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User: AC-x

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Comments · 1,259

  1. Re:Who gives a shit about the raspberry pi? on Vastly Improved Raspberry Pi Performance With Wayland · · Score: 1

    Well, except an RTC, which the Pi lacks and will require a $20 add-on, but the overall cost with accessories still ends up at a third of a crappy refurbished netbook.

    If it's networked (wired or wifi) it'll pick the time up over NTP automatically

  2. Re:Who gives a shit about the raspberry pi? on Vastly Improved Raspberry Pi Performance With Wayland · · Score: 1

    SD cards too expensive? You can't afford an extra $5 on top of $35 for the Pi?

    BTW The Pi also has composite video output if you're desperate.

  3. Optical illusion on Rough Roving: Curiosity's Wheels Show Damage · · Score: 1

    Could be an optical illusion, all the dents I can see on the images go from the outside in.

  4. 1m/s? Are you kidding me? on Rough Roving: Curiosity's Wheels Show Damage · · Score: 1

    Sure the vertical force on the tires is the same when standing still, but what about the force required to stop 342kg vs 900kg of inertia if you hit a large pointy rock at 1m/s?.

    1 m/s? Are you kidding? Curiosity has a top speed of less than 0.04 m/s on flat ground, it literally crawls along. Force due to gravity will be by far the dominant force on the rover's wheels.

  5. Re:Not General Purpose on Some Scientists Question Whether Quantum Computer Really Is Quantum · · Score: 1

    if you want to solve a particular type of optimisation problem, you can run it on a D-Wave at quite some speed

    Except, according to the blog post linked, the D-Wave has so far been slower than optimised algorithms running on classical computers...

  6. Re:So you can no-longer control guns, how about am on Working Handgun Printed On a Sub-$2,000 3D Printer · · Score: 1

    Making ammunition is trivial

    So is making a pipe bomb, but that doesn't mean that they should be widely available for sale.

  7. So you can no-longer control guns, how about ammo? on Working Handgun Printed On a Sub-$2,000 3D Printer · · Score: 1

    Last time I checked ammo couldn't be 3D printed, so how about more control on the sale of ammo instead? Not much you can do with a 3D printed gun if you don't have any ammo.

  8. What's the point if the phone's got malware anyway on Music and Movies Could Trigger Mobile Malware · · Score: 3, Insightful

    What is this, malware written by Dr. Evil? What's the benefit of all these overly-elaborate and exotic malware triggers when you already have malware installed that has taken over the phone? Why not just trigger it on a timer to poll a command and control server? If you want to target specific buildings you can just base it on GPS location or known wifi points etc.

  9. Re:Oh Noes on Printable Gun Downloads Top 100k In 2 Days, Thanks to Kim Dotcom · · Score: 1

    I've also heard that each downloaded blueprint can be used at least 5000 times

    It's worse than that, as a digital file it can be used infinite times with no loss of quality, which means there are 100,000 times more than infinity guns now potentially in circulation! Won't anyone think of the children??

  10. Re:How many printed? on Printable Gun Downloads Top 100k In 2 Days, Thanks to Kim Dotcom · · Score: 1

    I doubt 10,000 people have access to a high quality enough 3D printer to actually print a usable gun (i.e. one that doesn't blow up in your hand), the team that created this model used a commercial grade printer, not your average plastic extruder printer.

  11. Thanks to Kim Dotcom? on Printable Gun Downloads Top 100k In 2 Days, Thanks to Kim Dotcom · · Score: 1

    How about thanks to the media and legal hoo-ha around the whole thing? I bet most people wouldn't have heard of the project if it hadn't been reported on so much (see also: Streisand effect).

  12. Re:"Easily"?? on Using YouTube For File Storage · · Score: 1

    The point to be made here is that YouTube is technically also the same service, doesn't matter if you are hosting a website for audio storage, you are a data storage cloud. This is a minor headache for YouTube, and a valuable opportunity for the advertising industry

    It's not really the same on a technical level tho, because YouTube destructively modifies your data (re-encoding the video) while filelockers like dropbox allow you to retrieve your original data as-is. Sure they're both examples of "cloud storage", but one actively modifies your data while the other doesn't.

    Plus I can't imagine how this would be a "minor headache" for Youtube or even less how it's a "valuable opportunity" for the advertising industry, nobody's going to store files on Youtube because, if nothing else, they'd end up being many many times larger to download than the original file was to begin with.

  13. "Easily"?? on Using YouTube For File Storage · · Score: 1

    Using this technique one could easily store 10GB of data to be available anywhere in the world

    It's a fun little hacking project for sure, but I would not call this "easily" when you have things like dropbox or google docs to store, you know, actual files in.

  14. Re:Since when are compound eyes high resolution? on New Camera Inspired By Insect Eyes · · Score: 1

    Dragon flies have very good vision for what the use it for, with a higher detail / magnified area in the centre of their vision similar to the fovea of the vertebrate eye, but it's still not high absolute resolution and is well below all but the most basic conventional digital cameras' sensors.

  15. Since when are compound eyes high resolution? on New Camera Inspired By Insect Eyes · · Score: 2

    Since when have compound eyes been known for being high resolution? A dragon fly and its 30,00 lenses only corresponds to a total resolution of around 200 x 150.

    Compound eyes have many advantages for miniaturisation, field of view and sensitivity to movement, but there is no way you could claim they were high resolution.

  16. Re:Orbital pickup truck on Helium Depleted, Herschel Space Telescope Mission Ends · · Score: 1

    In 1972 all the "basic technology" existed to create a smartphone (microprocessors, LCD matrix displays etc.), that doesn't mean that if you went back in time it would just be a "project management problem". Even if the base level of a particular technology exists it still takes a lot of R&D effort to refine it.

  17. Re:Orbital pickup truck on Helium Depleted, Herschel Space Telescope Mission Ends · · Score: 1

    Has an ICBM ever actually been used to kill someone? (and don't say V2 because they're only short-range ballistic missiles).

    Or did you mean "designed to kill people"?

  18. Re:real parts on What's Holding Back 3-D Printing · · Score: 1
  19. How about because it's just not ready yet? on What's Holding Back 3-D Printing · · Score: 1

    Remember when printers were expensive and had relatively poor print quality, so generally few people had them in their homes? 3D printers are still at that stage. Plastic extruder printers have relatively poor print quality and resin / powder printers are a bit too expensive for widespread adoption.

    Maybe once extruder printers are under $100 and resin printers under $300 then we might see widespread adoption, but what do we expect the average person to use a 3D printer for that would make spending $500+ on it worthwhile?

  20. Bad summary on Why We'll Never Meet Aliens · · Score: 1

    The summary seems to have done a pretty bad job at describing the article, as it's more about how Hollywood alien encounters don't make sense (aliens coming along, inaccurate phasers blasting etc.)

    Did you ever wonder though - why these same [alien] scientists who made these neato energy weapons never bothered to develop targeting systems? They still rely on crappy biological reflexes to aim them. It's even sillier when alien robot/cyborgs that can outperform humans in every other way somehow still aren't so great at aiming their phaser zapper. They miss just as much as the humans do, and by that I mean - a lot. Of course, Star Wars would have been a short film if every shot stormtroopers made hit Han Solo but it would have made more sense.

    Its actually rather ridiculous when you think about it - we (as in current state of human tech) already have automated targeting systems that work well with our doofy bullet-guns. We literally have targeting systems in existence today better than anything you saw in Star Wars.

    and also how aliens will have already explored so much of the galaxy they'll just stop exploring more (for some reason, seems a bit unlikely to me)

    If we discovered a fish-like creature on Europa today it would be fascinating for us to study it. If however, we were 1000 times smarter and had spent the last 1000 years finding fish-like creatures across the galaxy, and could with 99.99% accuracy predict the exact existence of such creatures from light-years away, it probably wouldn't be all that interesting to go study another one.

    Also what about automated (Von Newman) probes? Paul doesn't really seem to consider all avenues of exploration.

  21. Only evolutionists? on Creationist Bets $10k In Proposed Literal Interpretation of Genesis Debate · · Score: 1

    Mastropaolo includes a list of possible circuit court judges to oversee the trial and a list of those he challenged to take part on the evolutionary side of the debate

    "They [evolutionists] are not stupid people; they are bright, but they are bright enough to know there is no scientific evidence they can give in a minitrial," Mastropaolo said.

    Does he think that the only theory that runs contrary to the Genesis is evolution? How about we also bring some geologists, physicists and astronomers in to testify about the origins of earth too?

  22. Re:Apple banned Adobe because iPhone sucked. on Apple Hires Former Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch, Destroyer of iPhones · · Score: 1

    The way I read it jjjhs is suggesting that Flash using GPU acceleration for video is "just a workaround" for slow non-GPU accelerated video when obviously non-GPU full screen video is going to be CPU intensive and using GPU acceleration is the only solution.

  23. Re:Apple banned Adobe because iPhone sucked. on Apple Hires Former Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch, Destroyer of iPhones · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Sure they have gpu acceleration now but I suspect it's just to work around that issue.

    No GPU acceleration is the fix to the issue, not just a workaround. It's like deriding a 3D engine for having really slow CPU-only rendering and claiming that enabling 3D acceleration is "just a workaround" for a slow 3D engine.

  24. Re:Great! on A Quarter of Sun-Like Stars Host Earth-Size Worlds · · Score: 1

    It's like the Interstellar equivalent to the Imperial system

    Don't forget that the original definition of the metric meter was "one ten-millionth of the distance from the Earth's equator to the North Pole"

  25. Re:In space cosmic ray excuse never gets old on Curiosity Rover On Standby As NASA Addresses Computer Glitch · · Score: 1

    There are several ways to do it using error correction techniques at the cost of some capacity. My point is not that flash should not have failed it is the system should be able to continue to function with external I/O failure present as long as the core system processor/northbridge is ok. An I/O error transfering data for one discrete experiment or function should not adversly effect another.

    You're acting as if the rover suddenly failed and is no-longer working, the fact is the rover is completely operational and they're currently fully diagnosing the problem to make sure they fix the problem.

    Plus have you considered it's far better to fail safe then fail catastrophically? We're talking about computer systems with zero physical access, it seems like a pretty damn good idea to me to, on detection of any sort of problem, enter a safe mode to allow the problem to be fully diagnosed instead of the rover just assuming it can carry on operating, executing faulty commands and putting itself in an uncontactable state like Viking I did.