this is still one of the most fascinating news stories over the past few years. i remember when it first happening being glued to news sites and reading all the conspiracy theories, thinking about how scary and uncertain life can be. hopefully they find some answers so family members can get some closure.

I remember taking a course in university about Japan during WWII, and the professor was all about debunking common myths about Japan and its people during the war. One aspect that stuck with me, was reading testimony from Japanese soldiers and civilians to show that not all of them were loyal zealots willing to die fighting - which is a common myth used to justify why the US dropped the atom bomb. Similarly, I also remember reading documents showing that the US government was possibly trying to send a message to the USSR before meeting not to fuck with us by dropping the bomb first.

Has anybody bit the bullet and registered to see what it's like? The article is low on details about what exactly the social network is like - I'm assuming like facebook (because of it's comparison), but the description makes it sound more like reddit (with the upvoting).

Overall I agree with everyone's comment that there really won't be any competition with facebook - I get annoyed when media attaches "this is the new ____ killer" to everything. It would be nice to see an evolution in social networking in the way that this article describes, and its always good whenever we take a step towards solving privacy concerns even if the site is small.

Scientists actually believe that our brain naturally look for patterns that aren't there (even when we aren't on drugs). The arguments for this are kind of interesting (that it originated as a defense mechanism that has helped us survive in the wild), although I am a bit skeptical about that. It's not too far of a stretch to think that hallucinogenics would make it easier for our brains to pick out patterns.

It's kinda crazy that nobody really noticed that there weren't any women in the stands before. I've definitely noticed women in NHL games so it's not like EA couldn't have done it earlier.

This might be more of a LPT than common knowledge, but in the past year I've recently noticed that all my (men's) shirts have tags on the inside near the waist. If you are putting on a shirt and notice the inside tag is on your left then you know your shirt is going to be facing the right way. I hope I explained this clearly and properly. It's really nice to not have to examine my shirt first to make sure it's facing the right way before I put it on, just notice the tag is in the right place and boom.

I too brush my teeth in the shower in the morning and it saves a lot of time. Especially since I usually wake up with little time to spare before I have to be somewhere. I don't recommend flossing in the shower though.

Being from the U.S. and having lived in different places around the world (China, Hong Kong, UK), I have to say that the US mobile phone situation is the worst. Fees are extraordinarily expensive compared to everywhere else, options are incredibly limited, and contracts are not the norm in any other country I've lived. This is clearly one of those situations where government regulation has failed and will continue to as long as the relationship between the FCC and government is not fixed.

This is my first time posting in the lounge.

I've been active and posting snaps since I joined about two weeks ago. What i've noticed is that there is a lack of discussion with posts, which overall makes Snapzu less engaging than I would like. However, I do find it understandable since a) small user base and b) I myself am more of a lurker than a poster - but I've started to post replies to comments on my snaps, even though they are few and far between. I'm not really sure how to encourage more discussion related to snaps - there seems to be some interest in them since they're being voted up but not really commented on. Perhaps I'll start posting my own reaction first to get the conversation started?

As for the idea of an "ideal" Snapzu, I'd just like to say that I like that Snapzu isn't reddit. There's already a reddit for that. Besides the censorship issues that came up recently, reddit has changed over the last few years into more of a giant, anonymous facebook community. And it's great for killing time and feeling a part of a community of people that share your interests, but less for thinking and engagement. I like the potential for snapzu, and I'd like to see less of a drive for a censorship free, "reddit 2.0" and more of growing and shaping snapzu into it's own thing.

Now that you mention it, I might be guilty of not opening up snaps and engaging with them as well. I think it might be a case of learned habit. Migrating over from reddit, where headlines are sensationalized or glossed over in favor of comment threads. I'll be mindful of trying to engage with snapzu differently than reddit, if I want to practice what I just preached.

I think just for an experiment I'll start leaving first comments on the Snaps I post and see what happens. I'll let you know how it goes.

Some really cool images here. I found it particularly funny the mention of how the software automatically inserted arms into the dumbbells image because it didn't know that arms aren't attached to them. I don't know much about AI / machine Learning but the dumbbell situation makes me think about the difference between AI getting smarter as opposed to us being able to program more info/algorithms.

Sorry about that, I've edited in the full URL now. I'll be more careful in the future, but the initial reason I used the shortened URL is because the New York Times website in particular doesn't fill in Snap details automatically. Shortened URL still didn't work but I was experimenting.

I was also unaware of the dupe detector because it never seems to flag anything for my posts, but it's good to know it's there. I wasn't sure if the search feature here is just bad or otherwise.