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User: Dan+East

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  1. Twofer on Fuel Free Spacecrafts Using Graphene · · Score: 4, Informative

    A quick search on converting photons to electrons turned this up:

    http://cleantechnica.com/2013/...

    A new discovery by researchers at the ICFO has revealed that graphene is even more efficient at converting light into electricity than previously known. Graphene is capable of converting a single photon of light into multiple electrons able to drive electric current.

    So that could be where the extra electrons are coming from.

  2. Re:How embarrasing on Crowdfunded, Solar-powered Spacecraft Goes Silent · · Score: 1

    It doesn't sound like it takes very long to fill up 32MB either

    Nope. Just ten compressed audio files would do it.

  3. Blocking access on Leaked Document Shows Europe Would Fight UK Plans To Block Porn · · Score: 2

    And how exactly do you block access? Politics and policy aside, from the technical viewpoint, what he proposes is not possible. One country cannot get worldwide cooperation of every single adult website to honor this opt-in policy. Keyword based filters cannot work with encrypted traffic. Whitelisting or blacklisting would be such a massive undertaking as to never be effective. There's just no way to even do what he's advocating.

  4. Re:Played for a few hours and got bored on How Cities: Skylines Beat SimCity At Its Own Game · · Score: 0

    Say "IRL" just one more time. I dare you.

  5. Re:Nostaligia on Jason Scott of Textfiles.com Wants Your AOL & Shovelware CDs · · Score: 2

    To illustrate just how much content I'm talking about, here is a list of BBSs just in the Cleveland area code of Ohio where I grew up:
    http://bbslist.textfiles.com/2...

    There are 759 BBSs in that list, representing just one little slice of Ohio. Each one was a microcosm all unto itself. There are dozens of different types of BBS software represented there. Each BBS was hand-crafted and configured by the individual sysop with the style, color, behavior, etc, and hardly any two of them were even remotely similar. It was a point of pride for sysops to have a unique looking board, and they were updated often. Some where awful, some were great, but they were all handcrafted extensions of the people who made them. Each had its own character and personality, and the discussion forums and online games drew different types of people together. Some were mainly gaming BBSs, running multi-player online games like Trade Wars ( http://geekswithblogs.net/cwil... ), others had tons of shareware files you could download, others focused on discussion forums and communication, and of course others delved into the darker realms of illegal file sharing, etc. But again, they were all unique, and they are all gone.

  6. Nostaligia on Jason Scott of Textfiles.com Wants Your AOL & Shovelware CDs · · Score: 2

    I can understand the sense of nostalgia. I'd love to have all my Amiga floppies from when I was a kid. I'd also love to see all the dial-up local BBSs I frequented in the late 80s back up in glorious glaring ANSI (via a web interface, of course). But it's gone forever. Not a shred of it is left, which makes me a little sad. The BBS era is certainly one that was not captured for posterity. I'm sure there are a few here and there that might have been pulled off an old HDD and put online, but I'd say 99% of them (and there were a lot, and they had a lot of content) are gone forever. I don't hear people lamenting this much, but it was a segment of human society that first developed and introduced the concept of online digital connectivity to humanity, and it was not preserved.

  7. Rolled out intelligently on Feds Order Amtrak To Turn On System That Would've Prevented Crash · · Score: 2

    The PTC system has been rolled out in an intelligent manner, and curves that require breaking got it first. What happened in this particular derailment was an anomaly. Any time a massive new system like this is rolled out, decisions have to be made to prioritize which areas are the highest risk, and thus those areas get the system first. In this particular curve, PTC was installed coming into the curve from the other direction, but not in the direction the train was travelling. Why? Because in the direction the train was travelling, the speed limit from the last stop was never greater than the speed in which the curve could be navigated. The train never needed to slow down into the curve when travelling in that direction. However when coming from the other direction, the train needed to slow from a normal 90+ MPH. Thus PTC was rolled out to make sure trains decelerated because that was the greatest risk.

    The train accelerated suddenly within one minute of the crash to that high of a speed, so this wasn't an issue of just negligence and forgetting to brake. The train was accelerated far above the speed limit for no good reason, then the engineer tried to brake at the last second but it was too late.

    My hunch is he heard that other engineer in another train talking about being hit by projectiles, and so he sped up to try and make it harder for the engine to get hit, and he misjudged when he needed to slow down to take that curve.

  8. Deception on The Best Way To Protect Real Passwords: Create Fake Ones · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Deception is a valid form of security, similar to obfuscation. It should not be relied upon, but it is merely another layer. In the early 90s me and some buddies ran a multi-node BBS. One of the admins used the same password on another BBS, and someone was able to log into our system using his admin account. So to prevent that from ever happening again, I wrote a script that, for the three site admins, would also ask for their birthdate every time they logged in. If an incorrect date was entered a single time, the account would be locked. Thing is, it wasn't our birthdates that we had to enter, but just another very short password that we could enter really easily. So an attacker, if they got to that point again (obtained the password), would give it their best guess (or perhaps even research to find) the admin's birthdate. If any date was entered at all (containing two slashes or hyphens) the account was immediately locked, because the expected password was just a couple letters is all, and anyone entering an actual date was not an admin.

  9. Re:Pretty amazing, but not much cheaper than RPi on $9 Open Source Computer Blows Past Crowdfunding Goal · · Score: 3, Informative

    Your comparison is flawed. The Raspberry Pi doesn't have Wifi, Bluetooth, or any onboard storage. By the time you add those three things to the Pi, C.H.I.P. will still be less than half the price (even with the HDMI board).

  10. Vaginosis/Vaginitis Plus on The Medical Bill Mystery · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I sense this is a hoax, or at least contrived example to raise awareness. It is trivial to look up CPT codes online. The first code listed is for a SureSwab Vaginosis/Vaginitis Plus test (87481).

    It isn't exactly "fun", but it is straightforward to request your actual test results from the facility, and then correlate the results to your bill. You should have results and documentation in your medical record for ancillary department services you were charged for. That is, if you want to audit everything like that to keep healthcare facilities honest. If you have insurance (either government provided, or private), then you can always have them investigate anything you see that is awry. Insurers are always more than happy to find someone to sick their attorneys on.

  11. Re:Dosbox in a browser? on Twitter Stops Users From Playing DOS Games Inside Tweets · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Do I REALLY want to run a dosbox in my browser?

    How are we supposed to know the answer to that.

    How long until someone comes up with an exploit?

    An exploit to what exactly? Are you actually asserting that someone will discover a JavaScript security hole, then instead of simply exploiting it with a standard web page, they would instead construct an ms-dos program designed to run in dos box that exploits some additional security hole in dos box in order to exploit the JavaScript vulnerability? Do you happen to be afraid of your own shadow too?

  12. Re:They're called trees. on Breakthrough In Artificial Photosynthesis Captures CO2 In Acetate · · Score: 2

    So, on that wiki article it says the percent of forested land area, by country is:
    Canada: 3,101,340 km2 forested which is 31.06%
    USA: 3,030,890 km2 forested which is 30.84%

    But then Canada and USA combined is: 4,680,000 km2 or 26.00%

    Obviously something is quite wrong with that article.

  13. Larger landing area on Longer Video Shows How Incredibly Close Falcon Stage Came To Successful Landing · · Score: 4, Interesting

    It sure seems that if a larger landing area was available, so that the rocket didn't have to lean so far to adjust to a very small target and thus could prioritize staying vertical, it would be able to land successfully. What's it going to take for NASA or the FAA or whatever to give them permission to land on, um, land.

  14. Money on Google Rolls Out VP9 Encoding For YouTube · · Score: -1, Flamebait

    (bandwidth costs Google money, thus by using a more efficient codec to reduce the amount of data they have to transmit, they save money. But of course they'll spin it as if they're doing it for the poor disenfranchised bandwidth limited user. Just keep that fact on the down-low)

  15. $3 on Build Your Own Satellite For Less Than $30K · · Score: 1

    I can build by own satellite for under $3. Granted it will be comprised of a solar panel and an LED that blinks once a second, but no one ever said it actually needed to do anything.

  16. Drought solution on Fault System Enables Larger Quakes In California · · Score: 2

    One step closer to significantly reducing California's water consumption.

  17. Consummate politician on Sen. Feinstein Says Anarchist Cookbook Should Be "Removed From the Internet" · · Score: 2

    I would expect nothing less of a true politician. Whether it's the small town politician slapping down even more stop signs after an accident occurred, a school board politician enacting rule after rule that parents and students must jump through in order to protect the school board from litigation, or a senator talking about "removing" a 40+ year old book from the internet, they all have one thing in common: doing things for the sake of being seen doing things, as if they have solutions or actual control over things they do not. It's all about the image. Smoke and mirrors.

  18. Re:Interesting on Madman: Proximity To Black Hole "Not a Big Deal" · · Score: 1

    I really enjoyed this movie as a kid. Quite frankly, Maximilian was, and is to me still, one of the scariest robots ever created. Given the era, it's very surprising DIsney produced a movie as dark as The Black Hole. In addition to Maximilian there were the zombie-like laser-lobotomized humans running the ship. And no, there was no happy ending for any of them - the best they got was to eventually die. Yeah, it tried to go right by the checklist of what made Star Wars a huge success (lasers, robots, and even a "force"-like ESP thing), but it was still quite original in a number of ways. They even had a fairly decent go of zero-gravity behavior in the space ship at the beginning.

  19. Re:No real mystery here on X-37B To Fly Again · · Score: 1

    I'm sure it's doing more than that. It has a payload bay like the space shuttle. Certainly it is doing spying, but it's very likely that it is actively testing new technology that has to make up for the loss of capability that the Space Shuttle provided. More than likely it launches micro satellites, then locates and tracks them, and finally recaptures them. It could also be launching a larger payload of some kind, then manipulating the payload with a robotic arm, etc.

  20. Exiting on Attempted Breach of NSA HQ Checkpoint; One Shot Dead · · Score: 4, Interesting

    According to a CNN article, they were leaving the secure area, not entering. A quote from an official said they failed to follow proper safe EXITING procedures. Another major news site said that a gun and cocaine were found in the vehicle. It's a large complex and a lot of people live in it. Sounds like drugs were being ferried in or out, and it didn't have anything to do with the NSA or secrets.

  21. Makes sense on If You Want To Buy an Apple Watch In-Store, You'll Need a Reservation · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This makes sense for a number of reasons. First, it will keep scalpers from buying up so many devices and selling on eBay. Makes it much easier for Apple to keep track of these people. Second, it will reduce the number of impulse buys for people that don't really understand what the device can, and more importantly, can't do, thus reducing the number of returns and increasing overall customer satisfaction. Sure, it has downsides, but I think the upsides probably win out in this case.

  22. Re:Putin's getting desperate... on NASA Denies New Space Station Partnership With Russia · · Score: 2, Informative

    space exploration is probably one of their strongest points both historically and currently

    Russia has heavy lift capability, and that's basically it. I tried to find the last time they actually did exploration (as in probes, rovers, etc) and didn't see much of anything since the Soviet Union. Right now NASA, ESA, Japan, China and even India are all ahead of Russia as far as exploration goes, as all those organizations have active probes in space doing science. Russia is basically just hauling stuff into orbit.

  23. HTML5 on SuperMario 64 Coming To a Browser Near You! · · Score: 1

    For one brief moment I thought this was actually newsworthy - AKA it was implemented in Javascript using WebGL and Web Audio API - while in reality it runs in 3rd party plugin which is a native executable running directly on the system. Yawn.

  24. Re:Fake, not practical on Magic Leap's AR Demo Video · · Score: 1

    Here's there scene I'm talking about.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

    This new Magic Leap video... same poor interface concept, slightly better graphics.

  25. Fake, not practical on Magic Leap's AR Demo Video · · Score: 5, Insightful

    First of all, of course it's fake.

    The biggest flaw is the interface itself. A full 20 years ago, when Johnny Mnemonic (the movie, not the short story) came out, and I saw Keanu Reeves using that VR internet type access, I knew that those interfaces would never work in the real world. I'm sitting here browsing the internet, typing this message, etc, by moving my fingers maybe an inch most. We are currently stuck having to do physical interactions to interface with a digital world. As long as we are stuck using this kind of interfacing (IE it's not plugged directly into our mind), then the less physical effort is required to interface, the more efficient, faster, accessible, and convenient computers will be to access.

    Really, I'm going to lift my arm up to head level, and make a huge gesture like I'm pulling laundry out of the washing machine, to look at a message? LOL Suuuuuure. Anyway, you can spot it in a minute when these interfaces are generated by animators / artists / movie effects people, because they could never gain widespread usage when the majority of people would be fatigued after a mere 10 minutes using such a system. Kind of like every movie with a computer makes beeps and blips every time you interact with any widget, which in reality would drive the average human out of their mind in exactly 20 minutes. Yeah, looks cool as a prop, but annoying in real life.

    Oh, and I like the way that gun somehow turns into an actual prop in that guy's hands. They've invented a transporter and holodeck to go along with their VR headset apparently.