Maybe they're working on partial data from the vendors, but those entirely arbitrary groupings of specific products, closely related products, and entire product ranges make this pretty a meaningless apples to oranges comparison. The figure of 223m is for all models of iPhone, e.g. every model of phone Apple makes (albeit unclear if they mean just the three models released in 2017 or older models too), yet the figure for Samsung is for one pair of related models out of many other ranges, most of which are part of the Galaxy line which they then go on to state is more popular than the iPhone, and the other three products on the list are specific models, albeit with some different bundle and style options.
You can't even say it's done that way to turn it into a pro-Apple fluff piece because there's no way that those 223m iPhones Apple shipped can't end up with them having the most popular individual product of 2017 (almost certainly the iPhone 8) when broken down to that level.
I suspect there are still a lot of details that are not fully in the public conciousness yet - I didn't know that he'd claimed to be the actual hostage taker - but again that doesn't really work. Right off the bat, that should indicate that the supposed shooter has come to their senses somewhat and may be at least open to being talked down without any further violence. Then there's this:
gasoline fumes can ignite on contact with many mundane heat/electric sources
That includes gunfire, so surely that's another reason why the responding police should have been cautioned about not being so trigger happy before they arrived on the scene? Potentially, you're either close enough to know for sure that you won't miss which increases the chance the gun discharging would ignite any fumes directly, or far enough back that you might miss and have a ricochet do it.
I think the real takeaway here is that are multiple procedural and training failures on the side of law enforcement that need to be kept in the spotlight, rather than allowing it to focus entirely on the actions of the two gamers. A tragic mistake has already happened and that can't be changed, but there's no reason to compound that by failing to learn from it.
You know, that could be the 127.0.0.1 script kiddie bait for the swatting generation. Try giving your address as "1600 Pennsylvania, D.C." (which certainly fits your second point for a whole *bunch* of people), or local equivalent, and wait for the fireworks to start...
I'm assuming that the Secret Service (or local equivalent) will actually will get the address of the swatter before they roll, but either way it's popcorn time.
It's not just the cops that responded who need to be investigated with a view to procedural changes, disciplinary action, or even potentially prosecution, they need to take a look at the dispatcher too. From what I understand, the 911 call contained some remarkably specific information that could only have originated from someone in a house where, according to the caller, there was an armed family member holding the rest of the family hostage - yet had somehow managed to overlook the caller. That seems like a pretty big red flag that this was *potentially* a crank call to me, so the question is how many people failed to pick up on that red flag betweeen the police responding to the call and the shot being fired? Sure, they had to respond and be prepared for it to be a genuine call when they get there, but you'd kind of think that *any* possibility that it might be bogus might make those on the scene a little less trigger happy, no?
Actually, as TFA points out, filing a false police report (which is esssentially what swatting is) *is* a felony in some juridictions but a misdemeanor in others. It's clearly a misdemeanor in California, but AFAICT can be either a misdemeanor *or* felony in Kansas depending on the severity. Since someone got killed, I'd guess this could fall into the felony category, in which case "Swautistic" could be going away for quite some time if prosecuted and found guilty in Kansas.
It does not automatically follow that because there has been a 22-year low for *all* movies that superhero movies are part of the problem, or are fading in popularity. In fact, the entirely of the fall-off seems to be mostly accounted for by other genres while superhero movies taken in isolation seem to have remained static, or even increased their ticket sales, depending on which set of box office figures you believe.
Also, don't forget that superhero (including things like Star Wars and Star Trek, not just DC/Marvel/etc.) movies offer a phenomonal amount of additional revenue through merchandising compared to almost every other movie genre, Disney/Dreamworks animated franchises being the only other real player. Hollywood might not get as large a percentage from the mechandising rights at they do for ticket sales but the sheer volume of it isn't to be sneezed at, and you can guarantee that is factored into the budgeting and selection of what goes to production.
Sadly for those of us that prefer other genres, or are just looking for a little more variety with decent levels of quality, superhero movies are a *huge* part of Hollywood's profits and they're not going to be going anywhere anytime soon.
I picked up an S3 at almost 20% off in the post-Christmas sales (YMMV on discount availability, obviously) and it seems to fit your needs to a T. Personally, even with the discount, I think it's still slightly overpriced, but easily the nicest Android Nougat tablet on the market at the moment, although it will almost certainly be getting an update to Oreo at some point in 2018. There's surprising little bloatware pre-installed by Samsung - mostly MS Office and a few other popular tools - which can easily be disabled, although it's definitely not 100% stock due to Samsung's UI tweaks. Performance is great, the 9.7" AMOLED screen is amazingly clear and bright, and as you'll already be aware it's light (429g vs. 517g for the Pixel C), has USB-C, fingerprint reader, and the mSD slot that the Pixel didn't (mine has a 64GB card in it). I'm also finding the S-pen surprisingly useful, and combined with a BlueTooth keyboard [1] it's effectively a laptop replacement for general purpose computing. Highly recommended, despite the price.
[1] Like the RRP of the tablet, Samsung's keyboard cover is also ridiculously overpriced and (AFAIK) still has the design flaw of not including a cut-out for the tablet's rear-facing camera, so be sure to check that if you're considering it. I got a third party cover that included a removable keyboard with a built in trackpad that essentially turns it into a laptop replacement as long as you don't need to do anything too complicated.
Social media platforms are absolutely doing this kind of thing, even in the EU, and they get away with it because, as far as the letter of the law in many places is concerned, provided they store the data under a generic UID like "AdvertisingTargetProfile529313" applied behind the scenes rather than an actual name like "beelsebob", it's considered anonymous. The spirit of the law and lots of data analysis proving the contrary might say bullshit to that, but barring someone actually taking them to court over it and winning, that's what they do and will continue to do.
It's easy enough to test too. Wipe your browser's cache, or start a browser in a clean sandbox on a random IP address that isn't tied to you (e.g. a random coffee shop), disable any ad-blockers, enable cookies and scripts, then start surfing the multiple sites across the web looking for information a random product like you might be looking to make a purchase - reviews, specs, etc. You don't even need to follow links between sites; just going directly to relevant sites and using their internal search engines or browsing site indexes is enough. How long do you think it'll take before Google etc. start serving up ads based on what you are looking for, even if you only search using other engines? If you get to the ten minute mark before getting nailed, I'll be impressed. They're only able to do that because they're using non-opt-in profiling and, sooner or later, there's going to be enough data in that profile that it might as well have your actual name on it- and with the right analysis it quite easily could - assuming you didn't inadvertly give that data point away as well, of course.
It's a good start, but there are still some fairly major loopholes that could do with being closed. Specifically for all the information that Facebook, Google, LinkedIn/Microsoft, Twitter, etc. gather on people without them even *having* an account. Even if we assume that they fully complied with a request to delete an individual's account data per the EU regulations, that would only almost certainly only mean pressing reset on the stuff tied to the account and they'd continue collecting the rest perfectly legally because it's "anonymous". That this kind of data isn't actually anonymous and can readily be tied to a specific individual is pretty well established by now, yet they continue to gather vast mountains of data on people who never opted in *or* out, nor is there a simple way to request it be deleted because an individual can't easily link themselves to a given tracking ID.
Be careful what you wish for on that as well. The fairly obvious solution would be legislation that forces companies to honour things like DoNotTrack, but given previous attempts in this area by the EU we'll probably end up with another fatally flawed implemention like the Cookie Directive and the endless series of prompts to allow them to set a cookie to say that you don't want them to set cookies.
There's a slight problem with using a hyperloop style tunnel to launch a rocket - the rocket eventually will need to exit the tunnel, which means the tunnel can no longer be sealed to maintain a near vacuum. Using a maglev, or similar propelled "cart", to provide a first stage launch vehicle for a spacecraft isn't a new concept though - as you say, there are numerous 20thC sci-fi works that depict this approach, almost certainly based on the technique used by the V1 and V2 rockets in the 1940s - so removing the hyperloop tunnel from the equation and just using a souped-up version of the maglev might eventually be a viable approach. It really depends on whether the fuel and mass savings from that initial phase of acceleration is significant enough to offset the costs and technical complexity (e.g. potentially non-vertical launch trajectory) of operating the first stage.
I agree it's highly speculative and constrained by our non-existant experience with alien life which is why I didn't even try and quantify it. Still, at the very minimum you're going to need a capacity to actually construct the thing and understand the maths, science, etc. required for to do so which implies a minimum brain (or equivalent) capacity, plus a the necessary stature and dexterity to physically manipulate the construction materials and withstand the rigours of the trip. Learning simple tricks is completely different than having a sufficient grasp of STEM and the levels of manual dexterity for such a project, so while I think more/less compact frames than a human is certainly possible for a space-faring species, there are almost certainly size limits in both directions, regardless of the precise physiology.
The more significant variable might be personal space - most humans seem to need quite a bit of it except for relatively short periods of time, but there's no reason why another species wouldn't be perfectly OK with next to none. However that's another trade off; even if they don't move around much or need much spare space, they still need to supply energy to keep the crew alive; food and/or power which requires at least some space, no matter how efficient the recycling systems and power generators are. The larger the crew, the larger the life-support systems required. On the otherhand, if you shrink the crew count too much on a multi-generational ship you are potentially going to have issues with genetic diversity and susceptibility to diseases - assuming either of those is relevant to our hypothetical aliens, of course.
It think it's more likely people are doing this to try and get ahead of the queue for any sell orders compared to people who went for a round number like $16,000. Given the latency in the BTC system and potential for profit-taking and accompanying price falls at each major dollar amount milestone that could make quite a difference in your bottom line when it all shakes out - especially if it results in a sell instead of being left holding the bag and praying for a recovery after a major price correction.
All assuming that the exchange doesn't crash and your trade goes through at all, of course.
The assumption there is that aliens would operate with the same timeframe constraints we do. Humans are pretty bad at projects that are not going to be completed/operational within a single lifetime; even the Great Wall of China is really a number of smaller projects, and I can only think of a couple of scientific experiments that have been on-going for more than a century, although I'm sure there are others. An alien race on the otherhand need not think that way and, even before you take into account they might be much longer lived and more patient than we are, sending out space probes that are not going to return any results for millennia, if at all, might not be seen a conceptual problem.
That said, I don't think it's a probe or multigenerational ship either; it not only seems awfully small for a multi-generational ship (assuming a reasonable minimum size for any lifeforms that might crew it), but also needlessly large for an automated probe. Maybe if you allow for the occupants being in stasis for the voyage, some kind of currently inactive propulsion system that allows for much faster speeds than we're currently seeing, or various other Sci-Fi scenarios. The real deal breaker though is waste heat; there doesn't seem to be any, so if it is a ship then it's either very energy efficient or a wreck.
Yeah, I'm aware that there are some crypto currencies that are trying to do more useful stuff with all the processor cycles, or look at other approaches to coin earning "work" using the Blockchain that are not so environmentally unfriendly though excessive power consumption, such as Ethereum's concept embedding of Smart Contracts in the blockchain. The problem there is one of inertia; BTC is way out in front in the general public perception stakes (I've already seen several non-tech media articles that have used "Bitcoin" as a synonym for "crypto currency"), with ETH and LTC probably just barely on the Radar of those outside the core community that have actually done their homework. For current speculative investments in crypto currencies BTC is clearly where it's at, and many of the people doing so are more likely to be buying BTC rather than mining their own; I doubt the Winklevoss twins have mined a single coin, but their BTC are (on paper at least) supposed worth over $1b: high demand plus limited supply means ever higher prices, which increases demand... AKA "a bubble", although it's anyone's guess when it'll pop and how much of a correction there will be when it does. While I'd love to see it happen, getting a sufficiently large chunk of the mining farms and speculators to switch to a suitable existing currency like Gridcoin, let alone a brand new one launched by Folding@Home or similar as suggested by Mikael below, is probably a non-starter at this point.
There's complaining about the computation, and there's complaining about the pointlessness of the actual computation itself. While the former is, to some extent, necessary for the design of many crypto currencies, the latter has become apparant as a design issue that (with the benefit of hindsight) really is a serious moral flaw in the whole concept. All that processing time is 100% self-serving to the currency when it could quite easily achieve the same purpose *and* do something useful that might benefit mankind as a whole.
If you want to use an arbitrary computation to secure the ledger, then why not compute something that might actually have some productive benefit like Folding@Home instead? Need to force artificial scarcity (as BTC does), then instead of periodically reducing the number of coins awarded per computational unit, increase the number of Folding@Home (or whatever) units that need to be processed in order to earn in order to mine a coin. Many crypto currency fans are touting the "more energy consumed than x countries" stats like they're some kind of badge of honour, when in reality it's just another example of mankind screwing ourselves over in the long term in the pursuit of a quick buck right now.
Very true. That does present an interesting possibility that we may be slowly approaching a tipping point though, at least if the figures in this article that claims that electric cars are now becoming cheaper to run than those with ICEs are accurate. There's some caveats in there (of course), and the study only applies to a single inefficient fossil fuel usage case in a handful of pretty well developed countries, but the rest of the first world probably isn't too far behind. There's clearly a long way to go though; providing fossil fuel free electricity to power the cars (it may be more efficient to burn the carbon centrally, but it's still far from green), getting that electricity capacity into areas where it's currently lacking (especially in developing nations), and - the big one - making it cheaper for far more usage cases than replacing the ICE.
That they sold out for as little as $20k just rubs salt in the wound. Your mention of hos makes me wonder if the negotiation as to the necessary funds went along along the lines of the old joke about negotiating affection:
Man: "Would you have sex with me for one million dollars?"
Woman: "For a whole million dollars? Sure!"
Man: "Cool. Would you have sex with me for a buck?"
Woman: "Of course not! What kind of woman do you think I am?"
Man: "Lady, we've already established what you are. Now we're just haggling over the price."
Substitute "sell out your constituents" for "have sex with me", and yeah, I can well believe some of these rent-a-shills would end up settling for $20k.
Actually, I don't think "being a techie" makes much difference either. Think about how many who are technically competent, including those that actually have an idea of what is going on and the capabilities of big data, still continue to use the services of Facebook, Google, and so on, despite the now almost weekly stories highlighting just how easy it is for companies to make connections and draw conclusions that at first seem to be impossible. Technical knowledge is almost certainly a major factor in why people eventually decide to opt-out (or try to), but it apparently has no bearing on why people keep voluntarily throwing their often highly personal data at all sorts of companies, as opposed to situations like Equifax, where they probably didn't even get a say in the matter. That willingness seems like it's mostly down to a combination of two things: apathy, in that they know but it's too much effort to change, or contentment, in that they've accepted the trade-off as they understand it (almost certainly poorly, regardless of technical aptitude) and don't see any need to even look for an alternative approach.
Google apparently custom builds their core systems (or more likely gets a third party to build systems to their specs), including the use of their own motherboard designs. That affords them a lot more latitude to design the IME out of the system and implement alternatives that they control - using proprietary silicon if need be - than it would if they were buying pre-built systems off the shelf and trying to turn the IME off after the fact. I wouldn't count on any potential Google solution being a fix for a regular user who is buying pre-built PCs, or even building their own from readily available COTS components.
While I think it's probably started to get pretty close, I suspect that *NIX (there is lots of BSD in the embedded space) hasn't quite knocked some of the more popular RTOSs - like QNX or VxWorks out of the park for embedded systems just yet either, and it gets even more messy if you take into account that many RTOSs are actually derived from *NIX OSs. There are an *awful* lot of home, office, and industrial appliances running something like QNX/VxWorks behind the scenes, and you typically have far more of those than PCs when you start to think about it, but even then there's a good chance the monitor will be running an RTOS variant too for all those on-screen displays and colour management tools. Usage stats for given devices, let alone ones that might be credible or aggregated by OS, are awfully hard to come by though.
I dunno, seems like an ideal opportunity for a very thinly veiled bit of agenda pushing in support or opposition of the movement to legalise marijuana and other recreational drugs to me; depending on how you write the character you could easily go either way on that - or leave it more ambiguous to try and add to the discussion. A TV series has a lot more room for "extending the canon" (AKA "filler") and using it to provide some form of commentry on real world affairs, so I wouldn't count him out just yet.
I think we've actually got two quite distinct groups of BTC users at this point (with some members of both groups); those that are using it as a currency, split between those who maintain a float of BTC in a wallet and those that just buy BTC on demand for a specific purchase, and those that are using it as a high-risk speculative investment. Depending on the size of the wallet and the timing of the (probably inevitable) price correction, the former group shouldn't be two badly burnt by it, especially if the BTC in the wallet were acquired before, or fairly early on, in the recent spike in value. If/when the correction comes, then the bag holders are (as usual) going to be the latecomers to the latter group with larger holdings than the level of risk they can bear - if you bought in for your investment at $2,000 (say) and it crashes to $3,000, you're still good, albeit probably a little put out that you didn't bail a little sooner. If you were late to the party and bought in at $5,000, $6,000, or even $7,000 though... Note also that being gung-ho about blockchain and related technologies - as is the case for much of corporate interest - does not in many instances actually entail that they hold any significant holdings of the currency themselves; all the real financial risk is elsewhere.
If you had a PalmPilot it even played a sound while tranferring data. Magick indeed. Needless to say, any self-respecting nerd immediately replaced Palm's default warble with a recording of a ToS tricorder - in fact, I think that was actually mandatory if you had one of the models with the flip-up screen protector and wanted to retain any nerd-cred at all. Good times!
I think you're mis-parsing the report a bit. What's exceptional here is the *combination* of factors; the strength of the storm, that it's so far east, *and* so late in the year. There have absolutely been recorded storms that are more powerful, further east, *or* later in the year, but not all three at the same time - hence it's of at least some note to those with an interest in meteology or climate change - even the deniers and skeptics, since they need to know about it to try debunk it. Yeah, there's an element of those dumb precedent stats (Oblig. XKCD) like "Party X has never lost the election when they've won seats Y & Z", but there's nothing wrong with the reporting - all it does is state a series of facts about the storm.
That's the big question though, isn't it - who had access to the code? Even if we assume (and I see no reason not to) that the Israeli's are telling the truth about the FSB using Kaspersky AV to commit espionage rather than just supporting some US FUD, we actually still have no idea whether they were using code that was deliberately placed there by Kaspersky at the behest/insistance of the FSB, or a coding error that the FSB exploited in the same manner that the NSA has demonstrably exploited numerous tools. Note also the careful wording of the public versions of the Israeli announcement - they are making absolutely no assertions about whether or not Kaspersky Labs was aware of the flaw, just that the FSB was exploiting the software.
We should absolutely assume that the FSB has a similar programme of finding and exploting zero-day exploits to the NSA, so what really matters now is how Kaspersky Labs responds. Addressing the issue of the flawed code is easy enough, especially if they Israelis have treated it as a bug and shared the details with them, but the real trick (regardless of whether they are in the pocket of the FSB or not) is going to be to convince people they really didn't have any knowledge of this and it really was a zero day discovered by the FSB. That's going to be tough, but perhaps not impossible - don't forget that they have a pretty good track record of exposing various hacking groups, including some that are almost certainly Russian government sponsored, and was instrumental in pinning Stuxnet on the US and Israelis so there's history there as well..
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe they're working on partial data from the vendors, but those entirely arbitrary groupings of specific products, closely related products, and entire product ranges make this pretty a meaningless apples to oranges comparison. The figure of 223m is for all models of iPhone, e.g. every model of phone Apple makes (albeit unclear if they mean just the three models released in 2017 or older models too), yet the figure for Samsung is for one pair of related models out of many other ranges, most of which are part of the Galaxy line which they then go on to state is more popular than the iPhone, and the other three products on the list are specific models, albeit with some different bundle and style options.
You can't even say it's done that way to turn it into a pro-Apple fluff piece because there's no way that those 223m iPhones Apple shipped can't end up with them having the most popular individual product of 2017 (almost certainly the iPhone 8) when broken down to that level.
That includes gunfire, so surely that's another reason why the responding police should have been cautioned about not being so trigger happy before they arrived on the scene? Potentially, you're either close enough to know for sure that you won't miss which increases the chance the gun discharging would ignite any fumes directly, or far enough back that you might miss and have a ricochet do it.
I think the real takeaway here is that are multiple procedural and training failures on the side of law enforcement that need to be kept in the spotlight, rather than allowing it to focus entirely on the actions of the two gamers. A tragic mistake has already happened and that can't be changed, but there's no reason to compound that by failing to learn from it.
You know, that could be the 127.0.0.1 script kiddie bait for the swatting generation. Try giving your address as "1600 Pennsylvania, D.C." (which certainly fits your second point for a whole *bunch* of people), or local equivalent, and wait for the fireworks to start...
I'm assuming that the Secret Service (or local equivalent) will actually will get the address of the swatter before they roll, but either way it's popcorn time.
It's not just the cops that responded who need to be investigated with a view to procedural changes, disciplinary action, or even potentially prosecution, they need to take a look at the dispatcher too. From what I understand, the 911 call contained some remarkably specific information that could only have originated from someone in a house where, according to the caller, there was an armed family member holding the rest of the family hostage - yet had somehow managed to overlook the caller. That seems like a pretty big red flag that this was *potentially* a crank call to me, so the question is how many people failed to pick up on that red flag betweeen the police responding to the call and the shot being fired? Sure, they had to respond and be prepared for it to be a genuine call when they get there, but you'd kind of think that *any* possibility that it might be bogus might make those on the scene a little less trigger happy, no?
Actually, as TFA points out, filing a false police report (which is esssentially what swatting is) *is* a felony in some juridictions but a misdemeanor in others. It's clearly a misdemeanor in California, but AFAICT can be either a misdemeanor *or* felony in Kansas depending on the severity. Since someone got killed, I'd guess this could fall into the felony category, in which case "Swautistic" could be going away for quite some time if prosecuted and found guilty in Kansas.
It does not automatically follow that because there has been a 22-year low for *all* movies that superhero movies are part of the problem, or are fading in popularity. In fact, the entirely of the fall-off seems to be mostly accounted for by other genres while superhero movies taken in isolation seem to have remained static, or even increased their ticket sales, depending on which set of box office figures you believe.
Also, don't forget that superhero (including things like Star Wars and Star Trek, not just DC/Marvel/etc.) movies offer a phenomonal amount of additional revenue through merchandising compared to almost every other movie genre, Disney/Dreamworks animated franchises being the only other real player. Hollywood might not get as large a percentage from the mechandising rights at they do for ticket sales but the sheer volume of it isn't to be sneezed at, and you can guarantee that is factored into the budgeting and selection of what goes to production.
Sadly for those of us that prefer other genres, or are just looking for a little more variety with decent levels of quality, superhero movies are a *huge* part of Hollywood's profits and they're not going to be going anywhere anytime soon.
I picked up an S3 at almost 20% off in the post-Christmas sales (YMMV on discount availability, obviously) and it seems to fit your needs to a T. Personally, even with the discount, I think it's still slightly overpriced, but easily the nicest Android Nougat tablet on the market at the moment, although it will almost certainly be getting an update to Oreo at some point in 2018. There's surprising little bloatware pre-installed by Samsung - mostly MS Office and a few other popular tools - which can easily be disabled, although it's definitely not 100% stock due to Samsung's UI tweaks. Performance is great, the 9.7" AMOLED screen is amazingly clear and bright, and as you'll already be aware it's light (429g vs. 517g for the Pixel C), has USB-C, fingerprint reader, and the mSD slot that the Pixel didn't (mine has a 64GB card in it). I'm also finding the S-pen surprisingly useful, and combined with a BlueTooth keyboard [1] it's effectively a laptop replacement for general purpose computing. Highly recommended, despite the price.
[1] Like the RRP of the tablet, Samsung's keyboard cover is also ridiculously overpriced and (AFAIK) still has the design flaw of not including a cut-out for the tablet's rear-facing camera, so be sure to check that if you're considering it. I got a third party cover that included a removable keyboard with a built in trackpad that essentially turns it into a laptop replacement as long as you don't need to do anything too complicated.
Social media platforms are absolutely doing this kind of thing, even in the EU, and they get away with it because, as far as the letter of the law in many places is concerned, provided they store the data under a generic UID like "AdvertisingTargetProfile529313" applied behind the scenes rather than an actual name like "beelsebob", it's considered anonymous. The spirit of the law and lots of data analysis proving the contrary might say bullshit to that, but barring someone actually taking them to court over it and winning, that's what they do and will continue to do.
It's easy enough to test too. Wipe your browser's cache, or start a browser in a clean sandbox on a random IP address that isn't tied to you (e.g. a random coffee shop), disable any ad-blockers, enable cookies and scripts, then start surfing the multiple sites across the web looking for information a random product like you might be looking to make a purchase - reviews, specs, etc. You don't even need to follow links between sites; just going directly to relevant sites and using their internal search engines or browsing site indexes is enough. How long do you think it'll take before Google etc. start serving up ads based on what you are looking for, even if you only search using other engines? If you get to the ten minute mark before getting nailed, I'll be impressed. They're only able to do that because they're using non-opt-in profiling and, sooner or later, there's going to be enough data in that profile that it might as well have your actual name on it- and with the right analysis it quite easily could - assuming you didn't inadvertly give that data point away as well, of course.
It's a good start, but there are still some fairly major loopholes that could do with being closed. Specifically for all the information that Facebook, Google, LinkedIn/Microsoft, Twitter, etc. gather on people without them even *having* an account. Even if we assume that they fully complied with a request to delete an individual's account data per the EU regulations, that would only almost certainly only mean pressing reset on the stuff tied to the account and they'd continue collecting the rest perfectly legally because it's "anonymous". That this kind of data isn't actually anonymous and can readily be tied to a specific individual is pretty well established by now, yet they continue to gather vast mountains of data on people who never opted in *or* out, nor is there a simple way to request it be deleted because an individual can't easily link themselves to a given tracking ID.
Be careful what you wish for on that as well. The fairly obvious solution would be legislation that forces companies to honour things like DoNotTrack, but given previous attempts in this area by the EU we'll probably end up with another fatally flawed implemention like the Cookie Directive and the endless series of prompts to allow them to set a cookie to say that you don't want them to set cookies.
There's a slight problem with using a hyperloop style tunnel to launch a rocket - the rocket eventually will need to exit the tunnel, which means the tunnel can no longer be sealed to maintain a near vacuum. Using a maglev, or similar propelled "cart", to provide a first stage launch vehicle for a spacecraft isn't a new concept though - as you say, there are numerous 20thC sci-fi works that depict this approach, almost certainly based on the technique used by the V1 and V2 rockets in the 1940s - so removing the hyperloop tunnel from the equation and just using a souped-up version of the maglev might eventually be a viable approach. It really depends on whether the fuel and mass savings from that initial phase of acceleration is significant enough to offset the costs and technical complexity (e.g. potentially non-vertical launch trajectory) of operating the first stage.
I agree it's highly speculative and constrained by our non-existant experience with alien life which is why I didn't even try and quantify it. Still, at the very minimum you're going to need a capacity to actually construct the thing and understand the maths, science, etc. required for to do so which implies a minimum brain (or equivalent) capacity, plus a the necessary stature and dexterity to physically manipulate the construction materials and withstand the rigours of the trip. Learning simple tricks is completely different than having a sufficient grasp of STEM and the levels of manual dexterity for such a project, so while I think more/less compact frames than a human is certainly possible for a space-faring species, there are almost certainly size limits in both directions, regardless of the precise physiology.
The more significant variable might be personal space - most humans seem to need quite a bit of it except for relatively short periods of time, but there's no reason why another species wouldn't be perfectly OK with next to none. However that's another trade off; even if they don't move around much or need much spare space, they still need to supply energy to keep the crew alive; food and/or power which requires at least some space, no matter how efficient the recycling systems and power generators are. The larger the crew, the larger the life-support systems required. On the otherhand, if you shrink the crew count too much on a multi-generational ship you are potentially going to have issues with genetic diversity and susceptibility to diseases - assuming either of those is relevant to our hypothetical aliens, of course.
It think it's more likely people are doing this to try and get ahead of the queue for any sell orders compared to people who went for a round number like $16,000. Given the latency in the BTC system and potential for profit-taking and accompanying price falls at each major dollar amount milestone that could make quite a difference in your bottom line when it all shakes out - especially if it results in a sell instead of being left holding the bag and praying for a recovery after a major price correction.
All assuming that the exchange doesn't crash and your trade goes through at all, of course.
The assumption there is that aliens would operate with the same timeframe constraints we do. Humans are pretty bad at projects that are not going to be completed/operational within a single lifetime; even the Great Wall of China is really a number of smaller projects, and I can only think of a couple of scientific experiments that have been on-going for more than a century, although I'm sure there are others. An alien race on the otherhand need not think that way and, even before you take into account they might be much longer lived and more patient than we are, sending out space probes that are not going to return any results for millennia, if at all, might not be seen a conceptual problem.
That said, I don't think it's a probe or multigenerational ship either; it not only seems awfully small for a multi-generational ship (assuming a reasonable minimum size for any lifeforms that might crew it), but also needlessly large for an automated probe. Maybe if you allow for the occupants being in stasis for the voyage, some kind of currently inactive propulsion system that allows for much faster speeds than we're currently seeing, or various other Sci-Fi scenarios. The real deal breaker though is waste heat; there doesn't seem to be any, so if it is a ship then it's either very energy efficient or a wreck.
Yeah, I'm aware that there are some crypto currencies that are trying to do more useful stuff with all the processor cycles, or look at other approaches to coin earning "work" using the Blockchain that are not so environmentally unfriendly though excessive power consumption, such as Ethereum's concept embedding of Smart Contracts in the blockchain. The problem there is one of inertia; BTC is way out in front in the general public perception stakes (I've already seen several non-tech media articles that have used "Bitcoin" as a synonym for "crypto currency"), with ETH and LTC probably just barely on the Radar of those outside the core community that have actually done their homework. For current speculative investments in crypto currencies BTC is clearly where it's at, and many of the people doing so are more likely to be buying BTC rather than mining their own; I doubt the Winklevoss twins have mined a single coin, but their BTC are (on paper at least) supposed worth over $1b: high demand plus limited supply means ever higher prices, which increases demand... AKA "a bubble", although it's anyone's guess when it'll pop and how much of a correction there will be when it does. While I'd love to see it happen, getting a sufficiently large chunk of the mining farms and speculators to switch to a suitable existing currency like Gridcoin, let alone a brand new one launched by Folding@Home or similar as suggested by Mikael below, is probably a non-starter at this point.
There's complaining about the computation, and there's complaining about the pointlessness of the actual computation itself. While the former is, to some extent, necessary for the design of many crypto currencies, the latter has become apparant as a design issue that (with the benefit of hindsight) really is a serious moral flaw in the whole concept. All that processing time is 100% self-serving to the currency when it could quite easily achieve the same purpose *and* do something useful that might benefit mankind as a whole.
If you want to use an arbitrary computation to secure the ledger, then why not compute something that might actually have some productive benefit like Folding@Home instead? Need to force artificial scarcity (as BTC does), then instead of periodically reducing the number of coins awarded per computational unit, increase the number of Folding@Home (or whatever) units that need to be processed in order to earn in order to mine a coin. Many crypto currency fans are touting the "more energy consumed than x countries" stats like they're some kind of badge of honour, when in reality it's just another example of mankind screwing ourselves over in the long term in the pursuit of a quick buck right now.
Very true. That does present an interesting possibility that we may be slowly approaching a tipping point though, at least if the figures in this article that claims that electric cars are now becoming cheaper to run than those with ICEs are accurate. There's some caveats in there (of course), and the study only applies to a single inefficient fossil fuel usage case in a handful of pretty well developed countries, but the rest of the first world probably isn't too far behind. There's clearly a long way to go though; providing fossil fuel free electricity to power the cars (it may be more efficient to burn the carbon centrally, but it's still far from green), getting that electricity capacity into areas where it's currently lacking (especially in developing nations), and - the big one - making it cheaper for far more usage cases than replacing the ICE.
Substitute "sell out your constituents" for "have sex with me", and yeah, I can well believe some of these rent-a-shills would end up settling for $20k.
Actually, I don't think "being a techie" makes much difference either. Think about how many who are technically competent, including those that actually have an idea of what is going on and the capabilities of big data, still continue to use the services of Facebook, Google, and so on, despite the now almost weekly stories highlighting just how easy it is for companies to make connections and draw conclusions that at first seem to be impossible. Technical knowledge is almost certainly a major factor in why people eventually decide to opt-out (or try to), but it apparently has no bearing on why people keep voluntarily throwing their often highly personal data at all sorts of companies, as opposed to situations like Equifax, where they probably didn't even get a say in the matter. That willingness seems like it's mostly down to a combination of two things: apathy, in that they know but it's too much effort to change, or contentment, in that they've accepted the trade-off as they understand it (almost certainly poorly, regardless of technical aptitude) and don't see any need to even look for an alternative approach.
Google apparently custom builds their core systems (or more likely gets a third party to build systems to their specs), including the use of their own motherboard designs. That affords them a lot more latitude to design the IME out of the system and implement alternatives that they control - using proprietary silicon if need be - than it would if they were buying pre-built systems off the shelf and trying to turn the IME off after the fact. I wouldn't count on any potential Google solution being a fix for a regular user who is buying pre-built PCs, or even building their own from readily available COTS components.
While I think it's probably started to get pretty close, I suspect that *NIX (there is lots of BSD in the embedded space) hasn't quite knocked some of the more popular RTOSs - like QNX or VxWorks out of the park for embedded systems just yet either, and it gets even more messy if you take into account that many RTOSs are actually derived from *NIX OSs. There are an *awful* lot of home, office, and industrial appliances running something like QNX/VxWorks behind the scenes, and you typically have far more of those than PCs when you start to think about it, but even then there's a good chance the monitor will be running an RTOS variant too for all those on-screen displays and colour management tools. Usage stats for given devices, let alone ones that might be credible or aggregated by OS, are awfully hard to come by though.
I dunno, seems like an ideal opportunity for a very thinly veiled bit of agenda pushing in support or opposition of the movement to legalise marijuana and other recreational drugs to me; depending on how you write the character you could easily go either way on that - or leave it more ambiguous to try and add to the discussion. A TV series has a lot more room for "extending the canon" (AKA "filler") and using it to provide some form of commentry on real world affairs, so I wouldn't count him out just yet.
I think we've actually got two quite distinct groups of BTC users at this point (with some members of both groups); those that are using it as a currency, split between those who maintain a float of BTC in a wallet and those that just buy BTC on demand for a specific purchase, and those that are using it as a high-risk speculative investment. Depending on the size of the wallet and the timing of the (probably inevitable) price correction, the former group shouldn't be two badly burnt by it, especially if the BTC in the wallet were acquired before, or fairly early on, in the recent spike in value. If/when the correction comes, then the bag holders are (as usual) going to be the latecomers to the latter group with larger holdings than the level of risk they can bear - if you bought in for your investment at $2,000 (say) and it crashes to $3,000, you're still good, albeit probably a little put out that you didn't bail a little sooner. If you were late to the party and bought in at $5,000, $6,000, or even $7,000 though... Note also that being gung-ho about blockchain and related technologies - as is the case for much of corporate interest - does not in many instances actually entail that they hold any significant holdings of the currency themselves; all the real financial risk is elsewhere.
If you had a PalmPilot it even played a sound while tranferring data. Magick indeed. Needless to say, any self-respecting nerd immediately replaced Palm's default warble with a recording of a ToS tricorder - in fact, I think that was actually mandatory if you had one of the models with the flip-up screen protector and wanted to retain any nerd-cred at all. Good times!
I think you're mis-parsing the report a bit. What's exceptional here is the *combination* of factors; the strength of the storm, that it's so far east, *and* so late in the year. There have absolutely been recorded storms that are more powerful, further east, *or* later in the year, but not all three at the same time - hence it's of at least some note to those with an interest in meteology or climate change - even the deniers and skeptics, since they need to know about it to try debunk it. Yeah, there's an element of those dumb precedent stats (Oblig. XKCD) like "Party X has never lost the election when they've won seats Y & Z", but there's nothing wrong with the reporting - all it does is state a series of facts about the storm.
That's the big question though, isn't it - who had access to the code? Even if we assume (and I see no reason not to) that the Israeli's are telling the truth about the FSB using Kaspersky AV to commit espionage rather than just supporting some US FUD, we actually still have no idea whether they were using code that was deliberately placed there by Kaspersky at the behest/insistance of the FSB, or a coding error that the FSB exploited in the same manner that the NSA has demonstrably exploited numerous tools. Note also the careful wording of the public versions of the Israeli announcement - they are making absolutely no assertions about whether or not Kaspersky Labs was aware of the flaw, just that the FSB was exploiting the software.
We should absolutely assume that the FSB has a similar programme of finding and exploting zero-day exploits to the NSA, so what really matters now is how Kaspersky Labs responds. Addressing the issue of the flawed code is easy enough, especially if they Israelis have treated it as a bug and shared the details with them, but the real trick (regardless of whether they are in the pocket of the FSB or not) is going to be to convince people they really didn't have any knowledge of this and it really was a zero day discovered by the FSB. That's going to be tough, but perhaps not impossible - don't forget that they have a pretty good track record of exposing various hacking groups, including some that are almost certainly Russian government sponsored, and was instrumental in pinning Stuxnet on the US and Israelis so there's history there as well..