RAW CPU performance isn't a very interesting metric for most uses. How fast do apps open up, and how much RAM does it have to make multitasking smoother? How quickly can I go from locked to taking a video, in case my cat does something funny and I need to put it on YouTube? How fast can I get to commonly toggled settings? How long does it take to charge the battery?

Anything that can't be opened with common screwdrivers and fingernails is an automatic fail in my book. Glue, difficult to pry open clips and the like are indications of either bad design or a customer-hostile manufacturer. Aside from anything else, it tends to void your warranty.

It was never about journalist. The original claim, that a female indie developer slept with a journalist in exchange for a favourable review, has been proven to be false. The review doesn't exist. The journalist in question never reviewed any of her games. He mentioned one in a list and wrote an article that mentioned her in coverage of an event, but both those things happened before they were involved. It's all complete bullshit.

There are issues in games journalism, but GameGate has never been about any of them.

It's funny how two people can see the same events and come to the exact opposite conclusion about what happened.

Some people wrote some articles about how "gamer" culture, which is/was mainly a badge used by mostly male hard core players, is somewhat outmoded now because most people playing games do so casually. Furthermore people calling themselves gamers and claiming to speak on behalf of their community created the whole GamerGate thing, an elaborate web of lies and false accusations with a few criminal threats thrown in for good measure. At the very least, the term has now been poisoned by those people and people who really love games as entertainment or an art form should probably more on to calling themselves something else.

Naturally the GamerGate people took this as a personal attack on themselves, which I suppose it kind of is. If you are one of those angry young guys who screams profanity into his microphone during every online match, or who doesn't feel like a "real man" unless he can virtually screw a prostitute and then murder her to recover his cash you may feel personally attacked when someone suggests those things are not positive aspects of gaming culture.

I've read those articles and they are clearly not an attack on all video game players. They are trying to say that the vast majority of players are nothing like the low lifes behind GamerGate, who are calling themselves real gamers. Language and labels change meaning, and although I enjoy games I wouldn't want to be identified as a "gamer" any more.

Seems like bribery is pretty common in US politics, no? Maybe not outright "brown envelope under the table" bribery, but campaigns have to be funded somehow. When you need $100m to get into office you can't really afford to stick to principals or refuse "advice" from people writing you fat cheques.

Let me tell you how it actually works. The really pioneering research is done by universities and government funded labs. They do the really risky, in terms of ROI, work that leads to new medicines and treatments. Once they have something that could be turned into a valuable product they either sell the IP or set up a small company that the big pharma guys can buy. The big companies then make a product, get it approved and sell it for a nice profit. I'm not saying that is an easy or cheap process, but they are not the ones responsible for most of the major advancements. The research they do is mostly aimed at increasing their profits, not improving health.

It would be better if governments just banded together, like say through the EU, and funded the whole process from initial R&D to release themselves, and made it all available for as little cost as possible. Unfortunately there are not enough socialists to make it happen, but that would be the best option for public health and keeping costs down.

It would be hard for them to keep the fact that they can crack iPhone encryption secret though. They couldn't admit that they decrypted the phone in court, so they would have to try for parallel construction or something. That hasn't worked too well for them so far, e.g. in the Silk Road case where it's quickly becoming obvious what they did.

It might be harder to make the "using encryption = conspiracy to commit a crime" when the judge's phone is encrypted too, and so are the phones of all the jury members.

To be fair, that's mainly because good encryption had not become common and easy enough to use for it to be a problem. The NSA only nobbled TrueCrypt once it was causing them big problems, and had been seen to be secure if used correctly in a number criminal cases too. Then we had the Snowden leaks to catalyze the deployment of encryption on top.

It's actually harder to do a lot of that on the ISS than it is on a planet, where you have natural resources at your disposal. A key part of settling anywhere will be figuring out how to exploit those resources, so maybe the next Mars rover should focus on mining and refining raw materials.

The other issue DC has it that many of the characters are insanely powerful. Superman is practically a living god, and Wonder Woman is on a par for strength and the ability to fly. Green Lantern can only really be hurt of caught off guard, and the Martian can become non-corporeal at any time. At the same time they are hanging around with The Flash and Batman, a guy who has no super powers at all and could die from a single punch by the kind of guys they need to challenge Superman.

I think what annoys people are lame reboots like Robocop, or the fact that they made three shit Spiderman movies and then decided to make another three that were only marginally better due to contractual obligations. The worst part of that debacle is that when Marvel does Civil War they might not even be able to use Spider Man, one of the most important characters, due to Sony clinging on to the rights.

Jackie Chan is the actor, not the character. Most of his films were one-offs with original stories, although there were some series. The Police Story trilogy is excellent, by the way.

It's usually as much the reader's fault for assuming bad faith all the time. It's hard to be subtle or reasonable when the other person assumes everything you say is hostile and takes it in the worst possible light.

It's not a binary swear/never swear option. When I swear I try to reserve it for times when it really adds something to what I am saying. Usually it's for emphasis or comedy. Swearing all the time is just kinda lazy and makes it less effective.