mdc

I've never been caught. Does that make me good at cyberespionage? I think there's more to it than that. You might argue necessary but not sufficient, but I'd even disagree with that. The fact that the NSA was outed by Snowden has not made everything they're doing ineffective or we wouldn't be so worried about it.

Being bad at defense doesn't necessarily imply being bad at offense. Security is hard because you have to win 100% of the time. Being good at cyberespionage means getting a win now and then. I'm not saying the US is good at it, just that neither the OMB breach nor the Snowden incident bear on that. And a lot of the info released by Snowden indicate they were pretty good at it (at least targeting their own citizens) or those disclosures wouldn't be such a big deal.

"Airbus did not anticipate that a pilot would stall a plane and fly it directly into the ocean"

Stalling and flying into the ground have been two common failure modes since flying began and they often happen in sequence. I would think they would be high in the list of misuse cases any aircraft designer would consider.

"we should refrain from being quick to judge which is more or less intuitive."

We should not be quick to judge which UI is more effective, but by definition we can be quick to judge which is more intuitive. In fact, the more time you spend with a system, the less qualified you are to comment on whether it is intuitive. Judging whether a UI is intuitive should take very little time and no expertise past understanding basic operations. I'm certainly not qualified to judge, but I'd think anyone who has experience with modern flight systems would be qualified to comment on whether a particular design was intuitive.

Or he's never had a home in the full sense of the word.

That kind of implies that everything we create inherently belongs to the government, "they" let us use it for the period of copyright, and then it's theirs again to sell off. I can make a case for copyright ending and creative works no longer having an owner, but I can't make a case (philosophically) for them to automatically belong to the government.

Do you really believe that DRY in coding precludes redundancy in implementation?

Stephen King wrote a book called On Writing that is part memoir and part guide to writing. It's not intended to be a full writing course, but it's a great intro to the important bits presented in a really entertaining way.

I also really like the Self-Publishing Podcast. If you're interested in being an indie author rather than pursuing traditional publishing, it's a fantastic look at three guys finding their way in that industry. The Writing Excuses podcast (recommended earlier by joanofarf) is a better podcast for the craft of writing, but I find the Self-Publishing guys both entertaining and inspirational.

A sieve would just be a one-step funnel. If your engagement involves more than one step (sieves in series) then it's a funnel.

I don't think jasonjei was being dismissive of real ADHD. He was just pointing out that it is often over and mis-diagnosed. Many kids are considered misbehaving or diagnosed with a medical problem because they can't sit still for hours at a time, but that really is just kids being kids.

I think jasonjei and you are on the same side of this issue. He was a normal kid that didn't want to be mis-labeled, and you have a real condition that deserves consideration. You should both be opposed to the lazy parents/teachers/doctors who extend ADHD diagnoses far beyond its real scope to medicate normal kids into compliance.

The article mentions blocking invites, not messages themselves, so there's not really any content to use as a basis for spam filtering.

Not at all. I wasn't saying the .com namespace was crowded. I was responding to someone who thought it was and who thought the appropriate solution was increasing domain registration prices.

It seems like this solution means that if you want to have your own domain, either you must be rich or the website must be profitable. You're basically saying that only the rich should have access to domain-branded blogs and other non-commercial sites, and everyone else can make do with subdomains like a blogspot or blogger website. I think raising fees would have consequences for well-intentioned users far beyond the effect it had on domain squatters.

He says it slides but "gets nowhere near 4x". That's clear enough to preclude 5x.

You'd get a very strong puff of air. The air leaving the end of the barrel doesn't have a lot of momentum so it diffuses pretty quickly in the ambient air. You could shape the outlet to get a more focused jet, but it's still going to be a puff, not a strong sustained stream.

This system externalizes the risk of telling the truth. Too many people excoriate journalists who say things they don't want to hear, so too many journalists pander to their audience. This will let the journalists continue to say what their audience wants to hear and blame the algorithm for any uncomfortable truths.