I wouldn't say 'just like'. There were some differences. The slime mold has to worry about its connections getting severed, so there were some extra edges which are redundant.

This is because the Tokyo Rail System engineers didn't have the same concerns, that tunnels would suddenly get cut off and blocked.

Rather than trying to identify nasty comments, how about weighting votes in such a way that it's proportional to how often a person has voted over time. I would think that a vote from someone who upvotes something occasionally is worth more than someone who has a tendency to upvote more often. Of course, this won't be perfect in that you will have people trying to game the system with idle accounts, but I think with some work it could be doable.

'Nasty' comments can be difficult for humans to spot, let alone machines. A lot of important information is lost when we go to a strictly text only medium. If we're going with the group to decide what's good and what isn't, then we run the risk of group think as well. So I am a little cautious about endorsing any automatic filtering of content in this way.

People who are new also, have the ability to upvote but not downvote. I think this might be causing a disproportate amount of upvoting, which may also pertain to 'nasty' comments. Perhaps maybe disabling upvoting for new people for a certain period and/or after a receiving a certain karma score might alievate this a little?

Google have taken Randall's feedback into consideration and have added the feature to hide one's gender on Google+ profiles.

Women using the service are reporting that their low-level wariness and sense of vulnerability has lessened somewhat as a result.

"Hiding female identity from male view on the internet is very important and is likely to lead to real social change," a spokesperson from Google added.

I went through 14 years of Catholic schools before going to university.

When I started out, I realised that everyone else was new like me so I took initiative and introduced people to each other, etc. At the time I was very excited about going there because I would meet new people, people like me.

People kinda picked up on that vibe when I started I guess. To be honest, I normally wasn't like that. But anyway, I realised quickly that if you are the kind of person who is seen as friendly, approachable, etc. then people will want to hang out with you, and invite you to things, etc.

An important thing to realise as well is, you don't really have a lot of common interests to be friends with people. I've met great people over the years who were totally different to me. Having things in common helps but, relationships in general to me are more about understanding, not checking off a list of things we both like.

Being on your laptop really isn't an excuse not to socialise. Most of my time in my CS classes was spent in the lab, with a laptop sure, but I mean people need to eat and of course have their all important coffee breaks... or even just to get up and walk around for a bit. The thing is, if you're seen to just spend all your time alone / on your laptop then people will just assume things like you're busy / don't want to be disturbed etc.

As for members of the opposite sex, well, I can say that things got better for me as I got older. It might seem like a really big deal now but when you look back years later, you might not feel that way.

For approaching women, dating, etc, know that chances are if you're new to the game, you will screw up. That's nothing to be worried about or take personally though.

I see you're doing CS so I mean, chances are when you started programming you will have made mistakes along the way, even basic syntax errors. Heck, you can still write software for years and still make mistakes. So I mean, it's like anything really just practice and you'll get better.

Focus on creating a coed group of friends, it makes it far easier to get feedback from both sexes, as well as expand it from both sides. If you're capable of being a friend with a girl, it makes it much easier to sustain a more complicated relationship. Then again I had an odd group of friends where exs tended to stay friends. (I had 4 exs as guests at my wedding.)