Leon Atkinson's Blog, page 24

Protection Racket

Another example of government “protecting” us.

How to Win at Poker

On April 15, 2011, a day that has been dubbed “Black Friday” in the poker community, the DOJ shut down the American operations of three major sites: PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker, and Ultimate Bet.

Michael Kaplan has an update on the story:

In January of this year, Full Tilt and the DOJ worked out an arrangement in which the DOJ took ownership of Full Tilt with the intention of selling it to raise funds to pay back American players. Seven months later, on July 31, PokerStars purchased Full Tilt from the DOJ. Businessweek estimated that the transaction would make $547 million for the U.S. government. At the time, the DOJ vowed to reimburse Full Tilt’s U.S. players; Stars said that it would take responsibility for returning $184 million to non-American customers.

PokerStars followed through on its end of the deal and recently relaunched the Full Tilt site outside of the U.S.

So has the DOJ paid the U.S. players? Of course not.

Related articles

Zynga Wants to Get into the Gambling Business

Playing Civ II for 10 years

What will the world be like in 2000 years? Basically no change.

Man Plays Civilisation II For 10 Years, World Disintegrates into ‘Nightmare Of Suffering’ (PHOTOS)

What will the world be like in 2000 years?

According to one visionary using a computer simulation, the distant future will be a “hellish nightmare of suffering and devastation”, largely uninhabitable, flooded and beset by in-fighting, nuclear war and periodic annihilation.

Strength training improves cycling sprints

I suspect a few people in my family will find this interesting.

Cyclists’ improvement of pedaling efficacy and performance after heavy strength training

The authors tested whether heavy strength training, including hip-flexion exercise, would reduce the extent of the phase in the crank revolution where negative or retarding crank torque occurs. Negative torque normally occurs in the upstroke phase when the leg is lifted by flexing the hip. Eighteen well-trained cyclists either performed 12 wk of heavy strength training in addition to their usual endurance training (E+S; n = 10) or merely continued their usual endurance training during the intervention period (E; n = 8). The strength training consisted of 4 lower body exercises (3 × 4-10 repetition maximum) performed twice a week. E+S enhanced cycling performance by 7%, which was more than in E (P = .02). Performance was determined as average power output in a 5-min all-out trial performed subsequent to 185 min of submaximal cycling. The performance enhancement, which has been reported previously, was here shown to be accompanied by improved pedaling efficacy during the all-out cycling. Thus, E+S shortened the phase where negative crank torque occurs by ~16°, corresponding to ~14%, which was more than in E (P = .002). In conclusion, adding heavy strength training to usual endurance training in well-trained cyclists improves pedaling efficacy during 5-min all-out cycling performed after 185 min of cycling.

Bacon Jello

Follow the link for the recipe.

Bacon Jello

Bacon jello.  Yes, it’s bacon-flavored jello that looks like you’re slicing into a nice, thick slab of home-cured bacon.  Think of it less as dessert, and more as a surprisingly edible piece of concept art.  This jello has a dairy base flavored with bacon (of course!), a mix of maple syrup and flamed and reduced Calvados, and applewood smoke.

Ember.js

I’m anxious to try this out.

Ember.js – About

Traditional web applications make the user download a new page every time they interact with the server. This means that every interaction is never faster than the latency between you and the user, and usually slower. Using AJAX to replace only parts of the page helps somewhat, but still requires a roundtrip to your server every time your UI needs to update. And if multiple parts of the page need to update all at once, most developers just resort to loading the page over again, since keeping everything in sync is tricky.

Ember.js, like some other modern JavaScript frameworks, works a little differently. Instead of the majority of your application’s logic living on the server, an Ember.js application downloads everything it needs to run in the initial page load. That means that while your user is using your app, she never has to load a new page and your UI responds quickly to their interaction.

One advantage of this architecture is that your web application uses the same REST API as your native apps or third-party clients. Back-end developers can focus on building a fast, reliable, and secure API server, and don’t have to be front-end experts, too.

10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10

Any book about Commodore is on my reading list. You can read it for free, or buy it from Amazon. I really liked Commodore: A Company on the Edge, which told the story of Commodore from the beginning to the sad end. Amiga Forever!

10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10

10 PRINT is a book about a one-line Commodore 64 BASIC program, published in November 2012. Book purchases support the nonprofit organizations PLAYPOWER (to which all royalties are being donated) and The MIT Press, the book’s publisher.

HipHop VM now faster HPHPc

Facebook’s VM for PHP is now running code faster than the code compiled to C++.

Speeding up PHP-based development with HipHop VM

Here at Facebook, the HipHop team constantly strives to improve the efficiency of PHP execution and increase productivity for our PHP developers. In late 2011 we announced that we were pursuing a just-in-time (JIT) compilation approach called HipHop VM (HHVM) as a successor to the HipHop PHP-to-C++ compiler (HPHPc). The goals of the HHVM project are two-fold: build a production-ready virtual machine that delivers superior performance, and unify our production and development environments.

Below is an update on the state of HipHop VM, followed by a deep dive into some details on HHVM’s architecture and optimization strategies.

BioShock 2 is free for PS Plus members

Whee!

Free BioShock 2 for PS Plus members starting tomorrow

BioShock 2, a game whose appreciation is a bit of a slow burn, will be free for PlayStation Plus members following tomorrow’s PSN Tuesday update. If you’re interested in spending some money on BioShock 2, there’s always the well-conceived Minerva’s Den add-on.

Other highlights for Plus members tomorrow include Rockstar Game Collection 1 (Red Dead Redemption, Grand Theft Auto: Episodes from Liberty City, L.A. Noire and Midnight Club: Los Angeles Complete Edition) for 10 percent off at $53.99. There’s also Puddle for half off at $3.50 on PS3 and $2.80 on Vita.

VentureBeat covers Owncloud

VentureBeat published an article about Owncloud today. We’re hoping this will kick off some serious attention ahead AppNation IV.

Pentagon protecting us from drones with directives

As we all know, once a bureaucrat writes a directive, the problem is solved. Thankfully, we have a directive in place to make sure it’s always a real human pressing a button to drop bombs from a drone. There will be no chance of incompetent humans making mistakes nor of a computer virus taking over the drones.

Pentagon: A Human Will Always Decide When a Robot Kills You | Danger Room | Wired.com

Worried about the day when the robots become self-aware and start deciding who lives and who dies? The Pentagon’s actually written a directive to make sure that can’t happen, whatever the next steps are in autonomous robots.