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  1. Re:Precisely placing atoms is not new. on Researchers Develop Atomic-Scale Hard Drive That Writes Information Atom By Atom (techcrunch.com) · · Score: 3, Insightful

    look, this would be worthwhile if it had any sort of implication of it being feasible for some useful purpose some day. it does not.

    it needs "clean vacuum" and a low temperature. it's less feasible,

    the _only_ reason they arranged them in 8 bits and put that out in the pr was to get press time for something that otherwise would not have gotten any. they could have gone with "you can write the bible on so and so small thing" approach too.

    bubble memory or whatever is more feasible for use than this, that's saying a lot.

    Wouldn't a hard drive technician from 40 years ago say the same thing if you told him of your plan to build a helium filled hard drive the size of your fist that would have a million times more capacity than the washing machine sized drives that were state of the art?

  2. Re: Precisely placing atoms is not new. on Researchers Develop Atomic-Scale Hard Drive That Writes Information Atom By Atom (techcrunch.com) · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Either way, because this requires an extremely cold temperature, it will likely never even end up in even the most state-of-the-art datacenter, nevermind your PC. This is one of those neat yet 100% impractical things that come around every so often. Could a derivative of this technology some day become practical? Maybe, but not with the copper/chlorine combination seen here. I think DNA based storage would probably come sooner.

    If they could figure out how to read and write to this quickly, don't lose too much space to ECC and get good durability, the temperature requirement won't keep it out of datacenters - liquid nitrogen is (relatively) cheap (10 - 20 cents/liter), and a 500X increase in density would make it very attractive - replacing 500 racks of disks with one rack of these would pay for a lot of liquid nitrogen.

  3. Re:It's inevitable on UK Bill Introduces 10 Year Prison Sentence for Online Pirates (torrentfreak.com) · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The best way to avoid the fair use problem is to create your own original content rather than building off of someone else's copyrighted content and claiming it as your original.

    Too bad that would eliminate many of the best creative works ever created, nearly all great artists built on previous works.

    The entire Disney empire was built on someone else's stories. And they are doing everything they can to keep someone else from doing the same.

  4. Re:Is it better than security cameras? on Uber Hires a Robot To Patrol Its Parking Lot and It's Way Cheaper Than a Security Guard (fusion.net) · · Score: 1

    $7/hour for a machine that roams around the lot with the sole purpose of noticing people doing "wierd" things to cars and alerting authorities (after which the 6-12 cameras that are reasonably placed can be reviewed, for the 1 hour before/after the event happened) seems like a pretty fair price to overcome that, especially if something questionable happens at least once a month (and in some parking garages it could happen once a week).

    But apply the same algorithms that this roving robot uses to sense unusual behavior, and you don't need a human to comb through 1000 hours of footage, only incidents will need to be reviewed -- if the camera-bot can sense a break-in in progress, so can the other cameras.

  5. Re:Is it better than security cameras? on Uber Hires a Robot To Patrol Its Parking Lot and It's Way Cheaper Than a Security Guard (fusion.net) · · Score: 1

    As noted, it's a mobile camera. The big advantage comes from liability and HR savings. You write and tweak an algorithm, and then the little robot does it. Follows a set path, semi-random path, whatever. Doesn't get tired, doesn't get bored, doesn't skip looking somewhere because nobody would hide there. "Remembers" every last detail in a manner that's reproducible in court. If anything happens to the robot, you just upload the work algorithm into the new one, charge it up, and let it go. If the robot misses something, tweak the algorithm and redeploy.

    That doesn't really answer my question - why is a roving robot (which can only see a portion of the parking lot at a time) better than dozens of fixed and/or PTZ cameras that are overlooking the entire lot all the time? Any algorithm that the robot uses to detect bad behavior could also be applied to the fixed cameras, with the PTZ's used to zoom in on suspicious behavior for more detail.

  6. Re:Is it better than security cameras? on Uber Hires a Robot To Patrol Its Parking Lot and It's Way Cheaper Than a Security Guard (fusion.net) · · Score: 1

    Robots have better ability to examine things closely. Security cameras often have major limitations on what they see. For example, typically they can only read license plates if the car is in a specific location (i.e. the entrance/exit). They can't see what's going on everywhere, and can be blocked.

    Assume someone rents a big van, enters the lot, parks his van in front of the camera. Get out on the other side (protected by the van), and proceeds to break into a trunk, plants some evidence, or perhaps a GPS tracker, removes the radio, etc. No one can ever tell what happened. The robot avoids this issue.

    But won't the big van also block the little robot (assuming it doesn't just run over the robot).

    If this robot can read license plates, then a pole mounted PTZ camera can also read license plates, but unlike the robot that can only be one place at one time, cameras are cheap enough that they can be mounted throughout the lot. (1 year of robot rental is $120K, that's a lot of cameras).

  7. Is it better than security cameras? on Uber Hires a Robot To Patrol Its Parking Lot and It's Way Cheaper Than a Security Guard (fusion.net) · · Score: 1

    If a robot costs $7/hour to rent, and you need two of them (for battery changes), that's $122K/year for 24x7 coverage.

    Is this roving robot better than blanketing the lot with fixed security cameras? (other than acting as a honeypot to attract people that want to mess with the robot) Whatever logic the robot uses to determine if something warrants an alarm could be applied to the fixed camera feed as well. And you have fewer blind spots since the robot can't see what's happening over in the next row of cars and it's very apparent when you're in the line of sight of the robot.

  8. Re: Why do people think self driving cars will cat on New Cars Are Too Expensive For The Typical Family, Says Study (gulfnews.com) · · Score: 1

    Plenty of people in cities get by on taxis and car-share, self driving cars will expand that to suburban areas.

    Plenty of people in cities get by on public transport, and it's generally quicker in a lot of major cities.

    Sure public transit is good for everyday trips, but still it's nice to have access to a car (even within the city) to take you point-to-point instead of waiting on transit and possibly adding blocks of walking to your journey. Things like getting taking your date cross-town from a restaurant to her friend's party on a rainy night, taking the dog to the vet when he injured his food and can't walk, going on a weekend camping trip out of town, etc.

    These are the times when it's nice to have access to a car, but you don't neccessarily need your own car - take Uber or a taxi when you're in town, use carshare or a car rental company when you want to get out of town - take the car-share 4WD SUV when you're going camping, take the convertible when you're driving down the coast to a B&B with your partner, rent a minivan when you're taking the family for a week long road trip. When you don't have to own a car, you have a lot more flexibility in what kind of car you get when you *do* need one.

  9. Re: Why do people think self driving cars will cat on New Cars Are Too Expensive For The Typical Family, Says Study (gulfnews.com) · · Score: 2

    Plenty of people also get by walking several miles in the sun/rain/snow/dark.

    Sometimes people simply don't have a choice.

    But they do have a choice - many carless city dwellers can afford a car payment and even a garage space (they may even have a deeded space that they aren't using), but chose not to own a car because there's no point - why buy an expensive depreciating asset that sits around unused 90% of the time if they don't have use it to get to work or run errands because they can get to work by train and walk to the grocery store?

  10. Re:Why everyone should buy new? on New Cars Are Too Expensive For The Typical Family, Says Study (gulfnews.com) · · Score: 1

    It is dumb to buy a new car. It loses 25% of the value the moment you take possession. Then rusts and loses value continuously. You can get fantastic almost as good as new car, one or two years old, some 30% cheaper.

    If you keep your car for a long time, then it can be worth buying new since you know it was well taken care of. I bought my car new and 11 years later, am still driving it. While I've enjoyed the past 8 years of no car payments, I'm finally thinking of replacing it to get a car with better gas mileage and modern safety features.

  11. Re:The solution, buy a less than median priced car on New Cars Are Too Expensive For The Typical Family, Says Study (gulfnews.com) · · Score: 1

    Another possibility, if the average family with an average of 3.5 members got rid of their average cell phone plan that costs an average of $60/mo per phone they would save an average of $210/mo which would let them afford the median priced automobile.

    I think the average family worried about affording a car has a much cheaper cell phone plan than that.

  12. Is collision avoidance *that* expensive? on New Cars Are Too Expensive For The Typical Family, Says Study (gulfnews.com) · · Score: 1

    Does collision avoidance add significantly to the price of the car? At least one company sells an add-on collision avoidance system that costs around $1100. If this company can retail a compete add-on system for only $1100, it must cost manufacturers less than than to build it in to the car (they may sell the option as an add-on for thousands of dollars, but that has no relation to what it actually costs them to build it)

    But even $1100 is less than 3% of a $34,000 car, so it doesn't seem fair to blame it for new car price inflation. Bundling options together likely one factor that adds to the price inflation - buyers can't pick and chose the options they want -- want the Bluetooth calling? Well you need to get the $1200 "premium audio package". Want a sunroof? Then you'll have to upgrade to the LX model for $4000 more. Want collision avoidance? Then you'll need the $3300 "tech" package that includes adaptive cruise control, GPS navigation, and backup camera.

    Of course, even if the average new car costs $34K, there are still lots of cars available for less, a 2017 base model Honda Accord costs $22K (add $1000 for collision avoidance). A VW Jetta or Chevy Cruz is around $17K.

  13. Re: Why do people think self driving cars will cat on New Cars Are Too Expensive For The Typical Family, Says Study (gulfnews.com) · · Score: 5, Insightful

    People don't want a dirty car that strangers have been in. They don't mind a dirty car that is one they only use.

    Plenty of people in cities get by on taxis and car-share, self driving cars will expand that to suburban areas.

    None of the car-share cars I've used have been "dirty", they are regularly cleaned and maintained.

  14. For devices that get regular updates the Qualcomm TrustZone bug has already been fixed. It went out in the January 2016 updates: https://source.android.com/sec.... Check the patchlevel date on your device.

    Of course the other part, that someone who can compel Qualcomm to sign TrustZone software images that intentionally compromise security, is still the case, and likely will be for some time. That's a threat model that hadn't been considered important until recently, and it's one that's not easy to mitigate. That's not restricted to Qualcomm, either. In every device with a trusted execution environment, there's some organization who holds the signing keys needed to load firmware in that environment, generally (but not always) the SoC vendor.

    Can't this hole be closed by designing the trusted firmware so it requires that the passcode be entered before it will accept a firmware update?

  15. Re:Dealing with threats and deception on Security Researcher Gets Threats Over Amazon Review (techcrunch.com) · · Score: 1

    I recently posted a similar review on Amazon, although mine was regarding a burglar alarm which connects to a server in China and has no encryption. To their credit, the manufacturer has not challenged the review.

    I'm not sure the manufacturer should get credit for being complacent.

  16. I'd be worried about my network security on Security Researcher Gets Threats Over Amazon Review (techcrunch.com) · · Score: 2

    I don't care if someone in China can flip my light on and off. Some people are excited excited when that happens.

    I'd be more concerned about a device on my network creating a persistent connection to a server in China... who knows what packets it's capturing or what it's relaying to that server - maybe it's giving them a full TCP tunnel back into my network?

  17. Re:I don't understand. on Women Interviewing For Tech Jobs Actually Did Worse When Their Voices Were Masked As Men's (fusion.net) · · Score: 4, Insightful

    So is the implication here just that it's harder to find highly competent women in technical fields rather than men?

    I think that's the problem exactly -- companies want to hire good people, and while women are just as capable as men when it comes to tech jobs (my company has some *very* strong female senior developers), there just aren't as many female tech applicants of any level. Nearly all (95+%) of our developer job applicants are male so it's much harder to find a strong female applicant given that for every female application we review 20 male applications. We are completely gender agnostic when we hire, but that's true agnosticism, not giving preference to any applicant based on gender.

    The only way to fix that problem in the present is to go back in time 20 or 30 years and get more females interested in tech early on. It's not fair to blame tech companies like Google for a problem that started well before it was even in existence.

    We have a much better male to female ratio in our intern programs, so things are getting better, but even there we're seeing around 80% male applications.

  18. That said, I'd be thrilled to see a significant portion of this allotment reserved for municipal wireless broadband in "unprofitable" areas.

    The unprofitable areas are those areas with low population density. Do you know what you don't find in areas with low population density? That's right, municipalities that have money to invest in wireless broadband.

    Right, when I lived in nearly unpopulated San Francisco and my only choices for internet were Comcast cable and "up to" 1.5mbit AT&T DSL. I didn't really want Comcast (or AT&T for that matter), but I was outside of the range of monkeybrains wireless isp so I was stuck with Comcast.

  19. Re:THIS DOESN'T MATTER! on Istanbul Attack: A Grim Reminder Of Why Airports Are Easy Targets (firstpost.com) · · Score: 1

    Airports are not particularly important, the way that airplanes are.

    The danger with planes is not that they are connected with air travel, but that there is little difference between a airplane and a guided missile. A guided missile that the terrorists did not pay for and could not afford, but can be used to attack another buildings.

    Any idiot that tries to protect airports from generic terrorists attacks is a fool, wasting our money because they have no idea of the difference between a high priority target and a low priority one.

    Airplanes are high priority targets and need to be protected. Airports are low priority targets that should not be heavily protected, except to prevent people from gaining access to the planes.

    Depends on what the goal of the attacker is -- it's unlikely that any terrorist will be able to duplicate the 9/11 attacks due to better cockpit security and procedures (and 200+ passengers on the plane that are unwilling to be used in another 9/11 attack).

    But if the attacker wants to shut down country-wide (or global) air travel (which would have huge global financial impact), then all they have to do execute a few attacks against crowded security lines and all air travel will stop when governments are forced to admit that their airport "security" just created an attractive target.

  20. Re:Great! on Apple Patents a Way To Keep People From Filming At Concerts and Movie Theaters (qz.com) · · Score: 3, Interesting

    B does not solve the problem. Analyzing the video stream for the do-not-film IR signal is non-trivial; it will require CPU cycles (thus, energy) to do this, and that means that this "feature" will make your battery last not as long as it otherwise would when you are using your camera.

    This is a real shame, because the actual solution to the problem is people not taking their cameras into the movie theater, or those Yonder things...

    This is part of the camera itself, so likely won't use any more battery than the focus, whitebalance, brightness, face detection and other features your camera is already doing with the camera feed.

  21. Re:Another Reason on Google To Step Up Smartphone Wars With Release Of Own Handset (telegraph.co.uk) · · Score: 1

    This is just one more reason to boycott Google and it's evil products.

    I don't understand. Why would a Google manufactured phone be a reason to boycott Google? If you're worried about evil, surely they can't pack much more evil into a Google Manufactured phone than they could into a phone developed by a 3rd party to their exact specs?

  22. Re:News at 5... on Drivers Prefer Autonomous Cars That Don't Kill Them (hothardware.com) · · Score: 1

    Scenario 1: Crash directly into a concrete barrier or into a crowd of people and cats. Really, there are no other possible outcomes at all? Not rapid controlled deceleration, not swerving off the road, nothing else comes to mind?

    Since the car is already looking ahead and can calculate the car's reaction to all control inputs based on the road conditions (because, after all, the car is already trying to slow down, and it knows the coefficient of friction with the road), it knows that it can't stop or steer off the road in time, it's already computed that regardless of what evasive actions it takes, those are the only two options, so it has to decide which is better - veer off to the side and hit the hard concrete barrier and kill the car's occupants, or use the bodies of the crowd in front of it to cushion the blow and potentially save the occupants.

    So it's still a valid question that needs to be answered - should the car be programmed to preserve the lives of bystanders, or preserve the live of the car's occupants. And is there a limit to how many lives it should risk. I.e. if there are 2 people in the car, and one person in the middle of the road, should it run down the person in the road to save the 2 passengers? Or should it be based on the person's monetary net worth (which, as everyone knows, is a perfect proxy for the person's value to society) - should the car scan the RFID tag in the person on the road to see his net worth and compare it to the passengers?

  23. Re: It's a liability issue on Drivers Prefer Autonomous Cars That Don't Kill Them (hothardware.com) · · Score: 4, Funny

    Jesus Christ. Please never reference the film version of "I, Robot" ever again.

    Why not? It's way better than the boring stories that dude Asimov ripped off from the movie.

  24. Because he's not 'your neighbour', he's some guy who bought the apartment next to you, never lives in it, but rents it out to strangers on the internet for profit.

    He is my neighbor, and short-term rentals ( 180 days) are prohibited by the HOA, though special permission for shorter term rentals can be granted on a case by case basis (i.e. you're traveling for a month and want to rent out your apartment for that one time)

  25. Ah I see that you later stated you had the dates backward. Ignore my snark, then, please

    Yeah, I'm ever hopeful that some day technology will progress to the point where it's possible to edit a post after posting.