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  1. Re:WTF on Tesla Sending New Wall-Charger Adapters After Garage Fire · · Score: 1

    There are plenty of (much smaller) battery chargers and battery packs out there that incorporate thermal fuses, enough to where people complain about them blowing and accuse the manufacturers of planned obsolescence. Yes, most electric ovens are thermally fused, and pretty much every household dryer has one as well.

  2. Re:WTF on Tesla Sending New Wall-Charger Adapters After Garage Fire · · Score: 1

    If you RTFA you would see that Musk talks about home wiring not always being done properly, so in order to avoid leaving that variable up to chance, Tesla has sent out chargers that shut themselves off at a certain temperature. Its almost like he cares if his customers are happy and hes willing to do what it takes to alleviate as many issues as possible while using his product, even when not caused by his own product.

    As opposed to designing the charger to handle this not-particularly-outlandish possibility to begin with?

  3. Re:Cost? on Linksys Resurrects WRT54G In a New Router · · Score: 1

    Attic is usually a better place for electronic equipment...

    Not where I live. You'd be looking at $300 or so each month just trying to keep the equipment from frying in the 100+ degree heat up there during the summer unless you spent a ton of money putting walls and insulation in. Of course flooding is a concern with a basement installation, but there are ways to mitigate that risk.

  4. Re: Wait What? on Ecuadorian Navy Rescues Bezos After Kidney Stone Attack · · Score: 1

    Pain control, lots of water, and wait for it to pass.

    Unless they're too big. Like you, I've had multiple occasions of having them, but the last time they were too big to pass and had to be broken up over multiple procedures after they put stents in. And God help you if you have staghorn stones.

  5. Re:Euro-blindness incoming on CES: Laser Headlights Edge Closer To Real-World Highways · · Score: 1

    I don't know if they're still made, but Cibie used to make their "Z-Beam" brand headlights that did exactly this as far back as the 70s. If parked facing a wall, you could clearly see a horizontal line above which almost no light was present.

  6. Re:Awesome on CES: Laser Headlights Edge Closer To Real-World Highways · · Score: 2

    In recent years, I have noticed a distinct upward trend in the headlight output of new vehicles produced here in the States.

    The same is true for emergency lighting used on police cars, ambulances, etc. With the advent of cheap LED lighting, a lot of emergency vehicles use ultra-bright LEDs, which are great for daytime visibility, but are far brighter than what's needed at night. I've yet to see a unit that tones the intensity down in darkness, with the effect that they're dazzling within a quarter-mile or so.

  7. Re:Regulate this on CES: Laser Headlights Edge Closer To Real-World Highways · · Score: 1

    there are locations in the US that get this stuff called snow and that said snow, and the dirt & salt they spread to melt the snow, tends to cover lines on the road.

    Another common problem in rainy areas is where the water on the road reflects the light away from the driver before it can reach the reflective tape/paint on the roadway, rendering the lines much less visible.

  8. Re: freedom on Counterpoint: Why Edward Snowden May Not Deserve Clemency · · Score: 2

    If he really wanted to make a point, he should come back and argue his case in court. Plenty of lawyers would be happy to work for him due to the high-profile nature of the case.

    He wouldn't get to argue his case in court. The state would pull the "state secrets" card, and practically no evidence in his favor would be allowed at the trial. This assumes he even makes it to trial, and doesn't end up in a mysterious accident or murdered by a fellow inmate.

    That said, I think he would be far more effective in his efforts as a martyr instead of a perceived outlaw. Unfortunately the attention span of the majority of the American public is such that even that likely wouldn't matter. The fact that information continues to come out regarding the NSA's activities is the only thing keeping this issue in a lot of peoples' minds.

  9. Re:Technically correct on Counterpoint: Why Edward Snowden May Not Deserve Clemency · · Score: 1

    You have much more influence controlling who is on the ballot for a party if you are a delegate.

    This points out a large part of the problem - if you're not a (D) or (R), you don't really matter to the process, and most times all of the candidates offered by the two major parties are equally worthless for one reason or another. Hell, they effectively bar presidential candidates from other parties from participating in the debates, for crying out loud.

  10. Re:Don't imagine it stops there. on U.S. Waived Laws To Keep F-35 On Track With China-made Parts · · Score: 1

    go to the usual supply houses and find some for me, ok? mouser, digikey, newark, jameco, etc. go browse for common parts like resistors, chips, caps, diodes, etc. find me any significant amount of those common yet important parts that are made here.

    What kind of chips? While they do have overseas fabs, TI makes plenty of stuff domestically.

  11. Re:If they were, would they lie about it? on Senator Bernie Sanders Asks NSA If Agency Is Spying On Congress · · Score: 1

    This is the logic of the computer Hal 9000 in Kubrik's 2001, A Space Odyssey

    Except HAL had morals and ethics, and went insane being unable to reconcile them with his orders. Maybe it's time for the equivalent of Dave Bowman to suit up and head for the Logic Memory Center.

  12. Re:What exactly happened? on How One Man Fought His ISP's Bad Behavior and Won · · Score: 1

    Affiliate programs are a form of advertising that work by giving you an ID that you add to the URL of a link on your server to a particular seller's site (Amazon, etc.). This ID allows the seller to determine which affiliate drove that click to their site, and the affiliate (the ISP in this case) is paid a fee for sending that click to them. What's happening here is that the ISP is taking the initial DNS request and doing a redirect to a URL that includes their affiliate ID for vendor sites they participate in affiliate programs, but they're doing it for *all* DNS requests for those sites, not merely in response to clicking the advertising links provided by the seller.

    For instance, Amazon offers page banners for their affiliates to post on their own sites that contain links to products you might be interested in, and if you click one of those links, whoever is hosting the banner will get paid for that click based on the affiliate ID contained in the links in the banner. In this case, if you just enter "www.amazon.com" in your browser, the ISP is adding an affiliate ID to the redirected URL your browser is given, so the ISP is being paid by Amazon, who thinks that someone clicked on one of their ads even though the ISP didn't display a banner or otherwise perform the service that Amazon is paying for. The ISP is exploiting the trust that the seller is extending to their affiliates in order to get paid more than they're entitled to, and they're basically stealing money from the seller for advertising that was never provided.

  13. Re:I think we all know what happens next. on Safeway Suspends Worker For Sci-Fi Parody of His Firing · · Score: 1

    All of BP's assets should have been seized at an international level by the US, auctioned off, and the proceeds distributed to all of those affected, including non-US citizens and affected areas.

    One can already do that via a lawsuit if they bring a strong enough case. Probably a more appropriate response by the government would have been to suspend their corporate charter for six months.

  14. Re:How dare they on Safeway Suspends Worker For Sci-Fi Parody of His Firing · · Score: 1

    In Arizona, which IS a right to work state, you get suspended or fired, you DO have difficulty getting unemployment, especially if your former employer doesn't bother to answer the state's questions about the circumstances of your dismissal.

    They don't have an appeals process? I live in Florida, and had an employer fire me and dispute my unemployment claim last year, so of course I challenged it because the firing was totally without merit. I had a perfectly clean record with HR, so the state didn't even think twice before ruling in my favor. Given that they suspended him the day before they were going to lay him off, I think he could probably make a reasonable case that Safeway suspended him in order to avoid the unemployment claim, regardless of the video.

  15. Think those bad boys of Wall Street would behave so badly if the fines for white collar crime were a percentage of their personal wealth instead of a percentage of the profits from just their latest rule violation?

    No, they'd just find better ways to hide their money.

  16. Re:It's more like a stunt to me on Tech Startup Buffer Publishes Every Employee's Salary, Right Up To the CEO · · Score: 2

    then you are by defenition incompetent at your job

    You can't make this stuff up, folks.

  17. Re:Might as well download an existing torrent on Archive.org Hosts Massive Collection of MAME ROMs · · Score: 1

    It looks to me like they were granted an exemption from the portion of the DMCA that forbids circumvention of an access method *only*, not an exemption from copyright law in general. So, it's definitely legal for them to break DRM to get the ROMs for archival purposes, but not necessarily legal for them to distribute said ROMs. I'm betting money there's going to be some kind of court action as a result of this, regardless of whether archive.org is in the clear or not.

  18. Re:Dear NSA, on US Federal Judge Rules NSA Data Collection Legal · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It is, for varying definitions of "terrorist", up to and including "you there, reading this Slashdot article".

  19. Re:oh fucking cry about it. on Surge In Online Orders Overwhelms UPS Christmas Deliveries · · Score: 1

    And waiting for the check to clear too.

  20. Re:First world problems on Surge In Online Orders Overwhelms UPS Christmas Deliveries · · Score: 1

    Only 364 shopping days left!

    Seriously though, I ordered some non-Christmas stuff from Amazon this past weekend, but even with a 2-day shipping guarantee, I knew at least some of it was getting here after Christmas because I knew the shippers were getting slammed, and I'm kind of surprised that more people didn't think about that. Boo hoo, I had to wait for my BeagleBone case and UV resist film to get here today when it was promised Tuesday. Whatever shall I do?

  21. Re:No future for Netflix on Netflix: Non-'A' Players Unworthy of Jobs · · Score: 1

    Gives a bit of insight as to why they're pushing so hard for "immigration reform" and raising the H-1B cap, eh? If you get a reputation for being difficult to work for, it becomes harder to find competent people.

  22. Re:Can you run a Tech Company on Grade A folks onl on Netflix: Non-'A' Players Unworthy of Jobs · · Score: 2

    An even worse kind of rot is when you have a code base that's old, and has suffered any number of shortcut hacks and other deviations from good engineering practice. Then on top of it all, anyone that knew anything about what was done and why it was done is no longer with the organization, and because it's "maintenance work", the greenest guys get stuck on it without the knowledge or willingness to do things right, making a bad code base even worse.

  23. Re:Well, it is from the bring-your-D+-game dept. on Netflix: Non-'A' Players Unworthy of Jobs · · Score: 1

    Only later, when customers started complaining about inconsistencies in the DB, people took closer look at what he did. His solution turned out to be to simply bypass the transactions completely (AKA rather run multiple actions in parallel in different transactions).

    That's another variation of "I can make it run in record time if it doesn't actually have to work". I've seen it time and time again.

  24. Re:Short answer: no on Is Ruby Dying? · · Score: 2

    Really. It's all about how many check-ins your boss sees from your account every week.

  25. Re:Or anything running in a VM on Asm.js Gets Faster · · Score: 1

    Just fine, at least I do.

    That's great to hear. Seriously, I'm not being snarky. It's nice to see more guys that can deal with different environments well. You're absolutely right that it's not rocket science, but a lot of guys don't get past the abstract model of the machine that their dev environment/language provides for them.