Hacker News: DLWormwood

New comment by DLWormwood in "Hubble telescope has new lease on life after computer swap appears to fix glitch"

DLWormwood — Fri, 16 Jul 2021 14:58:35 +0000

Or just a few turns, depending on your difficulty setting. (-;

New comment by DLWormwood in "The Elusive Peril of Space Junk"

DLWormwood — Thu, 08 Oct 2020 00:41:15 +0000

Especially interesting since it is technically the "intro" or "B plot." (Most of the series is a mini-version of The Right Stuff.) But the first third of the series is an oddball fusion of an office sitcom with a "dirty jobs" style documentary. (That is, JANITORS IN SPAAAAAAACE!)

New comment by DLWormwood in "Laughter Doesn’t Scale"

DLWormwood — Sat, 02 Apr 2016 00:29:28 +0000

The sender was not the person being punk'd; it was the recipient. The person who would have seen that confirmation dialog would have been in on the joke...

New comment by DLWormwood in "Spot the Ball"

DLWormwood — Sat, 20 Jun 2015 00:03:00 +0000

I remember seeing an arcade redemption machine that worked on the same principle. It had a database of hundreds of screenshots from soccer/footy games and the player had to guess where the ball should be. The more accurate the guess; the more tickets the machine dispensed.

New comment by DLWormwood in "Leonard Nimoy's Advice to a Biracial Girl in 1968"

DLWormwood — Sun, 01 Mar 2015 02:12:38 +0000

Actually, the fact that young Spock was an outcast was already established by the early '70's thanks to the animated series’ episode “Yesteryear”, written by D. C. Fontana. For the most part, this was only episode of that series that was considered canon until ST: Enterprise incorporated more of that series into official lore.

New comment by DLWormwood in "Where Are the Hardest Places to Live in the U.S.?"

DLWormwood — Fri, 28 Nov 2014 21:50:11 +0000

Where’s cost of living in the metrics? Without that, unemployment and median income paint a very incomplete picture.

New comment by DLWormwood in "SimCity That I Used to Know"

DLWormwood — Sun, 19 Oct 2014 22:24:25 +0000

It’s one thing to edit Wikipedia; it’s another thing altogether to make that edit stick. Now that Will Wright has been cited in an article published by a third party, an editor has already started the process of changing it via the article’s talk page. Creatives have had a very big problem self-correcting the site, since the official editors have a distrust of uncited sources.

New comment by DLWormwood in "The Internet Sucks: Or, What I Learned Coding X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter (1999)"

DLWormwood — Mon, 24 Feb 2014 15:52:39 +0000

As well written as this article is, I do have a problem with its tone. The writer seems willing ignorant of why the Internet “sucks” for gaming; it was not designed for real time small packet transmission. Most of TCP’s design, in particular, was intended to facilitate the transmission of comparatively sizable files over FTP, NNTP, and SMTP. Even stuff like IRC was designed not to be so concerned about timeliness that the chatlog on each end would match up exactly.

New comment by DLWormwood in "I For One Welcome Our New Robot Vocal Cords: Radical Computer Music"

DLWormwood — Fri, 07 Feb 2014 17:44:32 +0000

> If the music tugged at all the right heartstrings, but you knew it wasn't made by a human, could you feel that depth of connection?

I do think this is a false dichotomy of sorts. (Right turn of phrase?) The music may have been made by a machine, but humans made the machine. What ultimately is the difference between music “made” by a violin being directly played, verses a synthesizer reconstructing songs based on what a programmer did beforehand? It’s just a matter of degree. It might be more productive in discussions to look at the “artist” verses “committee” angle instead.

New comment by DLWormwood in "Looking back on the game 'Myst' on its 20th anniversary"

DLWormwood — Wed, 25 Sep 2013 01:39:18 +0000

Telltale Games has been carrying the torch for these kinds of games for the last decade. Beside resurrecting old LucasArt staples like Monkey Island and Sam & Max, they’ve launched other franchises to the format: Bone, Homestar Runner, and The Walking Dead come to mind. They also occasionally score a big license, like Back to the Future and Jurassic Park.

New comment by DLWormwood in "Why two spaces after a period isn’t wrong – lies typographers tell about history"

DLWormwood — Sat, 14 Sep 2013 19:03:38 +0000

As much as I agree btilly might have crossed a line, “hating an idea” would be considered a fatal flaw by many, including myself, depending on the social context and idea itself. Maybe “disapproval” would be a better word in this situation; “hatred” has too much emotional and social baggage that its use even in hyperbole may have to go away if we can ever hope to regain any notion of sensible discussion.

New comment by DLWormwood in "1,600 Year Old Goblet Shows Romans Used Nanotechnology."

DLWormwood — Fri, 23 Aug 2013 21:19:07 +0000

> My question then is why I can't get a wine glass today made this way? :-)

Likely for a similar reason that glass was mostly forgotten by the West during the early Middle Age and we completely lost how to make Damascus steel. Information was not preserved in a permanent multigenerational manner, either by intent or oversight, that we can still access today.

New comment by DLWormwood in "1,600 Year Old Goblet Shows Romans Used Nanotechnology."

DLWormwood — Fri, 23 Aug 2013 21:09:49 +0000

> chemistry was alchemically transformed into nanotechnology under the Clinton administration

Clever way to put it… although how much was the president’s doing directly, or the consequences of trends within one of the various government agencies that he just rode the wake of, might not be clear without some citation.

New comment by DLWormwood in "How domains became backwards"

DLWormwood — Sun, 17 Feb 2013 20:02:11 +0000

That language is math. Which, due to historical accident, was inspired by Arabic writing, rather than the Latin variety.

New comment by DLWormwood in "Bill Gates: My Plan to Fix The World's Biggest Problems"

DLWormwood — Sat, 26 Jan 2013 18:19:24 +0000

> The natural question I asked is "Why are you having kids you can't afford?" The question wasn't asked during the piece and it's something that isn't asked worldwide.

You are misusing the word “natural” there…

It could be from no access to contraception or abortion, either due to lack of wealth or social precepts? Social mores that disparage men who don’t have kids? Lack of biological and statistical understanding of how sex and procreation are related?

Even in the West, it was only until recently (the Enlightenment, maybe?) that the notion of “choosing to have children” even existed. It was either considered an uncontrollable instinct or something influenced by divine providence, with the actual question of sexual behavior being dodged outright.

New comment by DLWormwood in "Lemmings 404 page"

DLWormwood — Wed, 23 Jan 2013 23:17:40 +0000

"Last Updated 12-22-10"

Wow. I guess the income from the swag (and their 15 minutes) ran out.

New comment by DLWormwood in "Rethinking the value of Scrabble tiles"

DLWormwood — Mon, 31 Dec 2012 09:22:59 +0000

I believe that is part of what his definition of “ingoing and outgoing entropy” is refering to. That said, it does seem weird to heavily bias for the 2-3 letter and 7-8 cases. I would think the moderate length words should not get such short shrift, since these words tend to be the ones used to determine when the various letter and words value tiles get hit in any given game. (Full disclosure: not a regular Scrabble player.)

New comment by DLWormwood in "Mining a 1993 game design for innovative game mechanics"

DLWormwood — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 21:09:29 +0000

Actually, it’s “Extra Credits” summary. PATV just hosts them now after they had a falling out with The Escapist involving a fundraiser for covering medical bills.

New comment by DLWormwood in "Thank you Apple"

DLWormwood — Sun, 23 Sep 2012 13:04:30 +0000

I don’t think that word is pronounced the way the blogger thinks it is…

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ume

New comment by DLWormwood in "Apple will no longer license aftermarket power adapters for iPhone 5"

DLWormwood — Thu, 06 Sep 2012 03:29:28 +0000

America Online began as “AppleLink Personal Edition” before the company struck out on its own, Apple tried a service called “eWorld,” and the replacement for MobileMe, iCloud, scaled back the scope of online services. I think Apple has learned by now that even they don’t have the resources to compete with the Internet at large.