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They were analysing the machine code, not a high level language with lots of edge cases.

Machine code is simple, right? So ask the guys dealing with recent speculative caching issues...

The Atari 2600 uses the 6502 CPU core, and we have perfect simulation tools for it.

It sounds trivial: just execute the opcodes one by one, right? So read the article here -- any usual emulation technique results in differences that not only are user-visible but can make the game unwinnable. And even that is still far from being fully accurate.

Nope, they just make it so you have to use their $8000/gallon ink.

https://arstechnica.com/gadget...
(old article, but the point remains.)

What good would a new plate do you?

Much like a new driver's license, or even a new car, it still identifies you, and it's not hard to query every license plate of every vehicle you've used (including rentals) since tracking began.

Unless you're a billionaire and decide to take Steve Jobs's example and buy a new car every few weeks so you never have to get a license plate. (Granted, California recently closed that loophole)

Cardinal Richelieu would be proud:

If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him.

In this case, they just have to wait for a crime that happens conveniently close to you.

An arstechnica commenter mentioned NoCoin which is a standalone extension.
https://arstechnica.com/inform...

https://github.com/keraf/NoCoi...

You can also take the URL they curate and then import it into your adblocker of choice.

https://raw.githubusercontent....

This was know about at least 7 months ago, there have been stories about side channels longer than that. So: why have they only got their 'best minds' working on it now ?

Hypercard was far ahead of its time. Unfortunately, most of these friendly languages are not very effective at hardcore tasks.

Yeap, totally didn't happen. ISPs never blocked or throttled anything.

What I am waiting for is for companies to start revoking licenses of people if they protest or don't like their software. For example, back in the early 2000s, Verant banned someone from Everquest because they didn't like their fan fiction (even though it was supremely lousy writing... but had nothing to do with behavior on the game itself.) I can see companies pulling licenses from people who don't toe the line, or bitch about their products in forums. The EULA allows them to, so why wouldn't they? It might be that companies might start doing what casinos do, and if someone gets banned from one, they get banned from all. Which means someone who is a F/OSS advocate could never run Windows, use Office or Photoshop, or use AutoCAD, should they choose to be a machinist.

Link here:

Stallman has some valid points, especially in an industry where all your tools to do your job can be taken from you on a whim.

Base-load production isn't a subsidy or an externality, but if your wider point is about ignoring the deficiencies of one's own position, then I'd suggest people are usually aware of those deficiencies but tend to minimise them, or at least feel sure they're much less of an issue than the deficiencies of the alternatives.

My problem here is the false equivalency. You say that each side is equally bad for glossing over the weaknesses in their arguments, but when those issues differ by orders of magnitude it's not equivalent at all. While no solution is perfect, some answers can be dramatically better than others.

For your example, intermittent renewables are a solvable issue - with storage, with wide distribution and redundancy, with plenty of variation in the mix of sources. The solutions do add to their cost, but even so are cheap enough that they're still competitive. Compare that to fossil fuel emissions, which cost us hundreds of billions annually even before factoring in climate change, and still no effective solution exists. Billions more have been spent piloting "clean coal" plants, promising only to partially reduce emissions, but still without success. Unless you're aware of hidden costs to renewables that are anywhere near the vast costs of fossil fuels, I don't see how the two alternatives are remotely equivalent.

Makes me think of that line in Aliens: (discussed here)

PFC Hudson: Is this going to be a stand-up fight, sir, or another bug hunt?

Maybe these guys get better pay but, personally, I'd take less if I could simply nuke things from orbit - you know, to be sure.

I know there's hope that the cost of lidar will come way down, but when?

For Waymo, prior to January of last year:
    Google’s Waymo invests in LIDAR technology, cuts costs by 90 percent
    https://arstechnica.com/cars/2017/01/googles-waymo-invests-in-lidar-technology-cuts-costs-by-90-percent/

No thanks. I’d rather just give Android users malware.

https://arstechnica.com/search...

It’s much more fun.

Bingo, a 720p video has a bitrate of around 5Mbps. For the size of your standard phone screen, you have to be inches away for the difference between 720p and 1080p to become apparent. And per Verizon themselves, video streaming on their mobile network is capped at 10 Mbps.

But what I asked for is your sources, PopeTazo. Sources that I've noticed that you have yet to provide.

Here you go. I'm flattered that you prefer my sources to the other poster who provided them. Happy to oblige (the last one is a nice summary)

http://www.kansascity.com/news...

https://arstechnica.com/tech-p...

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/0...

https://www.vice.com/en_us/art...

You mean this?. You call that a debunking? It's a DC-based reporter playing the part of Twitter apologist, and is nothing more than his opinion on the published video. Yeah, watch this... I just debunked the debunking.

When designing a building with cars parked inside, dealing with exhaust gas, without making the whole building an unpleasant place to be, is expensive. Apartment/Condo buildings with EV only parking inside are a much nicer proposition. This doesn't change traffic congestion, but neither does 1.5 parking spaces per unit. Perhaps vehicles like the Arcimoto SRK will help urban commuters avoid congestion, although side impact safety looks to be as challenging as with a motorcycle.

you're missing the point. The woman you work with are like that because if they weren't, if they were uncomfortable with locker room talk, they'd leave. That is the conclusion of hiring mangers the world over. It's held up and born out in a lot of research/surveys. Heck, I'd be uncomfortable in that environment (I'm a bit of a Melvin) and I'm a 6' tall 220lb guy.

Furthermore, something we tend to forget (or conscientiously ignore) is that virtually any man is a physical threat to a woman. There's a super creepy scene in Hulu's 'The Handmaid's Tale' that illustrated this.

And it's gotten so bad that when municipalities try to run their own Internet service, just basic obvious service, they are shut out by lawyers from these companies that obviously do not want to provide normal Internet.

And this isn't FUD...this actually happened in North Carolina & Tennessee a couple years ago, after lobbying by the big cable companies & telcos.

States win the right to limit municipal broadband, beating FCC in court
Muni ISP forced to shut off fiber-to-the-home Internet after court ruling
City ISP makes broadband free because state law prohibits selling access

NC & TN aren't the only places municipal ISPs are restricted; as of 2014, 20 states had regulations limiting municipal ISPs in one way or another.

And it's gotten so bad that when municipalities try to run their own Internet service, just basic obvious service, they are shut out by lawyers from these companies that obviously do not want to provide normal Internet.

And this isn't FUD...this actually happened in North Carolina & Tennessee a couple years ago, after lobbying by the big cable companies & telcos.

States win the right to limit municipal broadband, beating FCC in court
Muni ISP forced to shut off fiber-to-the-home Internet after court ruling
City ISP makes broadband free because state law prohibits selling access

NC & TN aren't the only places municipal ISPs are restricted; as of 2014, 20 states had regulations limiting municipal ISPs in one way or another.

And it's gotten so bad that when municipalities try to run their own Internet service, just basic obvious service, they are shut out by lawyers from these companies that obviously do not want to provide normal Internet.

And this isn't FUD...this actually happened in North Carolina & Tennessee a couple years ago, after lobbying by the big cable companies & telcos.

States win the right to limit municipal broadband, beating FCC in court
Muni ISP forced to shut off fiber-to-the-home Internet after court ruling
City ISP makes broadband free because state law prohibits selling access

NC & TN aren't the only places municipal ISPs are restricted; as of 2014, 20 states had regulations limiting municipal ISPs in one way or another.

And it's gotten so bad that when municipalities try to run their own Internet service, just basic obvious service, they are shut out by lawyers from these companies that obviously do not want to provide normal Internet.

And this isn't FUD...this actually happened in North Carolina & Tennessee a couple years ago, after lobbying by the big cable companies & telcos.

States win the right to limit municipal broadband, beating FCC in court
Muni ISP forced to shut off fiber-to-the-home Internet after court ruling
City ISP makes broadband free because state law prohibits selling access

NC & TN aren't the only places municipal ISPs are restricted; as of 2014, 20 states had regulations limiting municipal ISPs in one way or another.

There's no drivers behind the wheel in the Waymo taxis in Phoenix. True Level-4 self-driving cars are already here.

I'm not sure we actually KNOW that the current warming trend is entirely man made

We know to a high level of scientific certainty. In fact, the evidence strongly suggests the world would still be slowly cooling, if it wasn't for our greenhouse gas emissions.

Given that the science behind this specific part of the question is far from conclusive

It absolutely is; that's why every scientific institution on the planet endorses the conclusion that we're causing the warming we're seeing. We can even quantify it - the IPCC AR5 WG1 summary says our emissions of CO2 alone have caused a radiative forcing of 1.68 W m^2 (+/- 0.3), plus another 0.97 W m^2 from methane - which dwarfs the cooling effects of atmospheric dust and nitrates at about -0.42 W m^2 in total. We know it's our CO2 that's causing it because a) we can easily measure the CO2 levels rising rapidly, and b) isotopic analysis shows a match with carbon from fossil fuels (not to mention the observed levels happen to agree nicely with our calculated emissions, and that nothing else has been observed that could come close to causing the effect we're seeing).

None of this attribution has anything to do with our land temperature models (which btw are working just fine).

What's still uncertain is exactly how much warming we'll see, and when. Not what's causing it.

Government should not be playing favorites.

Maybe Governments should stop subsidizing the incumbents, even when the alternative is cheaper.

We all hate Google, but the AT&T and Comcast are worse, surely?

unfortunately that won't work:
https://www.theregister.co.uk/...

and here's the order that says

[...]be remanded to the custody of the United States Marshals to be incarcerated until such time that he fully complies with Judge Reuter's Order[...]

http://arstechnica.com/wp-cont...

E.g.: *FOREVER*

Snouts to the trough .. Republican fight against municipal broadband heats up in Michigan

Actually, the IRS cancelled that contract and went with Experian. How much better that is is up for debate, of course :)

Apparently they suspended the contract on 10/12, Equifax protested, and the GAO denied the protest.

We know, from reports such as this one:-

https://arstechnica.com/tech-p...

that States are now hard at work to write their own net neutrality legislation at the State level. Bearing in mind just how much money the big telcos have just spent paying on "lobbying" to have the FCC overturn the Obama Net Neutrality legislation, the idea that States could push back against this by enacting their own laws must really chafe.

So maybe what is going on here is simply a measure, pushed for by the cable lobby, to grant them access to federal infrastructure and thus perform an end-run around anything individual states can do? The devil will be in the detail, as always...

cities, towns might just have a chance to build a network, community broadband if they so want.

Except for the at least 20 states where ISPs have bought laws and regulations prohibiting or limiting cities and towns building community broadband networks.

Thanks for that information.

My comment is from articles like this:
https://arstechnica.com/gadget...

"... I want repaired processors for free."

So do I. I want backdoor-free processors without payment. I will send Intel the faulty processors.

Intel CPU Backdoor Report (Jan. 1, 2018)

My opinion: Intel is a world-class company, with poor top-level management. Brian Krzanich is not the kind of person who is necessary. He is not a person with enthusiasm for technology combined with the social ability to lead a large company. One story about Krzanich: Intel CEO sold all the stock he could after Intel learned of security bug.

Paul Otellini, the previous CEO, was worse, in my opinion. Otellini "joined the finance department in 1974" I complained about Otellini 11 1/2 years ago in a Slashdot comment: More Intel employees should say in public what they have told me in private: Intel CEO Paul Otellini is not a competent leader. He lacks social ability. (June 09, 2006)"

Intel's health and strength is important to everyone on the planet, it seems to me. The technological part of the company can be excellent, but recent top management has not been able to handle the challenges.

The underlying issue, it seems to me, is that the process of choosing new CEOs tends to be defective. Perhaps all employees should have 50% of a vote, with the board of directors having 50%.

To a reasonable approximation all patents must have been filed before then - as soon as details are published they cannot be patented. Post 1995 lifetime of a patent is 20 years.

So anything 20 years or older must be patent free. I.e. anything before 1998 or so should be fine. Oddly enough that means that the original 386 instruction set is OK. So is MIPS.

SSE etc is not though

Intel published a helpful chart of when each SIMD instruction set was patented

https://arstechnica.com/inform...

Since x64 requires SSE2 which was patented in 2001, there's still a bit of life in x64 patents. Also practically modern x64 and x86 applications probably all use more recent SIMD instruction sets and may not run on a chip which doesn't implement them.

Links about Trump

Trump's lies:

In 298 days, President Trump has made 1,628 false and misleading claims (Nov. 13, 2017, Washington Post)

In a 30-minute interview, President Trump made 24 false or misleading claims. (Dec. 29, 2017, Washington Post)

President Trump's Lies, the Definitive List (Dec. 14, 2017, The New York Times)

10 Falsehoods From Trump's Interview With The Times (Dec. 29, 2017, New York Times)

Trump takes credit for zero aviation deaths worldwide. (Jan. 2, 2018, Trump's Twitter account)
Replies:
"I'm gonna take credit for puppies being cute..."
"Guess who's responsible for designing the cute kangaroo pouches that keep little Joeys safe? That right, it was Me. ME. ME!"
"That's a job well done, thank you, but don't forget I gave dolphins their blowholes! Without me, they would've drowned!"

Sexual abuse:

The 19 Women Who Accused President Trump of Sexual Misconduct (Dec. 7, 2017, The Atlantic.com)

Mental instability:

Incoherent, authoritarian, uninformed: Trump's New York Times interview is a scary read. (Dec. 30, CNBC) Quotes:
"President Donald Trump tells a string of falsehoods in his recent New York Times interview that make it difficult to tell whether he is lying or delusional."
"Trump appears to suffer from the Dunning-Kruger effect, which holds that the least competent people often believe they are the most competent."
"Trump's comments are, by turns, incoherent, incorrect, conspiratorial, delusional, self-aggrandizing, and underinformed."

Lawyers 'Telling Trump What He Wants To Hear' So He Won't Fire Mueller (Dec. 31, 2017, Huffingtonpost.com) Quote:
"The president of the United States, in their view, is out of control a good deal of the time..." People who work for Trump have to adjust to his instability.

8 of the Sleaziest Things Donald Trump Has Said (June 16, 2015, 2 1/2 years ago, RollingStone.com)

Choosing weak people to be leaders:

Trump's FCC Chairman pick Ajit Pai heralds a weaker, meeker Commission (Jan. 23, 2017, TechCrunch.com, almost one year ago)
Ajit Pai's FCC is still editing the net neutrality repeal order (Jan 2, 2018, ArsTechnica.com)

Trump picks ghost hunter to be federal judge (Nov. 15 2017, BBC News) Quote:
"The appointment of Brett Talley, 36, for a lifetime post as an Alabama federal judge is raising eyebrows because he has never tried a case."

Profiting personally:

Trump has now spen

This is, or was, being sorted out in a lawsuit between AT&T and the FCC over the FCC's overriding the anti-muni broadband laws in Tennessee. The FCC lost the first round in federal court, with the court saying the FCC's regulations didn't carry the same precedence as federal laws do. See Ars' coverage: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/08/in-blow-to-muni-broadband-fcc-loses-bid-to-overturn-state-laws/

With that in hand, it should be a pretty easy time for the states to argue that the FCC can't limit their ability to give the ISPs additional rules to go by within the state's borders. In fact that was the regulatory scheme for years and why the credit card companies fought to get themselves declared to be regulated by the federal government only.

Turd polishing complete: https://arstechnica.com/tech-p...

Links about Trump

Trump's lies:

In 298 days, President Trump has made 1,628 false and misleading claims (Nov. 13, 2017, Washington Post)

In a 30-minute interview, President Trump made 24 false or misleading claims. (Dec. 29, 2017, Washington Post)

President Trump's Lies, the Definitive List (Dec. 14, 2017, The New York Times)

10 Falsehoods From Trump's Interview With The Times (Dec. 29, 2017, New York Times)

Trump takes credit for zero aviation deaths worldwide. (Jan. 2, 2018, Trump's Twitter account)
Replies:
"I'm gonna take credit for puppies being cute..."
"Guess who's responsible for designing the cute kangaroo pouches that keep little Joeys safe? That right, it was Me. ME. ME!"
"That's a job well done, thank you, but don't forget I gave dolphins their blowholes! Without me, they would've drowned!"

Sexual abuse:

The 19 Women Who Accused President Trump of Sexual Misconduct (Dec. 7, 2017, The Atlantic.com)

Mental instability:

Incoherent, authoritarian, uninformed: Trump's New York Times interview is a scary read. (Dec. 30, CNBC) Quotes:
"President Donald Trump tells a string of falsehoods in his recent New York Times interview that make it difficult to tell whether he is lying or delusional."
"Trump appears to suffer from the Dunning-Kruger effect, which holds that the least competent people often believe they are the most competent."
"Trump's comments are, by turns, incoherent, incorrect, conspiratorial, delusional, self-aggrandizing, and underinformed."

Lawyers 'Telling Trump What He Wants To Hear' So He Won't Fire Mueller (Dec. 31, 2017, Huffingtonpost.com) Quote:
"The president of the United States, in their view, is out of control a good deal of the time..." People who work for Trump have to adjust to his instability.

8 of the Sleaziest Things Donald Trump Has Said (June 16, 2015, 2 1/2 years ago, RollingStone.com)

Choosing weak people to be leaders:

Trump's FCC Chairman pick Ajit Pai heralds a weaker, meeker Commission (Jan. 23, 2017, TechCrunch.com, almost one year ago)
Ajit Pai's FCC is still editing the net neutrality repeal order (Jan 2, 2018, ArsTechnica.com)

Trump picks ghost hunter to be federal judge (Nov. 15 2017, BBC News) Quote:
"The appointment of Brett Talley, 36, for a lifetime post as an Alabama federal judge is raising eyebrows because he has never tried a case."

Profiting personally:

Trump has now spe

Beats me but if the governed consent then what's it got to do with you unless you live there?

That logic would apply to North Koreans too, wouldn't it?

Without getting too dark, my worry is as follows: governments are in a position of immense power over both private residents and would-be businessmen wishing to operate in a town. Especially, when the particular line of business requires infrastructural work — such as laying cables or pipes. Indeed, they are the main reason for the dearth of choices of ISPs already.

An ambitious mayor seeking to expand his power — whether for the Greater Good[tm] or unjust personal enrichment — can easily sabotage all efforts by private enterprises (including the mighty Google!) until the governed give up and permit him to do it instead.

Think about it — a group of people in that town will now be laying the cables, buying the routers, and negotiating with the uplinks. Why do these people have to be government employees? And, as I ask in the subject, what else will the town's government seek to similarly nationalize — after making it impossible for those not connected to town hall to provide competing service?

It is to prevent even appearance of this corruption that various laws exist banning governments from offering commercial services — they have an inherent conflict of interest.

You and most of the rest of Slashdotters are blinded by your desire to stick it to Comcast. But you are cheering the creation of a worse monster... Comcast will survive this — but small guys like these will not.

"“Meltdown” and “Spectre”: Every modern processor has unfixable security flaws" https://arstechnica.com/gadget...

Which makes you wonder if this is actually a flaw. A flaw is where something does not work the way it was designed to work. The fact that every modern processor has the same vulnerability suggests that perhaps this was designed into them at some point. I have no evidence that this was designed in, but one should at least entertain the possibility that it was.

"“Meltdown” and “Spectre”: Every modern processor has unfixable security flaws"
https://arstechnica.com/gadget...

FCC still revising the order: https://arstechnica.com/tech-p...

FCC is still turd polishing. The order hasn't been issued yet. https://arstechnica.com/tech-p...

"“Meltdown” and “Spectre”: Every modern processor has unfixable security flaws" (1/4/2018)
https://arstechnica.com/gadget...
has the Spectre news re "with proof-of-concept attacks being successful on AMD, ARM, and Intel systems"

if you have a decent amount of technical know how you can make yourself pretty difficult to track down

Well, he's been found and arrested already — so much for the "pretty difficult". Police should've shown the same vigor before his actions resulted in a death.

I don't believe I've seen anyone react to that bomb threat with anything other than disapproval.

In denial much? Open any article on the subject and browse the comments. For example, from here:

• Sounds like someone called in an anonymous bomb threat. Cute.
• Got me all excited there for a second, bummer.
• Not the most productive thing for sure. But what's the alternative?
• Considering Pai's complete disregard of the public's opinion on the matter, or the many accusations of fraud on the comment period, I think at this point it's a moment of "desperate times call for desperate measures."

I'd say, the ratio of approval to disapproval there is 1:1...

Science means you get to ask the questions and you don't get shouted down because you aren't with the hivemind

No, you only get shouted down if you a) keep asking the same questions that have been answered a hundred times already, and b) present zero new evidence to back your questions. Scientists don't have time to waste on foolishness like that. Come back with a study that can pass peer review, like the Berkeley Earth people did.

if you are defending a posture that you benefit from personally

Whereas postures that benefit the trillion-dollar fossil fuel industry are squeaky clean and unbiased, right?

It is totally unclear what the impact of human activity is.

No, it's very clear, and has been for decades.

they haven't been able to present a model that has been proven to be accurate

The models have proven surprisingly accurate, despite attempts to paint them otherwise. Learn what the models are for.

There has been plenty of "abrupt" changes in atmospheric composition and temperature in the past

Name one in the last few million years that's even close to the abruptness we're seeing today. There may not be anything like it in the entire record, short of a meteor impact.

Tactics employing vague statements and fear, uncertainty, and doubt should be very much familiar to old slashdoters

Indeed, you're employing them right now. No citations, no evidence, just vague accusations that attempt to cast doubt on established science.

The narrative has changed from "global warming" to "climate change"

Pure straw man. Both terms have been in use for decades, and both are even more true now than they were then.

I never bought a Pixel C because I was basically content with my old Nexus 9.

IMHO the Nexus 9 is the perfect size for a tablet. Any bigger and it would be bulkier and heavier; and the screen is just big enough to read technical books (including pages with tables or charts). I used to carry a Nexus 7 and that screen wasn't big enough.

So what I really want is a tablet the same size and weight as my Nexus 9, with USB C and a fingerprint reader. That's it.

The Pixel C tablet is bigger than the Nexus 9 and 81 grams heavier. It does have USB C but does not have a fingerprint reader. So I never spent the money on it.

My Nexus 9 is getting kind of flaky and Google is no longer offering security updates so it's probably time to find something new to replace it. The only thing I have found that looks good is the Samsug Galaxy Tab S3. Similar size (about a half-inch taller and wider, I can deal) and weight (only 2 grams more!) to my Nexus 9, has a slightly bigger screen (9.7 inch diagonal vs. 8.9 inch), has USB C, has a fingerprint reader.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/03/galaxy-tab-s3-review-the-high-price-of-a-well-rounded-android-tablet/

Well from the ISP's perspective there are two problems. One is the MPAA/RIAA or some front organisation connecting to the tracker, getting a list of ISPs and complaining. In that case they need to send out a warning letter.

The other is if P2P traffic is consuming all their bandwidth. In that case they'd use deep packet inspection and throttle all torrents regardless of legality.

Though, interestingly, the FCC ruled that illegal before the 2015 Net Neutrality ruling

https://www.cnet.com/news/fcc-...

Then again Pai said throttling bittorrent is OK and that it's basically up to consumers and the media to expose bad behaviour

https://arstechnica.com/tech-p...

I.e. throttling for network management purposes is OK, but anti competitive throttling is not. However consumers, not the government, should decide that.

Cable, Dish, DSL.

Only 9% of Americans have three or more choices for broadband. So, statistically speaking, you're probably lying.

https://arstechnica.com/inform...

Dropped Comcast for Sonic the day Comcast removed their NetNeutrality pledge.

Sonic supports personal privacy and NetNeutrality.

So the new rules are "paid prioritization". https://arstechnica.com/tech-p...

And the concern is how to protect websites from being "down voted" out of existence, in respect to QoS priority, etc.

My concern is what is this going to do to VoIP providers. Aside from VoIP/SIP providers, I don't know what is latency sensitive. I actually don't give a rooty toot toot if a Facebook page takes a few seconds longer to load, or a video stream has to buffer a little longer before playing (as long as it doesn't buffer during the stream). VoIP prioritization, and video game lag are about the only things that concern me.

I couldn't copy/paste that link, but the story is definitely still there: For 8 days Windows bundled a password manager with a critical plugin flaw