I bought a refurbished Sansa Clip Zip from Amazon. That's an mp3 player from back when those things existed.
I rooted it and installed Rockbox, an open source OS for mp3 players that beats all pre-installed systems out of the water.
Then I got a 32 gigabyte micro SD card, which this player can use. That's enough to keep a copy of all of my music.
So I listen offline and free of charge and ads. Of course, getting hold of new music can be a bit of a hassle.
I think it was The Lord of the Rings. I also read it in middle school, and it was a giant hardcover.
@'zilla , if I could pick your brain on that one. Is dark energy something that's been proven as an energy, or simply a deus ex machina inferred from the accelaration of the universe's expansion? Like, "The universe is accelarating! I must need energy to do that! Let's call it dark energy."
Also, is dark energy the same as dark matter? Perhaps the latter is being transferred into the former.I could go and find these answers for myself... but then, as you're here
If you could really find those answers, you'd get the nobel price for sure 
Is it an energy? Yes, unless General Relativity is incorrect. There are two major effects of dark energy. One is the expansion of space, the other is the very shape of spacetime. Einstein proposed that the shape of spacetime is intimately linked with the energy contained within it. We've measured the shape of spacetime on the largest scales, and it requires a lot of invisible energy to explain it.
In itself, this energy has a positive gravitational effect. It's the pressure of dark energy that overcomes this and drives the expansion. Exactly how these two effects are linked, still puzzles me. This guy seems to understand it.
Are dark energy and dark matter related? Unlikely, but not impossible. Whereas dark energy provides antigravity, dark matter provides the gravity necessary to form galaxies etc. We can create a map of dark matter, whereas dark energy seems smoothly distributed across the 'verse. Still, some scientists are following an idea called Dark Fluid, which is a combination of the two. Just like you propose, they imagine that dark energy can condense into dark matter. I think it's really exciting but I haven't gotten around to read about it yet.
Our broken universe
This is something I'm reading up on at the moment. It's called the electroweak epoch. It starts way way back when the universe was less than a second old, and when the universe got stuck in a rut.
Everywhere was really hot back then. I mean millions of billions of degrees. Everything was wild and, perhaps, simpler than the universe we know today. There were fewer forces of nature, because they kind of melt together at such high temperatures.
One of these forces was the electroweak force. Unlike today's electromagnetic force, which rules electricity and magnets and creates light, the electroweak force had four different particles similar to the particles of light (the photons). Otherwise it was similar to the electromagnetic force – it could attract things and repel things. But it must have had some other weird effects too. I don't know the details yet.
Starting in the electroweak epoch, however, and as the universe cooled down, something happened. The electroweak force was doomed. Why?
I can try to explain it with a comparison. Imagine biking really fast along a road. The road has huge, bowl-shaped potholes, but you're going so fast you're just soaring over them without falling down. The moment you go too slow, though, you will fall into a pothole. If you cannot bike faster again, you will always be stuck in that pothole, going back and forth along its sides. That is what happened in the early universe. When the temperature cooled down, the typical energy was small enough for part of the universe to fall into a pothole.
This did something profound, which was to break the electroweak force into two very different forces. The four electroweak particles were mixed together and partitioned out. Three were given to the weak force, and one was given to the electromagnetic force – it became the photon.
What does the weak force do? It is the weirdest force. It violates a whole bunch of rules that all the other forces respect. It is the source of radioactivity. It has strange ties to electromagnetism. It might have something to do with dark matter. And it can only be felt at a tiny distance which is less than the size of a proton. Why?
Because of that pothole. A very strange pact was made when the universe fell down there. With whom? The Higgs field, that enigmatic source of the Higgs bosons that we discovered in 2012! In fact, ever since the end of the electroweak epoch, the weak force has had close ties with this field, while the electromagnetic force goes free. Because of the Higgs field's grasp on the weak force, the three particles of the weak force are always eaten by the Higgs field, before they can get anywhere at all. And it doesn't end there. The weak force is thought to act as the messenger between the Higgs field and most of the other particles, too!
What does that really mean? It happens to give all those particles a mass. Of all the particles we have observed, only the photon is without any mass. That enables it to always travel at the speed of light. So... if it wasn't for this pothole, you could argue that everything would be moving at the speed of light! And you know what happens when you travel at the speed of light? Time does not pass.
Weeell.. actually, there is reason to believe that it wouldn't be quite like that. But it surely wouldn't be the universe we know, the universe we are able to exist in. So, it is actually quite a good thing that we live in a universe with a leg stuck in a pothole.
Interesting correction: when I say that the universe fell into a hole/was broken, it's not really as if a global change happened instantly. Even if it was perfectly synced, there shouldn't be anything stopping us from achieving those energies again, apart from the fact that a million billion degrees is a lot! So even before the universe got cold enough, that pothole was already there, waiting..
Ah, I didn't notice the soft-hide, that's a good function. Does it require a confirmation, like a prompt box? Otherwise I'd be worried I might touch the icons by mistake.
I'm on a computer now and it makes more sense because I can hover and see the descriptions. I'm not sure about crazy, dumb and TL;DR. These might be used in a funny way, but the one who made the post might not always get it, and it can seem negative. Not sure how I'd feel getting these on my posts.
How about an angry one, though? (Of course, that makes it very similar to Facebook.) It has a negative element too, though, so I'm not sure.
The confused reaction could be useful, but perhaps one that isn't an animation, like a question mark. I'd love to know when my posts are super confusing.
And it is a bit of clutter. I could imagine a more compact way for listing reactions:
+7 
where the number is the number of counted reactions and hovering gives the detailed number (again, Facebook did it, I'm brainwashed)
If the range of reactions was hidden until you click/hover the "box of different like options", that would make it even cleaner. But I know how those things can be a pain in the butt to customize!
It's a really neat mod, though, and it enables us to give more rapid feedback on posts!
I'm for keeping all the +1 ones, some of the neutral ones and a generic soft-hide one.
I wonder what the electroweak field would look like
It's a tricky question, Facebook had the same debate and they must have spent so much time choosing.
I would probably not use the negative ones, rather just ignoring a post then giving it attention.
The neutral ones are useful to express reaction, though I don't have a clear impression of what the last four convey.
The like is ubiquitous, but also covers a lot (vaguely). The thanks might not be needed as the like might imply this in the right context.
Useful is a great idea. It took me a while to connect it with the icon, but I cannot think of any better icon.
That's a nice function. On mobile it takes up a bit of space though, it displays all choices since I can't hover. I'll attach a screenshot.
I need to poop
The hair.
I see a mix between ALttP Link, Skyward Sword Link and Oracle of ... Link. And probably a bit of Smash Bros Link.
It was like a cloud coming into focus
Charmander, Valor and about 88.
Still I'm lagging behind everyone else. The game seems very much a one-off where you had to be there from the start. I am getting to the point where I can actually beat a gym once in a while, but it's very rare to see one with weaker pokémon than mine.
Too much now is investment, through grinding without a sensible reward in the end. Don't evolve this now, don't use the candies there, you'll catch s better one, wait until you're.. which level? It doesn't really end.
It's fun though. I'm actually considering getting the Plus thingy, if anything just go support the game. Also waiting to see if they'll ever release more pokémon or new games.
Going to parks is amusing, because everyone is playing the game and I feel like I'm talking part in that ridiculous but fun craze while it lasts.
Thanks! I now got an invitation for an interview and I'll see them on Wednesday
That's probably why I remember it so well. It was the only time I peeked on my presents, and I regretted it instantly xD Important lesson of life?
Chrome at work, Firefox at home, because my old computer can't handle Chrome, plus they don't make life easy for Linux users
Opening the Nintendo 64 on Christmas morning still stands out in my mind as a pretty big one.
Same for me, I think. Even though I had sneak peeked on the N64 before it was wrapped, I didn't know until Christmas Eve that they had also got Ocarina of Time with it!
Gargamel 8 - Towards Compression
Olof Gustavsson - Weight
Warder - Tyhjan Pirttin Valssi
Wim - Serenity Falls
Yasunori Mitsuda - Time's Scar
More or less. Can't pick a ranking because they have different uses. My top fave might be Towards Compression, which can also be the hardest one to like.
Google+ sounds really nice the way you describe it. I'm not too happy about whatever Facebook is doing to my mind.
If only civilization broke down, we could all sit around the fire every evening, telling stories and having deep conversations.
Except most of us would be dead, of course..
Maybe I'll give G+ another try.
You could say I worked as a script kiddie and private investigator. Basically this research foundation did a project on a solar panel installation in the city. They wanted to visualize the data, but weren't sure how, so they brought me in.
During the six weeks I was there, I realized that a lot of the data was missing, what they did receive was very odd, and the one person who could tell us what was going on, was on extended leave.
So I pieced together what I could and gave them a way to fetch and process the data. They didn't have a database, they had no way to install server-side software, and their data only arrived as attachments in Outlook. In the end, I wrote a Windows batch file to periodically call an exe file that extracted attachments from Outlook, and a script interface that transformed this to a pseudo-database stored in Excel files. Because that's how researchers roll - awkwardly.
Now I hope they'll use it enough to be delighted but not enough for it to hit a bug and break down.
The job I'm hoping for is as a researcher on similar projects. What they really entails, I hope to find out in an interview!
Not at all, but my headcrab is brilliant.
I've had a summer job this year. About 20 applications failed but one went through, and that's all it takes. I've spent the time doing my best to impress. They have a relevant permanent position out and I've applied for that. Now I've got my fingers crossed that my advantage is sufficient.
This is pretty much a fork in the road for me, my life can go in different directions after this Fall. My work situation and my future have been linked thus for years though, but this is the last call. I've long lost my ability to be stressed out though, so I'm mostly stoic about it. Que sera sera
