has a great lineage for quality pizza. But Detroit itself is like a hostile environment to me, where I can't even travel around without risking breaking my vehicle literally in half. I'd have to me making great money there, just to pay upkeep on vehicle maintenance.

There still persists this idea that all you have to do is "built it, and they will come", a la Field of Dreams (1989).

First off, that's not the right quote. It's "If you build it, HE will come." He being "Shoeless" Joe Jackson, a baseball playing ghost. And if you're basing your marketing strategy on baseball playing ghosts, you need to go back to school. Ghosts don't have any money, they can't buy your product. Baseball playing ghosts didn't even fund the REAL field of dreams, just down the road from me where they filmed the movie. The movie itself brought popularity and prosperity to the field, and since the movie was almost 30 years ago, the field is fallen on hard times.

But lastly, and this bit of insight came from my grandmother: It never amazes me when people offer something for free, and then get mad when people take them up on that offer. You did it. You chose to make it free to use. You put a tip jar out on the counter, sure, but ultimately the thing is free with no strings attached.