This has long been known, and as usual not super new news.
Even in 1975 ("Haicheng Earthquake" ), schoolchildren who had been given electrical measurement kits began to detect unusual fluctuations in ground voltage. This earthquake is one of the few that have reasonably legitimately been claimed to have been predicted on the order of days in advance, with significant population lives saved by concrete action beforehand (could be fortuitous coincidence, but they definitely saw the warning signs -- and note that this earthquake is one of the many documented where animals foretold the earthquake through unusual activity).
There have also been reports of the atmosphere turning purple/blue around the location of an impending earthquake, which is probably what led to the work here. What is new is some more consistent effort to try to detect the precursors.
My uninformed interpretation of the phenomenon is that geophysical / piezoelectric stress in the rocks induces voltages/currents in the ground, which in turn cause atmospheric electrical effects that can be detected.
How will the reporting distinguish when someone's connection is getting f'd up by the crappy wifi connection with interference from all their apartment neighbors?
Is there going to be a standard test setup requirement? Over wired connection?
In the 1970s the Swiss makers found themselves under attack from the new cheaper quartz watches. (wikipedia for "quartz crisis") They could no longer plausibly claim that their handcrafted puffery resulted in more accurate timekeeping. So they had to change their marketing message from "accuracy" to "heirloom timepieces" bullshit (hence why you see messages like, "you don't just buy a Pat** Phi***, you only take care of it for the next generation." etc)
You would think that they (like religious science-deniers) would just accept that that is their niche, and stay with it. But now they have to catch up with the smart watch too, or risk losing the next generation of watch buyers.
So let's see how their message of "preserving an heirloom timepiece" stands up against the reality of a battery that lasts for 24 hours, and consumer electronics that get thrown out after 2 years... When the guts of your watch are indistinguishable from a $75 piece of crap, who's going to believe the marketing hype?
I find it incredible that an article criticizing visual design elements lacks a single screenshot, graphic, or figure illustrating the problems they're talking about.
yeah, and I'm sure that everyone's devices will be operating so in spec, and the algorithms designed so carefully, that there will never be any possibility that the harmonics bleed over into the audible and drive everyone within hearing distance nuts with the annoying sounds? Great idea!
I have to agree. The downfall of some liberal countries is that they become *too* sensitive, and when confronted with a true enemy, they don't realize or recognize it.
When someone is out to destroy you, you cannot simply be polite and act like it's a dinner party where someone had bad manners.
Lessig didn't even make the top 7 of the list of potential Democratic candidates. If anyone has a claim that they've been unfairly removed from the candidacy, it's the candidate at #4 or 5 who didn't get included in the debate -- yet no such claim has been made by any of those others.
*Some* method has to be used to gradually reduce the list of people to debate. What does Lessig propose? He could not even gather the support for that. Is that the fault of the process, or him?
The only reason I've been considering this phone is to let my family join the Google Fi project, because of the reasonable plan $ options ($20/month, and good data rates), and the ability to roam globally without extortionate fees. (and just to stick it to the major carriers assholishness).
However, regardless of how good the phone may be relative to past versions of Nexus, they're all familiar with iPhone and iOS now, and to break out of that is a big hurdle in itself. The tie-ins of iMessage, ease of using apps, user interface, etc, all conspire to keep us using iOS.
This is why it's hard to break up ecosystems... iPhone does most everything we want, but it just costs too much to switch.
Don't just blame Apple for all this. Blame the Australian government and their protectionist policies that enable companies to take advantage of customers because they have no alternatives.
Go to Australia and you will see ridiculously priced cars, books, food items, software, tons of other consumer items. All protected from imports in the name of "promoting Australian industry", i.e. protecting them from competition.
Software licenses that cost 2-3x in the US or 10x in India. And books? Are you kidding? Books? No -- it is real. Australian authors "protected" from competition by charging more for books from overseas. As if you can promote Australian writing by taxing foreign books more...
These are the idiots that we put in charge of our interests.
First of all, shame on authors for either not checking their models enough, not asking others to check them, and not opening their models for others to see before publishing "important" results.
Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, shame on the rest of us (and especially policymakers) for relying on such kinds of work so quickly and without validation to support generally political agendas. It's almost the equivalent of funding vaccine-skeptic studies by choosing which doctors will speak in your favor without regard to a rigorous scientific review process.
The problem with a lot of leaders is that after they achieve some initial (and maybe even really big and sustained) success, they start to see it as validation of stupid ideas they may have on other things that are not related. And they begin to view their companies as experimental labs for their personal unvetted ideas. This is dangerous.
You saw it in Google's daycare fiasco where some progressive schooling agenda was rolled out, leaving lots of parents with no affordable option for their kids because an executive wanted this, and everyone else had to follow. There are other (better) examples too.
I get the sense that this is the same kind of thing in action. A CEO has some utopian dream about a fully collaborative workplace where everyone is equal, meritocratic, and maybe actually some noble goal of making a better company.
But the thing you learn about groups of people over time is that not everyone can or wants to be equal all the time, and have a content-based battle for leadership every day of their lives. Sometimes you just need a factory workplace to get stuff done, and you don't need everyone to be equal and coming up with ideas every day of their lives. People often want someone to be the leader, to take the responsibility, say what others need to do, and they do it. You evaluate how it went, and try another idea where someone else leads.
You can see examples of this in your own workplace, your friends, your family. You very rarely will see a successful or satisfying group structure where everyone has to debate every decision all the time and be thinking on their toes to do it. It's tiring, and sometimes very much the opposite of what you need to happen. Get a group of friends together where no one feels they can say what the evening's plan should be and I think you get the frustrating picture.
Go home, start making dinner, and debate and negotiate with your spouse and kids about every step of the process because it's sure to make it better, right? I suggest you try it in your life before rolling it out to 1000 employees as the company policy.
Good to understand though, that not having to be compelled to produce something that could be used against you, doesn't mean that you are protected from that thing being produced... by others. So if somehow their phones were brute force unlocked or decrypted, that evidence could definitely be used against them.
What is with the epidemic of half-assed, unqualified, reaching-beyond-their-capabilities public servants we have lately?
Whether corrupt police, incompetent city government, school principals, etc, when did these kinds of people start getting elected to important public service roles?
Or is it just that now we have more access to tools to expose their idiocy and it seems there are more of them?
I am all for free speech and entitlement to personal opinion. But the very role of government and public policy is to have a rational and objective view on what is reasonable for citizens to do and not do as part of civil society. It is not to merely sway with the wind and throw up one's hands and say, well, we can't offend anyone's beliefs so we shouldn't do our jobs for fear of being voted out of office.
It is high time that both we as citizens and we as government not put up with or enable a small ridiculous minority of extremist views to hold the rest of society hostage, with the threat of lawsuits.
There is such a thing as being overly reasonable. And there are many more issues that don't rise to this level of publicity, that policy makers give in to, for fear of negative repercussions, rather than doing the right thing.
Fair is fair, so let's make sure it cuts both ways, all the way up the management chain. Let anyone who can and is willing to do the CEO job for less $ take the position, and have to have the current CEO train his replacement.
How will it be at all reasonable to shut down LGA and move traffic to EWR and JFK? Traffic is already a nightmare getting out of Manhattan and on the GCP/Van Wyck. The problem is getting people to the airports.
It is a joke to try and take subways/buses to LGA. La Guardia and NYC need to make some hard and bold public policy choices to cut through a couple of neighborhoods, and make public transport more efficient to/from the airport.
The level of infrastructure quality in our supposedly world-leading financial center is a total embarrassment. You come back from Singapore or HK or even Munich, and you wonder, how are we still #1 with this shit? Fuck the investment required and cost/benefit ratios -- it's a indicator of your country's standing and priorities.
Aside from the normal arguments about a shortage of workers *at what offered wage level* etc, etc., the more interesting question here is a question of demographics.
When the world offers you endless numbers of reasonably well-trained workers who can fill your job openings at 1/2 the cost of US workers, what is a country to do? How long can a country resist that pressure? We may politically shout for better wages and training for US citizens to fill these jobs, but the deeper issue is that borders/barriers are less and less effective lately against a flood of competition from people who are cheaper and better (or hungrier).
Americans I believe will have to come to grips with the possibility of a stagnant or even decreasing standard of living as the rest of the world takes what was once our position. No amount of restriction of H-1B visas will prevent that.
"Intimidated by the process"? More like intimidated by Northrop Grumman's supervisors being in the room to make sure they don't say anything that might, hmm, jeopardize their future at Northrop Grumman...
First I think they need to work on having enough people in their country to make such a wall worth it... The way their population is declining, pretty soon even if a tsunami hits, no one will be left in the country to notice it.
Let's be clear on whose responsibility is whose. No one is forcing this guy to do *anything* and it's kind of a stretch to say that Comcast is forcing him to move out of his house. He bought and wants to live in a certain house, that has not yet been clearly shown to have internet service. Comcast is incompetent, and it's his choice on what to do about it.
The issue is not that he has to move out, it's that he doesn't have many cost effective options to get fast internet at his house. But he hasn't even exhausted all his options. Has he looked into contracting to extend a line tap? Has he tried satellite? Phone? Any other options? Many people and businesses operate in far more remote places where they manage to get connectivity.
Much as I hate Comcast, have a sense of objectivity here...
We can debate all we like about whether there is or is not an absolute standard or "owner" of the language.
But I will still use the ability to write and speak according to the refined rules of whatever standard is adopted, as a filter to figure out if the person I'm talking to has a certain level of qualifications and skill... and is able to understand and think clearly within rules and structures, whatever they may be.
Just because the owners of those may change doesn't mean that poor logic, thinking, and inability to write are suddenly excused.
This is why I have a hard time buying luxury goods where the brand is more important than some tangible functionality.
If I cannot tell the difference between a $100 watch and a $10,000 watch by its accuracy or functionality, I open myself up to being deceived by people who exploit that people cannot tell the difference.
I don't need to be told a luxury story about how a watch is an expression of my adventurousness or legacy, to part me with $10,000 more than the next equally functional good is worth.
I have always struggled to understand how some technology makes the transition from being a luxury or niche appeal, to something that government starts to feel is an entitlement or is deserving of regulation. In that sense I watch and see some technologies become victims of their own success -- too many people "rely" on something, and you become a public good and it's out of your control.
How did telephone service become a guaranteed-access human right and lifeline? When will the internet become so essential that to not have it is unacceptable and must be subsidized?
When Sirius and XM radio merged, there was such scrutiny to determine whether that was an unfair narrowing of competition -- for satellite radio entertainment for fucks sake. Yet 5 years before that, the field hardly even existed -- and that was not viewed as a lack of competition!
I would like to know the theory of when something crosses that border...
I guess we must hold these newcomers to a higher bar because of public safety. No need for any of these rules to apply to the legions of dangerous, shitty, and unhelpful taxis / drivers already on the road! Please, keep Uber out for our own protection -- I am more comfortable with untrackable, combative, unhelpful, no-feedback-receiving, swindling taxi drivers and taxi companies that I'm used to!
Slashdot Mirror
This has long been known, and as usual not super new news.
Even in 1975 ("Haicheng Earthquake" ), schoolchildren who had been given electrical measurement kits began to detect unusual fluctuations in ground voltage. This earthquake is one of the few that have reasonably legitimately been claimed to have been predicted on the order of days in advance, with significant population lives saved by concrete action beforehand (could be fortuitous coincidence, but they definitely saw the warning signs -- and note that this earthquake is one of the many documented where animals foretold the earthquake through unusual activity).
There have also been reports of the atmosphere turning purple/blue around the location of an impending earthquake, which is probably what led to the work here. What is new is some more consistent effort to try to detect the precursors.
My uninformed interpretation of the phenomenon is that geophysical / piezoelectric stress in the rocks induces voltages/currents in the ground, which in turn cause atmospheric electrical effects that can be detected.
How will the reporting distinguish when someone's connection is getting f'd up by the crappy wifi connection with interference from all their apartment neighbors?
Is there going to be a standard test setup requirement? Over wired connection?
Funny how things go round and round.
In the 1970s the Swiss makers found themselves under attack from the new cheaper quartz watches. (wikipedia for "quartz crisis") They could no longer plausibly claim that their handcrafted puffery resulted in more accurate timekeeping. So they had to change their marketing message from "accuracy" to "heirloom timepieces" bullshit (hence why you see messages like, "you don't just buy a Pat** Phi***, you only take care of it for the next generation." etc)
You would think that they (like religious science-deniers) would just accept that that is their niche, and stay with it. But now they have to catch up with the smart watch too, or risk losing the next generation of watch buyers.
So let's see how their message of "preserving an heirloom timepiece" stands up against the reality of a battery that lasts for 24 hours, and consumer electronics that get thrown out after 2 years... When the guts of your watch are indistinguishable from a $75 piece of crap, who's going to believe the marketing hype?
I find it incredible that an article criticizing visual design elements lacks a single screenshot, graphic, or figure illustrating the problems they're talking about.
yeah, and I'm sure that everyone's devices will be operating so in spec, and the algorithms designed so carefully, that there will never be any possibility that the harmonics bleed over into the audible and drive everyone within hearing distance nuts with the annoying sounds? Great idea!
I have to agree. The downfall of some liberal countries is that they become *too* sensitive, and when confronted with a true enemy, they don't realize or recognize it.
When someone is out to destroy you, you cannot simply be polite and act like it's a dinner party where someone had bad manners.
Lessig didn't even make the top 7 of the list of potential Democratic candidates. If anyone has a claim that they've been unfairly removed from the candidacy, it's the candidate at #4 or 5 who didn't get included in the debate -- yet no such claim has been made by any of those others.
*Some* method has to be used to gradually reduce the list of people to debate. What does Lessig propose? He could not even gather the support for that. Is that the fault of the process, or him?
The only reason I've been considering this phone is to let my family join the Google Fi project, because of the reasonable plan $ options ($20/month, and good data rates), and the ability to roam globally without extortionate fees. (and just to stick it to the major carriers assholishness).
However, regardless of how good the phone may be relative to past versions of Nexus, they're all familiar with iPhone and iOS now, and to break out of that is a big hurdle in itself. The tie-ins of iMessage, ease of using apps, user interface, etc, all conspire to keep us using iOS.
This is why it's hard to break up ecosystems... iPhone does most everything we want, but it just costs too much to switch.
Don't just blame Apple for all this. Blame the Australian government and their protectionist policies that enable companies to take advantage of customers because they have no alternatives.
Go to Australia and you will see ridiculously priced cars, books, food items, software, tons of other consumer items. All protected from imports in the name of "promoting Australian industry", i.e. protecting them from competition.
Software licenses that cost 2-3x in the US or 10x in India. And books? Are you kidding? Books? No -- it is real. Australian authors "protected" from competition by charging more for books from overseas. As if you can promote Australian writing by taxing foreign books more...
These are the idiots that we put in charge of our interests.
Issues like this were already being flagged in 2013:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/19/opinion/krugman-the-excel-depression.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonkblog/wp/2013/04/16/is-the-best-evidence-for-austerity-based-on-an-excel-spreadsheet-error/
First of all, shame on authors for either not checking their models enough, not asking others to check them, and not opening their models for others to see before publishing "important" results.
Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, shame on the rest of us (and especially policymakers) for relying on such kinds of work so quickly and without validation to support generally political agendas. It's almost the equivalent of funding vaccine-skeptic studies by choosing which doctors will speak in your favor without regard to a rigorous scientific review process.
The problem with a lot of leaders is that after they achieve some initial (and maybe even really big and sustained) success, they start to see it as validation of stupid ideas they may have on other things that are not related. And they begin to view their companies as experimental labs for their personal unvetted ideas. This is dangerous.
You saw it in Google's daycare fiasco where some progressive schooling agenda was rolled out, leaving lots of parents with no affordable option for their kids because an executive wanted this, and everyone else had to follow. There are other (better) examples too.
I get the sense that this is the same kind of thing in action. A CEO has some utopian dream about a fully collaborative workplace where everyone is equal, meritocratic, and maybe actually some noble goal of making a better company.
But the thing you learn about groups of people over time is that not everyone can or wants to be equal all the time, and have a content-based battle for leadership every day of their lives. Sometimes you just need a factory workplace to get stuff done, and you don't need everyone to be equal and coming up with ideas every day of their lives. People often want someone to be the leader, to take the responsibility, say what others need to do, and they do it. You evaluate how it went, and try another idea where someone else leads.
You can see examples of this in your own workplace, your friends, your family. You very rarely will see a successful or satisfying group structure where everyone has to debate every decision all the time and be thinking on their toes to do it. It's tiring, and sometimes very much the opposite of what you need to happen. Get a group of friends together where no one feels they can say what the evening's plan should be and I think you get the frustrating picture.
Go home, start making dinner, and debate and negotiate with your spouse and kids about every step of the process because it's sure to make it better, right? I suggest you try it in your life before rolling it out to 1000 employees as the company policy.
Good to understand though, that not having to be compelled to produce something that could be used against you, doesn't mean that you are protected from that thing being produced... by others. So if somehow their phones were brute force unlocked or decrypted, that evidence could definitely be used against them.
What is with the epidemic of half-assed, unqualified, reaching-beyond-their-capabilities public servants we have lately?
Whether corrupt police, incompetent city government, school principals, etc, when did these kinds of people start getting elected to important public service roles?
Or is it just that now we have more access to tools to expose their idiocy and it seems there are more of them?
I am all for free speech and entitlement to personal opinion. But the very role of government and public policy is to have a rational and objective view on what is reasonable for citizens to do and not do as part of civil society. It is not to merely sway with the wind and throw up one's hands and say, well, we can't offend anyone's beliefs so we shouldn't do our jobs for fear of being voted out of office.
It is high time that both we as citizens and we as government not put up with or enable a small ridiculous minority of extremist views to hold the rest of society hostage, with the threat of lawsuits.
There is such a thing as being overly reasonable. And there are many more issues that don't rise to this level of publicity, that policy makers give in to, for fear of negative repercussions, rather than doing the right thing.
Fair is fair, so let's make sure it cuts both ways, all the way up the management chain. Let anyone who can and is willing to do the CEO job for less $ take the position, and have to have the current CEO train his replacement.
How will it be at all reasonable to shut down LGA and move traffic to EWR and JFK? Traffic is already a nightmare getting out of Manhattan and on the GCP/Van Wyck. The problem is getting people to the airports.
It is a joke to try and take subways/buses to LGA. La Guardia and NYC need to make some hard and bold public policy choices to cut through a couple of neighborhoods, and make public transport more efficient to/from the airport.
The level of infrastructure quality in our supposedly world-leading financial center is a total embarrassment. You come back from Singapore or HK or even Munich, and you wonder, how are we still #1 with this shit? Fuck the investment required and cost/benefit ratios -- it's a indicator of your country's standing and priorities.
Aside from the normal arguments about a shortage of workers *at what offered wage level* etc, etc., the more interesting question here is a question of demographics.
When the world offers you endless numbers of reasonably well-trained workers who can fill your job openings at 1/2 the cost of US workers, what is a country to do? How long can a country resist that pressure? We may politically shout for better wages and training for US citizens to fill these jobs, but the deeper issue is that borders/barriers are less and less effective lately against a flood of competition from people who are cheaper and better (or hungrier).
Americans I believe will have to come to grips with the possibility of a stagnant or even decreasing standard of living as the rest of the world takes what was once our position. No amount of restriction of H-1B visas will prevent that.
"Intimidated by the process"? More like intimidated by Northrop Grumman's supervisors being in the room to make sure they don't say anything that might, hmm, jeopardize their future at Northrop Grumman...
First I think they need to work on having enough people in their country to make such a wall worth it... The way their population is declining, pretty soon even if a tsunami hits, no one will be left in the country to notice it.
Let's be clear on whose responsibility is whose. No one is forcing this guy to do *anything* and it's kind of a stretch to say that Comcast is forcing him to move out of his house. He bought and wants to live in a certain house, that has not yet been clearly shown to have internet service. Comcast is incompetent, and it's his choice on what to do about it.
The issue is not that he has to move out, it's that he doesn't have many cost effective options to get fast internet at his house. But he hasn't even exhausted all his options. Has he looked into contracting to extend a line tap? Has he tried satellite? Phone? Any other options? Many people and businesses operate in far more remote places where they manage to get connectivity.
Much as I hate Comcast, have a sense of objectivity here...
We can debate all we like about whether there is or is not an absolute standard or "owner" of the language.
But I will still use the ability to write and speak according to the refined rules of whatever standard is adopted, as a filter to figure out if the person I'm talking to has a certain level of qualifications and skill... and is able to understand and think clearly within rules and structures, whatever they may be.
Just because the owners of those may change doesn't mean that poor logic, thinking, and inability to write are suddenly excused.
Well, they did have to stop and charge the Apple Watch a few times to get it to work for more than 24 hours.
This is why I have a hard time buying luxury goods where the brand is more important than some tangible functionality.
If I cannot tell the difference between a $100 watch and a $10,000 watch by its accuracy or functionality, I open myself up to being deceived by people who exploit that people cannot tell the difference.
I don't need to be told a luxury story about how a watch is an expression of my adventurousness or legacy, to part me with $10,000 more than the next equally functional good is worth.
I have always struggled to understand how some technology makes the transition from being a luxury or niche appeal, to something that government starts to feel is an entitlement or is deserving of regulation. In that sense I watch and see some technologies become victims of their own success -- too many people "rely" on something, and you become a public good and it's out of your control.
How did telephone service become a guaranteed-access human right and lifeline? When will the internet become so essential that to not have it is unacceptable and must be subsidized?
When Sirius and XM radio merged, there was such scrutiny to determine whether that was an unfair narrowing of competition -- for satellite radio entertainment for fucks sake. Yet 5 years before that, the field hardly even existed -- and that was not viewed as a lack of competition!
I would like to know the theory of when something crosses that border...
I guess we must hold these newcomers to a higher bar because of public safety. No need for any of these rules to apply to the legions of dangerous, shitty, and unhelpful taxis / drivers already on the road! Please, keep Uber out for our own protection -- I am more comfortable with untrackable, combative, unhelpful, no-feedback-receiving, swindling taxi drivers and taxi companies that I'm used to!