Slashdot Mirror

https://c2.staticflickr.com/6/...

The A-29 is a thoroughly modern, well equipped aircraft which just happens to use a prop. I know one Brazilian airforce pilot who flies it and has nothing but praise for the plane.

After the dumb decision of shelving the A-10 in favor of the F-35 the USAF would do good in considering the Super Tucano as a COIN/CAS alternative. Hell, at $4 millon a pop you can even write them off as minor losses on the F-35 program

According to the linked graph, white people are overrepresented by about 16%. That certainly dispels the myth that white people are being discriminated against.

I wonder if the high number of Asians at Google could be due to Indians and Pakistanis, i.e. people educated in other countries rather than in the US school system.

Let me know when they make a Soylent that tastes like Harold's Fried Chicken (One Bite and We Got'Cha).

https://farm6.staticflickr.com...

Seriously, let me know.

[By the way, if you're ever in Chicago and looking for some terrific, delicious chicken or cat fish - and I mean really really good - try Harold's. Stuff is amazing. But be careful the really hot sauce is really hot. There are a bunch of Harold's around town for your late-night post Hawks/White Sox/Bulls game enjoyment.]

Coincidentally, Microsoft in 2008 launched its own Code Trip project, which it described as "a road trip, a bunch of developers cruising around in a tour bus and geeking out. It's also an online TV show (or video podcast, or vodcast, or whatever the kids call it nowadays) chronicling their adventures throughout the western United States." So, the Microsoft-funded, Roadtrip Nation-branded 2015 Code Trip PBS show looks like a remake of sorts of Microsoft's own 2008 Code Trip, albeit with a more diverse cast

To paraphrase Bobby Hill, "What was YouTube supposed to do? NOT monetize the hospitalized baby?"

Eg. in the Netherlands you can find stickers on mailboxes saying "NO to unaddressed advert print -- NO to local circulars". The latter are "local news" rags dropped in every mailbox, paid for by advertising. Typically the local municipality publishes notices in them, so it's not unusual to see "NO -- YES" stickers. There also do exist YES -- NO and YES -- YES variants of the stickers but those are understandably rare. These are not backed by any law, but since people tend to get irate if the stickers aren't respected, they usually are. Someone came up with them and the design stuck.

One example and another example (including NO -- YES variant).

An image search for "nee nee sticker" gets lots of examples, including the inevitable jokes. In eg. Germany you can see different designs, search for "bitte keine werbung".

TWINS OR NOT? Score for Caitlyn Jenner & Jessica Lange = 93%, "almost identical".

I use this, for the pi:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/produ...

get a 12v SLA battery (as you'd find in a computer UPS box) and that sits on one set of leads. your 14-18v filtered dc goes into thee main non-battery input, and you get one 'logic OR' output.

now, its either the battery voltage (12) or the input module voltage (could be 18v). so, I then pass that ups module output into a dc/dc to bring it down to a clean and reliable 5v for the pi:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/produ...

this ensures you always always get 5v into the pi, even if you lose mains power. it can all be built into a single box, too, even the 12v battery.

just fyi. (I built all this and its been working well for months, so far)

https://farm9.staticflickr.com...

HTH

Fun with Paintbrush: Teddy Ruxpin + Google Glass = Sergey Ruxpin

Obiligatory Xkcd http://xkcd.com/538/
If you see the explaination and think TL;DR read the xkcd it will explain too. But this below is why everyone is ignoring him.
Once again this is nothing more than fud. its FUD because there isn't a way for him to alter them.
He says he hacked into the actual flight controls via the onboard entertainment system. So I am going to explain how this is not on any plane outside a 787 or Airbus a-380 (both use an ethernet bus for the main connections between suites so a person with advanced knowledge who is an asshole enough to want to be banned for life from flying while committing several felonies [interfering with the flight crew for one is since 9/11] could.)
First the magic tweet states its a 737/800. This link is a pic the avionics bay of a 737/800.
http://farm4.staticflickr.com/...
They were introduced in1994. That's pre-internet. The IFE the In-flight entertainment system united uses was added in 2010. Its a redundant system not essential for flight or navigation so therefore its not connected directly to the rest of the avionics suite. But let me prove that.
https://www.redskyventures.org...
Actual boeing operations manual.
but lets go back to actual tweet "Find myself on a 737/800, lets see Box-IFE-ICE-SATCOM, ? Shall we start playing with EICAS messages? "PASS OXYGEN ON" Anyone ? :)" lets see he has a custom made hacking box, this where he knows it or not is a felony when he hooks it to the IFE. That's in the 14 CFR Part 91. What is 14 CFR Part 91? its the 1000+ page rule book that FAA details every aspect of flight in. From the size of the screws to what can actually be on board as a part of the plane. its in there. So back to the tweet. Chris hooks up an illegal hacking box to the IFE which is a redundant system separated from the navcom because requires an antenna to operate and there bandwidths can cause electrical issues with other systems (like aluminum foil in mircrowave issues).
Said box supposedly breaks firewall around IFE to get out. But to go where? He would be using command line and be seeing machine code at the core of a Boeing system.
So assumable he is seeing the maintenance list (unaware that the moment the firewall is breached in flight the in flight data recorder starts recording this) and he picks ICE?
ICE isn't ice its a function of the flight management system (FMS). IThe FMS will use ARINC 653 partitioned operating environment software, which allows multiple applications on the same processor. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A...
What is ICE inside of FMS? Its to keep track of the ice buildup on the plane and to create solutions. But Ice can't drop oxygen masks nor can ice communicate with Satcom. And what is satcom?
SATCOM is satellite communications. Its an antenna on the fuselage of the plane. Its is not only for TV and wifi. It is a another way to communicate with Flight Ops, specifically with dispatch. It is just same as you use cellphone. If ARINC comm is not available, SATCOM comes to play, especially in remote areas and over polar regions. But here is the catch. IFE is directly connected to Satcom because thats Satcoms primary purpose on the 737/800. Satcom can't be used to change stuff internally because its not designed to. Its designed to be a communications channel for voice, internet and TV. sacom on 737 is wired through no 1 hf. so you can select hf or satcom.. Its manufactured by Thales UK The Thales TopFlight SATCOM is the first ARINC 781 SwiftBroadband-enabled SATCOM. However this wonderful device is connected to the rest of the suite via a Arinc 429 data bus.

Oh, these fucking things. I guess the point behind them was to create such annoyingly long lines for drinks that people stop going back for refills. Continuously out of ice, touch screen does not work consistently, takes forever to navigate menus. Could have been awesome, but totally missed the mark. People behind me in line get annoyed when I want half lemonade and half-soda water. Oh sorry, the v2 interface calls it "sparkling Dasani" (really) Fuck you, Coke.

The presence of a BillG look-alike kid in the pro-Common Core ad made by recent $3.7M Gates Foundation awardee the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation is a nice touch!

So the link in the summary: https://farm4.staticflickr.com... has a line that says "Jobs-students gap = $500b over 10 years". What exactly do they mean by this? That the increased wages over 10 years will cost them $500b unless they find a way to suppress them? Or are they claiming it is some sort of lost productivity cost?

sad but true. testing is often left to the users (hw and sw, alike). only the basic smoke tests go thru in today's 'agile' world.

a funny but also slightly sad example of NO qa at all:

https://farm9.staticflickr.com...

see the spelling of that word at the bottom? COLORAST?

what the hell is that? well, my guess is that its the COLOR adjustment but no one bothered to clear the buffer before it said CONTRAST (as you step thru the menu options).

not a show-stopper but indicative of what we see in the sw/hw world today.

if vendors can't be bothered, why would users?

And if we can get Pluto designated a planet once again we'll be back to normal.

"Normal" depends who you ask.

I lived in Costa Rica for a couple years, most recently about eight months ago. They have a phrase, "pura vida" which could maybe be translated as "the good life", but it's used as a greeting and farewell phrase as well. It's also used as an answer to, "How are you doing?" On the one hand, it seems remarkable that they would be happier than anyone else; broadly speaking I expect people to have the same general experiences anywhere. On the other hand, I spent a few months in Panama and then returned to CR for a holiday, and when I picked up a pizza that I had ordered, the guy said "Have a nice day," that is, "pura vida". And he meant it sincerely. At that moment, the difference in attitude was shocking; I had been used to Panamanians (although I prefer the sobriquet Panamaniacs :P) basically looking at me as a business opportunity at best.

The average Costa Rican does not have a computer, although cell phones are relatively common. Computers are quite expensive, enough to make an import business profitable, but very few people can afford one. There is a 100% import duty on cars, so those are expensive too. They also do a license plate restriction on driving, at least in San Jose. Most have electricity and relatively clean water, although they do have an issue with dumping raw sewage into almost all of the rivers. I wish I could more effectively describe the impoverished living conditions; if you have any specific questions please feel free to ask.

On the other hand, people sure don't care about working hard there. My friends in San Jose tell me that the weekend starts on Thursday, and everyone including the boss is late on Fridays and Mondays. There were as I recall a couple clubs where you paid a $10 cover and drinks were free. If there was paperwork that needed to be processed by the government, let's just say the Vogons would be proud of the Tico bureaucracy. If you needed to have your car repaired by a certain date, the Ticos will of course be delighted to tell you that it will be ready then, but no amount of inducement or cajoling will actually make it ready by a given date. Things happen when they happen, and no one is in a hurry to get anything done or to go anywhere — they call it operating on "Tico time".

However, all that said, I'm a little skeptical of the article. Most of Costa Rica is really rural, and I would be surprised if the national power grid actually extended to all corners of the country. I don't think that the average Tico really cares about environmentalism; to some degree it's a first world problem. The Costa Rican government on the other hand knows that the country basically has no industries; the farming isn't great and I believe tourism is the biggest part of the economy. Costa Rica doesn't have all that much to tour, either: there are no mayan or aztec ruins, and almost nothing in the way of indigenous culture. I heard something about painted oxcarts being a thing, but never saw one. Contrast with Panama's amazing diablo rojos (the buses or the costumes). So some while back they hit upon the idea to market themselves as a destination for "eco-tourism", which involves convincing the rest of the world that they have some sort of unique level of biodiversity. It may even be true. However, they really need to promote the image of being green and eco-friendly regardless of the truth.

If I could make a decent living there it'd be hard not to go back, even though the world is full of things I have never seen before. Whether or not the Ticos are the happiest people, I think that I can safely say that happiness for me is two-for-one mango daiquiris at the Lazy Mon. Pura Vida!

Which is why attics are ventilated and ceilings are insulated.

Not in our house -

https://farm7.staticflickr.com...

a nice fanless i7 (haswell) build, with the magic being a heatpipe heatsink case and a 45w i7 chip:

https://farm8.staticflickr.com...

search for streacom fc8 as the case. then, stay under 65w (to be safe) and you can be fully fanless.

for htpc use, there is NO reason to ever have a fan, again. even the i3 has a 35w chip that works just fine for movies and desktop stuff.

Ah, Americans and their "mammoth snowstorms" - try living on a rock in the middle of the North Atlantic. You know what we call a snowstorm with gale-force winds and copious precipitation? Tuesday ;) Our last one was... let's see, all weekend. The northwest gets hit by another gale-force storm tomorrow. The southeast is predicted to get hurricane-force winds on Thursday morning.

Here's what the job of someone dispatched to maintain antennae for air traffic control services has to deal with here. ;) (those are guy wires)

That just raises another issue - why are you services and utilities so unreliable in the US? Here in Iceland we get hurricane-force winds several times a year on average - I've had gusts over Cat 5 on my land. Winter isn't incredibly cold but is super wet (all precipitation forms), windy, and lasts a long time. Up at higher altitudes you get stuff like this (yes, those are guy wires... somewhere in that mass). I lived in the US for a long time and had an average of maybe two power outages a year from downed lines and such - sometimes lasting for long periods of time. I've never once had a power outage here that was anything more than a blown breaker in my place.

It's really amazing what you all put up with - your infrastructure standards are really low.

Somebody beat you to it: https://c1.staticflickr.com/1/...

Marissa Mayer's 2011 concept car sketch for BMW vs. Google's 2014 built vehicle

I tried to sell Ivory to a guy once. He was not amused.

It's still on the menu at my favorite Chinese restaurant. Only they prefer that you call it chicken.

Agreed on adding more panels. The battery component made the payback period too long to justify.

Our install:
Solar barn: https://c1.staticflickr.com/5/...
Solar hot air: https://c4.staticflickr.com/4/... //freaking amazing, +4C even with bad glass in it
Solar hot water: https://c4.staticflickr.com/4/...

Agreed on adding more panels. The battery component made the payback period too long to justify.

Our install:
Solar barn: https://c1.staticflickr.com/5/...
Solar hot air: https://c4.staticflickr.com/4/... //freaking amazing, +4C even with bad glass in it
Solar hot water: https://c4.staticflickr.com/4/...

Agreed on adding more panels. The battery component made the payback period too long to justify.

Our install:
Solar barn: https://c1.staticflickr.com/5/...
Solar hot air: https://c4.staticflickr.com/4/... //freaking amazing, +4C even with bad glass in it
Solar hot water: https://c4.staticflickr.com/4/...

The design is so close one has to wonder if they are actually using the same machinery for some of the components between this tablet and the iPad. They really are that similar.

The chassis is completely different, just look at them here. What components would they have used the same tooling for? I can't see any, obviously there are a lot of similarities but if you actually look at them there isn't anything that is the same.

exactly the same buttons in exactly the same locations

Buttons look pretty different actually. But before the iPad Mini came along the Nexus 7 had its volume keys and data cable port in the same spot, Apple put them in the same place on the iPad Mini because it's the logical place for them, not because they were copying them. The Nexus 7 also had the headphone jack on the bottom and then when Apple introduced their next phone they put the headphone jack on the bottom too, not because they were copying, simply because it's a logical place for it.

Any 7 inch tablet of the same aspect ratio is going to look very similar because the devices are generally pretty featureless. The idea that companies should have a monopoly on things like size, aspect ratio or placement of buttons and ports is ridiculous.

The design is so close one has to wonder if they are actually using the same machinery for some of the components between this tablet and the iPad. They really are that similar.

The chassis is completely different, just look at them here. What components would they have used the same tooling for? I can't see any, obviously there are a lot of similarities but if you actually look at them there isn't anything that is the same.

exactly the same buttons in exactly the same locations

Buttons look pretty different actually. But before the iPad Mini came along the Nexus 7 had its volume keys and data cable port in the same spot, Apple put them in the same place on the iPad Mini because it's the logical place for them, not because they were copying them. The Nexus 7 also had the headphone jack on the bottom and then when Apple introduced their next phone they put the headphone jack on the bottom too, not because they were copying, simply because it's a logical place for it.

Any 7 inch tablet of the same aspect ratio is going to look very similar because the devices are generally pretty featureless. The idea that companies should have a monopoly on things like size, aspect ratio or placement of buttons and ports is ridiculous.

can't be any worse than the BBC which has a statue of a naked boy standing in front of a priest above the main entrance to its London headquarters:

https://c1.staticflickr.com/5/...

That is NOT photoshopped.

These are the fuckers who're out "protecting" our children?

Oh, these would be the same ones who covered up Jimmy Savile's vile deeds?

These would be the same ones who employed Esther Rantzen for years, who is not only founder of Childline and patron of the NSPCC, she was also very chummy with Savile.

I don't need to draw you a fucking picture here, it draws itself.

When you stop and think about the fact that the Rosetta project was launched over ten years ago (something I didn't realize until recently), it's hard not to feel sorry for the scientists and others on the project.

The statements the ESA is putting out have a positive spin on them (for multiple reasons, I'm sure), but at the end of the day this has got to be a pretty hard blow to the people personally invested in the project. After the effort required just to get it launched and a decade of waiting, it must be hard on them. Wish them the best of luck for a second chance when the comet nears the Sun.

Comparison of the demographics of undergrad CS majors at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in 1984 and 2014.

Did anyone notice the large change in Caucasion students? from 88.5 -> 34.6 (53.9% decrease). The largest catagory increase was 'International' (28.1% increase). I have not idea what that means, in the ethnicity category. The second largest was Asian, at (25.4% increase). One might guess this is realated to the change?

Comparison of the demographics of undergrad CS majors at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in 1984 and 2014.

Those are hyperlinks. That's the generally accepted, even traditional, look for a hyperlink. You do know what a hyperlink [apple.com] is, do you not? When I click a hyperlink, I expect to arrive on a web page forthwith. That's what they mean. But that's not what these mean. These mean... random stuff. Normal words... are words. Underlined and/or blue-colored words are hyperlinks.

You're making a distinction that doesn't exist. A hyperlink is a clickable item of text. What happens after you click on it is irrelevant to the point because you've already worked out that it's a clickable thing by the time you've clicked on it.

And they haven't been predictably blue-coloured and underlined since the 1990s.

Buttons, despite Ive's insane, drooling jihad against skeuomorphism, should look like you are expected to reach over and press them.

You say it like an item of faith. Despite your long post you provide no justification for putting boxes around clickable things to pretend they're buttons. Again, back in the 1990s, toolbar icons used to have boxes round them to pretend they were buttons. But we don't need that kind of hand-holding any more. We know we can click on them without needing those boxes.

When someone's learned to ride a bike they don't need training wheels any more.

How would you react to a stereo that had no buttons, just words on its face? Is that intuitive? Of bloody course it isn't. You press a button, it depresses, it looks different, it clicks, you know to expect the action to occur.

Those are actual buttons, not pretend ones. Look, if you have something made out of wood, it has a wood grain, and that's very nice. If you have something made of plastic, then decorating it to look like it's wood is not nice, it's cheap and unnecessary.

The over-love of buttons leads you to horrible designs like this:
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/...

You are in no position to criticise anyone's design chops, let alone Ive's.

Setting aside the GP's bit about pulling out a rack to use as a work surface, some ovens are larger than others. Given the magic mushrooms context and the odd historical trend of certain folks employed in mortuary roles adding embalming fluid to recreational substances in the 90s (is that still a "thing?"), maybe the GP was operating out of a full service Dearly Departed Disposal Department facility.

That said, I don't know why a thinking person wouldn't just opt for a home-built laminar flow cabinet, which can be constructed at very little expense if a bit of effort is put into sourcing the required components. In a pinch, a unit suitable for basic biological specimen work can be built for USD $100 or less. Clearly, anyone building such a unit with the intention of handling potentially hostile materials should seriously consider needs versus risks, but in my experience dudes wishing to conduct personal mystical fungi pharmacology trials are not noted for being particularly receptive to cautionary notes.

Brogrammers at Work

advanced civilizations are more likely to spend their time getting high

I've seen one in my attic

I only have experience with ZFS, so I don't know if this is a general feature of RAIDs. I've run tests on my home zpool; the benchmarks show that read speeds on the pool increase from 20-200% as more disks (parity or data) are added (the new forum layout crops the plot; blue/red/yellow = RAIDZ1/2/3). I presume this is because IO operations can be partially parallelized across the pool. For me the biggest selling point is that my file server is only dependent on my disks; if any part of the server dies, I am not locked in to anything. For that matter I can even have 3 out of the 11 drives die, and my data are still intact and can be moved to other hardware if needed.

Research assistant Shelby Fellows got me emitting muons.

https://farm4.staticflickr.com...

pulled over for going too slowly should you not exceed the posted speed limit

To make it easy, here's a picture of the "centuries old" technology in a 2010 model John Deere 1910E.
https://c1.staticflickr.com/5/...

Pumping water reservoirs is done all over Europe, without flooding vast areas, as it simply uses already existing glacial areas that were created by similar processes to begin with.

Except there are nowhere near enough of those natural reservoirs available for any appreciable amount of large-scale storage, hence why there are projects like Jachenau, Osser and Atdorf. All of these installations are constructed by excavation of a large volume of elevated mountain terrain, reinforcing it with concrete and leak-tight materials to prevent natural embankment weathering and/or catastrophic dam failure and flooding them.

Newer designs actually promise a lot more, given the ever advancing march if science.

No advancements in engineering and materials science can ever hope to circumvent the laws of physics. Flywheels are simply an extremely shitty way of storing vast amounts of energy long-term. For frequency regulation, okay. But for storing TWh's worth of energy, it's insanely expensive. This is the Beacon Power (who went bankrupt, btw) Stephentown flywheel energy storage and frequency regulation plant that can store all of 5 MWh worth of energy (about 1 large wind turbine for 1 hour). Meanwhile, in reality, in order to be able to smooth out solar production, you'd need at least 3-4 day's worth of nearly the whole freakin' grid's power. Just to store one 1GW nuclear reactor's equivalent production for one day you'd need about 5000 of such flywheel storage plants.

These are not made up figures. Here I've taken actual whole-German power production figures from Dec 2013 and blown them up 5x simulating a buildout of their current ~35 GW of wind & ~30 GW of solar installed capacity to insanely high levels (to a total of 325 GW of nameplate installed capacity - actual current total nameplate installed capacity in Germany is ~180 GW) and analyzed the shortfall. It'd still require ~550x the largest pumped hydro storage plant that exists in Germany (Goldisthal, which cost a cool 600 mil Euros, so just multiply to get a feel for the capital cost on top of the 5x wind & solar buildout). I didn't even need to be very picky about the month, as the same situation repeated itself on the very next month of Jan 2014. Now imagine you wanted to meet just 10% of this storage requirement using flywheels - that'd be on the order of 466 GWh, or about 100000 of the Stephentown flywheel energy storage plants, taking up ~1000km^2 just for the freakin' plants.

So energy storage seems a dynamite idea, but it's only when you start to run the numbers that you begin to realize the scale of the problem involved and how laughable some of the proposed solutions are.

As for the shuttle, to split hairs, I never specified it stored the flywheel energy for electrical purposes. Reaction mass is energy, too. But I yield to your point, that I should have been more specific. The main point was, that it can store energy for weeks without significant losses, anyway.

You're not splitting hairs, you're just covering your ass for being dead wrong. At no point did the shuttle use flywheels for any kind of energy storage or energy source. Just admit that you were wrong and move on.

Even Liquid salt reservoirs with just 6h of time are already enough to cover a night during the shorter nights of the year.

Have a look at the graphs of power production graphs I posted above again. I didn't make these up, they're actual production figures. Then understand that 6h doesn't even begin approach the

What about the majority of people who live in dense cities in apartment buildings without private driveways and/or parking spaces that are simply not practical to electrify. You know, it's easy to solve the problem for relatively rich folks, but most people in the world live more like this or this (myself included). We park our cars out on the streets, drive around mostly in or near the city and fill up perhaps once a month. Are we supposed to go charge our cars once or twice a week for a few hours at some remote location?

??? I don't see that all. The links are just google image searches on "reykjavík fireworks", "brenna gamlárskvöldið", and "jóðhátíð í eyjum". Oh, hmm.... I'm betting that because I'm searching from Iceland I get differently biased results. I know that my regular google searches at least bias towards Icelandic sites. Okay, well, basically picture this for an hour while several dozen of these are ongoing, or summer festivals like this.

We kinda like fire.

Windows don't have to deal with frost heaves.

Yikes! I saw that in Vermont when I was up there years ago.

They get something like that down south, too, when it gets so hot that the asphalt starts to melt. Apperrently, not only does the underlayment support the surfacing, but the surfacing supports the underlayment.

Don't get into that Google bubble car, Grandpa! Didn't your read this? :-)

Roads are not flat. I realize that is an extreme example but roads are not always completely flat. They go over hills, through valleys and weather causes them to buckle slightly. All that has to happen is for an edge of one of these panels to come up a bit and you get a permanent bump in the road. Conventional roads can handle this as the bump just wears or is ground down and the road is fine again. With these panels any protruding edges would receive stresses at different angles and be prone to breakage. To fix it would require the road bed to be re-built. Going over crests will be an issue as the road will curve. A major cost in construction will be making the road bed rigid enough to not move and displace the panels. Add that to the cost of the panels, electrical connections, de-icing power costs, etc and you get a very expensive road.

The biggest difference is in repairing road surfaces. When conventional roads get bumpy we can lust add another layer of asphalt to even it out. This can be done a few times before we need to rebuild. With those panels we would have to re-build every time the road bed went out of alignment.

I like the statements about panel replacement being so easy. Potholes are generally caused by the road bed failing causing a failure in the road surface. Replacing a panel, as easy as it might be, will not fix the underlying issue and the new panel will fail quickly.

These panels may be useful for sidewalks and parking lots in certain areas that do not have extreme weather but I doubt they will be useful for roads or highways.

Windows don't have to deal with frost heaves.

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