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Can't live with em.. can't live without em.

I'd love to know who to attribute this quote to --I think it's Frank Herbert, but was never able to verify it after some modest searching: The purpose of science fiction isn't necessarily to predict, but sometime to prevent.

That is nothing compared to the money it took to design and fab the chips, and most of that money was fronted by HP, http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/02/hp-itanium/ .
Given the production costs and the number of customers using it, so it was always a high cost chip with mediocre performance.
Intel would rather shut down thoughs fabs and make more x86 ships which make them more money.

Unfortunately it became a legend for all of the wrong reasons. Billions of dollars have been sunk into it over the years and many lawsuits have been filed over it demise by vendors desperate to get out of it or force another vendor to stay in it.

http://www.eweek.com/servers/hp-to-seek-4-billion-in-damages-from-oracle-over-itanium/
http://news.cnet.com/Allies-pledge-10-billion-to-boost-Itanium/2100-1006_3-6031773.html
http://www.masslive.com/news/index.ssf/2013/09/hudson_intel_plant_closing_wil.html

Unfortunately sales never came close to the billions of dollars that have been sunk into it, and it has been that way for years:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/02/28/itanium_04_sales/
http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/02/hpearnings/
http://www.zdnet.com/photos/charts-mining-itanium/21115

I'm sure someone has a comparison of how much money has been invested compared to how much money has been made in sales. I might be mistaken, but from what I've been reading from the beginning Itanium has never come close to breaking even for hardware or software sales. Certainly companies like HP and Oracle spent millions of dollars on their lawsuit trying to get out Itanium.

Itanium has always been nothing more than a desperate multi-billion dollar effort to break free from the chains of x86.

Among other things this scheme sounds like it falls into the "penny gap". There is a big psychological difference between free, like volunteer donations to open source projects, and cheap, such as these small bribes. See here for a fascinating overview.

Contrary to what you think, they are pissed about both, and more so about the US population because it consists of their voters ...

You mean the same US population that had access to stories like this, http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/03/ff_nsadatacenter/all/, well over a year prior to Snowden yet still managed to be ignorant?

Nah, I don't think the government is that worried about the general populous.

DARPA was working on something similar to this. It was a special glove that actively drew blood to the surface of the skin on your hand and cooled it:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/15.03/bemore.html
Looks like someone managed to commercialize it: http://forum.slowtwitch.com/cgi-bin/gforum.cgi?post=4495810

Anyway, your hands and toes are already your body's natural radiators, since they have a relatively high surface-area to volume ratio. Your body can already regulate its temperature naturally by pumping more blood into the capillaries near the surface of the skin when it needs to cool off more. As it mentions in the Wired article, simply applying a cold heat sink won't really work, since your body tends to draw blood circulation away from contact with cold surfaces, so you'd also need the pump or something to force the blood circulation back towards the heat sink.

When I do martial arts, I find I get the best cooling by simply swinging my hands back and forth. That gives me forced convection through my fingers, combined with enhanced evaporative cooling of my sweaty palms, while the extra centripetal acceleration draws blood out closer to my fingertips.

There's another similar body hack for those of us with trouble regulating your temperature while sleeping and tend to overheat and start sweating under your blankets: simply sleep with your hands and/or feet sticking out from under the blanket. This will let your body better regulate its core temperature using its natural mechanisms of pumping more blood closer to the skin for more cooling, or drawing blood away from the skin to retain heat and maintain proper core temperature. Hey, it's this "one simple weird trick" for better sleep, on the internet... who would have thunk it?

One black swan is all fine and dandy, at least compared to dragons

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/07/genetics-of-iq/

Why does a country need coal to become industrialized? This comes to mind:

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/10/kamwamba-windmill/

Obvious recycling alternators from old cars is not a solution that scales well enough to industrialize a nation, but at the same time this was being done by a teenager with only rudimentary knowledge of engineering.

The US aspect of "raise some civil liberties issues" is well known over a few cases going back many years (say mid 1980's) DNS.
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/06/warrantless-gps-monitoring-scotus/
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/08/gps-tracking-unconstitutional/
Its not bias, its just reality, the English language used to describe objects, actions, physics and past US legal history.

The US aspect of "raise some civil liberties issues" is well known over a few cases going back many years (say mid 1980's) DNS.
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/06/warrantless-gps-monitoring-scotus/
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/08/gps-tracking-unconstitutional/
Its not bias, its just reality, the English language used to describe objects, actions, physics and past US legal history.

As much as it's fun to make fun of him now, there are 2 things to remember: 1) Apple was in pretty bad shape in 1997 -- a year before the iMac, 4 years before the iPod. 2) He's the CEO of the competition -- what would you expect him to say? "They're in trouble, but Steve is a great guy, he's done some creative things in the past, they should stay the course, work hard on making great products, and maybe someday they'll wipe up the floor with us!"

It's not like he's the only CEO to ever do this.

Exhibit A:

Clark is not afraid to publicly dis a company like Apple, much as Steve Jobs once mocked IBM.

"Apple," Jim Clark will sigh, as if he were talking about a horse on its way to the glue factory. "They're not doing anything... Apple blew it."

Then, with a dismissive wave of his hand, and just the hint of a grin: "I think they're in serious trouble."

-- SGI founder & chairman Jim Clark in Wired, 1994

Exhibit B: Steve Ballmer laughing at the iPhone

His complaints about the iPhone were somewhat valid at the time, but 1) he forgot that people WILL pay for a good product, and 2) if he wasn't aware of how Apple refined the iPod over the previous six years -- making it better and cheaper every year -- he's dumb as a rock. Oh wait, he was aware:

Business Week: How much money will you lose per Zune?

Ballmer: None. Apple put the hammer down there, dropped the price down to $249. If they had been $299, it would have been nicer. They have the advantage of scale. So we're at $249, too. We don't make a lot of money, not to start out.

So I just mark that down to "standard CEO bluster." Or maybe he really was that stupid.

next year. Nice! Where do I preorder both? http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/news/2004/03/62867

Timeline of the anti-trust case:

"May 18, 1998: The big day. The U.S. Justice Department and 20 state attorneys general file an antitrust suit against Microsoft, charging the company with abusing its market power to thwart competition, including Netscape.

September 6, 2001: U.S. Justice Department says it no longer seeks the breakup of Microsoft and wants to find a quick remedy in the antitrust case. "

Timeline of Microsoft political donations.

wired has an article that could clarify this for you: in a world where hardware companies are pushing their own brand of OS and app store, selling the OS is becoming very hard. rather than accepting this without a struggle, MS may give away RT with surface and sell x86 Windows as usual for as long as possible.

"Part of whatâ(TM)s going on here is that the low-cost mobile ecosystem has changed the way people think about operating system software. Smartphones and tablets have left traditional computers in the dust, and their operating systems and apps are overwhelmingly free. Upgrades to Appleâ(TM)s iOS platform â" which powers the companyâ(TM)s iPads tablets and iPhones â" have long been free, as have new versions of Googleâ(TM)s Android mobile OS. Like Microsoft, Google supplies operating systems to outside hardware makers, but unlike Microsoft, it doesnâ(TM)t charge them for the software. Phone and tablet makers can load Android on their devices for free."

http://www.wired.com/business/2013/10/apple-ends-paid-oses/

Read this article. Still looks like a fishing expedition to me, regardless of what he posted. Racial profiling? http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/10/fbi-tracking-device/

4k was touted in the original Mac Pro announcement, and it has two high-end graphics cards. That's why I was hoping for the announcement of a 4k Apple display today. I guess it didn't happen. In fact here's a wired article from 30 minutes ago on the very topic. I use my current MacBook Pro on a 30" Dell monitor so I am not a brand purist. But since a 4k display on a laptop is cutting edge I thought a vendor-supported configuration would be smoothest. I've had pretty spotty results driving dual dvi max resolution from laptops in the past - not just performance, but even supporting it at all.

Just like bankers who own a free option — where they make the profits and transfer losses to others – researchers have the ability to pick whatever statistics confirm their beliefs (or show good results) and then ditch the rest.

Big-data researchers have the option to stop doing their research once they have the right result. In options language: The researcher gets the “upside” and truth gets the “downside.” It makes him antifragile, that is, capable of benefiting from complexity and uncertainty — and at the expense of others.

But beyond that, big data means anyone can find fake statistical relationships, since the spurious rises to the surface. This is because in large data sets, large deviations are vastly more attributable to variance (or noise) than to information (or signal). It’s a property of sampling: In real life there is no cherry-picking, but on the researcher’s computer, there is. Large deviations are likely to be bogus.

A lot of the NSA debate right now is not based in any papers but is about "known unknowns" as Rumsfeld would have said: we think we know that the NSA had some sort of major crypto breakthrough in recent years (source, dismissed by Schneier back then but taken quite seriously now) but we don't know anything more specific than that.

So the question becomes "What encryption methods are most likely to be affected by this 'enormous breakthrough'?" and that's not a question you will find answered in any scientific paper. The answers of people like Schneier are ultimately based on intuition that has been fed with hypothetical answers to fuzzy questions like "What encryption methods look the most vulnerable?", "What encryption methods are sexy targets?", "What areas of maths are sexy fields of research?", "In what areas of maths might public academia have blind spots?", "Which implementations/standards could be manipulated without being too obvious?", ....

Schneier comes to the conclusion that asymmetric encryption is more likely to be broken than symmetric encryption as (a) asymmetric encryption standards often rely on magic numbers that someone has to choose, (b) asymmetric encryption methods have become extremely widespread in past years and make for attractive targets and (c) the idea of breaking some asymmetric encryption method is sexy as hell.

But that's just a hunch of his, nothing you can ever prove or disprove. Other people will find equally convincing reasons to argue the opposite (for example, there seems to be quite a bit incremental progress in breaking symmetric encryption methods but hardly any in breaking asymmetric ones) and at the end of the day all good reasons and probabilities might be for naught if some NSA cryptanalyst just had a most unlikely brilliant idea and was somehow able to get the resources to follow up on it.

Those documents are linked to at the bottom of a Wired article that seemingly pits David against Goliath. How is it that they can reference a source, and still not get the story right?

Screw the 'Faux News' complainers, there is no media outlet that is reporting the real story here.

It's a sad sad state of affairs.

The legal briefs filed so far look like they are about to hand the government its own ass in respect to seizing SSL keys.

They mainly look like some people will disappear.

Donate to Lavabit legal fund

The legal briefs filed so far look like they are about to hand the government its own ass in respect to seizing SSL keys.

How so? The filing is only asking that the contempt charges be reversed, and the govt to turn over any SSL keys in their possession (like you trust them not to keep a copy?) They might get the contempt charge reversed, but I wouldn't expect any other sort of compensation. Setting a precedence that the original demand for the encryption keys was unlawful is about all they can hope for.

If you are deliberately killing innocent people with drones, you aren't doing it right. That is why they don't deliberately target innocent people.

Pakistani General - Actually the drones are awesome

Donate to Lavabit legal fund

The legal briefs filed so far look like they are about to hand the government its own ass in respect to seizing SSL keys.

The docx/Office Open XML format [wikipedia.org] was standardized, and the specification is open. This part has been solved already.

Docx/OOXML is a fake standard, pushed through by Microsoft by bribery and packing the ISO committees. OOXML is full of "specifications" of the form "like Word does it". Spelling this in XML does not change a thing: the formats remain as tied to the closed and arbitrary program code as they ever were.

I can only assume the reason the CFAA doesn't apply is that these systems don't "connect" to the vehicles' devices is any meaningful way, but rather merely passively listen to them as they go by.

Naa, even "receiving" passive unencrypted broadcast signals that are intended to be sent to everyone around is illegal. Remember Google doing the exact same thing?

Google, in seeking a dismissal, claimed it is was not illegal to intercept data from unencrypted, or non-password-protected Wi-Fi networks. Google said open Wi-Fi networks are "radio communications" like AM/FM radio, citizens' band and police and fire bands, and are "readily accessible" to the general public and exempt from the Wiretap Act - a position the appeals court rejected. Today's decision means that Google's main defense to wiretapping allegations is out the door.

quote

The only difference is if you work for law enforcement or not. If you don't, the CFAA applies and you committed a felony. If you do however, none of the laws apply and thus it is legal.

Even the crime of out right murder is legal if you work for law enforcement. Of course the CFAA, which covers a lesser crime, won't apply either.

We kids have no idea what its like upgrading thousands of computers at work because unlike you, grandpa, we use [Ansible / Salt / Chef / CFEngine / Puppet]. And making changes to thousands and thousands of machines takes seconds to send out to all of them. A bit more time to verify, and any that are stuck can be rebuilt from scratch in a few more moments without even worrying about why it didn't work the first time.

Second point: why would you need some kind of interface to your firewall rules. Its a text file. Learn the syntax and keep in in version control. Then have the back end of version control push the change out through the programs that I just mentioned.

You're getting old. Its probably time to retire.

Whoosh ... read a little below on the comments section :-)

While there is an easier way to specifically produce Pu-238, it is a byproduct of Pu-239 production.

All the while, NASA's Plutonium shortage is threatening the future of deep space exploration.

What about using this to make scientific-grade plutonium for ourselves? There has been some news lately that the US has only a few dozen kilograms of non-weapons-grade plutonium left, putting the future of NASA's deep-space exploration program. If we had access to a dependable supplies, we might be able to really think about missions to Europa, Enceladus, and other places in the solar system where life may exist.

Linux doesn't kill people, Windows NT kills people!

(Or at least it kills ships... got to watch out for those divide by zero errors!)

What next? Complaining about hidden compartment in desks?

Complaining? There's at least one man in jail for building hidden compartments.

"I built these compartments just like any other business that I had, doing stereo business, customizing needs to peopleâ(TM)s needs in their vehicles, and I admit there was probably some irresponsibility of building these things, but I was onlyâ"I just figured it would be, like, as long as I didnâ(TM)t know what was going onâ"and donâ(TM)t want to knowâ"there was no law against it ⦠If I had known there was a law against it, I wouldnâ(TM)t be here. If there was a law that says these compartments are illegal to build, I would not build them. If I had known this was going to happen to me, I wouldnâ(TM)t have done it."
...

Above all, Anaya seems baffled that he will likely spend the next two decades in prison for doing something that isnâ(TM)t specifically forbidden by federal law. âoeIf it takes me never building another compartment again for me to get out of here, thatâ(TM)s what Iâ(TM)m willing to do,â he says. âoeBut I think I should be able to.â

http://www.wired.com/opinion/2013/10/a-necessary-evil-what-it-takes-for-democracy-to-survive-surveillance/

turns out on the professor's web page Emmanuel Candes, there is a link to Some old talks that shows an example of the kind of transforms / cleanup they're talking about (they're lengthy PDFs, but worth skimming if you're curious about the kidns of images). Nothing like real world pictures; synthetic examples with some shapes (almost like something you could mock up with MS Paint), but the premise is rather interesting.
And I just saw this like on the Candes web page above: this does have some interesting more real-world pictures. Fill in the Blanks: Using Math to Turn Lo-Res Datasets Into Hi-Res Samples (wired, 2010)

Something you don't need... until you do.

Shockingly, most everyone doesn't expect to be laid up in the hospital. Hence: you being horrified at buying insurance "because you don't need it."

The human brain just isn't very good at judging risk.

http://www.wired.com/politics/security/commentary/securitymatters/2007/03/SECURITY_MATTERS0322

You missed the major selling point for the Cadillac, which is touted in an unbelievable series of cliches ("sexy sophistication" anyone?) here/a>. It has whopping 207hp and 295 lb of torque vs. the meager 416hp and 443lb of the Tesla. That's going to make people looking for an expensive sports car run to G with bundles.

The US gov cannot undo what is now out and been "quality" reading for so many.
Yes that "effective mass surveillance" and file "change" is going to be the key :)
If its totally wiped at the CIA end 'now' you know its an on going operation.
If the change was logged and the work group who did it is found but gets promoted/contract extended - you know its an on going operation.
Or they find a staff member who was on duty and question them?
Some digital version of the "took a phone call and left her foot on a pedal that may have caused the erasure"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rose_Mary_Woods
Richard Nixon's Last Secret: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/10.07/nixon_pr.html

Yep.

Just Ask Zediva. They did the same thing with DVD's and got shot down.

Streaming Movie Service Zediva Pays Hollywood $1.8M, Shuts Down

I think you forgot to take your pill today.

Nope. Look at GE... They get understand.

4 years ago, Slashdot ran this exact same story http://science.slashdot.org/story/10/03/02/0242224/recovering-data-from-noise about Wired running this exact same story: http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/02/ff_algorithm/all/1

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/03/petraeus-tv-remote/ "CIA Chief: We’ll Spy on You Through Your Dishwasher" so expect to see a lot of new, cheap, "always on" networked devices ready for the US market :)

While we might joke, consider the Xfinity home security system. Cameras and controls, and sensors. http://www.comcast.com/home-security/equipment.html

Put a camera in every room, and what do you get? Bibbity Bobbity, Boo. No spying through dishwashers needed.

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/03/petraeus-tv-remote/
"CIA Chief: We’ll Spy on You Through Your Dishwasher" so expect to see a lot of new, cheap, "always on" networked devices ready for the US market :)

How the heck is text messaging not included in this list?

SMS messages are piggybacked onto existing beacon probes between the cell network and the handset. They cost virtually NOTHING to the carrier. They are 99.9999999% profit. The fact that the general public isn't intelligently adopting iMessages and Google Hangouts for this reason alone is silly. I see the argument though... Short term, the price gouging that occurs in SMS and MMS messages will simply transfer over to the data plans. Long term, the moment SMS is no longer a contract-signing focus, the carriers will become competitive with the data plan fees/restrictions. That's how I see the future anyways. :)

http://www.extremetech.com/mobile/141867-price-gouging-it-costs-more-to-send-a-text-message-on-earth-than-from-mars
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2008/12/text-messages-c/
http://www.forbes.com/sites/sethporges/2013/03/28/mobile-carrier-are-worried-about-free-messaging-apps-good/


Just sayin'

A few months back

And there appears to be methane snow coating Titan: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titan_(moon) Rain too, by the looks of things: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/03/titan-april-showers/

Of the nine U.S. Unified Combatant Commands, AFRICOM (United States Africa Command) is the newest. Both W and Obama have expressed significant interest in expanding the role of U.S. operations in Africa, for purposes of counter-terorrism and a desire to improve stability (ironically, special operations forces are historically used to invoke instability in a nation-state). The Obama operations in Libya during its civil war was actually AFRICOM's coming-out party, its first chance to be a real boy.

Since then, AFRICOM has moved forward in supporting policy roles by expanding U.S. military facilities, particularly those supporting drone operations, on the continent. this implied that special operations were the next step--why just spy on a terrorist cell when you can try and capture it's leader, too?--so learning about these events is not a big surprise. However, the relative failure of these efforts (at least the Somalia operation--the Tripoli operation may or may not be a disappointment at the policy level, depending on how sincere their protests are) is something of a black mark on AFRICOM's plans. There is some serious head-scratching going on, I am certain, and the role of tactical operations is likely being re-evaluated.

Yeah, the Libyan government is so irate. Just like how Pakistan publicly bitches about drone strikes but behind closed doors couldn't be happier. http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/03/pakistani-general-actually-the-drones-are-awesome/

The Libyan government is the most liberal and pro western friendly government in the middle east. I do not know where you get this? ... you do know Ghadaffi is dead right and the rebels won?

He might need some of that hoard to pay for his defense. I don't know that going cheap on this will be in his interest.

According to Wired he's using a public defender.

Remember, Ulbricht was living in a shared apartment and working out of a library. If his defense is that he's not the guy running Silk Road, it would be suspicious for a man in his situation to suddenly have an expensive defense team.

Maybe he could start a Kickstarter to fund... well, not his defense, because that's not a creative work, so to speak, but a DOCUMENTARY about his defense, including people who could just check by to see if he was dead yet.

He might need some of that hoard to pay for his defense. I don't know that going cheap on this will be in his interest.

According to Wired he's using a public defender.

Remember, Ulbricht was living in a shared apartment and working out of a library. If his defense is that he's not the guy running Silk Road, it would be suspicious for a man in his situation to suddenly have an expensive defense team.

From TFA:

People hosting openPDS at home would always know when entities like the NSA request their data, because the law requires a warrant to access data stored in a private home.

They disregard the constitution and you want them to respect the law? Indeed the government will not physically get into your house without a warrant, but we know they have no problem remotely hacking your computer.