Nobody ever builds weapons to use against "innocent civilians and enterprises".
Instead, everyone builds weapons to use only against those evil and horrible people who are guilty of offenses against the one true ideology, or the one true religion, or the one true culture. Of course, those who are aiding those terrible villains are also guilty of aiding the enemy. Then, of course, it's a small stretch to accept that those who are neutral are still helping the enemy with their neutrality, and those who aren't helping anyone are hindering our own ability to fight.
"We won't harm innocent civilians" is just as useless as a certain other company's promise to "don't be evil", and for the same reason. It all depends on the perspective used to define what's "evil" or "innocent".
The Clinton example is an excellent one: As I recall, earlier in his testimony, it was established exactly what fell under the definition of "sex" for that discussion. If he said he did have sex with Lewinski, it actually would have been a lie, and most Americans would still be confused.
It seems to me that the congressman had a particular narrative he wanted to fit.
"Shadow profiles" sounds scary and mysterious. In a previous big-data job, I used the term "unassociated data" to describe when we had a connected set of records that didn't match any known individual. They still existed as records, and we didn't discard them... but they weren't anything personally identifiable until we stumbled across a record that tied them to known individuals (and when that happened, our term for that connecting record was the "decoder ring").
Both points there are exactly what I was alluding to... Modern computing is a lot more complicated than it seems. It's amazing how much of technology is hacked together with duct tape and baling wire to make it work, and it's silly for anyone to throw stones in a city full of glass houses.
Right? About the only thing worse would be a kernel vulnerability in something silly like fonts...
The beep vulnerability makes a lot of sense, actually. Related to this update, I recently learned that the ubiquitous beep used to be driven by reprogramming the system clock. Naturally, that kind of hardware access is something that should be a system administrator function, restricted to root on *nix systems. It would make sense, then, that any vulnerability there would likely be a privilege escalation.
I'm not entirely sure whether you're trolling, or if you genuinely believe the uninformed jetsam you wrote there.
Failed yet again by my local main-stream media. I dont recall any coverage of the event, but i guess thats to be expected from a group of conglomerate advertisers
Well, of all the failures among news outlets, it was reported twicebefore on that awful "Slashdot" site. One of those even linked CNN as a source, but they're hardly mainstream, are they? There was, of course, also coverage on Fox News, which in turn links to coverage on the Wall Street Journal. On the other coast, the LA Times also ran a Bloomberg-syndicated story.
thanks to the sausage-factory machinations of our federal government, im sure we'll never be privy to so much as a general idea of what this satellite was designed to do
Well, let's go gather a few facts, and guess. First, its contract details are all secret, which strongly implies it's for military purposes. It was aimed for low-earth orbit at 51 degrees inclination, which would put it over many places of military significance. Indeed, a more knowledgeable source theorizes it's for space-based radar, which would certainly be in accordance with recent US military doctrine of "get more pictures, engage from further away, and use fewer people".
Flint Michigan looks set to go another year without clean water
...which has absolutely nothing to do with spaceflight, or the military, or anything related to this discussion. Not only are the military branches and intelligence agencies expressly forbidden from assisting Flint, the restoration efforts are already underway and progressing as expected. What the fearmongers like yourself conveniently ignore is that essentially Flint has had to rebuild its entire water system due to the years of neglect, and as of last year, the vast majority of test samples are clean. There's still work to be done, but the situation is no longer a failure of government.
Congress brand oversight.... Well it wasnt as prevalent for this 3.5 billion dollar satellite
Which is perfectly normal for classified projects, regardless of where they go. Since part of OPSEC is to minimize dispersal of classified information, there are bipartisan committees that debate classified projects in great detail, and their unclassified comments are usually distributed to the other congresspeople.
it did such a bang-up job of everything from the timely restoration of New Orleans after hurricane Katrina
...which isn't in Congress's authority, since once the national emergency has passed, the authority goes back to the state per the Tenth Amendment...
to ensuring healthcare for our veterans is the best in the world
...which isn't mandated by any law, or even really practical, and still not directly under Congress's authority, being wholly delegated to the Veterans Health Administration, itself wholly under the Department of Veterans Affairs, which is itself organized under the Executive branch under the President...
On the one hand, yes, I totally missed the time zone difference. On the other, I also cut out the hours of processing and handling time to get a shipment from the loading dock to the airport, and vice versa at the other end. I suppose that's what I get for going through the process in my head, so here it is written down:
Roughly estimating, the shipment is in a truck or "processing" from 7AM-9AM. From 9-10 AM it's being handled at the airport and loaded on the plane.It's in flight from 10AM to 5PM ET, landing at 2PM PT. It'll be out of the plane by 3PM, and out of the airport by 4PM. Then it's in a truck again, and arrives on the loading dock by 6PM, just in time to be useless overnight.
It seems cutting down two hours would be enough to support coast-to-coast same-day B2B shipping in major areas, at least going east to west.
Well, that's it. This discussion's pretty well covered, now.
Seriously, this is exactly the dilemma. Back when I did defense work (connected distantly to attacks), nobody ever had intention of hitting civilians. It was bad intel, bad guidance, or just a plain and simple screwup. We just kept trying to be better, adding more confirmations, better cameras, better training... and slowly things got better.
None of those improvements were cheap. A small improvement in image quality might mean a few hundred million dollars in expenses, mostly in paperwork to track exactly what work happened where and how, but if it provides the critical information to prevent a single bad mission, it's worth the price.
It's not a popular opinion, but it seems to me that war is inevitable. People are always finding new means and reasons to kill each other, and they'll do it with or without my help. The best we can do as engineers is to make sure that the attacks are as precise and successful as possible, to minimize the innocent casualties.If an AI can tell the difference in 10 pixels between a firearm flash or the sun reflecting off a camera lens, I'm all in favor of it.
As someone who routinely flew across half the continent... no.
get the FAA to change the rules allowing existing designs to create a sonic boom over land while traveling over a certain altitude
It's not just an FAA problem. The booms are still problematic, even at altitude. They require a lot of planning, as they will disrupt other aircraft in flight. They're also still a nuisance at the ground, even if they aren't loud enough to shatter windows or cause damage.
simply bring a new Concorde back
Ah, yes... let's bring back a doomed aircraft and hope it magically works better this time.
The Concorde was a brilliant piece of engineering, but ultimately impractical. Its design, optimized for supersonic flight, meant it wasn't very stable at the lower landing speed, and had to pitch much higher during landing to maintain stability. That's why the nose tips down: so the pilots can see where they're going while the plane is still pointed up. Add to that the inefficiencies and difficulty in accommodating the unique needs of the plane, and it's no surprise it was mothballed.
given the amount of sonic booms people have endured for decades living near an Air Force base or a Space Shuttle landing site. A fighter jet squadron is not quiet by any means.
...both of which pale in comparison to the frequency of booms from possible commercial traffic.
As it happens, I've spent a good amount of time near fighter jets. They certainly aren't quiet, being up in the hundred-decibel range from a reasonable distance, but they typically don't produce sonic booms while anywhere near the ground. Even then, the bases where they perform such maneuvers are usually in sparsely populated areas, where the majority of people exposed to the noise are the military personnel, who quite frankly aren't given the ability to complain.
Similarly, the western Space Shuttle landing sites were also in sparsely-populated areas. While the eastern landing site at Kennedy Space Center is certainly more populated than Edwards AFB, it's still far less dense (especially where the booms were loudest) than most of what you'll find in the path of commercial air travel.
The reality is tickets will likely cost 10 - 20x more
At first, this is probably true. Yet, first-class seats are still filled routinely, and I know of at least one company that would love any ability to move people and equipment across the country, and have them arrive in time to be installed the same day.
and attract about as many people as those who fly privately, which is not that large a market.
The funny thing is that usually markets will appear. Significantly cutting travel time anywhere in the continental U.S. means it's possible (though expensive) to get something off a loading dock in Boston at 7AM, and get it to a loading dock in L.A. by 4PM, while there's still someone there to unload it. Currently, that impossibility means there's no chance of the shipment arriving while the dock is staffed, so it waits until the next morning. That means a one-day effort is now two days, and if that stretches over a weekend, it becomes four days to do a ten-minute installation on a part*.
And humans have to sleep, so flying coast to coast is quite socially acceptable when done overnight without causing a considerable loss to precious business time.
Humans also have to sleep fairly comfortably, or they suffer consequences like not being able to walk the next day. There are also a lot of folks who understand that "business time", "sleep time", and "personal time" are all separate things that should not be mixed freely. There are also companies who will only pay for time spent traveling during normal business hours, so flying overnight is an inconvenience to the employee with absolutely no compensation*.
* These stories are unfortunately true, from a previous job where I did installation and troubleshooting of very expensive equipment, usually located on the other side of the country from our office.
What Cambridge Analytica did was "research". Ostensibly, their research was "in the public interest" because they thought the best thing for the public was for Trump to win the election. At the same time, yes, there are places out there doing legitimately bad things, and if their TOS is enforceable, investigative researchers won't be inclined to look into the transgression, because they might be sued or face other undue consequences.
It might be a bit more appropriate to have some kind of governmental body to do research into illegal activities (a bureau of federal investigation, if you will), and instead ensure that things like discrimination are suitably illegal. That office's investigations could be explicitly authorized to violate TOS and EULAs, through the normal warrant process.
Eh..... Run sustained operations too close to the maximums, and components get a bit too warm and start failing earlier, especially in a dusty or otherwise poor environment. That's a pretty common issue on fielded systems where "preventative maintenance" is (sometimes literally) a foreign concept.
A PSU that's moderately overspec'd (I wouldn't go more than 50% over TDP as a rule) or higher-end brand can quite happily get clogged full of dust, have a fan die, or absorb a few spikes without any failure, because the (arbitrary) 20% loss in capacity wasn't being used anyway. Those capacitors don't need to hold the charge quite so high, the heat sink doesn't need quite so much surface area, and the fan doesn't need to turn quite so fast as it was all designed for.
Keep your house clean, and every so often run a ESD-safe vacuum around the case, and an on-spec PSU will last fine for many years. If a system is destined for a workshop, cabinet, or other less-than-ideal environment, a higher rating might be worth the higher price. Since a lot of folks won't ever open their system for cleaning, there's some case for casual builders to have a higher PSU, as well.
Unlike the amount of RAM, clock speed, hard drive size, PSU selection is a bit more than just picking the number you need. It's a cost/risk/reward balance. No, you don't need to go absurdly high, but you usually don't want to be at the bottom of your options, either.
Now define "boot" for the boot time... what graphics settings for that game, what third-party extensions are used in Word, and where/how we're copying the file and whether cache is involved.
Of course, the first thing I would do with a shiny new machine is transfer over my video card, so all GPU measurements are useless right out of the gate. The second thing I would do is to replace any spinning disks with a mid-range SSD, making the other benchmarks useless, as well. My mother wouldn't change any hardware, but she also wouldn't understand what "FPS" even is. My father has a NAS for his data, so the file copy times are bound more by the network speed than his hard drive.
To use a car analogy per Slashdot tradition, this is like asking for a single score on whether a Porsche, Ferrari, or Corvette is a better car. Sure, we can pick horsepower to be our standard metric for a typical driver, but if you care more about handling, the metric is useless. Of course, if cost is the main factor, Honda might be more your brand... The "typical user" doesn't really exist any more than a "typical driver".
Obviously you have no idea how a logical claim works. What reliable evidence is there that "they saw cracks in the bridge and did nothing" or that "they took no action"? You seem to be jumping to the conclusion that the builders saw nice obvious warning signs, but to date I haven't seen any such detail in official reports, though it has been repeated in many "armchair analysis" posts by folks eager to dole out the blame.
Fortunately, the court system does not (intend to) work that way. Sure, anyone can bring forth any claim of fault they want, but then they'll have to show some evidence for it, and the defense will have an opportunity to counter with other evidence.
So again, I'll wait to pass judgement until the NTSB report is released. Despite your apparent opinion of American government, I trust that the civil servants who have made it their life's work to improve transportation safety through failure analysis will actually do so. If, and only if, they find evidence that the bridge was improperly designed and approved, or that signs of early failure were ignored, then let the lawsuits fly. Until then, we are working with an incomplete picture.
I'll admit I confused the issue in my earlier post, but a quick bit of research straightened me out. Apparently, NTSB factual reports are admissible, but final reports are not. The factual reports that say who followed proper procedures would still be pretty damning to a lawsuit.
I used to be a "full-stack developer", as the term was just coming into use, and some folks still like to hold that banner high for me... but I loathe the whole concept, based on the experiences I've had to endure because of such "full-stack" idiots.
The "full stack" includes the hardware, the OS, the database, the front-end, and all the middleware that makes it play nicely together. Even without the bemoaned complexity of modern frameworks, that's still a lot of ground to cover, and it has to be done right. For the web guys, I'm talking about the difference between using tables for layouts and HTML5/using CSS whatever-the-latest-version-is. In the OS layer, somebody has to make the call whether the service process is best run as a cronjob, init script, or inittab line. Within the database, it's the difference between an INNER JOIN and... I don't know; I'm not a database guy any more.
Sure, you can find developers who can make something work through the full stack. Any idiot with access to Google can do that. Once you start revering them as some kind of technical genius, you lose the ability to question the uninformed decisions they're making. After a few years running that way, every small issue becomes a huge technical challenge, because everything's tied together in ways that only those developers understand.
I have seen a system where the front-end generates and sends to the server a chunk of plaintext, which is directly written to/etc/crontab. It was designed that way because that was "the simplest way", according to the well-respected full-stack developer who did it. He had no concept of the security or reliability implications, because he's not a security or systems person. He just knew that it would get the job done, and since he was so well-respected, nobody ever stopped his designs and actually reviewed them impartially.
I'm fine with having a few developers who work above and below their layers, but nobody should ever be responsible for everything, and nobody should be on the pedestal that often accompanies the "full-stack" label.
Or in other words, grab $15K before the NTSB report comes out, as a hedge bet against the report saying it was unforeseeable and nobody can be sued for it.
he used a building-size source of intense x-rays called a synchrotron, but Wu's group made do with a compact tabletop source.
Now, what's really interesting is that while the total exposure for an image is about the same, the power is reduced and the time is increased greatly. As I understand, that reduces the risk posed by the radiation.
I recently went through all of Derek Lowe's "Things I Won't Work With" columns (highly recommended for anyone with a sense of humor and an instinct for self-preservation), and in the aftermath spent some time reading some of his other articles. One in particular discusses the possibility of an automated chemist, performing reactions given a recipe. Today's article discusses this latest paper, which focuses on generating those recipes, and compares it to another AI approach previously covered.
Notably, Lowe focuses on the impact such developments will have on the field of chemistry, and compares it to the impact of the Deep Blue vs. Kasparov chess matches. In short, yes, the boring labor-intensive analytical jobs will be handed off to machines, and humans will take on the management role of deciding what new compounds society will need.
I have several "bosses" at my job. Let's focus on two of them.
For one of them, I will answer at any time. Day or night, work day, weekend, or even a day off when I'm out with my family. I know that he is knowledgeable enough to handle most issues on his own, and respectful enough of my time that he won't call unless I'm really the best (or only) person to handle what needs attention. He also has enough strength of character that I know he won't panic when management does. When he does call, he apologizes to me, my wife, and anyone else around for the interruption.
Another boss, on the other hand, is the opposite. He's earned the reputation for calling folks during dinner to discuss incorrect paperwork, threatening HR consequences if the issue isn't resolved immediately. Whenever management panics about something they should have addressed six months earlier, he will jump and sound the alarm just to show that he's doing something. Rather than think about who else is on duty that could handle the problem, he goes straight to his senior people, both interrupting their lives and depriving the junior folks of the experience they would need to become senior. Since this boss doesn't respect me or my time, I have no inclination to answer his calls when I'm not obligated to do so.
For what it's worth, I'm salaried, but working time is tracked and overtime is paid. Nothing I do affects life-threatening situations, but a lot of money is involved.
The key element in human trafficking is that it involves coercion. No, visa facilitators don't necessarily fall into the "human trafficking" bucket, because they aren't forcing the Chinese women to come against their will. The gangs in Libya, if they don't rip off the immigrants but instead serve only as guides and charge only fees that are known up front, are also not human traffickers. The honest coyotes also aren't in the business of human trafficking, though they are typically breaking other laws.
The problem is that all of the situations you describe are very often involved in actual human trafficking, to the extent that it's very difficult to tell the difference. A very common tactic is that a migrant makes a deal with a guide (or facilitator) to smuggle (or otherwise move) them somewhere, but the smuggler instead takes them somewhere else (usually several hundred kilometers away), confiscates their passport and other documentation, and says that due to some unexpected bribes/fees/expenses/whatever, the migrant now owes more money, and has to work to pay off the debt. The migrant thinks they can't go to the police, because they'll get sent back with no documentation. They're usually threatened with violence if they even try to escape.
The other broad category you describe is prostitution, either underage or "simple" (whatever that means). Again, the act itself isn't the problem, but the circumstances around it. A prostitute who is not coerced in any way (including not being able to consent due to being underage) is not involved with human trafficking. Any exploitation, though, becomes a separate matter of human trafficking, completely independent of the (potentially legal) prostitution itself.
In short, It's fine for "sex" to be your product, or "relocation", or "assistance", but once your product is "unwilling people", that's human trafficking. Sure, it'd be great if we could limit discussion to only the bad folks in each of those roles you describe. While we're at it, let's make gun laws that only apply to bad folks, too. Conversely, let's only let good people have drivers' licenses, solving the problem of road rage completely!
Thank you! That makes me so very happy! I can now describe my life as "unbelievable!"
You're actually the first person on the Internet to notice the variety of things I do and have done, and I wish you had a name so I could recognize you. I've been expecting it for a while, because I realize that a lot of the context in my life is lost in comments. If you don't mind (and even if you do, really), I'm going to rant off-topic about how I have come to have "been there" and "done that" for so many (but certainly not all) topics. If it helps, picture me as a crazy old professor, getting overly excited about his favorite branch of mathematics. Apart from the fact that my hair's not gone white (yet), and I'm not very good at math (despite minoring in it in college) the stereotype is a pretty accurate picture.
In short, I've lived a good life, and been fortunate enough to be a lot of places, do a lot of things, and meet a lot of folks. I've also been able to turn a lot of my hobbies into careers, and overlap a lot of my time into several different aspects of my life.
For instance, this lab in Ghana was built just after a turning point in my life, when I left my crappy-but-fulfilling teaching/tutoring job near a university and my side business working IT and sysadmin for a small radio station. I was in Ghana for about 6 months, during which time I proposed to my girlfriend, who had convinced me to volunteer. I then came back, went back into software development, realized in a year that I'd lost my passion for the daily grind of programming, and moved to full-time sysadmin, with my radio experience moving into live audio production (building on some stage experience from before the teaching position) on the weekends, and getting involved with my church audio as well, which in turn got me involved in an occasional role with a film crew making several short films. That continued for several years, until I moved across the country for a new sysadmin/technician/installer/engineering/whatever job that has sent me to many places doing engineering work, but I still get enough time off to reunite annually with a group of chemist friends back near that university, where we engage in some energetic demonstrations.
That one paragraph describes ten different jobs/hobbies, seven US states, four countries, three continents, and countless friends and colleagues, all spread across about a decade. That's been the pace of most of my adult life, and reflecting on that pace has led me to a few important realizations.
First, every moment in a life is connected. What I do for fun now (like taking up running again... currently at a 15-minute mile pace) will become a story later (next month I race against a 7-year-old!), and could become the next big opportunity (does Elon Musk run 5Ks, and does he run them ridiculously slowly?). Living in the moment and taking every opportunity is a great way to get new experiences. One principle I've held to is that as long as I'm acting how I believe to be right at the time, I have nothing to regret. Sure, I've done some awful things that turned out to be wrong, but I was acting on the best information I had at the time, so I don't regret my choices. I just keep moving forward.
Second, everyone else's story is just as connected and as screwey as mine. Now, I don't really know you, and you're an AC so I will never really know you much, but I'd expect you've done a lot in your life, too. You've worked jobs with crappy bosses, you've done stupid things, and you've had some really fortunate moments. I'd love to hear those stories, but be warned that you'll be added to the list of folks I know. If I say I "have a friend" or "know someone", it's usually someone whom I've convinced to tell me their stories. Tonight, I heard that a colleague of mine (who coincidentally was in Ghana two years before I was) was running as a child, and ended up running into a palm tree and getting a piece of a frond embedded in his arm. That's not a story I'm likely to tell again, but it's fascinating to me
Slashdot Mirror
Nobody ever builds weapons to use against "innocent civilians and enterprises".
Instead, everyone builds weapons to use only against those evil and horrible people who are guilty of offenses against the one true ideology, or the one true religion, or the one true culture. Of course, those who are aiding those terrible villains are also guilty of aiding the enemy. Then, of course, it's a small stretch to accept that those who are neutral are still helping the enemy with their neutrality, and those who aren't helping anyone are hindering our own ability to fight.
"We won't harm innocent civilians" is just as useless as a certain other company's promise to "don't be evil", and for the same reason. It all depends on the perspective used to define what's "evil" or "innocent".
That's certainly true... but it was stupid the last time, it's stupid this time, and it'll be stupid next time. What exactly is your point?
The Clinton example is an excellent one: As I recall, earlier in his testimony, it was established exactly what fell under the definition of "sex" for that discussion. If he said he did have sex with Lewinski, it actually would have been a lie, and most Americans would still be confused.
It seems to me that the congressman had a particular narrative he wanted to fit.
"Shadow profiles" sounds scary and mysterious. In a previous big-data job, I used the term "unassociated data" to describe when we had a connected set of records that didn't match any known individual. They still existed as records, and we didn't discard them... but they weren't anything personally identifiable until we stumbled across a record that tied them to known individuals (and when that happened, our term for that connecting record was the "decoder ring").
Both points there are exactly what I was alluding to... Modern computing is a lot more complicated than it seems. It's amazing how much of technology is hacked together with duct tape and baling wire to make it work, and it's silly for anyone to throw stones in a city full of glass houses.
Right? About the only thing worse would be a kernel vulnerability in something silly like fonts...
The beep vulnerability makes a lot of sense, actually. Related to this update, I recently learned that the ubiquitous beep used to be driven by reprogramming the system clock. Naturally, that kind of hardware access is something that should be a system administrator function, restricted to root on *nix systems. It would make sense, then, that any vulnerability there would likely be a privilege escalation.
I'm not entirely sure whether you're trolling, or if you genuinely believe the uninformed jetsam you wrote there.
Failed yet again by my local main-stream media. I dont recall any coverage of the event, but i guess thats to be expected from a group of conglomerate advertisers
Well, of all the failures among news outlets, it was reported twice before on that awful "Slashdot" site. One of those even linked CNN as a source, but they're hardly mainstream, are they? There was, of course, also coverage on Fox News, which in turn links to coverage on the Wall Street Journal. On the other coast, the LA Times also ran a Bloomberg-syndicated story.
thanks to the sausage-factory machinations of our federal government, im sure we'll never be privy to so much as a general idea of what this satellite was designed to do
Well, let's go gather a few facts, and guess. First, its contract details are all secret, which strongly implies it's for military purposes. It was aimed for low-earth orbit at 51 degrees inclination, which would put it over many places of military significance. Indeed, a more knowledgeable source theorizes it's for space-based radar, which would certainly be in accordance with recent US military doctrine of "get more pictures, engage from further away, and use fewer people".
Flint Michigan looks set to go another year without clean water
...which has absolutely nothing to do with spaceflight, or the military, or anything related to this discussion. Not only are the military branches and intelligence agencies expressly forbidden from assisting Flint, the restoration efforts are already underway and progressing as expected. What the fearmongers like yourself conveniently ignore is that essentially Flint has had to rebuild its entire water system due to the years of neglect, and as of last year, the vast majority of test samples are clean. There's still work to be done, but the situation is no longer a failure of government.
Congress brand oversight. ... Well it wasnt as prevalent for this 3.5 billion dollar satellite
Which is perfectly normal for classified projects, regardless of where they go. Since part of OPSEC is to minimize dispersal of classified information, there are bipartisan committees that debate classified projects in great detail, and their unclassified comments are usually distributed to the other congresspeople.
it did such a bang-up job of everything from the timely restoration of New Orleans after hurricane Katrina
...which isn't in Congress's authority, since once the national emergency has passed, the authority goes back to the state per the Tenth Amendment...
to ensuring healthcare for our veterans is the best in the world
...which isn't mandated by any law, or even really practical, and still not directly under Congress's authority, being wholly delegated to the Veterans Health Administration, itself wholly under the Department of Veterans Affairs, which is itself organized under the Executive branch under the President...
one can on
On the one hand, yes, I totally missed the time zone difference. On the other, I also cut out the hours of processing and handling time to get a shipment from the loading dock to the airport, and vice versa at the other end. I suppose that's what I get for going through the process in my head, so here it is written down:
Roughly estimating, the shipment is in a truck or "processing" from 7AM-9AM. From 9-10 AM it's being handled at the airport and loaded on the plane.It's in flight from 10AM to 5PM ET, landing at 2PM PT. It'll be out of the plane by 3PM, and out of the airport by 4PM. Then it's in a truck again, and arrives on the loading dock by 6PM, just in time to be useless overnight.
It seems cutting down two hours would be enough to support coast-to-coast same-day B2B shipping in major areas, at least going east to west.
Well, that's it. This discussion's pretty well covered, now.
Seriously, this is exactly the dilemma. Back when I did defense work (connected distantly to attacks), nobody ever had intention of hitting civilians. It was bad intel, bad guidance, or just a plain and simple screwup. We just kept trying to be better, adding more confirmations, better cameras, better training... and slowly things got better.
None of those improvements were cheap. A small improvement in image quality might mean a few hundred million dollars in expenses, mostly in paperwork to track exactly what work happened where and how, but if it provides the critical information to prevent a single bad mission, it's worth the price.
It's not a popular opinion, but it seems to me that war is inevitable. People are always finding new means and reasons to kill each other, and they'll do it with or without my help. The best we can do as engineers is to make sure that the attacks are as precise and successful as possible, to minimize the innocent casualties.If an AI can tell the difference in 10 pixels between a firearm flash or the sun reflecting off a camera lens, I'm all in favor of it.
...why not both?
For what it's worth, AMD also has only a 3-year warranty.
As someone who routinely flew across half the continent... no.
get the FAA to change the rules allowing existing designs to create a sonic boom over land while traveling over a certain altitude
It's not just an FAA problem. The booms are still problematic, even at altitude. They require a lot of planning, as they will disrupt other aircraft in flight. They're also still a nuisance at the ground, even if they aren't loud enough to shatter windows or cause damage.
simply bring a new Concorde back
Ah, yes... let's bring back a doomed aircraft and hope it magically works better this time.
The Concorde was a brilliant piece of engineering, but ultimately impractical. Its design, optimized for supersonic flight, meant it wasn't very stable at the lower landing speed, and had to pitch much higher during landing to maintain stability. That's why the nose tips down: so the pilots can see where they're going while the plane is still pointed up. Add to that the inefficiencies and difficulty in accommodating the unique needs of the plane, and it's no surprise it was mothballed.
given the amount of sonic booms people have endured for decades living near an Air Force base or a Space Shuttle landing site. A fighter jet squadron is not quiet by any means.
...both of which pale in comparison to the frequency of booms from possible commercial traffic.
As it happens, I've spent a good amount of time near fighter jets. They certainly aren't quiet, being up in the hundred-decibel range from a reasonable distance, but they typically don't produce sonic booms while anywhere near the ground. Even then, the bases where they perform such maneuvers are usually in sparsely populated areas, where the majority of people exposed to the noise are the military personnel, who quite frankly aren't given the ability to complain.
Similarly, the western Space Shuttle landing sites were also in sparsely-populated areas. While the eastern landing site at Kennedy Space Center is certainly more populated than Edwards AFB, it's still far less dense (especially where the booms were loudest) than most of what you'll find in the path of commercial air travel.
The reality is tickets will likely cost 10 - 20x more
At first, this is probably true. Yet, first-class seats are still filled routinely, and I know of at least one company that would love any ability to move people and equipment across the country, and have them arrive in time to be installed the same day.
and attract about as many people as those who fly privately, which is not that large a market.
The funny thing is that usually markets will appear. Significantly cutting travel time anywhere in the continental U.S. means it's possible (though expensive) to get something off a loading dock in Boston at 7AM, and get it to a loading dock in L.A. by 4PM, while there's still someone there to unload it. Currently, that impossibility means there's no chance of the shipment arriving while the dock is staffed, so it waits until the next morning. That means a one-day effort is now two days, and if that stretches over a weekend, it becomes four days to do a ten-minute installation on a part*.
And humans have to sleep, so flying coast to coast is quite socially acceptable when done overnight without causing a considerable loss to precious business time.
Humans also have to sleep fairly comfortably, or they suffer consequences like not being able to walk the next day. There are also a lot of folks who understand that "business time", "sleep time", and "personal time" are all separate things that should not be mixed freely. There are also companies who will only pay for time spent traveling during normal business hours, so flying overnight is an inconvenience to the employee with absolutely no compensation*.
* These stories are unfortunately true, from a previous job where I did installation and troubleshooting of very expensive equipment, usually located on the other side of the country from our office.
Yeah... this is a minefield.
What Cambridge Analytica did was "research". Ostensibly, their research was "in the public interest" because they thought the best thing for the public was for Trump to win the election. At the same time, yes, there are places out there doing legitimately bad things, and if their TOS is enforceable, investigative researchers won't be inclined to look into the transgression, because they might be sued or face other undue consequences.
It might be a bit more appropriate to have some kind of governmental body to do research into illegal activities (a bureau of federal investigation, if you will), and instead ensure that things like discrimination are suitably illegal. That office's investigations could be explicitly authorized to violate TOS and EULAs, through the normal warrant process.
Eh..... Run sustained operations too close to the maximums, and components get a bit too warm and start failing earlier, especially in a dusty or otherwise poor environment. That's a pretty common issue on fielded systems where "preventative maintenance" is (sometimes literally) a foreign concept.
A PSU that's moderately overspec'd (I wouldn't go more than 50% over TDP as a rule) or higher-end brand can quite happily get clogged full of dust, have a fan die, or absorb a few spikes without any failure, because the (arbitrary) 20% loss in capacity wasn't being used anyway. Those capacitors don't need to hold the charge quite so high, the heat sink doesn't need quite so much surface area, and the fan doesn't need to turn quite so fast as it was all designed for.
Keep your house clean, and every so often run a ESD-safe vacuum around the case, and an on-spec PSU will last fine for many years. If a system is destined for a workshop, cabinet, or other less-than-ideal environment, a higher rating might be worth the higher price. Since a lot of folks won't ever open their system for cleaning, there's some case for casual builders to have a higher PSU, as well.
Unlike the amount of RAM, clock speed, hard drive size, PSU selection is a bit more than just picking the number you need. It's a cost/risk/reward balance. No, you don't need to go absurdly high, but you usually don't want to be at the bottom of your options, either.
Now define "boot" for the boot time... what graphics settings for that game, what third-party extensions are used in Word, and where/how we're copying the file and whether cache is involved.
Of course, the first thing I would do with a shiny new machine is transfer over my video card, so all GPU measurements are useless right out of the gate. The second thing I would do is to replace any spinning disks with a mid-range SSD, making the other benchmarks useless, as well. My mother wouldn't change any hardware, but she also wouldn't understand what "FPS" even is. My father has a NAS for his data, so the file copy times are bound more by the network speed than his hard drive.
To use a car analogy per Slashdot tradition, this is like asking for a single score on whether a Porsche, Ferrari, or Corvette is a better car. Sure, we can pick horsepower to be our standard metric for a typical driver, but if you care more about handling, the metric is useless. Of course, if cost is the main factor, Honda might be more your brand... The "typical user" doesn't really exist any more than a "typical driver".
Obviously you have no idea how a logical claim works. What reliable evidence is there that "they saw cracks in the bridge and did nothing" or that "they took no action"? You seem to be jumping to the conclusion that the builders saw nice obvious warning signs, but to date I haven't seen any such detail in official reports, though it has been repeated in many "armchair analysis" posts by folks eager to dole out the blame.
Fortunately, the court system does not (intend to) work that way. Sure, anyone can bring forth any claim of fault they want, but then they'll have to show some evidence for it, and the defense will have an opportunity to counter with other evidence.
So again, I'll wait to pass judgement until the NTSB report is released. Despite your apparent opinion of American government, I trust that the civil servants who have made it their life's work to improve transportation safety through failure analysis will actually do so. If, and only if, they find evidence that the bridge was improperly designed and approved, or that signs of early failure were ignored, then let the lawsuits fly. Until then, we are working with an incomplete picture.
Eh, we're both half right.
I'll admit I confused the issue in my earlier post, but a quick bit of research straightened me out. Apparently, NTSB factual reports are admissible, but final reports are not. The factual reports that say who followed proper procedures would still be pretty damning to a lawsuit.
I used to be a "full-stack developer", as the term was just coming into use, and some folks still like to hold that banner high for me... but I loathe the whole concept, based on the experiences I've had to endure because of such "full-stack" idiots.
The "full stack" includes the hardware, the OS, the database, the front-end, and all the middleware that makes it play nicely together. Even without the bemoaned complexity of modern frameworks, that's still a lot of ground to cover, and it has to be done right. For the web guys, I'm talking about the difference between using tables for layouts and HTML5/using CSS whatever-the-latest-version-is. In the OS layer, somebody has to make the call whether the service process is best run as a cronjob, init script, or inittab line. Within the database, it's the difference between an INNER JOIN and... I don't know; I'm not a database guy any more.
Sure, you can find developers who can make something work through the full stack. Any idiot with access to Google can do that. Once you start revering them as some kind of technical genius, you lose the ability to question the uninformed decisions they're making. After a few years running that way, every small issue becomes a huge technical challenge, because everything's tied together in ways that only those developers understand.
I have seen a system where the front-end generates and sends to the server a chunk of plaintext, which is directly written to /etc/crontab. It was designed that way because that was "the simplest way", according to the well-respected full-stack developer who did it. He had no concept of the security or reliability implications, because he's not a security or systems person. He just knew that it would get the job done, and since he was so well-respected, nobody ever stopped his designs and actually reviewed them impartially.
I'm fine with having a few developers who work above and below their layers, but nobody should ever be responsible for everything, and nobody should be on the pedestal that often accompanies the "full-stack" label.
Or in other words, grab $15K before the NTSB report comes out, as a hedge bet against the report saying it was unforeseeable and nobody can be sued for it.
Yes. According to the TFA,
he used a building-size source of intense x-rays called a synchrotron, but Wu's group made do with a compact tabletop source.
Now, what's really interesting is that while the total exposure for an image is about the same, the power is reduced and the time is increased greatly. As I understand, that reduces the risk posed by the radiation.
I recently went through all of Derek Lowe's "Things I Won't Work With" columns (highly recommended for anyone with a sense of humor and an instinct for self-preservation), and in the aftermath spent some time reading some of his other articles. One in particular discusses the possibility of an automated chemist, performing reactions given a recipe. Today's article discusses this latest paper, which focuses on generating those recipes, and compares it to another AI approach previously covered.
Notably, Lowe focuses on the impact such developments will have on the field of chemistry, and compares it to the impact of the Deep Blue vs. Kasparov chess matches. In short, yes, the boring labor-intensive analytical jobs will be handed off to machines, and humans will take on the management role of deciding what new compounds society will need.
I have several "bosses" at my job. Let's focus on two of them.
For one of them, I will answer at any time. Day or night, work day, weekend, or even a day off when I'm out with my family. I know that he is knowledgeable enough to handle most issues on his own, and respectful enough of my time that he won't call unless I'm really the best (or only) person to handle what needs attention. He also has enough strength of character that I know he won't panic when management does. When he does call, he apologizes to me, my wife, and anyone else around for the interruption.
Another boss, on the other hand, is the opposite. He's earned the reputation for calling folks during dinner to discuss incorrect paperwork, threatening HR consequences if the issue isn't resolved immediately. Whenever management panics about something they should have addressed six months earlier, he will jump and sound the alarm just to show that he's doing something. Rather than think about who else is on duty that could handle the problem, he goes straight to his senior people, both interrupting their lives and depriving the junior folks of the experience they would need to become senior. Since this boss doesn't respect me or my time, I have no inclination to answer his calls when I'm not obligated to do so.
For what it's worth, I'm salaried, but working time is tracked and overtime is paid. Nothing I do affects life-threatening situations, but a lot of money is involved.
Gee, if only someone would define it clearly...
The key element in human trafficking is that it involves coercion. No, visa facilitators don't necessarily fall into the "human trafficking" bucket, because they aren't forcing the Chinese women to come against their will. The gangs in Libya, if they don't rip off the immigrants but instead serve only as guides and charge only fees that are known up front, are also not human traffickers. The honest coyotes also aren't in the business of human trafficking, though they are typically breaking other laws.
The problem is that all of the situations you describe are very often involved in actual human trafficking, to the extent that it's very difficult to tell the difference. A very common tactic is that a migrant makes a deal with a guide (or facilitator) to smuggle (or otherwise move) them somewhere, but the smuggler instead takes them somewhere else (usually several hundred kilometers away), confiscates their passport and other documentation, and says that due to some unexpected bribes/fees/expenses/whatever, the migrant now owes more money, and has to work to pay off the debt. The migrant thinks they can't go to the police, because they'll get sent back with no documentation. They're usually threatened with violence if they even try to escape.
The other broad category you describe is prostitution, either underage or "simple" (whatever that means). Again, the act itself isn't the problem, but the circumstances around it. A prostitute who is not coerced in any way (including not being able to consent due to being underage) is not involved with human trafficking. Any exploitation, though, becomes a separate matter of human trafficking, completely independent of the (potentially legal) prostitution itself.
In short, It's fine for "sex" to be your product, or "relocation", or "assistance", but once your product is "unwilling people", that's human trafficking. Sure, it'd be great if we could limit discussion to only the bad folks in each of those roles you describe. While we're at it, let's make gun laws that only apply to bad folks, too. Conversely, let's only let good people have drivers' licenses, solving the problem of road rage completely!
Does Taylor Swift count?
Thank you! That makes me so very happy! I can now describe my life as "unbelievable!"
You're actually the first person on the Internet to notice the variety of things I do and have done, and I wish you had a name so I could recognize you. I've been expecting it for a while, because I realize that a lot of the context in my life is lost in comments. If you don't mind (and even if you do, really), I'm going to rant off-topic about how I have come to have "been there" and "done that" for so many (but certainly not all) topics. If it helps, picture me as a crazy old professor, getting overly excited about his favorite branch of mathematics. Apart from the fact that my hair's not gone white (yet), and I'm not very good at math (despite minoring in it in college) the stereotype is a pretty accurate picture.
In short, I've lived a good life, and been fortunate enough to be a lot of places, do a lot of things, and meet a lot of folks. I've also been able to turn a lot of my hobbies into careers, and overlap a lot of my time into several different aspects of my life.
For instance, this lab in Ghana was built just after a turning point in my life, when I left my crappy-but-fulfilling teaching/tutoring job near a university and my side business working IT and sysadmin for a small radio station. I was in Ghana for about 6 months, during which time I proposed to my girlfriend, who had convinced me to volunteer. I then came back, went back into software development, realized in a year that I'd lost my passion for the daily grind of programming, and moved to full-time sysadmin, with my radio experience moving into live audio production (building on some stage experience from before the teaching position) on the weekends, and getting involved with my church audio as well, which in turn got me involved in an occasional role with a film crew making several short films. That continued for several years, until I moved across the country for a new sysadmin/technician/installer/engineering/whatever job that has sent me to many places doing engineering work, but I still get enough time off to reunite annually with a group of chemist friends back near that university, where we engage in some energetic demonstrations.
That one paragraph describes ten different jobs/hobbies, seven US states, four countries, three continents, and countless friends and colleagues, all spread across about a decade. That's been the pace of most of my adult life, and reflecting on that pace has led me to a few important realizations.
First, every moment in a life is connected. What I do for fun now (like taking up running again... currently at a 15-minute mile pace) will become a story later (next month I race against a 7-year-old!), and could become the next big opportunity (does Elon Musk run 5Ks, and does he run them ridiculously slowly?). Living in the moment and taking every opportunity is a great way to get new experiences. One principle I've held to is that as long as I'm acting how I believe to be right at the time, I have nothing to regret. Sure, I've done some awful things that turned out to be wrong, but I was acting on the best information I had at the time, so I don't regret my choices. I just keep moving forward.
Second, everyone else's story is just as connected and as screwey as mine. Now, I don't really know you, and you're an AC so I will never really know you much, but I'd expect you've done a lot in your life, too. You've worked jobs with crappy bosses, you've done stupid things, and you've had some really fortunate moments. I'd love to hear those stories, but be warned that you'll be added to the list of folks I know. If I say I "have a friend" or "know someone", it's usually someone whom I've convinced to tell me their stories. Tonight, I heard that a colleague of mine (who coincidentally was in Ghana two years before I was) was running as a child, and ended up running into a palm tree and getting a piece of a frond embedded in his arm. That's not a story I'm likely to tell again, but it's fascinating to me