Not the Hobbitsses! NOOOO!!!11!1!

I have been developing a game based on the Cube 2 engine, specifically the Red Eclipse fork. The benefits, as I saw it, was that the engine was Zlib-licensed, and most of the game code was re-usable (both Red Eclipse and my game are first-person arena shooters). The downsides were the lack of experience - the code is unfamiliar and sparsely-documented (and in some places downright bad), not many people are familiar with the level editor, and the model import system is not the most artist-friendly.

Currently it's at a proof-of-concept state - it's playable, the core gameplay is there, but it's using Red Eclipse assets that are CC-licensed, not suitable for commercial release, and the few maps are blocky and spartan.

I am seriously considering a switch to Source 2, because I'm much, much more familiar with Hammer and SMDs than with the Cube 2 asset toolchain, and I'm sure some of my Source modding experience will carry over to Source 2. I'm waiting for more details, though, particularly regarding the toolchain. I'd have to redo pretty much everything, but it would likely make for a far better product. Particularly if it ends up being ported to consoles - Red Eclipse lacks gamepad support, and having seen the code, it's not an easy thing to add.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson likes to remind us that "culture is what you don't notice." You might see PRC Propaganda in this description of Cixin's work, but if you think about what movies like "American Sniper" and "Top Gun" and the Superbowl must look like to non-Americans, then "propaganda" becomes a relative term. I have long been under the impression that Chinese culture is heavily censored and controlled, so I am perpetually amazed at the things I find portrayed in Chinese media, like the reoccurring themes of government corruption and the importance of a strong press.

I just finished reading The Three Body Problem, and I did not see anything propaganda-like at all in the book. Cixin presents some pretty complex moral issues for the reader to wrestle with and an extremely damning portrayal of the Cultural Revolution as being anti-science, anti-intellectual, and horribly destructive to the environment. The book opens with a physics Professor on trial for the crime of teaching modern physics, which is considered Western propaganda. Later we see the Cultural Revolution slash-and-burning entire forests and turning them into deserts and one of the characters gets hold of and is influenced by Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, which is banned by the government for pushing capitalist ideology (how ironic from my American perspective). It is only decades later, when China experiences a renaissance of free public education and science that things are portrayed as getting better.

--------Spoilers--------

In fact, part of the aliens' plan to keep humanity weak is to undermine science and promote magical thinking in our culture. Despite the seemingly pro-environmentalism message early in the book, the aliens consider using environmentalism to halt our scientific progress. The reader is left to thinking about how we balance scientific progress against extreme environmental crimes like those committed during the Cultural Revolution.

The bad guys in the book are a cult of of human beings who want an alien race to provide a central totalitarian government to the entire world. That doesn't exactly endorse central planning. The book portrays overt nationalism as detrimental and unsophisticated, as when a proposed nationalistic message to extraterrestrials is scrapped for a universal statement about humanity.

I'm sure there are ways to interpret Cixin's writings as PRC Propaganda, but--like most complex texts--there are ways to support many criticisms of the text, even contradictory hypotheses.

Let's split pirating into two crimes:
IP Theft
IP Infringement

IP infringement would be commercially using someone's IP as though it were your own. Selling bootleg DVDs, straight-up counterfeiting, plus corporate copyright/patent/trademark infringement. This can be left under the laws currently.

IP theft would be equivalent to regular theft of the same product, for non-commercial personal use. If you have to make it a separate crime, give it penalties on the scale of "five times the retail value of the product" - this should be a misdemeanor, not a felony, crime.

This was such a blatantly anti-customer move that I will never - NEVER - be a Lenovo customer again. They cannot be trusted, and probably can never be trusted again because any "change" could just be a whitewashing campaign, not a real change.

This is simply more evidence that they deserve all the shit they're getting, and more.

Sure, maybe it's competitive with a bottom-end office desktop, where the most intense thing it has to run is Youtube.

But it's competitive with a $500 desktop, while it costs $1000. It's not hard to get similar performance when you literally double your budget.

I vehemently disagree. I highly recommend taking the 16 minutes and 39 seconds to actually watch the most compelling part of the documentary before trying to wave it away as "gloomy documentaries." For you to say such a thing shows that, contrary to your statement, you are denying the presence of pollution--or at least the social responsibility we all have to improve our health, life spans, and quality of life by regulating pollution.

I live in Washington DC and spend a great deal of time worrying about my health and the health of my children because our air quality here can get so bad that we have Red Ozone Days where we are told to keep our children inside, especially if they have any respiratory conditions, which they are more likely to have thanks to the poor air quality. I think it a blessing that NASA and the EPA monitor our air quality and that the local papers light a fire of panic under everyone's feet about the need to improve it because childhood leukemia and other cancers aren't something we should just shrug at.

Awareness of pollution is why we have Catalytic converters in our cars to dramatically reduce the toxic nature of the exhaust coming out of them. It's why we banned Lead Gasoline and ended the crime wave having that chemical in our brains unleashed on our culture. It's why air quality has improved over the last 10 years as new technologies, improved MPG, and other environmental regulations, but we still have much more to do.

It's also a moral issue for us, because our Made-In-China marketplace is why they have so much pollution. We want cheap goods and they turn a blind eye to the pollution to keep the products cheap. But that pollution is making it's way back to us over the Pacific Ocean. I want to keep buying cheap stuff from China, but I am also willing to pay a little more if it allows the Chinese people to improve their health.

The Chinese government should let people understand the science and choose for themselves.

I am not the Sith you're looking for. You don't need to see my identification.

Well, there's one simple brute-force solution: create a world government. If one government runs everything, they get automatic jurisdiction over everything, and have one universal set of laws to apply everywhere.

Which, when you think about it, kinda makes sense. It's weird that laws change based on which arbitrary piece of dirt you happen to be standing on.

Peer-reviews on everything I write below are greatly appreciated. I want to make sure I understand this equation.

io9 has a pretty down-to-earth explanation of the equation:

FIT Treadmill Score = %MPHR + 12(METS) - 4(age) + 43(if female)

You can get your MPHR for your age here. I found a chart of METS here for various exercises.

So, if I'm understanding this correctly. If I reach a 160 heart rate out of 179.0 MPHR predicted for my 41 years of age while running 12 minute miles worth 8.5 METS. My score would be:

83.7 + 12(8.5) - 4(41) = 21.7

The same heart rate for my age running 8 minute miles:

83.7 + 12(8.5) - 4(41) = 69.7

If I am understanding this correctly, it really looks like you could easily improve your score with a few lifestyle choices (push yourself harder when you work out, eat healthier). This equation could be a great metric for people concerned about their health

The measures of how well an economy is working is not "how much money is in the system", but "how much money is moving", and "how much of the economic system does that money reach?". Money that does not move does not do work, and people that do not give and receive money are not part of the economic system.

Consider two hydraulic systems. One has a massive 200L of hydraulic fluid since it leaks so much, but most of it is in a reservoir, and it only produces 10N of work on a small 10cm^2 area. The other has only 1L of hydraulic fluid, but it reaches pressures of 10Pa, doing several kilonewtons of work.

Which one is working better? Obviously the second one.

Oil-based Middle-Eastern economies are like the first one. They may make a lot of money, but only a few people get that money or its benefits, and the money leaks out of the country almost immediately.

A good economy is like America's, or Germany's (and yes, these economies are relatively good - could be better, but good). The money does pool around the rich, but not nearly as much (most of the "wealth" of the ultra-rich is in assets, not cash), and the trade with foreign countries is mostly balanced. Mostly. And there are very few people who do not participate in the economy - even people on welfare get money, then spend it. They're idle parts in the machine, but still part of the machine.

ISIS thrives because they're getting money in from elsewhere (coughsaudiarabiacough), and getting the cheapest possible people you can.

I think someone in the Science Online community put it best, "Facebook is my private life; Google+ and Twitter are my public life." Facebook is where I go when I want to see my friends' family photos and get a list of small-talk conversation topics for when I hang out with them in real life. I have no interest in following celebrities, politics, or other topics on Facebook because the conversations there are too inane.

Google+ is where I go when I want to have political debates, read science news, or be exposed to fascinating ideas. The conversation on G+ is heavily nerdy because the community is heavily nerdy. I go there for the same reason I read /., the conversation is deeper and more sophisticated. I don't learn anything arguing with my crazy conservative uncle on Facebook, but I do learn something when I argue politics with David Friedman on G+.I hear Twitter is good for this kind of subject/interest-specific engagement with others, but I simply can't figure out how to have a conversation there.

That said, I think it makes sense to break out Google Photos. That is an application I have come to really appreciate. It backs up all my phone's photos and videos, automatically creates scrapbooks and artwork out of them, and has created a timeline of my life. I highly recommend it for anyone using Android.

They aren't getting many recruits from Western countries. They're getting *prominent* recruits.