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Actually, China isn't spending 1960's money (as a percentage of GDP at least), which is what's so weird. The EAST reactor in the story only cost around $40 million. The original US Tokomak back in 1980 (built in 70's) cost $560 million... not including the inflation since then. China's space launches are cheap too. China is doing all this stuff really cheap.

I guess espionage is cheaper than research.

He probably meant uBlock Origin, not the crappy hijacked uBlock with donation links.

Homepage

Firefox addon

Chrome addon

UBLOCK ORIGIN

PS: accept no sobstitutes!

What about an F-14?

You can do that now.

Well, no, not quite. It's an F-16.

What about an F-14?

You can do that now.

Well, no, not quite. It's an F-16.

in the hope that it will in turn discourage similar behaviour towards real women

Cortana's programming might help solve the GIFT issue where otherwise normal people act like assholes when they are unable to see the people they are acting out at, but since humans behave differently when presented with a computer and with a live human, it will probably do very little for actual human interaction.

And these Scratch-like languages aren't too different from visual scripting systems used in game engines such as Unreal.

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

Google's Public Data explorer can be used to pull some graphs.

Here's a dataset that shows unemployment rates in European various countries.

Facebook is mind crack for fools. https://scholar.google.com/sch...

So far, github has done very well at doing so and providing "5 9's" of reliable service.

Wow, they sure lost that one if it was ever a goal.

.And as much as I appreciate that Sourceforge has long-running CVS and Subversion projects, I genuinely wish they'd simply migrate and discard that technology.

You can use git with sourceforge. You've been able to for a long time, I think longer than github has existed. Some people actually prefer CVS, believe it or not. I don't understand those people, but different strokes for different folks, and sourceforge provides.

"Why not in Tibet, where it could be positioned at an even higher altitude but with many of the same favorable characteristics of being dry and away from light and air pollution?"

The Tibetan Plateau is where I would like to see the TMT get built. China is already a partner in the project and when China wants to build something, it just gets built. There is already a qualified large telescope site on the Plateau:

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

The really sad thing here is that it is likely that all of the original Apollo astronauts will be dead before anyone else goes to any non-Earth body.

While I agree that this is sad in a philosophical sense, we should also consider that while we haven't sent people to a non-Earth body, we *have*:

1) Landed on a comet
2) Got up-close-and-personal images of Pluto
3) Also Charon
4) Discovered over 5000 exoplanets
5) Send a probe out of the solar system (*)
6) Maintained a manned space station for the last 18 years
7) Sent several robots wandering around mars and taking pictures
8) (And occasionally vaporizing the miniature martian town centers with its "heat ray")

And a bunch of other things, such as mapping the CMB, finding strong evidence for dark matter, imaged an exoplanet, gotten spectrometer readings of the atmosphere in an exoplanet, found an asteroid with rings, and many minor things.

I'm not sure what the utility of sending a human into space is at the present time. Unless there's an obvious use case, it *seems* like the extra effort of sending a human isn't worth the risk, except as a political statement.

Oh, and we're seriously considering mining asteroids. How cool is that?

(*) Depending on the definition of the boundary, and the current definition is "cloudy" at that point, so that the probe seems to be going into and out of the boundary that defines the solar system edge.

The really sad thing here is that it is likely that all of the original Apollo astronauts will be dead before anyone else goes to any non-Earth body.

While I agree that this is sad in a philosophical sense, we should also consider that while we haven't sent people to a non-Earth body, we *have*:

1) Landed on a comet
2) Got up-close-and-personal images of Pluto
3) Also Charon
4) Discovered over 5000 exoplanets
5) Send a probe out of the solar system (*)
6) Maintained a manned space station for the last 18 years
7) Sent several robots wandering around mars and taking pictures
8) (And occasionally vaporizing the miniature martian town centers with its "heat ray")

And a bunch of other things, such as mapping the CMB, finding strong evidence for dark matter, imaged an exoplanet, gotten spectrometer readings of the atmosphere in an exoplanet, found an asteroid with rings, and many minor things.

I'm not sure what the utility of sending a human into space is at the present time. Unless there's an obvious use case, it *seems* like the extra effort of sending a human isn't worth the risk, except as a political statement.

Oh, and we're seriously considering mining asteroids. How cool is that?

(*) Depending on the definition of the boundary, and the current definition is "cloudy" at that point, so that the probe seems to be going into and out of the boundary that defines the solar system edge.

he/she might be referring to programs like CPM

CPM is a middle and high school program, when kids should be far beyond the ability to "make change". It is also specifically targeted toward college bound kids, where a more theoretical approach may be justified.

You have obvious stopped paying cash for goods. There are plenty of cashiers who, when the total is $18.25, and you give them $20.25, give you back your 25 cents, and then another $1.75, instead of just giving you two bucks.

he/she might be referring to programs like CPM

CPM is a middle and high school program, when kids should be far beyond the ability to "make change". It is also specifically targeted toward college bound kids, where a more theoretical approach may be justified.

I'm not the person you're replying to, but he/she might be referring to programs like CPM, which had mixed results when I was in school.

The problem isn't that it uses real world examples (those are excellent in teaching the "why" instead of just the "how"), it's that there is also an emphasis on group participation and strange unorthodox methods that aren't necessarily better.

As for "New Math" being five decades ago... I've seen some relative's kids' homework that is required to be solved in strange ways using matrices, etc, that is definitely outside of the realm of traditional math.

That's one thing I thought of after I saw the announcement, but I doubt that's the primary reason. Probably the main reason is just that they want to avoid the service getting eaten up by people who don't even understand what the "quality" and "resolution" settings on their cameras or other camera-enabled devices mean. Even with Google's compression, I imagine it's not too hard to use steganography to fit the Constitution, or a chunk of the Bible, or most of 1984, or the Kama Sutra, or the technical plans for a planet-destroying battle station in an image.

If a service like Google, Amazon, Facebook, or Yahoo! resizes and recompresses the image data, that's one thing. If they start stripping iTXt chunks that contain copyright or attribution information, that could be a serious legal problem; likewise if they reduce quality so much that it obscures a watermark containing a copyright or trademark notice.

Let's begin with a little story. In the 1950s the Betty Crocker company introduced just-add-water 'box' cake recipes that produced cakes that were as good as and often better than peoples' 'scratch' cakes --- sometimes the recipe was better (or) the mix in the factory-sealed box stayed fresher than ingredients taken from the pantry, why does not matter. Betty Crocker cakes aced blind taste-tests and were affordable, and yet the product did not take off as expected.

A bit of research uncovered a guilty secret. In spite of what the company perceived as pure convenience, cake-making women (and the manly cake-making men of the 1950s) were secretly ashamed of the simple steps to produce a product that had been the subject of family pride. They no longer felt sufficiently empowered by the process. By the simple addition of an actual egg, enough recipe-empowerment returned to remove this psychological deterrent and cake-box sales soared.

They later refined the tactic by suggesting on the box that the product might even be improved even further by the (optional) addition of that miracle of miracles, the extra egg. Two eggs! Everyone who was anyone tossed in that extra egg. And all remnants of cake-making insecurity vanished completely and America embraced the box-cake, to become the industrial cake-making giant it is today.

((SIDE NOTE: Even though this was known to me, to come up with a citation I found it not generally discussed. I had to delve down to 'book' level to find a good reference to it. Thanks Google. Folks who imagine that web content sufficiently represents our culture should think again.))

(DO, a deer, a female deer) So not surprisingly the good people of MIT have re-discovered that to continue the cryptographic arms race every simple hard-coded tag must become a passive device, (RE, a drop of golden sun) every passive device must become an active computing device, (MI) and every active computing device must become a self-contained machine (FA) with an autonomous power source, (SO) non-volatile memory and significant processing power. It will soon move into the next phase where even this is not sufficient because of unforeseen circumstances like new attacks on hash algorithms or implementation errors, and a robust system must also include flash-update capability, (LA) which also requires a separate and secure chain of certificate-based authentication to prevent someone from planting the original 'stoned' virus upon RFID tags. "Your passport is now stoned. Legalize marijuana!" (TI)

Which is itself moot if someone somewhere manages to leak or crack a single private flash update key. Which brings us back to (DO).

So the discovery is actually that RFID technology is mirroring nicely the same arms race that computers and communication links everywhere are experiencing. As Bruce Schneier sagely says, "Security is a process, not a product." So be generally conservative and wary every time someone offers a new security end-product --- and remind yourself every now and then, "Why again are we even riding this Merry-Go-Round?" By all rights Schneier should be helping to roll out the gravy train that would place RFID tags everywhere. More work for him! But surprisingly often he comes out in favor of less embed-intrusive and more human-intensive approaches to security. That's why humans love him and robots don't subscribe to his Twitter feed.

In addition to taking these (seemingly necessary) small steps in the direction of embedding additional complexity, we should devote equal time to considering the possibility of small steps that roll back complexity generally, to reveal what unforeseen benefits they may have. Perhaps the powdered egg once included in box-cakes was actua

is there a reliable alternative for Chrome? on my chromebook, i use "tab cookies" https://chrome.google.com/webs... but i often find google's cookies lying around even after closing all tabs related to google. Self-destructing cookies is always 100% reliable.

uMatrix has some neat features you may be interested in - including blocking cookies and a bunch of settings. I don't think you can make it block cookies, from the home domain, by default but it will block third party cookies, scripts, etc... It's a bit like NoScript except it's better.

Think an old-school Windows software-based firewall. Now imagine that for your browser - complete with the learning curve. I just recently shared my config file with someone to get them started, somebody from here. I'd suggest a more personalized settings but that's okay to start with someone else's.

It uses whitelisting. Yup. If it's not from the first-party, it's blocked by default and that includes scripts, frames, xss, cookies, etc... I believe, now that I look at it, you can probably set it to block all cookies (even from first-party) by default and then whitelist the site as you go.

The good news is that there's a version for it on Firefox now. I use Opera and I've had uMatrix for ages. It's made by the same guy who makes HTTP Switchboard (another nice app) and uBlock which is a bit like AdBlock Plus but much better and, again, much more refined. Though uBlock works out of the box, there's a lot more you can do with it. Combining uMatrix and uBlock gives you a whole lot of refinement options and really lets you customize your experience.

Alas, the author will not accept donations of any kind - and I've offered to send him some money, I'd even offered what some might call a good chunk of money for a regular donation. He declined and pointed me to his FAQ which, it turns out, says he does not accept donations. (I think I'd tried to send him $500, so not a whole lot.)

So, if you don't mind a small learning curve (it's not entirely intuitive but not difficult - I figured it out) and want to actually get it "right" then I recommend uMatrix. You can export your settings (your whitelist/saved sites) and use them on multiple computers which will save you some time if you're using more than one computer. It is, and I'll be upfront, a bit of work at first. However, once you get a few of your regular sites set up it's good to go. When you find something that doesn't work then you enable it. When you get it to work, you simply save it and add it to the list so that it's retained between sessions. If you're unlikely to visit the site again, don't save it. If you don't need the script(s) then don't enable them.

For each third-party, you can block or accept, set to always block, set to always allow, and whatnot. It's really very nice. I *highly* recommend spending a few hours with it enabled and seeing the difference that it makes. It does make many sites entirely unusable - but then you just enable what needs to be enabled and you're good to go. If you frequent the site then you save it. If you trust the site or just will be visiting once - don't save it but can even go so far as enabling all. It's really quite an impressive tool.

I'll go ahead and get you the link:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-...

Opera:
https://addons.opera.com/en/ex...

Chrome:
https://chrome.google.com/webs...

If you want to get fancy and use HTTP Switchboard, or just read about it, then I'll grab that link for you too:
https://addons.opera.com/en/ex...

I'm sure you'll figure it out quickly. It's not as much work as I make it seem. I've been using it for a while and once you get it all set you're pretty much good to go with very little interruption. It's surprising how few sites that I actually care to allow to fun scripts from third parties. Sometimes, I even block them on the main sites - I don't always just set to allow.

I suppose, if you need a hand with it th

Fastest[edit] The Apollo 10 crew; Thomas Stafford, John W. Young and Eugene Cernan achieved the highest speed relative to Earth ever attained by humans; 39,896 km/h (11.1082222 km/s, 24,790 mph, approximately 32 x speed of sound, approximately 0.0037 percent of the speed of light). The record was set 26 May 1969.

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

Unfortunately it seems he was off by a couple decimal points. Either that or there's some X-project we don't know about?

Some peoples business is not worth taking, case and point.

GAH!

Case in point

Actually no, not welcome. I'll bet there are some great Windows tech support related sites out there. Maybe start here:

https://technet.microsoft.com/...

Or more likely here:

https://www.google.com/

So there's your advice.

I was going to take the opportunity to launch into a full tech-support monologue but it brought back too many old and bad memories.

Pray tell how do you drive down a side road like this comfortably at over 25 MPH? If the google map image comes across right, the image shown is when there are hardly any cars parked. Often the street has cars parked on both sides for multiple houses with barely enough gap between to get a normal size car in between. https://www.google.com/maps/@4...

There are large neighborhoods in London now that are effectively under Sharia Law (not that you'll hear anything about it in the SJW controlled media).

There are tons of videos showing this.

I actually like that idea; I know there are roads I've driven on with artificial curves added (and this is in the U.S.) to keep people from going too fast; I've also seen more residential areas getting traffic circles instead of regular intersections, which can have a similar effect (depending on how the stop signs were before). I have no problem with this. In my area it's very common to have speed bumps or speed humps to slow down traffic, and it always pissed me off how my car's suspension had to suffer because some idiots couldn't restrain themselves.

Example in Sarasota.

Google streetview of location in video.

Honestly those driving sight lines look pretty good to me.

But if speeding is truly an issue, then the squirrel up there on the electric line has the right idea. (see link)

Ah, that butterfly ballot. I still believe it happened because they were driving busloads of senior citizens (or illiterates, or both) to the polls, and told them something like "vote for the second guy or your Social Security will get cut off!" Pat Buchanan was the second hole, but not the second candidate, which was Gore. The people loading them on the bus wouldn't have known that a butterfly ballot was in use at that specific polling place, thus interleaving the order of candidates.

Go look up pictures of it, it was pretty clear where you had to punch if you knew the name of the candidate and could read, but not if you were simply told to vote for the "second" candidate by someone who had not actually seen that a butterfly ballot was being used. And the double-punches? They could happen if you could read, but quickly went for the "second" hole, then made a second "oops" punch after reading. So it was a bad user interface, but it was more bad in the context of making "dirty tricks" fail.

Ironically, punch card voting systems were in the process of being removed, but due to lack of money, low-income districts, the very ones that had the most problems with them, were more likely to still have them. (see "The Low-Income Paradox") So it is entirely plausible that the party workers involved in sending busloads of people to the polls might not ever have seen a butterfly ballot themselves!

Such a counting procedure is so obviously biased

You mean, like this:

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

?

They're doing just fine.

And you called out the parent for bullshit? Oh wait, you said the parent had a little bullshit, so I guess you went for the full monty.

Even if Zen actually does what it is supposed to do, there's a very real possibility that AMD won't exist after 2019 when their crippling bond obligations come due.

Anybody who has seen AMD's financials with 6% and 7% interest rates on notes that were issued when the Fed was basically giving money away for free knows that AMD is far, far from "doing just fine." There are plenty of former AMD employees who could tell you that as well.

Only because Intel payola [1] during those years didn't really get punished (sure they paid a fine, but honestly they got off pretty easy) while AMD spent all that time developing x86 and Intel just embraced it.

[1] https://www.google.com/search?...

Hunter-gatherer man used to spend 15-20 hours per week per person to collect food. Now 2% of our population are farmers; the rest are busy building information super highways and rocket ships.

I should start over with this paper. I instead started blogging, as I wanted to study more classical and modern economic theory so as to directly assault the field. One of the biggest problems I'm having is dividing the information: I've got a general theory of economic behavior, covering the growth of wealth, the cycle of (un)employment, scarcity, and population growth and restriction; and then I have things like inflation, supply-and-demand theory (mine explains why high-demand goods are cheaper, while low-demand goods are more expensive--this is what subjective theory of value tried to handwave away), and extension theories all the way out to taxes.

The description of how reduction of labor per good creates a cycle of unemployment and re-employment leading to the production of more goods per person (and thus a higher general standard of living) is *not* in the same class as an explanation of how taxes on labor affect unemployment. My biggest criticism about modern economics is its pathological focus on store prices and stock markets; the base theories I produce may lead to arguments about store prices and unemployment, but they're not about value. I've rejected value as a valid economic concept.

The Nexus line is a hacker series built by hackers for hackers.

Then you dont know what the Nexus line is, we are talking about the Google Nexus devices that are built by HTC, Samsung and LG, they have developer mode disabled by default and most come with locked bootloaders, they also dont come with SD card slots, so no they are not built by hackers or for hackers.

Those in the modding community and Slashdot readers are more likely to want those features than Henry HTC or Sally Samsung, no?

Then they would not be buying Nexus phones as you have been misinformed, many of the Nexus devices are in fact Samsung and HTC phones.

I am adding this under the Bird vs. Robot category in my list of versus:

https://docs.google.com/spread...

sorry, dropped the link.

Although, sadly, they apparently never came to an agreement with The New Zork Times.

Trying to stay ahead, I suppose. Our police started an experiment training large birds of prey to attack and take out (small) drones. Israelis come up with a drone that fights back.

1) Traction glass. You can see through it just fine. And you don't need to be able to see through it (light rays taking parallel paths), you just need light - refraction and all - to largely get through. And not even all of it, it's fine to lose a good chunk of it compared to rooftop installs - see ""They'd be better on roofs" in my reply above.

How well can you see through your typical modern greenhouse? You don't need to have "perfect visual transparency" to let lots of light past a surface. In fact, your surface texturing can actually increase your potentential generation (see my comment about the potential of fresnel lensing above).

2) Most rooftops are also not angled correctly either. And unlike roads, most rooftops are not designed to bear the extra weight of panels. And again, see the "They'd be better on roofs" reply.

3) See the comments about damage and loadbearing in the same post.

4) Tanks rip all roads to pieces. But your not-so-subtle jab at the French who basically were responsible for you being an independent country (rather than a bunch of rabble-rousers quickly captured and hung by the British) is well noted.

5) Fields A) mean building dedicated projects, rather than hitting two birds with one stone (getting a road and a solar farm out of the same build process); and B) using up greenspace that most people would rather keep or use for other purposes.

Or see my reply above, where I cover a lot of the criticisms (I'll gladly go into more). There is nothing at all exotic about traction glass (aka "anti-slip glass").

Wanhao Duplicator I3 runs around $399

Info Link
http://3dprintingindustry.com/...

Forum

https://groups.google.com/foru...

Info on 3D printing and Duplicator Calibration and mods from JetGuy
http://www.3dprinterbrain.com/...

This is from a guy (JetGuy) That build a 4 X 4 X4 FOOT ed Printer

I wonder if this is even legal?

It's technically legal to produce the basic bricks, since the applicable patents expired in 1989. As for trademarked Lego properties (like the mini-figures, for example) or any which are covered by more recent patents, you can still get away with it as long as you're only producing toys for personal use, and make no attempt to sell them.

But back to the OP's topic: The feasibility of making Lego compatible bricks with cheap 3D printers isn't actually the only question that you're going to have to face; you also need to take into account materials cost. Sure, the "Ultimaker 3D Printer" itself is quite expensive at US $2K -- but even if you gave up on cheaper options and decided to cough up that chunk of change, you also have to keep in mind that the plastic filament to feed the beast also costs money, to the tune of $20 to $80 per spool, depending upon what you're doing. On top of that, not every "printed" component comes out quite right... so you're likely to blow plenty of cash on ultimately wasted filament. Mind you, there are also so many other really cool things you could do with a 3D printer, besides making Lego bricks... but those things will just require that much more filament, and ultimately accomplish the opposite of your stated goal, that of saving money.

So the bottom line is, if you're going to get into 3D printing at all, you really need to do it "for the love of the game" as they say, not to save money. If all you want is cheaper Lego compatible bricks... then you'll probably be better off in the long run just buying generic brand bricks.

Google is the company that can be least trusted. They are the only company which has the primary business model of collecting as much information from you as possible and selling it to the highest bidder.

Not that it matters Google does not sell their creeptastic spy data to other parties. They use it themselves to make as much money as possible at least that's what they claim publically.

https://privacy.google.com/#go...

https://www.google.com/loon/

They aren't symmetrical enough for KSP. However, I believe that KSP used the parachute design from Apollo for their inspiration, which may be why they look the same. My assumption would be that they are designed like that as it is the simplest pattern, and the colors make for high visibility to see when there are issues and be able to figure out why.

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

Though it looks like the Apollo chutes have more alternating color sections than KSP or this one.

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

Maybe it is Mercury then, that looks more like it.

They aren't symmetrical enough for KSP. However, I believe that KSP used the parachute design from Apollo for their inspiration, which may be why they look the same. My assumption would be that they are designed like that as it is the simplest pattern, and the colors make for high visibility to see when there are issues and be able to figure out why.

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

Though it looks like the Apollo chutes have more alternating color sections than KSP or this one.

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

Maybe it is Mercury then, that looks more like it.

Will this satellite need 'glasses' too? https://news.google.com/newspa...

Software development and engineering are not marginal expenses (they don't vary with the number of items sold).

Software development and engineering account for a tiny fraction of Apple's costs. Something like 10-15%. Look at any software company's financial statements. You'll find that their development costs are always somewhere between 10-20% of total cost. It's true for Microsoft, Oracle and any other software company. You are correct that they are fixed costs but their effect on the bottom line in this case is relatively minor.

Apple's manufacturing is done in Asia (where costs have fallen in dollar terms) but Apple's development is mostly done in America.

Look at Apple's financial statements. You'll find that Apple's Cost of Goods Sold is almost 10X their SG&A and 15X their R&D costs. Cost of Good Sold is the direct cost attributable to making the physical products Apple sells - direct labor and materials. Engineering falls under SG&A and/or R&D. The costs aren't even close.

What you are missing is that even though Apple's manufacturing is done in Asia, what is important is that at the end of the day Apple's revenues and costs are in dollars. Since 2/3 of their sales are outside the US, a strong dollar hurts Apple on a net basis because it makes Apple's products more expensive outside the US.

Disclosure: I'm a certified accountant.

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

Done, next?

I'm not buying one unless it's powered by a Mr Fusion.

You are in luck, they are bringing Mr. Fusion back also:

https://www.google.com/shoppin...

Now on to hoverboards...

https://www.google.com/patents...

I'm kind of curious to see someone explain how this invention is different from all the other daisy-chain serial bus connections that were in use in 1995 when this was filed.

Book: Puzzles for Pleasure
Chapter: "Wire Wizards", page 73

Roadworks found eight wire ends protruding from a pipe in London. In Glasgow they discovered the other ends of the eight wires. Two foremen Smith and Campbell met to discuss how to match up the two sets of ends.

Back in London, Smith took a battery and connected pre-arranged numbers of ends to the positive terminal, the negative terminal, and left at least one wire free.

In Glasgow, Campbell labelled his ends A to H, then with a bulb tested each pair of wires that could be formed from the eight, for a circuit. Knowing the pre-arranged numbers Campbell could identify wires in each group.

The idea now was for Smith to disconnect the barrery, and Campbell to join six of his ends into 3 pairs, then tell Smith which ends he'd joined and which wires were in each group. Smith could then test all pairs of his ends using his battery and bulb, and thereby correctly identify his wire ends.

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

... suggest that the size of servings is influenced by bad habits and by expectations from food sellers.

The human mind is actually quite deceptive, and exactly when you feel full when eating is in no way an objective, fixed norm. Search for bottomless soup bowl for an intresting experiment that shows how people are fooled to eat much more than they expect without notecing.

Does this include this type of porn?
https://www.google.com/trends/...