They aren't that fragile. My Dad has my old iPhone 4, it's never been kept in a thick plastic or silicone case, and it still looks nearly as good as new despite now being 6 years old (and on its original battery!)
My iPhone 6 which replaced it, when it came out, has never been in a case. It rattles around in my pocket with everything else in there. It's now 2 years old and still looks practically brand new despite never having been in a case and having been dropped once or twice.
They aren't anywhere near as fragile as people think. They are actually pretty tough.
It depends on the laptops and how well the manufacturer supports Linux. I find Hewlett-Packard laptops work just fine with Linux, I have a couple at work, both run Debian and there's no problems with the display, wifi, suspend/resume etc.
Let's imagine this is a MIRV with 15 separate warheads, totaling 50 megatons, total (maybe). Let's imagine the targets are the following British cities: London, Bristol, Plymouth, Portsmouth, Birmingham, Sheffield, Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds, Newcastle, Glasgow, Edinborough, with the larger ones receiving two warheads.
Britain would basically cease to exist as a nation. So much damage would be done the economy would be non-functional. All the transport links in the country flow through those now destroyed cities, and that infrastructure would be destroyed. Every single piece of modern electronics in the country and in neighbouring countries that was not EMP hardened would no longer work, and everything (especially the transportation system) depends on all this stuff working. The prevailing south west winds would ensure that enough fallout would end up on surrounding areas adding to the casualties, and areas with nearby nuclear power stations would receive a lot of extra fallout. Just feeding the survivors with a barely functioning transportation system would be a logistical nightmare - ground transportation would be difficult thanks most of the major road and rail routes having been destroyed. Injured survivors would be left to fend for themselves - the entire capacity of the health service would be overwhelmed with the casualties of just one of the bombs. The electricity grid would be destroyed, even to the undamaged areas, it would be years before power was restored.
The survivors themselves, many of them would be suffering PTSD in the years afterwards, and virtually everyone will have lost friends and family and probably most of what they own in the attacks. What survived wouldn't be Britain, it would be a grotesque almost zombie like Britain with at best third world conditions for decades following.
Just because there are survivors and some land left untouched doesn't mean the country is effectively destroyed.
> You think Russia is going to bother bombing North Dakota?
Yes, absolutely North Dakota would be bombed, because that's where a bunch of American missile silos are, and Minot AFB. North Dakota might not exactly be carpet bombed but it would be the recipient of more and larger weapons than you might think.
> A nuclear war would be horrifying but it wouldn't wipe out all life on earth
No, but human life afterwards wouldn't be much fun for generations, and even after the planet had recovered, would be like pre-industrial times. A nuclear winter caused by an all out exchange would be deeply unpleasant and finish off most of the survivors. Industrial society would unlikely ever restart, given the lack of people and lack of easy to mine resources (to get much of the resources we use now requires an already existing high technology base, that would no longer exist after a catastrophic exchange of nuclear weapons).
Well, more accurately it would be an American-built website, on a Taiwanese-made server, using Taiwanese-designed hardware, running a Finnish operating system, with his American designed cellphone made in China, running a Finnish operating system...
I couldn't get to Github, but that's the only outage I noticed due to a DNS error. It was right at the end of the day so I was about to go home anyway so didn't investigate any further.
I suspect also that Facebook (being a US firm) is trying to impose American prudishness on nations with completely different cultures. Not out of malice, merely ignorance of what other places may or may not find offensive.
I don't think I've ever come across a modern in-car GPS/entertainment system that is *not* a polished turd. The GPS navigation software is always terrible - slow, counterintuitive and annoying to use with an unresponsive UI meaning you're not sure if it actually accepted the touch screen input, difficult and costly to have updated, and if it allows over the air updates requires a contract (more cost). The system will also be hilariously dated before the car is even a third of a way through its expected lifetime. Often they are hilariously dated the day the car rolls off the production line.
I'd rather a car came with an entertainment system that had just one thing: a decent Bluetooth audio system and nothing else. That way the updates are on whatever device I use.
The best one I had was a Chevrolet rental car. The Bluetooth device list was full (it only allows 5), but trying to delete any of the devices left by previous renters did nothing. We tried turning the car off, trying it with the engine stopped, trying it parked with the engine running etc, but no difference. The UI went through all of the motions of deleting it, but didn't actually delete it. Googling brought the following procedure to reset the system. Stop the car, turn it off. Open the drivers door. Wait for 5 minutes with the drivers door open. Close the drivers door. Turn the car back on again.
It actually worked. It was bizarre. We could now remove the old bluetooth devices from the list.
It even remembered and automatically connected with my phone afterwards too.
It doesn't make it awkward at all. The external batteries are easily pocketable, and a short bit of cable isn't a problem. I have a MiFi with a battery you can swap, but I've never swapped the battery - it's easier and simpler just to plug it into an external battery when the charge gets low.
AMOLED screens tend to suffer from burn-in. A load of Ingress players with AMOLED phones have the image of the Ingress user interface permanently faintly visible on their screen where it's become burned in.
We seem to have electrified railways going between cities in Europe, and they seem to be cost effective. We even have an electric train that crosses the English channel.
Rubbish. The A319neo has a fuel efficiency of roughly 2L/100km per passenger seat (about the equivalent to 115 US mpg). The airlines that operate them get about a 90% load factor, so the passenger seat figure you quote is off by orders of magnitude.
Passenger air travel is becoming ever more fuel efficient. Airlines are keenly interested in the lowest fuel used per passenger seats, especially the low cost airlines. EasyJet's fleet (a low cost European airline) is almost brand new, same with RyanAir (who are notorious for making everything as cheap as possible). Not only do the airlines want efficient planes, but they want them as full as possible. EasyJet's load factor is 90% for example (meaning on average at least 90% of the seats are filled).
EasyJet's A319-neo aircraft have an average fuel burn (no wind) of about 2L/100km per passenger seat (about 115 mpg (US)). Adjusting with a 90% load factor about 103mpg per passenger flown. This is roughly equivalent to a reasonably efficient mid-size car carrying 3 people (note: most cars most of the time only carry 1 person), but remember the plane is doing 500+ mph while getting this efficiency, whereas the car will only be doing about 60mph to get that efficiency per seat.
A well-loaded electric train can better this of course, but airline travel isn't as absurdly fuel thirsty as you presume - there have been very impressive efficiency gains over time.
Making PCBs isn't all that hard, nor is soldering SMD. I've soldered 0.4mm pitch LQFP chips to a home made PCB. These days I don't bother making the PCBs since there's lots of places doing low quantity PCBs where I can just send the gerbers off to (and get 4 or 6 layer boards, which you need to be obsessed to make at home). I don't even use specialist tools for SMD soldering - normal soldering iron chisel tip, flux, 0.23mm dia solder, solder wick.
It varies massively by airport. Going through Houston on a B777 or B787 from London, I get through passport control before my luggage reaches the carousel every time, and that's been consistent for years. Each non-US citizen passenger gets through in generally less than 2 minutes, and there's always many gates open, so even if you're at the back the wait isn't typically all that long.
Dallas Fort Worth on the other hand... I will never use DFW again.
Why would that be the case with Eire and NI? The common travel area pre-dates both the UK's and Ireland's entry into the EEC (then EC, then EU). Eire is not a Schengen country and this probably won't change after Brexit.
Scotland won't vote for independence. To do so requires the approval of Westminster, and the government has already said it won't be allowing another Scottish referendum in the foreseeable future.
I didn't think anyone bought a valve (tube) amp for its linearity, but rather for how it distorts. At least my guitarist friends want valve amps for how they distort.
They weren't bringing the Internet to Africa from what I understand, but rather limited web access to a handful of web sites (one of which was of course Facebook).
Slashdot Mirror
Give them *some* credit. I'd say it needs at least a pretty small Perl script. The inbuilt regexp support would be very useful.
Today's military absolutely would fire at civilians.
The Kent State shootings demonstrate this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
They aren't that fragile. My Dad has my old iPhone 4, it's never been kept in a thick plastic or silicone case, and it still looks nearly as good as new despite now being 6 years old (and on its original battery!)
My iPhone 6 which replaced it, when it came out, has never been in a case. It rattles around in my pocket with everything else in there. It's now 2 years old and still looks practically brand new despite never having been in a case and having been dropped once or twice.
They aren't anywhere near as fragile as people think. They are actually pretty tough.
Transmission line efficiency is WAY above 50%. Your electricity power lines would be glowing cherry red if they were only 50% efficient.
Transmission losses for the UK power grid for example is only 7%, meaning transmission efficiency is 93% - a far cry from 50%.
It depends on the laptops and how well the manufacturer supports Linux. I find Hewlett-Packard laptops work just fine with Linux, I have a couple at work, both run Debian and there's no problems with the display, wifi, suspend/resume etc.
"Wipe out" is indeed what it would do.
Let's imagine this is a MIRV with 15 separate warheads, totaling 50 megatons, total (maybe). Let's imagine the targets are the following British cities: London, Bristol, Plymouth, Portsmouth, Birmingham, Sheffield, Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds, Newcastle, Glasgow, Edinborough, with the larger ones receiving two warheads.
Britain would basically cease to exist as a nation. So much damage would be done the economy would be non-functional. All the transport links in the country flow through those now destroyed cities, and that infrastructure would be destroyed. Every single piece of modern electronics in the country and in neighbouring countries that was not EMP hardened would no longer work, and everything (especially the transportation system) depends on all this stuff working. The prevailing south west winds would ensure that enough fallout would end up on surrounding areas adding to the casualties, and areas with nearby nuclear power stations would receive a lot of extra fallout. Just feeding the survivors with a barely functioning transportation system would be a logistical nightmare - ground transportation would be difficult thanks most of the major road and rail routes having been destroyed. Injured survivors would be left to fend for themselves - the entire capacity of the health service would be overwhelmed with the casualties of just one of the bombs. The electricity grid would be destroyed, even to the undamaged areas, it would be years before power was restored.
The survivors themselves, many of them would be suffering PTSD in the years afterwards, and virtually everyone will have lost friends and family and probably most of what they own in the attacks. What survived wouldn't be Britain, it would be a grotesque almost zombie like Britain with at best third world conditions for decades following.
Just because there are survivors and some land left untouched doesn't mean the country is effectively destroyed.
> You think Russia is going to bother bombing North Dakota?
Yes, absolutely North Dakota would be bombed, because that's where a bunch of American missile silos are, and Minot AFB. North Dakota might not exactly be carpet bombed but it would be the recipient of more and larger weapons than you might think.
> A nuclear war would be horrifying but it wouldn't wipe out all life on earth
No, but human life afterwards wouldn't be much fun for generations, and even after the planet had recovered, would be like pre-industrial times. A nuclear winter caused by an all out exchange would be deeply unpleasant and finish off most of the survivors. Industrial society would unlikely ever restart, given the lack of people and lack of easy to mine resources (to get much of the resources we use now requires an already existing high technology base, that would no longer exist after a catastrophic exchange of nuclear weapons).
Well, more accurately it would be an American-built website, on a Taiwanese-made server, using Taiwanese-designed hardware, running a Finnish operating system, with his American designed cellphone made in China, running a Finnish operating system...
I couldn't get to Github, but that's the only outage I noticed due to a DNS error. It was right at the end of the day so I was about to go home anyway so didn't investigate any further.
I suspect also that Facebook (being a US firm) is trying to impose American prudishness on nations with completely different cultures. Not out of malice, merely ignorance of what other places may or may not find offensive.
I don't think I've ever come across a modern in-car GPS/entertainment system that is *not* a polished turd. The GPS navigation software is always terrible - slow, counterintuitive and annoying to use with an unresponsive UI meaning you're not sure if it actually accepted the touch screen input, difficult and costly to have updated, and if it allows over the air updates requires a contract (more cost). The system will also be hilariously dated before the car is even a third of a way through its expected lifetime. Often they are hilariously dated the day the car rolls off the production line.
I'd rather a car came with an entertainment system that had just one thing: a decent Bluetooth audio system and nothing else. That way the updates are on whatever device I use.
Ironically, the Escort wasn't an American car, it was a rebadged Mazda.
The best one I had was a Chevrolet rental car. The Bluetooth device list was full (it only allows 5), but trying to delete any of the devices left by previous renters did nothing. We tried turning the car off, trying it with the engine stopped, trying it parked with the engine running etc, but no difference. The UI went through all of the motions of deleting it, but didn't actually delete it. Googling brought the following procedure to reset the system. Stop the car, turn it off. Open the drivers door. Wait for 5 minutes with the drivers door open. Close the drivers door. Turn the car back on again.
It actually worked. It was bizarre. We could now remove the old bluetooth devices from the list.
It even remembered and automatically connected with my phone afterwards too.
It doesn't make it awkward at all. The external batteries are easily pocketable, and a short bit of cable isn't a problem. I have a MiFi with a battery you can swap, but I've never swapped the battery - it's easier and simpler just to plug it into an external battery when the charge gets low.
It's horses for courses.
AMOLED screens tend to suffer from burn-in. A load of Ingress players with AMOLED phones have the image of the Ingress user interface permanently faintly visible on their screen where it's become burned in.
We seem to have electrified railways going between cities in Europe, and they seem to be cost effective. We even have an electric train that crosses the English channel.
Rubbish. The A319neo has a fuel efficiency of roughly 2L/100km per passenger seat (about the equivalent to 115 US mpg). The airlines that operate them get about a 90% load factor, so the passenger seat figure you quote is off by orders of magnitude.
I would take the train just to avoid the mini-hell that is Stansted airport.
Not so fast.
Passenger air travel is becoming ever more fuel efficient. Airlines are keenly interested in the lowest fuel used per passenger seats, especially the low cost airlines. EasyJet's fleet (a low cost European airline) is almost brand new, same with RyanAir (who are notorious for making everything as cheap as possible). Not only do the airlines want efficient planes, but they want them as full as possible. EasyJet's load factor is 90% for example (meaning on average at least 90% of the seats are filled).
EasyJet's A319-neo aircraft have an average fuel burn (no wind) of about 2L/100km per passenger seat (about 115 mpg (US)). Adjusting with a 90% load factor about 103mpg per passenger flown. This is roughly equivalent to a reasonably efficient mid-size car carrying 3 people (note: most cars most of the time only carry 1 person), but remember the plane is doing 500+ mph while getting this efficiency, whereas the car will only be doing about 60mph to get that efficiency per seat.
A well-loaded electric train can better this of course, but airline travel isn't as absurdly fuel thirsty as you presume - there have been very impressive efficiency gains over time.
Making PCBs isn't all that hard, nor is soldering SMD. I've soldered 0.4mm pitch LQFP chips to a home made PCB. These days I don't bother making the PCBs since there's lots of places doing low quantity PCBs where I can just send the gerbers off to (and get 4 or 6 layer boards, which you need to be obsessed to make at home). I don't even use specialist tools for SMD soldering - normal soldering iron chisel tip, flux, 0.23mm dia solder, solder wick.
It varies massively by airport. Going through Houston on a B777 or B787 from London, I get through passport control before my luggage reaches the carousel every time, and that's been consistent for years. Each non-US citizen passenger gets through in generally less than 2 minutes, and there's always many gates open, so even if you're at the back the wait isn't typically all that long.
Dallas Fort Worth on the other hand... I will never use DFW again.
Why would that be the case with Eire and NI? The common travel area pre-dates both the UK's and Ireland's entry into the EEC (then EC, then EU). Eire is not a Schengen country and this probably won't change after Brexit.
Scotland won't vote for independence. To do so requires the approval of Westminster, and the government has already said it won't be allowing another Scottish referendum in the foreseeable future.
I didn't think anyone bought a valve (tube) amp for its linearity, but rather for how it distorts. At least my guitarist friends want valve amps for how they distort.
They weren't bringing the Internet to Africa from what I understand, but rather limited web access to a handful of web sites (one of which was of course Facebook).