Invent Your Own Computer Games with Python

This is a really good idea. I learned BASIC from a book that took the same sort of approach, and (language aside [fuck you Dijkstra]) it was a great motivation.

Startup Trekking: Steve Jobs, circa 2020: "Thoughts on country roads"

Country roads were created during the car era. But the iCar era is about a very comfortable user experience, reliability and durability, all areas where country roads fall short.

WikiAnswers - What is the difference between a duck

Surreal humor as exemplified by the "duck joke" is most frequently favored by college students, a particular subset of professional comedy writers, and voracious readers of Douglas Adams novels.

MS Paint Adventures

SunPlus: The biggest chip company you’ve never heard of

Dude reverse-engineered instruction set *and wrote an emulator* based on a ROM dump.

Volumetric heat diffusion skinning - Wolfire Games Blog

In a 3D model, assign vertex weights (= amount of influence a bone has on the model's vertices, for each bone, for each vertex) based on a "heat diffusion" model. Simple, looks nice.

The Trouble with the Segway

The article referenced in the previous bookmark.

The Electric Unicycle

Paul Graham comments that while people have a negative reaction to Segway riders, they don't have a negative reaction to this self-balancing unicycle. He thinks it's because the sitting-astride, feet-on-pedals aspect makes it look like the rider is actually doing more work. EDIT: Thinking about this some more, I suspect that part of the appeal of, say, motorcycles vs Segways is the fact that bikes are dangerous. Riding a motorcycle is courting death. Segways probably won't kill you. "Solution": Make Segways go ten times faster.

Making the Food Taste Like The Food « Tea Leaves

It's a long-winded article to make a single point, which is "pre-cook your aromatics", but it also includes a daal recipe.

iPhone/Touch Platform

Graham Nelson (author of Inform, lecturer in pure mathematics) on the importance of making a stand re Apple's no-translation-layers clause: "it matters because App Store-like cultures are here to stay, and we need to establish some community norms for them."

Skulpt

Python implemented in JavaScript

LLVM Project Blog: Amazing feats of Clang Error Recovery

Clang's helpful error messages. I haven't seen all the GCC ones presented here, but it was fun to go through the ones I knew to see how used I had become to pattern-matching GCC errors. "Two or more data types in de..." "Aha! Forgot a semi-colon above!" "non-class type" "Aha! Used . instead of ->!"

Welcome to Venmo | Private Beta.

"When people trust you, you can pull money from their accounts at will." Words to live by! Similar to African pay-by-phone-credit schemes. (hacker news)

open sword - pixen

Pixel art image editor for OS X. I'm using it at the moment, and it's very nice. Update: It's also quite buggy.

Hacker News | Ask HN: got any food hacks?

Quick recipes. Most are vegetarian or vegetarianisable.

Lorem iPad

Duis aute irure dolor iPad in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse CEO Steve Jobs dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Windows 7 ha ha ha.

#795944 - Pastie

Geohot's PS3 exploit relies on the PS3 failing to invalidate a memory region. He ensures that it fails by glitching the memory bus of his PS3 with an FPGA programmed to pull (one or more?) lines low for 40 nanoseconds. Pretty damn cool.

Reputation Is Dead: It’s Time To Overlook Our Indiscretions

Title sums up article. Bookmarking because it seems to be indicative of a trend in tech reporting (and possibly also reality) towards less privacy and less expectation of privacy by default. (But just to be clear: the interesting part is not whether or not this is true, but that the Internet hivemind has convinced itself that it is true) (hacker news)

Spoiler alert: TV medical dramas 'rife' with bioethical issues and professional misconduct

"Informed consent was the most frequently observed bioethical issue. Of 49 total incidents, 43 percent involved "exemplary" consent discussions, while the remaining instances were "inadequate." In general, exemplary depictions portrayed "compassionate, knowledgeable physicians participating in a balanced discussion with a patient about possible treatment options." Conversely, inadequate depictions were "marked by hurried and one-sided discussions, refusal by physicians to answer questions" and "even an entire lack of informed consent for risky procedures," the authors state."

3 Simple Rules That Will Make You a ‘Superstar’ Developer « yield thought

1. Write lots of crap. 2. Introduce subtle bugs. 3. Don't document anything. Sad: a) "This is satire" postscript; b) comments indicating why the postscript was necessary.

The Selfish Gene as Philosophical Essay

Daniel Dennett on why "philosophical" isn't a criticism of Dawkin's writing.

Schneier on Security: Schneier Blogging Template

If there's one thing I like more than recursion, it's... well.

Study Hacks » Blog Archive » How to Get Into Stanford with B's on Your Transcript: Failed Simulations & the Surprising Psychology of Impressiveness

Interesting take on the "psychology of impressiveness": the harder it is for people to imagine themselves accomplishing a task, the more impressive that task is (regardless of how much perseverance or talent was actually required) (hackernews)

What is an HTML 5 WebSocket - KAAZING.ORG - Home - Kaazing Gateway

XMLHTTPRequest, you have served me well, but now it's time to learn something new.

Stewart Brand - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The hippie, writer, and environmentalist who, among many other things, founded the Whole Earth Catalog, started the WELL, and coined the phrase "Information wants to be free", is a strong advocate for nuclear power -- on the basis that it is one of few viable green power technologies.

Sam Harris: Science can answer moral questions | Video on TED.com

I avoided this for a while because I felt I'd disagree with it. Actually it's very good. Fascinating to see his unpreparedness under questioning afterwards.

My Lai Massacre - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Readability - An Arc90 Lab Experiment

Bookmarklet that reformats any "article-style" page and removes all the crap. Seems to work! (Edit: works best on things with one big column of text)

19 equal temperament - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Alternate scale consisting of 19 tones rather than the normal 12. I like the music that I've so far heard for this tuning.

Conjuring Slydini (Part 2) - Opinionator Blog - NYTimes.com

Conjuring Slydini - Opinionator Blog - NYTimes.com

Sevish - Golden Hour album at Split Notes Microtonal Netlabel

Published on the world's first netlabel for freely-available, microtonal songs with recognisable beats! And this kind of niche is why the Internet is so great. Let's hold hands, Internet.

Conal Elliott » The C language is purely functional

"“C programmers” really program not in C, but in the purely functional language cpp. As with any purely functional language, cpp consists only of (nestable) expressions, not statements. Now here’s the clever part: when evaluated (not executed), a cpp expression yields a (pure) value of type C, which is an ADT (abstract type) that represents imperative programs." Teehee, language nerds!

Why Mark Shuttleworth is right - Ubuntu is not a democracy and nor should it be | OMG! Ubuntu!

Amazing example of the echo-chamber effect of the internet. The root cause of this discussion is that the fucking minimise and close buttons on window borders changed positions. That's. It. Truly stunning. I'm almost impressed.

Performative contradiction - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Oh ffs..."The statement "Hierarchies do not exist" offers a more subtle example of performative contradiction referring to the very capacity of making a statement, because the statement itself is a hierarchy of semiotic relations of letters (as symbols) formed into words (as signifiers) formed into a sentence (as a statement)."

Dawkins Review of Intellectual Impostures

Penises are equivalent to the square root of -1.

Psychopaths Among Us, by Robert Hercz

Fascinating distraction material (hacker news)

Interview: Encyclopedia Dramatica moderator

"Let us talk epistemology for a moment. The minute there is a hidden limit on speech, it is no longer free. Free speech with limits is not free speech under any circumstances. But Matthew 15:11 (what goes into a man's mouth does not make him "unclean", but what comes out of his mouth, that is what makes him "unclean") certainly applies to some users of ED"

Cookery Books: Britain's Gift to America - Food - The Atlantic

'Across town, in Bloomsbury, Persephone Books (59 Lamb's Conduit Street, Russell Square tube station) reprints "20th century classics by (mostly) women."' Unusual London cookbook shops

Aboriginal recognition a farce: Tuckey - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

This is from the same people who say the Lord's Prayer before each session of Parliament. Looking forward to hearing about the "tokenism" of that gesture.

§ 161. Idea worth minus a million

'When telling others about their ideas, every inventor or designer should say honestly: “I have an idea worth minus a million.”' ... however, the concept of Evian-branded ice makes me want to punch kittens.

Call Me Fishmeal.: TED 2010

"I, for instance, don’t like the taste of tripe, but I don’t begrudge those who do. It seems to me that the problem came because the people who didn’t think Sarah was funny either (a) took her seriously, and so thought she was the most idiotic, venal, and horrible woman who ever lived, and/or (b) thought everyone else must be hating this as well, because so clearly WE ARE EATING A STOMACH OH GOD THIS IS DISGUSTING I FEEL LIKE IT IS EATING ME BACK THERE MUST BE SOME KIND OF MISTAKE." Will Shipley's writing is as good as his code.

"M.I.A.", M.I.A., clap clap blog

Interesting political / musical analysis of this song. I think this sort of writing is hard to do well, but he managed it. :)

Robot Chicken Unicorn Attack 'Chase Your Dreams' Shirt -- Adult Swim Shop

USA and Canada only. Why must you destroy my dreams, adultswim. :(

Have tracing JIT compiler's won? | Lambda the Ultimate

Scott and Scurvy

Fascinating account of the discovery, and subsequent loss, of the cure for scurvy between the 18th and 20th centuries. I can understand how it was lost: fresh lemon juice conveyed a benefit but lime juice stored in a copper vessel did not; fresh seal liver helped but preserved meat didn't. It must have been completely baffling.

Tony Abbott "Threatened" By Gays on SameSame.com.au

I know a good cure for feeling "threatened" by gays.

Leviathans may battle in remote depths - latimes.com

Bookmarked for title alone

Face-Off: Final Fantasy XIII | DigitalFoundry

The comparison video is *amazingly* well-done. I want to find the person who made this video and shake their hand. And then slap them silly with the other hand.

Human Nose Shapes

typesofnoses.com. Thanks, Internet!