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No much different than of Predictive Policing, or Predictive Assessments, or Predictive Profiling, or Predictive Markets, or Datamining and Predictive Analysis and so on and so on...

Opera is nice for offline reading

I recommend Opera Mini over "normal Opera": it has a much minor size and memory footprint (by been very light, it works very well on old phones and tablets)

Opera is nice for offline reading

I recommend Opera Mini over "normal Opera": it has a much minor size and memory footprint (by been very light, it works very well on old phones and tablets)

Google Translated version:

https://translate.google.com/t...

How do you exhaust when there is a shield on top of the port?

A $10 sheet of metal bent into an upside down V shape usually.

Or you can get all extra fancy: https://www.google.com/search?q=chimney+cap

I cannot attest to the quality of the jobs, but Burlington, Vermont has made the list of top ten lowest municipal unemployment (nationwide) a few times recently.

"Benson Leung
+Stephen Warren Our initial failure analysis on my Pixel shows that not everything failed. The main battery charger has reverse-polarity protection and did not fail in this case. The Pericom PI3USB9281 that we use on Pixel for negotiating BC1.2 and Apple charging protocols is NOT tolerant to negative voltages and most definitely was destroyed. Furthermore, something killed the ST PD microcontroller that handles this system's power delivery logic. We are still investigating."

Found into https://plus.google.com/+Benso...

And the editors' job isn't to correct them.

I see you've confused timmay with an editor.

You must be new here.

Your idea of micro-payments has already been implemented in one form: Google Contributor. Instead of ads, you see images of your choice displayed (like kittens), and a small equivalent payment goes to the site in question instead of ad revenue. The problem with that particular solution is that you have to stop blocking Google's ads to make it work. And of course, you're paying an ad company as a middle-man to do this, which some people may object to.

I've been thinking about the use of specially pre-designed HTML tags for advertising that allows only a limited subset of safe content - that is, no general-purpose scripting, no flash, no animation, no interactive content, only static images and text, and some additional functions to allow things that advertisers want, such as unique visitor counts, click-through rates, etc.

I'm no web expert, so I'm not sure about the feasibility of such an idea, but the general notion is to give advertisers a way to present their content in a guaranteed safe manner to as to discourage people from blocking ads based on a fear of getting infected by malware. We could even enforce maximum rendering sizes and total percentage of allowed ad space on a page on a per-user basis. If there was such an "ad" tag that had strict content requirements such that it could be safely validated by the browser, I'd be a lot more inclined to allow exceptions rather than the all or nothing hammer-like approach I feel I'm forced to take now. I understand that many sites I enjoy need ad-revenue to survive, but to be blunt, my computer's safety comes first, no matter what.

Most (but not all) desktop application use cases can be accomplished with a web browser these days.

Not if you want to use the application to get any work done. You know, the kind that you actually need to use, and not just browse cat videos with?

Your kind of thinking has been trashing UI/UX for more than a decade. Especially now when everyone's copying the ugly-as-hell Metro/touchscreen style.

What's a pliancy cue? Oh we don't learn about that because touchscreens don't use mice!

Holy SHIT. Even Google doesn't know what a pliancy cue is any more.

Google search for "police want to arm drones"

Yep. Let's give this government MOAH MONAY!!!

Make everyone pay THEIR FAIR SHARE!

Hey, it will only be used against us.

Hmm... I have to refer back to Brian Greene again. IIRC...

I've read his book "The Elegant Universe". He's very much into string theory, his description of gravity and it's ability to transverse dimensions explains dark matter to me - right or wrong I'm comfortable with my understanding of it. It's best described in the DVD's that comes with the book. The book itself is easy reading and the library normally carries it.

But it's the 8 episode series season 1 of "How the Universe works" narrated by Mike Rowe (of Dirty Jobs) I've watched untold times, it puts me to sleep at night :) it's Mike's voice, knocks me right out. and the series does indeed explain how the Universe works, I've learned much from it. The series is on Youtube https://www.google.com/search?... (best if watched in order 1-8)

As are the DVD's supplied with "The Elegant Universe" https://www.youtube.com/result... (1-3)

The more people that use it, the faster, and more powerful it gets!!
It's powered by YOU when you use it!
0Net

0net

What about Smelly Slashdotter?

You're operating on a vacuum assumption in your own head without looking at the world around you. You go, "Oh, that doesn't make sense to me, so I'll make up bullshit and claim everything based on solid analysis and understanding is made-up bullshit." It's familiar to me: it's called a cargo-cult. Basically, anything that's not simple is obviously suspect, and anyone who knows wtf they're talking about must have an agenda and is thus lying.

You are reveling in your ignorance and wielding stupidity as a weapon.

You'll note that dishwashers, washing machines, dryers, and those other nice tools all arrived *prior* to the dual income family becoming standard

Yes. They removed the strain on household labor, thus freeing up that labor resource and making way for a labor bubble. I *just* explained that.

Where we are going is an economy where productivity keeps increasing compared to labor hours spent.

Are going? That's where wealth comes from. I've been writing about this for a while. The toxic component is time: if you eliminate 2% of labor in a year and create 2% more jobs, you have stable unemployment; if you eliminate 20% of labor in a year and create 7% more jobs, you have growing unemployment (you just moved from 4% to 16.5% unemployment).

In the Industrial Revolution, they moved from manual weaving to the power loom, immediately cutting that 479 labor-hours of shirt-making back to near 100 labor-hours; they got 80% unemployment for nearly 100 years. Since then, we've steadily progressed to an economy where it takes not even 7 labor-hours per single shirt to grow the cotton, harvest the cotton, dye the cotton, spin the thread, weave the thread, construct the shirt, package the shirt, ship the shirt, and retail the shirt on store shelves.

What do you think GMO crops, advanced fertilizers, pesticides, harvesting machines, planting machines, and refrigeration did to the farming economy? In 1970, India was growing 2 tonnes of rice per hectare of land, and selling it for a price of $550/tonne; by 2000, inflation raises that $550/tonne to over $3,000. By the year 2000, India was growing 6 tonnes of rice per hectare of land area, and selling it for under $200/tonne. In 30 years, they decreased the costs of manufacturing rice by around 93%, which means a sum total reduction of labor in aggregate when accounting for all levels of the supply chain in the business of producing rice. 93% of the humans involved in making 1 tonne of rice are no longer employed in making that tonne of rice; they might produce a larger population in response and thus make more rice to feed said population, and so not actually unemploy 93% of their farmers, but the proportion did drop.

the income from a single job has been degraded since the 70s as more and more of those middle class jobs exited via outsourcing, to be replaced by lower wage jobs, if at all

So back in the 70s we had cars with 6 CD changers, satellite radio, air conditioning standard, anti-lock brakes, electronic stability control, airbags, 4 wheel independent suspension, On-Star, and a $2,000 satellite navigation system option? Air conditioning in cars did become standard in 1968; by 1969, about half of all cars had air conditioning units. 2/3 had car radios in 1970--it was still common to see cars with no radio in the 70s. Never mind satellite systems, multi-CD changers, and the like.

What about cell phones? We had the color TFT in 1998, and the Compaq iPaq had a wireless radio option to operate as a cellular phone; yet people barely got on with a $600 Motorola V3 Razr. The cellular phones of 1973 weighed 5 pounds; in 1983, they became commercially available at a cost of $4,000 (over $9,000 2014), with a service cost of $50/month plus 40 cents per minute. For $60/month on a $350 phone, I have data service and can stream Spotify to and f

Thanks for the street view and concise list! But that double-wide does not look like two lanes, it is a lane and a shoulder for parking. Our city does this too, and people do use it like the Google car intended to but it is not marked for turning. Practically speaking you have to consider the shoulder area near the intersection as a no-mans-land.

According to the report, they were side-by-side in the same, double-wide lane, hence the shared responsibility. Here's a Street View picture of the turn in question [google.com]. Apparently, the sequence was:
1) Red light.
2) Google car signals for a right turn.
3) Google car gets into right side of the double-wide lane and passes cars that are stopped for the red light.

My take is, even though it intended to turn right, the Google car was in the wrong to drift to the right away from the dashed white line it was obviously following on its left side. It was interpreting the space to the right as driveable. For it to be a driveable lane there would have to be either a dashed line to the right that Google car would cross over, OR a right arrow painted on the road ahead indicating it was indeed a lane dedicated to right turns. These things were not there. Google should have stayed in the lane, not have interpreted the right side as a valid to drive at all --- unless it was pulling over to stop or parking. Google car was in the wrong for passing cars to the left of it. It was driving on the 'shoulder', not within its own white-marked lane or designated right turn lane.

4) Google car has to stop because there are sandbags blocking the storm drain.
5) Light turns green, cars start moving.
6) Google car waits for cars to pass to create an opening, then slowly moves back towards the center of the lane.

Google car is in the wrong again because it was stopped and is now moving slowly on the 'shoulder' and is NOT signalling left to indicate it wishes to re-enter the lane.

7) Bus decides not to yield to the Google car that's ahead of it in the lane, trying to pass it anyway.

Google car was probably in 2mph 'crawl mode' which is not human to do at all. Humans either wait or gas 'n go. From the bus driver's relative speed the Google car probably looked like it was stopped. The Google car may even still be signalling right at this point. The bus does not see the sandbags, all it sees is a car on the shoulder.

8) Bus gets its nose a bit ahead of the Google car.
9) Google car doesn't turn the wheel back in time and scrapes the side of the bus.

Google car completely at fault. It was on the 'shoulder' not in the lane. Vehicles ahead of you lose their right of way when they leave the lane. Google car (likely) NOT signaling left to indicate re-entering the lane (because it thought was in a separate and valid lane: wrong). But even if you are signaling left to indicate you wish to enter a lane, you do not gain right of way.

So unless it was exceeding the speed limit the bus is in the right, There is the other thing, that contact was made after the front of the bus passed, which alleviates any suspicion that the bus hit something directly in its path. Google in the wrong, and they need to review the criteria for drivable lanes. If the road has clearly visible lines to your left and there are none to your right, that's NOT a drivable lane over there. Stay in your lane-position, don't pass anyone and (of course) watch your right-rear for dipshits driving on the shoulder.

Something like this happened to me. I'm centered in a marked right turn lane at a solid-circular red light. Cars on the opposite side of the intersection had all turned left and passed in front of me and now no one is coming. It is now clear for me to ta

According to the report, they were side-by-side in the same, double-wide lane, hence the shared responsibility. Here's a Street View picture of the turn in question. Apparently, the sequence was:
1) Red light.
2) Google car signals for a right turn.
3) Google car gets into right side of the double-wide lane and passes cars that are stopped for the red light.
4) Google car has to stop because there are sandbags blocking the storm drain.
5) Light turns green, cars start moving.
6) Google car waits for cars to pass to create an opening, then slowly moves back towards the center of the lane.
7) Bus decides not to yield to the Google car that's ahead of it in the lane, trying to pass it anyway.
8) Bus gets its nose a bit ahead of the Google car.
9) Google car doesn't turn the wheel back in time and scrapes the side of the bus.

More or less, the Google car technically had the right of way, because it was in the same lane as the bus but ahead of it, but the bus had every reason to think the Google car, which was stopped, would cede the right of way to it just the same as it had to several other cars, and thus had clearly decided to pass the Google car. Which is to say, the bus created the situation that caused the impact when it failed to yield to a car that had the right of way, but that doesn't give the Google car a free pass to cause an accident with a vehicle that's already begun passing it. Both had every reason to believe the other would behave differently, yet an accident still occurred, so it's likely a case of shared responsibility.

Of course, most humans would have the common sense to avoid iffy maneuvers around a bus, and the bus driver may have been expecting that as well.

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

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

13,900,000 results (0.44 seconds)

Say what you want about the GOP they are at least willing to give the middle finger to their leadership.

There's a lot of people who are officially a "CEO", but it's largely just a title.

Years ago I new a guy who had a small consulting group of him and one other person. He would proudly proclaim to anyone that was willing to listen that "He was a CEO!". Nevermind that he was also a developer, salesman, janitor, etc of the company. All that mattered to him (and a few people who didn't realize what the reality was) that he had an official CEO title because of the way the company was organized.

So if you want to think of CEO as just a title of any company with the correct tax structure, I'm sure there's a lot of lowly paid CEOs.

For instance, If the local coffee shop decided to incorporate as an S-corp, and the majority shareholder said he was CEO, is that the same thing as the head of Exxon, who last year made 40.3 million dollars?

Well perhaps not that exact item, but you get the idea, https://www.google.com/search?...

I think he's Trolling all of us. It's like he watched "Bulworth" and was inspired by it but decided to go Right Wing with it.

Lucky Patcher uses a combination: hosts file and it can disable the advertising services in Google Play Services. You can do that also with tools like https://play.google.com/store/... , I used that to disable the analytics spying service too.

A lot of people aren't aware of it, but Google has been using existing infrastructure like this for years; here's one of their older ads. The difference? Note that it used to be free!

Is "Google dork" still a term? Anyway, here's a search that pertains to the second article, there are a few still out there.

They'll probably show ads on the shielded version of the website.

From https://support.google.com/pro...

Does Project Shield place ads on content?

No, Project Shield doesn’t place ads on websites it protects.

Project Shield doesn’t change the content of your website in any way. It also doesn’t impact the ability for your website to target advertising or analyze ads-related data.

But by using Project Shield you and your agents and seven generation of your children's children agree and that we can change the Terms and Conditions of use, in a 64 page-long document of legalise, that only 1 in 100 people will ever read and/or notice, at any time.]

From https://support.google.com/pro...:

Does Google’s Privacy Policy apply to visitors to my website?

No. Your website’s own policies and terms of service — including how you manage user data and privacy — apply to people visiting your site, not Google’s privacy policy and terms of service.

More information for them to mine, which is what they really crave.

From https://support.google.com/pro..., emphasis mine:

What data does Project Shield collect?

We collect traffic metadata and cached content for website traffic passed through Project Shield. This helps us detect and defend against DDoS attacks.

We also ask for your website’s configuration data — your website's origin server, domains, and subdomains — to set up Project Shield. We hold on to this for as long as you have an account with Project Shield. You can delete your Project Shield account at any time.

Data and web traffic may be processed and stored in the US or other countries.

How do you use my website and website visitors’ data?

Project Shield collects web traffic logs, and other data on how we serve your traffic, to help improve Project Shield's service and performance.

Project Shield does not collect data to improve search results or target advertising.

Does Google’s Privacy Policy apply to visitors to my website?

No. Your website’s own policies and terms of service — including how you manage user data and privacy — apply to people visiting your site, not Google’s privacy policy and terms of service.

Can people tell that I’m using Project Shield?

Yes. Domain Name System (DNS) records are public information and will show that you are pointed at Project Shield servers. When you set up Project Shield, you point your traffic at Project Shield servers. Anyone can use a public website to look up your DNS records and see what IP address or host name your website points to.

Indeed, the begin with childhood personality profiles built through standardized testing and placed into a federal database. Vid from the 90's. This has been going on for quite some time, and Common Core is only the latest iteration.

Example: A group of your fellow students does something wrong. The group decides to keep the secret. Should you:
A. tell a teacher
B. tell your parent or guardian
C. keep the secret.

The correct answer is C. They want to foster group think. Natural free thinkers, Anti-authoritarians, and others who don't fit into the system are flagged as children to watch out for. If the non-conformist becomes politically active their chances of being singled out for COINTELPRO increase greatly, especially if they are mentally "gifted". In the extreme case where the individual is on a path to being influential or contributing technology that might disrupt the oppressive system, then their lives will be ruined through false rumors, group harassment and other elements of psychological warfare possibly including covert use of directed energy weapons (effects partially declassified via FOIA request).

Protip: The real reason that "conspiracy theorist" is associated with "tinfoil hat" is because since the 1970's people who uncover corruption have been attacked with directed energy weapons, including but not limited to projection of voice or audio into the person's head using microwaves.

In the soviet and communist regimes censorship is used to silence people. In the free and open societies, free speech is used against people: You are encouraged to speak your mind openly so the powers that be can identify you as a potential dissident and preemptively attack you.

For at least Google ads, you can turn off user tracking for ads: https://www.google.com/setting...

Back in the 80s, I seem to recall wire services carrying reports of a "mushroom cloud" over the ocean. It was reported by commercial pilots, probably reliable witnesses not inclined to make up things for jokes.

Speculation was undersea volcano, unusual thunderstorm convection, and impact. I don't recall them following up on it, and I think it remained a mystery... let's see if I can track this down in a few minutes before hitting submit....

Oh wow, it was easier than I thought it would be. Here's the original story.

It was the 3rd google hit for "pilots spot mushroom cloud". Would that all my searches were that easy.

I can't find the original article I read where in the late 90's an IBM employee worked out how to partition a mainframe for Linux. But they did offer it and actually helped get Linux accepted as many began to say "If IBM backs it it must be good". The best link I could find on this is from 2001:

https://books.google.com/books...

All I have to say on the matter is blub blub

> It's a problem that doesn't come up very often, is unlikely to ever come up in a hydrogen car (especially a fuel cell one like in the article due to nothing being very hot)

And I'm afraid this is part of the point. Hydrogen embrittlement also occurs at low temperatures. It's the high pressure containers that seem to suffer the worst problems, not relatively low pressure systems made out of relatively cheap steel, and not some of the finer steels such as

> It would probably also utterly horrify you that I have used hydrogen under a bit over atmospheric pressure as a furnace

Not a bit. It's the high pressure and various metals, including many steels, used for high pressure that seem to have real problems with hydrogen embrittlement. You can avoid it with some pretty expensive steels, or not using high pressures of hydrogen.

Again, _this does not solve the transport problem_. The car's local tanks can be made expensively. The storage units for a day's or week's hydrogen supply at a refilling station, or the pipes or transport vehicles to move it, are a very different technological problem. One can't take experience from, say, the Haber process and simply it works well for miles of pipe or remote, exposed, long-duration storage tanks.

The idea that "these fuel containers are solid" and have hydrogen embedded in a safer, non-pressurized object is appealing, but does not yet work well. I've seen no evidence that it will _ever_ work well. For viability, hydrogen fuels need _much_ higher unit density and much less mass of transport compared to mass of hydrogen transported to be viable. They need to roughly double the amount of hydrogen/unit mass they can currently hold to be considered viable. I'm looking at the US Department of Energy charts at https://books.google.com/books...

I am sorry to rain on the parade of alternative fuel sources, but one can't simply describe problems as solved when they've not been.

To be fair, when I lived in SF I was a network admin and I made OK money, so I could afford to eat out all the time. And to be equally fair, I eat a nice big fat steak semi-regularly now and I feel grateful for the opportunity, too. But when I was starting out, I ate a lot of goddamned ramen, not steaks. And I didn't live by myself, I shared a house with five other people. And I didn't use Lush products, I used Suave, or whatever I got out of the dollar store.

Yes, the cost of living in SF is high, but what do you expect to do about it? I sympathize with people who were born poor in SF; how do you save enough to escape? There is only so much SF to go around. This nation is founded upon the principle that might makes right, not that whoever was there first gets to stay. If you lack economic might, you don't get to run things. If one is opposed to capitalism, okay, just say so. But don't complain about cost of living, or gentrification, or scarce housing if you choose to move to someplace. There are other less exciting places to live which are considerably better deals. We have to decide who gets to live in SF somehow. Money is the arbiter of all such decisions under capitalism.

I was reading a blog post on gentrification recently where the author was whining that tech companies had come into SF "a few years ago" and blown the economy out of proportion. Talk about a total lack of perspective; it happened decades ago, not "a few years", or at least that's when it really began to take off. The tech proliferation in SF corresponded to the dot-com boom. They had office space and proximity to an international airport, what did people expect?

Sure, all they need is my fingerprint to access the phone, know which bank I'm with, know that that I'm registered for cardless cash at said bank, my fingerprint again to access the app, and possibly my fingerprint again to request the funds.

But sure, a card and 4 digits is totally more secure.

You mean the finger print that is already on the phone because oil leaves the prints on the screen? Not sure how you can think this is safer when finger print scanners have been fooled by pictures.

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

Your web-server based bookmarks extension sounds interesting. The cross-browser bookmark syncing I've tried in the past has been really clunky, so now I just export bookmarks every now and then to have backups, but don't keep bookmarks in sync between browsers.

The new Vivaldi browser is based on Chromium and uses its extension system so you can install extensions from the Chrome store. The most popular user-script extension is Tampermonkey but there are others such as Control Freak and NinjaKit. I actually haven't really used them much (Tampermonkey a little a few years ago) as I primarily use Firefox and Greasemonkey myself, but they should get the job done.

You should try out Vivaldi--it's pretty slick now. They have a forum where you can make suggestions. Definitely worth a shot of voicing your opinion if certain features (or weird behavior) make or break your using the browser.

Your web-server based bookmarks extension sounds interesting. The cross-browser bookmark syncing I've tried in the past has been really clunky, so now I just export bookmarks every now and then to have backups, but don't keep bookmarks in sync between browsers.

The new Vivaldi browser is based on Chromium and uses its extension system so you can install extensions from the Chrome store. The most popular user-script extension is Tampermonkey but there are others such as Control Freak and NinjaKit. I actually haven't really used them much (Tampermonkey a little a few years ago) as I primarily use Firefox and Greasemonkey myself, but they should get the job done.

You should try out Vivaldi--it's pretty slick now. They have a forum where you can make suggestions. Definitely worth a shot of voicing your opinion if certain features (or weird behavior) make or break your using the browser.

Your web-server based bookmarks extension sounds interesting. The cross-browser bookmark syncing I've tried in the past has been really clunky, so now I just export bookmarks every now and then to have backups, but don't keep bookmarks in sync between browsers.

The new Vivaldi browser is based on Chromium and uses its extension system so you can install extensions from the Chrome store. The most popular user-script extension is Tampermonkey but there are others such as Control Freak and NinjaKit. I actually haven't really used them much (Tampermonkey a little a few years ago) as I primarily use Firefox and Greasemonkey myself, but they should get the job done.

You should try out Vivaldi--it's pretty slick now. They have a forum where you can make suggestions. Definitely worth a shot of voicing your opinion if certain features (or weird behavior) make or break your using the browser.

It's a curious thing, but the U.S. Constitution is rather vague about a "right to privacy." There is no explicit right to privacy to be found anywhere in the Constitution or amendments. However, there's a long judicial history of interpretations and precedents that, in aggregate, creates something like a right to privacy. But, again, it is an implied right, not an explicit right, which is partly why we found ourselves in the present situation. A fun way to get a bunch of first-year law students in a twist is to propose a privacy amendment for the Constitution, then have them argue about what it actually means.

Would it make much difference? Could the things that Snowden revealed have taken place if an explicit privacy amendment had existed? (Many here would argue that the 4th amendment ought to have prevented it, so what good would another amendment do?) Would the FBI have much of an argument against Apple if such an amendment existed? Could Google do what it does and not run afoul of violating citizens' privacy rights, a la the "right to be forgotten" rulings in Europe? Could Roe v. Wade, which hinged heavily on an implied right to privacy, ever be overturned?

The currently best reproduction of the original Star Wars trilogy is a fan edit compiled by Harmy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
http://originaltrilogy.com/top...
https://docs.google.com/docume...

This is a reconstruction of the 1977 theatrical version of STAR WARS. The original shots were painstakingly restored using various sources (listed below) and the film received an extensive shot by shot colour correction based on a fade free 1977 I.B. Technicolor Print.

This fan edit is compiled from many sources, including an earlier scan by Team Negative1, the group this article is also about.

VIDEO SOURCES:
        STAR WARS Episode IV A New Hope Official Blu-Ray 2011 (Preliminary colour correction by You_Too)
        STAR WARS 2006 Bonus DVD (sourced from the 1993 Definitive Edition Laser Disc Master - upscales by Dark Jedi, You_Too and Harmy)
        Star.Wars.Episode.IV.A.New.Hope.1977.720p.HDTV.x264-DON (2004 DVD Version)
        STAR WARS 1997 Special Edition (Reivax DTV capture)
        Custom mattes, 35mm and 70mm film cell scans etc.
        Team Negative1 35mm LPP print scan of the Mos Eisley sequence
        Puggo Grande (1977 16mm print transfer)

Harmy has since released restored edits of Episode V and VI as 720p MKV.
The MKVs also include many subtitles and alternative audio tracks.
It is currently the definite edition of the original trilogy.

The problem isn't so much the tap water. That's easy enough to filter. The problem is Rio has MILLIONS of people who live in shantytowns, that have no sewers or running water. This means sewage runs off to the nearest body of water.

Here's a map of the favelas: https://www.google.com/maps/d/...
Here's the map of the venus: http://www.rio2016.com/en/venu...

Well, it's not very likely that we'll be given a chance to run the analysis on Windows.

THAT'S THE JOKE.

Nope. The object in his hand looks just like the contactless payment (combined with chip and pin) devices that are all over the place (in the UK anyway). Granted it doesn't look like the telepower device on the right side of the picture but certainly DOES look like a contactless payment device.

This doesn't rule out the story being BS for all the other reasons you give like needing to be tied to a traceable account...

You dont need a card reader, you just need any NFC enabled device. Here's an app for any NFC enabled Android phone that reads card information, its censored because it's a demonstration, but the source code is available, or you could just follow the spec's available on Visa and Mastercards websites.

The problem is that the information sent wirelessly isn't unique to contactless payment schemes. In fact it's everything on the front of your card (name, exp date and card number) which is all you need to make online transactions. So walking around a shopping centre with an antenna is an ideal way to anonymously collect card numbers.

But NFC in my phone is limited to a few CM I hear you say. This is entirely due to the antenna design and power limits. NFC's wavelength has a maximum theoretical range of 22 metres, OK that's theoretical. In reality if you had a large enough antenna and enough power you could easily get 2-3 metres, however that would create a problem with the number of responses you'll get, an antenna that reaches 0.5 to 1 metre would really be all you'd need to go on a fishing trip for card numbers... And no one is going to look at you twice with your strange device as long as you're wearing a high visibility vest and carrying a clip board.

Sure. They forgot to make it impossible to change the battery, expand the storage, etc.

They got that part right.

This is really just a continuation of the 'OMG freak out about nuclear thing' that has been with us since the 60s. Nuclear can be bad, but there is also radiation all around us, and we do know how to detect and manage radiation risks.

Small package of radioactive tracer material left unattended.
Dude walks past and notices,hey, this shit isn't nailed down.
Dude thinks, maybe I can score some bucks off of this.
Dude takes it and stashes it somewhere.
Dude starts asking around, who wants to buy [this thing?]
Everyone says, "Don't let the Americans know you got that. They're fucking crazy!"
Dude just gives up.
Company searches for the thing. It's gone.
Company believes in responsible (wince) disclosure.
Company is wincing because Americans shrug at the theft of high explosives.
But theft of enough radioactive material to slightly irradiate an area brings on a shit storm.
Time passes. Still not found.
Someone in the Iraqi ministry realizes that they can fuck with America's mind by leaking the story.
The fucking with America's mind begins.
Rueters is chosen for the leak because they are staffed with whimpering radiophobes and never seek out the opinions of physicists and nuclear materials experts to corroborate the risk or put potential dose or usage into proper perspective.
Rueters releases 'exclusive' wire story with few real details.
Everyone dusts off their 'dirty bomb' files and updates them to threat du jour.
$ perl -pni.bak -e 's/Bin Laden/ISIS/sgi'
Headlines are created posing the new threat.
Half of the stories are deliberately obfuscated so there is confusion whether a fission or 'dirty' bomb is being discussed.
The dozen or so follow-up interviews where real experts shrug off (or laugh at) dirty bomb threat are left in archives.
Google creates a handy new ID=0ahUKEwiCnOigpYHLAhVCKCYKHXhIDZkQqgIIKTAA to group the stories so you can see the silly headlines.
Someone at Slashdot does not like nuclear power, because they like solar energy.
It doesn't really make sense because to hate nuclear energy is to love natural gas, but there it is.
So let's ride the cresting wave of hysteria and fear.

Oh, how long can evil ISIS hold out? How can they possibly resist the diabolical urge to build the single little 'dirty bomb' that no one could ever completely prove would not erase our very existence? Will their tortured minds give in to uncontrollable desires? Can ISIS withstand the temptation to build the 'dirty bomb' that even now beckons to them in these shrill, childish headlines? Will they succumb to the maddening urge to (slightly) irradiate a small area? At the mere! [world press slaps its ass on ISIS' head] Building! [world press slaps its ass on ISIS' head] of a [world press slaps its ass on ISIS' head] single! [world press slaps its ass on ISIS' head] Bomb! The beautiful shiny 'dirty bomb'! The jolly, candy-like 'dirty bomb'! Will they hold out, folks? Can they hold out?

Yes. I have backups. You have backups. You're modded down to 0 for a perfectly reasonable question.
I'm sure I'll soon join you.

Meanwhile the dipshits that run public hospitals DON'T have a usable backup strategy, pay trolls ransom,
and the new slasdhdot posts it as if it's big news.

Big news would be if someone actually had a backup and DIDN'T pay the ransom... or if they got LEOs
to actually FIND the bad guys. Paying ransom... heck, even the LEOs pay ransom. https://www.google.com/search?...

E

Oh and GIFs bottomed out in 2011, and have been rising, and are now back up to 2007 levels

I've read a couple of articles recently form good sources that predict #Twitter is dying. True? I can only hope so.

I've found Google trends to be a good indicator of popularity.

Twitter vs Snapchat vs Instagram

I was surprised that Snapchat wasn't more popular, but you can see Twitter has been in decline since 2013, and Instagram is showing lots of growth (I guess lots of people want to take what improvements we made with digital imaging, and have shitty filters that look like crappy cameras, while they take selfies of their duck-face and their crappy food.

You can see Slashdot has been on a loooong decline into irrelevance