The CDC (i.e., the US government) lists the US homicide rate as 55/million, which would make it 6th on that list. Furthermore, that list seems to exclude just about all countries in North/South America and Africa, many of which have the highest murder rates in the world. And why is the murder rate for Turkey listed as twice that of the highest country in the wikipedia list? This doesn't even come close to passing the smell test.

Old fogies like me remember that back when Blender was commercially developed, they had an odd business model consisting of giving the software away for free (as in beer) and selling the documentation (see the old review here, for example). Documentation is now one of the weakest points of Blender, IMHO.

Judging by the charts here it looks like there were about 200,000 homicides with guns in the last 20 years (not counting suicides). So... a little more concerning than lightning strikes.

If interference could really be a problem (unlikely), then politely asking passengers to put their gadgets away is a laughably dumb solution, because it doesn't account for people forgetting to do so accidentally or willfully (say, terrorists). The only sane solution is to design the planes to be robust to interference, which I'm pretty sure they do already anyway.

Again if you placed your companies data at a DC in lower Manhattan you should be fired.

I don't know anything about Datagram, but there are legitimate reasons to have a DC in lower Manhattan... For instance, for latency-limited high-frequency trading operations. I don't know if this is the particular case with Datagram's clients, but the fact that DCs exist in a ludicrously high-rent area means that they probably exist there for a good reason.

Forgive me if Im skeptical of an AC claiming that a company who has been creating consoles for 30+ years managed to make RAM slower than disk access. That would be basically impossible to pull off even if you were specifically trying to do so; theres about 3 orders of magnitude difference between the speed of the two.

Mod parent up and grandparent down. It is mind-numbingly ludicrous to believe main memory access on the Wii U is slower than disk accesses. If that were true, there wouldn't be any point in having a CPU faster than about 100 Hz (which = 1 / x, where x = random access disk latency ~ 10 ms).

Argh, a million times yes! Stupidity of stupidities!

Exactly. The "bananas" you see in supermarkets are a genetic monstrosity; basically all clones of the same individual, thanks to human meddling over the last 7000 years. It doesn't get more GM than that. So, where do you draw the line?

This is confusing, as the Model M is based on a buckling spring, not a mechanical switch as the keyboards in the article have. Also, it's worth mentioning that there are vastly different Model M's--IIRC, the earlier ones have a softer feel, and the later ones require much more pressure. I have a Unicomp Model M, and it appears to be closer to the latter, which I dislike.

It's ridiculous that kids are growing up with chronic back pain as a result of having to schlep around gigantic backpacks full of books. My high school actually banned carrying backpacks between classes, mostly because of overcrowding, which meant that they had to allow extra time between classes to access lockers (and ironically probably also exacerbated traffic in the halls). All this led to decreased instructional time in any given day, more disruption of class due to kids not having enough time to use the restroom between classes, probably more violence in the overcrowded halls, etc. So, for purely logistical reasons, tablets are a huge win.

Biking is dangerous. I've been hit by cars accidentally at least 6 times and intentionally twice. No major damage yet, but it's been close a couple of times. Plus I've just fallen down on my own a couple of times.

It's a debatable point, but it's not too hard to find credible analyses showing that cycling is no more dangerous than walking, in some reasonable sense. If you've been hit that often, you may want to reevaluate your cycling habits--especially your road position. I'd roughly estimate that upwards of 95% of cyclists ride in a way that makes them dangerously prone to collisions. Usually, this means hugging the right side of the road, where you are likely to get hit by a car pulling out, or a door opening, or a car squeezing between you and oncoming traffic, or a motorist who didn't see you because you were hiding on the right side of the road. It's a testament to the safety of cycling that 95% of cyclists can ride so dangerously and yet are rarely involved in crashes. Riding safely, you shouldn't really be worrying about the danger of cycling at all.

The beeb has an article that addresses the apple thing--he often ate an apple before bedtime, so the fact that a half-eaten apple was found on his night stand wasn't unusual at all, and the apple was never tested for cyanide.

If Neanderthals and humans could mate and have fertile offspring, then why aren't they considered the same species?

The idea of a $100 master's degree is subversive, especially considering that a master's is the basic qualification to hold a professorship at a modern university

This is incorrect. A master's degree will, at best, qualify you to lecture basic classes at your local community college. Teaching at a university requires a PhD, almost without exception.

Yes, but is it an automatic automatic teller machine machine?