Having prepared many a baked good in the U.S., I can honestly say I've never read a recipe that calls for 'sticks' of butter as a unit.

The 'cup' measurement is still not a problem though - because the stick-of-butter packaging tends to have little lines telling you exactly at which point you've reached half a cup, a quarter cup, 1/8th of a cup, or tablespoons, etc.
http://mrsdiehlsmathsite.files...

It's because the U.S.'s food industry is so homogenized that the volume measurement 'works'. 1 cup of product X from one company is going to be equal to 1 cup of competing product X from the other company.

There are some notable exemptions.
Brown sugar, for example, which is why most recipes will call for "1/2 cup of brown sugar, packed" - because if you don't 'pack' it, the size and shape of granules can greatly affect the actual amount.

Cherry tomatoes was another example. But the thing with that, and with many other such items, is that the exact amount doesn't really matter all that much - it's certainly not 'scientific cooking'. So one time your pizza / salad / whatever will have a bit more/less tomato than the next time, but it's not a big deal.
Eggs is a huge one. If a recipe calls for '8 large eggs', have a good look at the 'large eggs'.. they're far from the same size. Nobody bothers to suggest that one needs X milliliter of eggs, though (never mind separating out yolk from egg white).
Onion is another one. Recipes often call for '1 large onion'. Go to a grocery store in the U.S. and check out the large onions.. there's some the size of a big nectarine, and others are easily bigger than your fist. So which do they mean? It doesn't really matter... use the latter if you like things more onion-y.

Only when measurements are very strict, a recipe will in fact call for weight.

Personally I think it makes cooking a lot easier - except for when you get to the whole 1 tablespoon = 3 teaspoons vs 16 tablespoons = 1 cup thing. Having a measuring cup/thing for every common cooking unit saves a lot of mess, especially when you need to double/triple/quadruple recipes.

The summary says that 'others' have fallen for it. That makes you think there's got to be at least half a dozen idiots in the world that have tried this, right?

The article (at DICE) says "others have fallen".

Their source is The Independent:
http://www.independent.co.uk/l...

What does that story say?

Pictures have followed the advert that (also fake) showing the outcome of attempting to charge your phone in the microwave:

So there's really only 1 person who said they tried it - and the article itself points out that this, too, is fake (as admitted - he was doing it for the exposure, RTs, etc.)

Maybe there's hope for people yet - though I wouldn't put it past some to actually try it, there's no reason to believe that it has already transpired.

An announcement that they're planning on making an announcement, with the former alluding to the same material as the latter.

Pre-announcement:

The @IOCCC judges are looking at their schedules to see when we might hold a new #IOCCC. Stay tuned!

Announcement:

The 23rd @IOCCC will be open from 2014-Sep-01 02:03:04 UTC to 2014-Oct-19 18:17:16 UTC. #ioccc #IOCCC23

They're allowing the VPN users because, to Netflix, it looks like it's coming from a valid IP in the US.

That was the whole point of my comment, though - the summary suggested that there's already checks on the billing address, when in fact Netflix doesn't much care where the billing address is - they serve up the content portfolio based on the IP address. If they did use the billing address, then that account could log in from whatever IP address they like, and they'd still get the content licensed for the country/region that matches the billing address.

And yes, I know the content owners "don't let Netflix".. and, yet, here we are.. unless there's a major kerfuffle going on behind the scenes between the content owners and Netflix regarding the VPN loophole.

You're thinking of perspective - and you'd need a very odd angle and wide angle lens to hide it. Here's a more realistic side shot which is already fairly up close and wide angle:
http://cdn1.mos.techradar.futu...

I don't think most people are particularly going to care (unless the protrusion is likely to make the phone wobble when set down somewhere), but it's slightly humorous to see Apple editing it away / leaving that ring off for product shots / conveniently leaving it out of product renders.
( Or, if you're still convinced that they didn't edit it away, they at least went to the trouble of trying to hide it without making it seem like they're trying to hide it. )

credit card billing address checks it already runs

What checks are those? Just the regular payment ones to prevent CC fraud?

As far as I know, Netflix doesn't particularly actively use the billing address to restrict services to a particular region - they use IPs for that. That's why for any country where Netflix launches a service that differs from the U.S. one (fewer titles, episodes released much later, etc.), you'll find tutorials popping up on how to get yourself a VPN service that has U.S. IP addresses and even VPN services advertising themselves (directly and indirectly) as being perfectly suited for the job. Hell, you'll find those tutorials for countries where Netflix hasn't even launched at all, and I'd imagine there's tips for U.S. users on getting a VPN to enjoy some foreign titles not available there, too.

Josh Taylor (ZDnet article author) basically has the right idea, but is targeting the wrong people. Yes, geo-restriction is "a form of old-world trade protectionism that is an anachronism", but rather than complain that Quickflix wants others to play by the rules that they're legally bound to, he should complain that Netflix is playing loose with those rules without letting them go entirely. Netflix should offer up the same content everywhere without the need to use a VPN, if they're effectively allowing it, knowingly and willingly, anyway.

Haha - you're absolutely right! Not sure why I had 'bricks' on the mind :(

Correct - though that's only one option. You can also plug it into other boards (termed 'bricks', so Arduino has Shields, BeagleBone as Capes, and Edison has Bricks). SparkFun - next to Adafruit probably the best-known company for this sort of thing - has got a bunch of bricks plus the Edison available for pre-order starting today:
https://www.sparkfun.com/news/...
https://www.sparkfun.com/categ...

Among those is the standard Arduino form factor breakout out of Intel itself, but also a brick for an Arduino Pro Mini form factor, and a bunch of more generic bricks like accelerometer/gyro, GPIO, (tiny) display.

I do wonder why there doesn't appear to be a sound brick.. seems like an oversight especially when they've got everything else required to make a tiny little portable gaming unit.

I'd imagine that most of them really didn't want that stuff leaked - or they'd just leak them, themselves, in a coordinated manner.

Of course now that they are out, most of them will be working with their PR agent(s) to put as positive a spin on it as they can - be that to be indignant, outraged, shrugging it off, claiming it's not them, thinking of how they're going to put themselves in a PSA about password security so that their idolizing fans don't make the same mistake, etc.
And, yes, some of them will probably come out of this better.
But that doesn't mean that this is what they wanted all along.

There's also progressive JPEG - pretty much the same effect, you'd end up displaying a low-res/blurry version of the image first that gradually refines to a higher resolution version, building off of the earlier lower resolutions.

I'm not so sure that's right. I'm certainly not equating the two here, but certainly there's a comparison to be made with e.g. Time4Popcorn.

Time4Popcorn effectively aims to play in the market of non-interactive entertainment delivery (films and TV series, mostly), but its developers - and certainly its users - have no interest in wanting to play by the existing rules (i.e. having to license the content at great cost, and only after spending weeks if not months of being unable to license it at all).

I don't think there's a great many people suggesting that it, and other such upsetting technologies, be required to play by the rules. If anything, they see these technologies as being instigators of having those rules changed, if not abandoned altogether.

I see Uber and the like as being in the same vein - and while Germany, London, whatever ends up 'banning' these services, I'm sure they realize that it's not going to stop then and there, and the rules will eventually have to be adjusted.

This allow to change the img source according to media queries, which is not possible using CSS

Could you explain this in more detail?

I thought it was perfectly possible to have an @screen CSS with one image source, and an @handheld CSS with another image source?

( Not to mention the 'device-pixel-ratio' tricks. )

In addition, while sub-optimal, servers themselves can already send different media based on the request headers; isn't that how the whole 'mobile vs desktop mode' in smartphone browsers works (or rather, is supposed to work) anyway?

I think that in the case of e.g. Wolfenstein, you're right, there's a storyline (well.. sort of) that is written for a particular character.. but that's mostly the character's background/mindset/etc, and not so much its looks.

I just think it's silly to expect developers to build games that always take a specific set of players preferences into consideration over another.

This is why I mentioned that they should leverage the technology that they're already using and come up with a unified way to re-use assets. This doesn't require customization options in-game at all - all it needs to be able to do is load a mesh, associated texture maps, and skeleton parameters, and it should be good to go, regardless of whether that game is an army warfare game, an RPG, etc.

Movies and games are intrinsically different, though. You also have no control over the protagonist's actions.

Perhaps the easiest way to make this obvious is to ask you to watch one of the 'no commentary' playthroughs of a game. I think you'll find very quickly that you'd be wondering why the player didn't check out a certain room, why they shot a person and alerted a bunch of their buddies when they could have just snuck past, etc. etc.

Note that almost hidden in that very paragraph is part of the realization that it's different - you'd be wondering about the player, not about the character. Even if, during a movie, you wonder why a protagonist did / did not do X, you're wondering it about the protagonist, and not the screenwriter / director / etc.

As for whether or not it's appropriate for any type of game - no, probably not. That is why I did limit it to at least humanoid type games, limiting one to a humanoid type skeleton. If somebody wants to drop that inside the model of a penis because they're 14 and think it's funny, they should go for it (and get banned for violating the rules if it's an online game, most likely). If they're playing a game where they're a snake, then obviously the humanoid skeleton simply wouldn't apply.

So within the genre of having humanoid type characters - which is the vast majority of games - what element of customization do you believe would be incompatible with, say, a Battlefield type game? If you think that some players would wear fur coats over bikinis while wielding a gun.. well they're just making themselves a bigger target, aren't they? ;) But if you think that some players would choose to be a bit more on the L4D Coach side of physique mesh, or that a player might choose to have that shirt texture buttoned all the way up to the top because they want to show a little less cleavage...well, I'm not sure what would be wrong with that.

Just because she shares some of the traits that she discusses as miss-ification (I don't remember the term she used - watched it a long time ago; the bow in the hair being ubiquitous is hilarious though), doesn't mean she's undermining her argument.

That's the same silly observation-jump-to-conclusion people make about e.g. those who are part of Greenpeace driving cars, taking flights and having their main fleet be diesel engine ships, and thus should not be taken seriously on their talking points on pollution.

Specifically, she chose to wear make up and wear earrings - for whatever reason. In the case of a game character, that choice is made entirely for you.

Now, do I think that every game should have a characters with complete customization options? Well, actually, yes. Why not. In fact, it would be about time that the game industry picked up on the Wii's 'Mii' construction and allowed gamers to play with their own humanoid avatars in any game so that people can design their own characters to their heart's content, or have it designed professionally for them. The technology has been there since games started using skeletal systems instead of rigid pre-defined poses.

But assuming that's not within budget constraints, there's at least little to no reason to always put a bow on a cartoonesque character to indicate it's supposed to be female, or to give more human-like characters large breasts, a voluptuous behind, and skimpy clothing - just like the male characters don't always need to be six pack buffs with a 5 o'clock shadow and a deep-but-not-too-deep voice. If that's exactly what the game calls for (hello, Mortal Kombat), fine. Otherwise, spice things up, keep things interesting, and stop reinforcing the stereotypes that the games industry has, even if the criticism comes from somebody who may very well embody that stereotype.