Please do not link to any site that autoplays a video. Chrome handles html5 natively. It is not easy to block it in chrome. That alone is going drive users away from Chrome to Firefox+NoScript. It is just a matter of time before advertisers and sleazy websites add autoplaying videos. It is back to X10 popup and blinking text of geocities. Thanks for the warning, you will see the drastic reduction in hits for such links from Chrome. You will create a policy of not linking to any site that has auto play video. Also why do you include it directly in read? Can't you just put up a link and say click to play?
Just can't win, can you? I mean, back when it was some proprietary flash player everyone complained because Linux doesn't have Flash, other than Chromium.
Now we got to a nice standardized format (HTML5) and people still complain?
And in reality, the <video> tag has an "autoplay" attribute - if it's present the video autoplays. if not, it doesn't.
(And if you're handy, in the DOM there's a piece of javascript that writes the video tag and sets the autoplay option based on a setting).
If you want, write to Mozilla, Apple, Microsoft and Google to have them ignore the autoplay attribute if present so videos don't autoplay at all no matter what the webmaster's intent. It's the advantage of HTML video - the user is in charge and their browser is free to ignore or obey the webmaster's intention.
Just like most web browsers ignore "text-decoration: blink " (blink tag has been deprecated in a CSS world. Though most browsers actually don't obey the CSS either).
However, the answer is likely that it was an easy way to unlock phones sold in the N. American market. Every time Apple releases a new phone, a bunch are bought up on the west coast by people who jailbreak them, unlock them, and then sell them in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and mainland China. This likely accounts for both the large number of jailbroken devices and for the decline, as a larger and larger number of legit devices are sold directly into the Chinese market.
Don't confuse North America with the US.
iPhones sold by Apple in Canada without a contract come SIM unlocked by default. If I wanted to wait, I could've had an unlocked iPhone 6 (or 6+) on launch day.
And other places often sell unlocked iPhones.
Plus, on launch day, there are NO jailbreaks for new devices. So unlocking them is basically impossible via the jailbreak route.
And the incidence of jailbreaking in Asia is going down, as it turns out by jailbreaking, you're getting your phone infected with all sorts of spyware. There already are a bunch of iOS spyware that infects jailbroken devices only because they require circumventing the iOS security system in order to function. They can't infect a non-jailbroken phone.
So the only reason for jailbreaking in Asia is to engage in what they consider their basic right - to pirate. I mean, the latest installs of the jailbreaking tools for the past few iOS revisions install some Chinese pirated app store.
Of course, elsewhere on the Internet, the other way to do pirated app installs is to use a re-signer service that uses the enterprise certificate to sign cracked apps so they install on unjailbroken phone. It probably explains why the iOS section of most sites is gathering dust, while the Android section is healthy and growing with dozens of new pirated apps posted daily.
You forgot those little magnetic balls. They're banned now because many kids were swallowing them, and because of their magnetism, if you swallow two, your life really is in danger as they'll find each other and tear apart your intestines along the way.
Netgear's fanciest two routers, the R7500 and R8000, aren't yet supported. All we can do is sit and beg Brainslayer or Kong to spend time on them, but they've got a lot of irons in the fire.
Well, the R7000 and R8000 are "open routers" per Netgear. The R7500... not so much.
And while it takes a bit of hunting, Netgear's source code firmware for those are available as well. (Well, most of it, given the amount of proprietary drivers that are binary only).
MyOpenRouter is usually where I go first when deciding if there's a particular Netgear router I want. (Netgear runs the site as a central place for all their "open" routers and alternative firmware. At least the routers they officially support as being "open").
If we cooperate and realize that robots can serve us within limits, we can have a place where employment is optional (but still manage scarcity). Or if we just let greed take over and the robots will be the ones that oppress us.
Manna - By Marshall Brain explores these issues by seeing how machines initially take over, then following through with two different outcomes.
Of course the TL;DR version of it (I highly suggest reading the full thing first) is on Wikipedia.
You've just described half the drivers on the road! On their phones, eating, putting on makeup, READING shit. It's those people that are the dangerous ones.
Sadly, that's actually true.
It used to be drunk driving was the #1 cause of preventable accidents (or even accidents, period). Over the past few years, it actually became #2, with #1 being distracted driving (encompassing far more than just texting and cellphone use).
That's why you cannot apply small scale economics to large-scale economies. What works and is "plainly obvious" when you do stuff with your friends doesn't work on a large scale. (Pay attention the next time someone proposes changing some law or some other economic thing - or "why doesn't the government tax these guys it's so obvious". No it isn't. In fact, it can lead to the opposite result than desired (see prohibition - works in small communities, fails in larger ones. Likewise, communism.).
It's why economics is split into two fields - microeconomics, which deals with interactions on a small scale - between a few people or small groups, and macroeconomics, which deals with large conglomerations of people - at a city, state or country level.
In fact, strange things happen, like trade is actually the same as technology at the macroeconomic level - both transform things (raw materials to finished goods) and are actually equivalent. If a technology isn't available to you or uneconomical to use (too small a country, say), then to get the equivalent is to trade.
So they're basically negating the one major aspect of a drone, the ability to fly significant areas autonomously by tethering it to someone on the ground. Sounds like bureaucratic red tape to me, if you can't kill a thing make it useless to do it by wrapping it in so many "common sense" measures as to make it useless. I can understand some things, requiring insurance, constant tracking, keeping records, but maintaning line of sight either shows a complete lack of understanding of what a drone is or a blatant attempt to kill a (possibly) nascent industry.
The problem is, and has been, that drones need to integrate into the air system we have today. Low level flights are generally allowed because aircraft don't usually fly that low (hence the 400 foot rule), but once you go above that, you can find yourself in the middle of air traffic - maybe not so much an airliner, but bug smashers and helicopters. And if you're going to be in that, you need to participate in full VFR rules at a minimum (including see and avoid). And if you can't see your drone, well...
In fact, that's been the primary problem the FAA has been wrestling with - how to integrate drones into the national air traffic system. Everyone wants the same rules applied - if your drone is going to occupy the same airspace, it will have to obey the same rules, including necessarily avionics (transponders, controlled airspace and ATC, etc).
The lowlevel rules are an attempt to let a fledgling industry not require everyone who flies a drone be a fully licensed pilot.
(The NTSB has ruled that even RC planes are "aircraft" and ARE subject to the FARs. The FAA's advisory is just that - advisory on how to partake in the hobby in ways that are unlikely to call the FAA's attention). So the FAA wants to treat small drones as RC style aircraft with the same RC style limitations.
It's already happened that idiots have tried to abuse it (hence why the NTSB has ruled RC aircraft are aircraft) - some idiot with a drone was bobbing and weaving it and causing a nuisance to the public flying it through pedestrian tunnels and dive bombing them, etc.
The problem is, drones are so easy to fly, most users are idiots, and the FAA has to basically balance the demands of fully licensed airspace users against those of hobbyists and small commercial operations.
Large drones are still subject to full pilot and aircraft/airspace regulations. (There also have been large RC aircraft that end up having to qualify under experimental aircraft rules).
Considering that GG has done nothing but expand over the last 6mo, it does seem that people are listening to and paying attention to it. Then again, if you have any passing desire for people who report on things, to act in a ethical and objective manner it matters to you. Otherwise I'm sure you're quite happy with kotaku or gawker brand click-bait telling you how you're a terrorist for playing video games.
No, GG has died down. Seriously - the news on it has waned and the general public probably only saw it on CSI or The Good Wife.
Yes, that's about the extent of the news - some Hollywood writers saw something interesting, read the Wikipedia entry on it and then wrote up an episode about it.
GG isn't newsworthy anymore, and it only was newsworthy because the women involved made noises - everyone else? They haven't said a peep.
You can't pirate what you are legally allowed to share.:-)
Yes you can, as piracy is copyright infringement.
Want to violate GPLv2? Easy - release binaries without source. It's happened (inadvertent or not) many times already, and it IS copyright infringement - you don't have to agree to the GPL, but if you don't, the code reverts to All Rights Reserved and whatever limits copyright law gives you. (Hence why we call it "copyleft" - because agreeing to it gives you more than what copyright gives you - but if you don't agree, that's fine as copyright provides you certain rights, but less of them than if you did agree).
Ditto with creative commons - anything with "ND" or "NC" can be obviously pirated by simply not obeying it. NC can be violated by innocently putting it up on a website with ads.
Again, copyleft because you don't have to agree to the CC license to use the material - default copyright All Rights Reserved will apply instead (which is basically NC+ND without implicit permission).
If the oil price kept at the same high level for another decade I think they had good chances of doing mass market electric cars. But given current oil price trends I think the Model 3 is about as low in the segment as they can get. Unless they figure out some way to magically decrease costs which would depend on battery technology advances which aren't there.
You're assuming oil is being kept artificially high and that it really should be as low as it is. But it isn't - Saudi Arabia is throwing its weight around because they realize they need to control the supply side equation while they can. You know the biggest losers in this oil price drop? Oil companies in North America. They're all either running unsustainable productions, or are close to selling at cost.
If you don't see what the end goal is - think about who can afford to buy these struggling oil companies and who has the money. Yes, Saudi Arabia. They're not doing it because they can, they're doing it because they know in a few years they won't have their miracle liquid anymore, so in the meantime, they can bankrupt a few US oil companies, use their vast sums of money to buy them over and then when the oil's gone and prices jump back, Saudi Arabia owns all the oil again.
All the oil producing nations are looking into the post-oil era. Dubai has high end tourism on its radar. Saudi has oil, and they want to bankrupt as many companies so they can be bought for cheap to maintain their stranglehold. Maybe even a few other oil producing nations who are struggling with the low price of oil.
North American oil is expensive. However, when it was $100/barrel, there's lots of money to be made.
Where have we seen this before? Oh yeah, monopolies. Using their market power to out-sell competitors and drive them out of business so they can be bought for pennies on the dollar.
Most of the oil companies in the US will probably be dead in a year, so oil will then spike up higher than ever before because Saudi Arabia is going to want all t heir riches back.
Tesla making the investment now is smart - because when oil starts going up again, they're going to be in a nice position to sell cars as everyone else ramps down EV production in favor of gas (now cheap!) cars.
Keep mission critical stuff offline, or on a network not running standard protocols
Airgaps don't work, Stuxnet proved you can still take down an airgapped network (face it - airgaps also mean old vulnerabilities don't get patched because it's way less convenient).
And proprietary protocols? They exist too.
But you know what? All this specialty stuff costs way more money. And then you wonder why the military is spending $200 on a network card that can barely do Gigabit speeds, when they can buy a GigE cards for $20. Or $50,000 for a network switch to serve an office.
COTS has been the goal because the commercial stuff has proven itself to be way more robust, cheaper, and far more advanced than what the military can procure through the usual methods. And more secure, too, just by being out there and pummeled.
Plus well, you have taxpayer groups arguing about why the military is needing all sorts of strange stuff - remember the $400 toilet seat? Now try imagining the headlines on/. when it's revealed that a computer on the inside network cost $10,000 for something already outdated when it was provisioned. Something that they could've gotten at Best Buy for under $1,000 with superior specs. And no, there's nothing special about it - it's not rad hard, not encased in steel or anything. Just a regular PC meant for an office.
If it is so bad then why not ban tobacco? The problem with tobacco is that it is so widely available, making getting off the stuff so hard. I certainly would not visit a dealer to get illegal baccy.
The reality is that governments are addicted to the tax income. 11 billion a year in Australia.
Prohibition doesn't work, period. See previous attempts at alcohol, and current attempts at drugs.
Instead, sin taxes and societal influence is the best way. Sin taxes are obvious - tax and regulate it. Societal influence is interesting - smoking rates are way down, not because of tons of new laws and regulations, but because it's been demonized so badly, smokers are basically second class citizens.
Have a kid? Well, now society will deem you an outcast for exposing your kid to such harm. And these days, you know when a smoker enters the room, or purchase something used that came from a smoker. And nevermind the spouse trying to sneak in a smoke break - friends and family will soon ask questions.
Social pressure keeps people from smoking just like back in the early days, peer pressure ensured you smoked.
It's probably the most effective way - you give people the choice, tax them for the choice, and well, let society take care of the choice as well. If you can stand all those, go for it.
Of 12 day care facilities affiliated with tech companies, sixâ"thatâ(TM)s halfâ"have below-average vaccination rates, according to the stateâ(TM)s data.
In other words, half the day care facilities were below average, and half were above. Isn't that kinda/sort the DEFINITION of average?
Really? No.
Average is the mean. If we say the average IQ is 100, I can give you 10 people where the average IS 100, but only one is below 100. Say, 110, 110, 110, 100, 100, 100, 100, 100, 100, 70. Or 101, 101, 101, 101, 106, 101, 101, 101, 107, 80.
If you want to say 50% are below and 50% are above, you want the MEDIAN, or the "middle". Which splits the set precisely in two - half below, half above.
Anyhow, it's saying the state average vaccination rate, which can be for example, above 95% in most places, but a few places where it's 30% will bring it right down to the 80% range, and of that, half of the places are above it and half below. Which is coincidental, but not the definition of average. After all, outliers skew it. Perhaps those 6 below were really far below which drag down the rate and put a bunch of those on the border above.
Mean, median and mode are different. (Mode is basically the datapoint that occurs the most, or the peak in a histogram). And for a bunch of people who claim to be smarter than the average population, this is really basic math taught in elementary or middle school.
Big brother issues aside, there's a very valid point in his post: Why pay for all those extra electronics/failure points when all you want is a display device. Personally, all I want is a screen and speakers with enough ports on the back for my various systems.
Because those failure points will still be there in a "dumb" TV.
The TV needs a video processor and modern video processors already have multi cores with GPUs and all that. You can thank the smartphone revolution, but the SoCs used in TVs are often derived from the SoCs used in smartphones. Enough so that TV-specific SoCs can be more expensive.
So you're already talking about a TV with dual or quad core processors, 1GB of RAM, and other things. WiFi/Ethernet isn't pricey (and often bundled because most SoC vendors encourage bundling - if you go Broadcom, and use Broadcom WiFi/Ethernet ICs too, you get a break on the whole package).
Basically, TVs have gotten to the point where thanks to smartphones, they're swimming with CPU power, already run Android or Linux, and are sitting there as required pieces for the video processing chain. "Smart" features are merely software items that are trivial to add on because they come "for free".
Plus, it's one of the few ways to get Netflix in 4K. Netflix doesn't support 4K on PCs.
The fundamental question that remains unanswered is why is there a gender imbalance. And the answer to that question will upset people, which is why there isn't much research into it.
It could be something as simple as "girls don't like computers and never have" in which case there's nothing we can do to encourage them - if they don't want to do it, we can't force them. (This will anger all the equality/feminist groups).
But, the answer could be more sinister - perhaps boys intentionally force girls to quit, or IT is so misogynistic that females are kept away because of boorish or other sexist behavior. In which case it's the IT workers themselves that need to change and that's a very serious issue. Especially since a number love computers because they can be assholes and now we've basically declared IT to be a non-asshole zone. (This actually has happened in other fields).
And yes, other fields like teaching (especially elementary and middle school) DO also have the problem and are also trying to find solutions.
There are no easy solutions, nor easy answers. And some large group will get pissed off no matter what the answer is.
As for CS education itself, I think we don't need people to learn to code as it's not a skill fundamental to living in modern society. As developers, we're skewed into thinking it is, but no, it's not. Fundamentals like logic and algorithms can be taught elsewhere in the syllabus and are way more useful skills in life than learning how to write hello world.
We've been waiting for that vulnerability that will finally create such havoc on XP that people will abandon it.
It only affects domain-joined PCs. If you're running XP Home (can't join a domain to begin with), then it really doesn't affect you.
It's a basic downgrade attack - similar to how those TLS bugs were done. You force the client and/or server to revert to an older less secure authentication protocol and then use that to get your way in.
This. Back in 2008 I came to the realisation that it was cheaper to part out a secondhand laptop than sell it as a complete unit. So, instead of a £75 (by the bluebook for the spec) loss-leader as a functional laptop, I sold the lid hinges for £70, the screen for £120, the mainboard for £150, the processor for £65, the RAM for £30, the hard drive for £40, the DVD burner for £80, case plastics for £90 all told and the battery for £40... I got more for the laptop in PIECES than what it originally cost NEW.
That's generally true - the parts separate cost more than the parts, together. Especially used parts because one needs to put actual effort into parting it out, and ensuring all the necessary pieces are there. Parts that are standard like hard drive and RAM are easy, but structures like the hard drive cage and other pieces are more difficult to part out since people usually want an assembly.
The real question though is whether or not the amount of money made extra exceeds the effort required to do it.
Then again, with repair aggregators like iFixit, if you part it out correctly they probably will accept it. Though it also makes you wonder how complicit a company like iFixit is in dealing with stolen goods.
(Remember, a company like iFixit doesn't generally buy parts from the factory - iPhone screens and such are generally purchased used from those recycling phones, though they may seed stock by disassembling brand new phones and selling them as new parts.).
I still see lots of people selling phones for "parts" and quietly noting that the device is locked and they somehow don't have the password. So people are obviously still stealing phones without knowing they can't actually use them.
There _are_ people who legitimately own for example an iPhone and can't get in. For example if you inherited one. Or bailiffs took someone's valuables away, including the iPhone (don't know how legal that is).
Well, Apple already has policies on how to "legitimize" iPhones that were acquired not through criminal means. If it was inherited, you go to the courts and get a court order saying that yes, it's yours per the will and not under dispute (since wills can be contested). Apple would be more than happy to unlock that phone and assign it to your account.
Apple won't however just take it on blind faith that the "death certificate" you present them is real and that your grandma happened to die 100 times leaving you with 100 different iPhones and iPads needing unlocking. Unless you happen to convince a judge 100 times of that.
Yes, trans fats are the nasty but saturated fat is fine for you - that's been proven time and again over the past decade.
One of the problems is conversion of unsaturated fats to saturated fats, a process called hydrogenation (because it's adding hydrogen to the carbon chain - remember each carbon can have 4 bonds, and in unsaturated fats some of those bonds are double bonds, adding hydrogen turns those double bonds into single bonds).
The problem is chirality - you can get hydrogen bonding "in the wrong place" so turning a cis- version into a trans- version. The trans- version (hence trans fats) is bad for you, while the cis- version isn't so bad.
Of course, until the discovery of the chirality (and chirality affects a lot of things) of saturated fats, they probably got mixed together (they're still saturated fats, after all) and the original problem was because of the hidden trans- version. Of course, these days we can identify which we have far more accurately.
Chirality is an annoyance in chemistry - one gets you an inert molecule that doesn't do anything, the other gets you something really reactive, and it just depends on where the atoms decided to bond.
I'm curious what kind of research they would do on these items. You would think NASA already knew everything there is to know about these items back in 1969.
NASA might, but if the museum is going to put it on display, they're going to have to do research on identifying and the background of everything. Plus look up anything interesting that can be added to the display.
Then there's the research into the best way to display the items for the public display.
It's one thing to put up an artifact for display. Another to actually put it context and background. And it's possible that maybe the camera wasn't Armstrong's or used on the moon, but a duplicate made for familiarization purposes (to help the astronauts get comfortable with the cameras, NASA actually produced a bunch for them to take home to use in all situations.) This could very well be one of them. Plus, if there's any film, they need permission to develop and identify it.
What is interesting about Alibaba is the opportunities to buy directly from the manufacturers by the common man. If you look on their website you see shirts that normally retail for $70-$80 selling for $8 with FREE shipping. Sure, you can call them "fakes", but they are made in the same factory by the same workers as the "real ones". Who do you think is manufacturing the "real" goods? Santas' Elves?
Now we know how much we are getting screwed paying 1000% markups.
Only if you don't know how Chinese manufacturing REALLY works. You know, stuff like third shift manufacturing, clones, and fakes.
Third shift - the same manufacturing line makes more product than requested. So if the company asks to make 10,000 widgets, the factory will make 12,000. Of course, the company would notice needing 20% more parts and supplies, so the extra 2,000 are Chinese-sourced "substitutes". The company get 10,000, and the 2,000 are lower quality parts - using cheaper caps, underspec'd parts, leftover wire and thinner materials. The packaging will usually be identical since running 12,000 copies off the same press is easy. Inner packaging will often be missing since who wants to spend $20 for the 2,000 extra pieces of packaging? $10 worth of bubble wrap ought to be sufficient.
These are then sold at cheap prices, where unsuspecting buyers don't realize they're not only getting shoddily-made stuff. I mean, that power bar rated at 15A doesn't need to use 14ga wire, right? We have plenty of 24ga hookup wire lying around as scrap, so let's use that! (And I'm being generous, I've seen ones using 30ga or thinner "rated" at 13-15A - if you remember how thin the wires were in a ribbon PATA cable, think using that for a power bar).
Then there are the fakes where they use whatever parts they can find and wire them together. Then stamp the manufacturer's mark on them. Sort of like what happened to those fake FTDI and Prolific USB-serial chips that entered general distribution. Or those "8GB" flash cards that only have 1GB of actual storage on them.
Then there's the group of people who take rejected parts and wire them up and hope no one notices - like perhaps a chip failed thermal testing - it still works, but only if you keep it under 40C or something. Those rejects usually get discarded, but smart ones will recycle them and use them elsewhere, maybe even a third shift product. Imagine powering up your server only to have it die under load because the part (which was rejected) failed and you have a copycat item.
Of course, for stuff like T-Shirts and stuff, or clothing in general, it should be obvious what the markup is. I mean, go into any expensive shop district and look at the stores there - almost all are clothing stores. Very few stores can afford to pay those high prices. So that $100 shirt really does cost $1 to make - that $99 is used to pay the $20,000 monthly leases on those high end district stores.
About the only other kind of store is Apple, who earn anywhere from $2000-4000/square feet (approximately twice that of Tiffany's). And only through that could Apple even afford to make those kinds of locations profitable.
Demoni, on the other hand, is a server that assists in the communication between peers using the BitTorrent protocol. In peer-to-peer file sharing a software client on an end-user PC requests a file, and portions of the requested file residing on peer machines are sent to the client, and then reassembled into a full copy of the requested file. The "tracker" server keeps track of where file copies reside on peer machines, which ones are available at time of the client request, and helps coordinate efficient transmission and reassembly of the copied file. The BitTorrent tracker is also, in the absence of extensions to the original protocol, the only major critical point, as clients are required to communicate with the tracker to initiate downloads.
Actually, a tracker does even less.
It's just a mapping between hashes and peers.
A tracker doesn't have to track much other than those two - your client connects to a tracker, and your client gives the torrent hash. The tracker then returns the peer list it knows about so your client can then connect to them and negotiate pieces and stuff.
Fancy trackers may track additional features since clients return how much they upload and download, so the tracker may use that to track your ratio (usually by user-specific tracker URLs).
But there's nothing the tracker has that says anything more than "hash - user IP". It doesn't know what the files are, or anything else.
I'm starting to believe that Linux has finally hit a limit--it excels in the business (server, routers, robots). Forget the direct-to-consumer space--it's not gonna happen, and Ubuntu phone sort of solidifies it w/all the hype that came with it. Hi, FreeRunner 2....
Linux does fine in direct to consumer space, actually.
You just have to abandon the notion of "a Linux box" as acting how Linux does on the server and other things you know and love.
Replace the upper level guts with something more reasonable and you know, Linux is popular. A stunningly large number of devices run Linux in consumer devices, and Android powers a lot of phones. The thing in common is that the Linux core is hidden behind a pile of custom code that hides its nature because it has to.
Things like SystemD, NetworkManager, PulseAudio and other big blob programs are attempts to get "regular" Linux to behave more like how consumers expect their devices to behave. Which are incredibly complex behavior that can't just be tied together with a bunch of shell scripts.
Just think how basic operations are done on Android. It's obvious Linux can do them, since Android can do it, but damn is it hard to get desktop Linux to behave like Android.
What lead to the popularization of science fiction, arguably, was the technological innovation in print. That is, printing paperbacks was cheap enough so that even if very few books sold, it was still possible to at least break even. The advent of the paper back is like the advent of direct to video movie. Lower risk, more titles, profits are driven by the few that sell well, the rest are pulped.
Actually, what made printing cheap was the mass market paperback - not paperbacks (which existed for a long time). A mass market paperback was a way to print cheap copies and distribute them beyond the traditional bookstore - those books you saw on the shelf at the supermarket are mass market. Basically by using fixed dimensions, cheap paper, cheap glue bindings and very fast printing, you can make a readable book really cheap. Combine them into an assortment of books (all the same size) and you can ship boxes to distribution centers and then to stores who put the books up on the registers pretty much randomly.
This gave you wide exposure (a print run of 1000 was cheap, and probably went to 10% of the stores that sold mass market paperbacks - 1 each among the assortment), and the cheapness of it all made the assortment cost effective. It didn't matter that not all stores had the same books - they just got some and if it sold, good, if not, it got returned and lumped into another assortment somewhere else a month later.
So the mass market stores got a constantly cycling collection of cheap books they could sell. If you were a reader, you went to the higher quality paperback editions that were printed much better and lasted longer, but were more expensive. Also you went there because mass market books were a hit and miss random collection - if you wanted a specific book, you were better off going to the bookstore.
These days, the term is basically meaningless other than to refer to a specific form factor of book as stores switched from carrying pulp as a impulse sale to a common stock item. But back in the pre-internet days, mass market was a good way to get exposure.
What I want to know is: Since this is a 'trend' a lot of car manufacturers are headed to, in another couple years where am I going to be able to buy a car that doesn't have all this crap in it? CAN bus is ok to a degree, but I don't want (or need) a bluetooth/wi-fi enabled integrated digital everything car. Give me the old 'needle' speedometer, flipping number manual odometer, etc - I don't want a 'digital display' where everything breaks at once if it dies, I don't need or want my stereo integrating into the drive train, and it doesn't need to tell me the temperature, weather, gps, and all that stuff - I know when it's hot or cold out, sunny or rainy/snowy, and I can read a map. I want *less* technology, not more.
Import brands from lesser known countries. Or higher end vehicles. Or learn to love classic cars.
The thing is, your needle speedometer hasn't been wired up to the wheels in 20 years or so now - they're all electronic with a servo giving your the needle position. That's basically true for everything you see on the dash - it's all electronically driven and controlled and the only things you feed it are a CAN bus network plug and power. Sure some gauges flick when you turn the key, but just because they don't doesn't mean it isn't electronic.
So the needle and flippy odometer are basically purely electro-mechanical devices in most cars, and of the whole cluster, only the speedometer is the required instrument. And there are probably enough purists out there where the needle instrument would remain an option. They all get the information the same way so it's really a matter of swapping the panels around during manufacture.
As for all that "electronic crap"? They've gone this way because electronics have proven themselves to be far more robust, durable, cheaper and way more featureful than their old mechanical counterparts. It's why throttles are electronic despite supposedly being more complex - a throttle cable fails surprisingly often versus your pot and servo (while the latter gives you cruise control as a free option - it's just software now). Brakes remain hydraulic with mechanical backup (though many are electric rather than vacuum assist). Hell, even your transmission is basically all electronic - automatic transmissions used to be almost all mechanical but that lead to the control box being very finicky where 1/16" of an inch can trigger a recall. It's why modern automatic transmissions are so efficient - knowing how the engine is loaded, the speed, throttle position and many other sensors, the transmissions can figure out what gear to use.
And yes, going electronic makes life a lot simpler - the mess of a wire harness is far simplified, it's cheaper to manufacture, and way more reliable. It's also why previously high-end features reserved for luxury cars can be hand in your $15,000 econobox. In the end it's all software, and software is remarkably cheap.
Of course, it's unlikely remote update would become a standard low end feature anytime soon - I mean, you have to handle cases where the vehicle may not be set up to connect to an owner's wifi network, 3G isn't available everywhere (and who's gonna pay for it?), etc.
That said, remote access does have its uses - perhaps monitoring your car from inside the house. This will be more standard in range-limited vehicles like electric cars, so you can see the status of your car inside on your phone (state of charge, charging or not, etc) and even have it run the AC or heater while still on house power so the car is cool or warm when you get in.
Anyhow, you want electronic crap free cars? We call them classics. And even those aren't all electronics-free, as people have learned that electronic fuel ignitions make life much nicer (twist 'n' go - no longer worry about vapor lock, cold weather, etc.), and yes, you can get 'em with automatic transmissions too, and creature comforts like AC.
Of course, if you do go true all mechanical, be prepared to spend a few days every month working on it. It's why there are a lot of shade tree mechanics - things fail constantly.
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Just can't win, can you? I mean, back when it was some proprietary flash player everyone complained because Linux doesn't have Flash, other than Chromium.
Now we got to a nice standardized format (HTML5) and people still complain?
And in reality, the <video> tag has an "autoplay" attribute - if it's present the video autoplays. if not, it doesn't.
(And if you're handy, in the DOM there's a piece of javascript that writes the video tag and sets the autoplay option based on a setting).
If you want, write to Mozilla, Apple, Microsoft and Google to have them ignore the autoplay attribute if present so videos don't autoplay at all no matter what the webmaster's intent. It's the advantage of HTML video - the user is in charge and their browser is free to ignore or obey the webmaster's intention.
Just like most web browsers ignore "text-decoration: blink " (blink tag has been deprecated in a CSS world. Though most browsers actually don't obey the CSS either).
Don't confuse North America with the US.
iPhones sold by Apple in Canada without a contract come SIM unlocked by default. If I wanted to wait, I could've had an unlocked iPhone 6 (or 6+) on launch day.
And other places often sell unlocked iPhones.
Plus, on launch day, there are NO jailbreaks for new devices. So unlocking them is basically impossible via the jailbreak route.
And the incidence of jailbreaking in Asia is going down, as it turns out by jailbreaking, you're getting your phone infected with all sorts of spyware. There already are a bunch of iOS spyware that infects jailbroken devices only because they require circumventing the iOS security system in order to function. They can't infect a non-jailbroken phone.
So the only reason for jailbreaking in Asia is to engage in what they consider their basic right - to pirate. I mean, the latest installs of the jailbreaking tools for the past few iOS revisions install some Chinese pirated app store.
Of course, elsewhere on the Internet, the other way to do pirated app installs is to use a re-signer service that uses the enterprise certificate to sign cracked apps so they install on unjailbroken phone. It probably explains why the iOS section of most sites is gathering dust, while the Android section is healthy and growing with dozens of new pirated apps posted daily.
You forgot those little magnetic balls. They're banned now because many kids were swallowing them, and because of their magnetism, if you swallow two, your life really is in danger as they'll find each other and tear apart your intestines along the way.
Well, the R7000 and R8000 are "open routers" per Netgear. The R7500... not so much.
In fact, the R8000 has a DD-WRT port. As does the R7000.
And while it takes a bit of hunting, Netgear's source code firmware for those are available as well. (Well, most of it, given the amount of proprietary drivers that are binary only).
MyOpenRouter is usually where I go first when deciding if there's a particular Netgear router I want. (Netgear runs the site as a central place for all their "open" routers and alternative firmware. At least the routers they officially support as being "open").
Perhaps it's time for a little reading.
If we cooperate and realize that robots can serve us within limits, we can have a place where employment is optional (but still manage scarcity). Or if we just let greed take over and the robots will be the ones that oppress us.
Manna - By Marshall Brain explores these issues by seeing how machines initially take over, then following through with two different outcomes.
Of course the TL;DR version of it (I highly suggest reading the full thing first) is on Wikipedia.
Sadly, that's actually true.
It used to be drunk driving was the #1 cause of preventable accidents (or even accidents, period). Over the past few years, it actually became #2, with #1 being distracted driving (encompassing far more than just texting and cellphone use).
The problem is, and has been, that drones need to integrate into the air system we have today. Low level flights are generally allowed because aircraft don't usually fly that low (hence the 400 foot rule), but once you go above that, you can find yourself in the middle of air traffic - maybe not so much an airliner, but bug smashers and helicopters. And if you're going to be in that, you need to participate in full VFR rules at a minimum (including see and avoid). And if you can't see your drone, well...
In fact, that's been the primary problem the FAA has been wrestling with - how to integrate drones into the national air traffic system. Everyone wants the same rules applied - if your drone is going to occupy the same airspace, it will have to obey the same rules, including necessarily avionics (transponders, controlled airspace and ATC, etc).
The lowlevel rules are an attempt to let a fledgling industry not require everyone who flies a drone be a fully licensed pilot.
(The NTSB has ruled that even RC planes are "aircraft" and ARE subject to the FARs. The FAA's advisory is just that - advisory on how to partake in the hobby in ways that are unlikely to call the FAA's attention). So the FAA wants to treat small drones as RC style aircraft with the same RC style limitations.
It's already happened that idiots have tried to abuse it (hence why the NTSB has ruled RC aircraft are aircraft) - some idiot with a drone was bobbing and weaving it and causing a nuisance to the public flying it through pedestrian tunnels and dive bombing them, etc.
The problem is, drones are so easy to fly, most users are idiots, and the FAA has to basically balance the demands of fully licensed airspace users against those of hobbyists and small commercial operations.
Large drones are still subject to full pilot and aircraft/airspace regulations. (There also have been large RC aircraft that end up having to qualify under experimental aircraft rules).
No, GG has died down. Seriously - the news on it has waned and the general public probably only saw it on CSI or The Good Wife.
Yes, that's about the extent of the news - some Hollywood writers saw something interesting, read the Wikipedia entry on it and then wrote up an episode about it.
GG isn't newsworthy anymore, and it only was newsworthy because the women involved made noises - everyone else? They haven't said a peep.
Yes you can, as piracy is copyright infringement.
Want to violate GPLv2? Easy - release binaries without source. It's happened (inadvertent or not) many times already, and it IS copyright infringement - you don't have to agree to the GPL, but if you don't, the code reverts to All Rights Reserved and whatever limits copyright law gives you. (Hence why we call it "copyleft" - because agreeing to it gives you more than what copyright gives you - but if you don't agree, that's fine as copyright provides you certain rights, but less of them than if you did agree).
Ditto with creative commons - anything with "ND" or "NC" can be obviously pirated by simply not obeying it. NC can be violated by innocently putting it up on a website with ads.
Again, copyleft because you don't have to agree to the CC license to use the material - default copyright All Rights Reserved will apply instead (which is basically NC+ND without implicit permission).
You're assuming oil is being kept artificially high and that it really should be as low as it is. But it isn't - Saudi Arabia is throwing its weight around because they realize they need to control the supply side equation while they can. You know the biggest losers in this oil price drop? Oil companies in North America. They're all either running unsustainable productions, or are close to selling at cost.
If you don't see what the end goal is - think about who can afford to buy these struggling oil companies and who has the money. Yes, Saudi Arabia. They're not doing it because they can, they're doing it because they know in a few years they won't have their miracle liquid anymore, so in the meantime, they can bankrupt a few US oil companies, use their vast sums of money to buy them over and then when the oil's gone and prices jump back, Saudi Arabia owns all the oil again.
All the oil producing nations are looking into the post-oil era. Dubai has high end tourism on its radar. Saudi has oil, and they want to bankrupt as many companies so they can be bought for cheap to maintain their stranglehold. Maybe even a few other oil producing nations who are struggling with the low price of oil.
North American oil is expensive. However, when it was $100/barrel, there's lots of money to be made.
Where have we seen this before? Oh yeah, monopolies. Using their market power to out-sell competitors and drive them out of business so they can be bought for pennies on the dollar.
Most of the oil companies in the US will probably be dead in a year, so oil will then spike up higher than ever before because Saudi Arabia is going to want all t heir riches back.
Tesla making the investment now is smart - because when oil starts going up again, they're going to be in a nice position to sell cars as everyone else ramps down EV production in favor of gas (now cheap!) cars.
Airgaps don't work, Stuxnet proved you can still take down an airgapped network (face it - airgaps also mean old vulnerabilities don't get patched because it's way less convenient).
And proprietary protocols? They exist too.
But you know what? All this specialty stuff costs way more money. And then you wonder why the military is spending $200 on a network card that can barely do Gigabit speeds, when they can buy a GigE cards for $20. Or $50,000 for a network switch to serve an office.
COTS has been the goal because the commercial stuff has proven itself to be way more robust, cheaper, and far more advanced than what the military can procure through the usual methods. And more secure, too, just by being out there and pummeled.
Plus well, you have taxpayer groups arguing about why the military is needing all sorts of strange stuff - remember the $400 toilet seat? Now try imagining the headlines on /. when it's revealed that a computer on the inside network cost $10,000 for something already outdated when it was provisioned. Something that they could've gotten at Best Buy for under $1,000 with superior specs. And no, there's nothing special about it - it's not rad hard, not encased in steel or anything. Just a regular PC meant for an office.
Prohibition doesn't work, period. See previous attempts at alcohol, and current attempts at drugs.
Instead, sin taxes and societal influence is the best way. Sin taxes are obvious - tax and regulate it. Societal influence is interesting - smoking rates are way down, not because of tons of new laws and regulations, but because it's been demonized so badly, smokers are basically second class citizens.
Have a kid? Well, now society will deem you an outcast for exposing your kid to such harm. And these days, you know when a smoker enters the room, or purchase something used that came from a smoker. And nevermind the spouse trying to sneak in a smoke break - friends and family will soon ask questions.
Social pressure keeps people from smoking just like back in the early days, peer pressure ensured you smoked.
It's probably the most effective way - you give people the choice, tax them for the choice, and well, let society take care of the choice as well. If you can stand all those, go for it.
Really? No.
Average is the mean. If we say the average IQ is 100, I can give you 10 people where the average IS 100, but only one is below 100. Say, 110, 110, 110, 100, 100, 100, 100, 100, 100, 70. Or 101, 101, 101, 101, 106, 101, 101, 101, 107, 80.
If you want to say 50% are below and 50% are above, you want the MEDIAN, or the "middle". Which splits the set precisely in two - half below, half above.
Anyhow, it's saying the state average vaccination rate, which can be for example, above 95% in most places, but a few places where it's 30% will bring it right down to the 80% range, and of that, half of the places are above it and half below. Which is coincidental, but not the definition of average. After all, outliers skew it. Perhaps those 6 below were really far below which drag down the rate and put a bunch of those on the border above.
Mean, median and mode are different. (Mode is basically the datapoint that occurs the most, or the peak in a histogram). And for a bunch of people who claim to be smarter than the average population, this is really basic math taught in elementary or middle school.
Because those failure points will still be there in a "dumb" TV.
The TV needs a video processor and modern video processors already have multi cores with GPUs and all that. You can thank the smartphone revolution, but the SoCs used in TVs are often derived from the SoCs used in smartphones. Enough so that TV-specific SoCs can be more expensive.
So you're already talking about a TV with dual or quad core processors, 1GB of RAM, and other things. WiFi/Ethernet isn't pricey (and often bundled because most SoC vendors encourage bundling - if you go Broadcom, and use Broadcom WiFi/Ethernet ICs too, you get a break on the whole package).
Basically, TVs have gotten to the point where thanks to smartphones, they're swimming with CPU power, already run Android or Linux, and are sitting there as required pieces for the video processing chain. "Smart" features are merely software items that are trivial to add on because they come "for free".
Plus, it's one of the few ways to get Netflix in 4K. Netflix doesn't support 4K on PCs.
It only affects domain-joined PCs. If you're running XP Home (can't join a domain to begin with), then it really doesn't affect you.
It's a basic downgrade attack - similar to how those TLS bugs were done. You force the client and/or server to revert to an older less secure authentication protocol and then use that to get your way in.
And most businesses have moved off XP.
That's generally true - the parts separate cost more than the parts, together. Especially used parts because one needs to put actual effort into parting it out, and ensuring all the necessary pieces are there. Parts that are standard like hard drive and RAM are easy, but structures like the hard drive cage and other pieces are more difficult to part out since people usually want an assembly.
The real question though is whether or not the amount of money made extra exceeds the effort required to do it.
Then again, with repair aggregators like iFixit, if you part it out correctly they probably will accept it. Though it also makes you wonder how complicit a company like iFixit is in dealing with stolen goods.
(Remember, a company like iFixit doesn't generally buy parts from the factory - iPhone screens and such are generally purchased used from those recycling phones, though they may seed stock by disassembling brand new phones and selling them as new parts.).
Well, Apple already has policies on how to "legitimize" iPhones that were acquired not through criminal means. If it was inherited, you go to the courts and get a court order saying that yes, it's yours per the will and not under dispute (since wills can be contested). Apple would be more than happy to unlock that phone and assign it to your account.
Apple won't however just take it on blind faith that the "death certificate" you present them is real and that your grandma happened to die 100 times leaving you with 100 different iPhones and iPads needing unlocking. Unless you happen to convince a judge 100 times of that.
One of the problems is conversion of unsaturated fats to saturated fats, a process called hydrogenation (because it's adding hydrogen to the carbon chain - remember each carbon can have 4 bonds, and in unsaturated fats some of those bonds are double bonds, adding hydrogen turns those double bonds into single bonds).
The problem is chirality - you can get hydrogen bonding "in the wrong place" so turning a cis- version into a trans- version. The trans- version (hence trans fats) is bad for you, while the cis- version isn't so bad.
Of course, until the discovery of the chirality (and chirality affects a lot of things) of saturated fats, they probably got mixed together (they're still saturated fats, after all) and the original problem was because of the hidden trans- version. Of course, these days we can identify which we have far more accurately.
Chirality is an annoyance in chemistry - one gets you an inert molecule that doesn't do anything, the other gets you something really reactive, and it just depends on where the atoms decided to bond.
NASA might, but if the museum is going to put it on display, they're going to have to do research on identifying and the background of everything. Plus look up anything interesting that can be added to the display.
Then there's the research into the best way to display the items for the public display.
It's one thing to put up an artifact for display. Another to actually put it context and background. And it's possible that maybe the camera wasn't Armstrong's or used on the moon, but a duplicate made for familiarization purposes (to help the astronauts get comfortable with the cameras, NASA actually produced a bunch for them to take home to use in all situations.) This could very well be one of them. Plus, if there's any film, they need permission to develop and identify it.
Only if you don't know how Chinese manufacturing REALLY works. You know, stuff like third shift manufacturing, clones, and fakes.
Third shift - the same manufacturing line makes more product than requested. So if the company asks to make 10,000 widgets, the factory will make 12,000. Of course, the company would notice needing 20% more parts and supplies, so the extra 2,000 are Chinese-sourced "substitutes". The company get 10,000, and the 2,000 are lower quality parts - using cheaper caps, underspec'd parts, leftover wire and thinner materials. The packaging will usually be identical since running 12,000 copies off the same press is easy. Inner packaging will often be missing since who wants to spend $20 for the 2,000 extra pieces of packaging? $10 worth of bubble wrap ought to be sufficient.
These are then sold at cheap prices, where unsuspecting buyers don't realize they're not only getting shoddily-made stuff. I mean, that power bar rated at 15A doesn't need to use 14ga wire, right? We have plenty of 24ga hookup wire lying around as scrap, so let's use that! (And I'm being generous, I've seen ones using 30ga or thinner "rated" at 13-15A - if you remember how thin the wires were in a ribbon PATA cable, think using that for a power bar).
Then there are the fakes where they use whatever parts they can find and wire them together. Then stamp the manufacturer's mark on them. Sort of like what happened to those fake FTDI and Prolific USB-serial chips that entered general distribution. Or those "8GB" flash cards that only have 1GB of actual storage on them.
Then there's the group of people who take rejected parts and wire them up and hope no one notices - like perhaps a chip failed thermal testing - it still works, but only if you keep it under 40C or something. Those rejects usually get discarded, but smart ones will recycle them and use them elsewhere, maybe even a third shift product. Imagine powering up your server only to have it die under load because the part (which was rejected) failed and you have a copycat item.
Of course, for stuff like T-Shirts and stuff, or clothing in general, it should be obvious what the markup is. I mean, go into any expensive shop district and look at the stores there - almost all are clothing stores. Very few stores can afford to pay those high prices. So that $100 shirt really does cost $1 to make - that $99 is used to pay the $20,000 monthly leases on those high end district stores.
About the only other kind of store is Apple, who earn anywhere from $2000-4000/square feet (approximately twice that of Tiffany's). And only through that could Apple even afford to make those kinds of locations profitable.
Actually, a tracker does even less.
It's just a mapping between hashes and peers.
A tracker doesn't have to track much other than those two - your client connects to a tracker, and your client gives the torrent hash. The tracker then returns the peer list it knows about so your client can then connect to them and negotiate pieces and stuff.
Fancy trackers may track additional features since clients return how much they upload and download, so the tracker may use that to track your ratio (usually by user-specific tracker URLs).
But there's nothing the tracker has that says anything more than "hash - user IP". It doesn't know what the files are, or anything else.
Linux does fine in direct to consumer space, actually.
You just have to abandon the notion of "a Linux box" as acting how Linux does on the server and other things you know and love.
Replace the upper level guts with something more reasonable and you know, Linux is popular. A stunningly large number of devices run Linux in consumer devices, and Android powers a lot of phones. The thing in common is that the Linux core is hidden behind a pile of custom code that hides its nature because it has to.
Things like SystemD, NetworkManager, PulseAudio and other big blob programs are attempts to get "regular" Linux to behave more like how consumers expect their devices to behave. Which are incredibly complex behavior that can't just be tied together with a bunch of shell scripts.
Just think how basic operations are done on Android. It's obvious Linux can do them, since Android can do it, but damn is it hard to get desktop Linux to behave like Android.
Actually, what made printing cheap was the mass market paperback - not paperbacks (which existed for a long time). A mass market paperback was a way to print cheap copies and distribute them beyond the traditional bookstore - those books you saw on the shelf at the supermarket are mass market. Basically by using fixed dimensions, cheap paper, cheap glue bindings and very fast printing, you can make a readable book really cheap. Combine them into an assortment of books (all the same size) and you can ship boxes to distribution centers and then to stores who put the books up on the registers pretty much randomly.
This gave you wide exposure (a print run of 1000 was cheap, and probably went to 10% of the stores that sold mass market paperbacks - 1 each among the assortment), and the cheapness of it all made the assortment cost effective. It didn't matter that not all stores had the same books - they just got some and if it sold, good, if not, it got returned and lumped into another assortment somewhere else a month later.
So the mass market stores got a constantly cycling collection of cheap books they could sell. If you were a reader, you went to the higher quality paperback editions that were printed much better and lasted longer, but were more expensive. Also you went there because mass market books were a hit and miss random collection - if you wanted a specific book, you were better off going to the bookstore.
These days, the term is basically meaningless other than to refer to a specific form factor of book as stores switched from carrying pulp as a impulse sale to a common stock item. But back in the pre-internet days, mass market was a good way to get exposure.
Import brands from lesser known countries. Or higher end vehicles. Or learn to love classic cars.
The thing is, your needle speedometer hasn't been wired up to the wheels in 20 years or so now - they're all electronic with a servo giving your the needle position. That's basically true for everything you see on the dash - it's all electronically driven and controlled and the only things you feed it are a CAN bus network plug and power. Sure some gauges flick when you turn the key, but just because they don't doesn't mean it isn't electronic.
So the needle and flippy odometer are basically purely electro-mechanical devices in most cars, and of the whole cluster, only the speedometer is the required instrument. And there are probably enough purists out there where the needle instrument would remain an option. They all get the information the same way so it's really a matter of swapping the panels around during manufacture.
As for all that "electronic crap"? They've gone this way because electronics have proven themselves to be far more robust, durable, cheaper and way more featureful than their old mechanical counterparts. It's why throttles are electronic despite supposedly being more complex - a throttle cable fails surprisingly often versus your pot and servo (while the latter gives you cruise control as a free option - it's just software now). Brakes remain hydraulic with mechanical backup (though many are electric rather than vacuum assist). Hell, even your transmission is basically all electronic - automatic transmissions used to be almost all mechanical but that lead to the control box being very finicky where 1/16" of an inch can trigger a recall. It's why modern automatic transmissions are so efficient - knowing how the engine is loaded, the speed, throttle position and many other sensors, the transmissions can figure out what gear to use.
And yes, going electronic makes life a lot simpler - the mess of a wire harness is far simplified, it's cheaper to manufacture, and way more reliable. It's also why previously high-end features reserved for luxury cars can be hand in your $15,000 econobox. In the end it's all software, and software is remarkably cheap.
Of course, it's unlikely remote update would become a standard low end feature anytime soon - I mean, you have to handle cases where the vehicle may not be set up to connect to an owner's wifi network, 3G isn't available everywhere (and who's gonna pay for it?), etc.
That said, remote access does have its uses - perhaps monitoring your car from inside the house. This will be more standard in range-limited vehicles like electric cars, so you can see the status of your car inside on your phone (state of charge, charging or not, etc) and even have it run the AC or heater while still on house power so the car is cool or warm when you get in.
Anyhow, you want electronic crap free cars? We call them classics. And even those aren't all electronics-free, as people have learned that electronic fuel ignitions make life much nicer (twist 'n' go - no longer worry about vapor lock, cold weather, etc.), and yes, you can get 'em with automatic transmissions too, and creature comforts like AC.
Of course, if you do go true all mechanical, be prepared to spend a few days every month working on it. It's why there are a lot of shade tree mechanics - things fail constantly.