Excellent article at The Verge on the history of pinball and video arcades.

Authenticity is a hard nut to crack, but there are a few hallmarks of the video game arcade of days gone by: first, they have video games. Lots and lots of video games, and (usually) pinball machines. They’re dark (so that you can see the screens better), and they don’t sell food or booze.

I’ve been a curmudgeon for years about how, back in my day, I had to learn BASIC and DOS to do anything with a computer… which in turn is why I think I learned a hell of a lot about how they work. While I’m all in favor of iPads, it’s just not the same when new users can bypass all of that programming stuff.

Never actually occurred to me that you can just sit a kid in front of a UNIX prompt.

Two years ago, my son Jacob (then 3) and I built his first computer together. I installed Debian on it, but never put a GUI on the thing. It’s command-line, and has provided lots of enjoyment off and on over the last couple of years. The looks of shock I get from people when I explain, as if it’s perfectly natural, that my child has been able to log in by himself to a Linux shell since age 3, are amusing and astounding. Especially considering that it is really not that hard. Instead of learning how to run an Xbox, he’s learned how to run bash.

I predict a highly caffeinated stay. Why wasn’t this here when I was writing my book here? (Oh yeah, it was 1995.)

Report: 96% Of Nation’s Smut Consumed By Filthiest 1%

The onion thinks they’re joking, but this is actually pretty close to true. We had one guy who rented 12 tapes a day. Every day.

When the fiscal cliff deal was signed, it included a provision killing off loans to nonprofit health providers:

When Congress struck a deal to avert the fiscal cliff, it also dealt a quiet blow to President Obama’s health overhaul: The new law killed a multibillion-dollar program meant to boost health insurance competition by funding nonprofit health plans.

The decision to end funding for the Consumer Operated and Oriented Plans has left as many as 40 start-ups vying for federal dollars in limbo. Some are considering legal action against the Obama administration, after many spent upwards of $100,000 preparing their applications.

I love how this is framed as being bad for competition. More to the point, nonprofit providers have far less overhead, so this was also likely to reduce long term costs, just as single payer would.

I’m a bit confused by this article concerning controversy over a star that has been dated at 13.9 billion years, making it 200 million years than the actual universe that houses it.

However, buried in graf 5 we learn that the margin of error is 700 million years. At this point, the problem is solved:

1. The dating technique for the star comes up with 13.9 billion years, but the technique itself has known margins of error.
2. Since in this case, ages greater that 13.7 billion can be thrown out (barring extraordinary evidence to the contrary), we can safely date the star as between 13.2 and 13.7 billion years—or actually, 13.65, since IIRC that’s when the universe cooled off enough to allow the first stars to form.
3. Ergo, no mystery and no story. Unless, of course, it’s a story that sometimes science comes up with ranges of answers and has to self-correct.

For example, let’s say that my contempt for Kevin Lee’s reporting is 102%, plus or minus 7%. Since it’s not possible to hold someone in more contempt than my theoretical maximum, we can safely assume that I regard this article as between 95-100% contemptible, even though there’s a “mathematical” answer of 109% possible.

View from off Strip is much better.