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I just read them in the voice of the blue and pink unicorns in this documentary about Candy Mountain.

Chaaarlie! It's a magical liopleurodon, Chaaarlie! The Republicans hate liopleurodons, Chaaarlie!

repost (Herblock is on vacation)

I know autonomous cars will be "oh so safe". At the moment I'm just as worried about what these things will make people do to people.

[OPENING OVERTURE ]

Your driver liability insurance policy has come up for review. We have been recently been acquired by AAAA, the quadruple-A company -- the "Autonomous AAA of the future" and what that means for you as a member is -- it has never been easier to upgrade to an a-car! Financing is available! [link] Due to increasing pressure in the political, legal and underwriters' arenas, we regret to inform you that the cost of your driver policy will be rising this quarter in order to begin collection of fees for the Federal National Driver Insurance Pool, and rising at a steady rate thereafter. It will continue to rise over time despite your [good to excellent] driving record. Now that the Autonomous Vehicle Safety Act is law, and blanket liability accident investigation procedures have been approved by Congress, the legal liability of autonomous vehicles is capped nationwide. While this grants the manufactures freedom from risk of direct criminal penalty and potentially unlimited civil liability, it places human drivers in a difficult position. Most a-car accidents will, of historical necessity rather than actual circumstances, be "no-fault". Since human drivers and any victims claiming injury from them are still obliged to use traditional law enforcement and legal means of redress -- and the cost of these continues to rise -- underwriters are pressuring insurance companies to drop human drivers altogether. We do not intend to do this, but we can no longer provide policies for extended periods. Your new maximum policy period is now [one month]. Thank you for insuring with AAAA.

[INTERMISSION \]

Meanwhile...

Dear editor: DRIVERS cause accidents. A-CARS prevent them. That's what the billboard says -- and if Howard County Referendum passes this September manually operated cars will soon be a thing of the past here. What started as a discussion at a hearing after last year's tragic accident grew into a full heated debate, and to think it all started with the parents who provide their children with a-cars pinning the blame squarely on other peoples' children. But then, after co-opting the national campaign with its slick literature and canned answers for everything -- NOW the fault is with human drivers themselves. And then in an astounding feat of lunacy they claim that it's only fair to place the blame on everybody. Not just the drunk, the aged or infirm, the inexperienced, the distracted or the just plain stupid. But no one's stupid in their book, we're just behind the times is all. They are like the drum majorettes of some utopian humanist parade. I say, SAVE US from these rich hippies, their weird toys and their broken ideals. Now I know a lot of these people, even like some of 'em, but aside from this national 'sideline the humans' campaign they're pushed at us (and WHO is paying for those TV spots I wonder) let's not forget that this debate started around kids. Kids who need to learn to drive as surely as they need to learn to push a pen and spell their name. It's like swimming, who would discourage their own children from practice in swimming, to become expert swimmers, because water is dangerous?? Every kid will need to drive some day, or suffer harm or hardship by not knowing how. These a-car parents even forbid their kids from riding in cars being driven by folks they've grown up with, trusted for years. At the parent conferences we even sit on opposite sides of the table, we can barely be civilized even, because this crap has gotten so deep. Well I say they are making a big mistake and don't seem

repost (Herblock is on vacation)

I know autonomous cars will be "oh so safe". At the moment I'm just as worried about what these things will make people do to people.

[OPENING OVERTURE ]

Your driver liability insurance policy has come up for review. We have been recently been acquired by AAAA, the quadruple-A company -- the "Autonomous AAA of the future" and what that means for you as a member is -- it has never been easier to upgrade to an a-car! Financing is available! [link] Due to increasing pressure in the political, legal and underwriters' arenas, we regret to inform you that the cost of your driver policy will be rising this quarter in order to begin collection of fees for the Federal National Driver Insurance Pool, and rising at a steady rate thereafter. It will continue to rise over time despite your [good to excellent] driving record. Now that the Autonomous Vehicle Safety Act is law, and blanket liability accident investigation procedures have been approved by Congress, the legal liability of autonomous vehicles is capped nationwide. While this grants the manufactures freedom from risk of direct criminal penalty and potentially unlimited civil liability, it places human drivers in a difficult position. Most a-car accidents will, of historical necessity rather than actual circumstances, be "no-fault". Since human drivers and any victims claiming injury from them are still obliged to use traditional law enforcement and legal means of redress -- and the cost of these continues to rise -- underwriters are pressuring insurance companies to drop human drivers altogether. We do not intend to do this, but we can no longer provide policies for extended periods. Your new maximum policy period is now [one month]. Thank you for insuring with AAAA.

[INTERMISSION \]

Meanwhile...

Dear editor: DRIVERS cause accidents. A-CARS prevent them. That's what the billboard says -- and if Howard County Referendum passes this September manually operated cars will soon be a thing of the past here. What started as a discussion at a hearing after last year's tragic accident grew into a full heated debate, and to think it all started with the parents who provide their children with a-cars pinning the blame squarely on other peoples' children. But then, after co-opting the national campaign with its slick literature and canned answers for everything -- NOW the fault is with human drivers themselves. And then in an astounding feat of lunacy they claim that it's only fair to place the blame on everybody. Not just the drunk, the aged or infirm, the inexperienced, the distracted or the just plain stupid. But no one's stupid in their book, we're just behind the times is all. They are like the drum majorettes of some utopian humanist parade. I say, SAVE US from these rich hippies, their weird toys and their broken ideals. Now I know a lot of these people, even like some of 'em, but aside from this national 'sideline the humans' campaign they're pushed at us (and WHO is paying for those TV spots I wonder) let's not forget that this debate started around kids. Kids who need to learn to drive as surely as they need to learn to push a pen and spell their name. It's like swimming, who would discourage their own children from practice in swimming, to become expert swimmers, because water is dangerous?? Every kid will need to drive some day, or suffer harm or hardship by not knowing how. These a-car parents even forbid their kids from riding in cars being driven by folks they've grown up with, trusted for years. At the parent conferences we even sit on opposite sides of the table, we can barely be civilized even, because this crap has gotten so deep. Well I say they are making a big mistake and don't seem

it will be the apple fan boys who will have to shell out for an overly expensive bit of wire.

But they make the coolest bits of wire...

Look at the prevailing atmospheric vorticity of the area, place a bunch of counter-vorticity-inducing stators around the biggest leak (just a few percent cant on them is sufficient) and light it up. The updraft will pull air in through the stators inducing continuous vorticity that will form a fire tornado miles into the atmosphere, totally oxidizing the methane and anything else that might burn in the gas.

Once the fuel supply is cut off, the vortex may be self-sustaining due to the temperature difference between the ground and the upper troposphere. This is known as an Atmospheric Vortex Engine.

To turn it off, you turn the stators straight in thereby removing the vorticity and the vortex structure dissipates into a normal updraft.

Heeeey! It's Jimmy Two Times!

Does it work in Europe?
IBM UBA

The Trolley Problem is a red herring that distracts from the real danger: government remote-controlled detainment of political opponents, as depicted in Minority Report. Plus, any number of variations: script-kiddies hacking, drug cartel kidnapping, kidnapping/trafficking of women/children, murder-for-hire (drive off cliff), nation-state espionage and assassination. When major crimes, and not just credit card scams, become available to the push of a button, the risk threshold to the criminal is lowered for heinous crimes.

There's nothing to say but this.

No. Clinton ordered the banks to be more willing to write mortgages on STARTER HOMES for first time buyers who couldn't afford large down payments and had less than stellar credit (but not terroble).

In 2000 I got my first mortgage. I had to go FHA because I did not have a large enough down payment. No way would I have gotten the loan without STELLAR CREDIT. All FHA was doing was allowing zero down (which still cost about 6K in costs) but no way did they allow bad credit buyers. That didn't really get off the ground until 2004, thanks George W "A Home of Your Own" Bush. https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

I certainly don't want to install anything with "badger" in the name.

Privacy Badger doesn't care. Privacy Badger doesn't give a shit.

so that they depend on asset seizures to operate

[citation needed]

In fact, here's a policeman saying the exact opposite of what you are saying: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...

I'll even transcribe it for you: when asked what the police used those proceedings for, the answer given is that "we try not to use it on things we need to depend on" and "it gets you a toy, or anything you need".

...unless you consider a "margarita machine" something the police depends on to operate.

http://hackaday.com/2010/03/31...

http://hackaday.com/2013/03/14...

http://hackaday.com/2013/03/18...

http://www.extremetech.com/com...

https://www.avforums.com/threa...

Most any WiFi firmware artificially limits the radio -> http://www.qsl.net/kb9mwr/proj...

http://www.ilounge.com/index.p...

Whoa, your car has hidden features? https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Extra cores on your CPU? No way! http://www.bit-tech.net/hardwa...

Cripple phone features? Oh noes! https://www.techdirt.com/artic... https://www.techdirt.com/artic...

More than one HAM radio have been found to be subject to software tweaking for improvements in scan speed and frequencies covered.-> https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Got a RAID card? Some of them can be crossflashed to gain features BTW. Or you can pay thousands to the manufacturer for some features (*cough*PERC*cough*) http://www.servethehome.com/ib...

Gains can be had by flashing custom firmware to your DVD\BD RW drives but I didn't feel like spending any time past a cursory search to find this. http://binflash.cdfreaks.com/ http://www.rpc1.org/viewtopic.... http://dvrflash.rpc1.org/

Firmware being used in external HDD has also been found to be crippled vs a standard drive, this didn't used to always be the case....

Here's one that's just an upgrade with features the manufacturer didn't include (see also ANY Jailbreaking post ever)

http://lifehacker.com/find-out...
http://lifehacker.com/5942229/...
http://www.digitaltrends.com/p...

Oh look, your camera now supports RAW? Thought that was only for pro cameras not P&S pocket models...

I could go on and on with examples but suffice it to say yeah it DOES happen and it happens fairly often. It happens most often with system that have a full OS, often Linux, where a firmware flash can give you all sorts of features (OpenWRT or Tomato anyone?) but it also happens in cameras, lab bench tools, TVs, stereos, and just about anything else that is driven by software. Want more turbo boost in your car? Software baby! Want that printer to register an empty toner cartridge sooner? No problem!

Tired now, think I've made my point?

http://hackaday.com/2010/03/31...

http://hackaday.com/2013/03/14...

http://hackaday.com/2013/03/18...

http://www.extremetech.com/com...

https://www.avforums.com/threa...

Most any WiFi firmware artificially limits the radio -> http://www.qsl.net/kb9mwr/proj...

http://www.ilounge.com/index.p...

Whoa, your car has hidden features? https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Extra cores on your CPU? No way! http://www.bit-tech.net/hardwa...

Cripple phone features? Oh noes! https://www.techdirt.com/artic... https://www.techdirt.com/artic...

More than one HAM radio have been found to be subject to software tweaking for improvements in scan speed and frequencies covered.-> https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Got a RAID card? Some of them can be crossflashed to gain features BTW. Or you can pay thousands to the manufacturer for some features (*cough*PERC*cough*) http://www.servethehome.com/ib...

Gains can be had by flashing custom firmware to your DVD\BD RW drives but I didn't feel like spending any time past a cursory search to find this. http://binflash.cdfreaks.com/ http://www.rpc1.org/viewtopic.... http://dvrflash.rpc1.org/

Firmware being used in external HDD has also been found to be crippled vs a standard drive, this didn't used to always be the case....

Here's one that's just an upgrade with features the manufacturer didn't include (see also ANY Jailbreaking post ever)

http://lifehacker.com/find-out...
http://lifehacker.com/5942229/...
http://www.digitaltrends.com/p...

Oh look, your camera now supports RAW? Thought that was only for pro cameras not P&S pocket models...

I could go on and on with examples but suffice it to say yeah it DOES happen and it happens fairly often. It happens most often with system that have a full OS, often Linux, where a firmware flash can give you all sorts of features (OpenWRT or Tomato anyone?) but it also happens in cameras, lab bench tools, TVs, stereos, and just about anything else that is driven by software. Want more turbo boost in your car? Software baby! Want that printer to register an empty toner cartridge sooner? No problem!

Tired now, think I've made my point?

You Americans really need to change your laws so John Oliver can be President. He talked about this last year.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?... Does a good job of explaining and showing the police corruption related to this.

JATO are for beginners. There are far better ways to go fast.

http://jalopnik.com/5481005/vi...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

There's a third evil force (which I'm sure government and corporations are overjoyed about) pushing as hard as they can for censorship:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

A huge activist arm of the tech news media has, especially over the last year and a half, been to happy portay criticism and disagreement as "harassment" and "threats" as an excuse to censor and stifle discussion of the "wrong" opinions, especially about politics or lapses in their own journalistic ethics.

Motherboard Vice (the site linked in the summary) itself hypocritically silenced the masses by wiping out its own comments section, ensuring only themselves and approved plebians will have a voice on their site. Mad about too many readers fact-checking your insulting, baseless, click-bait articles? Problem solved. And now they have the gall to bemoan a loss of internet freedom? How come we didn't get a story posted about that, Slashdot?

For a bunch of fans and batteries they don't half talk a bunch of BS... "a revolution" and "so that you can achieve your dreams", i'm honestly not sure if this is form onion news or something from southpark.

One should never trust a newspaper's coverage of science. Some journalists don't care about the quality of studies and will often erroneously or intentionally oversimplify (or misrepresent) the implications of a study to suit a narrative they're invested in.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

There's an additional problem that comes as a consequence of this: wikipedia editors routinely categorise publications that align with their politics and ideology as reliable sources while discounting those who do not as unreliable. The result, particularly in "hot" topics is that you get a non-expert, politicised view of the science rather than a link to the study.

hahaaaa! the only reason i would want washing machines to be WIFI-enabled would be to hack them in order to see this sort of thing happen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... - the only problem being of course that if [by-default] insecure IoT enabled washing machines really DID end up like this, it would be totally and utterly unsafe. kids or animals in the same room as tens of thousands of washing machines all spinning at 5,000 RPM under remote-DDOS-mass-hacked-computer-control... generally bad and unfavourable en-masse outcome. still, sadly, i can genuinely foresee something like this actually happening. with resultant lawsuits, company directors being imprisoned for mass-murder, and, finally, then and ONLY then would laws be put in place which make it a criminal offense to not properly secure IoT devices. the sad thing is that we as tech-savvy people damn well know RIGHT NOW that such laws are critical and necessary, but that law-makers are flat-out ignorant of the dangers.

Hey Arca, take a tip from the WalkCar. Kill the narration, pick a good tune, and show your product doing something that is actually interesting. (water? obstacles? steps? a hill even?)

Yep, this vid is best explanation I've seen of what's going on:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Of course government and corporations want to control and censor the internet, but lately they've found support and allies among righteous authoritarians who pass themselves off as activists for the oppressed (when all they're really after is power).

If you ever encounter someone who thinks that only government censorship matters, show them how Reddit once actively opposed things like SOPA and PIPA. Then point out how CISA recently passed without a blip from them, and how they now actively shut down discussion of things like TPP.

Not that I disagree with the other commenters. As I said - it's like the world just went dark. Even /. just doesn't have the story flow which has been not only slowing, but becoming more derivative of the other sites I read. It all seems to be copy-paste, little real journalism anymore. In fact, it seems to me that outfits like Vice at least *originate* things once in awhile, not just copy from the wires who themselves no longer put many in the field. And it's not just "news", but science reporting (my gig is science), tech (same old, little innovation), and most of everything else I can think of at the moment. As if the stuff on social media was ever of great concern to any but the most shallow. To actual humans, it seems pretty boring and almost totally meaningless, except as a warning to "don't go there with your life, get a real one instead".

I read that as Erection Engineer but I'm mildly buzzed from a couple of drinks. That's an unusual state for me. I have an excuse. They are all being a bit loud, getting to know each other, and getting drunk so I have a minute.

Drunk people are incredibly annoying until I have a couple drinks myself. Why I loathe coming in late to a party.

I didn't have one but my older brother had a chemistry set that had all sorts of things they'd never even dream of letting a kid have in today's litigious society. It had a variety of acids, all sorts of stuff.

BAM! memory time kicks in. I had one of hose old school chemistry kits, and it had real actual chemicals, and real actual experiments. I hate to go into old guy mode, but as safety culture takes a tighter and tighter grip over the country, Chemistry kits have become lame, almost useless.

I'm expecting vinegar and baking soda reactions to be made illegal soon, and some brown skin kid arrested for doing one in a school science fair experiment as a teacher thinks it might be some terst explodey thing "Well, there were all these bubbles and stuff - and we just ca't be too careful these days!"

We used to buy black powder and use our empty BB gun's CO2 cartridges. We'd fill them up, tamp 'em down, throw in a waterproof fuse, and then cause hate and discontent with various inanimate things.

When we couldn't get into town to get black powder, a friend an I used to pry the tops off of bullets, and empty out the contents. Hope I didn't just make some safety culturists faint!

We had potato guns, paint can dust bombs, machetes, hatchets, saws, gasoline and a book of matches...

And we were learning things as well. Today's kids are in this weird world where safety culture is trying to insulate them from every possible source of injury. So they hit the teenage years with a weird sense of immortality mixed in with normal teenage rebellion, and no idea about this kinda stuff. So we get YouTube videos of teenagers sticking bottle rockets up their asses and lighting them https://www.youtube.com/watch?... , or taping firecrackers to their lips https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

and on and on. Not one of us stupid old time kids would ever do that, even if we stole some of Grandpa's beer and Wild Turkey, and took off to the woods with a box of M81's. We were hell on mailboxes, which was kinda bad. But the point is, we did happen to grow up without doing serious harm to ourselves.

I read that as Erection Engineer but I'm mildly buzzed from a couple of drinks. That's an unusual state for me. I have an excuse. They are all being a bit loud, getting to know each other, and getting drunk so I have a minute.

Drunk people are incredibly annoying until I have a couple drinks myself. Why I loathe coming in late to a party.

I didn't have one but my older brother had a chemistry set that had all sorts of things they'd never even dream of letting a kid have in today's litigious society. It had a variety of acids, all sorts of stuff.

BAM! memory time kicks in. I had one of hose old school chemistry kits, and it had real actual chemicals, and real actual experiments. I hate to go into old guy mode, but as safety culture takes a tighter and tighter grip over the country, Chemistry kits have become lame, almost useless.

I'm expecting vinegar and baking soda reactions to be made illegal soon, and some brown skin kid arrested for doing one in a school science fair experiment as a teacher thinks it might be some terst explodey thing "Well, there were all these bubbles and stuff - and we just ca't be too careful these days!"

We used to buy black powder and use our empty BB gun's CO2 cartridges. We'd fill them up, tamp 'em down, throw in a waterproof fuse, and then cause hate and discontent with various inanimate things.

When we couldn't get into town to get black powder, a friend an I used to pry the tops off of bullets, and empty out the contents. Hope I didn't just make some safety culturists faint!

We had potato guns, paint can dust bombs, machetes, hatchets, saws, gasoline and a book of matches...

And we were learning things as well. Today's kids are in this weird world where safety culture is trying to insulate them from every possible source of injury. So they hit the teenage years with a weird sense of immortality mixed in with normal teenage rebellion, and no idea about this kinda stuff. So we get YouTube videos of teenagers sticking bottle rockets up their asses and lighting them https://www.youtube.com/watch?... , or taping firecrackers to their lips https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

and on and on. Not one of us stupid old time kids would ever do that, even if we stole some of Grandpa's beer and Wild Turkey, and took off to the woods with a box of M81's. We were hell on mailboxes, which was kinda bad. But the point is, we did happen to grow up without doing serious harm to ourselves.

Reminds me of this Youtube video with the same title https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

In 1987, the PXL-2000, a toy black-and-white camcorder was produced that used standard audio cassettes. I remember being amazed when I saw advertisements on TV for it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

New Live Poll Lets Pundits Pander To Viewers In Real Time

How long until mexcian drug cartells manage to capture a drone and repurpose it for their own drug delivery. Like in the movie Intersteallar. https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Who used delivery drones first? Amazon? UPS? No, it's the drug dealers :-)

downed uavs are a big deal. they dont just crash one and forget about it. it gets found and recovered or blown up.

Yeah why can't it be cool and hip like Erlang!

Outlaw Psycho Bitch is the shit man! You will have women watch you code at alternative coffee shops and groupies guaranteed!!

Bah. That is lame compared to the purity of sound in having an actual full symphony orchestra to accompany you everywhere to satisfy one's assorted musical needs.

As soon as I read that, I thought of these:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Family guy Stweie following fat guys with a tuba. No commentary on yourself, just true live music!

Bah. That is lame compared to the purity of sound in having an actual full symphony orchestra to accompany you everywhere to satisfy one's assorted musical needs.

As soon as I read that, I thought of these:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Family guy Stweie following fat guys with a tuba. No commentary on yourself, just true live music!

A fundamental tenet of democracy is that voting is secret, and that the counting process is transparent. E-voting provides none of these. I'm aware that there are cryptographic protocols that would allow this in theory, but this does not resolve the issue of the voters being coerced by their spouses, families, communities or big brother to vote a certain way. Only casting your vote anonymously inside the voting booth prevents this. Further, having a verifiable paper trail and manual counting makes fraud MUCH more difficult. In E-voting, you only have to alter a single number to sway the election in your favor. In traditional voting, throwing a whole election becomes much harder.

Even if we assume that we go the E-voting path, how can we trust the software running on the system? Who wrote it? Me? Then I know who the next president will be! We can cook up all kinds of hashes etc, but how can you verify that a system that claims to run a particular version of the code is, in fact, running this version? Particularly on a remote connection? Even if all this were, in some fictional universe, in place, this system is highly complex: In code, in technology, in infrastructure. I may be able to grasp this, but my mother (a smart woman, but not tech savvy) won't have a clue. This is fundamentally undemocratic.

See this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

I wonder why this isn't obvious, but some seem to think that there is an algorithm or a neat trick that will make everything wonderful, and not stop to think about why things are the way they are.

> Can it be scaled up enough to build cars, bridges and buildings out of it?

Not without destroying capitalism, no.

There are a lot of pseudo scientists out there and it is not helped by masses of typically arrogant people that think they know what science is in the first place.

People confuse POLITICS with science. Bring up something about science and they'll say stupid things like "well X number of people agree with me" which isn't science. That is politics. Or you'll see something along the lines of "look at my nifty idea... all the numbers add up"... great... still not science... not unless you want to include Dungeons and Dragons min max builds in "science"... because there is a tautology in any formal logic that doesn't root itself in empirical evaluation. And then you get people that say "well, I can't provide evidence because its really hard... so I don't have to."... Not my problem.

Point being... ANYTHING that can't be tested is merely a hypothesis and that is fine... have your hypothesizes... that's super. It remains not science until its been tested with methodology that is pessimistic, cynical, skeptical, and exhaustive. That is... you propose a hypothesis... then you try to disprove it. DISPROVE. When you FAIL to disprove it... look for any fallacy in your position with the intent to find one. If you can neither disprove the position nor find a fallacy in your argument... THEN you submit it for peer review giving your peers full access to everything you did and how you did it so they can find problems if they exist.

When it has surpassed all that... you pretty much have science.

What we often get is nothing resembling that which is why it isn't science.

Pretty math? Sure... slow clap for that. But the reason this sort of science generally never does anything useful is because as Richard Feynman said... "It looks like science except it doesn't work". That is the issue here.

Cargo Cult Science:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Not science anymore than a guy with coconuts on his head is a tower control operator.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
"We do file share like we don’t care
throw music industry in despair"

Uh, you would be wrong...
For the right applications this alloy could be very good. Just don't make barbecue grilles out of it.

So, actually, I'm not wrong. :)

For most applications it wouldn't be an issue. I can't remember how many times my cellphone has caught fire, maybe because the number is "0". Yes, yes Lion batteries, danger, etc etc etc but it just doesn't really happen all that much in real life. But it would be fine for a lot of the things I mentioned- knives, antennas, bike frames, most tools (ever had a hammer catch fire? Me neither.), tablet cases, etc etc.

So yeah, there are definitely places you wouldn't want to use it, but lots and lots of places you would.

And frankly, anyone that designed a grill using magnesium (!!) is either an idiot or has a brain injury, or both. I mean really, why not just make your grill out of compressed gunpowder?

Uh, you would be wrong...

My wife and I had one of the grilles in this series. We got the recall notice right after thoroughly cleaning the grille for the first time. Normally the inside of the chamber is protected by a layer of oxidation, but a thorough cleaning scrapes the oxide layer off and exposes fresh magnesium. Ours didn't catch fire, but after we got the recall notice we looked into it and apparently the first heavily-documented case of the grille burning was after the owners thoroughly cleaned it and probably exposed fresh magnesium right before using it again.

Magnesium is used successfully for other applications, but usually with the fire-risk considered an acceptable tradeoff. Engine blocks, with steel liners for the cylinder walls and with aluminum cylinder heads so that the magnesium isn't directly exposed to flame, and in wheels that should be safe unless a tire failure results in a skidding bare wheel scraping against pavement are both common in racing. The very term, "mag wheel," is based on the use of magnesium wheel, even if most are now aluminum for street-legal uses.

For the right applications this alloy could be very good. Just don't make barbecue grilles out of it.

Not THAT'S comedy!

Re. Australia: do you have a pointer to the law or regulation that says so? (First I've heard of it.)

As far as I know, at least US, Canada, UK, & EU law all permit opt-out if you submit to "patdown". However, IANAL, especially for non-US law.

You might enjoy this video of a German guy demonstrating he could smuggle an entire bomb past the scanners (German w/ subtitles).

They were afraid one device would get good pictures of them stealing the other.

                      https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

If you saw video this before you followed their orders, would have have acted the same?

Do you believe you acted morally in this situation?

https://www.youtube.com/embed/...

93 / 93

https://www.youtube.com/embed/...

Screw these d-bags:

https://www.youtube.com/embed/...

Relevant to the discussion :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

His claims get even more absurd than that:

Did you enjoy watching The Hobbit? Hunger Games? Avengers? Avatar? All rendered on Ubuntu at WETA Digital. Among many others.

Do you exist in the same space-time continuum as Ubuntu? Congratulations, you're an Ubuntu user!

Have you ever used the letters "U" and "B" together? Congratulations, you're 33% of the way to being an Ubuntu user!

Seriously, I like Ubuntu and support Linux, but this is just silly. It's like saying anyone who's ever had a cup of coffee is related to Juan Valdez.

Take a step to your left!

Mash means Smash (potatoes)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...