I’m leaving Mojang | notch.net
The home of Notch
Hasnain says:
"As soon as this deal is finalized, I will leave Mojang and go back to doing Ludum Dares and small web experiments. If I ever accidentally make something that seems to gain traction, I’ll probably abandon it immediately."
This is kind of sad, but I'm happy for the guy.
Posted on 2014-09-15T18:15:13+0000
Yes, we’re being bought by Microsoft
Yes, the deal is real. Mojang is being bought by Microsoft. It was reassuring to see how many of your opinions mirrored those of the Mojangstas when we heard the news. Change is scary, and this is a big change […]
Haskell for all: Morte: an intermediate language for super-optimizing functional programs
The Haskell language provides the following guarantee (with caveats): if two programs are equal according to equational reasoning then they will behave the same. On the other hand, Haskell does not guarantee that equal programs will generate identical performance. Consequently, Haskell library write…
Hasnain says:
I understand some of these words...
"Now suppose there were a hypothetical language with a stronger guarantee: if two programs are equal then they generate identical executables. Such a language would be immune to abstraction: no matter how many layers of indirection you might add the binary size and runtime performance would be unaffected."
Posted on 2014-09-12T18:15:43+0000
University of Glasgow :: University news
Scientists have taken a major step forward in the production of hydrogen from water which could lead to a new era of cheap, clean and renewable energy.
Hasnain says:
Hydrogen production from water - now if only Agha Waqar could have done something like this for his water powered car...
Posted on 2014-09-12T16:57:40+0000
My experience with using cp to copy a lot of files (432 millions, 39 TB)
lists.gnu.org
Requests for Startups
Introduction There are a lot of startup ideas we've been waiting for people to apply with, sometimes for years. In an effort to be more direct, we're introducing the RFS (Requests for Startups). Basically, we'd like to fund more breakthrough technology companies--companies that solve an important pr…
LOW-TECH MAGAZINE: The Revenge of the Circulating Fan
The steadfast rotating fan has been employed to keep people cool since the eighteenth century, and it remains highly effective, requiring much less energy and providing more comfort than air-conditioning. Cooling people by increasing local airflow is at least ten times more energy efficient than ref…
How the global banana industry is killing the world’s favorite fruit
During harvest last year, banana farmers in Jordan and Mozambique made a chilling discovery. Their plants were no longer bearing the soft, creamy fruits they'd been growing for decades. When they cut open the roots of their banana plants, they saw something that looked like this: Scientists first di…
Hasnain says:
"But the GMO lightning rod distracts from the larger cautionary tale: Our reliance on monoculture to feed surging global populations is catching up with us. International agricultural organizations are already scrambling to find new scourge-resistant substitutes for things like rice and potatoes. In fact, so dire are other global agricultural problems that Tropical Race 4’s onslaught doesn’t even get bananas near the top of priority list. “Getting support to develop new resistant bananas is really tough—there are already so many demands on the international agricultural community,” says Ploetz. “There’s a lot of hunger in the world and bananas just have to get in line behind all those other big problems.”"
Posted on 2014-09-11T20:03:28+0000
The Awful Reign of the Red Delicious
How the worst apple took over the United States, and continues to spread
Hasnain says:
"As genes for beauty were favored over those for taste, the skins grew tough and bitter around mushy, sugar-soaked flesh."
Posted on 2014-09-11T20:02:49+0000
Matchmaker, Matchmaker, Make Me A Spreadsheet
In mid-August, couples and lonely hearts packed a Brooklyn basement to hear scientists make sense of something the crowd could not: love. It was the 11th meeting of the Empiricist League, a kind of...
Hasnain says:
"But if submitting to Big Data is what’s required, are we interested in telling it? Rudder started writing the book in a pre-Edward Snowden era, when the conversation about data was largely about its possibilities, not its perils. There’s a telling passage early in the book when Rudder writes, “If Big Data’s two running stories have been surveillance and money, for the last three years I’ve been working on a third: the human story.” But that doesn’t go quite far enough. These days, isn’t the human story a combination of surveillance and money?"
Posted on 2014-09-10T04:43:21+0000