lena's comments

I appreciated the heads-ups about this in this thread. I have been a Fastmail customer for years, and didn't realize they were subject to Australian law. It's very relevant to me, and even though the laws haven't passed yet, major privacy organizations seem concerned enough. It's not easy to change e-mail providers, most people pay a year or more in advance, so it's good to be aware of these important issues. It also could give the company a chance to reassure customers, but I must say that "If the laws change such that we need to say anything different in our privacy policy, then we will definitely make a public statement about those changes" is not the reassurance I was looking for. I have come to expect good tech companies to vehementely oppose laws like this, actively fight against them, organize protests or at least publicly support the opposition (as in the anti SOPA/PIPA efforts in the US), etc. Not just say "We will update our privacy policy if necessary".

I don't know about foreclosure data, but I also wouldn't look at just that, because regulations are different in other countries. I live in the Netherlands and a lot of people now (about 30%) have a mortgage that is worth more than the house. That is not a huge problem as long as they are able to pay the mortgage each month and do not have a pressing reason to move, do not get divorced, etc. but if they do need/want to move they end up with a debt for the difference of the value of the house and the mortgage (In this country, you cannot just walk away from your house and debt, you always remain responsible for the debt).

I think the fact that 30% of all houses here are "underwater" is a better sign of a housing bubble than the amount of foreclosures because at least where I live in many cases banks prefer not to foreclose but put the house on the regular market and hope to sell it for a reasonable prices.

Is it safe to change my password now? All I read in the article is how much they are investigating this. How do I know the hackers don't still have access and are now actively monitoring password changes potentially getting more info? I am concerned that there is nothing about this on the eBay front page and that I have not received an email from eBay about this

Mel Siff died in 2003. "Established wisdom" at that time did not recommend a low-fat diet at all. He apparently wrote in one of his books that "nutritional scientists" recommend a diet of 10% fat, but that was never the recommendation of major health organizations or "conventional wisdom". The IOM recommended in 2002 20-35% of calories from fat, for example. In 1990 the recommendation was 30% or less.

It seems that Mel Siff didn't follow a low fat vegetarian diet himself, based on his response to a critical article about him: (full response here: http://www.somasimple.com/forums/showthread.php?t=6558 )

Interestingly, I cannot recall anyone by the name of Glassman ever staying in the Siff household or studying me in the laboratory to examine my eating habits, so I am intrigued to know where he found this inside information. The abbreviated tale of my cardiac rehab programme (http://www.worldfitness.org/drmelsiff.html) certainly said nothing about my specific breakdown of macronutrients in my diet.

Had he read a little more carefully what I wrote, he would have noticed that my diet comprises something like 50-60% lipids (no fried foods, no transfats, no animal fat, plenty of fish) and under 30% carbohydrates (no refined carbs) and hasn't deviated much from that sort of balance for many years - I have never been a lover of high carb diets and have eaten little or no sugar (other than about 1-2 tablespoons of honey or a few servings of fruit a day). Where on earth does he obtain that nonsense from about my diet?

So, he says there he ate about 50-60% fat. It's strange though that he says "no animal fat" but plenty of fish, which is of course animal fat.

I have learned in this thread that it isn't, but the parent has a good point: in the European country that I live in the name is not recognized at all. Potential employers will not know the value of the education and might assume it is just a degree farm.

I read Scientific American Mind and I actually wish it were a PDF. Instead, it's an app, with content that I can hide and show and some additional features like the odd video. It's pretty, but it's a shame that it is completely tied to my iPad and the articles aren't shareable with anyone, or saveable.

In general, I would advice to not get your health advice from the NY Times. This is a response from Harvard's Nutritionsource: http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/2013/05/17/the-n... who calls it "highly misleading". Nutrition research is difficult, like I said, population studies often fail to account for the fact that in western countries practically the only people who are on a very low sodium diet are people who are already very sick.

Those studies are usually not very good. They often fail to recognize that people who are on a low-sodium diet are very sick, for example (just like those studies that say that a low BMI is very dangerous but fail to control for the fact that very ill people are thin). I just think it would be really strange if humans had such a high need for salt, because until a few hundred years ago people did not add salt to their diet, getting only the naturally occurring sodium from food, and people did just fine.

According to Harvard School of Public Health, salt sensitivity is a myth: http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/salt-questions/#...

Link? Studies about salt are notoriously difficult, because hardly anyone actually adheres to a truly low-salt diet, so you get the equivalent of a study that tries to discern whether smoking 1.5 pack of cigarettes (which takes lots of restrain) is any better than 2. Personally, it took 2 months for my blood pressure to start coming down on a high-vegetable low-sodium diet, and I notice that many people already think they are not salt-sensitive if it doesn't work in 2 days. I'm still astonished when I take my blood pressure and it is 115/70 or so. It used to be consistently 150/90.

It's not very rare at all. It's rare if you compare it to grains, and while quinoa is not a grain, it is usually used instead of a grain. Many beans (e.g. white and black) and vegetables have a complete amino acid profile.

I agree that you don't always know when you purchase something what you're going to use it for. I got the 16GB iPad and never ever expected to run out of storage space. I didn't know about all the great games you could play on it, and how that (together with ebooks and other stuff) really adds up. If someone had asked me what I'd use it for back then, I would have answered "web browsing and reading ebooks". That changed in the first couple of months though. In hindsight I really wish I had at least 32GB.

A similar thing goes for the laptop/desktop example given above. I recently bought a laptop for my parents and the salesperson tried to talk them out of it as well, because they weren't going to travel with it. I think a laptop (with an external screen if it is used a lot) is so much more useful for most people than a desktop, simply because of it's portability inside their home, even without any travel. Now they can sit next to their partner instead of in the separate computer room upstairs. Or (if there was no computer room upstairs) they can put it in the closet when they're done and don't have a big computer taking up space in the living room all the time. And it's way easier to take it with me on public transport if there's something wrong with it. I really felt that the "are you planning on taking it with you while traveling" is the wrong question when it comes to deciding between desktop and laptop, especially for most people when the extra power that a desktop gives is totally insignificant for word processing and web browsing. A laptop (not a top of the line one) was definitely the best option for my parents, and I'm glad I was there so that the salesperson did not succeed in talking them out of that with the best of intentions.

From the article: A spokesperson of the Royal Dutch Airforce says they are surprised about the words of Lubbers[1]. 'We never disclose any information on this. As former prime minister, he knows that'. According to the spokesperson whether or not there are nuclear weapons is a state secret.

[1] Lubbers was prime minister from 1982-1994, confirmed that there are in fact nuclear bombs in Volkel, and said that he never thought that "those silly things" were still there.

That's great that you're adding user profiles, thank you! 15 leaderboards definitely isn't over the top, especially not for an app where improving your score is so essential. You could even add a 16th, 17th and 18th leaderboard for total time across the modes on each difficulty (that would be great, IMO). I own multiple games with 25 leaderboards (one for each level on speedrunners, one for each song for music games, etc), and on gaming forums people moan that that is the maximum number allowed on Game Center because they would prefer more.

This looks great! Congrats on the release, I hope this does well.

Some comments:

- In the Dutch Appstore description you mention that this is good for children in "groep 3, 4, 5, 6". In the US appstore you say "grades 3, 4, 5, 6". They are not equivalent. In the Netherlands six year olds are in "groep 3", so it's equivalent to US grade 1.

- The handwriting recognition worked well, but it's not perfect (of course) and I do have to write a bit differently than usual. I suspect it will be easy for me to get used to. I am glad there is no penalty for errors, that makes it less frustrating. Will test it out on my child later.

- There need to be user profiles. That's essential for a game that you market to both school children and parents. There also should be highscore lists in the game itself, not just in Game Center. Also: in Game Center I only see highscores for the Advanced modes, which is a pity.

- I would absolutely love it if there were an option to choose which time tables to test. That would be perfect for school children who have to train them. I have a few apps for that, but none that measure your progress so nicely and that purely focus on speed. I understand that that's not your focus with this app, but still, I thought I'd put the idea out there

All in all, I am very impressed (though the lack of user profiles would normally be a deal breaker for me in an app like this).

Unfortunately the opposite is a much, much bigger problem right now: people running around telling people with chronic pain that they must have physical issues that must be corrected, and that pain that is not caused by physical issues is somehow not "real".

There is a lot of science about this. Look up David Butler and Lorimer Moseley if you're interested.

Research suggests that it does. The book "Spark" by John Ratey goes into this in depth. http://www.amazon.com/Spark-Revolutionary-Science-Exercise-B...

Me too, but I noticed the other day that you can only save your progress at Khan Academy if you sign it with either Google or Facebook. That stung. I don't want to sign up for a social network, just to save my progress on a math course.

This would be awesome for vim. Not just for the escape key, but also for other often used keys. I love the virtual keyboard in Codea for example.

Your point is valid, but it is still worth noting that a huge audience also did buy their game. They just sold their millionth game on the App Store alone. http://2dboy.com/2012/01/09/one-million-downloads/

Sarno's book is part great and part fluff, but the idea that stress/ideas play a big part in chronic pain is not controversial among pain scientists. Explain Pain by Butler and Moseley is a great book about this, but unfortunately it is rather expensive. The latter part of this blog post gives a summary: http://changeyourpain.com/2011/03/03/what-was-that-about-chr...

This is a TED video by Moseley: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwd-wLdIHjs

And this is a good summarizing post about pain science: http://www.bettermovement.org/2010/seven-things-you-should-k...