Why Luka is awesome (2012/01/18)
Some person on the Internet was sad. This happens sometimes. He was so sad that he was thinking of killing himself. This, too, happens sometimes. And you know what else happens sometimes? Assholes happen. They write stuff like:
[read more...]Why SOPA really is that bad (2012/01/18)
Placebo: A new idea for a restaurant (2012/01/16)
There was some research a while back which found a possibly-surprising result. As most people probably suspect, the difference in perceived quality between wines does not really follow price very closely. But! It does follow stated price; if you serve the same wine to a lot of people, and tell some of them it’s $12 for a box and others it’s $400 for a bottle, the latter like it better. Better yet, they’re right – they really do enjoy it more. Thank you, MRI scans and the like.
[read more...]Oh, apparently, Blizzard still hates gays (2012/01/07)
Apparently (it says a lot about Blizzard’s continued relevance to my world), back in October, Blizzard aired a long homophobic rant at Blizzcon. (No, it wasn’t bleeped at the actual con. EDIT: Or at least so some bloggers claimed.) Then there was a sort of half-baked apology. Eventually they posted an actual apology.
[read more...]Autism: What's a "spectrum" anyway? (2011/12/29)
People occasionally see autism and Asperger Syndrome and related things referred to as “autism spectrum disorders” (ASD). People who work in the field tend to refer to someone being “on the spectrum”.
[read more...]Bye, Walgreen's. (2011/12/28)
So, Walgreen’s and Express Scripts played chicken this year, and the answer is, we have to move our prescriptions.
[read more...]Year 17. No end in sight. (2011/12/25)
Being married: Actually sorta cool.
[read more...]Nice try, FedEx. Nice try. (2011/12/23)
Someone sent me something, signature required. Obviously, there’s no hint as to when during the day the package will show up, but usually FedEx is early afternoon here.
[read more...]Buffer overruns (2011/12/22)
My spare cognitive capacity for the forseeable future will be on buffer overruns. I just saw a hunk of code which struck me as truly spectacular, in a number of ways, and it occurred to me that there is some kind of fundamental barrier here. I don’t think there’s been any time in the last fifteen years where I could possibly have made that mistake. I’m alert to this in some kind of structural way; that particular subclass of errors just leaps out at me.
[read more...]numb3rs instant review (2011/12/18)
He’s an FBI agent. He’s a brilliant mathematician. Together, they fight crime!
[read more...]