If you're a bitcoin investor, which you may be, you might have trouble reading the news. Two separate things. The first was a warning, which hinted at the action. People who actually can listen to stuff outside of the bitcoin bubble reacted to the warning. And then the action took place. So now there's a reaction to that. And then there's people who, evidently, can not read the news, buying "cheap" bitcoins and slowing the fall.

Anyhow, if you need to get rid of your bitcoins, I will trade you some baseball cards. They're awesome, and they're not making any more of them, so they can only go up!

I can play a few instruments and make my own music, as well as having played in a few bands, but over the years I've learned to accept that computers can help me out a bunch. I used to try to play everything and record it too, which was a lot of work and it made things a bear to change. These days, I just try to focus in on a thing at a time, rather than be engineer, instrumentalist, songwriter, etc. I hardly have been playing instruments much on recordings because I don't have the time to do it all and come up with the sounds I like. I will enter my chord progressions into band in a box, and find a style that I kind of like. Then I'll tweek the instruments. It's just a million times easier. So I take sequencing shortcuts as well. But it's just a matter of ease, I mean if I could find a real steel drum player and could mike them up and it wouldn't take a few hours more than clicking a button, I'd do that, but only if I really had a vision or it was going out commercially and I could justify the cost.

I know you're being funny, but aside from the porn and the alien part, but I'm curious about the time traveler aspect.

  I've been wondering this wouldn't the most likely thing to be travel back in time be information itself, since we already can send bits at near light speed already? There must be someone on slashdot who can answer this.

I don't play this game, but it is available as my brother plays it all the time recently. You need an invite.

I've been reading this thread, and didn't want to get lost in the iPad debate, so I'm just posting fresh. As someone who's used both products, I'd say that I'm pretty over Apple stuff after over 25 years. But after making the switch from an iPhone 4 to a Galaxy S4, I'll tell you this, I lost something. And I found this out after my phone broke, but it applies to anything Apple really makes. They have Apple stores, and AppleCare etc, things that are designed to help make their products easier to use and are supported. An 18 year old clerk at the Apple store has more power than high level tech support people at most of these other companies making Android tablets. For me I notice the difference when something breaks, that I don't really have a place to go, and I'm not sure if I'm going to have to pay out of pocket and wait a long time to get my device back leaving me frustrated. For a senior, usually it's not something that's broken, but something they need to learn. Apple has classes at their stores for free and stuff. I'm not suggesting it from a purely device perspective, as I wouldn't want one under my Xmas tree, but I think from a support standpoint it's great for people who are making that first time plunge into technology.

I think excel is one of the greatest programs ever and reactive programming sounds great. This article isn't very specific as to how to get started though. Is it a concept, a product or something I have to implement myself?

It's unfortunate that this is being done by google, as a company that specializes in information will no doubt hasten the process of the terminators becoming self-aware.

Yeah, I had my comment moderated as funny, which it is, but I'm serious about this guy if I had to pick someone I've met in my life it would be him (and I know a guy who has the Nobel Prize in Economics). But there are a few street people who are maybe so smart they get hay-wired.

This guy used to stand in alley with his eyes rolled up, between the bookstore and the music shop chanting "Help me gus! Save us gus!" I used to think he was saying God, not gus, but I asked him about it. I actually didn't know he could talk at all, but I worked at the music store, and he came in, and I thought I was going to have to call the police. Then he talked normally and spoke well, and I asked him about what he was doing. He clarified his chant, sort of, at least as far as what he was saying. He wanted to buy something for his recording studio, which was a tape 4 track and other stuff that was in his shopping cart, which he showed me. I was in high school then, and I dealt with him a few times, and I think he told me about his education because I complimented his intelligence (I don't normally do that, but relative to homeless people I knew, he was smart, just crazy) and maybe I just probed people better then. Anyhow, he told me about his thesis, which me talking about is almost like the tenacious D song where it's a tribute to the greatest song in the world. I didn't really have the capacity to understand it all then (I was in H.S. talking to a mad partial PHD) so I can't spit it out verbatim, but he had me convinced at the conclusion, even perhaps the state of his condition, by virtue of his passion and reasoning despite the general premise behind his hypothesis seemed flawed to me then, and it had driven him in to exile, and he chose to go to Palo Alto for whatever reason. I don't know if he knows how to program. Maybe he learned on the mean streets.

When I hear about bitcoin's founder I am reminded of a homeless man I met in Palo Alto in the 1990's, in his 30's or 40's. He used to stand on the street chanting weird things and you would think he was insane, which he was. But if you talked to him, you'd realize he was pretty smart too. Anyhow, he told me about how he was getting his P.H.D. in Economics from Yale, but they rejected his thesis which was basically about private currency, as his professors equated it with counterfeiting and he subsequently went semi-mad according to him. This guy was a smart homeless guy but also a little crazy, his shopping cart had various gadgets powered by car battery, and I think there was a reason he was hanging out in the valley at that time. Find him, and you will find the creator of bitcoin.

Just playing devil's advocate, but a company like Apple, which introduced and marketed "Find my iPhone" as a way to find your lost phone, could augment the criminal catching capability of such an app by recording fingerprints of would be thieves.

it's not really a band aid solution, but a practical one, verbatim:

After weighing the potential benefits and costs, the commission came down pretty squarely against the idea. “Given the enormous cost, limited effectiveness, questionable feasibility, and probable significant adverse economic and ecological impacts of such a project, it does not seem prudent to seriously further consider such a proposal,” the report concluded.

But that was before the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned that a three-foot rise in sea levels is almost CERTAIN by 2100.

Your pets can get this too, especially if they eat dirt. It's something to be aware of, since the vets took a couple of months figuring it out. It's the sort of thing if you want an expedited diagnosis you probably have to bring up yourself, so it's good to see it getting a little publicity so maybe doctors will become more aware in other parts of the country/world.

I went to the polling place with my voter ID card and driver's license. Was on the list for the polls, but since they supposedly sent me an absentee ballot which I did not request, I was put on a provisional ballot. Had to wait an hour to actually cast a vote. Got a receipt from the polling guy who was handling provisionals. Took it back and read it later. Turns out it needed my signature, and the one of the poll worker. He didn't handle the provisional ballot correctly, and I am extremely pissed off. I shouldn't have had to cast a provisional ballot in the first place, and the polling worker did not handle the ballot properly. I am going to go back there and raise some hell later.