Rafael Atijas, founder of Loog Guitars:

Loog Guitars are small, 3-string guitars designed to make it fun and easy for anyone to play music. They come with flashcards and an app that get you playing songs on day one.

I don’t know much about guitars, but these look cool and the prices seem very reasonable, and the app looks great. It’s a Kickstarter project, but it’s already fully-funded (several times over) and they expect to start shipping next month.

Jonathan Zdziarski, pushing back on the notion that “pro” users need more than 16 GB of RAM:

I fired up a bunch of apps and projects (more than I’d ever work on at one time) in every app I could possibly think of on my MacBook Pro. These included apps you’d find professional photographers, designers, software engineers, penetration testers, reverse engineers, and other types running — and I ran them all at once, and switched between them, making “professionally-type-stuff” happen as I go.

Here’s a list of everything I ran at once:

• VMware Fusion: Two running virtual machines (Windows 10, macOS Sierra)
• Adobe Photoshop CC: Four 1+gb 36 MP professional, multi-layer photos
• Adobe InDesign CC: A 22 page photography-intensive project
• Xcode: Four production Objective-C projects, all cleaned and rebuilt
• Microsoft PowerPoint: A slide deck presentation
• Microsoft Word: A 20* page document with graphics
• MachOView: Analyzing a daemon binary
• Mozilla FireFox: Viewing a website
• Safari: viewing a different website
• Preview: Three PDF books
• Hopper Disassembler: Performing an analysis on a binary
• WireShark: Performing a live network capture as I do all of this
• IDA Pro 64-bit: Analyzing a 64-bit intel binary
• Apple Mail: Viewing four mailboxes
• Tweetbot: Reading all the flames and trolls in my mentions
• iBooks: Currently viewing an ebook I paid for
• Skype: Logged in and idling
• Terminal: A few sessions idling
• iTunes
• Little Flocker
• Little Snitch
• OverSight
• Finder
• Messages
• Veracrypt
• Activity Monitor
• Path Finder
• Console
• Probably a lot I’ve missed

The result? I ran out of things to do before I ever ran out of RAM. I only ever made it to 14.5GB before the system decided to start paging out, so I didn’t even have the change to burn up all that delicious RAM.

I think it’s a legitimate complaint that you can’t get a new MacBook Pro with 32 GB of RAM, but agree with Zdziarski that the practical effects of having “only” 16 GB are overblown for most typical use cases, even with “pro” software.

jones_supa writes: Saxo Bank, an investment bank based in Denmark, has released a list of its outrageous predictions for 2016. Among these predictions, economist Christopher Dembik claims that Europe will consider the introduction of a universal basic income to ensure that all citizens can meet their basic needs in the face of rising inequality and unemployment. This will come on the back of increased interest in basic income from Spain, Finland, Switzerland, and France.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

What, exactly, do people mean to signal when they preface a comment with "I know this isn't politically correct to say, but . . ."?

It is boasting? "Please acknowledge that I am brave, a rebel, a nonconformist, by being willing to say the following in defiance of social convention." Is it special pleading? "I recognize that the following may be considered rude, but please pretend that it is not because I have acknowledged it." Is it lampshading? "You can treat this as not-rude because I have pre-announced that it could be seen as rude." Is it strawmaning? "Nobody would actually be offended by what I'm about to say, but I'm going to pretend that some people will in order to paint them as ridiculous." Is it self-serious cross-climbing? "Contemplate, for a moment, how I will suffer for being willing to share great truths with you."

I ask because it seems so common, in public or private. Take the case of a 47-year-old Englishman who used LinkedIn to praise the looks of a 27-year-old Englishwoman, a complete stranger to him. “I appreciate that this is probably horrendously politically incorrect but that is a stunning picture," he said. The recipient shared the message and her rebuking response, leading to a flood of both criticism and support.

There are plenty of interesting issues embedded here. Is there some sort of social or moral convention that requires us to keep unsolicited messages private? (I lean towards no, in most cases.) If, for the sake of argument, an unsolicited message is rude, is it proportional or compassionate to share it to make a point about such messages? (I submit it depends upon the message, and the sender, and the recipient.) Are some women reasonably irritated by unsolicited messages about their appearance in professional settings and through professional channels? (I'll answer that obliquely with an observation that when I was a prosecutor, my female colleagues told me that after a trial, when they interviewed jurors, the jurors wouldn't necessarily comment on their trial performance, but at least one would almost inevitably comment on what they wore.)

But let's carve out just one issue: what's the guy signalling with "I appreciate that this is probably horrendously politically incorrect"? I don't see anything to admire about it. It smacks of "I sense on some rudimentary level that this will likely annoy you but I'm going to say it anyway, so deal with it." Or perhaps it means "modern norms of discourse annoy me and I shan't abide by them and I find it necessary to announce my defiance." Saying it strikes me as strengthening the argument that the communication is rude, or uncouth, or aggressive.

Norms about courtesy and rudeness change. Do you disagree with the changes? Are you trying to resist and push back against the changes? Fine. Speak, and let the chips fall where they may. But ask yourself: what are you trying to accomplish by such a preface in any particular communication?

New submitter Lopsemily writes to note that passengers on Uzbekistan Airways may face a new pre-flight check: In a recent statement, the country's flag carrier announced it will weigh passengers and their carry-on luggage prior to flights to determine how much weight they'll be adding to the plane. 'According to the rules of International Air Transport Association, airlines are obliged to carry out the regular procedures of preflight control passengers weighing with hand baggage to observe requirements for ensuring flight safety,' says the airline's statement.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Economist:

“What are you on? The ‘fuck Windows’ strategy?” Back in the late 1990s, when Bill Gates was still Microsoft’s boss, any employee who had the temerity to suggest something that could possibly weaken the firm’s flagship operating system was sure to earn his wrath. Even after Steve Ballmer took over from Mr Gates in 2000, that remained the incontestable law at the company’s headquarters in Redmond, in Washington state. Everything Microsoft did had to strengthen Windows, to make it ever more crushingly dominant. Many of the company’s best innovations were killed because of this “strategy tax”, as it was known internally.

Today the rules are different in Redmond. The new boss who took over last year, Satya Nadella (pictured, centre, with Mr Gates to the left and Mr Ballmer on the right), recoils when he hears the term “strategy tax” and says he now tells his staff simply to “build stuff that people like”.

Sounds like just what Microsoft needs. Then this:

Yet Mr Nadella’s biggest achievement so far is that he has given Microsoft a coherent purpose in life, as it enters its fifth decade. He sums it up in two mottos. One is “mobile first, cloud first”: since these are where the growth is going to come from, all new products need to be developed for them.

At first I wanted to quip that they can’t both be first. But maybe they can. They’re not in conflict, and they’re potentially complementary. complimentary. The idea is, everything Microsoft does should be of primary relevance to mobile (devices being used) and the cloud (for storage and incoming data). That strikes me as a good focus for Microsoft.