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New Yorkers do not want to give up on...

A clear majority of New Yorkers support this project...

Looking at the signatories of the open letter, I can’t help getting the feeling that what they meant by “New Yorkers” is, rather, “New Yorkers that matter”. You know, the ones who own stuff like real estate and businesses.

I seriously wonder what Bezos and his yes-men were thinking. They really are well insulated from real public opinion by their ivory towers. https://static01.nyt.com/image...

Well, tough guy, don't let me stop you from showing pictures of this "screaming horde of violent criminals, waving flags of another country, throwing rocks, and trying to break into our country." Make sure they're actually violent criminals and that they actually have flags and are throwing rocks. I wouldn't want you to change the goalposts if you're going to throw out a bunch of hyperbolic bullshit.

Next, explain the logic behind a violent criminal who decides to sneak into another country, and decides to bring his giant flag to wave along the way. Because there's no better way to be stealthy than screaming while waving your foreign flag, right?

So, go ahead, show your evidence that the situation that you have been frightened into believing and that you shit your pants over daily is actually happening. Or, you know, shut the fuck up.

You can't be 'Internet Awesome', Google tells children on their 'Certificates of Internet Awesomeness', unless 'You know how to tell the difference between the real and the fake.' By that standard, Google itself is not 'Internet Awesome.' From Tuesday's Google Online Security Blog post: "Last week, BuzzFeed News provided us with information that helped us identify new aspects of an ad fraud operation across apps and websites that were monetizing with numerous ad platforms, including Google. While our internal systems had previously caught and blocked violating websites from our ad network, in the past week we also removed apps involved in the ad fraud scheme so they can no longer monetize with Google. Further, we have blacklisted additional apps and websites that are outside of our ad network, to ensure that advertisers using Display & Video 360 (formerly known as DoubleClick Bid Manager) do not buy any of this traffic. We are continuing to monitor this operation and will continue to take action if we find any additional invalid traffic. While our analysis of the operation is ongoing, we estimate that the dollar value of impacted Google advertiser spend across the apps and websites involved in the operation is under $10 million."

The new rules certainly shouldn't be approved as is. However, this isn't a fight about what uses of asbestos are within our tolerance of human health risks, it's about the fact that the proposed rules are procedurally stupid and full of loopholes. The coverage of this policy seems to be painted with the brush of rolling back regulation to an excessive extent when that isn't the issue here. If you read the actual complaints from the scientists ( https://int.nyt.com/data/docum... ), none of them cite any content in the new rules that is inherently unsafe, just that the rules are written in a way that if a use is left off the list, that use is by default allowed rather than prohibited.

The comment I responded to equated this rules change to bringing back PCB's. This is not true for the reasons I stated. As a side note, he also equated it to bringing back DDT, while the extent to which we prohibit DDT seemed to be the cause of millions of deaths in impoverished nations around the turn of the century. This fact is certainly arguable, but it does make a good example that the real world is often a balance of several courses of action, all of which have negative consequences.

The video is misleading because it has been deliberately altered to be misleading and hide the facts below the poor resolution and compression artifacts.

The area has street lights and is well illuminated as shown by other videos. You can
see for yourself in the photos of the news reports with the Uber car still the at location and the bicycle on the sidewalk below a f-ing streetlight! leaves it pretty clear that the gamma and brightness of the video has been deliberately altered to hide the darker areas.

Driving at night where Autonomous Uber hit Pedestrian at night

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/19/technology/uber-driverless-fatality.html
[2] https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/mar/20/uber-notes-sad-news-killing-lady-driverless-car/

Damn you slashdot and your markup. https://static01.nyt.com/image...

If you replace "computer engineer" with "software engineer", the premise isn't quite as stupid as it seems at first. The software engineer's role is to make high-level technical decisions and tell the programmers what to write. In many companies, though, programmers are given the title "software engineer" and the people doing the high-level engineering are given titles like "software architect".

That's a description of a very dysfunctional place to work. Rarely do we see such a dichotomy between a "software engineer" and a "programmer". That might have been the case when programming was more of a cowboy activity. A software engineer is expected to do programming, and we expect the act of programming to follow some basic principles of software engineering, starting at the most junior positions (entry level software engineer or software engineer associate, or intern.)

More senior positions provide high level guidance, but the software engineering process is carried out from the grounds up. When this is not the case, shit ensues.

In that book, Barbie is the manager or lead engineer and the boys are the programmers. Whether or not Barbie is portrayed as a competent manager is a separate matter.

And therein lies the problem I had with that book (I'm a father of two girls.) Sure Barbie is the lead, but where did she start? How did she start? The book still harks to certain stereotypes where a woman still has to dictate how to do things without showing that she can actually roll her sleeves and get shit done.

This a reason why I keep showing my kids pictures of factory women during WWII or lady mathematicians working ballistic trajectories or programming vacuum tubes back in the day.

Wrong! Authorities exonerate.

No. If you ware investigated by the FBI and they don't have evidence to bring charges, they do not write you a note saying, "He's exonerated, signed, the FBI".

And in this case, not only didn't they exonerate Carter Page, but they presented further evidence to continue the FISA warrant, which the federal judges (all appointed by a Republican, by the way) looked at and said, "Yep, you keep watching this guy. There's sufficient probably cause."

By the way, here is an unretouched, actual photo of Carter Page so everybody knows who we're talking about.

https://media.gq.com/photos/5a...

And here is a photo of Carter Page "giving a speech" in Moscow, in 2016.

https://static01.nyt.com/image...

They could reduce the loss of water from evaporation by covering the reservoir with shade balls.

https://static01.nyt.com/image...

The lure of someone providing what the school district can't (or won't) is compelling.

Bingo.

Examine this photo, and tell me what you see. I see a classroom that's about half the size of a modern elementary classroom. I see blackboards. I see a radiator. I see a wall-mounted A/C unit. And I see hanging florescent lighting that was not built into the ceiling. With that alone, I'd place the age of the building somewhere between 1920 and 1930. That alone tells me how much a struggle it must be for this teacher to support her program, and how much work she must do to get what she can't from the district.

It just so happens that I grew up in the West Fargo school district, which Mapleton's a part of. Mapleton's a small satellite community; kids living in Mapleton go to Mapleton Elementary through sixth grade, then drive six miles east to West Fargo for middle and high school. The school is small, old, and has never been on the district's growing list of priorities to fund. (As opposed to a new middle school and new high school in order to feed the exponential growth in population.) Also, last I heard, West Fargo still does not have a 1-1 program. (Which is interesting, because they passed a technology levy back in 1995 which paid for truckloads of computers and our district's T1 line back when no other school in the area had internet access.) All which reinforces the point that resourceful teachers will do everything they can to provide what their districts cannot.

Only the strong should view this photograph: Trump.

U.S. governments have become DEEPLY corrupt.

Are you strong enough to look at this photo of Trump?

This photo helps explain: Trump.

and photographers: Trump

There is ample proof that technologically advanced species extinguish themselves.

https://static01.nyt.com/image...

In our case, we will probably do so out of shame.

https://static01.nyt.com/image...

True, but you have to admit that photovoltaics don't look as awesome as this.

He claimed to support Army of God, one of the few acknowledged Christian terrorist organizations in the United States. I wouldn't go so far as to say Robert Dear was an organization member, but he did say they were "heroes" for their killings of abortion doctors and abortion clinics.

And come on, he lived in a trailer: http://static01.nyt.com/images...
That's a far cry from "crazy homeless guy."

The actual wording of the textbook reads:

The African Slave Trade between the 1500s and 1800s brought millions of workers from Africa to the southern United States to work on agricultural plantations.

While that alone may technically be accurate, it's a great mischaracterization of the situation. It's even more egregious because the section of the book it's in is under "Patterns of Immigration". It's not really immigration when it's a forced migration to a place you're not even recognized as a full human let alone any chance, at that time, of being a citizen.

http://static01.nyt.com/images...

.. to what what industries get out of government. Heck, some oil tycoons saw the first gulf war where USA kicked Saddam out of Kuwait, and figured it would be a cakewalk to kick him out of Baghdad and install some puppets and get all the oil in Iraq on the cheap. Got two oil men elected as POTUS and VPOTUS, launched a smoke and mirrors campaign and got us into a war that has taken 1 trillion and counting. If the gamble paid off, they would have gained a few billion dollars. But it didn't, but they didn't lose 1 trillion dollars we, the taxpayers did.

Compared to the shenanigans of the coal and oil businesses, even if it is true, this 5 billion is nothing. But most likely it is a hit piece commissioned by the same people who brought you the Iraq war. That one was expansion attempt. Now they are defending the home turf, public utilities using gas and coal. Entrenched monopolies who have never faced competition, lightly regulated by revolving door politicians, lobbyists and company men.

Can you explain how the war got us cheap oil? You're borderline conspiracy theorest. They were part of OPEC before just as they are now, pumping out just as much before as after

Hey APK, is this your mom?

You really need to get facts.

Here - autopsy report for you to look at. The TWO hits to the torso were non-fatal.

Then the officer could have shot him in the leg/foot, charge over, attacker alive and subdued. How why didn't that happen? Any one who has dealt with 'the man' knows they don't tolerate any challenge to their authority.

he did / tried... 10 times 12 shots were fired.

That (last) shot could only be fired while approaching the officer.

why would you believe this to be true? This looks like an unfounded assumption on your part. If I were shot in the belly, my first reaction would probably be to double over in pain, thus my head would be bowed before the officer.

1. He was not shot in the belly.
2. {ref .. head exposed}... as such the act of bending over ... you would be approaching the officer.... (as you bent over).

Just pointing something out ...

I've seen people complain that Microsoft doesn't innovate, doesn't try new things.

And I've now seen people excoriate MS for trying new things and trying to innovate.

And, FWIW, some some aspects of Metro have been popping up elsewhere -- I don't think Metro has been an unmitigated disaster. At the venerable NYT, http://nyt.com/ useful bits can "slide in" from the margins when you move the mouse over to the left side of the window. Tiles are the lingua franca of The Toronto Sun, http://torontosun.com/ .

  MS, however, did screw up some things. Well ... a lot of things with Metro for the desktop.

First, it's a UI designed for media consumption (and single- and double-tasking) -- that ship has sailed. Phones, tablets, and, to a lesser extent, notebooks (and, in my house, the WiiU) are for media consumption. Desktops are for productivity.

Second, Metro is actually pretty decent when you figure out how the keyboard shortcuts (win-key +s for searching, alt-tab to switch windows, alt-f4 to shut a window, etc.). But it's pretty awful if you go at it with a mouse -- and MS did not, at all, make this clear.

Third, the Start button thing is ... almost, but not quite, a red herring. If you're looking for a program that's two or three menus deep, good luck to you. It is usually faster (if you're a decent typist, at least) to hit the win key and type the name of the program. If it's a program you use frequently, it should probably be pinned to the taskbar. I've watched my kids on the Win8.x desktop -- the only time they bother with the Start button is when they log out. I think the problem here is that we've had nearly two decades of living with Start and it's proving to be a tough habit to break ...

Fourth, and probably worst of all, MS foisted Metro and its apps on users in situations where it shouldn't have. If you were writing up an email in Outlook (desktop program) and wanted to open the calculator to check your math, it defaulted to a Metro, full-screen, four function calculator. That's stupid. MS has two built-in picture viewers, both relatively equivalent. But, using the default programs app, the Metro app can be set as the default app for several times more file types than the desktop app ... even though the desktop app can open those files and be set as the default viewer through Explorer. That's bad. And some OS settings can only be set through Metro -- and that's inexcusable since Metro is not supposed to be for "power users". And there are lots of other goofy places where the Metro app is the default choice, even when launched through the desktop.

Well, am an engeneer and a scientist.

And considering that arcs (as presented) do not have error brackets on them is a dead giveaway that qualifications of people who did the calculations are highly suspect.

But we haven't necessarily seen the maps that the search effort uses internally. This: http://static01.nyt.com/images... looks like someone drew it in 20 seconds in MS Paint, I'm guessing while in a hurry.

We've seen maps of where MH770 could be based on the angle of last ping received from the engines. Here's one: http://static01.nyt.com/images/2014/03/16/world/asia/16flight-map/16flight-map-superJumbo.jpg

We have a Last Known Position (indicated on that map). We know how fast 777s can fly. If we had the ping arc data as shown in red on the above map for every ping received, we could determine MH770's course, and narrow down where it ended up significantly.

The following numbers are wrong, but a concrete example is easier to follow. Say the first ping occurs 15 minutes after the Last Known Position, and we think the 777 is flying at 500 mph. Set your compass for 125 miles (scale), put the pointy end on the last known position, and draw a circle. That circle will intersect the First Ping Arc in two places (we hope). If it doesn't, we need to rethink assumptions. Anyway, the plane was in one of those positions (more or less) at the time of tyhe first ping.

Do it again for the second ping arc. And again. Some of these potential courses will make no sense and no longer need to be followed. With any luck. though, there will emerge a Most Probably Course for the aircraft.

It may be necessary to rerun this analysis for different speeds - if MH770 was flying low to avoid radar it would travel more slowly. Do it. Hell, throw the entire problem to a computer and let if grind out possibilities.

Has the satellite angle data, or the location arcs at particular ping times, been released? Can it be released?

If photogaphers are concerned about copyright why not just created a reduced size and quality version and release that. Its too small to be used for commercial uses in most cases

Go to http://www.nyt.com/ and count the 75x75 px and 151x151 px non-free photographs.

The web creates a commercial demand for low-res photographic images.

In my not very humble opinion you have that wrong. A quality newspaper will never just take a press release (from whomever) at face value. A good journalist will ask hard questions and never trust the spin masters, no matter from which direction they come.

When the war in iraq started this was the major shortcoming of basically the entire US mainstream press to just buy Mr. Fleischers bullshit and just report it 1:1 as fact.

Even the Grand Old Lady admiited to their to their shortcomings (registration may be required) in that respect, alas a tad late.

The story to me seems the opposite. Web sites are handling this quite well. The BBC is WFM currently. No big slowdown.

More to the point, both NY Times and WashingtonPost.com are serving huge images on their home page. MSNBC, FOXNEWS and CNN also seem to have no problem keeping up with my broadband connection.

And they have been quite responsive.

They are even serving up video and audio.

Seem prepared to me.

DRM is very simple. If there is a file on your machine that others can read and write but you can not, then someone else owns your machine. If all machines are owned in this manner and the law supports it, the law has violated the first amendment gaurntee of free press. If I can't make one of these or an anyonymous handbill equivalent with my own equipment the way I chose, then there is no free press. That is a much greater threat than the colapse of the pulp music sheet industry and it's illegitimate vinyl and radio broadcasting heirs.

DRM is the largest threat to the free flow of information ever. It has the ability to undo not just the digital revolution, but the benifits of mechinized paper publication as well. Once books were chained to their shelves in libraries and only a privaledged few could look at them. DRM chains are stronger than any steel.

And that's even if it makes it past CNET or ZDNET and into the mainstream press, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, L.A. Times, etc. more of the people who vote still read newspapers and watch news programs for their news, so they'll read a pro-RIAA spin and agree with them.

Yikes! I'm not sure how to change the views of the general public, but I know that I already wrote my congressmen to let them know how I feel from a professional and personal level. Will that change my congressmen's point-of-view? Maybe not, but at least they know how one of their constituents feel, just like how the democratic process is suppose to work.

...end rant

This is about telecommunication that might interest some of you:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_1 537000/1537645.stm

http://www.nyt.com/2001/09/13/technology/circuits/ 13ANTS.html

WASHINGTON, Nov. 15 -- The Bush administration, reversing a course set two decades ago, has decided that the world's remaining stocks of smallpox should be retained until scientists develop new vaccines and treatments for the disease, a process that could take years if not decades.

Man, I don't think Slashdot can claim responsibility for most of online America and a good bit of the rest of the online world simultaneously hitting every news site.

The washington post is still responding and has updated their front page with a picture of the collapsed tower. I think they're hosted on Akamai.

I got the NYT login page for the article, but I didn't log in. Globe and Mail and Canoe are two Canadian news site still reachable from where I am.

CNN seems to have a stripped-down front page that's now struggling to stay up.

The LA Times is now reachable again from where I am, and has a different angle pic before the tower collapse.

My university is a long way from NYC (I'm in Canada) but some of my friends are leaving to go home and watch the news. I know that in the context of pain and suffering world-wide, this is a small event, but it is still a horrible tragedy and a sad, sad day for those whose loved ones are victims.

Christopher

This post is a little stale by now, since Slashdot's database seemed to take a hit too for a while, and I went home to watch the tv coverage myself, but I'm posting anyway just for posterity.

The New York Times has an interesting, not-too-technical article with information on Spintronics. Spintronics is the art and science of developing practical applications which take advantage of an electron's inherent property of spin. Some discussion of M-RAM is presented which would be a very important first step in the actual deployment of a quantum computer. As a side note, my crypto professor at the U always said that if quantum computers ever became a reality, all current encryption methods would quickly become quite useless. I was wondering if anyone has looked at developing encryption algorithms which could specifically take advantage of the possibilities of quantum computing and remain secure.

I am the Yeti!!!

editor@nyt.com

I haven't verified that this address is functional, but I believe it to be correct.

The easy answer is "Because it's Linux". But, I find that unsatisfying.

Someone asked this recently in an "Ask Slashdot". What do you do to prevent the Slashdot effect? The concensus opinion was that the #1 thing to avoid being Slashdotted was bandwidth.

Seems funny though. Sometimes it seems like even major media gets Slashdotted although I can't think of any good examples at the moment. Some media never seems to suffer, like the New York Times site.

Is the Slashdot effect oftentimes blamed when it's really something big going on and a lot of people, even a lot of people who've never heard of Slashdot, are hitting the site?

Just yesterday people were saying that Britannica was Slashdotted, but someone reported that it was inaccessible even before the story appeared here. This seems like they simply underestimated the demand for their service. I just tried to connect there and it's still reaaal slow.

I was quite impressed awhile back when the world's smallest webserver was featured here and I could still connect to it. It was slow, and sometimes timed out, but generally I could connect. It's at a University, so they probably have a huge fat pipe, which backs up the theory that the best way to avoid the Slashdot effect is with bandwidth. Of course, the world's smallest webserver may actually be pretty fast. No scheduling overhead, very little file system overhead. Wouldn't it be ironic if this tiny terror was actually faster at serving this simple set of pages than just about anything available? If that's the case, this makes a good argument for Webserving appliances for a lot of applications. (Duh - slaps forehead - that's probably exactly what they were trying to demonstrate. It wasn't just a Guiness Book entry. Nobody goes for the world's biggest Web Server, after all...)

It seems to me that the Slashdot effect is actually a complex thing.

The internet?

Which part of the Internet?

There are a number of places that look very similar to the New York Times. This place for instance.