Viewing profile — nihilocrat

> I've worked in environments like that. Unfortunately, the open space looks like "not working" to people and is highly visible. Since no one wants to be publicly seen as not worki…

This one's particularly great: http://youtu.be/1-zhdU4GSBA You can tell there are pretty often some weird syncing errors, but hey, it's worth it for stuff like this.

Drone attack. Just to clarify, I'm not wearing a tinfoil hat, I just have seen the circumstances of some drone attacks: against US citizens in places where no war was declared and …

If they did that here, we'd need to find a new CEO... but the programmers would be in good shape.

Am I the only one who can't read this graph? It looks like it's rotated 90 degrees and there's no time axis so I don't see what this is representing. I don't understand what the le…

I also think government dilutes the effectiveness of the experts it employs, but at the same time the private sector is amazingly, exceedingly incapable of seeing benefit from anyt…

This is not really possible if you are working on a mass-market product, like a videogame. Financial success is synonymous with publicity, so if you STFU you will almost certainly …

"If you destroy publicly funded research, you leave us in a situation where only the big corporations can afford the drastic security precautions needed to continue biotechnology r…

Why recharge when you can just replace the batteries in such a situation? It would make for a better show, anyways.

Crytek deserves all the praise they get for their hard work in rendering... ...but... Why are we conditioned to think that "the future of gaming" is solely a function of a game's a…

I don't feel the analogy is entirely accurate. Imagine having to learn 5 "if" statements, or 10 ways to say "++". In a spoken conversation, you don't get to look up the API docs if…

What you are doing is called code-switching: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code-switching

I use "exploiting" in a more technical sense here. An exploit is using a bug in the game for personal gain, in an always-on multiplayer game with an economy affecting all players, …

Actually, there's a major shift in the industry (to "free to play") that companies have been making. Basically, the company provides an in-game item shop where players can use real…

I work at a company that makes MMOs. If this guy's statements are true, then he was making significantly more money exploiting an MMO than I do by programming one. The irony is sta…

I believe NYC is implementing a bike-share program like the ones in Montreal, London, and other cities. Basically, you pay a subscription fee (or you can just pay as you go, of cou…

Move to Canada? It's easier than moving to the US. :)

This sounds like the most common reaction to users accidentally causing errors in data: lock everything down and only allow a very specific operation, and complain loudly and speci…

You can't compare seeing human beings interacting in a "true 3D", real-life setting to the same thing happening on a screen. You don't get depth perception, and there are artifacts…

There is a cool German word for companies like Facebook or Google, which collect mounds of information about their users: Datenkrake : http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datenkrake

Video games allow the user to interact with the media and cause reactions to input. It allows us to explore causality at a very personal level, even though the systems and entities…

I've always been curious, regarding "speaking with a Southern drawl, with a stuffed-up nose from a bad cold" ... are there non-native English speakers here who have had particular …

Reminds me of Carl Sagan's musings on marijuana usage.

Insurance would not be quite as clear-cut, but I suppose it would be a sensible option. Companies would point to herd immunity (linked in the comments above) to avoid paying for va…

For the record, since Netflix Canada launched sometime last year, it has been a streaming-only service. We have a kind of sucky selection that is getting better as time passes, but…