Recent Comments

It's incredible to think of a planet shriveling up like that. Imagine how far it will go. Does anyone know why it's shrinking?

This the messenger website (messenger = MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging) which gives links to various resolution images for Mercury and the latest DEM (digital elevation model) for its northern hemisphere.

GMT (Generic Mapping Tools) scripts would provide one simple way to generate oblique views down on the DEM.

No particular reason... things seem to work just fine

As usual, Google is your (carefully tracking and note-taking) friend:

There's this but it doesn't give a sense of scale. This NASA video doesn't quite give you the "live from the planet's surface" sense. This one on Uyirvani is the best one I could find (is that Russian?)

Interesting, I didn't know any of this stuff. Relevant clip:

"Mercury, on the other hand, has only one solid shell for a crust, rather than Earth's many plates that shift about. As Mercury's molten iron core has cooled over the billions of years since the planet formed, it has contracted and the shell of rock surrounding it has cracked and shifted to accommodate the smaller size. Today, the signs of those changes are written all over the face of Mercury. "Some of these things are really, really big," said Paul Byrne of the Carnegie Institution of Washington and the Lunar and Planetary Institute. "There are some truly gargantuan cliffs on Mercury." Bryne is the lead author of a paper presenting the results in the March 16 issue of the journal Nature Geoscience. The greater shrinkage corresponds to a model of the planet with a much larger iron core, said McKinnon."

I'd love to see an artist's rendering of what those gargantuan cliffs must look like, says the guy who's afraid of heights.

There are so many awesome things this technology could be used for. Why focus on the prevention of crime. I hope it'll be used for good, but this story makes it sound like it's just another tool in the quest for lifelong punishment for even minor offenses.

comment truncated even after preview for some reason. Is there a problem with the "less than" symbol?

if only unravelling the pre-plate tectonic (greater than 2-3 Ga) and plate tectonic (less than 2-3 Ga) evolution of Earth were as straightforward as unravelling the shrinking of Mercury. Preservation of a complete record of past surface changes on Earth is a dreamer's paradise.

unravelling the pre-plate tectonic (>2-3 Ga) and plate tectonic (

3/14/15 at 9:26:54

I've always found it curious/interesting that life appears to rely on/exploit elements central to the periodic table (e.g., C, Si, and now Fe, ...). Any comments on why this is? I realize the electro-magnetic structure is important, but why?

What interests me more than anything (in the context of a news aggregation/discussion site) are discussions of past or future decisions, i.e., in given circumstances, what have thoughtful people elected to do in the past or plan to do in the future. Based on what comes up, I will follow the lead of others, do something different, or simply learn about the different views that are out there. Almost always, I find such exchanges both fun and helpful.

So, for example:
I liked the recent topic on kids versus adults and learning new tasks because I have kids and I am an adult and I like us all to be learning when possible.
I liked the recent topic on ergonomic office equipment because: a) this hits close to home for me, and b) I get to learn what others have done.

In terms of categories:
technology first (e.g., innovations in Linux distributions, programming workflows, video game system/game preferences, ...)
techno-science ethics second (e.g., is it good to teach/not teach programming to youth, should modern families be preserving stem cells for future health problems, to what extent should business plans place social responsibility over profits or vice versa, etc.)
science third (e.g., what comes after the Higgs boson, the new Mercury shrinking story fits, ...)
techno-politics fourth (e.g., privacy versus convenience, authoritarian design decisions or community-driven, etc.)

So, probably in line with what pipedot is already doing, what slashdot has done (and continues to do), and what soylentnews is trying to do as well. In the end, the community is really what makes it and for some reason (simple design is part of it), I'm quite intrigued by the potential of pipedot to be a fresh take on this community at large.

Ah ok, found it, thank you.
I previously only looked at the "subscribe"-button which firefox displays, when there is a feed associated to a site.
Maybe you could add this link/meta-data, to make the feed more accessible?

...
oh, and here I was bitten by the missing unicode support, when I wanted to use true quotation marks...
the error message could be more verbose about the problem too

Could you explain why you want Unicode support as a high-priority item over other features?

What kind of stuff would you like to see on Pipedot?

To be honest, additional bells and whistles are nice, but in the end its about accessible content. So long as article descriptions are accurate, links are provided, and conversation happens, what does it matter if there is achievements, friends, foes, blogs, and so on. Keep it simple, and grow knowing that your core is strong and well-defined.

That being said, the ability to search will be awesome in the future.

Thirded. ;)

This, and generally bringing the "my comments" page to (at least) feature-parity with /.

Nice write-ups on the Kinesis. I liked the emphasis on Linux.

Thanks for the tip on the RSS feed. This is a feature I want(ed), but hadn't found.

I also like the fresh take on this site. Hoping it gains a community!

Poor things. I'll ask the obvious - why operate? Since it's almost impossible either will survive, or you'd have to choose one head and lop off the other, why not just leave well enough alone? Life is full of mysteries and miracles.

RSS Feed already exists! It's at the bottom of the page, or http://pipedot.org/atom .

I'll add my voice to the chorus saying this site is headed in the right direction, and it remains really gorgeous to look at. I have no need for a journal/blog, a daily newsletter, or other. I'd appreciate it if the site is responsive (that is, on a small screen, if the CSS design allows the stuff at the right hand side to reposition itself at the bottom). I visit |. regularly on a mix of desktops, smartphones, and tablets. Slashdot was almost unusable on a small screen, and their improvements miraculously made it worse. Soylent is no better. This site does pretty well but there's room for improvement.

In the meantime, how about an offer to help, in a non-coding way? It seems you could use a fleet of editors, each overseeing a topic, to make sure you have a steady stream of content. There are probably a lot of folks eager to help make this site succeed.

Here's another thumbs up for the Kinesis. I bought one and consider it one of the best computing purchases I ever made. I wrote about it here and wrote another bit here about how to get a Kinesis to be useful with emacs. That, with a trackball, feels great.

I've had a hell of a lot less luck with desks and chairs. I've tried raising my desk to no avail, have tried using a yoga ball as a desk chair, have tried raising my monitor, etc. Nothing feels comfortable. No idea what I'm looking for, but I notice my neck getting stiff at the end of the day, so a change in posture would be appreciated. Meanwhile, I set a timer for 30 minute intervals and get the hell out of my chair and do some stretches. Better than nothing.

I'd like there to be a |.rssfeed. Unicode support would also be nice.

Really, Really Nice Job!!

I'm not sure we really need things like "achivements" or the blog/journal system. I don't think they're very important, and I don't think many people used them.

I do think things like unicode support should get priority over that

Love the site/html, beautiful and clean. Like the fresh approach to the strength of Slash-style moderation.

I like the voting system and it would be a huge step up for most systems (particularly political ones).

That said by starting to vote it got me thinking:
- I happen to only have two definite positive preferences I'll vote for, those are easy.
- Then among the remaining five options (not counting the NSA one) there are some I really don't want or want to hold back until a future date, I obviously don't want to vote for those, so those are easy.
- But since I've only chosen two out of seven options I could be wasting my influence if I don't push for at least some of the options that aren't outright "bad" in my opinion. It could end up weakening my own choices or it could end up weakening the choices I want to avoid, this starts to get hard.

It's like ranking without ranking; if I vote for all options I might as well not vote and if I vote for none I'm not voting so those two examples are the extremes and intuitively that tells me I should try to choose roughly half of the options XD

Maybe I'm just evil¹ :3

¹ "lawful chaotic" chaotic? *head asplodes*

P.S. I would like (more) unicode support but I'm in no rush , the code barfs at superscript 1 unless it's written using predefined html entities (ampersand sup1 semicolon) but on preview it changes the html entity (numeric doesn't work either) in the comment entry box to the character so if you preview it twice or preview and post it will fubar all over the place :o

This is the one that I was looking for.

I'd also like the accordion script for replying to a comment, so I don't have to go to a new page.

You're doing a great job here.

How about notifications that someone has responded to one of your comments?

Good work on choosing approval voting!

Single-vote (first past the post) methods are terrible methods of translating voter will into meaningful results. They discourage most people from voting and most candidates from running, and produce divisive results (see american presidential elections). If most people dislike a particular candidate, it can still win, because the vote against it may be split between the other options, since people can only express their first preference, and nothing else.

Preferential (ranked) voting systems can be ok, but it gets complicated when you decide how to count the preferences. If you use instant-runoff (eliminate the least popular candidate if there is no majority, then re-distribute the second-preferences from those votes. Repeat until someone has a majority) is divisive, because most people who didn't vote for whoever ends up winning, do not get their preferences counted at all. This is because their first-preference option doesn't get eliminated before a majority is reached by another candidate.

There are some decent preferential systems (e.g. borda count, kemeny-young), but they all suffer from arrow's impossibility theorem (which shows that they're all flawed in some key aspects).

Approval voting is simple to use, simple to count, and tends to produce consensus results.

This site doesn't appear to have a whole team of volunteers like SoylentNews (which I also like), so progress is slower, but I very much like and admire the effort. Consider me sold.

Reach feature parity with Slashcode first, then make this better than that Perl-hell.

More information on this poll can be found here.

And yes, the NSA option is a joke !

I hadn't heard of Abby and Brittany before. That's so cool how they've learned to share the same body, even to the point of typing on a keyboard.

And now all seems to be fixed. Yeah!!

Jarred Walton of Anandtech has nice reviews of both the TECK and the Kinesis Advantage .

I've never tried the TECK, so I can't opine. However, I really like the finger "wells" of the Advantage in terms of typing position, and the spacing of the left and right hands as well. These are great design features of the Advantage in my opinion.

Frankly, the puny function keys are a weakness of the Advantage. I reprogrammed my key mapping to put my low use keys like "capslock" up on the puny function keys and more high use function keys down on the main keyboard to compensate.

I use the "Truly Ergonomic Keyboard". It's pretty good, although the firmware bugs and customer service is pretty horrible. I considered the Advantage, but the puny function keys turned me off.

Human side, I suspect the challenges of this are immense for everyone because it is so atypical.

Analytical side, I wonder whether we could learn a lot about mind-body connections with such a scenario. Do they share the same responses to external stimuli, to placebos, and so on?

You know or don't know. Which is better? I wonder if things will be better with the change?

It is so hard to anticipate what the internet/www will be in 5 years. I hope that sites like Slashdot, soylentnews, and pipedot are part of it though -- with thoughtful exchanges possible and public on difficult issues.

I cannot recommend the Kinesis Advantage enough. It is an awesome ergonomic keyboard. I would not go back to anything less even at $300.

I also use and like: left handed vertical mouse, right-handed handshoe mouse, and an AirTouch table. All are good products and help repetitive use problems. I have a $1000 chair as well -- I don't know the brand, but it is excellent and blows regular office chairs out of the water.

Again, not the point. Does the example work better for you if I say Jesus instead of God then?

Besides, if you want to get pedantic then the Christian god isn't a separate species since it's capable of mating with a human and producing fertile offspring.

The fake leather in my own office chairs have formed some uncomfortable cracks, and I've been looking for a good replacement. I've heard some people rave about the Herman Miller Aeron chairs, but I'm a little put off by their $600+ prices. Are they really worth it? Or are you just paying for the brand? If that's the case, can anyone recommend a knock-off version at a reasonable price point? :P

apples & oranges

https://www.google.com/webhp?hl=xx-hacker#hl=xx-hacker&q=cat

&alpha to ω

Just a preview button!

I think the main reason why there is no edit button on slash-like sites is because of the comment moderation. Otherwise, you could write a very good comment, wait for it to get +5, Informative and then edit it to say something troll-ish.

The ones I embedded using literal A tags vanished. Then I tried with HTML ampersand escapes - that raised an error "Invalid value..".

Maybe this is just me.

Oops, rounding error.

OT: Is there no way to edit comments on |. ?

Maybe I missed the sarcasm, but it seems like 3/14/15 will be the special one.

A botnet is exactly what it is. I feel the euphemisms of "implant" (malware) and "implant network" (botnet) to sound very much like newspeak.

I think everyone understands that "race" in this context means different groups within the same species.

You're probably onto something there. We learn what has worked in the past and that informs and slows our approach to new problems.

Some people do seem to remain more open and less habitual as they grow up though. Any thoughts on what environmental factors encourage this? I tend to view it as a positive quality.