When looking at an icon/button with a flat edge vs. one with a beveled edge, the beveled edge gives the impression that the clickable area itself is smaller. This wasn't an issue with a cursor, but for touch you want the biggest possible touch areas for items without looking goofy. While its true that the area itself isn't really smaller, making it appear smaller makes people more hesitant with their presses which subconciously makes the UI feel 'slower.' I beleive this is why companies have migrated to the flat look.

There are plenty of good psychology experiments/case studies that produce a lot of really useful information and are repeatable (albeit over a very long period of time). The problem is there are also a lot of complete and utter ass psychology experiments. It is really really hard to produce a good study that provides useful results in soft sciences, and in cases of psychology, they take a very long time and sometimes a lot of money to complete. Yes, they have to account for a lot of variables and exclude them via statistical analysis, but the ones that do it right do it exceptionally well.

I used to think negatively on those types of studies until I actually took the time to read one while helping my girlfriend with a paper. I was amazed at the level of detail and the amount of effort they took to isolate the results into meaningful data.

To put it simply, the cost of fuel for a nuclear reactor is miniscule in the overall scheme of things. Coal, while costing less per ton, requires a LOT more fuel to produce the same amount of power.

Well, why is thorium a hard bargain then if fuel isn't a big deal? Yield. Money is spent on nuclear reactors in the buildout phase plus the monitoring/safety and maintenance of the plant, not the fuel. Using thorium doesn't significantly reduce these costs, but significantly reduces the power yield. You can only make reactors so big, and making more reactors cost more than making a higher yield reactor.

I've found antidepressants have negatively impacted my ability to keep my body where I want it to be, as odd as that sounds.

I'm taking an antidepressant for OCD problems, and since I've been taking it, I've had a significant reduction in trichotillomania (hair pulling) as well as other OCD problems and face numbness from extreme anxiety. However, I find that the antidepressant has neutered the highs as well as balancing the lows. I find I'm more complacent with things that bother me about myself, muting the motivation to correct them, and also killing most of the endorphin rush from exercising. Its a vicious cycle, because as you gain weight you get upset about your weight/wardrobe, and thus the original reason you were taking the antidepressant is replaced by your new unhappiness about your weight. I've tried to ween off the antidepressant but the OCD came back with a vengance as well as crippling levels of anxiety because I'm no longer used to it.

Its like being stuck between a rock and a hard place. Staying in shape was much easier without the antidepressant, but functioning and managing my OCD was much harder. I guess where I'm going from this anecdote is that the heavy use/overperscription of antidepressants may be causing others to get in this frustrating conundrum.

Lets be real here, the only reason they're releasing this for free is because The Sims 4 is coming out in a few months. With EA, there's always another motive.

Someone should write a limerick that highlights all the good game companies EA has killed or corporatized, it wouldn't be hard but it'd sure be lengthy. Oh how I miss the old Maxis.

Best hardware keyboard I've ever used, fully QWERTY with a number row and very good tactile feedback/feel and spacing. My older brother mentioned that he thought he could type faster on his new touchscreen phone after about 6 months of having it, and I told him prove it. He grabbed a book and said type the back of it verbatim, so we did. I finished it when he was about 2/3rd done, and he uses that phone all the time for business emails where I use mine more casually.

I think the option most people are going now are case-keyboards, but they are only available for a limited subset of phones and aren't as seamlessly integrated as the slide-outs.

I liken it to motor sports. Its one level of abstraction from direct physical involvement like most of the major sports. Driver masters the skill of driving which is used to control a car for racing instead of racing themselves. Players control an avatar for competing instead of themselves directly. I find eSports intrigueing but driving to be insanely boring so your mileage may vary.

I'd argue that level of gaming definitely requires a type of physical skill, though it'd be closer to badminton or chess than that of driving. Its about reaction time, quick twitch reflexes, and teamwork/strategy.

I agree on the classification though, and think the term sport is the root of the issue. What makes these things exciting isn't usually the sport action itself, but the fact that the sport/league is set up in a way that enables competition. These are a competition, as is poker, diving, football, and hell even debate, and should be called competition. I think the use of sport in its place is simply because competition is a mouthful and most competitions are sports.

Apparently the finals were shown live on ESPN2 as well

company should be country :(

Not really. North Carolina has a ton, Charlotte having the 2nd most financial HQ's in the company only behind NY, with San Fran as a distant third. Both of these locations, even including super-blue San Fran, aren't as meddlesome when it comes to this kind of stuff.

Later on in the paragraph I addressed that the quoted situation might not be him, but I also cited an example where making it to the red light first, especially in front of hypermilers, would save me substantial stops on my trip.

"I also don't get people who get pissed off when I let off the gas early coming up to a red light."

I know in my case and some others, its the frustration of the self-fulfilling prophecy. You slow down coming to a stale light, and it changes, so you're satisfied with yourself because you didn't waste energy. Problem is, in some cases, if you had stayed with your speed or upped it a little you would have made the light. I'm not saying you do this, but its is quite common among people in my driving area, they'll slow to 5 under as they approach a light and it changes on them.

There are two routes I take where making that light by one second means you also make the next 4-5 lights. One is a straight-line on the way home from work, if I make the first light then I'll make the next 3 lights and get home without having to stop, and being that the road is slightly inclined, a lot of people like to drag ass 10-15mph under the speed limit. I've taken to using the ending lane (which I merged on from anyway) to mitigate this. The other place is a left turn coming home from my mother's house, where if I accelerate quickly when the left light turns green, I'll make the next light barely and the next 8 (yes, 8) lights all the way home. In these cases its advantageous for me to get at the front of the left turn lane to do this, so sometimes I will pass others just to make it to the red light first (which doesn't usually have too many cars) to save myself 8 minutes and some gas.

I guess what I'm saying is that sometimes people blowing past you aren't always angry, maybe they just have a route plan with light timings.

Passwords all the way down

I don't know names, but just as an example:

The guy who came up with and implemented the Blizzard always-on DRM for Starcraft II and Diablo
The lead designer for Sim City (2013)
The man behind Active Desktop for Windows 98
The innovator behind the wondrous idea of multi-page web ranking articles
The team behind stuxnet (debatable, pretty snazzy piece of work, could use Zeus or some other example)
Key PRISM database team
etc

I always found the commercial for that ad very fitting. She's in a dark shady street corner and its parodying a black market dealer. I wonder if the advertiser had a sense of humor.

That said, you should read TFS. "We've already seen the stories on using black boxes to monitor drivers" isn't an exact reference, but its the kind of behaviour they're referring to.