Less spectacular?

00:45 flying chunks of skull FTW

NSWF obviously

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2Bkk7pmFdU&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Look, I appreciate all the research. I find it fascinating. The more we know about human perception, the better. I would also prefer that design choices take empirical evidence into account. But if typeface designers and graphic artists say that a certain font 'flows better' or 'conveys a sense of industry' then that doesn't mean you need to (or even can) conduct research to prove them wrong.

If a graphic designer says that serifs 'lead your eye', but tests show that there is no difference in reading speed, then that's interesting, but neither the graphic designer nor the test is wrong, because the design choice is subjective.

Serif fonts were invented hundreds of years ago, evidently because the designers felt, as grandparent stated, that they are 'easier to read, especially large blocks of text. The serifs "lead your eyes" from one letter to the next, and help your eye group the words'. They were not wrong about this, no matter about reading speed, saccades, or empirical studies. The grandparent's 'simple test' is what you have to go on. I'm not going to prefer some shitty ugly typeface just because 'studies show' that it's no worse than a pleasant typeface. An ugly shitty typeface is an ugly shitty typeface if I say it is.

I tried to read you post, but all I got was *fap fap*saccades*fap fap*

Our eyes may use saccades at the hardware level, but we compose images with our brains' DSP (ASP?). The fact that the eyes jump around is interesting but means approximately nothing.

I think it's safe to say that nobody sees the world in jerky motion from eyeballs moving jerkily. For that matter, the high-resolution fovea in the human eye only subtends a few degrees of arc, but you just never notice, because the brain has heavy-duty processing power that synthesizes a high-resolution picture of the world through image-stitching. You can only focus at once distance at a time, but we don't really notice that either. We have stereo vision which means that we see double-images of things, but we don't really notice any double-images. We can see our noses 24 hours a day, but don't notice that either. If you want to try a fun experiment, go into an absolutely dark room, stare straight ahead, and fire a camera flash. Do not move your eyes. You will see a bright, very realistic image of the entire room for many seconds if you can avoid moving (saccading?) your eyes. You see the perfectly bright room, even in the absolute dark, because if you don't move your eyes, it's probably still accurate. As soon as you move your eyes, though, the image disappears, as your brain flushes it like cache data that can no longer be trusted. Sort of a visual cortex version of copy-on-write.

Typeface design is visual art. Visual artists have known for hundreds of years that certain shapes are pleasing, and how certain lines can draw your attention to certain features of an image, and how certain colors can influence mood. I'm sure it's all completely bunk though, after all, I read on Slasdot about saccades, so now I can dismiss another huge swath of scary subjective human experience and fence it safely out of the lonely introverted enclave that is my nerd existence.

Under-inflation is a major cause of blowouts.

Other than the BPA thing, cans are superior to bottles for packaging beer, because they keep out light, which degrades the beer.

Shiner's other beers are packaged in screw-top bottles that I can't even reuse for homebrew, so I might as well buy the cans.

Shiner Bock
Heineken

Not as interesting as chicken cam. Apes have poor image stabilization properties.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UytSNlHw8J8

No, it's more like the price of a coke is $0.50 if you buy it in the back section of Wal-mart and it's $1.00 in the vending machine outside. I don't want to walk into the store, so some guy might offer to walk to the back of the store, buy me a coke for $0.50, and sell it to me for $0.90, saving me a lot of walking, AND saving me money. Then, the first guy got tired of walking too, and there was another guy who offered to do the same thing for the first guy; buying the coke for $0.50 and selling it to the first guy in the middle of the store for $0.75. They both walked less, and both earned a little less money. But I still got my coke either way.

HFT is a continuous bucket-brigade of people from the back of the store all the way out to the front, each selling it to the next guy for 1 cent more. I don't care, because I'm getting value either way. If they want to stand there, and they think it's worth it, more power to them. HFT is a self-limiting problem.

Except HFT'ers ARE contributing to research and development in all kinds of technological areas. Better networks, faster connections, bigger pipes across the ocean...I heard some companies were looking into using neutrinos to communicate through the earth.

Also, R^2 don't mean shit.

This always annoys me when people show data and the crowd is all 'wow that fits the data exactly'.

I learned in high school that the fundamental theorem of algebra states that for any N points, there exists a polynomial of degree N-1 that fits the points EXACTLY. So if the model fits the data well, that might mean something. But I can shoot a piece of graph paper with a shotgun and find a polynomial that goes through every point exactly. Fit means nothing.

Parent should be modded informative, not funny. This is a known technique to calculate the area under experimental curves. I suppose the cool kids nowadays just use a software package that automatically calculates the area under an arbitrary curve, and I could write a program to do it in a couple minutes, but the scissor + balance method is a long and glorious tradition.

And the "unintended consequences" are "the ADA might sound like a good idea on paper, but ergonomic advantages of lever-type door handles work for velociraptors, too."

Making barrels is not even hard. Certainly making a barrel would be easier than making a reciever! If you have a lathe, you can make a smoothbore barrel in like a half hour. Drill a hole through it; done. You can buy the blanks and the drills from McMaster. Standard barrels are 4140 chrome-moly and stainless ones are 316 stainless. If you want to rifle it, you just need the tools to make cut rifling. This is how all high-grade target barrels are made anyway; they are mostly hand-cut and hand-polished. You will probably end up with a better barrel than most, which are usually hammer-forged. Reaming the chamber will take 5 minutes of flushing chips out. People re-chamber guns all the time; that's how new cartridges are developed.

People who make traditional muzzle-loaders weld up their own barrels from as many as 4 flat pieces of steel, using a forge and anvil. This is how it was done for many decades...I supposed people killed each other with hand-forged barrels LONGER than modern ones!

Not far off. The Gun Control Act of 1968 (GCA) at 18 U.S.C. 921(a)(23), and the National Firearms
Act (NFA) at 26 U.S.C. 5845(b) define a "machinegun" very loosly:

“any weapon which shoots, is designed to shoot, or can be readily restored to shoot, automatically more than
one shot, without manual reloading, by a single function of the trigger...and any combination of parts from which a machinegun can be
assembled if such parts are in the possession or under the control of a person.”

You may note that this makes an awful lot of things 'machineguns'. The BATF technology branch has actually affirmed in writing that shoelaces are machineguns. Google "shoelaces are machineguns", you can read the letter for yourself. Also, Chore Boy copper pot scrubber pads are also legally machineguns. Don't listen to me, google it and read the BATF correspondence.

If shoelaces are machineguns, you bet you ass a 3D printer is a machinegun. Hurray for gun control laws, most logical and reasonable of all laws.

As another child points out, you are incorrect about the guns. LEO's have extra special above-the-law privileges when it comes to guns, even when they are off duty, even in their personal life, and even after they are retired. My police-officer neighbor has a full-auto short-barrel Thompson, personally-owned. I would love to have one, but some animals are more equal than others.