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Do you use magnetic cores?

Use? No. Own? Certainly!

http://postimg.org/image/ikdo5jnvx/

This is a 1.6 KB core memory module still in a functional condition.
It was one of many from the system it came out of, so I saw little point in backing up the fragment of program that was on it, but currently should still contain the state of an 8x8 game of life board from when I last had it connected to a PIC and LED matrix.

I keep it on my cubicle wall for anytime an employee requests additional RAM for their computer, along with the acoustic modem when they ask about Internet bandwidth or the QoS settings, and an 8" floppy disk labeled "Server Backups"

http://postimg.org/image/kxjre3fj1/
(Just ignore the energy drinks, it made sense at the time... I think)

Just one more fine touch for the BoFH that has everything :D

" It still amazes me that the financial markets continued acting like the dollar was on the gold standard for so long after FDR, but they did - I guess "community based reality" has always been central to the finance guys."

They did so for a very good reason. While the U.S. was not officially on a Gold Standard internally, the Bretton Woods agreement meant that in regard to international trade, the dollar was still tied to gold. So it didn't change all that much.

But in '71, the U.S. government had been spending too much money for its gold reserves to cover, so Nixon decided to renege on Bretton Woods. The result was the "gold shock" you mentioned... not only did it affect the local markets but for all practical purposes, Nixon defaulted on U.S. debt to other countries. They didn't call it that, but that's what he did. Because by nixing (pun definitely intended) Bretton Woods, Nixon effectively and quite massively devalued the dollar in foreign trade. So if some creditor owned, say, $1M in U.S. debt, it was now worth only $600k. The whole world was pissed off at us, as they rightly should have been. But it wasn't "us" who did it, it was the money-mongers in government who wanted to print more money (inflation).

"I can't see that deflation could ever be healthy, however - Japan presents decades of evidence to the contrary, and I don't see any real world evidence demonstrating that "healthy" view."

Look at the computer and smartphone market. They get better every year, and (per feature) they get much cheaper every year. That's deflation, and that's a HEALTHY market. I did say MILD deflation, though. In a healthy market, goods should get a little bit cheaper over time as technology and other factors make production more efficient.

But now let's look at what inflation does. That is PRICES OF GOODS in dollars (or dollar equivalent, in the earliest years) according to the definitive source of same (cited on the chart). Price is of course the inverse of buying power. Prices for real goods were FLAT from 1665 clear through 1913. There were blips when the government borrowed money during wartime (also marked on the chart). BUT... everything always went back to normal shortly afterward.

UNTIL you get to 1913 (the year the Fed was created). There is a clearly visible war blip, but it doesn't go back down. The chart starts to slope up. Then the slope changes again in 1934, when the Gold Standard was abolished (internally). The slope gets steeper. Internal inflation started hitting a bit harder and then in '71 Nixon canned Bretton Wood. And look at the damned thing now. I've had people look at that and say, "so what?" But if you want to chart buying power rather than price, all you have to do is flip the chart vertically. That tends to get more reaction.

It looks nice, I'll give you that.

No, no it does not look nice. It looks like complete and utter shit. Seriously, how can anyone look at this and not see garbage?

Well. The same view looks like this to me - so it's probably a bug you have there.

What bothers me with (my version of the same view) is that absolute waste of space that goes on. A couple of percent of my screen is dedicated to showing me useful content.

It looks nice, I'll give you that.

No, no it does not look nice. It looks like complete and utter shit. Seriously, how can anyone look at this and not see garbage?

Well. The same view looks like this to me - so it's probably a bug you have there.

What bothers me with (my version of the same view) is that absolute waste of space that goes on. A couple of percent of my screen is dedicated to showing me useful content.

1. used Mechanical Turk to get people to report association of words with emotions
2. determine emotion by counting(!) corresponding words with weighting proportional to association, using sliding window in time.
3. generate pretty but almost meaningless plot
4. profit?

hint: Dramatic tension is often created through irony. The audience knows that the doom of character X (e.g. Walter White) comes when he finally comes to trust character Y (e.g. the white nationalist thugs) implicitly. Goddammit, at the very least look for some negative auto- or cross-correlations.

It looks nice, I'll give you that.

No, no it does not look nice. It looks like complete and utter shit. Seriously, how can anyone look at this and not see garbage?

And no, I'm not sorry at all. Everyone involved in this design getting past the drawing board should be fired, from a cannon, into a giant vat of hot grits.

http://postimg.org/image/ucbqrq6fn/

>stripping html used in quoting or emphasis.

Because nobody ever uses this, ever.

--
BMO

Just a few days ago, there was a story how the ice in the arctic "rebounded" 60%.

The real story is in this graph:

http://postimg.org/image/hcadakghv/

We've been measuring arctic ice the late 70s. It's at it's maximum in March, melts during the summer, and sees it's minimum in September. 2012 was the record year we had so far for the LEAST amount of artic ice. 2007 has second place and 2011 has 3rd. This year we have more than 2012. This was expected among scientists because of something called regression towards the mean. That concept basically says when an extreme outlier event occurs, we expect the next event to be closer to the average. Basically, the entire hoopla is about playing math games to appear more impressive than it is.

When the story came out, it was premature the typical September lowpoint, so don't expect the 60% figure to quite hold that high, but it is higher than last year none the less. However, you can see it's still well below 00s average and that every decade has since the measurements started have less and less ice.

So there you have it? Maybe the heat is going into the oceans? Then melting the poles as the currents do a good job of distributing the equator heat around via currents. The ice melts, breaks off whatever, and like icecubes in a warm drink, cool it down.... until there is no ice left?

Come on, what is with the propraganda here? Last year was an obsolute low point in Arctic Ice extent.... and we get stories of so called "rebounds"? Just look at the graph and tell me that it trend isn't clear.

Fine, so don't run shit in the background. If I have something running in the background, it's not up to my OS vendor to suddenly decide that's not important and throttle it down.

And to the other idiot answering: not all users have full control over what APIs their applications do or don't call.

http://postimg.org/image/fchqeeg7f/ - are you sure you should be using a computer?

http://s7.postimg.org/rqohe22ix/the_nyt_experience.png

As an analogy to paywall, I coin this privacywall.

It is interesting stuff to me also. I made a screenshot:

http://s23.postimg.org/rw44oefaz/1330am.png

It's a graphical representation of the frequencies that are deemed most useful for my particular circuit (which is an edge-case at around 3000 feet.)

No idea about sidebands since I don't work with AM, or anything else in that part of the spectrum. And the other notches are unexplained as well.

"If you apply same-origin policy to images in HTML documents by default, then I fail to understand how it would be "fairly rare" for you to encounter a page that's a sea of broken images."

In the vast majority of cases, the images on a page that are not hosted by the domain you are visiting are ads. It's that simple. Sometimes you run into other situations, but it's relatively rare.

For example, here is a shot of my NoScript menu for this very page. Granted, NoScript itself is not an "image" blocker, but in reality most 3rd-parth images today are buried in a mass of identifiable JavaScript. NoScript blocks them by default, except for those I have marked "okay" ahead of time. If I think I am missing something, I can go to that list and allow a site that is currently blocked. I can allow it temporarily (until I shut down the browser app), or permanently. But even the one that are "permanently" blocked can be turned on temporarily if I wish.

I also use a Flash blocker (flash ads are HUGE bandwidth thieves), and some other tools.

Whether it is worthwhile to do those things is entirely up to you. But you DO have a choice, and that's a good thing.

Tinypic nerfed. Try this one.

Have you ever used a QRCode? Ever noticed that most algorithms don't recognise the QRCode when it's sharpest and level with your screen? Usually, you don't have the time to have the code be level, or in focus, before the algorithm picks it up.

That's because QRCode are nigh indestructible. They could add a watermark and the code would most probably still be readable (depending on the level of error correction you apply when encoding).

For example, I took one of the Wikimedia QRCode examples, and drew on it. It still worked. Then I skewed the image using MS Paint. It still worked. Then I decided to go from 172 pixels to 86 pixels (using MS Paint's resize function). It still worked (zoomed to either 100% or 200%). Then I decided to "reduce its resolution", so to speak, by resizing that reduced image to 200%, then back to 50%, then back to 200%, etc for 4 or 5 times, until I ended up with this. It still worked.

Now, I'm sure that I *wanted* this to work. There will be dozens of cases where even the most stupid tear of paper or poor lighting will prevent that QRCode from being decoded. But somehow, I don't think that YouTube's HD video encoding will be much of an issue for QRCodes.

Tested with QR Droid on a Wiko Cink King, scanning off a 23" 1080p screen.

Have you ever used a QRCode? Ever noticed that most algorithms don't recognise the QRCode when it's sharpest and level with your screen? Usually, you don't have the time to have the code be level, or in focus, before the algorithm picks it up.

That's because QRCode are nigh indestructible. They could add a watermark and the code would most probably still be readable (depending on the level of error correction you apply when encoding).

For example, I took one of the Wikimedia QRCode examples, and drew on it. It still worked. Then I skewed the image using MS Paint. It still worked. Then I decided to go from 172 pixels to 86 pixels (using MS Paint's resize function). It still worked (zoomed to either 100% or 200%). Then I decided to "reduce its resolution", so to speak, by resizing that reduced image to 200%, then back to 50%, then back to 200%, etc for 4 or 5 times, until I ended up with this. It still worked.

Now, I'm sure that I *wanted* this to work. There will be dozens of cases where even the most stupid tear of paper or poor lighting will prevent that QRCode from being decoded. But somehow, I don't think that YouTube's HD video encoding will be much of an issue for QRCodes.

Tested with QR Droid on a Wiko Cink King, scanning off a 23" 1080p screen.

Have you ever used a QRCode? Ever noticed that most algorithms don't recognise the QRCode when it's sharpest and level with your screen? Usually, you don't have the time to have the code be level, or in focus, before the algorithm picks it up.

That's because QRCode are nigh indestructible. They could add a watermark and the code would most probably still be readable (depending on the level of error correction you apply when encoding).

For example, I took one of the Wikimedia QRCode examples, and drew on it. It still worked. Then I skewed the image using MS Paint. It still worked. Then I decided to go from 172 pixels to 86 pixels (using MS Paint's resize function). It still worked (zoomed to either 100% or 200%). Then I decided to "reduce its resolution", so to speak, by resizing that reduced image to 200%, then back to 50%, then back to 200%, etc for 4 or 5 times, until I ended up with this. It still worked.

Now, I'm sure that I *wanted* this to work. There will be dozens of cases where even the most stupid tear of paper or poor lighting will prevent that QRCode from being decoded. But somehow, I don't think that YouTube's HD video encoding will be much of an issue for QRCodes.

Tested with QR Droid on a Wiko Cink King, scanning off a 23" 1080p screen.

Have you ever used a QRCode? Ever noticed that most algorithms don't recognise the QRCode when it's sharpest and level with your screen? Usually, you don't have the time to have the code be level, or in focus, before the algorithm picks it up.

That's because QRCode are nigh indestructible. They could add a watermark and the code would most probably still be readable (depending on the level of error correction you apply when encoding).

For example, I took one of the Wikimedia QRCode examples, and drew on it. It still worked. Then I skewed the image using MS Paint. It still worked. Then I decided to go from 172 pixels to 86 pixels (using MS Paint's resize function). It still worked (zoomed to either 100% or 200%). Then I decided to "reduce its resolution", so to speak, by resizing that reduced image to 200%, then back to 50%, then back to 200%, etc for 4 or 5 times, until I ended up with this. It still worked.

Now, I'm sure that I *wanted* this to work. There will be dozens of cases where even the most stupid tear of paper or poor lighting will prevent that QRCode from being decoded. But somehow, I don't think that YouTube's HD video encoding will be much of an issue for QRCodes.

Tested with QR Droid on a Wiko Cink King, scanning off a 23" 1080p screen.

Facebook also has (or had, as of May 2012) a large presence in a datacenter owned by BAIS, located at the border of Sunnyvale/Santa Clara, called "SC2". It's a fantastic datacenter, to be honest: I used to rent 24U of rack of space (secured cage, not shared rack) + bandwidth (3.0mbit 95th-percentile) + power for about US$750/month, plus insurance costs (around US$500/year). Most of the expense was the physical rack space.

Let me be clear: the datacenter is amazing, is engineered Mostly Right(tm), and is very large (83,000 square feet) when compared to their previous DC (called "SC1", which consisted of the classic chicken-wire-esque fencing model, crappy AC (floor blowers were brought in but couldn't solve the situation) and tons upon tons of customers who did crap like this. Those idiot customers were "siphoned out" as a result of the SC2 migration (given new requirements/etc.) and I was honestly glad to see those customers go. There were a few in SC2 who continued to operate like this (devices/wiring literally being crammed into a secure cage, to the point where it blocked 90% of airflow), but no where near the number as in SC1).

At a networking level the services offered were done "mostly" right (there were a couple router or switch failures during the years I was there, where redundancy kicking in required manual intervention -- Tom Wye (CEO) would always respond personally in Email about such incidents, which was positive), though I imagine Facebook's network was separate from the BAIS network. My point is that the DC as a whole was done really, really well.

So when I say "large presence", what do I mean? Quite literally: half the datacenter (41,500 sqft) was just for Facebook, and that half was cordoned off (extra set of fencing and separate badge readers) too.

How did I know it's Facebook? Because there were multiple (not a couple, but 5 or 6) gigantic Facebook banners/stickers/labels all over the equipment, visible from behind the fencing, and because I ran into other customers who seemed to know that fact (conversations implied they knew people who worked at Facebook, who recommended BAIS, and that's why they themselves were getting rack space there).

The downside to Facebook owning half the DC is that BAIS stopped caring as much about smaller customers, since half their revenue was coming from Facebook. This manifested itself negatively in a couple of different ways, which I can itemize if people are interested in knowing. The short version is that very selective rules were applied to only the "smaller" customers, while the big boy a thousand feet away wasn't given the same degree of scrutiny, including being allowed to violate "hazardous material" requirements for several months (possibly indefinitely).

I have no idea what Facebook does at SC2, but given its size, I'm surprised it wasn't mentioned. No, it's not a full-fledged ground-up facility like the one at Prineville or Google's The Dalles datacenter, but it's worth pointing out that it's a good size and still located in Silicon Valley.

Click on the following link ...

http://postimg.org/image/9ovtmetqr/

I've seen enough of faces like the one in the photo above in Pakistan and in Afghanistan to know who they are

When I say it is debatable, take a look at this. (I have shown this graph many times now on /., and it has been borrowed by others. It is derived from numbers out of "How Much Is That In Real Money" by John McCusker, a work that is considered to be the definitive historical work on dollar value. More recent years are government's own figures.)

This graph.

Pay particular attention to the changes in inflation at 1913 (creation of the Fed), 1934 (F.D.R.) and 1971 (Nixon).

After being stable for nearly 200 years, at EACH of those points, considtent devaluation of the dollar (inflation) was changed for the worse.

A little background: you can see little inflationary bubbles that happened when the government borrowed money for wartime. But in EVERY case prior to 1913, dollar value came right back up afterward to its original level. The effect can also be seen for WWII, but it stops rebounding at the increased slope that started in 1934. In later years, any "wartime" bubble is simply lost in what historically should be considered rampant hyperinflation. (Even the government-claimed 2% annual rate -- which is complete fiction, by the way, it's provably much higher -- is disastrous to the economy in the long term.)

No, inflation is not "necessary" for a healthy economy. And yes, Nixon did a LOT of harm.