This pretty much just made my day at work. Except our lame IT lady just told me I can't download and play while I'm actually at work, on my actual work computer.
https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos_games/v2 (archive.org)
Since I listen to A LOT of music, I think a lot about formats and such. This (www.angrymetalguy.com) is a pretty great summary of mp3's. I might start cataloging my favorites in a lossless format after all, even if mp3's are mostly okay ;)
BUT STILL NO PONO FOR ME
Heard a story on this paper on NPR: http://papers.ssrn....bstract_id=2466040 (papers.ssrn.com)
From the abstract:
Research shows that evidence-based algorithms more accurately predict the future than do human forecasters. Yet, when forecasters are deciding whether to use a human forecaster or a statistical algorithm, they often choose the human forecaster. This phenomenon, which we call algorithm aversion, is costly, and it is important to understand its causes. We show that people are especially averse to algorithmic forecasters after seeing them perform, even when they see them outperform a human forecaster. This is because people more quickly lose confidence in algorithmic than human forecasters after seeing them make the same mistake. In five studies, participants either saw an algorithm make forecasts, a human make forecasts, both, or neither. They then decided whether to tie their incentives to the future predictions of the algorithm or the human. Participants who saw the algorithm perform were less confident in it, and less likely to choose it over an inferior human forecaster. This was true even among those who saw the algorithm outperform the human.
Is SimCity homelessness a bug or a feature? In which some people take their video game WAY too seriously. This is an article about a guys 700 page book about this.
Also read the comments. The guy in the first few comments is a master level troll.
http://motherboard...-a-bug-or-a-feature (motherboard.vice.com)
Have you seen this insane spaceship this guy built for his children? Between us we have the ability to do this. Dave has the woodworking stuff. Josh can program stuff. Who has a soddering iron and welding abilities? Also who has four spare months to do this?
This is the story of one of the last great scifi television shows. The year is 2013. The name of the show... is Babylon 5.
(Show synopses and commentary to follow.)
10,000-year clock http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2011/06/10000-year-clock/all/ (www.wired.com)
I know this story is a couple years old but I am just finding it.
The thing about this clock that raises the hair on the back of my neck is the potential for some future archaeologist or paleontologist (terrestrial or extraterrestrial) finding this clock, examining it, and discovering that, yes, it ran for 10,000 years (or even longer) and has stopped working at some point.
You don't get to be on my phone anymore, Facebook: Why Does Facebook Need to Read My Text Messages? (yro.slashdot.org)
Google Hangout: You stay signed out until I need you. Which might be never.
SPDCA: An alternative to texting.
I think I've mentioned before my opinions on texting. Long and short: it's an ingenious way for cell phone companies to essentially charge for nothing. From a technical standpoint, the profit margin on texting, given the almost negligible effect texting has on existing infrastructure, is incredible, particularly when it comes to overage fees. Having recently been disappointed in AT&T's announcement for their future move to stop selling "limited texting" plans (instead either pay-per-text or unlimited plans, and nothing in between), I wanted to talk about an alternative.
Instant Messaging (IM) is almost as old as the Internet itself. Starting as bulletin boards, moving through forums, and then services like ICQ, AIM, Yahoo, MSN, etc., most of our/my generation has had some experience with a chat window. The services were built with the intent that two people would each be sitting at a computer, with a keyboard, and a relatively persistent connection to the Internet. The systems and protocols themselves work surprisingly well, even supporting things like file transfers, video chat, screen sharing, even sometimes blending telephony into the mix (see: Skype). There even exists a protocol whose purpose is to allow you to create your own IM protocol, making the formalization of old IM protocols (AIM, ICQ) and the creation of new ones (Gtalk) relatively easy.
The problem is that the IM services have become somewhat unpopular, largely due to the onset of texting. The cell phone is the form factor that the original IM designers dreamed of: an always on, always connected device that could fit in your pocket, notify you of new events, and allow you to send and receive messages. And what's more: cell phone companies have convinced the public that it's necessary to pay for such a service, when instant messaging gives you the equivalent functionality, with the potential to exceed that of texting in some ways (status messages, for one).
Recent smart phones have started including IM clients (somewhat better supported on Android, in my short experience, than on the iPhone). I'm glad of this trend, because it gives its users an alternative to the obnoxiously overpriced texting racket. The problem is that for those who choose to communicate over IM, even though they can communicate outside the bounds of "texts," they quickly run aground of the fact that the people on the other side of the IM chat are often at a keyboard, not on a phone. This means that they can easily be spammed by a litany of messages, or be unable to respond quickly enough. Most IM clients, on a computer or otherwise, fail to indicate where a client is connecting from, so a user can't always tell if they're talking to a phone, a computer, or both. This is because most of the IM protocols don't make this distinction, for the reason that as long as you're connected, the service really doesn't care about anything other than successfully delivering a message.
So here's my solution: maintain an IM chat account, say on Gmail/Gchat. Maintain that account separate from your other chat accounts, and only use it for your phone. With that account, only allow messages from other chat accounts that you know are associated with cell phones, and nothing else. Don't log in to this chat account from a client with a keyboard, and if you do, only do so with the knowledge that the person on the other line will respond as they would a text: eventually, not necessarily immediately.
This satisfies the need for passive, non-verbal communication. It also grants the user the ability to set status, such that even if their phone's IM client is connected, they can indicate that they are otherwise engaged (something that isn't possible with texting). Also, depending on how you configure your Gchat client, you can have an off-phone record if your texts, and a record that is searchable (something hard to find in an text clients).
I'd be interested to hear if anybody wants to try this. It requires a smart phone that supports an IM client and push notifications thereof. There is a decent client for Gchat on Android, and I've heard of people using a utility called "Fring" on the iPhone. At the very least, it would be interesting to see if people who text each other frequently (roommates, significant others, etc.), could get rid of the majority of their text usage by going the IM route.
SPDCA: What I do in my free time (stackoverflow.com), or, giving myself Internet high-fives.
A fun read if you're into Git, or caching, or what I have to do in order to get web pages to process in less than 200ms.
The 416d65726963612043616e20436f646520 Act of 2013 (cardenas.house.gov).
Classifies programming languages as "critical foreign languages," that would "create a competitive matching grant program for schools, particularly those in low-income areas, to create new ways to teach computer science and engineering, in tandem with universities and non-profits."
Did you know a Last of Us graphic novel is coming out?
I know because I just got a suggest a purchase request for it, so I'll be ordering it for the library.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Last-Us-American-Dreams/dp/1616552123/ (www.amazon.com)
Faith Erin Hicks is one of my favorite graphic novel artists. I have an autographed copy of Friends With Boys by her.
At my previous job, the ancient version of Firefox we used had become sort of a joke. It would constantly render incorrectly such that I was always chasing down formatting/styling bugs that had long since been fixed. Or, it would incur miserable slowdowns on Javascript-heavy client applications (of which we had many). Add to that, almost every site we visited claimed that we needed to "upgrade our browser to a more secure version," and some would even refuse to function based on that alone. I would have to get a plugin to falsely report my version in order to gain access to some sites.
At one point, I tried to take it upon my self to upgrade my workstation's Firefox. I downloaded the source code, and did the usual ritual to get it configured and compiled. However, about halfway through the compilation, it would come back with memory errors, claiming the compiler (a relatively small, concise program) had ran out of memory in trying to compile the pieces of Firefox together.
Turns out, even though Firefox itself will run on a machine with less than 4GB of RAM, you will still need at least 4GB of RAM (developer.mozilla.org) in order for it to compile correctly. Add to that the fact that Firefox eventually outgrew being able to compile on 32-bit Windows systems (developers.slashdot.org), such that you would need a 64-bit machine with 4GB+ memory in order to even build a 32-bit Firefox. That is to say: Firefox, though perhaps only a "simple" web browser, is a large project, both in scope, breadth, and the number of people involved with its development.
That said, Firefox releases are estimated to weigh in at ~2.9 million lines of source code.
Which is why I laugh when I hear size estimates of HealthCare.Gov to be in the 500 million lines of source code. (www.alexmarchant.com)
This implies to me that that number is one or more of the following:
First I laugh, then I get a little sad. I used to work at a place like CGI Federal doing government contracting. How the government wants to build software is a bad way to build software. Having one big thing that solves all problems is a near-impossible task. Having dozens of different contractors working on one big thing without clear leadership makes it worse. Having a "tech surge" at the end of a project is, in the software engineering world, a well-documented way to kill a project and/or prolong its maintenance in perpetuity.
Much as I like to have software engineering in the news, I'd prefer it to not be like this.
From the LibreDWG project page:
LibreDWG is based on LibDWG (http://libdwg.sourceforge.net (libdwg.sourceforge.net)), which is written with variable names, documentation and comments in Esperanto.
Goddamn hilarious.
And then Steve said, 'Let There Be an iPhone' (www.nytimes.com)
By the end, Grignon wasn’t just relieved; he was drunk. He’d brought a flask of Scotch to calm his nerves. “And so there we were in the fifth row or something — engineers, managers, all of us — doing shots of Scotch after every segment of the demo. There were about five or six of us, and after each piece of the demo, the person who was responsible for that portion did a shot. When the finale came — and it worked along with everything before it, we all just drained the flask. It was the best demo any of us had ever seen. And the rest of the day turned out to be just a [expletive] for the entire iPhone team. We just spent the entire rest of the day drinking in the city. It was just a mess, but it was great.”
I'm sure you have already all seen this, but this is a pretty nice chart with size comparisons of every sci fi starship ever.
http://kotaku.com/every-sci-fi-starship-ever-in-one-mindblowing-comparis-1391608737 (kotaku.com)
