Lio

Love Neal's work. He's created so many great worlds but I think Snow Crash and Anathem are my favourites.

I have this vague feeling that I bumped into him in a provincial high street in England once. I've no way of actually verifying it was him but if we ever meet again next time I'll be prepared to give him better directions. :P

Handling touch screens in McDonalds will regularly put you in contact with staphylococcus because of trace faecal matter from unwashed hands. Your immune system isn't really going adapt to that.

> Come on bro.

Yep, you're right, there's probably a bit of that on there too.

Consider that bacteria are not the only things you could pick up. There's plenty of other parasites to choose from.

There is a reason we ask people to wash their hands.

You're immune system is probably not going to improve on exposure to worm eggs or larvae for example.

To take it to an absurd extreme, if you come across an unflushed public toilet you're not going to drink from it with the hope of boosting your immune system... are you?

There's nothing wrong with the phrase "grooming". We groom lots of things including ourselves as in personal grooming.

This whole language purity test, whether from the left or right, is just a load of performative bollocks.

True but you can definitely become less healthy by eating and drinking the wrong things.

Sugar in sodas, burger buns and ketchup for example is linked to type 2 diabetes.

Yeah that's a much better use case. Now you mention it I could see it being useful for soft synths, mixing, arranging, effects, etc.

I don't think I'd every want to "play" on it except as a last resort but it could definitely be handy for other virtual interfaces.

Imagine a knob per function synth or a modular setup being able to go straight the control in question would be useful.

An interesting aside here, there is no one, true style of action for keyboard instruments and no one, true type of feedback.

I have a good 88-note hammer action stage piano. I love it for acoustic pianos and it's OK for electric pianos (Rhodes, Wurlitzer) but it sucks a bit for organ, clavinet and synths.

I've seen people play Hammond really, really well on a weighted keybeds but it's much easier to just plug a second cheap(er) synth action controller in for organ parts.

I've never met anyone that really liked playing a tablet screen though. :P

Now think of all those people ordering on touch screens in MacDonalds and then eating their food with their hands. Yuk! :-&

I actually disable touch screen in bios on my Dell XPS13 because I don't like touching it accidentally but then I'm not the target market for a touchscreen laptop.

I guess for the most part if you like this you'll use it and if you don't you'll just ignore it.

Well the ZX81 was black and white only so that's not too surprising.

One of my friends had a ZX81 when we were kids.

If you went round this house he'd have to start it loading from cassette while you went out to play in the garden.

When you'd had enough pretending to be the A-Team you'd creep back, praying no one sneezed or farted lest the RAM pack wobbled and you have to start over.

I'd claim this was the Gen X equivalent of the Four Yorkshiremen sketch but if you told kids t'day they'd nare believe you.

Good times.

I surprised we can’t, or rather don’t, make more use of tidal energy.

That and low energy density storage located at sea with the turbines.

Yeah if you're a share holder you shouldn't be in any doubt that business is probably dead, if not straight away then in the medium term.

"Don't. Be evil!" :P