I didn't get around to looking it up earlier, but according to Wikipedia: 58 km/s for the Perseids and 35 km/s for the Geminids. Fortunately, none of those are in an orbit around the earth where they may intersect with other satellite orbits every hour.
Your "encryption" is only unbreakable if it is an isolated ciphertext message. If your phone calls and whereabouts have been monitored for a while because of some suspicion, and you used any of those words before, your encryption method is broken, just like a one-time pad or ECB message block is compromised if it is used more than once. By compromised/broken I mean that the attacker has reduced the complexity from infinity to some finite (possibly still large) number.
Mersenne twister (MT), having good statistical properties, is not a bad PRNG, but it's slow, needs a lengthy initialization, and is not cryptographically secure (CS): someone observing the output for a while can reconstruct the internal state and predict the next outcome.
For an online casino, you'd want a CSPRNG. For computer simulations that need to draw trillions of numbers from the PRNG, you'd want a fast PRNG with good statistics, such as a multiply-with-carry (MWC) or xorshift. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik... . I don't really understand why MT is used so much.
Of course, once you have the spelling, good writers will use its pecularities to their advantage, but even then I doubt that present-day English writings would be harder to read in a more phonetic spelling system - for someone who was raised with it. You mention words that sound the same but are written differently. But what about homographs such as lead, can, may, light, park, project, and wind? Or what added value is the spelling of through, though, tough, plough, and cough?
As an aside, I believe that the fuzzy, simple grammar of English makes it hard to write unambiguously about a complicated reasoning (academic writing). The lack of word genders and verb inflections makes it hard to refer to specific earlier sentence parts.
"So I had to go "cold turkey" on it, which was not easy. You find out just how addicting caffeine really is when you need to get off of it."
Please elaborate. Judging from my symptoms during holidays, I'd expect two days of mild headache and a bit more sleepiness before lunch time in the first few days.
Politics and SJW'ing creep into discussions if the topic of the story invites it. Not the case for this topic, today or back in 2004-2007. In my perception, any topic vaguely related to national US politics would invoke hundreds of comments. Not sure about SJW, but then, I'm still not entirely sure exactly what kind of comments those bickering about it are referring to.
But yeah, back then, there were more people knowledgeable about obscure technical topics to generate 100+ comments on stories that were not political or car-related.
"it would be interesting more for mixing custom meds for those who take several different pills a day. Maybe they could just take one or a few of the same pills that have all the needed ingredients."
It might be difficult to do that in a reliable way. The fillers/binders and the active ingredients must be compatible in terms of grain size (for reliable, even mixing) and to result in a tablet that doesn't crumble and that dissolves quickly or slowly as desired. To make it work out for every possible combination of active ingredients may be rather difficult.
http://avantslash.org/ - I browse slashdot nearly exclusively using this mobile interface, especially while commuting. Main downside: you need to host it as a script on your own server.
Update: Netflix will start talking to your ISP if it has at least 5 Gbps peak traffic for Netflix. So, it's likely that your single-city ISP will qualify for a free
(except for connectivity and power) appliance.
Ref.:
https://openconnect.netflix.co...
"Assume 50 Mbit/sec, symmetric bandwidth,... at 5% average utilization is 250 Gbit/sec, 50 Gbit/sec at 1% (my 1 day average over 3 months is.55 Mbit)"
I assume that the last number was supposed to be in Mbit/s units, or 1.1% average utilization. I think an ISP is more interested in peak, not average, utilization. For example, in the evenings around 8 pm when everyone is at home, watching youtube/netflix; say two HD streams at 5 Mbit/s each makes 20% utilization at prime time. And if you are the only uncapped ISP in the area, then you would get all the heavy users...
Also realize: at 100 k customers, you may be too small to get Youtube/Netflix to offer servers within your own network, so all that bandwidth really goes over your uplink.
P.S. It turns out that there actually are a few satellites in retrograde orbits, notably a few satellites launched from Israel, which georgaphical location makes eastward launches unpractical. Still, the head-on collision speed would be 16 km/s, not 60.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik...
"Wolfram Alpha pegs the average orbital velocity at 29.8 km/s."
That's the orbit of Earth around the sun, not really relevant here. The escape velocity from earth is 11 km/s; a low-earth orbit is a factor sqrt(2) slower (8 km/s).
"Thes velocities can easily be nearly 'head-on' at 60 km/s of impact velocity."
Head-on would result from (debris from) a satellite going east-west, against the rotation of the earth. I don't see why anyone would want to launch satellites other than west-east. It would add 900 m/s to the required Delta v of the launch rocket. Launch costs are exponential in Delta v.
Unlike my alarm clock on my nightstand, which I've had for 30 years and still functions perfectly without a single upgrade since I took it out of the box.
If that's one of those with the big red digits and a iron-core transformer: it probably uses $5 per year in electricity. [ref] Economy should also be accounted for in the "Works perfectly" argument.
But typical dose rates in the area are well under a millisievert per hour. While several thousand times higher than the average dose received by the average resident of the planet, it's still well below the dose required to cause even mild radiation sickness
You're mixing dose rates (Sv/h) and doses (Sv) in your argument, so I'm not sure what you're trying to argue here. Some googling tells me that the dose rates around Chernobyl are typically 1 micro-Sv/h (indeed, well below 1 mSv/h), or 8 mSv per year, which is only a factor 3 higher than the global average human exposure. I think those numbers sound nicer than they really are, since the Chernobyl dose rates are for people just being present and breathing air, but not actually ingesting contaminated water and food or inhaling dust.
Macros have been disabled by default for a decade now.
That's not the point of TFA or even TFS. The point is that different enable/disable policies can be implemented for macros that connect to the internet versus macros that operate in a sandbox such as buttons in an Excel spreadsheet that manipulate the data inside the spreadsheet. Right now, it's all or nothing.
That said, I'd prefer that write access to local files is also restricted. It's fine if a macro can automatically import data from a file, but I'm not so fine with macros being able to write data (overwriting/encrypting files, creating.EXE files).
All ethernet devices of the last 10+ years can autonegotiate between straight and cross-over wire configuration. So with wires on the connector organized as tx+ tx- rx- rx+ (4-wire example), a flippable connector would not require any changes in the electronics. And it would get rid of the impedance-killing central pair split in today's standard connector.
Of course, the question is whether you could make a flippable connector that's field-crimpable with simple tools.
if you want to make a sharp mirror the precision in the calculation have to be higher.
How so? For high-precision applications, you'd typically want a mirror with a deviation from its calculated surface that is better than lambda/20. For UV light at 200 nm and a mirror size of 1 m, that would be about 8 significant digits to describe the surface. Then you have 7 more digits to deal with intermediate results during the calculation.
Note: For X-ray mirrors, the wavelength is much shorter, but because X-ray mirrors are grazing-incidence mirrors, the surface tolerance is more like lambda/1 - - which also boils down to about 8 significant digits. Anyway, to describe the surface with an accuracy down to the size of an atom, you still only need 10 significant digits.
"When these rare events occur, it's not a single-occupant car getting hit, they wipe out multiple people. The risk factor is multiplied,"
No, it's not. The risk of an accident per passenger-mile is not dependent on the number of passengers per vehicle because the same factor applies for every accident-free trip.
When you change the screen-lock PIN, the FDE password will be reset as well. Are you sure that that isn't what happened?
But yes, I admit that I have had my problems, too. When I updated my nexus 7 (2012) from stock 4.4.4 to 5 lollipop, I got the boot message: something went wrong with the encrypted data partition. Factory reset needed. Grrrrr.... That's when I moved to Cyanogenmod.
Rooted Android can already combine a pin screen lock and password for FDE. Cm11 had it built in. For CM12 or stock Android with root, there are apps that can set the FDE password, or you could do it via command line over adb if you want to spend 15 minutes to figure out the right syntax.
It would be interesting to see how many people died of arsenic induced skin cancer due to solar panel production.
Where did you get that common silicon solar cells contain arsenic (or gallium for that matter)? Gallium arsenide solar cells are only used in space applications where the extra cost is offset by the watts/mass ratio. Standard PV panels are made of silicon doped with traces of boron and phosphorus. So, the answer is probably: close to zero, given how small the market for solar cells in satellites is.
I would guess that it's a reasonable proxy for PINs that people get to choose themselves, such as those for SIM cards and phone unlock codes. Where I live, you don't get to choose the PIN for your debit card.
As for my phone: it has an encryption password, an unlock code, and a SIM PIN, in order of decreasing complexity, related to the potential for damage if someone guesses it right and to the number of tries before the system locks/wipes itself.
Slashdot Mirror
I didn't get around to looking it up earlier, but according to Wikipedia: 58 km/s for the Perseids and 35 km/s for the Geminids. Fortunately, none of those are in an orbit around the earth where they may intersect with other satellite orbits every hour.
Your "encryption" is only unbreakable if it is an isolated ciphertext message. If your phone calls and whereabouts have been monitored for a while because of some suspicion, and you used any of those words before, your encryption method is broken, just like a one-time pad or ECB message block is compromised if it is used more than once. By compromised/broken I mean that the attacker has reduced the complexity from infinity to some finite (possibly still large) number.
Good luck typing Win+R with my Dvorak keyboard layout... Or can HID devices generate actual ascii/unicode symbols rather than scan codes?
Mersenne twister (MT), having good statistical properties, is not a bad PRNG, but it's slow, needs a lengthy initialization, and is not cryptographically secure (CS): someone observing the output for a while can reconstruct the internal state and predict the next outcome.
For an online casino, you'd want a CSPRNG. For computer simulations that need to draw trillions of numbers from the PRNG, you'd want a fast PRNG with good statistics, such as a multiply-with-carry (MWC) or xorshift. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik... . I don't really understand why MT is used so much.
"The 'ridiculous mess' that is English-language spelling is also an optimization of cognitive load, just as capitalization and punctuation are."
You make it sound like it was a conscious decision to spell English the way it is. It's not. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik... .
Of course, once you have the spelling, good writers will use its pecularities to their advantage, but even then I doubt that present-day English writings would be harder to read in a more phonetic spelling system - for someone who was raised with it. You mention words that sound the same but are written differently. But what about homographs such as lead, can, may, light, park, project, and wind? Or what added value is the spelling of through, though, tough, plough, and cough?
As an aside, I believe that the fuzzy, simple grammar of English makes it hard to write unambiguously about a complicated reasoning (academic writing). The lack of word genders and verb inflections makes it hard to refer to specific earlier sentence parts.
"So I had to go "cold turkey" on it, which was not easy. You find out just how addicting caffeine really is when you need to get off of it."
Please elaborate. Judging from my symptoms during holidays, I'd expect two days of mild headache and a bit more sleepiness before lunch time in the first few days.
Politics and SJW'ing creep into discussions if the topic of the story invites it. Not the case for this topic, today or back in 2004-2007. In my perception, any topic vaguely related to national US politics would invoke hundreds of comments. Not sure about SJW, but then, I'm still not entirely sure exactly what kind of comments those bickering about it are referring to.
But yeah, back then, there were more people knowledgeable about obscure technical topics to generate 100+ comments on stories that were not political or car-related.
"it would be interesting more for mixing custom meds for those who take several different pills a day. Maybe they could just take one or a few of the same pills that have all the needed ingredients."
It might be difficult to do that in a reliable way. The fillers/binders and the active ingredients must be compatible in terms of grain size (for reliable, even mixing) and to result in a tablet that doesn't crumble and that dissolves quickly or slowly as desired. To make it work out for every possible combination of active ingredients may be rather difficult.
There's a surprising amount of engineering behind tablet manufacturing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
http://avantslash.org/ - I browse slashdot nearly exclusively using this mobile interface, especially while commuting. Main downside: you need to host it as a script on your own server.
Update: Netflix will start talking to your ISP if it has at least 5 Gbps peak traffic for Netflix. So, it's likely that your single-city ISP will qualify for a free (except for connectivity and power) appliance. Ref.: https://openconnect.netflix.co...
"Assume 50 Mbit/sec, symmetric bandwidth,... at 5% average utilization is 250 Gbit/sec, 50 Gbit/sec at 1% (my 1 day average over 3 months is .55 Mbit)"
I assume that the last number was supposed to be in Mbit/s units, or 1.1% average utilization. I think an ISP is more interested in peak, not average, utilization. For example, in the evenings around 8 pm when everyone is at home, watching youtube/netflix; say two HD streams at 5 Mbit/s each makes 20% utilization at prime time. And if you are the only uncapped ISP in the area, then you would get all the heavy users...
Also realize: at 100 k customers, you may be too small to get Youtube/Netflix to offer servers within your own network, so all that bandwidth really goes over your uplink.
P.S. It turns out that there actually are a few satellites in retrograde orbits, notably a few satellites launched from Israel, which georgaphical location makes eastward launches unpractical. Still, the head-on collision speed would be 16 km/s, not 60. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik...
"Wolfram Alpha pegs the average orbital velocity at 29.8 km/s."
That's the orbit of Earth around the sun, not really relevant here. The escape velocity from earth is 11 km/s; a low-earth orbit is a factor sqrt(2) slower (8 km/s).
"Thes velocities can easily be nearly 'head-on' at 60 km/s of impact velocity."
Head-on would result from (debris from) a satellite going east-west, against the rotation of the earth. I don't see why anyone would want to launch satellites other than west-east. It would add 900 m/s to the required Delta v of the launch rocket. Launch costs are exponential in Delta v.
Unlike my alarm clock on my nightstand, which I've had for 30 years and still functions perfectly without a single upgrade since I took it out of the box.
If that's one of those with the big red digits and a iron-core transformer: it probably uses $5 per year in electricity. [ref] Economy should also be accounted for in the "Works perfectly" argument.
But typical dose rates in the area are well under a millisievert per hour. While several thousand times higher than the average dose received by the average resident of the planet, it's still well below the dose required to cause even mild radiation sickness
You're mixing dose rates (Sv/h) and doses (Sv) in your argument, so I'm not sure what you're trying to argue here. Some googling tells me that the dose rates around Chernobyl are typically 1 micro-Sv/h (indeed, well below 1 mSv/h), or 8 mSv per year, which is only a factor 3 higher than the global average human exposure. I think those numbers sound nicer than they really are, since the Chernobyl dose rates are for people just being present and breathing air, but not actually ingesting contaminated water and food or inhaling dust.
That's not the point of TFA or even TFS. The point is that different enable/disable policies can be implemented for macros that connect to the internet versus macros that operate in a sandbox such as buttons in an Excel spreadsheet that manipulate the data inside the spreadsheet. Right now, it's all or nothing.
That said, I'd prefer that write access to local files is also restricted. It's fine if a macro can automatically import data from a file, but I'm not so fine with macros being able to write data (overwriting/encrypting files, creating .EXE files).
All ethernet devices of the last 10+ years can autonegotiate between straight and cross-over wire configuration. So with wires on the connector organized as tx+ tx- rx- rx+ (4-wire example), a flippable connector would not require any changes in the electronics. And it would get rid of the impedance-killing central pair split in today's standard connector.
Of course, the question is whether you could make a flippable connector that's field-crimpable with simple tools.
How so? For high-precision applications, you'd typically want a mirror with a deviation from its calculated surface that is better than lambda/20. For UV light at 200 nm and a mirror size of 1 m, that would be about 8 significant digits to describe the surface. Then you have 7 more digits to deal with intermediate results during the calculation.
Note: For X-ray mirrors, the wavelength is much shorter, but because X-ray mirrors are grazing-incidence mirrors, the surface tolerance is more like lambda/1 - - which also boils down to about 8 significant digits. Anyway, to describe the surface with an accuracy down to the size of an atom, you still only need 10 significant digits.
"When these rare events occur, it's not a single-occupant car getting hit, they wipe out multiple people. The risk factor is multiplied,"
No, it's not. The risk of an accident per passenger-mile is not dependent on the number of passengers per vehicle because the same factor applies for every accident-free trip.
Both articles talk about 12 deaths per year due to people falling out... Maybe people dont worry about it, but it seems like a big deal to me.
When you change the screen-lock PIN, the FDE password will be reset as well. Are you sure that that isn't what happened?
But yes, I admit that I have had my problems, too. When I updated my nexus 7 (2012) from stock 4.4.4 to 5 lollipop, I got the boot message: something went wrong with the encrypted data partition. Factory reset needed. Grrrrr.... That's when I moved to Cyanogenmod.
Rooted Android can already combine a pin screen lock and password for FDE. Cm11 had it built in. For CM12 or stock Android with root, there are apps that can set the FDE password, or you could do it via command line over adb if you want to spend 15 minutes to figure out the right syntax.
"It IS damn useful to be able to look at an app on my phone while I'm out of the house, (...) I do all of this in my router's DMZ."
Huh? What does that mean? I hope that you don't mean that all those webcams are in the DMZ, fully exposed to the internet.
Where did you get that common silicon solar cells contain arsenic (or gallium for that matter)? Gallium arsenide solar cells are only used in space applications where the extra cost is offset by the watts/mass ratio. Standard PV panels are made of silicon doped with traces of boron and phosphorus. So, the answer is probably: close to zero, given how small the market for solar cells in satellites is.
I would guess that it's a reasonable proxy for PINs that people get to choose themselves, such as those for SIM cards and phone unlock codes. Where I live, you don't get to choose the PIN for your debit card.
As for my phone: it has an encryption password, an unlock code, and a SIM PIN, in order of decreasing complexity, related to the potential for damage if someone guesses it right and to the number of tries before the system locks/wipes itself.