Category: Uncategorized
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‘Aspies’ Cling to Asperger as Elite Diagnosis
In a proposed change for the upcoming DSM-V, Asperger syndrome would be eliminated as its own, separate diagnosis, and merged in with several other conditions under a general ‘autism spectrum diseases’ category. The “Aspies” are not pleased about that: Liane Holliday Willey, a Michigan author and self-described Aspie whose daughter…
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Yehuda Katz Reflects on Rails 3
Here wycats explains not only what's changed in the beta release, but also why it's changed, in a clear, thoughtful way that makes me feel I've been both wrong, and an asshole, about Rails 3. To wit: One of the things that most surprised and impressed me is the Rails…
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Jonah Lehrer on Loss Aversion
The amygdala, the part of the brain believed to be responsible for fear, is likely also related to the human aversion to loss. Researchers at UCL and Caltech have found evidence that people with damaged amygdalas are willing to make riskier decisions: Both amygdala-lesioned participants showed a dramatic absence of…
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Pentagon Funds Real-Life Spider-Man Tech
Or, more accurately, “Beetle-Man.” Wired’s Danger Room blog reports Darpa—the gonzo R&D wing of the U.S. military that gave us the Internet—is funding a team at Cornell who are working on gadgets that may one day allow a person to climb walls like a bug: Dr. Paul Steen, lead researcher on…
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Bayonet Skills to be Omitted from Basic Training for Modern Soldiers
I know what you're thinking: "we were still training soldiers to use bayonets?" Apparently so. And apparently, they've even been used this decade: A group of 20 British soldiers near Basra fought off an ambush by over 100 Mahdi fighters in Iraq, but eventually ran low on ammo. They then…
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John Nack: Adobe isn’t in the Flash business
From Adobe's John Nack, who's this reasonable probably because he works on Photoshop rather than, y'know, that other app: [Adobe's] in the helping people communicate business. We'd all do well to remember that, because it means that the company's fortunes are tied to building great tools for solving problems. If…
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Obama Cuts Funding For Useless Moon Missions
Can we seriously say we want him to be responsible about fixing out $8 trillion deficit, then complain that we're not gonna have a Hilton on the moon? No. No we can't.
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Zeldman: Flash, iPad, Standards
Jeffrey Zeldman: Lack of Flash in the iPad (and before that, in the iPhone) is a win for accessible, standards-based design. Not because Flash is bad, but because the increasing popularity of devices that don’t support Flash is going to force recalcitrant web developers to build the semantic HTML layer…
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DF: What if Flash Were an Open Standard?
Gruber, in discussing the current blogstorm over Apple's continued non-support for Adobe Flash in iPhone OS, touches on why Apple—who certainly have no problem with proprietary technology so long as it's theirs—are being such champs about keeping core internet technologies like WebKit free and open source: It’s indisputable that Apple…
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OmniGroup: iPad or Bust
Omni CEO Ken Case: We’re really excited about Apple’s iPad, and we want to make all of our products available for it as soon as we can. Yes, we already had a big year planned for 2010, with several long-anticipated major product releases—but we think iPad is really important: important…