It is obvious that this cheating was approved by the then chairman and family head, Ferdinand Piech, who ran the company until 2015. Piech was an engineer and engine specialist, famous for his detailed involvement in new designs.
This is a spectacular piece of aerospace engineering, basically a huge flying wing built to lift several hundred ton boosters. The recent SpaceX Falcon 9 Heavy launch with full booster recovery destroys the economic advantage of air launch. SpaceX's success indicates that launching can become a refuel and repeat process, so there is no need for a hugely expensive aircraft launch vehicle. Especially as that aircraft has limited speed and range and requires an enormous runway to operate from, which undercuts the idea that it can launch to any azimuth from anywhere. From a business perspective, the operation was successful, but the patient died. Sad.
Chrome is the preeminent global browser. Why am I not reassured when it adds the capability to allow Google to remove blacklisted extensions. Blacklisted and removed from user installations on what basis? Who decides and what are the criteria. Is there any appeal? Sure seems to grant a lot of trust to a firm that is quite often in the courts.
Not sure that matters. The Ethiopian flight never got up high enough to engage the auto pilot, they were in trouble essentially from the time the wheels left the runway. Separately, the autopilot is only as good as its inputs. If there is a sensor problem, as was the case with both these accidents, the autopilot is equally misled.
.It seems unlikely that Tesla would have been able to persuade anyone to help finance the venture unless he had a significant idea that at least neutralized some of the obvious objections. Tesla was not stupid, but rather a truly ingenious engineer, nicely illustrated by his development of 3 phase power. Ingenuity matters in these circumstances, The H bomb development stayed blocked for years, despite diligent effort, until Stanislaw Ulam conceived of the idea of radiation compression.
There is a piece in a Tesla biography which quotes him saying that he understood the energy flows involved from observing thunderstorms moving across the landscape while on vacation in the Rockies. It suggests he had an 'eureka' moment
The main question is what prompted Bloomberg to publish this story in the first place. They are well aware that the Chinese government carries grudges and will exact a large penalty from anyone harming China's interests. So why would Bloomberg, a firm that historically has tried hard to avoid offending China, publish a story designed to damage the reputation of the Chinese subcontractor base? Given the importance of China in the world financial framework, they are not an entity Bloomberg would casually offend. Yet they have done just that, with a very high profile story that is thus far lacking in hard evidence. What made Bloomberg, a very profit oriented firm, do that?
I'd expect Bloomberg would make sure they were bulletproof on the facts, because the article has lots of potential downsides for them. They must have hardware evidence at a minimum. For one, it will surely anger the Chinese government, an entity which holds grudges better than anyone. This story burned a lot of bridges. For another, the various named businesses who are reported to have knowingly operated penetrated services will need to clear their reputations with their customers. Lastly, Supermicro is very damaged by this and may get put out of business, they will be fighting for survival and will pull no punches. Afaik, retired intelligence personnel is still bound by their oath to not disclose classified information. That makes it challenging to mount a defense, so the hardware will have to provide the needed proofs.
There are about 200 million voter records and 24 terabytes of data, so about 100,000 bytes/voter. That is lot more than just vote records or census data. The person who uncovered this data pool did note that it included among other things projections of each voters opinions and likely vote patterns, with surprising accuracy insofar as he was concerned, based on what his own profile showed.
Iirc, it did not contain the leak, except in the narrow sense that the barrel did not leave the site. In actuality, the barrel contents, a sloppy mix of nitric acid process waste and sawdust, hugely overheated and much of the material was vaporized. Because of contractor negligence, the fire doors that should have automatically closed could not, so the contamination spread widely. The doors had been wired open because they had too many false alarms, which was inconvenient. The venting system that should have contained the fumes did not work, so the plant environs were contaminated. The estimated $2 billion clean up cost is an estimate, probably will be exceeded, as these cleanups rarely work as planned. Afaik, apart from some bonus payment reductions, there has been no penalties to any entity from this disaster. Accountability is entirely lacking by all appearances.
Seems a clever ploy to highlight his efforts and thereby enhance his career prospects. The good professor is ranked as an 'assistant professor', which is a non tenured position. To make tenure, he needs to get promoted to 'associate professor', which is the first tenured career step. There are very many more assistants than associates, the competition is brutal and getting some recognition is essential. Good on him for finding an encouraging way to document the rejections he has endured.
Card skimming is much too piecemeal an approach. The preferred technique (well over 100 uses in 2015) in Germany is to hook the ATM to a cylinder of ethylene, add a spark, collect the cash and scram. This takes about 2 minutes and produces about 10,000E per application, with about 100,000E collateral damage. Best of all, it is not vulnerable to changes in the card technology
The FDA has set up a real world test of consumer willingness to accept GMO foods. All farmed salmon can now be considered to be GMO, because no labeling is required. If consumers care, all farmed salmon sales will fall. Industry will react accordingly.
Coming after the Stuxnet experience and the recent hack of a steel mill in Germany, which forced an emergency shutdown of the furnace, with 'heavy damage', the complacent assertion that no cyber attack could cause a reactor malfunction just seems witless. Of course these reactors are susceptible to getting hacked, the main obstacle is the relative obscurity of the control systems and the reality that there are multiple different designs in service, so that a wide ranging attack is very complicated. By the same token, the diversity of targets makes the defense much more difficult, no 'one size fits all' protocol is likely to be effective.
The hope may be that hacking a nuclear plant might be seen as an act of war, so not something most states would pursue, but the proliferation of devices makes it easier to create a hard to attribute hack. There is plenty of ill will around as well, so this is likely to be just the first such attack post Stuxnet.
What a spectacular deal!! For less than $20mm/yr, a relative pittance, Google gets 60 years on a square mile of land right next to Silicon Gulch. There is surely a longer term plan to make this into GoogleWorld, just extend the lease in a few decades. Google leadership has not lost its smarts.
Shades of Teledesic! See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teledesic
The idea is not new, the technology is probably better, especially for efficient solid state RF transmitters, success depends on the spectrum available and the money. Do note that one of the gotchas in satellite internet access is that it is not easy to for apartment dwellers to get an adequate signal, whereas rural users should rejoice, as they usually get left out by the wireline/cable providers..
The noise this kind of gizmo, a short rotor helicopter, makes is really pretty astounding. The dreams of a tilt rotor commuter transport went on the rocks because of the noise, no community would tolerate it. Unfortunately there is no currently known technical fix. We limit airplane noise around airports, just like motorcycle and lawnmower noise in the community. This thing will be way louder than a motorcycle. Public acceptance is going to be nil if the noise comes from next door. Imho, Terrafugia has just shifted from barely possible start up venture to fantasy, for some unknown reason.
If memory serves, Paypal can freeze the bank account that you provide them in case of a dispute as well as your Paypal deposits. This capability might cause prudent people to link only a petty cash bank account to their Paypal account.
While it is encouraging to see innovation as a management focus, the more interesting story is glossed over. How is Kimberly keeping the lights on with a crushed IT department? It seems the basics must be running pretty well if a new IT guy can come in and focus on innovation opportunities. It would help to know if the goal is cost reduction or service enhancement.
Sorry, that is unfortunately incorrect. There was an earlier disaster, with the cover up of a massive sodium leak leading to a senior executive's suicide, back in Jan 1996. This is a separate event, involving the plant manager in charge of the fuel section, a hard core engineer, in February of this year.
The Japanese have built and used a similar tool for removing fuel from their troubled Monju fast breeder reactor prototype. The latest glitch was that the tool fell into the reactor and got stuck. The senior engineer on the effort committed suicide after this. The tool was retrieved last month, after much effort. It would be a shame if the Brits ran into similar problems, so hopefully they are talking to the Japanese and getting some lessons learned.
The absence of control over the cross fertilization from GM plants is a legitimate issue that is thus far not adequately addressed. People breeding pure strains that are inadvertently contaminated from adjacent GM plants may see their business destroyed with no recourse. This has happened in the case of some orange growers. It also is a concern for those seeking to market GM free vegetables that command market premiums. Thus far, the proponents of GM plants have essentially had a free ride on this issue and no consequential damages have been paid. This is unjust, as it puts the burden of adjustment on the injured party, rather than on the originator of the damage. When the law acts thus unjustly, people will respond similarly. I would not be happy either if someone moved a contamination source into my neighborhood and told me that adjusting to it was my problem.
This is an excellent idea. Afaik, the USPS already has substantial money processing experience. The USPS money order is a wonderfully cheap and reliable way to send small sums anywhere in the country. Expanding that service seems a pretty logical next step. Moreover, it would help improve civic morality. Not only does it seem much less glamorous to rob the post office rather than the bank, but additionally, the frustration of waiting in line to rob the attendant should drive most would be criminals back to the straight and narrow.
The degree of disfunction in this effort is beyond belief. The accident was almost 2 months ago, admittedly in the context of a massive natural disaster. Since then, nothing has happened except the barest minimum. There are a quarter of the workers on site as were there before the disaster, living in a bunker with no showers or decent meals, no hazard pay or adequate equipment. They are going in baby steps because there is not the people or the equipment to do more than one thing at a time. Not even the basic debris clearing has made much headway, less than 50 containers worth from a 1200x400 ft site. The company is admonished from all sides, but not supported. When the CEO tried to fly back to his office from a remote site after the disaster by using a government plane, it was made to turn back after it had taken off, ensuring a more than 24 hour delay in the response. This absence of effective national leadership continues, even though the radioactive vapors from the spent fuel pools have poisoned a large swath of central Japan. At the present rate, the site will not even be free from radioactive flooding until next year, so the problems will fester at least until then. If anything breaks before then, the problem could easily get much worse. Perhaps there is need for a supranational nuclear emergency team setup and a corresponding code of conduct. Japan is certainly showing how not to do it.
It is indicative of the gravity of the situation that the Japanese have not accepted any of the offers of radiation hardened robots designed for nuclear incidents such as this. The most logical explanation is that the situation is known to be impossible, so why accept foreign robots and the obligations that go with them just to be further embarrassed. No work can be done in the facility until the radioactive lake in the plant, currently about 1300x80x20 ft is drained, which will not be until year end at best. After all, no one has swimming robots for nuclear cleanup. So it is a waste of time to fulminate about the slow cleanup, because it is paced by the need to build holding tanks and a big radioactive water treatment facility, expected to start work by the end of May.
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It is obvious that this cheating was approved by the then chairman and family head, Ferdinand Piech, who ran the company until 2015.
Piech was an engineer and engine specialist, famous for his detailed involvement in new designs.
This is a spectacular piece of aerospace engineering, basically a huge flying wing built to lift several hundred ton boosters.
The recent SpaceX Falcon 9 Heavy launch with full booster recovery destroys the economic advantage of air launch.
SpaceX's success indicates that launching can become a refuel and repeat process, so there is no need for a hugely expensive aircraft launch vehicle. Especially as that aircraft has limited speed and range and requires an enormous runway to operate from, which undercuts the idea that it can launch to any azimuth from anywhere.
From a business perspective, the operation was successful, but the patient died. Sad.
Chrome is the preeminent global browser.
Why am I not reassured when it adds the capability to allow Google to remove blacklisted extensions.
Blacklisted and removed from user installations on what basis? Who decides and what are the criteria. Is there any appeal?
Sure seems to grant a lot of trust to a firm that is quite often in the courts.
Not sure that matters.
The Ethiopian flight never got up high enough to engage the auto pilot, they were in trouble essentially from the time the wheels left the runway.
Separately, the autopilot is only as good as its inputs. If there is a sensor problem, as was the case with both these accidents, the autopilot is equally misled.
.It seems unlikely that Tesla would have been able to persuade anyone to help finance the venture unless he had a significant idea that at least neutralized some of the obvious objections.
Tesla was not stupid, but rather a truly ingenious engineer, nicely illustrated by his development of 3 phase power. Ingenuity matters in these circumstances, The H bomb development stayed blocked for years, despite diligent effort, until Stanislaw Ulam conceived of the idea of radiation compression.
There is a piece in a Tesla biography which quotes him saying that he understood the energy flows involved from observing thunderstorms moving across the landscape while on vacation in the Rockies. It suggests he had an 'eureka' moment
The main question is what prompted Bloomberg to publish this story in the first place.
They are well aware that the Chinese government carries grudges and will exact a large penalty from anyone harming China's interests.
So why would Bloomberg, a firm that historically has tried hard to avoid offending China, publish a story designed to damage the reputation of the Chinese subcontractor base? Given the importance of China in the world financial framework, they are not an entity Bloomberg would casually offend.
Yet they have done just that, with a very high profile story that is thus far lacking in hard evidence. What made Bloomberg, a very profit oriented firm, do that?
I'd expect Bloomberg would make sure they were bulletproof on the facts, because the article has lots of potential downsides for them. They must have hardware evidence at a minimum.
For one, it will surely anger the Chinese government, an entity which holds grudges better than anyone. This story burned a lot of bridges.
For another, the various named businesses who are reported to have knowingly operated penetrated services will need to clear their reputations with their customers.
Lastly, Supermicro is very damaged by this and may get put out of business, they will be fighting for survival and will pull no punches.
Afaik, retired intelligence personnel is still bound by their oath to not disclose classified information. That makes it challenging to mount a defense, so the hardware will have to provide the needed proofs.
There are about 200 million voter records and 24 terabytes of data, so about 100,000 bytes/voter.
That is lot more than just vote records or census data.
The person who uncovered this data pool did note that it included among other things projections of each voters opinions and likely vote patterns, with surprising accuracy insofar as he was concerned, based on what his own profile showed.
Iirc, it did not contain the leak, except in the narrow sense that the barrel did not leave the site.
In actuality, the barrel contents, a sloppy mix of nitric acid process waste and sawdust, hugely overheated and much of the material was vaporized.
Because of contractor negligence, the fire doors that should have automatically closed could not, so the contamination spread widely. The doors had been wired open because they had too many false alarms, which was inconvenient.
The venting system that should have contained the fumes did not work, so the plant environs were contaminated.
The estimated $2 billion clean up cost is an estimate, probably will be exceeded, as these cleanups rarely work as planned.
Afaik, apart from some bonus payment reductions, there has been no penalties to any entity from this disaster.
Accountability is entirely lacking by all appearances.
Seems a clever ploy to highlight his efforts and thereby enhance his career prospects.
The good professor is ranked as an 'assistant professor', which is a non tenured position.
To make tenure, he needs to get promoted to 'associate professor', which is the first tenured career step.
There are very many more assistants than associates, the competition is brutal and getting some recognition is essential.
Good on him for finding an encouraging way to document the rejections he has endured.
Card skimming is much too piecemeal an approach.
The preferred technique (well over 100 uses in 2015) in Germany is to hook the ATM to a cylinder of ethylene, add a spark, collect the cash and scram.
This takes about 2 minutes and produces about 10,000E per application, with about 100,000E collateral damage.
Best of all, it is not vulnerable to changes in the card technology
The FDA has set up a real world test of consumer willingness to accept GMO foods.
All farmed salmon can now be considered to be GMO, because no labeling is required.
If consumers care, all farmed salmon sales will fall. Industry will react accordingly.
Coming after the Stuxnet experience and the recent hack of a steel mill in Germany, which forced an emergency shutdown of the furnace, with 'heavy damage', the complacent assertion that no cyber attack could cause a reactor malfunction just seems witless. Of course these reactors are susceptible to getting hacked, the main obstacle is the relative obscurity of the control systems and the reality that there are multiple different designs in service, so that a wide ranging attack is very complicated. By the same token, the diversity of targets makes the defense much more difficult, no 'one size fits all' protocol is likely to be effective.
The hope may be that hacking a nuclear plant might be seen as an act of war, so not something most states would pursue, but the proliferation of devices makes it easier to create a hard to attribute hack. There is plenty of ill will around as well, so this is likely to be just the first such attack post Stuxnet.
What a spectacular deal!!
For less than $20mm/yr, a relative pittance, Google gets 60 years on a square mile of land right next to Silicon Gulch.
There is surely a longer term plan to make this into GoogleWorld, just extend the lease in a few decades.
Google leadership has not lost its smarts.
Shades of Teledesic!
See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teledesic
The idea is not new, the technology is probably better, especially for efficient solid state RF transmitters, success depends on the spectrum available and the money. Do note that one of the gotchas in satellite internet access is that it is not easy to for apartment dwellers to get an adequate signal, whereas rural users should rejoice, as they usually get left out by the wireline/cable providers..
The noise this kind of gizmo, a short rotor helicopter, makes is really pretty astounding.
The dreams of a tilt rotor commuter transport went on the rocks because of the noise, no community would tolerate it. Unfortunately there is no currently known technical fix. We limit airplane noise around airports, just like motorcycle and lawnmower noise in the community. This thing will be way louder than a motorcycle.
Public acceptance is going to be nil if the noise comes from next door.
Imho, Terrafugia has just shifted from barely possible start up venture to fantasy, for some unknown reason.
If memory serves, Paypal can freeze the bank account that you provide them in case of a dispute as well as your Paypal deposits.
This capability might cause prudent people to link only a petty cash bank account to their Paypal account.
Bismarck said: Never believe anything until it has been officially denied. Presumably Mr Toure's comment qualifies as an official denial.
While it is encouraging to see innovation as a management focus, the more interesting story is glossed over.
How is Kimberly keeping the lights on with a crushed IT department?
It seems the basics must be running pretty well if a new IT guy can come in and focus on innovation opportunities. It would help to know if the goal is cost reduction or service enhancement.
Sorry, that is unfortunately incorrect. There was an earlier disaster, with the cover up of a massive sodium leak leading to a senior executive's suicide, back in Jan 1996.
This is a separate event, involving the plant manager in charge of the fuel section, a hard core engineer, in February of this year.
The Japanese have built and used a similar tool for removing fuel from their troubled Monju fast breeder reactor prototype. The latest glitch was that the tool fell into the reactor and got stuck. The senior engineer on the effort committed suicide after this.
The tool was retrieved last month, after much effort.
It would be a shame if the Brits ran into similar problems, so hopefully they are talking to the Japanese and getting some lessons learned.
The absence of control over the cross fertilization from GM plants is a legitimate issue that is thus far not adequately addressed.
People breeding pure strains that are inadvertently contaminated from adjacent GM plants may see their business destroyed with no recourse. This has happened in the case of some orange growers. It also is a concern for those seeking to market GM free vegetables that command market premiums.
Thus far, the proponents of GM plants have essentially had a free ride on this issue and no consequential damages have been paid. This is unjust, as it puts the burden of adjustment on the injured party, rather than on the originator of the damage. When the law acts thus unjustly, people will respond similarly.
I would not be happy either if someone moved a contamination source into my neighborhood and told me that adjusting to it was my problem.
This is an excellent idea.
Afaik, the USPS already has substantial money processing experience. The USPS money order is a wonderfully cheap and reliable way to send small sums anywhere in the country. Expanding that service seems a pretty logical next step.
Moreover, it would help improve civic morality. Not only does it seem much less glamorous to rob the post office rather than the bank, but additionally, the frustration of waiting in line to rob the attendant should drive most would be criminals back to the straight and narrow.
The degree of disfunction in this effort is beyond belief.
The accident was almost 2 months ago, admittedly in the context of a massive natural disaster.
Since then, nothing has happened except the barest minimum. There are a quarter of the workers on site as were there before the disaster, living in a bunker with no showers or decent meals, no hazard pay or adequate equipment. They are going in baby steps because there is not the people or the equipment to do more than one thing at a time. Not even the basic debris clearing has made much headway, less than 50 containers worth from a 1200x400 ft site.
The company is admonished from all sides, but not supported. When the CEO tried to fly back to his office from a remote site after the disaster by using a government plane, it was made to turn back after it had taken off, ensuring a more than 24 hour delay in the response.
This absence of effective national leadership continues, even though the radioactive vapors from the spent fuel pools have poisoned a large swath of central Japan.
At the present rate, the site will not even be free from radioactive flooding until next year, so the problems will fester at least until then. If anything breaks before then, the problem could easily get much worse. Perhaps there is need for a supranational nuclear emergency team setup and a corresponding code of conduct. Japan is certainly showing how not to do it.
It is indicative of the gravity of the situation that the Japanese have not accepted any of the offers of radiation hardened robots designed for nuclear incidents such as this.
The most logical explanation is that the situation is known to be impossible, so why accept foreign robots and the obligations that go with them just to be further embarrassed.
No work can be done in the facility until the radioactive lake in the plant, currently about 1300x80x20 ft is drained, which will not be until year end at best. After all, no one has swimming robots for nuclear cleanup.
So it is a waste of time to fulminate about the slow cleanup, because it is paced by the need to build holding tanks and a big radioactive water treatment facility, expected to start work by the end of May.