Just watched the trailer and I still have no idea what it is about. From some scenes it seems like the earth is some sort of spaceship (even more ridiculous than the campy Space: 1999), but in most of the trailer everything looks like very near-future. Plus the effects seemed uneven between trailer scenes, so I don't know what to expect there either. Not sure if its worth a watch, perhaps stick with what Chinese cinema does best (comedic fantasy stuff like the 2013 Journey to the West?).
Couldn't decide between using meters or feet and went with a completely useless unit instead? How big is a kitchen table, they are pretty famous for wildly varying in size. And usually a table denotes a surface, even if you said as big as THAT table it shouldn't be about the volume of an object. Libraries of Congress suddenly makes some sense... That said, I've been waiting for decades to see Jews in Space, maybe not much longer now?
Hmm. I don't know where you work, but the world is full of crappy software developers. Bad aircraft design will not go unnoticed, but bad software is the norm. I can tell you a couple of obvious bugs on almost every software I use daily. And it will only get worse - e.g. web designers pick up on js, and then find out they can do backend suddenly etc. Have you ever been in an interview process for a developer position? It is crazy how bad some developers are, and they come from banks, the government, automotive industry etc (the examples where not actually random) and when you reject them, they have no trouble finding their next gig! And security is nowhere close to being a field that is free from bad practices / bad developers - I'd say it is the opposite. Even simple concepts like monthly changes to passwords lead to insecure passwords etc seem to elude most "security professionals". And the voting machine space... that's probably the worse and the most dangerous. Yeah, the thought does terrify me - especially the closed machines some US states use - the xkcd comic is right on point I think.
Surely, the more convoluted a software design is, the more secure it is. And inability to audit is always extra security. We are talking about job security, right?
Do people actually follow the Consumer Reports recommendations? Just curious. Personally, the one thing I liked about CR was the "Consumerist" blog their subsidiary ran, but after they unceremoniously closed it down nothing else about CR seems of value. Hence the curiosity, does the public take them into account in buying something like a car?
Not exactly, in this case it wasn't an update, but a firmware bug. They missed some bounds checking or something so they players foot ended up beyond the container (shoe) space.
The original video is quite hilarious. He gets wrong almost everything that you can get wrong, and also some things you'd think you can't get wrong! He doesn't even know how to call things, like zip ties are "tweezers" and he calls various things (including the I/O shield) as "braces", the CPU socket a "holder" etc. The serious mistakes are applying a shitload of thermal paste *in addition* to the thermal pad the cooler had, installing the RAM in the wrong slots (non-dual channel), installing the PSU the wrong way, screwing the case radiator in without its fans... For me the most hilarious parts are two: - He wears some rubber band (unconnected to anything) on his arm to protect himself from static electricity (!). - He goes on and on describing how he will use a "CPU applicator" to make it easy to "apply" the CPU, then, without saying anything, it is clear he's thrown it to the side and just drops the CPU in the socket as he should. The second of the linked parody videos is quite funny too.
Eh, it is exactly the opposite of that. Apple is guaranteed to fix only high-profile bugs and will try to screw you out of support. I've been using Macs at work for a bit over a decade and the examples are too numerous to list, but I'll give some characteristic examples: - iPhone 4/4s had a thermal sensor in the wireless module that had a very high failure rate after the first year. The firmware that enabled it came as an update for the iPhone 4, people who never updated did not have an issue, but a good percentage of the rest of the iPhone 4/4s users ended up with "wifi grayed-out", which Apple would not fix out of warranty (they would tell you to reset network settings like it would help), that could be temporarily fixed by a thermal shock (putting the phone in the freezer and the oven). My development iPhone 4 developed the issue, and so did its 3 replacements (only 1 within warranty). - My bosses 6-month old mac mini was killing USB devices and the "genius" bar invalidated the warranty claiming they found "dust" inside (! - this was in a smoke-free cat-free office!). Boss was an apple fan and did not believe me when I said they can't do that, so took them on the 10% off a new mac mini offer... - Severe bug when moving windows on a secondary portrait monitor that survived 3 major OS X upgrades with ever-increasing report threads on Apple forums. In general, every one of the last major OS X releases since about Leopard feels a bit more buggy than the previous.
Sure, overall it is a nice unix-based OS with a decent UI, but with the money they make I can't believe how little they care about their customers. Oh, wait, the money they make despite how they treat their customers, explains in itself why the go down this route...
So this Japanese Top-100 chart decided to include YouTube a few years ago. But the way they implemented it, it does not count any "official" channels, just it looks for what is called "International Standard Recording Code" on any video, which means if you embed a song somewhere in your video and your video goes viral, the song appears on the Top-100, regardless of how you used it / what percentage of your video the song accounts for. Quite silly process really, but it is mostly harmless, I mean some weird things appear on the Top-100, big deal. Anyway, in this case youtube was promoting a sort of reality boxing series that featured this song often.
I don't get it, why is it not a crime to tell people not to vaccinate? No "real-world harm"? Seriously? People are dying. And it would be fine if just people who chose to not vaccinate (well, OK, their parents - sorry kids), but there's a part of the population who cannot vaccinate even if they want to and they rely on herd immunity. Why was Wakefield never prosecuted? He is responsible for more deaths than most serial killers and instead he is allowed to continue making anti-vaxx documentaries! Urging people not to vaccinate should be a crime, and un-vaccinated kids should not be allowed in public schools. No need to go back to the middle ages...
It was never an issue of performance. That was just an excuse that Google expected would be hard to prove otherwise. As you say, it is a very shaky excuse too, when add-ons are optional. Google is #1 in the ad space and they make their money from that, not from Chrome directly. Controlling the browser market does help them maximize their ad revenue and disallowing Ad-blockers they don't control it is one way. As they are trying to not alienate people too much, once this excuse was shot down they backtracked and will find another way later on.
So, it was a great Imax experience - if you have a Giant Imax screen near you (not those small Imax Digital ones), like the 26m wide Laser Imax I had close to me, the way it looks alone is worth the admission. I don't like 3D in general, but this was actually shot in 3D so it looks good overall and the action sequences are gripping and well shot. Now, the story is not very "original" nowadays, as we've seen a lot along similar lines these days. A friend asked me if it is a bit derivative to things like Ghost in the Shell - I had to point out the original manga was contemporary to the Ghost in the Shell manga, so you can't say it came a lot later. And in general this movie it is not very close to the manga (which I guess might be a good thing for the general audience - bad for those who like manga/anime). But overall I would recommend just for the giant Imax screens which make it a great spectacle, for a small screen it is just a decent sci-fi but nothing to write home about...
PS. The part-CGI character is not annoying/uncanny at all - it helps that it is supposed to by a cyborg anyway and that cgi is more advanced than 15 years ago when this was first discussed on/.
Rei has overdone it, we really don't need any more Tesla news. And we really really really don't need any more Tesla non-news like this one.
Elon Musk on the other hand single-handedly started the switch-over to electrical vehicles and is leading space launch technology. He is neither "scummy" nor a "salesguy". With all his flaws (stay away from Twitter, dude - no, it's not OK even if the President tweets much worse), he makes a difference, the world would be better off with a few more Elon Musks.
Eh, apart from the fact that it uses js, clicking on links scrolls you "down" to a different background and doesn't leave any "back" navigation. Definitely not 90's style behavior, web designers nowadays don't know how to make something basic & old school even if they tried...
In general we have removed the positive effects of natural selection from our society, which is leading us to a rather bleak future (just watch the semi-fictional film "idiocracy" for a good extrapolation). These stunts are one of the few natural selection sources left - whoever does a hydrochloric acid test for example should be removed from the human genome anyway. The problem is when bystanders get the effect instead of the idiot performing the actually stupidity... It is definitely not news for nerds though, I don't see how it even remotely warrants inclusion on slashdot... Then again, I am not new here...:D
My bank was bought by a bank I was tried to avoid. In the migration my cell phone number was lost, to enable online transactions they had a "2 factor auth" setup where an SMS enabled a "secure key app", but the form that could send me an SMS could not be submitted, it said no phone number. They were telling me the only way is to go to a branch with my ID for my phone number to be entered in the system. Well, it seemed like a retarded website, so I gave it a go, what do you know, changing form and submitting it got my cell phone number added to the db and sent an SMS. Frontend-only validation on a banking website, congrats guys, I am not leaving much money on that account...
Fifth, they provide a cloud forecast, which is useful for astronomy.
Interesting, I didn't know this service. For astronomy forecasts I cross-check a couple of services, but my favourite is 7timer.info, which, apart from cloud cover, gives you transparency and does an astro-seeing (atmospheric turbulence) forecast. In fact, its only issue was its unreliable server, which is why I donated a reliable server to the project, and made a free iOS client (Xasteria).
Ok, the Guinness World Records have become a bit ridiculous, registering records for some very trivial things, but at least this guy is not collecting "spreadsheets", but boxed spreadsheet software. He has over 500 according to the "strict" record parameters, or 800 otherwise. It's still rather trivial of course, when I was a kid (almost 3 decades ago), I had asked for the Guinness Book of records for christmas and enjoyed reading about the tallest man, the fastest animal etc, but the biggest spreadsheet software collection is nothing like that. I mean, you could have thousands of records under the category "biggest xx software collection", or things like "biggest kellogs cerial box collection" etc. Maybe I should also apply, I have the worlds biggest "software written by myself" software collection...
The Galaxy S3 was my last Samsung "flagship". Not only was it stupidly expensive for what it was, but the updates were slow to come and they seemed to leave the phone worse-off. I'm now settled with the Xiaomi Mi Mix line (switched from the cheaper but almost as good Mi line partly because of supporting T-Mobile LTE when I travel to the US), cheaper, better in most respects and updates don't leave the phone worse off. And according to TFA the updates come quicker too, although if that was my main concern I'd probably be looking at Android One phones or something like that...
This is very far from the worse that Oracle has done of course.
In any case, it is certain I'll see those "women are bad at negotiating salaries" comments, from people who have zero understanding of how, well, anything works. If salary negotiation was haggling, women would be fine, they are fine hagglers. But when you apply for a job, the potential employer already has formed his opinion on how much you are worth to them and the job offer will be relative to that. There is some wiggle room, but not enough to cover a $13k discrepancy. And in the end, if the women feel they are worth less, it is also due to the environment, not some innate problem.
And note I don't like the "solution" of preferring someone because they are female or a minority and not because they are better, in an attempt to "balance out" the status quo. It's the "easy way" that causes other problems, not the best way.
Anti matter fuel? What are you talking about? I am talking about acceleration with fission micro-bombs (nuclear pulse drive). At 1g acceleration you'd need just over 5 weeks to reach 0.1c, which is what I remember was calculated as feasible back in the 60's (throwing something like half a year's US GDP at it IIRC). I suggest you read up on Project Orion. I am not suggesting we do Project Orion specifically - unless it was used as a way to spend existing fission bombs. Just an example of tech that could get us there if we spent e.g. the military budget on such things instead of killing each other. But, again, I am not saying it is likely for 2 civilizations to meet. Reaching nearby stars is not even close to similar to exploring enough systems so that you happen on an inhabited one at the time you visit. While interplanetary rocks might be quite common, there is no real reason they couldn't be, and we just detected our first...
You said "laws of physics say no". I meant it is not hard from the point of view of physics as you put it. Engineering, tech, sure that's hard. But just "appreciable percentage of the speed of light" as you put it, that's not that hard even in that sense, only hard in fiscal/economic sense, as it's even doable at our current level of tech if we applied a big chunk of earth's resources. So interstellar probes for a civilization more advanced than us are quite a possibility, there's no law of physics making it hard. At the same time, having one actually visit us is pretty damn improbably from the laws of statistics;)
Slashdot Mirror
Just watched the trailer and I still have no idea what it is about. From some scenes it seems like the earth is some sort of spaceship (even more ridiculous than the campy Space: 1999), but in most of the trailer everything looks like very near-future. Plus the effects seemed uneven between trailer scenes, so I don't know what to expect there either. Not sure if its worth a watch, perhaps stick with what Chinese cinema does best (comedic fantasy stuff like the 2013 Journey to the West?).
Couldn't decide between using meters or feet and went with a completely useless unit instead? How big is a kitchen table, they are pretty famous for wildly varying in size. And usually a table denotes a surface, even if you said as big as THAT table it shouldn't be about the volume of an object. Libraries of Congress suddenly makes some sense...
That said, I've been waiting for decades to see Jews in Space, maybe not much longer now?
Hmm. I don't know where you work, but the world is full of crappy software developers. Bad aircraft design will not go unnoticed, but bad software is the norm. I can tell you a couple of obvious bugs on almost every software I use daily. And it will only get worse - e.g. web designers pick up on js, and then find out they can do backend suddenly etc. Have you ever been in an interview process for a developer position? It is crazy how bad some developers are, and they come from banks, the government, automotive industry etc (the examples where not actually random) and when you reject them, they have no trouble finding their next gig!
And security is nowhere close to being a field that is free from bad practices / bad developers - I'd say it is the opposite. Even simple concepts like monthly changes to passwords lead to insecure passwords etc seem to elude most "security professionals". And the voting machine space... that's probably the worse and the most dangerous. Yeah, the thought does terrify me - especially the closed machines some US states use - the xkcd comic is right on point I think.
Surely, the more convoluted a software design is, the more secure it is. And inability to audit is always extra security.
We are talking about job security, right?
Do people actually follow the Consumer Reports recommendations? Just curious.
Personally, the one thing I liked about CR was the "Consumerist" blog their subsidiary ran, but after they unceremoniously closed it down nothing else about CR seems of value. Hence the curiosity, does the public take them into account in buying something like a car?
Not exactly, in this case it wasn't an update, but a firmware bug. They missed some bounds checking or something so they players foot ended up beyond the container (shoe) space.
The original video is quite hilarious. He gets wrong almost everything that you can get wrong, and also some things you'd think you can't get wrong! He doesn't even know how to call things, like zip ties are "tweezers" and he calls various things (including the I/O shield) as "braces", the CPU socket a "holder" etc. The serious mistakes are applying a shitload of thermal paste *in addition* to the thermal pad the cooler had, installing the RAM in the wrong slots (non-dual channel), installing the PSU the wrong way, screwing the case radiator in without its fans...
For me the most hilarious parts are two:
- He wears some rubber band (unconnected to anything) on his arm to protect himself from static electricity (!).
- He goes on and on describing how he will use a "CPU applicator" to make it easy to "apply" the CPU, then, without saying anything, it is clear he's thrown it to the side and just drops the CPU in the socket as he should.
The second of the linked parody videos is quite funny too.
Eh, it is exactly the opposite of that. Apple is guaranteed to fix only high-profile bugs and will try to screw you out of support. I've been using Macs at work for a bit over a decade and the examples are too numerous to list, but I'll give some characteristic examples:
- iPhone 4/4s had a thermal sensor in the wireless module that had a very high failure rate after the first year. The firmware that enabled it came as an update for the iPhone 4, people who never updated did not have an issue, but a good percentage of the rest of the iPhone 4/4s users ended up with "wifi grayed-out", which Apple would not fix out of warranty (they would tell you to reset network settings like it would help), that could be temporarily fixed by a thermal shock (putting the phone in the freezer and the oven). My development iPhone 4 developed the issue, and so did its 3 replacements (only 1 within warranty).
- My bosses 6-month old mac mini was killing USB devices and the "genius" bar invalidated the warranty claiming they found "dust" inside (! - this was in a smoke-free cat-free office!). Boss was an apple fan and did not believe me when I said they can't do that, so took them on the 10% off a new mac mini offer...
- Severe bug when moving windows on a secondary portrait monitor that survived 3 major OS X upgrades with ever-increasing report threads on Apple forums. In general, every one of the last major OS X releases since about Leopard feels a bit more buggy than the previous.
Sure, overall it is a nice unix-based OS with a decent UI, but with the money they make I can't believe how little they care about their customers. Oh, wait, the money they make despite how they treat their customers, explains in itself why the go down this route...
So this Japanese Top-100 chart decided to include YouTube a few years ago. But the way they implemented it, it does not count any "official" channels, just it looks for what is called "International Standard Recording Code" on any video, which means if you embed a song somewhere in your video and your video goes viral, the song appears on the Top-100, regardless of how you used it / what percentage of your video the song accounts for.
Quite silly process really, but it is mostly harmless, I mean some weird things appear on the Top-100, big deal.
Anyway, in this case youtube was promoting a sort of reality boxing series that featured this song often.
I don't get it, why is it not a crime to tell people not to vaccinate? No "real-world harm"? Seriously? People are dying. And it would be fine if just people who chose to not vaccinate (well, OK, their parents - sorry kids), but there's a part of the population who cannot vaccinate even if they want to and they rely on herd immunity.
Why was Wakefield never prosecuted? He is responsible for more deaths than most serial killers and instead he is allowed to continue making anti-vaxx documentaries!
Urging people not to vaccinate should be a crime, and un-vaccinated kids should not be allowed in public schools. No need to go back to the middle ages...
It was never an issue of performance. That was just an excuse that Google expected would be hard to prove otherwise. As you say, it is a very shaky excuse too, when add-ons are optional. Google is #1 in the ad space and they make their money from that, not from Chrome directly. Controlling the browser market does help them maximize their ad revenue and disallowing Ad-blockers they don't control it is one way. As they are trying to not alienate people too much, once this excuse was shot down they backtracked and will find another way later on.
So, it was a great Imax experience - if you have a Giant Imax screen near you (not those small Imax Digital ones), like the 26m wide Laser Imax I had close to me, the way it looks alone is worth the admission. I don't like 3D in general, but this was actually shot in 3D so it looks good overall and the action sequences are gripping and well shot.
Now, the story is not very "original" nowadays, as we've seen a lot along similar lines these days. A friend asked me if it is a bit derivative to things like Ghost in the Shell - I had to point out the original manga was contemporary to the Ghost in the Shell manga, so you can't say it came a lot later. And in general this movie it is not very close to the manga (which I guess might be a good thing for the general audience - bad for those who like manga/anime).
But overall I would recommend just for the giant Imax screens which make it a great spectacle, for a small screen it is just a decent sci-fi but nothing to write home about...
PS. The part-CGI character is not annoying/uncanny at all - it helps that it is supposed to by a cyborg anyway and that cgi is more advanced than 15 years ago when this was first discussed on /.
Eh, I think you have to separate the two.
Rei has overdone it, we really don't need any more Tesla news. And we really really really don't need any more Tesla non-news like this one.
Elon Musk on the other hand single-handedly started the switch-over to electrical vehicles and is leading space launch technology. He is neither "scummy" nor a "salesguy". With all his flaws (stay away from Twitter, dude - no, it's not OK even if the President tweets much worse), he makes a difference, the world would be better off with a few more Elon Musks.
Eh, apart from the fact that it uses js, clicking on links scrolls you "down" to a different background and doesn't leave any "back" navigation. Definitely not 90's style behavior, web designers nowadays don't know how to make something basic & old school even if they tried...
In general we have removed the positive effects of natural selection from our society, which is leading us to a rather bleak future (just watch the semi-fictional film "idiocracy" for a good extrapolation). These stunts are one of the few natural selection sources left - whoever does a hydrochloric acid test for example should be removed from the human genome anyway. The problem is when bystanders get the effect instead of the idiot performing the actually stupidity... :D
It is definitely not news for nerds though, I don't see how it even remotely warrants inclusion on slashdot... Then again, I am not new here...
Oh, to clarify, I couldn't just go to the branch because I'm in a different country, that's why I wanted to enable online transactions...
My bank was bought by a bank I was tried to avoid. In the migration my cell phone number was lost, to enable online transactions they had a "2 factor auth" setup where an SMS enabled a "secure key app", but the form that could send me an SMS could not be submitted, it said no phone number. They were telling me the only way is to go to a branch with my ID for my phone number to be entered in the system. Well, it seemed like a retarded website, so I gave it a go, what do you know, changing form and submitting it got my cell phone number added to the db and sent an SMS. Frontend-only validation on a banking website, congrats guys, I am not leaving much money on that account...
People are saying that this "convenient" "stupidity" as you call it is simply an attempt to defraud their customers.
Fifth, they provide a cloud forecast, which is useful for astronomy.
Interesting, I didn't know this service. For astronomy forecasts I cross-check a couple of services, but my favourite is 7timer.info, which, apart from cloud cover, gives you transparency and does an astro-seeing (atmospheric turbulence) forecast. In fact, its only issue was its unreliable server, which is why I donated a reliable server to the project, and made a free iOS client (Xasteria).
Ok, the Guinness World Records have become a bit ridiculous, registering records for some very trivial things, but at least this guy is not collecting "spreadsheets", but boxed spreadsheet software. He has over 500 according to the "strict" record parameters, or 800 otherwise.
It's still rather trivial of course, when I was a kid (almost 3 decades ago), I had asked for the Guinness Book of records for christmas and enjoyed reading about the tallest man, the fastest animal etc, but the biggest spreadsheet software collection is nothing like that. I mean, you could have thousands of records under the category "biggest xx software collection", or things like "biggest kellogs cerial box collection" etc. Maybe I should also apply, I have the worlds biggest "software written by myself" software collection...
Well, duh, it wasn't built to withstand winds - there's no air in space! :-O
The Galaxy S3 was my last Samsung "flagship". Not only was it stupidly expensive for what it was, but the updates were slow to come and they seemed to leave the phone worse-off. I'm now settled with the Xiaomi Mi Mix line (switched from the cheaper but almost as good Mi line partly because of supporting T-Mobile LTE when I travel to the US), cheaper, better in most respects and updates don't leave the phone worse off. And according to TFA the updates come quicker too, although if that was my main concern I'd probably be looking at Android One phones or something like that...
This is very far from the worse that Oracle has done of course.
In any case, it is certain I'll see those "women are bad at negotiating salaries" comments, from people who have zero understanding of how, well, anything works. If salary negotiation was haggling, women would be fine, they are fine hagglers. But when you apply for a job, the potential employer already has formed his opinion on how much you are worth to them and the job offer will be relative to that. There is some wiggle room, but not enough to cover a $13k discrepancy. And in the end, if the women feel they are worth less, it is also due to the environment, not some innate problem.
And note I don't like the "solution" of preferring someone because they are female or a minority and not because they are better, in an attempt to "balance out" the status quo. It's the "easy way" that causes other problems, not the best way.
Anti matter fuel? What are you talking about? I am talking about acceleration with fission micro-bombs (nuclear pulse drive). At 1g acceleration you'd need just over 5 weeks to reach 0.1c, which is what I remember was calculated as feasible back in the 60's (throwing something like half a year's US GDP at it IIRC). I suggest you read up on Project Orion.
I am not suggesting we do Project Orion specifically - unless it was used as a way to spend existing fission bombs. Just an example of tech that could get us there if we spent e.g. the military budget on such things instead of killing each other.
But, again, I am not saying it is likely for 2 civilizations to meet. Reaching nearby stars is not even close to similar to exploring enough systems so that you happen on an inhabited one at the time you visit. While interplanetary rocks might be quite common, there is no real reason they couldn't be, and we just detected our first...
You said "laws of physics say no". I meant it is not hard from the point of view of physics as you put it. Engineering, tech, sure that's hard. But just "appreciable percentage of the speed of light" as you put it, that's not that hard even in that sense, only hard in fiscal/economic sense, as it's even doable at our current level of tech if we applied a big chunk of earth's resources. ;)
So interstellar probes for a civilization more advanced than us are quite a possibility, there's no law of physics making it hard. At the same time, having one actually visit us is pretty damn improbably from the laws of statistics