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Definitely support the work he does. Slight tangent, but if you haven't seen this DEFCON talk of his, you really should. It's hilarious. https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

I think it was who said that one failed terrorist attack and we all have to take our shoes off before boarding a plane but 31 shootings later still no new gun laws. This country has it's priorities completely backwards :(...

Except John Oliver never said that! https://www.youtube.com/watch?.... If you're too impatient, skip to 2:45.

"Wine is an emulator. Anyone who tells you otherwise, that's just bullshit PR."
--Ryan C. Gordon (icculus)

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQ6gXEoxIZI&t=4431

This comment reminded me of "Dude! What does mine say?"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

I suspect it was intentional and not that stupid.

Thanks for that. A good laugh once a day makes you live longer. Amongst the innumerable aerodynamic engineering issues:

  - Center of gravity is well forward of center of lift, so the only possible stable flying attitude is straight down

  - Wing loading is off the end of the scale. If you put a big enough engine on it, anything will fly - this one would would stall somewhere over 300 Mph, if it could ever fly straight that is, which is doubtful. Too bad it's limited to 200 Mph, I guess it's a helicopter after all.

  - Vertical and horizontal stabilizers are miniscule and tucked away in the turbulence of the fuselage. Control surfaces are apparently nonexistent. To get an idea how that might work, tie a string to a shoe box and fly it as a kite while driving down the freeway.

  - How much will those retractable engine engine covers weigh, if they ever exist? Which they never will.

  - Where are the roof racks? It needs root racks. And a trailer hitch.

For further research, see here.

On ageism, it's not just whether programmers work, it is the quality of the work and the independence of the workers. Where might that matter? Consider the democratic need for programmers to follow ethical standards about privacy and democracy and openness and user empowerment (in their designs) that much centralized proprietary behind-closed-doors big data CS just ignores.

As I found in academia (for example in the PU CE&OR department in the late 1980s), when half or more of the graduate students in an academic department are foreign nationals being paid by their governments to get degrees, where when going back home without a degree would be a huge disgrace and maybe loss of career, the atmosphere of the place changes. That might explain why dealing with systematic financial risk was not a big topic at the time then.

So, if most programmers are nervous about their jobs with tons of H1Bs and cheap young labor, what effect is that going to have on taking a stand for important issues? And these are not just ethical issues, they are even issues like pushing back on inefficient or brittle designs, or designs users won't like, or whatever. It takes a certain level of confidence to do that (a confidence that includes knowing you can always easily get a job elsewhere, which may be true for a fifty year old civil engineer but is less true for a fifty year old programmer). And I'm not talking the brash confidence of youth or even a willingness for self-sacrifice like Snowden or Manning -- which is a different thing. I'm talking about a well-earned confidence in the context of a supportive community which is the basis of day-to-day successes by a democracy accountable to the needs of citizens.

See also:
"Smile or Die" (which discusses the financial crisis in part resulting from no one being able to point out systemic risks without losing their jobs)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

And:
http://conceptualguerilla.com/...

And even my other post here mentioning John Taylor Gatto who talks about compulsory schools as being designed specifically to shape compliant workers.

My latest folly is based on remembering what computers and our democratic culture were like in the 1970s and 1980s, is to want to help create software that respects a citizen's needs for private data controlled locally and shared peer-to-peer (like via email) instead of a typical web business' needs (like Slack or gmail) to centralize and control other people's data: :-) Here is that project:
https://github.com/pdfernhout/...

I started that with the news that Mozilla, supposedly about internet freedom and privacy and user empowerment, is going to kiss off Thunderbird, meanwhile billions of dollars are poured into the web space to make the opposite of Thunderbird (and some of those dollars are going to Mozilla in a way as a conflict-of-interest). See also my post here:
http://it.slashdot.org/comment...

The USA should be funding thousands of people to work on such FOSS tools. Meanwhile, Thunderbird suffers for lack of a funding model. Volunteers and open source go together well -- but relying on volunteers is problematical when you have literally one gigabyte of legacy C++ and XUL source code that need to track every security issue in Firefox.

If this was really about increasing interest in computers, just give green cards instead of H1Bs, insist on overtime for programmers, require every employee have a window (like in parts of Europe) and do basic stuff like that. It might also help if we reduced the churn in "new" technologies that are often not as good as the old one (still waiting for something a lot better than 1980s Smalltalk, for example). Getting rid of software patents would a

See: https://archive.org/details/Th...

And: http://www.newciv.org/whole/sc...

More links on how schooling is not about education, and how schooling is a form of (prison-like) adoption:
http://p2pfoundation.net/John_...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Check out John Holt, too. That's all a big reason we homeschool/unschool.

More links: http://p2pfoundation.net/backu...

Enjoyed your informative post from the trenches, thanks! Especially your point about teacher incentives. You get what you measure -- so, as you imply, if you incentivize teachers to dumb down kids faster and better, that's what you'll get more of.

Long term, I feel a basic income may be part of the answer:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/towa...

As for what you can do in the short-term, it's tough. If you walk away, your (virtually adopted) kids will suffer. And you'll lose your income in a tough economy.. And one less voice for change in the system will be lost. But it's a painful situation if you care about what you do (although you run a high risk of burnout). Don't know what to advise, but at least you are not alone! :-)

"Flying cars" of this sort exist already, they just require a real pilot. The really interesting thing about the Terrafugia flying car is that it flies itself, so I imagine the challenge isn't so much the hardware as it is the software. If they can get that done right, "flying cars" could be made accessible to more people.

The challenge is not the hardware?? Terrafugia looks like nothing like the three vehicles in your linked video: it looks like science fiction. No way is that thing ever leaving CGI-land with those stubby little wings and tiny props. What the hell is powering it "cruise mode" when the props fold away? Probably hot air...

"Flying cars" of this sort exist already, they just require a real pilot. The really interesting thing about the Terrafugia flying car is that it flies itself, so I imagine the challenge isn't so much the hardware as it is the software. If they can get that done right, "flying cars" could be made accessible to more people.

Note that, for example, Google's cars are never going faster than 25 mph.

This is incorrect.

Google's Lexus-based self-driving cars are driving on highways, going highway speeds:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TsaES--OTzM

Makarov's group attacked the E91 protocol, our paper attacks the Franson system. A significant difference is that we show the Franson system to be insecure even if the device is implemented with perfect devices. Makarovs papers are very well-written and interesting to read. I recommend starting to watch one of his YouTube lectures: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... , it is entertaining, highly interesting and is on a reasonable level for the average ./ reader.

... laptop computer bags are being discouraged ...

How are they going to search the vendors? Will CES booths now be limited to Hanimex slide projectors?

Let me guess, the event organizers got a bomb threat, or the insurance underwriter has demanded CYA practices.

It ain't you or me. Unfortunately, "it ain't you or me" runs out eventually, and when that day comes, it'll be you, and me, paying the bill.

I know CCR was a hippy band, and Don't Look Now was intended to be a lefty song about rich people exploiting the poor, but I always took it as being about shirking responsibility, like CCR was mocking the boomers in advance for what they would become. Granted, I missed the hippy era by like 30 years, so when I was listening to CCR, I was watching Gen X starting to get crushed under the burden of paying for the promises that the boomers made to themselves.

The boomers may have been concerned about "the poor" in the 60s, but they've been feasting on the blood of "the poor", or perhaps I should say "the young", for decades now.

Boomer 1: Who will do the hard work to feed and clothe us?
Boomer 2: It ain't you or me.
Gen X, Y: Don't look now, someone's done your starvin'.
Millenials: Don't look now, someone's done your prayin' too

The generational conversation in one song.

...a record that will follow you throughout your entire life.

They stole that from inspector Cluseau, see.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=...

The Shoe Lobby has only one well-known member:

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

And does the only operating system for which Edge is available respect the privacy of web users

Dude, you use Gmail and therefore you don't respect your own privacy or the privacy of others. That being the case, why would you expect Microsoft to respect your privacy more than you do?

Microsoft's anti-Gmail ads are both accurate and amusing. Microsoft really couldn't understand end users' lack of self respect. Google and Facebook, on the other hand, realized the profitability of apathy early on.

And does the only operating system for which Edge is available respect the privacy of web users

Dude, you use Gmail and therefore you don't respect your own privacy or the privacy of others. That being the case, why would you expect Microsoft to respect your privacy more than you do?

Microsoft's anti-Gmail ads are both accurate and amusing. Microsoft really couldn't understand end users' lack of self respect. Google and Facebook, on the other hand, realized the profitability of apathy early on.

"Yeah, but practice on a hotdog first..." https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

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

Video demonstrating the phenomenon.

Well, if Goku is an acceptable proxy for Wukong, apparently that's already been settled.

Round 1

Round 2

Well, if Goku is an acceptable proxy for Wukong, apparently that's already been settled.

Round 1

Round 2

Well then, cue White and Nerdy...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9qYF9DZPdw
Al gots to get paid you know...
Take all that sweet YouTube money and get an orthopedic Segway!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?... Quadcopter holding an inverted pendulumn.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?... - 2 axis inverted triple penduumn. (the joints are free to move)

The backing is the utterly trivial part.
The hard part is knowing what traffic laws to break, and when, and how to deal with others breaking laws and doing unexpected things.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?... Quadcopter holding an inverted pendulumn.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?... - 2 axis inverted triple penduumn. (the joints are free to move)

The backing is the utterly trivial part.
The hard part is knowing what traffic laws to break, and when, and how to deal with others breaking laws and doing unexpected things.

Yes, but that way lies a slippery slope.

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

Lighten up, Francis! ;-)

What you don't get is that MongoDB is webscale. You have to sacrifice a certain level of reliability and stability to get high performance needed to start building webscale high performance applications. This training video about MongoDB will help you understand. It even has a protagonist who you will relate to who comes from an "old technology" background and helps explain to him the benefits.

I've wondered about that, if you could have a resolution-independent compression algorithm that stores color intensity maps as 2D shapes with gradient fills. Unfortunately I still have a pile of unread books on image processing, computer graphics and compression, so I have no idea if that's plausible or been tried.

It does kind of remind me of the old Apple II Graphics Magician program that stored "pictures" procedurally. Every time you loaded a file, the program recreated your drawing commands. The "shape tables" on the Apple II were really sets of drawing vectors, not bitmaps.

The relevant war-fighting strategies are decapitation and counter-force. They would be used in a first strike in an attempt to win the war quickly.

A decapitation strike aims to destroy or disrupt the national leadership and military command so that they are unable to command and control their nuclear forces in particular, and the armed forces in general. It might begin with a high altitude large nuclear explosion to generate a large electro-magnetic pulse (EMP) to disrupt communications prior to main attack on the political leadership, military high command, and the command and control infrastructure of the nuclear forces. The short warning time to impact of submarine launched ballistic missiles makes they highly useful for this task. Sitting on the coast, Washington DC is particularly vulnerable. Moscow? Not so much.

A counter-force strike aims to destroy enemy nuclear weapons before they can be launched. This requires many nuclear warheads, and the MIRV (Multiple Independent Reentry Vehicles) warhead is how they are delivered. The SS-18 Satan, for example, could either carry a single 25 Megaton warhead or many smaller ones (at least 10, possibly 20+). That mean you could potentially take out 10-20 targeted enemy nuclear missiles for each missile launch. This is a highly destabilizing capability.

If you are able to successfully execute a first strike using these strategies then the enemy is effectively leaderless at the critical moment, and largely weaponless afterwards. Since nuclear capable forces are often in relatively remote areas this may mean relatively little loss of life and opens the possibility of nuclear blackmail.

During the Cold War there was concern that the Soviet Union might be able to execute this strategy. It might look like this at the strategic level.

Cold War contingency plan crafted by the Soviet Union

Do you have any idea what this is going to do to my credit?

I watched that vid probably a dozen times, just to keep mysql smiling in the crazy days of having Neo4j, InfluxDB, Redis and Elasticsearch all thrown in by devs into the one project (no.. I shit you not...)

For those without Flash, here's an another version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

WTF is this suposed to be??!? Some half-assed attempt to blurr the real issue? The new epitome of the Chewbacca defense? Seriously?

Who the fuck cares about some marginal greenhouse gas per calorie consumed ratio when meat 'production' is proven to have an abysmal eco-balance-sheet over all??
Water polution, megacorp-driven livestock food monoculture, pathogens, the meat-industry driven anti-biotics disaster, etc.

Water polution with meat production alone is actually close to that of a chemical plant.

The truth is, no matter how you spin it, the eco-balance of meat production is abysmal. Period.

Letuce is a filler - you don't eat it for calories. Calories per weight wise letuce is a serious underperformer.
That's what potatoes or plant proteins are for. Or meat, if you prefer.

More and more people are cutting back their meat consumption and vegan is the new vegetarian. Because our planet is going to hell and meat and its production has become dangerous for your health.

Bottom line:
This article is meat industry propaganda non-sense and beyond pointless for any reasonable debate on the real issues of mass-meat production.

Each to their own. You prefer the rail-thin super-model heroin chic yourself, I take it?

It's weird that we're at the beginning of one of the biggest revolutions in the history of medicine - with the ability to sequence most of a person's genome for somewhere around $1,000. And no one really seems to care.

For me, I get about a minute and a half into this NHGRI video, and I get goose bumps. It's history in the making. It's like watching Abraham Lincoln give the Gettysburg address (one of the greatest speeches in the human history) - if Abraham Lincoln had been smoking hot.

Not that appearance really matters. But, wow, if that video doesn't inspire you based on content alone then you must be truly dead inside.

Do the same rules apply?

German Muslim: 'Islam Is Coming And Your Daughters Will Wear The Hijab'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Which is roughly equivalent to us saying "Christianity is coming and your sons will eat pork". Not a nice thing to say either way but not hate speech either.

Hey guys, I learned how to dress a wound with my triangular bandage, I've obviously learned medicine.

Obama didn't learn to code, neither did that useless twat Cameron.

Yeah, but have you learned how to fuck a pig?

Argh. You beat me to it.

Hey guys, I learned how to dress a wound with my triangular bandage, I've obviously learned medicine.

Obama didn't learn to code, neither did that useless twat Cameron.

Yeah, but have you learned how to fuck a pig?

The claim made by Bert64 above was, taxpayers paid for the infrastructure.

Bert64 would not substantiate that claim. Can you?

No, they did not

Your link describes, how the US government forced Bell Labs to allow other companies to connect to their network. It says nothing to substantiate your earlier claim:

It was the evil government that standardized the network.

Which is not surprising, because the standards were Bell Labs', not the government's — contrary to your earlier statements.

why don't you man up

Ouch, that was so sexist, bigoted, hurtful and hateful, I must retreat to my safe zone. Fuck you, hater!

I went and found you one of my favorite documentaries on the subject:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

The whole series is pretty good. It's biased but they all are. This is less biased than some. It's a good enough series to warrant watching the entirety of it. I... err... I don't really watch television so much, or movies really, but I do generally watch more documentaries than is healthy. This is one of my favorite subjects. There's still loads more for me to learn.

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

Except for perhaps the learnability, which is more of an AI than an automated driving advance? Though, in any case it would certainly be impressive to duplicate this independently.

It sounds like the gas and brake controlers are fairly commonly built in, but I was not aware of the steering controls, and he didn't mention adding any motors.

Forget it. I'll build my own, with blackjack and hookers.

What is stunningly stupid are people who don't know the first thing about guns attempting to regulate and ban them.
Why, it'd be like people who don't know the first thing about computers, or networks, attempting to regulate and ban them.

Nobody who knows a thing or two about guns has anything but contempt for a congressional district representative who starts describing "shoulder things that go up" or a state senator who talks about "ghost guns with 30 caliber clips".

The few anti-gun laws that DO get passed, are full of nonsense like this. These laws are created by clueless morons who quite frankly hurt the entire anti-gun position far more than they have ever helped it.

And for those who still wonder about the actual effects of firearm ownership on violent crime, homicide, suicide and so forth, I invite you to read through the following: https://imgur.com/a/b7HSM

What is stunningly stupid are people who don't know the first thing about guns attempting to regulate and ban them.
Why, it'd be like people who don't know the first thing about computers, or networks, attempting to regulate and ban them.

Nobody who knows a thing or two about guns has anything but contempt for a congressional district representative who starts describing "shoulder things that go up" or a state senator who talks about "ghost guns with 30 caliber clips".

The few anti-gun laws that DO get passed, are full of nonsense like this. These laws are created by clueless morons who quite frankly hurt the entire anti-gun position far more than they have ever helped it.

And for those who still wonder about the actual effects of firearm ownership on violent crime, homicide, suicide and so forth, I invite you to read through the following: https://imgur.com/a/b7HSM

Do the same rules apply?

German Muslim: 'Islam Is Coming And Your Daughters Will Wear The Hijab' https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

I see your point, but is that actually hateful?

Anyone without bias isn't human. Anyone unwilling to look beyond them is not interesting. Here's an old(ish) documentary:

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

The series is nice. If you're not familiar with it then what's getting a bit more attention now was being postulated then. It's a few years old. Greene is in it. It's full of fun ideas.

Number one trait of the neo-communists is being a hypocrite.

*Ban all guns, but let the government have them so we use them to enforce our wishes upon you.

*You must respect all cultures and religions, their beliefs, and their people's desires to keep them pure, unless it's white/Christian, in which case doing so is racist white-supremacy and you are Hitler.

*Minorities must be given a platform to speak out against their oppressors, even if it means advocating genocide. The majority must have their free speech rights reigned in so that minorities don't get hurt feelings.

*Violence is always wrong and barbaric, but we advocate using it against anyone who doesn't agree with us.

On more on point than ever:

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

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