This has certainly not been an average month - we are supposed to be getting down to -5F to -10F tonight - which may break the old record. Again. Not that February is ever an average month, but this wasn't even an average February.

While I do know a couple of people who rode their bicycles in the last month ... they don't own cars and live too far to walk. (I do own a car but live close enough to walk anyway, if we get more snow than expected this weekend.)

But of course, an average month is just convenient fiction anyway - no month is average.

I own several guns < 150 years old which never had a serial number - prior to 1968 it wasn't required on most firearms. Of course most guns did get serial numbers just for inventory purposes, but things like cheap .22 rifles or cheap shotguns sometimes didn't.

To the question at the end of the article - I use either depending on language and appropriateness to the problem. Languages like CBM BASIC didn't support functions, so you had to find a way to use loops even if it wasn't optimal.

However, there are lots of non-trivial examples, so why settle for something trivial? It was always a bit of work writing a factorial in older BASICs, recursion is just so much simpler. Or maybe terms of Pascal's triangle? The Fibonacci series perhaps - while there is actually a formula for that, most people won't know it. Lots of possibilities.

They are still not talking about literacy - they are talking about problem solving. That makes it the new Mathematics, not the new literacy. (And yes, what I learned coding on my VIP not quite 40 years ago did help me with my degree in Math a few years later, so I do know what I'm talking about.)

I recently had someone accuse me of being in my mid-thirties (no, I selected the last option). Good genes? If so, my little bother missed out - he looks older than I do. But he works outdoors - perhaps we can blame the sun.

So, does 40.003 feel different? It's just a number. I'm going on 52 in a couple of months - yes, it's just a number too.

Do I want to live to be 100? Honestly, I don't care. I want to live a good life - length doesn't matter.

Seems to be up, finally.

Of course I am unique from their sample, I used an unreleased test version of a browser - I had to be unique. However, that version of tracking is useless as I have ... 7 different versions of browsers on my system, they would not know they were the same person on the same computer. (And I have 3 other computers plus a couple of tablets.)

Does that mean I am, what, 40 different people according to them?

What's the difference between options 4 and 5? I might own one someday. but not anytime soon. (Presuming soon < 5 years) I selected 4, BTW.

I recall that the CPU in my first computer (an RCA VIP, with an 1802 processor) was still being used in satellites and such years later. Why? The processor was fully static CMOS, could be run at extremely low power (as long as speed wasn't an issue), and was more tolerant of radiation. But I guess I'm showing my age ...

Let's see, on the useful side we have compression/acceleration and parental controls. Would it also interfere with ad blockers and anti-malware? Those are also useful services. Services we as consumers don't want are those ads certain low-cost carriers insert in content - though if blocking those forces the carrier to shut down we might have a problem. And of course we also don't want those Big Brother services - governmental content blocking and monitoring.

"The singularity" is a term referring to asymptotic growth curves. But true asymptotic growth - going to infinity in a finite period of time - is impossible. Some people also use the term to refer to artificial intelligence, but I would consider that a misuse of the term (since a less confusing term existed previously).

By definition, the singularity is impossible, unless you find some way to change the laws of physics. (Reference to "Hellhole: Inferno" there if you've read it.) Vertical asymptotes would require infinite resources and so are not feasible.

These days, a typical monitor is likely to be 16:9 or maybe 8:5 (aka 16:10).

In terms of viewing area, for the same diagonal measure an old-style 4:3 monitor has a larger viewing area than a widescreen. Basic math. Yes, a square would be optimum, but in recent years we have been heading in the opposite direction.

As someone whose ISP uses Yahoo for mail, I can report that they appear to block mailing-list messages that are marked as Bulk. As a product tester for Opera and also a moderator on their user forums, I am supposed to be on several of their mailing lists - but never receive any of them. However, mail from that server sent by individual Opera employees comes through just fine. Likewise mailing lists that do not mark there messages as Bulk (from other servers) come through fine - though several (not all) of those lists are actually on Yahoo's servers. (I've had Opera send messages I need to get to a webmail service.)

The server is not blacklisted as I do get mail from it, they are not blocking all mailing lists (other than their own) either, so it appears to be the fact the messages are listed as Priority: Bulk.

No one has talked about preventing people from going there ... just preventing them from coming here. Not necessary really - just isolate them for 21 days before they can return.

I have to conclude from the supposed difficulty that they store the metadata without noting which numbers are unlisted. Or more correctly, were unlisted at the time, since that status may change.