"Matthias Felleisen, apparently as a byproduct while developing his dissertation in which he defined relatively well-behaved lambda-like calculi for describing imperative language features (continuations and mutable variables), proposed a formal definition of a "more expressive than" relation between programming languages, building in part on Landin's notion of syntactic sugar. Notable as a rare objective measure in a very subjective area."

I do not think Scala is perfect, but I am always very happy to use the REPL that comes with it when I want to experiment with Java stuff. (I used to use things like BeanShell.) Thanks, Scala!

As a sometimes graphic designer / user interface / user experience / information architect type wanna-be, I have say that I think the colors chosen for the Legoland calendar are kinda outright dumb.

Deals where you sign away the ability to sue and only get to use arbitration do not have to be inherently bad. But I guess 99.five9s% of the time they are, because of how they are set up. As screwed up as the legal system is in the USA, as an end-user I would rather take my chances with it than with the enforced arbitration route.

Thus I would like somebody with visibility to start a service that tells us which companies and products and organizations do not include such evil language in their Terms of Service or whatever. So we can try to see alternatives, and factor that into our decisions.

Something cool about Android (5+, at least, I guess) from a nerd perspective: If you use the official animation system, then the Battery Saver can disable those animations system-wide to save on juice. Super keen!

Well, at least the first instalment of The Mysterious Benedict Society was mind bogglingly good.

I think CHDK is, in a nerdy, hard-to-use way, completely awesome!

(I think Wikia is, in a blatant, obvious way, completely slow annoying ad-bloated browser destroying hell!)