It seems like they just found that the sandbox Google simulates the apps in is a little sloppy in its simulation (IP addresses are predictable), so it's easy to tell you're inside the sandbox. But they could fix that part pretty easily.
Was hoping for something more halting-problem-esque, since it's really difficult to "scan an app for malware" in general.
The public being able to track planes by listening in on their communications, which may indeed have privacy implications, has been the status quo for years. You can find all sorts of online sites with those kinds of maps (example). Maybe that should or shouldn't be the case, but I think it's fair to say it's the current expected case: if you're flying in a plane, your location is public knowledge to anyone within range of your transmissions who cares to listen to them.
Now being able to inject bogus messages, that's a completely different kind of security problem.
It's not clear to me why this research will improve ice cream's shelf life. Is shelf life limited by our understanding of the relevant physics?
Of course, I doubt that's why they're actually doing this, but it won't necessarily improve the practical side of making ice cream at all. That has been studied extensively an an empirical fashion, and we have pretty good information on how different methods and ingredients turn out. What's less clear is the reason for it, i.e. the physics behind some of the processes. That's good to learn to advance physics, but may or may not lead to practical improvements. And those practical improvements may or may not have anything to do with shelf life...
some simple, fun ways — anyone who [acts inappropriately] will have to wear an embarassing tie, etc. — instead of swear jar, having a sexual innuendo jar
This does not sound like a good idea to me. It makes it seem like some kind of American college comedy film, where you wink and tsk tsk the naughty fratboys for their inevitable innuendos and they smirk and promise to behave better.
How about just making it clear to any employees that they're expected to act professionally with their colleagues of any race/gender/age/whatever?
Not illegal, which is why he wasn't prosecuted, but subject to significant constraints on when a judge's discretion to use these extraordinary powers is justified. Since, after all, eavesdropping on conversations between a client and his lawyer is not normally permitted, not even in serious cases. He was found to have abused that discretion.
Wikipedia is the #6 most visited website on the internet, and is a textbook example of hypertext: it's mainly text, with some illustrations, intended to be informative, with an emphasis on making the documents hyperlinked and searchable.
I will admit that the idea's been losing some traction outside of Wikipedia, but partly because many people have started pooling their efforts there. Ten years ago I ran websites with information on subjects of interest to me. But today I just edit Wikipedia articles. There's little reason for me to create Trepidity's Ancient Greek Temples Homepage when there's no way it could ever compete with the information Wikipedia already has on them.
I agree, if the terms are introduced judiciously and glossed for those unfamiliar. I often see pseudo-erudite writing for popular audiences using "technical" terms gratuitously, though, sometimes in places where a less-jargony term would have actually been superior. Also, failing to explain the jargon terms that are used. That kind of usage often, imo, serves more as a dialectal marker intending to indicate the writer's background, as opposed to a good-faith communication strategy.
I believe that was typically the case at U.S. call centers too, back when there were more of them. In the late-90s and early-2000s, working helpdesk was a common way for techies without degrees to make some money (either to help pay for college, or just to pay rent).
Since Egypt was considered a UK ally, it wasn't on any lists of countries where it's prohibited to sell this kind of stuff, so unfortunately it was probably still legal. Unless someone finds them having sold stuff to North Korea or Syria or something.
Considering the size of the U.S. federal budget, it always seems to be smallish programs that are symbolically put on the chopping block when these political debates come up. This one isn't as ridiculous as, say, spending lots of time arguing over NPR's paltry budget, but it's still a pretty small budget, and comes with quid-pro-quos that make the net cost even less. The U.S. contributes 1/11th of the ITER construction costs, and in return American companies get 1/11th of the construction contracts, and U.S. scientists make up 1/11th of the staffing. That's about $2 billion over 10 years, i.e. $200m/yr is the US share. Withdrawal would save that, but result in both the contracts and the scientific participation going to remaining consortium members.
That's pretty interesting. I would've guessed the U.S. government is overall against Tor, as a complication for its law enforcement, and would be more likely to harass it than support it. Either it means that the "good" parts of Tor from the US govt's point of view, its potential usefulness to Iran/Chinese/etc. dissidents, is overriding the "bad' parts, or else it's different branches of the government working at odds (not impossible either).
Yeah, I would probably only run such a thing if I had a solid institutional arrangement that would back me up on it and divert any liability to the institution rather than me personally. A university may be able to get away with running an exit node, for example. But it's not clear this level of funding would incentivize those kinds of operators. Is a university's decision to run or not run an exit node going to turn on whether they get $100/mo funding?
I have a different conspiracy theory: Slashdot keeps posting articles guaranteed to rehash the (mostly uninformative) debate between people who support the IPCC conclusions and those who don't, because they hope to spawn a 500-comment shitfest in the comments, and maybe some social-media links, and thereby drive up pageviews.
I can buy that, but then why was there so much noise about renewing the Price-Anderson disaster-liability limitation? If there aren't really safety risks with new plants, why does the nuclear industry care about being indemnified from them?
I agree political opposition is a big problem, but afaict the capital costs and potential liability are a big problem as well.
The biggest problem is liability, which I believe is currently covered by a government guarantee. It is puzzling, though, that nobody big will take on construction of a nuclear plant without substantial government liability protection and guarantees. Dick Cheney even said that "nobody" would build a plant without that protection, because they don't want to take on the potentially unlimited liability if something really bad happens. But why would you be worried about a risk of an accident that basically can't happen due to modern safety protections? Skeptics suspect this reveals that the risk isn't as close to 0% as claimed. Another explanation is that it is but the management of power companies are out of date with their information, or irrationally conservative on the matter.
There used to be all sorts of hobbyist and academic sites with information on niche subjects the creator was interested in. Sites on Joy Division, on ancient Greek playwrights, on the Civil War, on turtles, on cooking, whatever. Now you're more likely to find big low-quality content-farms ranking highly, junk from Yahoo Answers or eHow or whatever.
On the other hand, Wikipedia has compensated by adding a large new consolidated source of all kinds of information. And that one isn't ad-supported.
Ads on search results are worth far more than ads on other media. Ads on search results are presented when someone is actively looking for something in the relevant category. Ads on content are irrelevant interruptions.
For the most part I agree, but there is probably money to be made in the annoying ads that successfully interrupt content, if someone can pull it off so that enough users actually watch it, at least to the extent that they do on television. That might be the case with the 15-second ads that you see before each episode when you try to watch episodes on colbertnation.com, for example.
I still think the Peninsula and South Bay are far superior if you like outdoor activities: running, hiking, climbing, biking.
If you like outdoor activities, then imo the other side of the hill, on the coast or in the mountains, is really the best place in the area. Less of the suburban-sprawl, big-box kind of feeling, more nature, less crowded. And ocean and redwoods! But alas the tech activity there is not as great as it used to be. The once Unix-greybeard-filled Santa Cruz Operation eventually died (and its corpse became a patent troll, SCO, that wasn't even based in Santa Cruz), and Seagate moved most of its operations from Scotts Valley to Cupertino. There are still some indie-game studios, though (Chronic Logic, Team Meat, Gaijin Games).
I don't think SF is even really designed around pedestrian activity. If it were, it might have good transit! It's been sort of non-designed, really, with quite a bit of de-facto design for cars, despite their green image opposing them in theory.
It was a medium-sized city with an extensive streetcar network, and that worked ok. But then the population increased, the number of cars greatly increased (which also slowed down the streetcars), and nothing much was done to fix it. The only two real improvements were around 1980: BART made it so that you could get between the Mission and financial district easily, and the Market Street Subway cleared out a little street-level congestion in the worst area.
It takes about 45 minutes to commute between places actually in San Francisco, if you don't pick the right ones, thanks to SF Muni having barely had any improvement since the Market Street Subway was built in 1980. Could easily spend 45 minutes on the N-Judah...
My guess is that he was grasping for straws and Xerox PARC inventing Ethernet was the only remotely plausible thing he could come up with that actually originated in a private-sector research lab. There just weren't many corporations involved the early internet development, which was mainly a DARPA/NSF/university affair.
BBN did have a significant role, and is a private company. But its role was as an ARPANET contractor, not only funded on a grant but working in close collaboration with national labs, ARPA, and universities, so it's too ideologically questionable to use as an example.
Slashdot Mirror
It seems like they just found that the sandbox Google simulates the apps in is a little sloppy in its simulation (IP addresses are predictable), so it's easy to tell you're inside the sandbox. But they could fix that part pretty easily.
Was hoping for something more halting-problem-esque, since it's really difficult to "scan an app for malware" in general.
Oh man, Igor Judge, Baron Judge is one of the better names for a judge in history. He could be a comic-book character with that name!
The public being able to track planes by listening in on their communications, which may indeed have privacy implications, has been the status quo for years. You can find all sorts of online sites with those kinds of maps (example). Maybe that should or shouldn't be the case, but I think it's fair to say it's the current expected case: if you're flying in a plane, your location is public knowledge to anyone within range of your transmissions who cares to listen to them.
Now being able to inject bogus messages, that's a completely different kind of security problem.
It's not clear to me why this research will improve ice cream's shelf life. Is shelf life limited by our understanding of the relevant physics?
Of course, I doubt that's why they're actually doing this, but it won't necessarily improve the practical side of making ice cream at all. That has been studied extensively an an empirical fashion, and we have pretty good information on how different methods and ingredients turn out. What's less clear is the reason for it, i.e. the physics behind some of the processes. That's good to learn to advance physics, but may or may not lead to practical improvements. And those practical improvements may or may not have anything to do with shelf life...
This does not sound like a good idea to me. It makes it seem like some kind of American college comedy film, where you wink and tsk tsk the naughty fratboys for their inevitable innuendos and they smirk and promise to behave better.
How about just making it clear to any employees that they're expected to act professionally with their colleagues of any race/gender/age/whatever?
Not illegal, which is why he wasn't prosecuted, but subject to significant constraints on when a judge's discretion to use these extraordinary powers is justified. Since, after all, eavesdropping on conversations between a client and his lawyer is not normally permitted, not even in serious cases. He was found to have abused that discretion.
Since he was removed from his judgeship, he'd be an ex-super-judge, no? Or perhaps a super-ex-judge?
Wikipedia is the #6 most visited website on the internet, and is a textbook example of hypertext: it's mainly text, with some illustrations, intended to be informative, with an emphasis on making the documents hyperlinked and searchable.
I will admit that the idea's been losing some traction outside of Wikipedia, but partly because many people have started pooling their efforts there. Ten years ago I ran websites with information on subjects of interest to me. But today I just edit Wikipedia articles. There's little reason for me to create Trepidity's Ancient Greek Temples Homepage when there's no way it could ever compete with the information Wikipedia already has on them.
I agree, if the terms are introduced judiciously and glossed for those unfamiliar. I often see pseudo-erudite writing for popular audiences using "technical" terms gratuitously, though, sometimes in places where a less-jargony term would have actually been superior. Also, failing to explain the jargon terms that are used. That kind of usage often, imo, serves more as a dialectal marker intending to indicate the writer's background, as opposed to a good-faith communication strategy.
But Orwell already wrote about all this a while ago.
I believe that was typically the case at U.S. call centers too, back when there were more of them. In the late-90s and early-2000s, working helpdesk was a common way for techies without degrees to make some money (either to help pay for college, or just to pay rent).
Since Egypt was considered a UK ally, it wasn't on any lists of countries where it's prohibited to sell this kind of stuff, so unfortunately it was probably still legal. Unless someone finds them having sold stuff to North Korea or Syria or something.
Plus, The Halo System from Qualcomm better have paid to be an Official Wireless Charging Sponsor or they're going to have trouble!
Considering the size of the U.S. federal budget, it always seems to be smallish programs that are symbolically put on the chopping block when these political debates come up. This one isn't as ridiculous as, say, spending lots of time arguing over NPR's paltry budget, but it's still a pretty small budget, and comes with quid-pro-quos that make the net cost even less. The U.S. contributes 1/11th of the ITER construction costs, and in return American companies get 1/11th of the construction contracts, and U.S. scientists make up 1/11th of the staffing. That's about $2 billion over 10 years, i.e. $200m/yr is the US share. Withdrawal would save that, but result in both the contracts and the scientific participation going to remaining consortium members.
That's pretty interesting. I would've guessed the U.S. government is overall against Tor, as a complication for its law enforcement, and would be more likely to harass it than support it. Either it means that the "good" parts of Tor from the US govt's point of view, its potential usefulness to Iran/Chinese/etc. dissidents, is overriding the "bad' parts, or else it's different branches of the government working at odds (not impossible either).
Yeah, I would probably only run such a thing if I had a solid institutional arrangement that would back me up on it and divert any liability to the institution rather than me personally. A university may be able to get away with running an exit node, for example. But it's not clear this level of funding would incentivize those kinds of operators. Is a university's decision to run or not run an exit node going to turn on whether they get $100/mo funding?
I have a different conspiracy theory: Slashdot keeps posting articles guaranteed to rehash the (mostly uninformative) debate between people who support the IPCC conclusions and those who don't, because they hope to spawn a 500-comment shitfest in the comments, and maybe some social-media links, and thereby drive up pageviews.
I can buy that, but then why was there so much noise about renewing the Price-Anderson disaster-liability limitation? If there aren't really safety risks with new plants, why does the nuclear industry care about being indemnified from them?
I agree political opposition is a big problem, but afaict the capital costs and potential liability are a big problem as well.
The biggest problem is liability, which I believe is currently covered by a government guarantee. It is puzzling, though, that nobody big will take on construction of a nuclear plant without substantial government liability protection and guarantees. Dick Cheney even said that "nobody" would build a plant without that protection, because they don't want to take on the potentially unlimited liability if something really bad happens. But why would you be worried about a risk of an accident that basically can't happen due to modern safety protections? Skeptics suspect this reveals that the risk isn't as close to 0% as claimed. Another explanation is that it is but the management of power companies are out of date with their information, or irrationally conservative on the matter.
There used to be all sorts of hobbyist and academic sites with information on niche subjects the creator was interested in. Sites on Joy Division, on ancient Greek playwrights, on the Civil War, on turtles, on cooking, whatever. Now you're more likely to find big low-quality content-farms ranking highly, junk from Yahoo Answers or eHow or whatever.
On the other hand, Wikipedia has compensated by adding a large new consolidated source of all kinds of information. And that one isn't ad-supported.
For the most part I agree, but there is probably money to be made in the annoying ads that successfully interrupt content, if someone can pull it off so that enough users actually watch it, at least to the extent that they do on television. That might be the case with the 15-second ads that you see before each episode when you try to watch episodes on colbertnation.com, for example.
If you like outdoor activities, then imo the other side of the hill, on the coast or in the mountains, is really the best place in the area. Less of the suburban-sprawl, big-box kind of feeling, more nature, less crowded. And ocean and redwoods! But alas the tech activity there is not as great as it used to be. The once Unix-greybeard-filled Santa Cruz Operation eventually died (and its corpse became a patent troll, SCO, that wasn't even based in Santa Cruz), and Seagate moved most of its operations from Scotts Valley to Cupertino. There are still some indie-game studios, though (Chronic Logic, Team Meat, Gaijin Games).
In Greece, oddly enough, they still call Istanbul (i.e. Constantinople) "the city".
I don't think SF is even really designed around pedestrian activity. If it were, it might have good transit! It's been sort of non-designed, really, with quite a bit of de-facto design for cars, despite their green image opposing them in theory.
It was a medium-sized city with an extensive streetcar network, and that worked ok. But then the population increased, the number of cars greatly increased (which also slowed down the streetcars), and nothing much was done to fix it. The only two real improvements were around 1980: BART made it so that you could get between the Mission and financial district easily, and the Market Street Subway cleared out a little street-level congestion in the worst area.
It takes about 45 minutes to commute between places actually in San Francisco, if you don't pick the right ones, thanks to SF Muni having barely had any improvement since the Market Street Subway was built in 1980. Could easily spend 45 minutes on the N-Judah...
My guess is that he was grasping for straws and Xerox PARC inventing Ethernet was the only remotely plausible thing he could come up with that actually originated in a private-sector research lab. There just weren't many corporations involved the early internet development, which was mainly a DARPA/NSF/university affair.
BBN did have a significant role, and is a private company. But its role was as an ARPANET contractor, not only funded on a grant but working in close collaboration with national labs, ARPA, and universities, so it's too ideologically questionable to use as an example.