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User: Guspaz

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  1. Irony on NASA: Increasing Carbon Emissions Risk Megadroughts · · Score: 1

    Ironically, the places with the least amount of natural water today will do just fine, because they're already investing heavily in desalination. Since they're already investing in that infrastructure, as their demand for water increases, they simply build more plants.

    The places with abundant water and very little water end up fine, it's the places in the middle that will be screwed if they don't plan ahead.

  2. Re:The EIS summary is full of shit on SpaceX Signs Lease Agreement With Air Force For Landing Pad · · Score: 2

    Tons of huge rockets are already being launched from KSC (with plans to launch far louder ones in the future), and have been for half a century. Landing rockets is unlikely to produce much more noise than that already does...

  3. Re:Poor U.S. on Netflix Now Available In Cuba · · Score: 1

    It's not a valid comparison to compare the price of 1kg of rice to the bulk price...

    For example, looking at WalMart Canada, they'll sell you 8kg of rice for C$1.06 per kilo, or they'll sell you 900g for C$2.52 per kilo.

    Of course, the 900g price is decently lower than the prices that Numbeo is quoting, but the basic premise holds true: food has different prices in different places. For one thing, the ability and willingness of people to pay more can drive prices up. For another thing, the cost of transport can too. And I can tell you that people in a country with a per-capita GDP of $6,985 are probably not willing to pay as much for stuff as people in a country with a per-capita GDP of $50,577.

  4. Re:Poor U.S. on Netflix Now Available In Cuba · · Score: 1

    A pound of rice costs the same anywhere

    It really doesn't. One kilo of rice costs C$3.67 in Montreal. One kilo of rice costs C$0.98 in Havana. Not everything is cheaper, but many things are.

    You can see the direct comparison here:

    http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-...

  5. Re:Poor U.S. on Netflix Now Available In Cuba · · Score: 1

    Satellite internet should work fine for Netflix. It's not latency sensitive, and while Satellite is typically not blazingly fast, it works fine at lower speeds, and the dynamic scaling is pretty seamless.

  6. Re:Cringe-worthy. on Students Demo Firefighting Humanoid Robot On US Navy Ship · · Score: 1

    Could you talk to why a more traditional fire suppression system (such as sprinklers) wouldn't work? It seems like building something into the ship itself, which would take up little space compared to a big bulky robot that needs to wander the ship, would be an enormously simpler problem to solve. I realize that fire in a warship is going to often be accompanied by structural damage (while in a building the structural damage would probably be a result of the fire rather than the cause of it), but you'd think that sufficient redundancy and resiliency built into the system could accommodate for that.

  7. Re:Simple, they're ignoring the consumer market. on What Happened To the Photography Industry In 2014? · · Score: 1

    My S95 didn't do much in the way of bokeh in the first place, so the limited amount of depth of field permitted by the smartphone isn't much less than the S95. Of course, for most people, limiting depth of field is not really something they care about (or even necessarily want).

    Obviously cameras with large sensors are going to be much more capable, my argument is more that smartphone cameras have passed a threshold of "good enough", the point where the pictures that they take are sufficiently good to essentially eliminate the P&S market. Cameras like the RX100 are great, but at $500-600 you're not going to find many people buying them. IIRC the entire global market for all mirrorless cameras is only like 3.5 million a year, whereas smartphones are nearing 400 million. And the mirrorless figure is dropping while the smartphone figure is increasing.

  8. Re:Simple, they're ignoring the consumer market. on What Happened To the Photography Industry In 2014? · · Score: 1

    Then clearly the camera market is beyond saving, destined to be relegated to the prosumer and professional niche (a tiny fraction the size of the former market), and the smart companies will do what Sony has done and get into manufacturing mobile camera stacks for smartphones and tablets.

    Smartphone cameras are already on par with or better than P&S cameras were when smartphones started supplanting them in the first place*, and they're only going to keep getting better. They'll obviously never match the much larger sensors on DSLRs, since they're still improving too, but the best smartphone cameras today (which will be the mainstream smartphone cameras of tomorrow) have already passed the point where nearly everybody doesn't care.

    *: My last P&S camera, which cost as much as an entry-level DSLR, was a Canon S95. It's a 2010 camera that you can still buy today. It was enormously better than my 2009 smartphone, but it's now inferior to my 2014 smartphone camera in nearly every way. My smartphone has better low-light sensitivity due to big advancements in sensors (BSI was the big jump between 2009 and 2014) and ever growing smartphone sensor size (smartphone sensors are now almost as big as the S95's), and on-sensor phase detect means my smartphone focuses faster and better to boot. Not to mention my smartphone is much better at video, doing higher resolution at higher framerates for longer durations. About the only way the S95 is still better is form factor (and even then it took an after-market grip to get the S95 feeling really comfortable), but as you said, the best camera is the one you have with you, and my smartphone is always in my pocket, while any camera never would be. It'd be in a backpack at best, and why dig for a P&S in my backpack when the phone in my pocket takes better pictures?

  9. Simple, they're ignoring the consumer market. on What Happened To the Photography Industry In 2014? · · Score: 3, Insightful

    There will always be a market for professionals and prosumers, but the problem is that their products are generally priced high enough that they form a barrier to entry for more casual users. Casual users are generally happy with their smartphone cameras, and they're not going to make the jump to a dedicated camera unless they can get something that is a significant improvement at a reasonable price. DSLRs are generally still $400ish, and mirrorless are typically even more than that. That's just not enough to convert people with a casual interest. If they sold something like the Rebel SL1/EOS 100D for $200, they might get people who are curious, but they're not.

    What's the cost to make one of these things really like? Because it would seem that advancements in manufacturing technology should have driven the cost down dramatically over time, and it doesn't seem like that's happened. Are the camera manufacturers just unwilling to undercut themselves, to accept lower margins? The problem is that the effective cost of a smartphone camera is $0 for most people, and that's definitely undercutting standalone cameras...

  10. Good for him? on Greg KH Favors Rolling Release Distros · · Score: 1

    I don't. I like predictably scheduled releases. Ubuntu's release strategy particularly pleases me, with predictable releases every 6 months, and long term support releases every 2 years, with support for upgrading either from regular release to regular release, or from LTS release to LTS release.

    Of course, I don't run Linux as a desktop platform, so Ubuntu still works nicely for me in a server environment. I tend to run only LTS releases on important servers (typically waiting until 6 months after an LTS release before upgrading to it, and regular releases on unimportant servers (like my home server).

  11. Re:Performance? RPi1? on Microsoft Announces Windows For Raspberry Pi 2 · · Score: 1

    It's backwards compatible, but not necessarily forward compatible. The RPi1 and RPi2 don't use the same instruction set, moving from ARMv6 to ARMv7, and adding the NEON instruction set extensions.

  12. Re:Yup. on Wi-Fi Issues Continue For OS X Users Despite Updates · · Score: 1

    I did try that the most recent time, it didn't help. It could see the 2.4GHz wireless network, but not the 5GHz wireless network (both networks are broadcast from the same router).

  13. Re:You can make a secure VPN but it doesn't help on Fixing Verizon's Supercookie · · Score: 1

    Because you should trust your server provider not to mess with your traffic more than you should trust Verizon? Who cares about the NSA, if they want to get your data they're going to get it. Meanwhile, Verizon is actively MODIFYING your traffic...

    Key exchange is also really not a problem, the entire point of a secure key exchange is that the keys are never transmitted in the clear. You don't need physical media.

  14. Re:VPN. on Fixing Verizon's Supercookie · · Score: 1

    Yeah, so I pay $10 a month for my own VPS, and run my own VPN on it. I have full control over what exactly gets logged, and data retention laws don't apply.

  15. Re: Does It Matter? on VirtualBox Development At a Standstill · · Score: 0

    KVM has poor host platform support (it runs on Linux and nothing else). KVM has poor compatibility with host hardware, requiring CPUs with certain features. KVM has a somewhat involved installation process. KVM has limited graphical support, relying on SPICE remoting which (at least currently) lacks any real hardware acceleration support for either 2D or 3D graphics.

    KVM is fine for a server environment, but it's extremely limited when compared to even the free version of VMWare.

  16. VPN. on Fixing Verizon's Supercookie · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Spend $5 or $10 a month on a VPN or a VPS and encrypt all your web traffic. As soon as your ISP is actively inspecting and modifying your traffic, it can't be trusted.

    You shouldn't have to do this, true, but it's a solution to the present problem.

  17. Re:Yup. on Wi-Fi Issues Continue For OS X Users Despite Updates · · Score: 0

    Neither did I, in the past. I vaguely recall having had wifi-related issues when the notebook was newer, but before I put Yosemite on it, I don't think I had any wifi issues any time recently before that. It was only after yosemite that I started having issues.

  18. Yup. on Wi-Fi Issues Continue For OS X Users Despite Updates · · Score: 0

    I've got a 2012 Macbook Air running Yosemite. Wireless has been giving me problems on wake. Once it gets connected, it's fine. But just the other day, I woke the laptop up, and no matter what I did it could not see my 5GHz network, despite the fact that a bunch of my other devices could see/connect to it just fine.

    I rebooted the Mac and it worked fine... but I shouldn't have to.

  19. Re: Does It Matter? on VirtualBox Development At a Standstill · · Score: 1

    That's entirely possible, but I'm disputing only the "vmware isn't free." statement. As a user of the free version of vmware, it's just not true. Yes, it has a reduced feature set, but it's got the core features that most non-professional users probably care about.

  20. Re: Does It Matter? on VirtualBox Development At a Standstill · · Score: 2

    How is vmware not free? They have free products for both baremetal and desktop virtualization. vmware player has been able to create new VMs for six years now.

    I think the only feature missing from Player that any significant number of people would care about is snapshots.

  21. Re:Wow on Canada Upholds Net Neutrality Rules In Wireless TV Case · · Score: 4, Informative

    The CRTC isn't corrupt, although they can sometimes get a skewed view of reality. They sometimes give too much weight to incumbent filings or taking on faith that the cost studies submitted by incumbents are accurate.

    It's difficult to examine the cost studies, because they're filed under seal, so when Bell files a cost study that defines the tariff rates that independent ISPs have to pay, nobody can challenge the cost study.

    Ironically, in one of the rare instances where Bell did expose a small part of one of their cost studies, it was found that they were costing out huge routers and then assuming a tiny usage of them. I think the specific case was Bell would include a 48 Gbps router in their cost study, and then claim that they only used 1Gbps of capacity on it. This meant 48x the cost for that part of the study, letting Bell charge more.

    The CRTC did correct Bell's costs for that instance, but that is just the rare public thing we know about. How many other instances of fudging is there in cost studies that nobody ever gets the opportunity to challenge because they're filed in secret?

    The independent ISPs have been asking for years to get the right to examine incumbent cost studies and other things that are filed under seal. The indies have proposed restrictions that would protect incumbent privacy, such as nominating a tiny number of people to see the data (such as a lawyer for the indie ISP), and to be under a nondisclosure agreement... the CRTC still hasn't done anything about it though. As a result, incumbent ISPs charge absurdly inflated costs for capacity to indie ISPs. I think Videotron is charging $23 per megabit for capacity on their last-mile network, and that's on top of all the other fees they charge like the cost of the DSL or cable line itself.

  22. Re:What the Macbook 13" should be on Dell 2015 XPS 13: Smallest 13" Notebook With Broadwell-U, QHD+ Display Reviewed · · Score: 1

    For all the beefs that people have with Apple, their battery life ratings are not one of them. It's generally agreed that Apple's battery life figures are reasonably accurate for the described scenarios.

  23. Re:Needed! on Google Pondering $1 Billion Investment In SpaceX's Satellite Internet · · Score: 1

    If ViaSat-1 really did fill up so soon after launch, then ViaSat-2 (scheduled to launch in mid-2016) should help. They already have 600,000 customers, so clearly the demand is there.

  24. Re:That thing is enormous on Getting Charged Up Over Chargers at CES (Video) · · Score: 1

    The difference is minor. You're talking about 10W per port on the Anker product, and 12W per port on the Octofire. This does not explain the enormous size of the Octofire product.

    You could practically take half a dozen Anker charges, consuming less space, and get 360W of charging... not that there'd be much value in that.

  25. That thing is enormous on Getting Charged Up Over Chargers at CES (Video) · · Score: 1

    What advantages does that 8-port charger have over competing chargers? The thing is incredibly enormous when compared to, say, a 6-port anker charger... and it doesn't really offer any more power per port than the Anker charger either.

    5x the size for an extra 2 USB ports seems absurd.