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exe  ·  3584 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Hubski, what are your Irrational Fears?

Okay, I swear this is true. I have an irrational fear of sliced bread. Only when it's sliced, and only when it's bread. If it's a loaf, I'm fine. If it's toast, I'm fine. But if it's a slice of bread, I feel physically ill and have to extract myself from the region. I don't know if you can classify it as a fear per se, but if you associate fear with "generates extreme discomfort" I think it would be.

exe  ·  3793 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Chelyabinsk meteor explosion a ‘wake-up call’, scientists warn

There's widespread insurance fraud in Russia, but there's also quite a bit of corruption within police ranks, so drivers will usually install a dashboard camera to defend themselves.

http://www.rferl.org/content/dash-cams-russia-fighting-corru...

exe  ·  3793 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Chelyabinsk meteor explosion a ‘wake-up call’, scientists warn

It was helpful that it occurred in the land of dashboard cameras. If it was anywhere else but Russia we'd have much less footage.

exe  ·  3796 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Reminder: Hubski IRC Exists

Some IRC clients will close to background, and alert you when your name is mentioned. mIRC is a common client, but I prefer Pidgin.

exe  ·  3818 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: "Homogenization Bias" on hubski?

I'm a huge lurker on many, many sites, but I probably lurk the hardest on HN, Reddit and Hubski. Fear of being wrong, and a lack of respect for one's own opinion I'll admit are big factors, but I think there's also an issue of being late to the party. I see threads on Reddit's 'Hot' feed, that have been weeded out by the Reddit hive-mind as being full of good discussion and content. But as soon as I get to the comments I suddenly get extremely disappointed because there's been a discussion raging for the past day or so. I, personally, feel that often a lot of what needs to be said, has been said. On the flip-side, when I do have something to say, often I feel that there will be very little audience to see it and to respond to it. It's a bit like, 'what's the point' (I don't feel this applies to Hubski, which puts new comments up the top)

Hubski really solves a lot of this problem by allowing people with a large numbers of followers to share threads and links posted by an occasional lurker that comes out of the woodwork. However, I think it's intimidating for some new users to see people with a huge amount of followers and make huge contributions to the Hubski community. Maybe a way to search and subscribe to new users that have certain interests? To join a new website and be quickly greeted by a "### has started following you" would really really encourage new people to feel like they have an audience that they feel like they can connect with.

Just my two cents.

exe  ·  3821 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Should a high school diploma be required to vote?

I think I might have to agree with you slightly. However, on the other hand you have a large group of informed youth that very rarely vote. In Australia only 40% of (relatively informed) youth voted, despite it being compulsory. In some cases, you actually need to give a people a kick in the backside, people that are actually informed but might be sitting in the political centre, or just unhappy with all major parties, to get them to vote.

exe  ·  3821 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Should a high school diploma be required to vote?

    This is how you get even more ignorant votes. People will just do it because they have to, and a lot of people will probably pick one at random (not caring about politics).

Arguably, this prevents political extremism, causing all of the major parties to the centre. Pushing more voters to vote prevents political influence by lobby groups.

exe  ·  3829 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: What Have You Been Playing Lately?

Wipeout HD on the PS3.

I can't explain how much I love this game and its predecessors on the PSP (I haven't had a chance to get Wipeout 2048 for the Vita). It's such a thrilling game, and playing it after at least 200 hours is still fun. It deviates significantly from most games - you don't drive cars, you fly anti-grav racers. You travel at 700km/h, you have aerobrake control, you can literally fly across sections of the track if you're travelling fast enough.

exe  ·  3859 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: What have you done that was new to you recently?

It annoys me that there is no "Show answer" option on Code Academy. They've tried to go the handholding route by giving you subtle hints when you mess up, and creating a dedicated forum to answer questions. But often the subtle hints fail, and an "official" annotated answer would be really damn helpful.

exe  ·  3860 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: What have you done that was new to you recently?

I decided to start to learn to code, about 4 days ago. I've been going through the Python course on Code Academy, trying my hand at some problems from Project Euler. Code Academy is pretty damn good, but it has some issues with telling you what exactly you're doing wrong. It will tell you that you've done something wrong, but you're never told what is wrong, and why it's wrong. I also found that just going through the source code from game jams and just screwing around with it until it does something interesting. So far it's been pretty rewarding, but occasionally I'll run into problems and trying to figure out what I'm doing wrong is particularly brutal.

exe  ·  3871 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: The First Hubski Newsletter went out today and many of you were featured

Oh wow, I'm really honored. I browse Hubski daily and that link was me deciding to stop lurking and actually contribute to this community.

exe  ·  3878 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: F'd: How the U.S. and Its Allies Got Stuck with the World's Worst New Warplane

It doesn't help that the F-35 is going to be the only fighter that Australia is going to be operating in any major capacity for the next couple of decades - considering how we held on to the F-111s for dear life until Parliament threw up their hands because they were getting too expensive to maintain. It seems that the F-35s are replacements for the F-111s which were designed specifically as long range bombers and served their role perfectly. The F/A-18 (I think this is Australia's primary air superiority figher at the moment) are ageing and keeping them airworthy is proving inefficient and costly. F-22s can't be purchased due to an export ban. It seems like it was a very expensive gamble from the beginning and by the looks of it, it might not pay off.

exe  ·  3906 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Do you have any scar stories?

I got knocked out of the boat, but the water was shallow enough for me to just stand up, so I just climbed back down and lay down until I was sure I wasn't going to pass out.

As for it getting reset, I went to the hospital, in the hope that they'd knock it straight back into place. Instead, they tell me to come back in 2 weeks time for surgery (which I did). Get knocked out, a "5 minute procedure takes place", wake up, cast taped to my face. Leave. Return, cast gets taken off. What do you know. My nose was still crooked. It's straight, just on the wrong place on my face. It's off by about 30 degrees.

exe  ·  3908 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Do you have any scar stories?

I have quite a sizeable and obvious scar running along the right side of my nose.

I managed to find myself at school camp sailing a Laser dingy. I was calling out to one of my friends, looking back away from the front of the boat - I started to hear the boat start to gybe so I instinctively ducked. However, I'd normally sailed Pacers - their booms are at a much different height. I managed to duck into the swinging boom. It caught my nose, broke it, and left a pretty deep gash. Blood everwhere.

exe  ·  3993 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Dear Writers, for the Screen and Off: Gravity is not a light switch.

Total Recall had the same issue. The elevator is in complete free-fall, and they're still casually walking around in the elevator, both feet planted on the floor. But, when they reached the Earth's core, everyone in the elevator started floating about, "because the gravity was changing direction".

exe  ·  4027 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: What smaller subreddits do you frequent, if any?

/r/classicalguitar /r/theoryofreddit /r/depthhub /r/truegaming /r/modded (dead) /r/insightfulquestions /r/trueaskreddit

Probably not what you're looking for, but /r/talesfromtechsupport . I read it almost everyday, and always manages to make me chuckle.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tensor_tympani_muscle

Normally, it is used to protect the ear by reducing the amplitude of certain sounds. For me, it sounds somewhat like what you wrote - a deep rumble, but not electric sounding. It gets quite painful if I do it for too long. I read somewhere that about 30% - 50% of the population can control it at will, although based on asking my friends, that statistic is most likely wrong. I know for certain that some people cannot do it.

exe  ·  4059 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: 'I want a world where disabled people are valid sexual partners' | Society | The Guardian

Yes! Thank-you.

exe  ·  4059 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: 'I want a world where disabled people are valid sexual partners' | Society | The Guardian

I don't have access to the video at the moment, but there is an interesting Australian documentary related to the article. It would be great if someone who knows what I'm talking about could post a link.

exe  ·  4060 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: A warning to college professors from a high school teacher

Ah, I see. Thanks!

exe  ·  4061 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: A warning to college professors from a high school teacher

I'm a tad thick, so I didn't completely understand the article. Was the article in favour of leaning towards more essay-oriented examination, and eliminate the creation and widespread use of multiple-choice tests? Or was it criticising No Child Left Behind and its greater focus on test results?

exe  ·  4066 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Reddit is for boys, Pinterest is for girls

Was Pinterest specifically designed to capture a female audience? Or was there an initial gender imbalance, and Pinterest gradually leaned over to a female majority?