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Amit Patel › Comments
Google Chart API can generate LaTeX equations - http://moultano.blogspot.com/2009...
Kazutaka Ogaki, ffcode, Miller Tzou and 44 other people liked this
love!
- Ashwin Bharambe
Quite useful for some. :)
- Daniel Schildt
Yay!
- Simon
Am I the only person who absolutely despises Knuth's "Computer Modern" font? I don't know what it is about it, but it just looks awful to me. And I'm one of those people who used TeX for everything including drawing finite automata and analytic tableaux back in college.
- Jim Norris
I'm with you, Jim. That's why, following the book _TeX Unbound_, I used other fonts in my LaTeXed thesis. From the colophon: "I used mathinst to make a mathematical font family of Monotype Bembo Semibold (from Agfa-Monotype), MathTime (from Y&Y), Chantilly (from Softmaker, similar to Gill Sans), Typewriter (from the Electronic Font Foundry), and a few others, with which I typeset this dissertation."
- Ruchira S. Datta
I always had \usepackage{times} in my LaTeX documents.
- Tudor Bosman
Times is almost as bad though. At one point I figured out how to use Adobe Garamond, but it was kind of flaky.
- Jim Norris
I didn't like Computer Modern or Times. I used Century Schoolbook for my stuff, I think (\usepackage{newcent}).
- Amit Patel
Marginal Revolution: Geoengineering with Iron Fertilization - http://www.marginalrevolution.com/margina...
Anna Haro, Carlos Ayala, Maxamad (Amazigh) and 5 other people liked this
"As even their critics admit, Levitt and Dubner have performed a useful service in drawing greater popular attention to geoengineering. Garden hoses to the sky,however, are not the only approach. Iron fertilization is simpler, cheaper and much more easily testable. Most people are aware that CO2 and temperature are positively correlated in the long historical record but fewer people know that iron dust correlates negatively on the same scale - that is, temperature and CO2 levels are low when iron-dust is high. The graph illustrates. The basic mechanism that appears to drive the association between low temperature, low CO2 and high iron-dust levels is that iron-rich dust sometimes sweeps off the continents into the oceans where it creates a plankton bloom. Phytoplankton take up CO2 in order to grow and as they die and produce fecal matter (I kid you not) carbon sinks to the lower depths or bottom of the ocean where it may remain for 100 to a 1000 or to even to millions of years (in the...
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- Jason Wehmhoener
from Bookmarklet
I met some marine microbiologists from Max Planck Institute Bremen at ISMB last summer where we talked about this specifically. They explained a couple of problems with this. Under natural conditions, only a fraction of the CO2 taken up by phytoplankton actually reaches the ocean floor, because grazers normally eat the phytoplankton and bring it back up to the surface. But under...
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- Ruchira S. Datta
So we're all gonna die anyways?
- Jim Norris
I got all that from one lunch with people who specialize in marine microbiology and have been thinking specifically about combatting climate change. I wonder if Levitt or Tabarrok have done the equivalent, or if they automatically understand everything because they're economists and thus can do away with the need for expertise (or even data) by the sheer power of their intelligence.
- Ruchira S. Datta
Jim, that doesn't follow. Actually reducing CO2 emissions is much simpler, though not easier, than these geoengineering solutions. The geoengineering solutions only *seem* simple because the complexities of ecology are swept under the rug. Economists of a certain stripe are accustomed to sweeping complexities under the rug (with regard to the economy as well), but in this case it just won't do.
- Ruchira S. Datta
Do you think that's an affliction unique to economists? I see a fair amount of it in other fields too, like computers for example.
- Jim Norris
It seems like we'd have much less insight into the secondary effects of any of these global warming mitigation schemes than we would if we pursued reduction in greenhouse gases in the first place. It seems like a lot of the mitigation strategies just trade off one environmental problem for another.
- Jim Norris
No, it's not unique to economists--in fact I think they caught the attitude from physicists, but the attitude at least seems to work well in physics itself (as opposed to various other fields to which physicists think they can lend their powerful intelligence--see http://arxiv.org/abs...).
- Ruchira S. Datta
Jim, my point exactly.
- Ruchira S. Datta
Do you think they caught the "pure math" bug and lost touch with empirical reality?
- Jim Norris
About computers, I think that may be at least a bit different because at least a small number of human intelligences designed the computer in the first place.
- Ruchira S. Datta
Jim: totally, I wrote a blogpost about this once, way back when I used to blog: http://ruchiradatta.blogspot.com/2005...
- Ruchira S. Datta
I interacted with some mathematical economists when I was doing my (pure math) thesis in game theory. One of them actually told me, "Don't use examples, they just make things more confusing." !!!
- Ruchira S. Datta
I can't stand gratuitous math porn in economics (or CS or any other science). I think a lot of it just serves to make the reader feel dumb and make the author look smarter, even when it has no bearing on reality. But then again I am not a scientist. I just admire them from afar.
- Jim Norris
Well, I'm trying to become a scientist, and it's a humbling experience. I do my best not to introduce gratuitous math porn. :)
- Ruchira S. Datta
How close are you? How's it different than being a mere computer nerd like me?
- Jim Norris
Well, I'm a research specialist, so in that sense I already am a scientist. I just feel there's an endless amount to learn, but it's also endlessly fascinating, which makes it a lot of fun.
- Ruchira S. Datta
At what point do you get to be somebody and do something that anyone cares about though? Does that ever happen? Only for the lucky few?
- Jim Norris
Well, I'm lucky to have already done something that some people care about (in fact we have more requests than we can keep up with), thanks to working for a great PI. I don't know when I'll get to be somebody though, that is only for the lucky few.
- Ruchira S. Datta
P.I. still sounds like something out of a detective novel or TV show: Magnum, P.I.
- Jim Norris
I always wanted to be a PI. :)
- Ruchira S. Datta
Jim, you said "It seems like we'd have much less insight into the secondary effects of any of these global warming mitigation schemes than we would if we pursued reduction in greenhouse gases in the first place. It seems like a lot of the mitigation strategies just trade off one environmental problem for another." and I think that sounds great. The thing that stumps me is the fact that we're increasing our output of greenhouse gases, not decreasing. So, how do we pursue reduction of greenhouse gases?
- Jason Wehmhoener
My cousin suggests taxing banks and using the proceeds to finance green technology transfer to developing countries: http://www.guardian.co.uk/busines...
- Ruchira S. Datta
OK, interesting concept. Then how do we get the industrialized world to stop increasing emissions? Or, maybe we need a more tractable problem: Is it possible to design an experiment that demonstrates the mitigation of secondary effects given a partial or localized reduction in emissions? In other words: do we need the whole world to grow up and get along before we can prove the efficacy...
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- Jason Wehmhoener
The article Ruchira links to mentions a "transaction tax". Can someone help me understand specifically what that means?
- Jason Wehmhoener
Jason, I'll ask Arunabha what he had in mind.
- Ruchira S. Datta
I'm sure I'll get in trouble for this comment, but I think stopping industrial emissions is like stopping teenage sex. You can keep telling people to abstain, or you can just give up and give everyone condoms and birth control pills. With CO2 emissions I think we're still in the abstinence camp. One day I think we will give up and decide to reduce CO2 by planting forests, increasing...
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- Amit Patel
Amit, the reason I had that conversation with those microbiologists in Bremen is because I was interested in developing geoengineering to reduce CO2 myself. I'm all for planting forests, but they take a long time to grow. In this case relying on geoengineering would be like engaging in unsafe sex in 1920, gambling that a birth control pill will be invented before an unplanned pregnancy occurs.
- Ruchira S. Datta
Much simpler than planting forests and waiting for them to grow is stopping deforestation, e.g. for producing beef or biofuels, which no matter how efficient will always be net carbon positive.
- Ruchira S. Datta
Ruchira, that makes complete sense. Unfortunately our agricultural lobbyists have an unhealthy amount of power and work hard to prevent any reduction in support for biofuel or beef production. How can we resist these forces?
- Jason Wehmhoener
Arunabha says: "Ruchira - to clarify, my paper does not propose a Tobin tax. The Tobin tax (on international currency transactions) has been part of the debate since the early 1970s for regulating financial markets and it has been proposed at times to finance development goals. The Guardian article used a similar argument for climate change. The proposal my co-author and I have put...
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- Ruchira S. Datta
Jason: By banding together and proposing positive alternatives. Much easier said than done...
- Ruchira S. Datta
I do like the idea of pushing clean coal and nuclear (though I have misgivings about both, and feel the expense of solar and wind are justified) and it's nice to hope that if such ideas were implemented broadly enough that it would take the wind out of the biofuel sails. Still not sure what to do about the beef lobby, which is another major cause of deforestation. A large number of...
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- Jason Wehmhoener
I do actually support research into geoengineering, biofuels, and so forth, I just think we need to combat climate change on many fronts rather than assume one of these is going to solve it.
- Ruchira S. Datta
Absolutely.
- Jason Wehmhoener
Generation specs: Stopping the short-sight epidemic - health - 06 November 2009 - New Scientist - http://www.newscientist.com/article...
Victor Ganata, Robert Felty, Alex Power and 6 other people liked this
What causes nearsightedness? It doesn't appear to be genetic. Spending lots of time outdoors while growing up seems to greatly reduce the chances of being nearsighted.
- Amit Patel
"Near work, such as reading, had always seemed like an obvious contributor, since short-sightedness appears more common among highly educated people."
- Clare Dibble
"Playing indoor sports turned out to have no benefits for the eyes, whereas even physically inactive time spent outside was beneficial"
- Clare Dibble
"The result? On average the children in Sydney spent nearly 14 hours per week outside, and only 3 per cent developed myopia. In contrast, the children in Singapore spent just 3 hours outside, and 30 per cent developed myopia. Once again, close work had a minimal influence; the Australian children actually spent more time reading and in front of their computers than the Singaporeans...
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- bob
My optometrist was very impressed that my myopia is getting better. He thinks it's because I take off my glasses to read, but now I think it's because I spent a lot more time outside than others.
- Piaw Na
My myopia stopped getting worse when I started going out more, but there were so many other lifestyle changes at the time that it's hard for me to say whether it had an effect. For example, when outdoors I also exercise more :) (hiking, mostly)
- Amit Patel
Our 9 month old son loves being outside. Maybe this will mean that he won't be as near-sighted as I am.
- Robert Felty
Google can generate your equations for you! - http://moultano.blogspot.com/2009...
Joel Webber, Roberto Bonini, Aaron D'Souza and 9 other people liked this
Sweet!
- Ruchira S. Datta
Awesome!
- Amit Patel
All math departments are going to ban google now :D
- Roberto Bonini
Issue 25313 - chromium - rounded corners look lighter in Chrome than in Safari and Firefox - http://code.google.com/p...
Ryan Moulton, Matt Mastracci, Joel Webber and Ruchira S. Datta liked this
"I'm really outraged by this, I never saw such attitude in software development... ever, in my entire life, and I have 10 years of experience in software development..... this is just unbelievable, such irresponsibility! Going public with this!!! come on!! WHY!?"
- Simon
from Bookmarklet
I think the author is being serious.
- Simon
Simon, I think the author of the comment you just quoted, Comment 14, is satirizing a comment above, e.g., Comment 9. But the author of Comment 9 is being serious.
- Ruchira S. Datta
I'm not so sure. Graphics geeks get really sensitive about this kind of stuff. Both #14 and #9 may be expressing their honest opinions. They only way to be sure is to troll them both and post a reply about the bug not being that important because the page still operates correctly with the sub-optimal rounded corners. Also, I can't repro it on the latest dev channel release of Chrome 4 on the Mac.
- Bill Strathearn
I once filed a bug with IBM about a single pixel being the wrong shade of gray, but arguing for a P1 seems to go too far.
- Amit Patel
I see crap like this on a fairly regular basis, and it doesn't appear to me that comment 14 is being satirical (or if it is, then the author is pretty bad at making satire clear). There seems to be no shortage of douchebags who will spam every bug that bothers them with "the sky is falling" comments, lambasting the individuals responsible with ad hominem attacks, and so forth. This is one of the things that makes working on open-source software for a large company less fun than it should be.
- Joel Webber
Apparently the author of comment 14 is going to escalate the issue, so the Chromium team can just ignore it for now until the executive fixes the bug.
- Matt Mastracci
Which pixel was that, Amit?
- ⓞnor
Lost Garden: Testosterone and Competitive Play - http://lostgarden.com/2009...
Clare Dibble liked this
How multiplayer competitive games vary based on whether they're skill-based or luck-based, and whether they're played with strangers or with friends.
- Amit Patel
"The most important realization is that typical form of 'fun' that we associate with competitive games is either reduced or turned into a negative experience. Competitive game play with friends becomes less about winning and more about shared experiences. This is a very different emotion. The ability to tell player stories, communicate, discuss and joke with one another are all features...
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- Clare Dibble
"The second group are pro-social players who are predisposed to react to competitive situations with a focus on relationship building. In general, they have a lower base level of testosterone. Intriguingly, they do not experience the same misery of failure. In some sense, they aren't playing to win so they don't mind losing. In fact, some studies suggest they even experience increased...
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- Clare Dibble
Interesting...
- .LAG liked that
Effort Leads To Greater Happiness « intellectual vanities… about close to everything - http://huehueteotl.wordpress.com/2009...
Los Angeles Dj, RAPatton, Clare Dibble and 13 other people liked this
“No pain, no gain applies to happiness, too, according to new research published online in the Journal of Happiness Studies. People who work hard at improving a skill or ability, such as mastering a math problem or learning to drive, may experience stress in the moment, but experience greater happiness on a daily basis and longer term, the study suggests.”
- Amit Patel
"And what’s striking is that you don’t have to reach your goal to see the benefits to your happiness and well-being."
- Clare Dibble
Eager to use Disqus for my blog, but want php, not js, so search engines can index comments. Tips? @danielha @disqus
Michal Cierniak, Louis Gray, anna sauce and AJ Kohn liked this
I'm the opposite — I *don't* want comments indexed because at the moment most search engines treat the guest's words and links as being my own.
- Amit Patel
Now that JavaScript is required for so many web sites, it seems odd that search engines are stuck looking at the static, served HTML.
- Bill Strathearn
I'd be afraid of search engines executing Javascript and indexing produced HTML. On the other hand, if it requests a PHP page, there's execution of code and generation of HTML, so that seems pretty similar. It's just a matter of where the code is executed. Maybe Google Caja makes it okay to run the Javascript in their crawlers.
- Amit Patel
Amit, isn't that particularly a concern with snippets? I know that's a challenging and frustrating issue! But in many cases, I've seen the content of comments for one of my blog entries to be not only substantially more voluminous but also, frankly, often more interesting than the entry itself, and it's clear that I end up getting a lot of relevant & high quality traffic to these entries from search engines *because* of those spiderable comments.
- Adam Lasnik
Should you receive "credit" (in the form of traffic) for another persons writing?
- EricaJoy
A more relevant question, IMHO, is whether the content is an appropriate match for a given search query. If someone searches for "etrade problems" and there are a ton of people ranting about specific problems about etrade in one of my blog entries, isn't that page likely a good result for that query? The idea of "credit" I believe is outdated. Who should receive "credit" for wikipedia...
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- Adam Lasnik
WRT "credit" being outdated, the fact remains that people are doing any and everything in the hopes of generating more traffic for their sites (hello entire SEO industry). Now, I am most certainly a fan of having relevant information surfaced in search results, however, I would prefer the relevant information show up directly instead of having to read through your blog post, then a...
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- EricaJoy
I see your point, but I respectfully disagree with both the premise and solutions. In particular, I feel that there's a high correlation between high quality comments and high quality original posts; it typically takes dedication and thoughtfulness for a blogger to create and maintain a strong community, so in that way, why shouldn't he or she get some "credit" for others' postings (so, too, with a forum). Also, I feel that your solution would too painfully remove context and flow.
- Adam Lasnik
(with that said, though, I understand and appreciate your frustration with regards to creating crap "content" just to rank, e.g., blackhat SEO. And in this regard, I think search engine efforts to better identify and reward quality authorship is a good thing in the long run).
- Adam Lasnik
Little did I realize, I was describing Backtype! They already do exactly what I describe wrt comments. http://www.backtype.com/EricaJo...
- EricaJoy
Flash 10: drawTriangles() disappointments - http://simblob.blogspot.com/2009...
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I wanted to use Flash 10's drawTriangles() API but it seems to be slower, and the output quality is worse, than Flash 10's other new graphics API.
- Amit Patel
James Leard liked this
Athabasca Falls in British Columbia, Canada.
- Amit Patel
Buoy Forecast 46012 (STORMSURF) - http://www.stormsurf.com/cgi-bin...
Big waves coming up this weekend, between San Francisco and Santa Cruz.
- Amit Patel
from Bookmarklet
I'm pondering skipping SuperHappyDevHouse for this.
- Amit Patel
The forecast is still looking pretty good. Woohoo!
- Amit Patel
Looks like I missed the biggest waves, 35-43 ft last night (!!?).
- Amit Patel
If all @Google's major innovations came from 20% time, why not give everybody 5 different 20% projects and wait for the magic to happen?
Cem Ozkaynak, Tony Ruscoe, Hutch Carpenter and 21 other people liked this
That's crazy talk Mr Gray. You have broken the logic quota for today
- Johnny Worthington
from iPhone
/hangs up logic hat on rack and retires.
- Louis Gray
If all the tasty stuff of a cake comes from the sugar, why not use all sugar and no flour, eggs, or milk? ;-)
- Amit Patel
Amit the chemist, ladies and gentlemen.
- Josh Haley
Because then no one would be on FriendFeed :-P
- Jesse Stay
because part of great ideas come from having them, a larger part comes from carrying them out.
- Vincent van Wylick
And because public business are in it to make money predictably, not from sporadic ideas that could potentially turn the whole business-model around.
- Vincent van Wylick
Because the inspiration often comes from the perspiration of the 80% work. Most people are not able to be inspired 100% of the time, though there are a few at Google who are.
- Bill Strathearn
Now how many people thought I was 100% serious on this question instead of just 20%? I'm getting a lot of 100% answers.
- Louis Gray
Do all Google's major innovations come from 20% time? I guess we'd have to start by agreeing on what those major innovations were.
- Cristo
FriendFeed?
- Jesse Stay
Twitter?
- Jesse Stay
Is "innovation" the emergence of new competitors from that time? ;-)
- Jesse Stay
Maybe Google should give all of their employees 100 1% projects. Then they'd really have a bunch of new ideas. One exception, though; one person gets stuck modifying Gmail to let you see your mail in an unthreaded date plus time received order.
- SuezanneC Baskerville
Neither Twitter nor FriendFeed came out of Google 20% time, as far as I know.
- Cristo
The all sugar cake is not only sweet and tasty; a big tablespoonful of it swallowed quickly, at the right time, often cures hiccups.
- SuezanneC Baskerville
LOL
- Thomas Power
I'd bet there are plenty of people at Google who do work this way.
- Kevin Gamble
I share this sentiment. There are services that need to be maintained but if you look at the new goodies being developed, it's all about freedom and creativity. Ok that's it I had to add you Louis to my tiny input stream on Twitter. Listing and group following you here wasn't enough. This tweet sealed the deal!
- Mark Essel
from iPhone
Introducing Adobe Flash Player 10.1 | Adobe Developer Connection - http://www.adobe.com/devnet...
Maxamad (Amazigh) liked this
What's in Flash 10.1? Better error handling, microphone access, GPU acceleration, better video streaming, peer to peer networking, reduced cpu hogging on busy pages (example: not activating Flash until it's visible on screen, shutting down running Flash programs)
- Amit Patel
Reduced cpu hogging! I've been wondering: are flash apps such CPU hogs because they're poorly written, or does flash not provide enough types of events that everyone ends up polling for everything?
- Laurence Gonsalves
Laurence, it is the former, not the latter. Biggest newbie error has to do with not cleaning up after yourself.
- Jason Wehmhoener
I think it's both. I think mostly it's apps that keep polling and timers going for animation and don't turn them off when you're in another tab or whatever. But I also find that even when I have no event handlers or timers, there's still a non-zero cpu consumption, which is rather annoying. I had also read somewhere that because plugins must use the ancient Netscape plug-in API from long long ago, there are some issues that are hard to resolve properly. :(
- Amit Patel
Here's a blog post that has a little bit about plugin performance: http://webkit.org/blog...
- Amit Patel
stamen design | big ideas worth pursuing - http://www.stamen.com/
Ruchira S. Datta liked this
Stamen Design creates some neat visualizations.
- Amit Patel
The Cost of Latency - http://perspectives.mvdirona.com/2009...
Vijendar, Paul Buchheit, Ruchira S. Datta and 3 other people liked this
Fast is better than slow. Sometimes even at the expense of correct.
- Joel Webber
Yeah, speed is the main reason I'm not as happy with my TiVo as I was years ago. I don't care about all these features they're adding. I just want it to be fast. Speed is also why I'm not happy with newer TVs, or cable boxes. Changing channels used to be instantaneous. Now it's sooooo slow. Speed is also a big part of why I'm using my iPhone instead of my G1.
- Amit Patel
@Amit, re iPhone vs. G1: Exactly -- Android's definitely getting there, but I feel like work remains to be done on making all the user interactions feel snappy, especially the way they do blitting of the app list and the home screen. Apple definitely got that right from day one.
- Joel Webber
Sometimes, Android seems to suffer from GC lag. However, iPhone lags sometimes too when some background process is working hard (switching from 3g to Wifi, or saving data to memory). I've had times when I had to reboot the iPhone. Both TiVo and AppleTV are way underpowered and irritating. I'm a big TiVo user, but the UI is so fricken slow sometimes, it really lags when an HD channel is having reception problems, and re-ordering scheduler items sometimes takes MINUTES while the UI is frozen.
- Ray Cromwell
sirishkumar, Thaths and Jason Wehmhoener liked this
This was quite beautiful. A lake, mountains, and a glacier. And the next morning, sunrise reflecting off of the glaciers behind Lake Louise.
- Amit Patel
at SJC we get to walk down staircases in the open air, for that authentic 50s jetset vibe
Ho John Lee, James Williams, Sam Harmon and 5 other people liked this
Only if you fly in to the Ghetto Terminal C.
- Kevin Fox
That's why I love Terminal C - checkin in single-digit minutes, retro vibe in CA sunshine FTW
- Kevin Marks
from email
I like that passengers can enter/exit at both ends of the plane at the retro terminal.
- Gary Burd
ditto that Gary!
- Robert Felty
I love boarding out of Terminal C. Retro vibe FTW, it makes you forget all the post-9/11 hassles and be in the moment for a second
- James Williams
I, too, love Terminal C. I long for the days when traveling was a lot less hassle than it is now.
- April Buchheit
Welcome to the high-tech capital of the solar system! NOT.
- Steve "Daddy do it!" Lacy
Should we start a campaign to keep Terminal C at SJC?
- Kevin Marks
Terminal B's looking pretty beautiful though, and I love the big comfy seats with integrated power and USB power in the armrests!
- Kevin Fox
Terminal C is also my favorite. It's interesting that people are so polarized though.
- Paul Buchheit
from iPhone
I love Terminal C and am worried about it eventually being upgraded to be big and slow like Terminal A.
- Amit Patel
After two long distance relationships, I have sentimental feelings for Terminal A.
- Daisy
I'm flying, on a jet plane...
- Jim Norris
I do know the "You're not really flying if your feet don't touch the tarmac" feeling.
- Steve "Daddy do it!" Lacy
Economist — Games lessons - http://www.economist.com/science...
“It sounds like a cop-out, but the future of schooling may lie with video games”
- Amit Patel
Save the World! (and Level Up) - http://thatsaterribleidea.blogspot.com/2009...
My thoughts exactly: "The players should generate the story as they go...This means breaking down some of the mechanics we are used to and allowing players to actually change the worlds they inhabit, instead of being forced to spin their wheels by fighting monsters that will simply respawn in five minutes or an hour. Some may object to this as being a “niche” feeling, but this niche has room for everyone. If executed properly, a player-generated story-based MMORPG solves a lot of the problems we have today with much less developer, writer, and designer time needed."
- Rob Shillingsburg
The emphasis on quests, items, and character development, as opposed to dynamic story generation, seems to come from computer RPGs, not new to MMORPGs, and I think it's because it's impractical to have much story development from a small number of people. So the story is written in advance and everyone experiences roughly the same story. MMORPGs do open up the possibility of having...
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- Amit Patel
April Buchheit liked this
At Yoho National Park in Canada.
- Amit Patel
Tobold's MMORPG Blog: Facebook games: Scam or useful tool? - http://tobolds.blogspot.com/2009...
bob and Rob Shillingsburg liked this
How popular Facebook games work and why they're popular. via nelson
- Amit Patel
Where there's a will there's a row | The Economist - http://www.economist.com/world...
rtshiva, Thomas Brox Røst, Alex Scrivener and 19 other people liked this
"In 26 out of 27 European Union countries, Mr Buffett’s plans [to leave most of his fortune to charity] would not just be shocking, but illegal. The exception is Britain."
- Simon
from Bookmarklet
Oh my, that's crazy.
- Amit Patel
"In continental Europe a big part of an estate (often around half) is reserved for the surviving children of the deceased and must be equally divided between them. ... Finally, “clawback” laws in many countries stop parents from dodging forced heirship by giving assets away while they are still alive. This applies to gifts made in the last years of life (two years in Austria, ten in Germany), or much longer: in some countries, no time limit applies."
- Paul Buchheit
I bet the Europeans think it's crazy that we reserve half for the IRS :)
- Private Sanjeev
I thought only millionaires had to reserve half for the IRS.
- Gabe
As of 2009, it's 45% for estates valued at over $3.5MM, with exemptions for small businesses and farmers. It affects less than 1% of the US population at present. It's set to revert to $1M in 2011, but there's pretty much no chance that Congress will let that actually happen.
- Joel Webber
@Sanjeev: In Europe the inheritance tax rates vary, but can be similar to the US, and the exemption limits are often much lower: "[2007] France if you are inheriting from a spouse you receive up to €76,000 tax free. Anything above this limit is taxed at between 5 and 40 per cent, depending on the size of the gift. But the rate for non-relatives is a hefty 60 per cent, with no...
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- Simon
@Simon: Interesting -- I had no idea it was that high. It's also telling that, as the Economist article suggests, (continental) European law seems to strongly favor blood relatives (especially children) over the wishes of the deceased. I'm not sure which is preferable, but it's an interesting dichotomy.
- Joel Webber
Killing mosquitos with lasers - http://www.gizmag.com/mosquit...
Felicia Yue, Pierre Beugnot, Steve Reeves and 20 other people liked this
"At the demonstration non-lethal lasers were used, but they did present a video showing a mosquito bursting into flames and falling to the ground when hit by a laser. Not only can the system target a mosquito, it can also differentiate a male from a female – the females being the only ones that feed on blood and spread disease."
- Amit Patel
from Bookmarklet
i want it!
- Vincenzo RR
xxI Hate mosquitoes.xx
- Bicentennial (Franc)
Finally a beneficial use for Mo Kargas' eyes!
- Spidra Webster
Yay!
- Mo Kargas
there is a project to make mosquitos beneficial actually - genetically modify them, and use them for diseases vaccinations - no injections necessary ...http://friendfeed.com/gizmag
- Petr Buben
Hmm...I'd rather get my vaccinations done with a syringe. I just can't stand the buzzing in my ear.
- April Buchheit
awesome!!
- Chris Heath
I'm sure it'd be wrong if we just hunted them all to death. I just don't know why. / um, Peter, was that supposed to link to the story?
- Bicentennial (Franc)
no, it wasn't, but im researching it .....April, well how about "Harnessing blowflies to teach robots how to see" ... http://friendfeed.com/mashabl... :] ... putting flies on flight simulator ... ---- it is INCREDIBLE how any fly can fly - change speed, stop on a dime, so to speak .. it is not possible to recreate such brilliant flight capabilities technically
- Petr Buben
sorry ..maybe i have changed the story a little bit, it should have been "mosquitos will be used to spread genetically modified malaria, unable to infect, but causing antibodies creation - therefore - vaccination
- Petr Buben
cool. oh, sorry I meant Petr ;}
- Bicentennial (Franc)
no problem :] ... here is the link .... http://friendfeed.com/gizmag... ... well , and here may be the REAL story :] - http://news.bbc.co.uk/2... .. i thought they are supposed to bite, but they are actually supposed to take over and create noninfectious kind of mosquitos
- Petr Buben
ok, here is the real now deal - In a daring experiment in Europe, scientists used mosquitoes as flying needles to deliver a "vaccine" of live malaria parasites through their bites. .... http://www.usatoday.com/news... ..... - Malaria kills nearly a million people each year, mostly children under 5 and especially in Africa.
- Petr Buben
WANT!
- Private Sanjeev
Microbial Warfare § SEEDMAGAZINE.COM - http://seedmagazine.com/content...
Jérôme Flipo, Paul Buchheit and Ruchira S. Datta liked this
"Lab Rat points out that bacteria armed with antibiotic weapons can even create collective “hunting parties” to bring down prey. One species, called Myxococcus xanthus, actually hunts in swarms, forming large groups to attack other bacteria and overwhelm their defenses."
- Amit Patel
from Bookmarklet
I notice the article quotes a blogpost from my friend Iddo Friedberg. :-)
- Ruchira S. Datta
Troubleshooting MacBook Air hinges - http://support.apple.com/kb...
“Learn what you can do if you experience one or more of these issues with the hinges on your MacBook Air.”
- Amit Patel
from Bookmarklet
I've had my Air for nearly two years and had heard about these hinge problems. It just happened to me this morning. Bleh.
- Amit Patel
I got the Air the week it came out, and I've had two different sets of hinge problems. A definite case of function attempting to follow form.
- Daniel Dulitz
Well, they say they *are* willing to repair it under warranty. However, *only* if I first have them repair a dent for $250–500. I've had the dent forever and to me it's just cosmetic. So I said no. I'll just live with the hinge problem until the machine dies and then I'll decide what to get next. And I won't get AppleCare.
- Amit Patel
Apple has had hinge problems before the Air. I had an iBook that had a lot of problems with the display cable passing through the hinge, so it would only work when the screen was at a certain angle. I had it repaired under warranty and it happened again. Naturally, this started happening right after I told someone that this computer (my first mac) had given me less trouble than any PC I'd ever owned :)
- Ben Darnell
Fossil Reactors - http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2009...
Rob Shillingsburg and Amit Patel liked this
BLDGBLOG is all sorts of awesome.
- Amit Patel
When I first read Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke (back in grade school) I misread one part to think he was talking about natural nuclear reactors. When I later re-read the book I realized my mistake, and was a bit disappointed because natural nuclear reactors seemed like such an interesting idea. Now I find out they really existed!
- Laurence Gonsalves
Meta: I wish Friendfeed would copy the first comment (if it was from the sharer) as a comment, similar to what it does for items "shared with note".
- Laurence Gonsalves
Back to the original topic: Yeah, BLDGBLOG is neat. This post got awfully woo woo at points, though...
- Laurence Gonsalves
Doesn't Google have an interest to make the web better? Why don't they offer a simple Spam Check JSON API -- you submit a text as URL parameter, they return a number representing the likeliness this bit of text is spam?
HealingBrush, Sandeep Kalidindi, EricaJoy and 9 other people liked this
Good idea. Algorithm: search for the text and determine whether it is oft-repeated boilerplate or near links to the same page scattered across many blogs.
- Daniel Dulitz
from iPhone
I'd be concerned about spammers using this as a way to gauge how well they are bypassing Google's detection. A well-written machine learning algorithm that optimizes spam phrases based on the return value from Google's JSON API could theoretically improve to the point of not looking like spam.
- Bill Strathearn
Using the text alone is likely to bring a lot of false positives. Just think of all the "Great post, thank you" comment spammers -- some people may actually be posting that legitimately while others just want a link.
- John Mueller
What Bill said. You'd have to train up a different, non-production classifier. Then you face the question of whether you want to support that API/feature forever, esp. given that the bad guys might end up getting lots of mileage out of such an API.
- Matt Cutts
John, I would probably *manually* delete a comment that reads "Great post, thank you" (believing it's spam). But you could also simply show a captcha when the API says it might be spam -- which would then be harmless to those low-confidence returns (and I would think "Great post, thank you" would receive a low confidence rating due to being so short). I.e. those who really want to post such "spamlike" congratulations would merely need to complete the captcha.
- Philipp Lenssen
Bill and Matt, interesting and unfortunate problem, though is there any way to resolve that issue? And how do programs like Akismet solve that problem?
- Philipp Lenssen
Bill's and Matt's issues are surmountable, but at what cost? Philipp, turning the question around, why would you want this? It would be more accurate/useful to perform the spam check within a higher level service, which could have an API.
- Daniel Dulitz
Isn't essentially what the DCC does : http://www.rhyolite.com/dcc/
- Soren Riise
What would also be interesting would be a service that separates legitimate people names from product / service names. I think I would totally install that as a plugin on my blog, Mr. "discount plane tickets" & Ms. "best data recovery" can go post their comments elsewhere :-)
- John Mueller
John — I get that kind of comment spam from names like Tanwa, Philip, Jay, Vector, Youku, and Lance. :-(
- Amit Patel
stats - mrdoob - FS, MS and MEM, all in one. - Project Hosting on Google Code - http://code.google.com/p...
This class provides a simple info box that will help you monitor your code performance. - flash memory and frames per second display
- Amit Patel
SWFWheel/en - Spark project - http://www.libspark.org/wiki...
Library for cross-platform Flash mousewheel support. Uses some ugly hacks as far as I can tell.
- Amit Patel
Twin study reveals secrets to looking younger - Skin and beauty- msnbc.com - http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id...
Private Sanjeev, Stephen Mack, τorƍue and 5 other people liked this
‘ In fact, unlike Jeanne, Susan is a lifelong sun worshipper. In addition, Susan began smoking in her late teens, and although she stopped for six years in her 20s, she averaged a pack and a half a day for 16 years before quitting in her late 30s. Jeanne never smoked. Over time, it seems, these habits have made a remarkable difference in the way they look. Now, “Susan looks ten years older than I do,” Jeanne acknowledges. ’
- Amit Patel
from Bookmarklet
Interesting bit: "According to the research analysis, every 10 years of smoking resulted in a perceived extra 2.5 years of age." (Trying to dig up the original study now to see if it actually did prove that.)
- Stephen Mack
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