Actually in the case of iOS it is substantially better. Application sandboxing makes it a lot harder to get pwned.

Yeah, that's the scenario that affected every design choice on the Space Shuttle and led to the building of the Vandenburg shuttle pad. Many problems with it, including the one where it invites a strike by the grab-ee on the landing site leading directly to a Dr. Strangelove situation.

sPh

I'm not sure why Ars Technica took their well-written article about the Soviet decision to build the Buran off-line, but IIRC that was essentially the logic the Soviets were following at the time. All their calculations told them the Space Shuttle was a loser, but the Americans were building one so surely they must know something we don't.... 20 billion rubles down the drain.

sPh

Because clicks is money.

Don't worry. You're a fine mixture of baryons and leptons. Any WIMPs or SIMPs are just along for the ride.

This article is a bit frustrating in that they haven't actually discovered a dark matter particle—they've just come up with a new idea for what it might look like. So it's not even a virtual particle. It's a hypothetical particle. But interesting nevertheless...

Kinda weird how from 1942-1980 or thereabouts it was women who were considered better at programming "systems", and all of a sudden that natural attribute reversed.

sPh

Note the word "energetic". Earth's matter is not particularly energetic when compared to an active fusion reaction or the angular momentum of a neutron star. Likewise with gas giants.

A neutron star is a gravitationally-bound sphere of neutrons, not plasma, and yet it's still a star.

I would respectfully suggest that a good definition of a star would be, "a gravitationally bound collection of energetic matter engaged in largely Brownian motion." That covers everything from brown dwarfs (D-D fusion requiring substantial energy to initiate) up to hypergiants and neutron stars. (Even a cold, dead neutron star possesses enough energy to dramatically warp spacetime -- there's a lot of energy there to be tapped.)

This definition would also exclude black holes, as a singularity isn't really "matter" per se -- matter requires volume, and a singularity has none of that.

It would also exclude galaxies and accretion discs, as those are not engaged in Brownian motion.

As noted, Jane Jacob's famous _Death and Life of Great American Cities_ addressed the affect of Bauhaus and other modernist schools of architecture and urban planning on everyday human beings. William Whyte's _City_ touches on many of the same issues. Wolfe's _From Bauhaus to Our House_ was written for more of a general audience and shows clear signs of the Wolfe-ian obnoxiousness to follow but is nonetheless a biting critique of those design schools.

But there's a large amount of Bauhaus (and/or Chicago School) criticism out there; you may need to look a bit harder.

sPh

I'm referring more to the general perception that sans serif fonts are "cleaner" and therefore easier to comprehend and read. If you track down the FAA study (ironically published from a manuscript typed on a typewriter IIRC) this is not the case. That matches my personal perception - sans serifs are fine for titling but serif fonts are almost always easier to comprehend - but goes against the conventional wisdom. As evidenced by the "cleaner" trope.

sPh

Highly accomplished designers tend to fall in love with and become obsessed by Bauhaus style in its various cyclical incarnations. The remaining 99.999% of the human race finds Bauhaus objects and systems very pretty to look and impossible to use for more than a few days, as documented by Jane Jacobs, William White, Tom Wolf, and many others. The designers believe the rest of the critics are blind and the human race is just using their wonderful Bauhaus stuff wrong.

sPh

- - - - - It's general knowledge in typography that Helvetica is the most legible typeface. - - - - -

That is very much convention wisdom, yes. There are surprisingly few scientifically designed studies on typeface legibility, but the ones I have been able to find (particularly the FAA-sponsored study in the early days of CRTs in the cockpit) have indicated that serif - NOT sans serif - fonts are easier to read, even at low resolution.

sPh

You are drawing a meaningless distinction.

You misunderstand. Linus routinely personally insults people he disagrees with. That'll get you shot today, in the wrong neighborhood. I am by no means asserting that people didn't cuss a hundred years ago.

Yes, the American frontier was nowhere near as violent as portrayed in Hollywood. But that's a really high bar to squeak under. It was plenty violent.