I RTFA but they didn't mention any energy storage component. What do they do when the wind isn't ideal?

Well the X1 is actually not that small - the keyboard is full size (measured against my desktop keyboard), 14" screen, no num pad.

In my experience gaining those coping strategies and sufficient acting ability to fool most people is not the same as growing out of it. I have to process all of that consciously at huge energy cost, and always with the nagging awareness that there are a lot of things I'm just not catching, but I don't know what they are.

It also only extends to the most common social situations, as soon as I move outside that set things fall apart. The anxiety and stress that causes is crippling. I can get through it for short periods of time but it takes ages to recover and takes a big toll on work productivity.

I've also found that even genuinely supportive people can't understand what it's like - for most people the model "other people are basically like me" is good enough that they've never really had it challenged and simply cannot step outside of that even if they want to. So these days I never bring it up, spend the energy to emulate NT protocols for those social situations I can't avoid (mainly work) and avoid all others.

So functional? Yes, for certain values of functional. Cured? No.

I've had a printer for about 2 years now, an Ultimaker 2, and for me it's been worth every cent. But if you're not the sort of person who is often frustrated by not being able to make some complicated one-off, hand-sized widget that is outside the range of things that can be made without a machine shop, then probably a printer is not a good investment.

To get value out of a printer you need to be willing to learn how to turn an idea in your head into a printable STL, which means learning some CAD package. I use blender most often because that's what I know best, but there are about a dozen good choices now and it really doesn't matter which you pick. Interoperability has been a non-issue for me - blender will import STLs fine, which everything else can generate.

In the last week I've designed and printed a bump guard to friction-fit onto my Dad's computer desk to protect it from the arm of his electric wheelchair, and printed a holder for my electric toothbrush from youmagine.com. In the past I've designed and printed things like a bracket to mount the numberplate on my KLR650 at an angle to take it out of reach of the aggressive knobblies I fitted; a bracket to mount the line sensor board I designed to the robot chassis we were using in a nodebots workshop; a case for a usb power adapter I hacked up one Sunday afternoon.

If you often find yourself wanting to do these sort of things and find joy in dreaming up something and then making it, then a 3D printer will change your life. But if you're just intrigued by the hype, then you're likely to be disappointed.

The Ultimaker 2 is a fantastic printer, with a low hassle-factor for doing everyday work (but, as with all printers, is a tool that you will need to put in time to become skilled with). I'm currently looking at building a second printer to expand the range of things I can build - the range of filaments available now is amazing but not every printer can use each of them: polycarbonate requires very high temperatures, carbon fibre is too abrasive for brass nozzles, flexible filaments aren't a good match for a boden setup, some do best with very large or very small nozzles. So my second printer will be built with this in mind - to maximize hackability.

If you're the maker type, I recommend building a printer from a kit - you will gain a useful understanding of the machine, which is essential to tuning it effectively (which is required to get acceptable quality prints in less cooperative materials like nylon). It will also make you fearless to modify it later, which means that you can keep up with new developments.

If they did this there is no question it would be my next dev machine. I've just bought a maxed out X1 Carbon (2015 version), which is a really fine bit of kit but I really miss the classic Thinkpad keyboard.

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I use the open source driver on an R9 270 optimized for quiet operation on Ubuntu 14.10. Mainly I use the machine for playing Skyrim at 1920x1080, which works surprisingly well. I'm sure I could get better performance with Catalyst or running on Windows, but performance is good enough for me: 25 fps outdoors, 60 indoors, using pretty much maxed graphics settings and the usual ton of mods.

I use the open source driver because I've found it to be absolutely bullet proof stable and offer the best support for things like multi monitor, screen rotations, multiple instances of X and switching between them and the console, frequent suspend/resume cycles, etc. The other advantage is the complete absence of hassle - installation involved plugging it in and turning it on and I haven't had to bother with it since.

If you use an AMD card and haven't tried the open source driver in a while it's worth checking out, the improvement recently has been impressive. I believe newer versions than I'm running have better performance still, but... systemd. And I don't feel like running xorg-edgers.

I've lived in two of these cities (#38 Durban and #14 Cape Town, South Africa), and the numbers can be misleading. Cape Town in particular is actually pretty safe as South Africa goes. I don't know anyone personally who has been affected by violent crime here, and I dated a police officer based in the CBD who had never even come close to having to use her firearm. The numbers are real, but seem to be heavily skewed towards inter-gang violence and domestic violence, both overwhelmingly localized to certain areas (not that that makes it ok).

Can't say the same for another South African city: Johannesburg. I was personally threatened three times with a firearm in the 12 years I lived there (twice in good suburban areas and once on a game farm), and nearly everyone I know there has been personally affected by some sort of violent crime. Two friends were shot (and survived) in hijackings. But it doesn't make that list somehow.

It would be great to have these stats on a finer granularity - as it is I don't think they're useful for any sort of real decision making.

Hiroshima, August 6th, 1945.

I've recently finished reading The Making of the Atomic Bomb (highly recommended). The more I look at the atomic bombing of Japan the more it looks like a pure act of terrorism. Further, it seems like atomic weapons have only two military uses: genocide and what you defined as terrorism. Deterrence skirts dangerously close to that definition too, and is in any case only effective against an enemy with convenient clusters of civilians.

On a side note: much as I hate the existence of nuclear weapons, I know myself well enough that if I was a physicist in the 1930s and 40s as such incredible progress was being made I would not have been able to resist working on it, even on the bomb project itself. I would have found a way to sell it to myself. Makes me suspicious of reasons like "It'll shorten the war and save $large_number of $our_side lives"

I think the issue is more complex than simple job arithmetic - if you can attract the very best it has a very non-linear effect on the country and its economy as a whole. Such as the programmer who left South Africa for the US and started a few companies you may have heard of - PayPal, Tesla, Solar City, SpaceX.

That said, I'm a programmer living in South Africa and working for a US company, and it would be pretty stupid for me to actually relocate to the US - I get to live in Cape Town (which is actually a really great place to live), earn USD and spend ZAR. Note that my employer isn't farming out jobs to foreigners because they're trying to cut costs, but because it is genuinely difficult to find the skills. More than half of the dev team are American.

I get the feeling that the programmers who are finding it difficult to find work at the moment are those with mediocre skills. Specialize in something (while keeping current with the general mainstream technologies) and I've always found it easy to land decent jobs.

This smells like a scam of some sort - I can't find any credible sources that link Gates to LENR, and the linked page also includes predictions by a financial astrologer. All the related links I dig into go nowhere but the same set of fringe / crackpot cold fusion sites. Anyone have anything firm on Gates involvement?

It sounds similar to something I wanted to do a few years ago. I see a ton of comments here attacking the idea as a pointless stunt, and pointing out that there are much more basic problems that need solving. I'm in Africa (South Africa) so I thought I'd chime in with where this can really make a difference:

Yes there is a large problem of poverty here, even in this relatively wealthy country (by African Standards), but have a look at why that is. Our official unemployment rate is 24% and the reality is probably much worse. Most of the unemployed are pretty much unemployable, with no useful education or skills. There is a mindset of entitlement bred by decades of political manipulation of the poor. Although we spend a lot per learner on education our outcomes are amongst the worst.

So how can technology help? By equipping people to participate in the job market, and in higher level jobs. Basic computer literacy is a barrier, as is being able to search for jobs online, compile and email a CV, etc.

My plan was to use the usb flash drives as basically your home directory, which allows you to carry your digital identity around and access the net, be able to print, etc. at locations that have a handful of computers, equipment and an Internet connection set up for the purpose. You are issued the flash stick on completing a basic intro course, taught at these same locations.

That goes some way towards levelling the playing field in terms of basic infrastructure access, but the it's part of a broader plan, the idea being to use the system as a platform for running training courses aimed at equipping people with the basic skills to operate a small business, possibly an online business. Today with the rise of high quality free online education facilities like this become even more valuable.

I've seen people set up (informal, technically illegal) businesses on the sidewalk offering passport photos while you wait outside the government buildings requiring them (home affairs, licensing etc). Their equipment is a deep cycle battery and inverter, a camera, computer, printer, a chair and an umbrella. Or a hair salon, or phone booth offering cheap international calls (presumably VoIP based). This is the sort of mindset I want to enable and encourage, and being able to participate in the computer age is a big part of that.

Does something like this fix all the problems of Africa? Of course not, no one thing can. But there are a thousand fixes to smaller problems like this that make a difference. This instance is aimed at two of the most serious root problems - education and national productivity (employablility), so it definitely has value.