Viewing profile — pavedwalden

I loved the India/China border sub-plot, both as a fun story and as a metaphor for geopolitics. At the end of the book no faction of elites is clearly winning, they're just hashing…

I've heard him say that REAMDE was his attempt to write an airport paperback. I don't think he succeeded there, but Termination Shock does work as a light thriller so maybe he was …

I think the moon theory was almost right, but I didn't see any reference to insects keeping the light source to one side or the other. The researchers seem to think that insects or…

"valves" is a good short answer. If you want a long explanation, this video gets into a lot of details. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdD0yMS40a0

When I worked in an office it was much easier to casually ask for quick help. It was often pretty obvious whether a senior engineer was busy and focused or between tasks, checking …

I use Siri just for playing music, setting alarms, and reminders, but even there I run into bugs on a regular basis. One day she stopped being able to find songs from Apple Music, …

Businesses with high chargeback rates might get rejected by some payment processors, but there's usually another one willing to take them on in exchange for higher fees.

Interesting way of looking at it. I don't know if the marketing value alone could justify the $100m price, but when you think about a 30 second Super Bowl ad being $6m and compare …

Thanks for supplying the fact-check I was looking for. I think I've been seeing headlines about this "discovery" for over a decade, always presented as if it's a promising new tech…

Point taken, as far as the scale of his theft. Myhrvold is still a villain in my eyes, but OP overstated things.

There's a lot about this in Michael Lewis' "The Fifth Risk". The most maddening part is that the company lobbying to weaken the National Weather Service can't replicate much of wha…

I think the only long-term solution is cultural. Different cultures have different relationships to intoxicants, and they can change over time. Over the last 60 years in America, d…

Among the many other ways our system amplifies recidivism, it's horrifying how common it is for police and prison guards to strike people in the head during confrontations.

The explanation that iOS users are subsidizing all other Anki users with that price somehow made it easier for me to swallow than if I viewed it as mere price-gouging.

There's an edX course about scientific illustration that looks interesting: https://www.edx.org/course/drawing-nature-science-and-cultur...

Originally, Google was very effective at looking at the interconnections of content people had put online and using that to infer which pages were most relevant. SEO tactics immedi…

It was called "Send Me to Heaven" https://www.wired.com/2013/09/send-me-to-heaven-app/

That reminds me of this very cool video from a gaze-tracking study of someone walking on rough terrain: https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/8bzdr8/gaz...

I got very interested in chess after downloading the 'Magnus Trainer' app. I hadn't particularly been looking to improve my chess playing (I knew the rules but rarely played and ha…

Thanks for making that game! When I was trying to learn better rhythm, I found it really interesting. I never got very good at it, but it was an engaging tool.

Could you wrap the cardboard in aluminum foil?

If someone worked for Halliburton, even just as a secretary, I'd link less of them and might let them know it. Given Disney's influence on copyright law, I could see Doctorow putti…

That simulation reminds me of the flash game 'QWOP'

Poorly cared for, pets can do an epic amount of damage to a property (getting the cat piss smell out of flooring is more than just a few dollars). Do you believe that landlords who…