Interesting Links for 05-12-2013

[andrewducker]

• 100 years of dog "improvement" has caused terrible damage
  (tags: dogs genetics fail )
• If your mobile phone contract is with 3 then you can use your minutes/data in the USA.
  (tags: mobile_phones )
• Valve's Gabe Newell and Linus Torvalds on Linux and Gaming (Valve just joined the Linux Foundation)
  Games are really the only thing keeping me on Windows

Comments

[xenophanean]

Has the internet killed Have I Got News For You? Nope.

It's getting a little long in the tooth from natural aging but Twitter satire is only for journalists themselves.

[andrewducker]

I don't have any journalists friended on Twitter - but I do have 805 people following me.

The idea that Twitter is just a bunch of London journalists is pretty silly.

[xenophanean]

It's hardly mass-appeal. I'm not saying no-one's on Twitter, but just about everyone I know is:

- Into satire
- On Facebook
- Not on Twitter

Like, I know a few people who are, but it's not many, so claiming that it's a real alternative is a bit rich, thus the sarcastic response.

[andrewducker]

15m people in the UK. Or 25% of the population:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/twitter/10291360/Twitter-claims-15m-active-users-in-the-UK.html

Not as high as Facebook's 24m, I'll give you:
http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/tech/news/a506593/facebooks-uk-users-top-24-million.html

But still more than a niche.

[philmophlegm]

Announcing you're gay in early December just as you have a calendar out and a new TV series starting soon?

Great career move.

Coincidentally, I was running a You're Hired! heat at his former school yesterday. He was a contestant a few years back. Seemed like a nice kid at the time, and not at all arrogant and starry as you might have expected.

[momentsmusicaux]

I've never understood why the continuum hypothesis can't just be taken as an axiom that can be stated either way. The same way that changing Euclid's 5th produces different systems of geometry, you'd get two different systems, one where you take CH to be true, and one where you take it to be false.

[andrewducker]

Yup, that would make sense to me too - not all mathematical systems need to work together, so there's no reason not to have different axioms that are useful for working on different problems.

Now, if one of them turns out to produce results that are useful in real life, and the other doesn't, then that's different. But it seems like both models are useful in this case.

[momentsmusicaux]

What is this real life of which you speak? This is sounding dangerously close to seditious applied maths ideas.

[makyo]

My general attitude about this sort of thing is that I'm happy that some clever people are thinking carefully about the foundations of mathematics, so that I don't have to and can cheerfully get on with thinking about hyperbolic knots and so forth.

[philmophlegm]

The article on "How did the computer game industry get to be so boy-focused" is the best I've read on that subject. But I do love the fact that it lavishes praise on Sierra On-Line for not being male dominated and for catering to women in their 30s, a few paragraphs after saying describing it as "a video game studio that would come to be known for its adventure games like King's Quest, Quest for Glory, Leisure Suit Larry..."

This might be the first time that Leisure Suit Larry has been held up as a positive example in an article about sexism in video games!

[bart_calendar]

I sort of get annoyed at the whole sexual labeling thing. I sort of feel like for a lot of people all available labels suck.

For me, when I'm attracted to someone it's because I'm attracted to that person. Whatever type of genitals they happen to have, I'll work with them if they want to have sex with me because I'm attracted to them. What shape those genitals are are not a big deal for me if that person is making me horny.

But I don't feel like the word bisexual would describe me correctly either. Why? I don't know! But it sure doesn't feel right to me! And I'd rather leave that word for people who do feel bisexual and identify with it. I don't want to encroach on their territory.

Pansexual is probably better a word. Though there isn't really a word for "people who have figured out how to seduce me."

Part of it is just that for the most part I believe in keeping my sexual stuff simply between me and people I trust - hence why I don't talk about Rome Girl and I being poly on my blog.

[kerrypolka]

Yes, I was reading that and thinking that I've heard several queer activists say they're against labelling because it forces people to identify as something that might not be accurate and implies that people's sexuality is fixed.

[bart_calendar]

Yep and while I can't speak for anyone else's personal experience I know I don't feel fixed enough to say that any existing term is accurate for me.