The only people who "never touch" their stuff are people who live in very, very dirty houses. If you want to clean stuff properly, you have to touch it. Dust settles on everything, and eventually that dust turns to actual dirt if you don't clean it off. And finishes like this make it basically impossible to clean…

The one scenario where a flashlight definitely works better is alluded to in the testing method - using it to light an entire room by sitting it on a flat surface and aiming it at the ceiling. You can sort of do it with a headlamp but a) it kind of defeats the purpose of having a headlamp, and b) they usually don't…

I react more to the satellite. Both photographers and news orgs will often pick out that *one* destroyed house to use as a backdrop - which is only natural, to get the most dramatic shot - but it's hard to tell how representative it is. To see house after house washed away in the satellite view drives it home for…

No problem - I also forgot to mention that he runs constant simulations of the election, which is an idea that Obama actually aped himself according to another post here. That's actually where Silver's final numbers come from - he inputs all these poll numbers, weights and corrects them, and then runs a large number…

A 12" tablet (especially with the guts of a computer and hinge hardware) doesn't make sense because it's really impossible to hold one for any length of time. Pick up even a standard ultrabook and just hold it in the air - even with both hands - for more than 60 seconds. Your arms are already going to be pretty…

5.5" is the new 3.6". In a year, there's not gonna be a "flagship" phone left smaller than that. The Note II's already out, the Droid DLX is coming next week... Well, there is the iPhone, which is going to seem even tinier than it does now... and not in a good way. More like in the "how did we ever convince…

His blog, where you can see his forecast numbers: http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/

Sigh.

I don't think this is about phones, it's about tablets.

I don't see why we name tropical cyclones either. As far as I know, we're the only country that does it.

Which is exactly why it's dumb. This is real life, not a movie (or a TV show, which is what TWC is trying to turn it into.)

"sprays of steaming liquor" is simultaneously the most fun and the most terrifying phrase I've ever heard.

change the seats and clean it up.

Sorry, Democrats and Republicans are the only choices. Our government was set up that way from the beginning - with different party names, but it's always been a two-party system, intentionally, and the parties have generally fallen along the same ideological lines (one in favor of strong central government, the…

That's kind of a generic search term for a pretty specific search. It'd be like wanting information on jet fighters and therefore Googling "history of flying machines". I would think that a person who wants information on third party candidates would be more likely to Google "third party candidates 2012" or some…

There is a sign you see posted everywhere, "You loot, we shoot." It's not a safe place after dark.

Mayor Bloomberg was going crazy about the new voting machines being "inefficient" in his last news conference - he likes the old mechanical machines, I guess, which he waxed nostalgic about. But then he said the optical scanners were like something from a century ago and said it wasn't acceptable in "this day and…

The operating system won't be the full version of Windows (obviously), but the Verge report also indicates it won't be Windows RT, but a "custom Windows kernel."

These types of voting machines should be banned, plain and simple. They're unreliable and leave no paper trail - in short, they undermine the entire democratic process because no one can have any confidence that their vote was counted properly. That makes it pointless to even vote in the first place.

Yes, this is clearly the first time we've ever heard about problems with electronic voting machines. And it's all a big Democratic conspiracy. :\