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User: Brulath

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  1. like most low power IoT, probably better with LoRa on Tech Firm Sigfox Develops Tiny Tracker To Help Fight Rhino Poaching (reuters.com) · · Score: 1

    It looks like a neat little unit; a few seconds into the video they show a potted device with a sigfox module on one side, another photo shows a GNSS module on the other (with a patch antenna on top, similar to this), and a Saft LS14250 LiSOCl2 battery (nominally 4.3 Wh). A GNSS position fix consumes up to ~1 mWh, and a Sigfox transmission should consume less than that, so they should have more than enough energy budget to last the three years comfortably.

    Interestingly if they'd used LoRaWAN instead they may not have needed the GNSS module. Sigfox's geolocation via radio signal strength has a precision of 1 - 10 km, whereas LoRaWAN can use multilateration (time difference of arrival) and get down to ~200 metres. That should be more than enough precision to track a rhino's movement towards a dangerous area, which means the device could last longer without using a GNSS module. LoRa competes with Sigfox, so someone else would have to do it, but it could be an interesting approach to animal tracking.

  2. I dual boot Windows and Linux at work, mostly using Linux. On rare occasion when I have to reboot into Windows it seems to take around 20 min to process whichever update it tried to apply last time I shut it down, wasting time. I'm not a fan of that little feature and the inability to control when updates occur.

  3. Re: Oh no... on EU Regulators Fine Google Record $5 Billion in Android Case (reuters.com) · · Score: 1

    Meanwhile, nobody seemed to care about Google search and gmail being included in Android phones till they got too popular

    Android was released 10 years ago. This anti-trust battle has been progressing for 8 years. I suspect your assumption is highly flawed.

  4. Re:Good thing there is Linux... on Microsoft Quietly Cuts Off Windows 7 Support For Older Intel Computers (computerworld.com) · · Score: 1

    Seems oddly common, probably due to legacy issues. Our entire surface mount assembly line and x-ray inspection machine run Windows 7 (except maybe the ovens). We are not fans, but there's not much you can do about it.

  5. Re: No one cares on Systemd-Free Devuan 2.0 'ASCII' Officially Released (devuan.org) · · Score: 1

    As that article is 4 years old now, I'd be interested to read an updated view on how systemd has changed since then (the single PID-1 thing appears to be at least partially outdated, if it's comprised of ~60 programs now). It may not have changed much, but 4 years is a fairly long time.

  6. The entire movement isn't rendered obsolete because several vocal sub-communities are taking extreme views. Any small community basically becomes more extreme in its views over time if it isn't exposed to reality. The problem is systemic in various causes ranging from feminism to atheism, various theisms (fundamental Christianity/Islam/Judaism/etc.), charitable organisations, environment-conscious groups, animal welfare (PETA), etc. This doesn't render any of the causes lost, it simply means they need to fight harder to drown out the voices of those more extreme sects.

    You should never yield a movement because extreme people come in every so often. You also may want to reconsider automatic judgement of someone based on a particular view (such as a perceived gender pay gap) as in their case they might be right, even if they might be wrongly attempting to generalise.

  7. Re:iPad, Siri and accessibility features on Ask Slashdot: Is There a Useful Voice-Activated PC? (dailycaring.com) · · Score: 3, Interesting

    My dad is in aged care with fairly advanced Parkinson's disease and finds Siri to be entirely unusable due to the tremor in his voice (a common symptom). He uses an iPad to check emails and facebook, send messages, and call people on Skype. I've tried turning Siri off, as he tends to hold the home button long enough to activate it frequently, but pressing the home button just asks you to turn Siri on again (which is not helpful at all). I recently activated the accessibility settings which require him to press longer to "tap" and ignore secondary taps (from shaking hands), which appears to have helped.

    She may be able to use her computer with some modifications to the peripherals. There are large keyboards, like this one, which have a perspex shield above them to rest your hands on. To press a key you have to put your finger through the holes in the thick plastic cover, which prevents a shaking arm from accidentally pressing the wrong keys. A trackball mouse is another improvement, as it doesn't require the arm to move precisely and, at least in my dad's case, the fingers are a bit more stable. I was planning to get both for dad, but he doesn't currently have space for them.

    Either way, I'd recommend trying to see if Siri or similar can actually understand her consistently before investing in voice technology. You can get a fair way with disability-accessible computer peripherals instead.

  8. Re:Becasue Gab.ai & people are sick of censors on Why Twitter Hasn't Banned President Trump (theverge.com) · · Score: 2

    I'm Australian, so not tied to either of the USA's major political parties, but it doesn't take more than a brief skim of the main page to know that gab.ai is heavily republican leaning; the articles there currently are overtly focused on discrediting democrats. It's often quite complicated to dissect censorship or coverage and determine whether it's biased or not; our local public broadcaster was audited recently(ish) and turned out to be neutral, even though one side was utterly convinced it was extremely biased towards the other. If I were worried about a platform being biased I'd take a long hard look at my own views, and the views of those around me, to make sure I wasn't falling victim to something like the False Consensus Effect.

    It's probably fairly neutral, overall.

  9. Re:Very much like capitalism conspiracy theories on People Who Know How the News Is Made Resist Conspiratorial Thinking (arstechnica.com) · · Score: 1

    Nearly any decision made by a sane person can be justified reasonably, from their point of view, with enough context, but very few of those decisions and very little of that context makes it to the consumer (for various reasons). I tend to take the stance that any sufficiently large organisation cannot communicate internally effectively enough to create a unified understanding of the challenges their customers face and how to solve them; this lack of unified understanding seems to lead to bold moves aimed at decreasing the difficulty of the business problems whilst increasing inconvenience for customers (DRM is a decent example).

    Understanding that, it's reasonable to assume that a large corporation won't have the customer-first focus that a small business might. Businesses with natural monopolies are less likely to make concessions for a customer, as their business performance requirements and lack of growth path (since they already have it all) lead to only two ways to increase profits: simplify interactions with customers and products or increase prices. Those in higher-level decision-making positions seem unlikely to have much insight into the lives of significantly less wealthy people, and so don't have enough context to fully understand the impacts their decisions may have.

    I guess my point is that you don't have to be a capitalist conspiracy theorist to have a default lack of trust in the generosity of large corporations, just scepticism for their internal communication abilities.

  10. Re:nothing to see here on HTC, Motorola Say They Don't Slow Old Phones Like Apple Does (theverge.com) · · Score: 2

    If you could disable it people would, and then they would complain that their phone kept turning off. I suspect if I still had an iPhone I'd turn it off immediately when I heard about it and forget about it if I started having issues later.

    They really should tell you that there's a battery issue and that batteries can be replaced, though. Most people would just tap the "okay" button without reading it (my parents do that all the time), but for those who do read dialogue boxes it could help.

  11. Re: Nazi Germany on Oculus Co-Founder and Rift Creator Palmer Luckey Leaves Facebook (uploadvr.com) · · Score: 1

    Nobody is entitled to an opinion they cannot defend, and anyone who respects someone else's indefensible opinion is an idiot for doing so. If they cannot – or will not – defend an opinion, they are not entitled to spout it into public discourse.

  12. Re:That's why people are moving to streaming servi on Streaming TV Sites Now Have More Subscribers Than Cable TV (axios.com) · · Score: 1

    Because they're tired of paying $80/mo for cable because it's the only way to get a couple dozen channels they want, but the cheapest bundle that includes those channels comes with hundreds of other channels they're not interested in. Whereas the streaming services offer more granular selection which lets you pick and choose those channels you want for $30/mo, because they're not bundled with a bunch of expensive sports channels you never watch.

    Random story which may elucidate why this is wrong:

    I played World of Warcraft back in the classic days, and used to get pretty miffed when I saw +Spell Damage on a piece of armour instead of +Frost Damage; after all, why waste precious stat points on all those elements my frost mage wasn't going to use? Bollocks to that +33 Spell Damage item, it should ditch the other elements and become a +40 Frost Damage one.

    My view was a bit naive, I'll admit. The game was balanced around the amount of bonus damage the existing armour provided; if it were altered to give me an advantage, which seemed possible (+single element damage seemed to use fewer item stat points than +all element damage), then they'd have to rebalance everything around that; probably by lowering the base damage of my character, which would suck.

    So while you see this bundle which has Awesome Channel + 30 other channels you don't give a hoot about, the cable company is aware. It's bundling those for convenience on their behalf. If they removed the 29 channels you don't watch they wouldn't reduce the price, because it still costs them the same to deliver those channels that you do watch as it did previously. The others are sort of a bonus.

    It's a bit weird, and easy to feel like you should be able to optimise and pick just the bit you want to get ahead, but it seems likely that the removal of channels from a pack wouldn't affect the price at all, because you're only paying for what you use - you're just lumped into a group with others who pay for the [different] parts that they use.

  13. Re:already exceeding expectations on Donald Trump Is Sworn In As the 45th US President (reuters.com) · · Score: 1

    I think many people who supported Hillary for some reason had a blind spot to all her faults.

    As an outside observer, I can confidently proclaim that this statement would be true of the vast majority of vocal political commentators here no matter which name was inserted into the sentence. It is frankly bizarre that such a large group of relatively learned individuals lack the capacity to introspect their own opinions and instead merely vomit forth whatever emotional response they hold as the one truth.

    No person placed under intense and biased scrutiny is going to walk away looking like anything other than the most extreme piece of trash ever to walk the Earth, whether it's a politician or your ex-partner. The caricature of a human that evolves in your mind as a response to an emotional analysis is an enormous straw-man and you should be able to recognise and deconstruct that.

    I don't have an intimate knowledge of U.S. politics, but I've yet to see anyone attempt to provide an analysis that wasn't trying to push an emotional opinion on the audience. No matter how elegant and subtle you think you're being, it's woefully transparent and repugnant to witness.

    Daniel Dennet's rules for composing a successful critical commentary are as follows; if you wish to criticise someone you need to analyse the parts of their opinions that you agree with first, to ensure you fully understand the whole:

    1. You should attempt to re-express your target’s position so clearly, vividly, and fairly that your target says, “Thanks, I wish I’d thought of putting it that way.
    2. You should list any points of agreement (especially if they are not matters of general or widespread agreement).
    3. You should mention anything you have learned from your target.
    4. Only then are you permitted to say so much as a word of rebuttal or criticism.

    No politician is universally bad or has universally bad ideas, and making it out like they are is just going to trigger our internal filters. I find myself skimming over or skipping large posts online most of the time these days; not because I lack attention span, but because the author isn't providing a thoughtful analysis.

  14. Re:Australian "conservatives" don't understand on Steam Fined $3 Million For Refusing Refunds (smh.com.au) · · Score: 1

    The US seems to follow "buyer beware", whereas Australia (and NZ) follow "buyer be protected". If you buy a device with a 12 month warranty and a reasonable consumer would expect it to last in excess of five years flawlessly, you can likely get it repaired/replaced for free if it dies within that time period (though it'll probably take some arguing). Likewise if the device doesn't do what it purported to do, or what the sales person said it could do, you can have it refunded. Reduces risk on the buyer's behalf and encourages better quality goods. In theory.

  15. Re:Geometry on Programming Education: Selling People a Lie? (blogspot.com) · · Score: 1

    Language is usually fairly irrelevant. It's like if I wanted to write an essay on the nature of monkeys (which I don't know much about) in Esperanto (which I don't know at all). I could learn the characters and grammar of Esperanto, which is apparently not super difficult, but that wouldn't teach me anything about monkeys or how to structure essays about them.

  16. Re:Let me get this straight: on Study: Cutting Sugar From Diet Shows Immediate Health Benefits (wiley.com) · · Score: 1

    However most vegetable oils are high in omega-6, which is correlated with arthritis amongst the usual crowd: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omega-6_fatty_acid#Suggested_negative_health_effects. It's used in pro-inflammatory immune responses, which are useful, but when consumed in excess (relative to omega-3, which is pretty hard to get given the 30:1 ratio most people apparently eat) it seems like it might not be so useful. Humans certainly didn't evolve with the ability to digest massive quantities of seed oil unimpeded by the fibrous seed itself. It looks like saturated fats and olive oil are still better for you, just for different reasons.

  17. Re:Rookie mistake number one on Disproving the Mythical Man-Month With DevOps · · Score: 1

    Microservices have some legitimate criticisms; it seems like you should only embark on that quest if you really know what you're doing and it's the best solution to your specific problem. It might be useful for expanding a monolith which is out of control, or for performance/language reasons in some cases, but building a whole system from microservices looks like it would be needlessly complicated once you delved in.

  18. Re:Does the real name policy curb trolling? on EFF Joins Nameless Coalition and Demands Facebook Kills Its Real Names Policy · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Perhaps, but imagine for a moment that you're an LGBT (or otherwise marginalised) teen living in a fairly hostile community. You'd want to reach out and communicate with people who could empathise, but wouldn't want to reveal your identity lest it lead to retribution. Not requiring a real name would allow them to reach out in a safer manner on that particular platform.

    That isn't just restricted to LGBT people, either. Anyone with a condition or history who wanted to communicate about it without linking it to them in a way family/friends/employers might find out about could benefit from a lack of real name requirements. Bullies would benefit too, however, so it's a double edged sword.

  19. Re:So what is the answer? on Massachusetts Examining Disability Access For Uber, Lyft · · Score: 2

    It probably depends. If you're wheelchair bound and are unable to move into a vehicle unassisted you're already utilising wheelchair taxis, not normal taxis, so it probably wouldn't apply in those situations. Refusing to have a guide dog in the car is problematic though, as they're permitted pretty much everywhere and are quite well trained. It's not unreasonable to require drivers to take a guide dog if a blind person hails a taxi, unless they're allergic, so why should ridesharing services be permitted to do so?

    In cases where it doesn't require much, if anything other than an attitude change, to support disabled people, it's more or less a no brainer. In other cases, if it should depend on the circumstances. If a person can't change the thing about them that's causing the issue (e.g. in this case, their disability) then requiring businesses to make reasonable changes to accommodate them is perfectly ethical. They're still human, and should be given the best chance to lead a normal life if they desire it.

  20. Re:Anyone figure out why on E3 2015: A Lot of Nostalgia For Old Games · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Sony probably backed it to give them another edge over the Xbox One. It's an odd decision, however, given RPG remakes don't tend to happen.

    I'll be interested to see if they can live up to the expectations we've developed over time. Upon replaying them I discovered that a large part of the depth of PSX and earlier Final Fantasy games was filling in the blanks – particularly when it came to personalities. Without voice acting you can come up with a completely different person depending on how you read them, which leads to different people having dissimilar experiences. With latter FF games they've been inserting a lot of voice acting, which I found very off-putting (it's not exactly A-list stuff, and I find that the personalities they project are strained).

    I found Leigh and Kirk's FF7 Letters to be an interesting nostalgia trip. Kirk had been in the industry for a while before playing FF7, having been exposed to its legend on many an occasion, and exchanged letters with Leigh whilst he experienced it for the first time. There's a lot of things my mind skipped over as a kid; always ignored Tifa, for example, when I could have interpreted her in an entirely different and more mature way. It's interesting.

    It'll be cool to see, regardless; re-imaginings are often fun ways of looking deeper into a story.

  21. Re:one down, about a dozen to go. on FDA Bans Trans Fat · · Score: 1

    I'd be more concerned about the cigarette companies using countries to lodge World Trade Organisation complaints or suing you under old treaties than about people growing their own tobacco (not that doing so would be easy with current war-on-drugs surveillance technology); they're still trying to get Australia to reverse its widely-praised plain packaging laws.

  22. Re:Palm oil? on FDA Bans Trans Fat · · Score: 1

    It'd be interesting to find out how good lard is, but when it's coming from bacon you'd still have the same problems associated with other processed red meats. Coming from unprocessed red meat (i.e. pre-bacon curing), however, looks like it might be fine.

  23. Re:Sick and tired of the political correctness on Tech Jobs and Apple: Every Bit As "Fun" As Pleasure Island? · · Score: 1

    That "study" is ridiculously flawed; they couldn't find a real paper arguing their point (noted in the article), so they invented a unrealistic scenario and used that. Nobody sane hires based entirely upon a piece of paper without meeting the person beforehand. It's absurd. They asked faculty members (not the people who would actually hire) to pick between two identical on-paper only people without being able to acquire more information or meet them in an interview setting, so of course they're going to decide between them based on superficial reasons. That is not evidence of discrimination in hiring processes, it's evidence of a flame-bait article.

    It may be that women can be privileged in hiring scenarios (for affirmative action or other reasons), but you'll need to provide an actual scientific study that argues that.

  24. Re:Meh on Presidential Candidate Lincoln Chaffee Proposes That US Go Metric · · Score: 1

    It's not like you lose precision by using celsius, you just get fractional values; the resolution is the same, provided you aren't rounding to whole numbers for some reason. It might be a win with non-digital thermometers, but you'd probably be using a digital one to measure something that might be life threatening.

  25. Re:Fears of abuse are overblown on Valve Introduces Steam Refunds In Advance of Summer Sale · · Score: 1

    Technically torrenting the game you haven't purchased to achieve the same end result is illegal (copyright infringement), whereas buying then requesting a refund is not. That's not much difference to some people, but for many it opens possibilities that didn't exist before.