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AFAICT, they blithely ignore all the things that *used* to make it possible to actually give Google value - the Google-fu expressions, including most importantly +term and -term.

Umm, the + operator was deprecated in 2011. I don't exactly know what effect it has had since then. (It seems to do something, but it's highly unpredictable.)

Exactly the point, the "Google-fu" was the ability to use the operators (prior to being removed/depreciated) to get the results you needed. They're slowly stripping them out replacing them with guess work based on what is most likely wanted. The problem with "most likely" is that it must have some sort of popularity. The real hidden gems of the internet are simply lost and your ability to sift through the rest is compromised by what others have wanted.

AFAICT, they blithely ignore all the things that *used* to make it possible to actually give Google value - the Google-fu expressions, including most importantly +term and -term.

Umm, the + operator was deprecated in 2011. I don't exactly know what effect it has had since then. (It seems to do something, but it's highly unpredictable.)

Try using "intext:" or "allintext:" or similar commands. They don't quite work consistently either, and more frequently than not they will eliminate results that actually SHOULD be matches, but it's at least something that has an effect.

The plus doesn't work very well anymore, half the result pages simply don't contain the word.

The plus operator was deprecated nearly 4 years ago. I don't know exactly what it does now, if anything.

You can try "verbatim" mode or the "intext:" operator, which both seem to have some effects, but they're also unpredictable.

google "guitar hero lawsuit dropped". Tons of articles.

Lead result
http://www.wired.com/2013/02/a...
Judge Dismisses Axl Roseâ(TM)s $20M Guitar Hero Lawsuit

For what it's worth. (I've missed why one has to upload this data to Apple, though)

The privacy scare stems from a discovery by two data scientists, who revealed Wednesday that iPhones and iPads contain an unencrypted file called “consolidated.db,” which has been tracking and recording your location data in a log accompanied with time stamps for the past 10 months.

The purpose of all this, according to Apple, is to maintain a comprehensive location database, which in turn provides quicker and more precise location services.

Apple must be able to determine quickly and precisely where a device is located,” Apple said in its letter. “To do this, Apple maintains a secure database containing information regarding known locations of cell towers and Wi-Fi access points.”

http://www.wired.com/2011/04/a...

NASA has only enough for about 3-4 more missions before it runs out.
http://www.wired.com/2013/09/p...
The US doesnt manufacture the kind they need. They got some from dismantling Russian warheads, but no longer. The upcompiong Juno-Jupiter mission was converted to solar power, about the distance limit they can do with solar cells.

Numbers 1 and 2 are easily addressed. Number 3 perhaps as well, but I only have ideas for 1 and 2.

1) No windows

Problem:

It's a pity if you have any sort of claustrophobia.

Solution: Use LCD screens instead.

2) No air

Problem:

[T]he device doesn't contain any onboard air supply . . . if the device loses power for any reason (electrical, mechanical, computational) then you better be able to hold your breath for a long long time.

Solution: Add an emergency air supply.

Anyone with ideas on Number 3?

This has been talked about for some time and is hardly "news that matters" in that regard. A neat concept that perhaps needs to be discussed from time to time, but the news is the contest rules, not the track itself.

Because he is the one that arrogantly ignored the democratic process, stole a massive store of intelligence documents, incompetently encrypted them, and made them available for friend and foe alike, and then fled to be among Americas adversaries. Surely you must see some room for assigning culpability to him?

Our own government "ignored the democratic process". Even the author of the Patriot Act says the NSA is abusing the law by collecting (i.e. stealing) such a large amount of their citizens' private information.

The NSA didn't make the documents available to China and Russia. Snowden did.

You're overlooking the fact that the NSA and its allies are the ones who made Snowden available to Russia in the first place.

You mean the copies of the phone records of many, but not all, Americans? That was repeatedly authorized, including by courts.

Once again, I refer you to the author of the Patriot Act, who says: "No public court has ever upheld document collection that is remotely close to the dragnet at issue. . . . The administration therefore admits that its bulk collection is unprecedented."

CONGRESS. Snowden could have gone to CONGRESS. He didn't.

If he was that naive, he'd be spending the rest of his life in solitary confinement, and we'd still be in the dark.

Why would the NSA hack US Government databases?
Tthe NSA supplied to our rivals (Russia, China), the method (network analyzer capturing the hack in action), and the means (sample code via core dump) to take over some very widely used Juniper routers. Once you have full control of the router, hacking any database traffic transiting through it is trivial.

As with all secrets, they are ephemeral (short lived), and one must be prepared for rivals to turn the tables.
Which the US did not prepare for.

...is basically what they're saying. And they're right, they're not cops, they're not investigators. They're a software company.

THAT SAID:

From what I can gather, the "hack" was in the form of a highly complex payload which used multiple vectors. This isn't script kiddy stuff, this is planned and executed with a LOT of money behind it. Less likely to be a disgruntled employee or a pissed off customer, more likely to be a state player or rival with knowledge of the network. They might start by discussing with the police, the identities of those outside the company that the employees from the Directors to the janitors talk to about work, then run backgrounds on those people. I would not be too surprised (though the evidence is currently lacking to back up my position) if this were the work of British or American foreign intelligence - DoD, CIA or MI6. I don't think the FSB would be up for this since it's a Russian company with clear access to computers all over the world by simple virtue of the ubiquitous nature of its software. It wouldn't make the GRU very happy to suddenly find a potential backdoor to millions of computers suddenly slammed shut by a sister agency. Who else? Israel? I doubt it, what motive would they have? Besides, they're too busy killing Palestinians. Though looking at the Wired article, it would appear that suspicion is heavily on Israel with the toolkit being identified - and sharing a lot of common code - as a Duqu derivative with some Stuxnet code in there as well, which they're calling Duqu 2.0. This article does not agree with the one referenced in TFS, in that Kaspersky is reported to not actually know how much data has been stolen but they do know it's a significant amount and specific in nature.

This. The SF-86 forms contained the self-reported information, not the results of the background checks. It's enough to be damaging to some people, but it's not the real crown jewels of the security clearance process, from what's been made public at least. Those are elsewhere, probably in that salt mine that the parent poster mentioned.

The weird thing is that Wired reports that the breach was discovered during a sales demo for security software. So, did the security vendor's salesmen have access to the OPM network for a live demo on the deployed system? If so, that needs investigation in and of itself. Who lets Joe Vendor come in and demo their warez on one's secret treasures? Why isn't the NSA in charge of securing this?

As NASA's New Horizons spacecraft careens through the solar system [...]

If the spacecraft is careening though solar system, did the engineers mixed up their metric and standard formulas again?

There was also a good thing about Silk Road: no violence:

http://www.wired.com/2014/06/s...

Reminds me of this:

http://www.wired.com/2010/10/fbi-tracking-device/

I don't think Google has actually given up on this project. They have just realized SpaceX is more capable. That's likely the reason Google invested a large sum of money in SpaceX.

Google just invested a large sum of money in SpaceX
http://www.wired.com/2015/01/g...

SpaceX has a big leg up in this race since it's very likely Google or Facebook would have launched on SpaceX rockets anyway.

http://www.wired.com/2015/06/b...

http://www.wired.com/2015/06/b...

In fact, if you look at the picture here of the trigger well machined out by the Ghost Gunner, it didn't do such a great job. The machining is var from "precision".

In fact it isn't even very good. A skilled (again, reasonably not especially skilled) person could do better. But at least it is straight, as one would expect.

As I stated earlier, the most important part is getting the holes right.

Because I'm so sure that ...

Your suspicions are not citations. Next.

Remember that the military put out an effort to secretly recruit bloggers back in 2008: http://www.wired.com/dangerroo...

Bzzz! A lie! The article makes no mention of "an effort". It only describes a discussion within the military, on whether such recruitment might be a good idea. Paying such bloggers — the way Russia pays its trolls as discussed in TFA — is a separate topic too.

This is the second time in this very thread, that I catch you misrepresenting the contents of the links you are offering. So I am not interested in continuing the discussion, liar.

That seems to be for the troops' recreation and communications, not propaganda.

Because I'm so sure that the military's top priority with enabling its workers to use facebook is so that they can trade cat pictures with their relatives, rather than spread the "information" their employer needs them to spread. Who do you think you're kidding?

Remember that the military put out an effort to secretly recruit bloggers back in 2008: http://www.wired.com/dangerroo...

Again, all the way back in 2008, the military was throwing money at web propaganda outlets in other languages, under phony names: http://usatoday30.usatoday.com... The websites suggest a pattern of Pentagon efforts to promote its agenda by disseminating information through what appear to be independent outlets, says Marvin Kalb, a fellow at Harvard University's Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy.

Yet, even further back in 2006, US Central Command publicly stated its efforts to "engage bloggers who are posting inaccurate or untrue information".

http://www.defense.gov/news/ne... "We were given the mission to do electronic media engagement," Flowers said. "The idea was put forth that so many people are getting their news from online sources that we would be remiss if we neglected that audience."

But clearly when he says "people", he's talking about non-US citizens, right? Try to find some evidence of that in the entire article. Go ahead.


The notion that the US government was somehow *new* to web propaganda even in 2006, even compared to the Russians, is absolutely absurd. Just as blogs were targeted by the military after coming into vogue in the mid 2000s, using social media was the obvious next step. What "propaganda programs" do you think Leon Panetta was referring in that previous USA today article, that they wouldn't involve Americans? Especially considering the military propaganda budget was 580 million dollars by 2012: http://www.usatoday.com/story/...

That's the same article, that the AC above linked to, while making an allegation I rebutted.

You didn't "rebut" anything, you simply mentioned that the Russians also had active propaganda programs, and that we don't know "what has become of that software development effort". I really love the way you tried to turn the thread back around to being about the Russians, even though that wasn't being discussed, and you just wanted an excuse to use that news link. It's very telling that you're more worried about Russians propagandizing to you than your own government.

The article specifically said that a 2.76 million dollar contract was awarded to Intrepid for their sockpuppet software. It would be incredibly naive to think the military threw down the money and forgot about the effort, especially considering their other web propaganda efforts (above) are evidenced at least back through 2006.

The article also mentioned "It would not disclose whether the multiple persona project is already in operation or discuss any related contracts." I'm sure you, in your neverending puppydog trust of our government's good-will, could only take that to mean that the programs were discontinued.

If you think the DoD would encourage its workers to use social media, and would not be willing to utilize sockpuppet software it had already paid for on Americans--at the very least after 2013 when this sort of propaganda is now technically legal!--you're more naive than anything else you've said thus far could possibly let on.

So, it was not done by a go

Chris Howden and John Plumb are the author and approver (respectively) from Lockheed..... Chris and John are lousy scientists.

The kindest way I can figure it is that the driver simply disables disk IO... hence there may be a small power savings from the lack of writes. Less kindly, they happened to measure lower power, and are reporting experimental noise as a solid result (see www-plan.cs.colorado.edu/diwan/asplos09.pdf for instance). We have no error bars (or even a # of runs), so it really isn't possible to say, but disabling disk writes could conceivably reduce power draw. The methodology section is sketchy enough to make solid conclusions impossible; the reporting of experimental details is worse.

Of course, this doesn't (and they admit it) stop me from hacking them in RAM... nor does it stop persistent firmware attacks (e.g. http://www.wired.com/2015/02/n...), nor does it stop me from trapping to ring 0, then trapping to SMM, then just ignoring their F*ING CODE BECAUSE I"'M IN SMM MODE BITCH!!! I GOTZ MY OWNZ ATA CODEZ

Or something.. I'd recommend just cutting the write-enable line on an old IDE drive, or rebooting periodically and running Tripwire from non-writable media (CD?). It's likely cheaper, and probably just as effective.

Construction work? Try this...

http://www.wired.com/2012/09/b...

Do enough of it, and the module construction itself can be automated and robotized. Or seen modern shipbuilding these days? Prefab modules assembled and welded by robots.

And so what if there's still "a lot" (weasel words) of labor around that. There's still less of it, and every decrease cascades into additional hits on labor. See the following piece on the potential impact of robot trucks on the long-haul trucking industry.

https://medium.com/basic-incom...

http://www.wired.com/2015/02/r... It was authenticated in his own journal found on his seized laptop.

It's called Keynesian economics. A 1930's work program to fix America's crumbling infrastructure would do wonders for the economy. Please educate yourself and pick up a shovel.

I've read the transcript that discusses his attempted hits, and it seems like he was supporting it. Whether it's enough to send him to prison for life, I'm not sure, IANAL, but he certainly wasn't innocent.

That being said, as they didn't allow it in the trial, it shouldn't be brought up in sentencing.

Who bought it from.. wait for it.. Cisco of USA :) http://www.wired.com/2008/05/l... - in case you want extra sources :)

Indeed - here's essentially the same article from 2003: http://archive.wired.com/wired...

Exactly, how is this any different than black boxes on airplanes? It isn't.

It's more invasive and personal than a blackbox. The NTSB wants cameras in cockpits of planes, but the pilots don't want them.

That's a great point. I also think it means at the current level and depth of knowledge we need to refine what it means to have a correlation.

From http://www.wired.com/2013/02/b...: 'Well, if I generate (by simulation) a set of 200 variables — completely random and totally unrelated to each other — with about 1,000 data points for each, then it would be near impossible not to find in it a certain number of “significant” correlations of sorts. But these correlations would be entirely spurious.'

Probably 'significance' needs to be larger the higher the number of variables in the system.

A great disaster has been averted!

Wired has it.

http://www.wired.com/2012/08/f...

Microwave is faster than fiber.

That's only true of the over the air rate, which matters a lot when you're talking about one hop, but isn't worth anything when you have to repeat the signal. The kind of network proposed would be several orders of magnitude worse than what we have at present because each radio repeater would increase latency more than the total injected in the much longer fiber runs.

http://www.wired.com/2012/08/f...

Microwave is faster than fiber.

If the government entity receives no unfair treatment and has to play by the same rules as every other company

Begging the question, aren't you? A giant "if"...

It is pretty bad, when local governments keep would-be challengers of private companies out. When it is the municipality itself, that's running it, things can only be worse — because, infamously, you can not fight city hall. Very simply, if the town has expertise to run an ISP, why wouldn't not those people form a private company to do it? And if they don't, their establishing a governmental ISP anyway will preclude anybody with a clue from ever setting up shop...

It is like Slashdot's earlier obsession with "Municipal WiFi" has not taught anybody anything...

How about shooting some tethers at it and deploying a counter-weight (rocket-powered?) to the object to swing it out of orbit? Make it into a Bola?

David French proposes Trajectory Diversion of an Earth-Threatening Asteroid via Massive, Elastic Tether-Ballast System [2010], although the time frame for the large objects he modeled was upwards of a decade. But IF you do have decades and the materials challenges of the tether (bluntly pointed out in Wired Magazine [2009]) are solved, it offers a low-tech solution that would not require constant vigilance or active control.

Or a massive light saber flung with a cosmic atlatl.

There is no evidence of significant voter fraud anywhere, that's why voter ID proponents never cite any real cases. The only problems with corruption of the voting system occurs when the votes are counted, or measures to deny people the ability to vote.

The modern day floppy-raid.

It's too expensive to buy at that volume and not yet proven.

2012 called. http://www.wired.com/2012/06/f...

Yes, consoles have consistent hardware but that doesn't mean much. That just means you have one version of the operating system with one set of drivers that are slightly better debugged than what the PC people deal with. So what.

Some things differ between video card manufacturers. NVIDIA GPUs are more efficient at some things, AMD at others. This is why Bitcoin miners preferred AMD before mining switched to FPGAs and ASICs: AMD's shader instruction set was more efficient at SHA-1 than NVIDIA's. And different video cards support different forms of texture compression. A console guarantees a shader ABI and a texture format, so you can ship precompiled shaders and compressed textures on disc. Console operating systems also tend to be far lighter than contemporary PC operating systems, so you can fit a lot more into the same 64 MB of RAM (Xbox era), 512 MB of RAM (Xbox 360 era), or 8 GB of RAM (Xbox One era).

I'm just saying that there is a net gain if the xbox is actually just a streamlined subsidized by licenses gaming PC.

Is it a "net gain" for end users not to be able to find worthwhile games among the self-published derivative amateur crap that Nintendo has in the past compared to the rejects on American Idol ? Because that's what floods Apple's App Store, which costs a developer $1000 for the hardware plus $100 per year.

Discovery of worthwhile apps is ultimately a search problem. Consoles have traditionally solved it by whitelisting only the best apps. Mobile has left it unsolved. How would you recommend to solve it?

The reason things are the way they are is because of console history.

Such as the flood of crapps that the Atari 2600 got in 1983, which turned North American retailers and end users off of video gaming entirely until 1985 (NYC)/1986 (nationwide) when Nintendo introduced its NES console with a whitelist mechanism to ensure that the worst products don't occupy valuable shelf space or player attention.

[The game console] is a legacy business model from a time when gaming PCs didn't really exist

The Commodore 64 was what you'd call a "gaming PC" in the early 1980s. Its graphics were better than ColecoVision, almost as detailed as NES. Its main fault was long loading times because most developers stuck to disk or (worse) cassette tape instead of cartridge.

I suspect [Microsoft would] be hit with more monopoly lawsuits were they [to fully unify Xbox with Windows]

I don't see how. Companies like Valve and Sony would be free to do the same thing. Steam OS is based on Debian GNU/Linux, and the Orbis OS that powers PlayStation 4 is based on FreeBSD.

This article claims that the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Green Bank, WV, has the "cafeteria's microwave oven is kept in a shielded cage" and "Large chambers designed to absorb radio waves - including a 5,000-square-foot conference room - have been built to make sure that, as Sizemore tells it, "radiation generated in the building stays in the building."

I visited NRAO once and got to drive a diesel '69 Checker cab (no spark plugs).

"Technology moves very quickly these days. Humans still don't. How about building a transit system that lets me get from new york to california in under EIGHT HOURS! then you can work on mars." Erm... We have one. It is called the airplane. They're operated by these amazing things called companies, for profit. New York to California is easy as pie. It's even more efficient than driving there! http://www.wired.com/2015/04/d...

8pen "spiral gestures" always seemed to be a fair approach which involved the least amount of finger re-lifting. Then it kinda just disappeared... http://www.wired.com/2010/11/h... http://www.8pen.com/

Just add a virtual nose: http://www.wired.com/2015/04/r...

Google is your friend.

Took all of 5 seconds to find examples like this from Wired.

The first link in the list has this regarding CAFE regulations of the time:

Domestic automakers predicted that fuel economy improvements would require a fleet primarily of subcompacts. In 1974, a Ford executive testified that the standards could “result in a Ford product line consisting . . . of all sub- Pinto-sized vehicles.”

The movie "Gravity" actually went to some care to depict their black hole correctly. See the picture here. The ring passing horizontally across the front of the black hole is the accretion disk. The ring *around* the black hole is the far side of the accretion disk, gravitationally lensed around the black hole.

Most everyone is commenting about better security software, firewalls, VPNs, encryption, and all that shit. Isn't the article about employee training?

For example: call up a bank. Try to get the balance on someone's account. This is a task well within reason for the person on the other end of the phone, ASSUMING it is your account, right? That's the point of employee training. The human element is the weakest element of any security system. What training do these employees need in order to not leak out your private information to any random person who calls in? Is simply stating your name on the account enough? Is there more verification steps required?

An example of social engineering security policies at various companies to the extreme that can happen:
http://www.wired.com/2012/08/a...

Is the world safer?

Yes. The revelations, and public reactions to them (the real public reaction as expressed in the marketplace, not whatever jaw-flapping occurs in response to some inane telemarkepollster call) have led to security improvements. The fact that it has also led to the entertaining spectacle of useless bureaucrats running around pissing and moaning and whining and generally making fools of themselves in public is just a bonus.

That's where government's legitimate role begins: by regulating or breaking up oligopolies and monopolies, so that there can be competition in the marketplace.

Oh, you mean like this?

Before building out new networks, Internet Service Providers (ISPs) must negotiate with local governments for access to publicly owned “rights of way” so they can place their wires above and below both public and private property. ISPs also need “pole attachment” contracts with public utilities so they can rent space on utility poles for above-ground wires, or in ducts and conduits for wires laid underground.

The problem? Local governments and their public utilities charge ISPs far more than these things actually cost. For example, rights of way and pole attachments fees can double the cost of network construction.

So the real bottleneck isn’t incumbent providers of broadband, but incumbent providers of rights-of-way. These incumbents — the real monopolists — also have the final say on whether an ISP can build a network. They determine what hoops an ISP must jump through to get approval.

This reduces the number of potential competitors who can profitably deploy service — such as AT&T’s U-Verse, Google Fiber, and Verizon FiOS. The lack of competition makes it easier for local governments and utilities to charge more for rights of way and pole attachments.

(Source: Wired)