Slashdot Mirror

My $100 recorder picks up bird songs well beyond 20kHz. Doesn't seem to be aliasing either, as the pitch changes move harmonically and in the same direction as the stuff lower down that we can hear.

Neil Young is available on 8-track and cassette tapes, if you recall what those are. A cassette of "Harvest" can be bought through Amazon for as little as $1.50, or if you are using a high fidelity system composed of oxygen free copper speaker cables, 00 gauge AC power cables (to allow the amps to reproduce the bass better), and typically use a green sharpie on the edges of your CDs, you can get a copy here for only $517.45, shipping included.

If he's willing to allow cassette tapes, he has no excuse for claiming that streaming is not good enough for his music.

Just use a couple of small business routers with built in VPN. They do all of the different subnets and wireless and all of that stuff. They're a few hundred bucks each. http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/p...

Ubiquiti has a small router with enterprise level features for less than $100. A site to site VPN and VLAN support are just a few of it's features and all you need to solve this problem.

I'm still running a Juniper SRX-210 at home, but I've been happy with the UniFi APs and EdgeSwitches I have from Ubiquiti so this little router is definitely on the short list when the time comes.

You don't all use these: http://www.amazon.com/Cell-Pho... ????

A good machine shop and a knowledge of F=ma is all that is really needed. The rest is detail, easily accessible on Wikipedia.

Or, you can buy textbooks on Amazon. ;-)

Uhhhh you DO know there are 4K monitors with displayport, yes? If you are plugging in a PC I'd suggest sticking with monitors, I've set up plenty of HTPCs for customers and frankly I've yet to see a TV that a monitor at the same res didn't look and/or perform better.

If you're so loaded that you're buying a 50 inch 4k TV and a $500+ graphics card, I'm sure you can shell out $20 for an adapter. http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00E9...

PS: To control one of these, you want a "flying mouse remote". It's a keyboard that "mouses" by waving it in the air.

I use the Logitech K400 and highly recommend it. It's much cheaper than a flying mouse, works comfortably on your lap without tiring your arm, and has excellent battery life.

I already have security esstentials and ClamAV and one other one that I don't quite remember right now (bitdefender?) installed. I figured it couldn't hurt to add another one.

Poe's Law strikes again...

Installing one anti-virus suite is a questionable decision. Two is moronic. More than that and you probably should stick to a LeapFrog.

I just bought a 1 TB for $77 from Amazon, so I don't think they need a huge drop. http://www.amazon.com/Seagate-... (though the price has risen $2 since I bought it last month).

I don't why anyone who wants to tinker with things complains about difficulty of repairs when it comes to fasteners. As you mentioned things like Torx and Pentalobe should be considered standard. It's not like we are talking about some strange fastener here like the old Whitworth ones where the modern replacement seems to be this or this. Besides just consider it an excuse to acquire more tools which is always a good thing.

This seems to be the biggest stumbling-block... Last standing desks I saw in a store selling office furniture were over $1000. I can't justify that at home, and I doubt that my employer would justify that at work.

I picked up this one on Woot for $300:

http://www.amazon.com/Cool-Liv...

It works reasonably well. It's got a hand crank and cranking it up and down is so tedious that I generally just leave it in the standing position, which is probably a good thing since that encourages me to stand more (though could be a bad thing if I left it in the down position). It's more stable than the $1000 electric desk I have at work, typing doesn't make the monitor move around at all like it does at work.

That just leaves hydraulic jaws or pneumatic/combustion rams, but I can't see any of this being used due to the danger to the pilot.

http://www.amazon.com/35TH-Ann...

There are some potential problems with other types. I have set up others here in the office that are clamp-on or surface mounted, and they can have trouble with multiple monitors, for example. One worker had to give it up because the lift that was stong enough to support her three monitors was too strong for her to pull back down.(oops!)

There are others in the office are using them with a little "micro-elliptical" device like this, and I would love to try a treadmill. Unfortunately I would have to put the whole desk up on blocks to get the extra height, and that also makes it more of a "standing-only" situation.

I wanted to try a standing desk for as little cash as possible. I used some wire rack shelving and tie wraps. Similar to this - http://www.amazon.com/Seville-... Removed one shelf. Positioned the middle shelf at the appropriate height. Used the tie wraps and attached to the middle shelf to create an 'L' shaped work environment. Used shelf liners and nylon cutting boards for work surfaces. Left the wire rack for under my laptop for ventilation. Positioned my printer in the bottom rack for balancing weight. I love using this inexpensive and versatile setup.

It's not just tech products. I have a habit of picking consumer products that get pulled off the market, for some reason. Examples include:

Hefty Serve and Save Plates: http://www.amazon.com/Hefty-Ev...
Novel chemical and heat-resistant material (some kind of polypropylene composite, vastly superior to Styrofoam or coated paperboard) and large enough to boil a full meal's worth of soup or ramen in the microwave, yet cheap enough to dispose of. You can snap one plate upside down on top of another to form a lid for leftovers, too. These were perfect for eating bachelor chow out of, when they got closed out I bought a shelf-full of the things. The product kind of felt like it was an engineer's dream of what disposable plastic-ware should be like (and it functioned really great), but guess it didn't sell well to house-wives.

Zip-loc bags with pleated bottoms and a stiffer plastic material, allowing them to stand upright by themselves. I used to make bulk batches of sauces and stuff to freeze, these were great for that purpose. They still make a "marinade" bag that's kind of similar but more expensive and not as useful to me, but the model I preferred is now gone. Couldn't find a link to the product.

Palmolive "Sponge-Fresh" dish detergent, also disappeared soon after I started using it as my favorite dish soap. It had a funny (but not unpleasant) fruity-solvent scent to it, but worked really well at suppressing microbial growth in the sponge. Discontinued within a few months, I stocked up of course:
http://www.amazon.com/Palmoliv...

Vaseline Intensive Care waterproof lotion, greatest thing ever for the laboratory or hospital (due to constant hand-washing). Some psoriasis and eczema patients swear it helps them more than anything else out there. Still a few sellers offering bottles from hoarded stockpiles at a sharp mark-up out there, I bought a case from one of those guys:
http://hard2findbeauty.blogspo...

It's not just tech products. I have a habit of picking consumer products that get pulled off the market, for some reason. Examples include:

Hefty Serve and Save Plates: http://www.amazon.com/Hefty-Ev...
Novel chemical and heat-resistant material (some kind of polypropylene composite, vastly superior to Styrofoam or coated paperboard) and large enough to boil a full meal's worth of soup or ramen in the microwave, yet cheap enough to dispose of. You can snap one plate upside down on top of another to form a lid for leftovers, too. These were perfect for eating bachelor chow out of, when they got closed out I bought a shelf-full of the things. The product kind of felt like it was an engineer's dream of what disposable plastic-ware should be like (and it functioned really great), but guess it didn't sell well to house-wives.

Zip-loc bags with pleated bottoms and a stiffer plastic material, allowing them to stand upright by themselves. I used to make bulk batches of sauces and stuff to freeze, these were great for that purpose. They still make a "marinade" bag that's kind of similar but more expensive and not as useful to me, but the model I preferred is now gone. Couldn't find a link to the product.

Palmolive "Sponge-Fresh" dish detergent, also disappeared soon after I started using it as my favorite dish soap. It had a funny (but not unpleasant) fruity-solvent scent to it, but worked really well at suppressing microbial growth in the sponge. Discontinued within a few months, I stocked up of course:
http://www.amazon.com/Palmoliv...

Vaseline Intensive Care waterproof lotion, greatest thing ever for the laboratory or hospital (due to constant hand-washing). Some psoriasis and eczema patients swear it helps them more than anything else out there. Still a few sellers offering bottles from hoarded stockpiles at a sharp mark-up out there, I bought a case from one of those guys:
http://hard2findbeauty.blogspo...

... theCase of the Killer Robot in college? Where they filed charges against the programmer?

Just to name a few:

1. The water pan is there to keep the brisket moist, which not only helps keep the meat from drying out, which also aids in smoke penetration (which is where the flavor comes from). It's not there to catch drippings. In the case of an egg smoker, it's also there to reduce the impact of different burns.
2. Offset smokers seem to be preferred by most "pitmasters"; direct heat really means you're grilling, not smoking, and that means you're mostly cooking over coals, rather than producing consistent smoke with an open-flame fire for the duration of the burn, and that means you're not getting enough flavor.
3. The "fuel" - given rather short shrift here - is one of the more important parts of bbq, and very hard to automate. Green wood, seasoned, large chunks or small, each has an impact on the immediate heat, the curve that the heat follows as it burns, and of course, the flavor via the smoke.
4. 220 lbs of brisket is decent, but good brisket places do 2000 lbs a day. If you're looking for something of quality instead of, well, acceptable, you're going to need to spend more time experimenting to figure out how to make a good brisket.
5. In order to have a chance to regulate the temperature well - and not keep cycling through blasts of heat and cooling - they'll need multiple temp probes, and an awareness of the outside temp and humidity as well, since ceramic insulation or no, the external environment will play a huge factor.
6. If the flat - the lean part of the brisket - is falling apart when you pick it up, the brisket has been overcooked. It means the point is going to have the consistency of pudding - or it's been destroyed entirely and is completely dry. It's harder to avoid this in a direct-heat smoker rather than an offset.

It should probably look like this. I remember seeing that shot in Franklin's book, Franklin Barbecue: A Meat Smoking Manifesto ... which yes, sounds pretentious, but since he's lauded as the best BBQer in texas several times over, and that book is #1 in BBQ & Grilling books on Amazon, maybe he's allowed to be a bit pretentious. Go get that book if you're at all interested. Apparently fact checked by Harold McGee.

There's more things I could pick apart too. I know, I'm sounding like a BBQ snob, but the fact is that I'm not very good at cooking it, and I haven't had a lot of experience. However, like any geek, I did my research. I read around. I checked things up on the internet. I talked to cooks. I volunteered at some cookoffs. I think I have just barely enough experience to recognize when someone else is doing it poorly. Anyone who's done this at all isn't going to be very worried about this invention, since, well, the parts that you can automate are the parts that are least likely to affect whether your brisket is going to taste good. You may as well have just stuck it in an oven with a few blocks of aromatic wood in a water pan underneath at 275 for an hour and a half per lb.

Funny. BTW fascism is a right wing thing.

There is nothing funny about this lie. See Goldberg.

Most of what I know about CIA mind control, I read in Journey into Madness by Gordon Thomas.

I don't have the book right at hand, but as I recall, Thomas made it quite clear that Dr. Cameron was valuable to the CIA precisely because he was Canadian -- an American doctor would be more closely scrutinized, more vulnerable to exposure.

Also as I recall, Dr. Cameron was quite vigorous about his business. He was not a tool to be deceived or coerced by American spooks. He did what he did of his own active volition.

His two lab assistants -- they were the super-creeps, the Igor assistants to Herr Doktor. The ones who spent a lot of time with patients, carrying out the doctor's orders, and whatever: drugging patients into comas, shocking patients into comas, drugging patients out of comas, making patients wear headphones repeating short loops of their own voices, over and over for hours ("psychic driving").

Of course, for "patients" read "torture victims".

Christ, what a world we live in.

In Live Free of Die, humanity buys a replication device and some older weapon plans from some advanced aliens for war against other, less-advanced aliens.

No they don't, not in Live Free or Die. Are you thinking of some other book?

In Live Free of Die, humanity buys a replication device and some older weapon plans from some advanced aliens for war against other, less-advanced aliens.

They divide its time between producing cool stuff and cloning itself. Very RTS-like strategizing.

Of course with enough replications, you can have an army of replicators spitting out ships like the Starforge, no Force assist needed.

Right out of an ethics book I read when I started programming.

http://www.amazon.com/Case-Kil...

People on this site keep saying that, but I have yet to see any proof.

This is a forum site; have you gone looking for 'proof'?

There is no reason why over the course of 20--30 years we couldn't invest in more energy storage

I'm going to have to rephrase my statements a bit. Tense problems, mostly. We couldn't, and currently can't, produce enough green energy to replace coal&oil economically, IE without making major sacrifices in quality of life elsewhere.

Somehow I dropped the battery part of my post as an additional option. Where the cheaper and more efficient the storage technology is, the more likely you are to store power rather than just build out your renewable energy infrastructure and just 'throw away' power during 'good' power production days.

Still, we appear to be on the cusp of radical changes. 30 years ago solar technology produced less power even at 100 times the cost. Lithium-Ion technology was a gleam in somebody's eye, much less possibly poised to take the market as the cheapest battery technology.
Lead Acid: $.194/wh.
LiIon: $.236/wh.

If ONE of the recent battery technologies that I've read about succeeds, or Musk's factory to cut the cost of his batteries in half, that means that LiIon will actually be cheaper than Lead-Acid. This would be huge.

Meanwhile they keep working to cut the cost of solar panels even as they increase their efficiency.

People on this site keep saying that, but I have yet to see any proof.

This is a forum site; have you gone looking for 'proof'?

There is no reason why over the course of 20--30 years we couldn't invest in more energy storage

I'm going to have to rephrase my statements a bit. Tense problems, mostly. We couldn't, and currently can't, produce enough green energy to replace coal&oil economically, IE without making major sacrifices in quality of life elsewhere.

Somehow I dropped the battery part of my post as an additional option. Where the cheaper and more efficient the storage technology is, the more likely you are to store power rather than just build out your renewable energy infrastructure and just 'throw away' power during 'good' power production days.

Still, we appear to be on the cusp of radical changes. 30 years ago solar technology produced less power even at 100 times the cost. Lithium-Ion technology was a gleam in somebody's eye, much less possibly poised to take the market as the cheapest battery technology.
Lead Acid: $.194/wh.
LiIon: $.236/wh.

If ONE of the recent battery technologies that I've read about succeeds, or Musk's factory to cut the cost of his batteries in half, that means that LiIon will actually be cheaper than Lead-Acid. This would be huge.

Meanwhile they keep working to cut the cost of solar panels even as they increase their efficiency.

You can extend the useful life of the Brother cartridges by resetting its "flag gear" as shown here.. Resetting flag gears is an essential skill for anyone who buys a Brother laser printer with the hope that the per-page printing cost will be low. Like many printer makers, the thing starts refusing to print when the cartridge has a long way to go. Luckily, the folks at Brother have engineered a way around that problem for us.

Unfortunately, the teaser cartridges that come with the printer are missing some small parts that are required for reset. Those can be bought as part of a toner refill kit, though I ended up buying new cartridges before I knew that.

I've had good luck with the toner refill product you linked. Here's a corresponding link to the caps. I always end up damaging those in the process of removing them, so I always replace them with new ones.

Here's the one I bought for my color MFP last time I bought, the frequently bought together caps are what I bought after having a mess with the black cart after refilling it.

Yesterday on the John Batchelor Show, the proposal by was for the Spaceguard to be formed as the Coast Guard for space, and for space to be governed by the space-equivalent of Maritime Law, which would fly in the face of current space treaties. The Spaceguard would also become sentinels and eyes out into space, having the funds and decision-making authority and hierarchy, as well as arms, like the USGS defending against asteroids and you-name-it. Until the mission into space becomes primarily for colonization rather than exploration, like the government states in public at least, then it will be regarded as unimportant. Also the fact that our governments are so risk-adverse as to allow for reasonable casualties and the necessary risk to be allowed, by the many who would gladly do so and who did so in the past commonly, is holding expansion into space back.

I think it was the author of this book: http://www.amazon.com/Safe-Not...

I didn't even know the US Geological Survey had weapons!

Yesterday on the John Batchelor Show, the proposal by was for the Spaceguard to be formed as the Coast Guard for space, and for space to be governed by the space-equivalent of Maritime Law, which would fly in the face of current space treaties. The Spaceguard would also become sentinels and eyes out into space, having the funds and decision-making authority and hierarchy, as well as arms, like the USGS defending against asteroids and you-name-it. Until the mission into space becomes primarily for colonization rather than exploration, like the government states in public at least, then it will be regarded as unimportant. Also the fact that our governments are so risk-adverse as to allow for reasonable casualties and the necessary risk to be allowed, by the many who would gladly do so and who did so in the past commonly, is holding expansion into space back.

I think it was the author of this book: http://www.amazon.com/Safe-Not...

Ellis Cashmore, is that you?

http://www.amazon.com/Black-Cu...

"Your Amazon Echo is Bluetooth-enabled so you can stream popular audio services like Spotify and iTunes from a mobile device..." http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/...

As usual, dave420 make claims without even an attempt at citations... Judging by the stalking following him with reminders of other past arguments dave420 lost in disgrace, that's just how the man is.

That the flag of USSR remains available in a variety of sizes and designs — including the face of Stalin — does not bother him one iota... Nor is the dreadful "Hammer & Sickle" printed on every bottle of a various brands of vodka a problem. Che Guevara T-shirts? He has them in a different colours (and sizes). No, it is the battle flag of a long-vanquished foe, that he must continue kicking even if takes making shit up to justify it. A real gentleman.

As usual, dave420 make claims without even an attempt at citations... Judging by the stalking following him with reminders of other past arguments dave420 lost in disgrace, that's just how the man is.

That the flag of USSR remains available in a variety of sizes and designs — including the face of Stalin — does not bother him one iota... Nor is the dreadful "Hammer & Sickle" printed on every bottle of a various brands of vodka a problem. Che Guevara T-shirts? He has them in a different colours (and sizes). No, it is the battle flag of a long-vanquished foe, that he must continue kicking even if takes making shit up to justify it. A real gentleman.

You aren't particularly empirical are you ?

http://www.amazon.com/Einsatz-...

https://www.google.com/search?...

Yes they do. http://www.amazon.com/White-Banner-Axis-Flag-1/dp/B00IQVDUBG/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1435292742&sr=8-4

But yet you can still purchase this http://www.amazon.com/White-Banner-Axis-Flag-1/dp/B00IQVDUBG/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1435292742&sr=8-4

How very white of you...

How very presumptuous of of you.

If Amazon is going to stop selling the Confederate battle flag, then why are they still selling the Japanese battle flag? How many millions of Chinese citizens died under this flag?

How may native Americans died under the 26 star American flag? There were at least 12 million native Americans killed in the US under various iterations of the American flag. Why should that still be sold by Amazon? Oh yeah, because there's less than a quarter million of them left to complain.

Someone can be offended by just about anything on the planet. This is just getting silly.

How very white of you...

How very presumptuous of of you.

If Amazon is going to stop selling the Confederate battle flag, then why are they still selling the Japanese battle flag? How many millions of Chinese citizens died under this flag?

How may native Americans died under the 26 star American flag? There were at least 12 million native Americans killed in the US under various iterations of the American flag. Why should that still be sold by Amazon? Oh yeah, because there's less than a quarter million of them left to complain.

Someone can be offended by just about anything on the planet. This is just getting silly.

They do - It's a $300 router, but you can turn off activity lights with a button press:
http://www.amazon.com/product-...

I was thinking it had a "pregnant woman" setting somehow related to the new Dash Button that orders ice cream and fried chicken at frequent random intervals.

Not to get in the way of a good rant, but Amazon does not appear to sell Nazi flags:

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb...

Nor does Walmart:

http://www.walmart.com/search/...

I'm not sure what a "Communist" flag is. I never knew Communism was a country.

In England, if you want to make flag-patterned underwear and sell it, that's legal, but in the USA, forget it.

Um...

Flag burning and flag wearing are still constitutionally protected activities in the United States. I have a flag bandana I trot out every 4th of July. Selling and sporting flag-patterned goods is a major industry, roundly cheered by the general populace.

Most of it is made in China, but we just pretend they mean China, TX.

They could have just opted for "science" and the incredibly cheap $50 Whole House Plug Neutralizer and neutralize those bad boy EMFs :)

http://www.amazon.com/Aulterra...

Wow. Someone recommends my book (which is on-topic for the discussion). I thank them. And we're both marked trolls.

The critics are right. This site really has gone downhill.

Jean-Michel Smith's science fiction novel _Autonomy_ would be a good summer read. It's about a small group of open source revolutionaries who work to transcend through their own singularity. Unfortunately they are hounded by government agencies and the UN, who want to destroy them without ever understanding what they are and what they offer the world. It's a clever novel that promotes a lot of open source values. http://www.amazon.com/Autonomy...

Thank you, whoever you are! Free software and the threat of software patents and copyright law to our basic freedoms to create were very much on my mind when I wrote the novel. Very glad you enjoyed it!

Book: Help Your Kids with Computer Coding http://www.amazon.com/Help-You... Got this for my nearly 8 year old and it's an awesome book to start the kids on. Starts them off with Scratch and moves them on to Python.

Jean-Michel Smith's science fiction novel _Autonomy_ would be a good summer read. It's about a small group of open source revolutionaries who work to transcend through their own singularity. Unfortunately they are hounded by government agencies and the UN, who want to destroy them without ever understanding what they are and what they offer the world. It's a clever novel that promotes a lot of open source values. http://www.amazon.com/Autonomy...

Thank you, whoever you are! Free software and the threat of software patents and copyright law to our basic freedoms to create were very much on my mind when I wrote the novel. Very glad you enjoyed it!

How about reading Savage Inequalities by Jonathan Kozol to find out what people really think about your attempts to widen the gap between the haves and the have-nots?

The emerging Effective Altruism movement is full of young people figuring out how to make to make charitable donations go further. The difference in impact between typical charities and carefully targeted intervention spans many orders of magnitude. Top ranked causes tend to be in the areas of global health and catastrophic risk, particularly AI risk. A few links:

GiveWell - detailed evaluation of top charities
Giving What We Can - people who have pledged to give 10% or more of their income to the most effective causes they can find
Back of the Envelope Guide to Philanthropy - my own website; some very rough math-geek evaluations of charitable endeavors
The Most Good You Can Do - a recent book on the Effective Altruism movement by Peter Singer
Machine Intelligence Research Institute - MIRI focuses on AI risk

For staying in touch there is EffectiveAltruism.org, supposedly a very active FaceBook group (disclaimer: I don't use FaceBook), and upcoming effective altruism conferences at the Googleplex in Mountain View, in Oxford, and in Melbourne.