Posts by pdh

> Society is racing to the bottom. We're being drowned in content that is based on averages and statistics

Problem is that many people are quite happy with that sort of content. They're looking for entertainment, not for art.

Re: Presumably they were already 'getting' divorced

Yes, the BBC story says, "Mrs Williams applied for divorce in January 2023"

Re: We don't hear you, the money is talking too loud

15 year old ThinkPad W500 here, with the hard disk swapped out for an SSD. It's my every-day machine and it does everything that I need it to do. It even survived an accidental coffee spill a couple of years ago. (Almost an entire cup, poured directly on the keyboard. I gave it two weeks to dry out, then it booted as though nothing had happened.)

I'm certain there are others here with even older machines.

Re: Too late?

Flares travel at the speed of light, don't they? That 500 km/sec number sounds more like CME speed.

Re: masters mind-mouse maneuvers

Mice? Mice are for wimps. José Manuel Rodríguez Delgado stopped a charging bull via a remotely controlled brain implant -- sixty years ago.

Re: 'This represented around 0.25 percent of all users'

> If having the data inadvertently exposed is that important or distressing, don't expose it.

I wish I could give more than one thumbs-up for that...

Given the prevalence of surveillance cameras in our society today, using a face scan for authentication is like writing your password on your forehead.

Re: Mutually Assured Destruction of Digital Systems (MADDS)?

Perhaps the Chinese want us to detect some of these intrusions. MAD can work as a deterrent only if your adversary knows for sure that you have potent weapons.

Re: Adapt or die

Those "tight planning regulations" have an effect too. Standards are higher than they used to be, and that costs money. I couldn't legally rebuild the house I live in now -- it's a fine house but was built 50 years ago, and it would violate numerous aspects of the building code if re-built as-is. Same with other things -- it would not be possible to manufacture the truck that I owned 20 years ago, because it wouldn't meet current safety standards. A 20-year-old phone would be laughably inadequate now. And so on -- we're paying more for many things, but we're getting more too.

Computers though... wow. Orders of magnitude performance increases, at lower prices. (Although I am typing this on a 15-year-old Lenovo W500.)

Re: How can a company be that bad...

That's probably true; the system is working as intended. Boeing screwed up, so the company is now under increased scrutiny from customers, regulators, the media, and shareholders. The extra scrutiny will continue until the Boeing re-earns the trust that has been lost. And deservedly so, as you said.

>>"can we really afford to do all these things that go on for 10 – 20 years? [...]"

> Can we afford not to?

Yes, we can afford not to. I admire the Voyager project, but let's be honest: the economic return on investment is likely to be negative. It's still worth doing in my opinion, but asking about ROI for this kind of thing is like asking about ROI for an arts project. ROI is not why we do these things.

Re: The way forward?

How bout AI running on quantum computers in the cloud, powered by renewable energy, and storing their results on a blockchain?

Re: An "easy" fix

Depends on where you live. I'm in the northeastern U.S. Where I live, the sun has been (partially) visible on only two days in the last two weeks. And at the moment, my roof is covered in snow. Solar would be completely pointless here between from November through February, and it isn't that great in late fall or early spring either.

Re: Should have tested beer

There are fining agents (substances that a brewer can add to beer in order to help clarify it) that are basically powdered plastic. The idea is that the plastic drops out (flocculates) and doesn't make it into the finished product, but it attracts some other kinds of particles on the way down, so they are removed as well.

Re: Cryptocurrency????

The ultimate cold wallet...

Makes a difference to the Marketing folks...

Re: Don't get this confused with free speech.

The Bill of Rights (first ten amendments to the Constitution) are exclusively concerned with limiting the government's power. Nothing in the Bill of Rights restricts citizens (including employers); it's simply a list of limitations on what the government can do. One of those limitations is that the government cannot restrict your freedom of speech. The First Amendment simply does not apply to individuals -- it says so right there on the box -- "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

Re: We've already got a working fusion system

Ssssshhhhhh... if people realized that we're close enough to a runaway nuclear fusion reactor which is so intense that it can cause skin burns, cancer, and blindness, there would be panic in the streets...

Re: "How do I maintain authority over my security force after the event?"

Shock collars are so last-century... any paranoid billionaire worth his salt would start a company that was focused on developing brain implants...

Re: Rather the other way round

"There is a significant probability that they're less safe"

To be fair, there are people who take worse care of their data than the average cloud provider does. For those people, cloud storage may be beneficial -- not because it's perfectly safe (it isn't) but because it's better than what they're willing and able to do on their own.

Indeed. I remember reading a few years ago that GMAC (General Motors Acceptance Corp, now re-branded as Ally) was responsible for essentially all of GM's profits over a multi-year timeframe. They broke even on the cars and trucks, and made their money from the loans. From a financial perspective, the only reason they built cars and trucks at all was to generate loans.

> I'm suprised amazon has to abide by airspace rules... no other rules seem to apply to them.

No, that's Twitter...

Next milestone: someone talking about something they did in the past, saying that they posted about it on Twitter (as X used to be called).

Re: Ah, the land of the best Justice money can buy

So what's next? OSHA decides to regulate cybersecurity for electric utilities, the Department of Transportation decides to regulate drug companies, and the Post Office regulates natural gas suppliers?

I completely agree that critical infrastructure needs to be protected and should be subject to cybersecurity regulations. But those regulations should be drawn up by an agency that actually has expertise in that area, under the authority of proper Congressional legislation. The issue here isn't "backward states reject obviously necessary regulations," but "Congress fails to enact necessary legislation."

So a question from the other side of the pond... I'm mildly surprised that individual nations are involved. I would have expected EU-wide regulations for things like this, rather than separate investigations and edicts from separate countries. Is this not an area that the EU regulates?

Re: The sytemd-free ecology

I just google'd "Best Linux distribution for beginners." The top of the response page is a table of 9 distros, with a tag at the bottom saying "15 more." Many non-enthusiasts will find that to be daunting.

Re: By announcing it they have made it irrelevant

Unless of course they already have a suitable technique for capturing these kinds of things, and are trying to bait rivals into sending more balloons sooner rather than later... i.e. this announcement could be a ploy to convince rivals that no such capability currently exists.

Re: Demanding money from a US school?

Schools may not have unlimited funds, but they generally have insurance. A couple of years ago there was a ransomware attack against a school district near where I live (in the US). The district's insurance company paid over $50,000 "to settle the matter." Local news said the school district had to pay a deductible (something like $20,000) and the insurance company paid the rest.

No word in local media as to how much the district's insurance premium increased the following year...

Re: Not persistent, so not a problem

Additional battery capacity is a software switch too, isn't it? So if you don't pay for that switch, then you have a bunch of battery cells sitting there unused -- adding weight to the vehicle and wasting the (somewhat scarce) resources that were used to manufacture the unused batteries.

Re: ex-twitter

There's a short story by Edgar Allan Poe called "X-ing a Paragrab." The crucial "paragrab" is this:

Sx hx, Jxhn! hxw nxw? Txld yxu sx, yxu knxw. Dxn’t crxw, anxther time, befxre yxu’re xut xf the wxxds! Dxes yxur mxther knxw yxu’re xut? Xh, nx, nx! sx gx hxme at xnce, nxw, Jxhn, tx yxur xdixus xld wxxds xf Cxncxrd! Gx hxme tx yxur wxxds, xld xwl, — gx! Yxu wxnt? Xh, pxh, pxh, Jxhn, dxn’t dx sx! Yxu’ve gxt tx gx, yxu knxw! sx gx at xnce, and dxn’t gx slxw; fxr nxbxdy xwns yxu here, yxu knxw. Xh, Jxhn, Jxhn, if yxu dxn’t gx yxu’re nx hxmx — nx! Yxu’re xnly a fxwl, an xwl; a cxw, a sxw; a dxll, a pxll; a pxxr xld gxxd-fxr-nxthing-tx-nxbxdy lxg, dxg, hxg, xr frxg, cxme xut xf a Cxncxrd bxg. Cxxl, nxw — cxxl! Dx be cxxl, yxu fxxl! Nxne xf yxur crxwing, xld cxck! Dxn’t frxwn sx — dxn’t! Dxn’t hxllx, nxr hxwl, nxr grxwl, nxr bxw-wxw-wxw! Gxxd Lxrd, Jxhn, hxw yxu dx lxxk! Txld yxu sx, yxu knxw, but stxp rxlling yxur gxxse xf an xld pxll abxut sx, and gx and drxwn yxur sxrrxws in a bxwl!

Dude was ahead of this time.

Might actually make some sense as an investment, as long as the Greater Fool machinery continues to operate...

Re: A Twitter lawsuit database

There's a wikipedia page for "Google litigation" at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_litigation but oddly, I don't see anything similar for Twitter.