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Comment Re:Who? (Score 2) 149

by BorgiaPope (#63544115) Attached to: SoylentNews Might Shut Down On June 30th

> Slashdot too is the ghost of its former self. Remember the Slashdot effect? Lively stories with hundreds of comments?

Yes, I remember. So where have the Slashdot users gone? To Reddit?

Hacker News seems to be thriving. The commentary on current tech is smart, even as the user base leans older (40+). This post from yesterday, "Same Stop: Life after 26 years as a programmer for Apple," has received 389 comments. It's well worth reading.

Until this very moment, I have not thought about the business model for Hacker News. It has no ads. Who moderates? Who pays the hosting bills?

Comment Re:Ranks up there... (Score 1) 68

It's interesting that the court was divided NOT according to its usual ideological lines: Roberts and Kagan were the only dissenters.

What things boil down to is that each justice rendered a purely aesthetic (and not legal) judgement: to what degree did Warhol "transform" the source photo? I happen to agree with the minority, that Warhol transformed the photo significantly, and added new artistic value. But this judgement, like nearly all such in aesthetics, has no empirical standard of proof, no way to measure the matter objectively.

As years and decades pass, and with them changes in the prevailing tastes of art criticism, this ruling may well look historically stupid. That's just another way of saying that aesthetic judgements are arbitrary, something we've known since Aristotle. A strange way to make law . . . .

Comment Existing Airpods Pro still superior (Score 1) 9

Three days ago I bought a set of Airpods Pro by walking into a Best Buy store (the U.S. retail chain). Cost: $219 USD, $40 more than today's announced price ($179) of the next generation Airpods. The extra tech in the Airpods Pro make that extra $40 worth it IMO.

It's interesting that Apple did not uggrade the Pro line. I have not read an explanation.

As for the battery life in my new Airpods Pro, I'll find out soon enough. The battery in the case can be charged with a Qi pad, which I have no experience with. Not sure of the benefit over the provided 1 meter cable (USB C --> Lightning).

Comment Re:'Weaponize' ??? (Score 2) 90

by BorgiaPope (#34667676) Attached to: The Wrong Way To Weaponize Social Media

The term "weaponize" is Shirky's own. Here's the full context from his essay:

"In contrast, one of the most successful anti-censorship software programs, Freegate, has received little support from the United States, partly because of ordinary bureaucratic delays and partly because the U.S. government is wary of damaging U.S.-Chinese relations: the tool was originally created by Falun Gong, the spiritual movement that the Chinese government has called 'an evil cult.' The challenges of Freegate and Haystack demonstrate how difficult it is to weaponize social media to pursue country-specific and near-term policy goals."
Censorship

Submission + - The Wrong Way to Weaponize Social Media (foreignaffairs.com)

Submitted by BorgiaPope
BorgiaPope writes: NYU's Clay Shirky, in the new issue of Foreign Affairs, calls the U.S. government's approach to social media "dangerous" and "almost certainly wrong," as in its favoring Haystack over Freegate. The Political Power of Social Media claims that the freedom of online assembly — via texting, photo sharing, Facebook, Twitter, humble email — is more important even than access to information via an uncensored Internet. Countering Malcolm Gladwell in the New Yorker, Shirky looks at recent uprisings in the Philippines, Moldova, and Spain to make his point that, instead of emphasizing anti-censorship tools, the U.S. should be fighting Egypt's recent mandatory licensing of group-oriented text-messaging services.
Image

Cooking With Your USB Ports 188

Posted by samzenpus from the sorry-your-dinner-crashed dept.
tekgoblin writes "Wow, I would never have thought to try and cook food with the power that a standard USB port provides, but someone did. A standard port provides 5V of power, give or take a little. I am not even sure what it takes to heat a small hotplate, but I am sure it is more than 5V. It looks like the guy tied together around 30 USB cables powered by his PC to power this small hotplate. But believe it or not, it seems to have cooked the meat perfectly."
GUI

IDEs With VIM Text Editing Capability? 193

Posted by timothy from the one-keybinding-to-rule-them-all dept.
An anonymous reader writes "I am currently looking to move from text editing with vim to a full fledged IDE with gdb integration, integrated command line, etc. Extending VIM with these capabilities is a mortal sin, so I am looking for a linux based GUI IDE. I do not want to give up the efficient text editing capabilities of VIM though. How do I have my cake and eat it too?"
Image

PhD Candidate Talks About the Physics of Space Battles 361

Posted by samzenpus from the load-photon-torpedoes dept.
darthvader100 writes "Gizmodo has run an article with some predictions on what future space battles will be like. The author brings up several theories on propulsion (and orbits), weapons (explosives, kinetic and laser), and design. Sounds like the ideal shape for spaceships will be spherical, like the one in the Hitchhiker's Guide movie."
Idle

Canadian Blood Services Promotes Pseudoscience 219

Posted by samzenpus from the type-A-negative-personality dept.
trianglecat writes "The not-for-profit agency Canadian Blood Services has a section of their website based on the Japanese cultural belief of ketsueki-gata, which claims that a person's blood group determines or predicts their personality type. Disappointing for a self-proclaimed 'science-based' organization. The Ottawa Skeptics, based in the nation's capital, appear to be taking some action."
Education

Computer Games and Traditional CS Courses 173

Posted by Soulskill from the terrible-terrible-games dept.
drroman22 writes "Schools are working to put real-world relevance into computer science education by integrating video game development into traditional CS courses. Quoting: 'Many CS educators recognized and took advantage of younger generations' familiarity and interests for computer video games and integrate related contents into their introductory programming courses. Because these are the first courses students encounter, they build excitement and enthusiasm for our discipline. ... Much of this work reported resounding successes with drastically increased enrollments and student successes. Based on these results, it is well recognized that integrating computer gaming into CS1 and CS2 (CS1/2) courses, the first programming courses students encounter, is a promising strategy for recruiting and retaining potential students." While a focus on games may help stir interest, it seems as though game development studios are as yet unimpressed by most game-related college courses. To those who have taken such courses or considered hiring those who have: what has your experience been?
Image

Scientists Say a Dirty Child Is a Healthy Child 331

Posted by samzenpus from the snack-is-going-to-be-on-the-floor-today dept.
Researchers from the School of Medicine at the University of California have shown that the more germs a child is exposed to, the better their immune system in later life. Their study found that keeping a child's skin too clean impaired the skin's ability to heal itself. From the article: "'These germs are actually good for us,' said Professor Richard Gallo, who led the research. Common bacterial species, known as staphylococci, which can cause inflammation when under the skin, are 'good bacteria' when on the surface, where they can reduce inflammation."
Programming

The State of Ruby VMs — Ruby Renaissance 89

Posted by Soulskill from the take-your-pick dept.
igrigorik writes "In the short span of just a couple of years, the Ruby VM space has evolved to more than just a handful of choices: MRI, JRuby, IronRuby, MacRuby, Rubinius, MagLev, REE and BlueRuby. Four of these VMs will hit 1.0 status in the upcoming year and will open up entirely new possibilities for the language — Mac apps via MacRuby, Ruby in the browser via Silverlight, object persistence via Smalltalk VM, and so forth. This article takes a detailed look at the past year, the progress of each project, and where the community is heading. It's an exciting time to be a Rubyist."

Comment Re:What exactly to they mean by "IP"? (Score 5, Informative) 116

by BorgiaPope (#14268289) Attached to: Advice for Open Source Startups: Remember LinuxCare
> My impression is that it's a good example of a
> geek-founded company taking on Professional Management
> to keep the VCs happy and getting royally fucked over
> by the Professional Management with the Impressive Credentials.

Bingo. I joined Linuxcare in early 1999 as employee #27, and stayed until January 2001. For a while it was paradise. I mean, who wouldn't like having Rasmus Lerdorf and Andrew Tridgell working a few cubes away? The level of talent there was really rather spectacular.

But then . . . . a couple of very bad VC-installed apples at the very top of the company destroyed the place by a) squandering the funding on absurd levels of growth and infrastructure, b) failing to IPO in time, and (worst of all) c) creating a geeks-vs-suits culture that came to consume everybody in petty office politics. In a reversal of stereotype, it was the original founders who had the most sanity. They held the tech talent in place as long as they could.

Sure, Linxucare's open-source services model was a little ahead of its time but the company, leaned down, could have hung on through the bursting of the bubble and eventually come to thrive. Its confidence that Linux had a future in the enterprise has been more than vindicated. Now, it's IBM Global Services and similar scooping up all the Linux services income. Sigh, what could have been . . . .

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