One of my cats has a more...energetic way of opening the hallway door. She learned that if she ran down the stair and bounced off the opposite wall she'd have enough force to knock it open. Damn does she ever like to make noise.

Funny fact: I recently learned that Taft and I are blood relations on the part of one of his grandparents. It's funny because he's always been one of my favorite presidents (not the best, but certainly interesting). There's more research to do, but presumably some of my recent ancestors knew him through family…

I'd left the country before the current crisis, and while that had no influence on the decision, the writing has been on the wall for some time now. I wouldn't fault anyone abandoning the states; the human race has a long, long history of moving from weaker countries to stronger ones. That said, I do intend to do…

Ecomics in general have horrible, horrible formats. To all the comic publishers out there: Just put a comic online. Tall rectangular page full of static images and text. A whole lotta people don't like this "click, blob of text, click, something moved, click, blob of text" thing you keep doing. You know what that…

Yes, because clearly the best way to manage your life and finances is with... terror, fear and dread?

Exactly with you. My last build was an 8-core AMD system with two AMD graphics cards. It blew i7 systems out of the water. My upcoming build is a dual-socket Intel board with a pair of Titan cards. It will be my new workstation baby.

Exactly. I don't have a thing against redesigns in general, but this "every few weeks stuff gets shuffled around the page" thing is getting really, really old. The current one seems even more counter-intuitive by placing the site name (kotaku, whatever) a section below other aspects. Seems to be breaking a pretty…

Hah! "Racist" does not require the subject matter to be "marginalized or subjugated".

Wow, that's sad news. He was one of my favorite authors from 15-25. I particularly liked the concept of the "Net Force" books, though obviously they were written to a much younger level.

On the other hand, putting it live would have probably been the only way to convict the guy if it was real. If it was real, saying "it was just fiction" would pretty much put any investigation to a stop. Putting it up live gives a way for victims to recognize information and come forward. It was a judgement call,…

Just because I'm not sure if you're thinking I'm an idiot or something, but my own personal experiences were not based on the advertisement specifying "girl". Anywho, by your logic anyone specifically advertising "counter girl" would almost automatically find themselves on the wrong side of a court case and... well,…

Presumably, but I don't go cold-calling at "help wanted" signs wearing a wire, so I'm unsure how someone convinces a legal aid office that there is enough evidence to proceed.

I'm always curious how these people (a) prove this in court (b) can afford to take it to court, especially when they're already job-hunting. I've been turned down for a few jobs in the last 6 months (reception, PA, retail) explicitly because I wasn't female and while I probably wouldn't have wanted the job anyway…

True, but I have to admit it has some kind of "Yeah, man, I got the goods. They're in the briefcase" style. I wish I could have found all of these things 5 years ago when I was using micro sd more frequently.

I've still got my watch-phone kicking around in one of my drawers. It's very convenient to pair with a bluetooth device for voice-only usage. I might bust it out again soon as a 2nd device.

Fair enough. Assuming that they are being honest about why there are no women this time around, is there something you feel they could have said that would have not upset people? Or is this a "no women = problem" kinda scenario?

No offense taken. While I was more trying to make a point that the UK is a fair smidge better than most countries in the world (far better than the US, arguably it's closest analogue, and better than what I gather from other EU nations but I can't say much from lack of personal experience), "better" doesn't…

I still haven't finished 13. I don't dislike the game itself, and the characters/story are good, but I reached this big open field area that afterwards you go into a tunnel with death-attack monsters and... the difficulty seemed to be cranked? The only comparable thing I've come across was the Yunalesca fight in 10,…

I believe that was with the older versions of the game; an extended trip (weeks) would get you to the outer borders where terrain generation just stopped functioning (notably, bedrock would not be formed as a smooth bottom layer, which can be bad if you fall). In the current versions I believe that this no longer…

I don't personally agree with that (because I'm not an idiot), but it's a valid point: even without the joke (which is a bad joke, and shouldn't have been made, but a lot of academics aren't known for their understanding of "humor") people would have been complaining (and presumably the "joke" was inspired by that…