In order for the buzz/hype to be actually relevant, you need very precisely time the "leak".
If you release it too early/build too much anticipation, you risk being the victim of Osborne Effect, and you will be sitting on a huge pile of unsold older-generation hardware, as the (potential) userbase is holding and waiting to see the next-generation before buying it. (This supposedly killed the Osbone Executive & Vixen)
Apple needs specially to be careful with this as (at least from the outside, to a non-Apple user like me) it seems that they only have a limited span of generations selling at one point of time. Basically, they are only selling "current gen" hardware. At the conferences, when they announce officially newer hardware, it's usually with added comment "it's shipping now". Meaning that newer hardware in the new "only current one" that they are selling. Meaning that by that point, they must have cleared the older hardware, and must be ready to ship the new one.
Also, in addition to that, Apple are a high profile target, meaning that asian-noname hardware cloner will try as much as possible to provide cheap knock-of s of their hardware. A too early leak also means that some no-name chinese cloner will have a longer lead time to try to produce a cheapo android clone with the same feature.
So basically : Apple needs to tighly control the leaks, so only what they decide to "leak on purpose" gets released - when it's at their most advantage e.g. for building anticipation. And so they avoid harmful leaks happening by genuine accident (employee leaking stuff too early, leading to Osborne Effect and un-shipped old-gen stock, or marked flood with cheap noname asian knock-ofs and the latest iGadget losing part of its elitists appeal).
Roaming costs will get moved into a different user fee.
There are no real reasons for roaming fee nowadays except to fill the pockets of the providers.
At worst situation for the service provider, he needs to interconnect with another provider. As most modern telephone back-end use voip (usually SIP), there aren't that many extra costs compared to a home call, and a cell tower is still a cell tower, no matter which country you're in.
At best for the service provider, it's the same parent company in both countries. The client isn't really roaming, he's just using 2 different local presence of the same parent company (e.g.: O2 is present in several EU-members countries. But it's still considered roaming if you're on O2 Germany, and calling from O2 Czech republic, etc).
So in other words, there's almost no justification for you to pay more than a few percents above what communications rates are at the local operator to which you're roaming while traveling in this country. (if it costs xxx eurocents for operator yyy to take a call for residents of a EU-country, it doesn't cost much more for the same operator to take the same call for somebody coming from abroad). But until recently, operator had the habit to jack up prices by an insane factor when roaming (when travelling abroad, in a not so distant past, you'd be prepared to pay between 4x and 10x what the locals pay for their calls).
In theory : yes. In practice : those will probably have been changed a couple of times between now and 2038. Officially on the ground of "new standards and feature" (read: DRM scheme changing requiring you to rebuy PVR and set-top boxes)
your car,
Though note that a car is actually a data center on wheel full of different computers. Linux is usually very popular on the infotainment system (the big screen with your music player and satnav) But on the low-level critical components, other OSes (mostly real-time OSes like QNX) are popular too.
So you might end with a car that functions perfectly well, but has it's infotainment screen black or stuck in a boot-loop.
your medical equipment etc.
Given how badly some of them are designed, it won't be surprising if they actually did restart from epoch 0 (or some hard-coded arbitrary point like date of product launch) each time they got power cycled. These *won't even notice* that the 2038 is a problem.
Roomba up to 700 & 800 series are dumb, just aimlessly wandering around until eventually covering the whole surface. There isn't much data to collect, and the device only transmit wirelessly using infrared (remote control, virtual walls) and some ZigBee-like (to remotely start the virtual walls, and by the bigger remote). In short: they aren't able to do any telemetry.
The 900 series is the only one with a camera, that has a concept of its environment (it can map it and has a notion of its position) and has wifi connectivity.
unless you have some really weird dwelling place, just get a 790 or 890 if you're concerned about telemetry.
In theory, it's not such a bad idea : it's already used by military nuclear submarines, by military aircraft carrier, and by a few russian civilian icebreaker (when you're out in the polar ice in the middle of nowhere for several months in a row, it's much more practical than having to refuel every couple of days back in the civilisation). I think there have even been a couple of experiments with trains.
In practice : it's going to be hard to scale down all this, including all the radiation shielding, to the size of a car. And still correctly shield against radiation even in this small form factor. And still pack enough oomph to carry around this heavy car including the super-heavy radiation shields.
That's why on Earth, for manned vehicle, this has been limited to concepts.
On the other hand on Mars, unmanned vehicles like Cursiosity use RTG - Radioisotope-powered Thermoelectric Generator - to supplement their battery charging. It's still a nuke drive, except that there isn't a sustained chain reaction (as a nuclear reactor) but just natural isotope decay, and the reaction's heat isn't directly driving a steam engine, but is directly producing electricity - basically the opposite of a Pelletier cooler, which slowly charges a battery (and keeps the rover hot enough against the cold weather) that can then subsequently be used to drive normal electrical motors)
I don't want to write a {...complex...} algorithm {...} in any kind of shell script.
Yup, that's why I put in parenthesis in my answer. In your specific case - I suspected - you need at least some more advanced logic available. (Whereas I've seen bioinformatics pipelines where all the "gluing" could be handled in bash, specially given its support for native regex, arrays, hashes, integer math and filtered expansion of variables [ NOTE: this monster even has a functionnal tcp/ip lite stack ]).
But over all, python just happens to be the current popular language to glue such things together. Move a few years back, and the exact same could be said of Perl, Java (though JNI seem to be a mess to get right in a portable manner),.NET, VisualBasic, Lisp, Lua, etc. Move a few years into the future, and maybe Ruby or Javascript will get popular traction. Or something else (Go or Rust - though the later is really more system-oriented and less likely).
Heavy lifting is done with a low level language (C/C++ mostly. Or FORTRAN in your situation as for other engineer and physicists. Or assembler a couple decades back), and the higher level language "du jour" is used for the glue and control.
He found a pharmacy in India that would sell him a six-month supply for the same price. When he got his first package, it was the same drugs that he got at the local pharmacy.
Maybe he got lucky and got indeed a real pharmacy in India, that simply sells the same drugs, only produced locally (usually also in India) for the Asian market and thus have their sell prices adapted to what that market will bear.
Maybe he could instead have got what was actually a small scam ran out of china, selling drugs in counterfeit packages, and produced by much less well controlled means. Meaning that not only the concentration of the active component might be off, but there might be other unwanted active components or the desired component might be entirely missing.
The problem with product sold over internet is that it's harder to correctly guess in which of the above situations you are. Unless you go for a very well know and well tested reputable source. At which point it will end up not being so cheap (or outright banned).
Do you suggest that every vaper should acquire expensive chromatography / tandem mass-spectrometers, just to be able to check that the fluid their inhalating doesn't contain any extra additive? that the manufacturer didn't try to smuggle a few extra substances just below the tolerated/detectable concentration? that the manufacturing processus didn't leak any accidental substances in it?
e-cig fluid is an industrial product. There's a gigantic potential for abuse. (see the problems with industrial food products to get a good idea).
Food-grade vegetable glycerine and peppermint oil just don't scream, "I am chemical death" to me, but what do I know.
If you source your fluid from a local organic pop-and-mom shop that makes a product that is basically just pure glycerin, and peppermint oil and nothing else : sure, you're going to get something which has the potential to be a lot less toxic than burning dried leaves treated with tons of additives.
But as soon as you speak about cheap industrial products, you know that the manufacturer will try to get away with any thing they can within tolerated / detectable concentrations. (The same as with industrial food : if it's processed to the point that you cannot recognize actual fruits/vegetables/chunks of meat - be afraid, very afraid).
{smoke} which is a byproduct of combustion. They produce a vapor fog that LOOKS like smoke, but isn't.
Yup, in theory, at least e-cig don't burn things so they don't toxic products of combustion, they instead deliver their durg by ultra-sound vaporisation. So e-cig should have been the less harmful one when considering the burning fire.
In practice, there's only that many additives that you can add to dried tobacco leaves before you start to have more chemical than actual dried plants. Whereas, e-cig fluid is basically any mix the manufacturer can manage to cram together while staying under the tolerated maximma. So e-cig are actually the ones with the most potential to deliver toxic shit to the consumer.
In theory : - regular cigarettes (and other classical tobacco product) work by *burning* dried leaves. - e-cig work by electronically delivering the fluid (mostly ultra-sound vaporisation). Thus cigarettes have much more potential to release combustion toxic products. In short : e-cig are not burning, in theory they are better.
In practice : - there's only that much additives that you can add to tobacco before you start having more tobacco than actual dried plants. - e-cig fluid is more or less a free mix of whatever the manufacturer can manage to cram while staying within tolerated maxima. Thus e-cig have way much more potential to contain toxic shit. In short : e-cig use an artificial fluid. Be afraid. Very afraid.
(The same rule applies to any industrially processed food product).
I was always under the impression it was other chemicals in cigarettes that were even more harmful.
Yes, harm comes also from nearly everything else beside nicotine, too.
In theory : cigarettes (and other classical products) work by burning dried leaves, so they could potentially release more toxic combustion products, whereas e-cig work mostly electronically (ultra-sound vaporisation) and should create that many extra compounds.
In practice : cigarettes work by burning dried leaves and there only as much additives that you can add to the leaves before starting to have more chemicals than plants. e-cigs use a fluid that is more or less a free mix of everything they can manage to cram in it while staying under the tolerated maximma. So e-cig have way much more potential to contain harmful shit.
(Basically the same difference that exist in industrial processed food)
At least, the FDA (and the various similar government agancies in other jurisdiction) are consistent. Cigarettes, cigars, smoking pipes, and other tabacco products aren't banned. e-Cigarette (basically the same as above, the only slight difference being that it relies on a complex electronic system to deliver its harmful chemical components instead of an open fire *) shouldn't be banned either.
The only *actually* surprising at first sight thing, is that Marijuana smoking is banned.
---
* - As the delivery isn't done by burning but by electronic delivery (ultra-sound vaporisation, mostly, as far as I know), in theory that means it shaves off a few harmful substances compared to classical tobacco (at least there aren't toxic combustion products). In practice, that means that e-cig fluid productors can go batshit crazy in their mixes (classical tobacco product are merely treated dried plants - i.e.: there's only so much that you can add before you start having more additivies than dried plants. e-cig fluids are mixes of whatever they can think of) and, in practice, there's way more harmful potential in e-cigs (specially if they can manage to get their toxic mixes below the tolerated maxima).
Congratulations, you've successfully re-invented Perl (and bash to some intent).
More seriously : yes, Python seem to be the current popular "glue code" language. Like Perl and shell-scripts before it. (and some BASIC dialects at some point in time in the microsoft ecosystem).
So, you can see the attraction of Python for, say a scientist - there are modules for many specialised, mathematical areas, all of which are very difficult to code from scratch, and although there are similar packages for C, C++ and FORTRAN, they are less easy to just pick up and use.
Note that often, the Python modules *are bindings* to the C/C++ & FORTRAN packages. Python is literally the glue code layer that makes these modules "easy to just pick up".
So, I receive a suspicious email, which I need to click on to open.
And before that, you need to click on your browser or e-mail client. And before that, you need to click to log into the computer. And before that, you need to push the physical power button.
Zero-click malware. Meh.
Except that random joe 6 pack user... ...does click on any e-mail, because that's what they are used to. ...also recognizes PowerPoint file as one of the few "safe" attachment that they can open.
In other words: all the clicks that a normal user will accomplish in this infection are normal regular action that they do on an everyday basis. The users would be click all things you mention anyway.
The thing that actually starts the infection is the "zero-click" part. The unusual action that would be happening on any other day is triggered by a mouse-over instead of a click. That's the peculiarity.
You can train (more or less) the users "Do not click on weird documents/attachments" It's more difficult in this case because opening a power-point is something that they are expected to do as part of their normal work.
While she wasn't so foolish as to reveal any methods or resources, we can't be certain whether Russia was aware we were onto them.
It's motherfucking *Russia*. Home of FSB, and before that KGB.
Do you really believe that they could genuinely be unaware of this ? That they, with all their might, were totally unable to know things that an inexperienced, extremely young, and rather emotionaly unstable / immature contractor has managed to get hold onto ?
Or is it more likely that they were aware, but simply pretended not to, and this leak a convenient pretext to stop acting surprised anymore.
(The same argument I've been repeating about any actual use of Snowden for Russia beyond the obvious PR / Propaganda).
are you sure it is not age related? between 20 & 50 is a long time
Age was taken into account. Still, some people degraded faster than others in this span of time. And those were significantly more likely to also be drinking. - Thus the actual conclusion that one real scientist should take home: there's a statistical link between the two. - Thus also the baseless spin that the press (and even the original BMJ article) are trying to take on it : even light drinking cause brain destruction
Did the study state there was a concrete cause-and-effect aspect? Or did they just show their results that show a correlation?
Yes they impled cause-and-effect : the original BMJ article title is Moderate alcohol consumption as risk factor for adverse brain outcomes and cognitive decline: longitudinal cohort study. It implies that moderate drinking is a potential factor that contributes to the brain damage.
This is then speculated even further by the press, with titles such as "Can Damage The Brain".
The correct wording would have been "Link found between drinking and brain".
i.e.: we know that they are correlated (we have a link in the numbers), but we haven't yet a model explaining why (not a model which reasonnably explains most of the observed data).
- Is the drinking causing the brain damage ? (it's plausible, as alcohol is toxic. And other situations have proven that repeated damage, even if each one should be small enough to recover, can cumulate over time and could sometime cause degenerative disease. See the problem with degenrative diseases and contact sports).
- Is having a stupider brain make the person more likely to drink ? (again it's plausible. people with psychiatric problems are more likely to seek substances, both for the "feel better" kick and as misguided attempts to self medicate (feel functional). See alcoholism and depression, etc.)
- Are both drinking and brain damage just appearing together in people as a consequence of some other factor that the researcher haven't controlled for.
so guess what the result of those negotiations is going to be? exact same as it is now.
Except that now UK isn't part of the EU and doesn't have anything to say anymore about its politics.
UK went from a full blown EU member, to probably the same status as Switzerland and Norway, two countries who were never members of the EU to begin with, and just sign treaties to be able to participate anyway.
Basically, UK just lost its voice at the EU table - its share of sovereignty.
Which sounds ironic, when a good chunk of the campaign's argument was something along the lines of "we want to be in charge of our own".
--
Or, UK could decide to go bonkers, completely sever ties with EU, and apply a request to be accepted as the 51st state of the USA. Airstrip One.:-)
Or is this something like scrypt (before that goes to asic too)
Scrypt *has gone* ASIC too. (Except, due to it being a key derivation function, not hash, even with its very conservative parameters, isn't as easy as sha256 to accelerate. ASIC Scrypt isn't many order of magnitude faster than GPU Scrypt - unlike sha256. But its much more power efficient)
Ethereum is the *current hot stuff* for GPU. And is even more tuned against ASIC than Litecoin's Scrypt.
Primecoin is another exemple which is currently mainly mined on GPU (which actual scientific use in the results).
But above all, these motherboards and "light" GPU are also extremely useful for scientific computing, (specially for task which are more GPU than memory-bound, where the PCIe x1 isn't limiting). (Which I think was the primary target market before the marketing department decided to run for it with buzzwords). And the machines can also be used for much more nefarious purpose : that is also a very good hardware platform for comp
No it's not. It's very simple. It's 2017 how do you think drug deals work? Smoke signals?
No. SMS. Which basically have the same level of privacy/intrusion prevention as post-cards. Or smoke signals.
There's a reason why your low-ranking street-trotting drug dealer is exactly that. If he had a little bit more brain and could understand all the intricacies of cryptography and data security, he would have enough brain to actually land a better paying job.
Lots of the information critical to investigate small fry drug dealer can easily be eavesdropped without even needed access to the culprit's phone.
Of course, there's going to be a few of them a tiny bit more tech savvy that will try to use some app to communicate... but given the above mentioned brain deficiency, they'll probably end-up discussing it on Facebook. On somebody's public wall.
Slashdot Mirror
In order for the buzz/hype to be actually relevant, you need very precisely time the "leak".
If you release it too early/build too much anticipation, you risk being the victim of Osborne Effect, and you will be sitting on a huge pile of unsold older-generation hardware, as the (potential) userbase is holding and waiting to see the next-generation before buying it. (This supposedly killed the Osbone Executive & Vixen)
Apple needs specially to be careful with this as (at least from the outside, to a non-Apple user like me) it seems that they only have a limited span of generations selling at one point of time.
Basically, they are only selling "current gen" hardware.
At the conferences, when they announce officially newer hardware, it's usually with added comment "it's shipping now". Meaning that newer hardware in the new "only current one" that they are selling.
Meaning that by that point, they must have cleared the older hardware, and must be ready to ship the new one.
Also, in addition to that, Apple are a high profile target, meaning that asian-noname hardware cloner will try as much as possible to provide cheap knock-of s of their hardware. A too early leak also means that some no-name chinese cloner will have a longer lead time to try to produce a cheapo android clone with the same feature.
So basically : Apple needs to tighly control the leaks, so only what they decide to "leak on purpose" gets released - when it's at their most advantage e.g. for building anticipation. And so they avoid harmful leaks happening by genuine accident (employee leaking stuff too early, leading to Osborne Effect and un-shipped old-gen stock, or marked flood with cheap noname asian knock-ofs and the latest iGadget losing part of its elitists appeal).
Roaming costs will get moved into a different user fee.
There are no real reasons for roaming fee nowadays except to fill the pockets of the providers.
At worst situation for the service provider, he needs to interconnect with another provider.
As most modern telephone back-end use voip (usually SIP), there aren't that many extra costs compared to a home call, and a cell tower is still a cell tower, no matter which country you're in.
At best for the service provider, it's the same parent company in both countries. The client isn't really roaming, he's just using 2 different local presence of the same parent company (e.g.: O2 is present in several EU-members countries. But it's still considered roaming if you're on O2 Germany, and calling from O2 Czech republic, etc).
So in other words, there's almost no justification for you to pay more than a few percents above what communications rates are at the local operator to which you're roaming while traveling in this country. (if it costs xxx eurocents for operator yyy to take a call for residents of a EU-country, it doesn't cost much more for the same operator to take the same call for somebody coming from abroad).
But until recently, operator had the habit to jack up prices by an insane factor when roaming (when travelling abroad, in a not so distant past, you'd be prepared to pay between 4x and 10x what the locals pay for their calls).
...and let the whole "random wandering" vs. "navitagion" in vacuuming bots begin !
(for those who were bored of vi vs. emacs (vs. nano vs. ed) )
your router, your network switch, your PVR,
In theory : yes.
In practice : those will probably have been changed a couple of times between now and 2038.
Officially on the ground of "new standards and feature"
(read: DRM scheme changing requiring you to rebuy PVR and set-top boxes)
your car,
Though note that a car is actually a data center on wheel full of different computers.
Linux is usually very popular on the infotainment system (the big screen with your music player and satnav)
But on the low-level critical components, other OSes (mostly real-time OSes like QNX) are popular too.
So you might end with a car that functions perfectly well, but has it's infotainment screen black or stuck in a boot-loop.
your medical equipment etc.
Given how badly some of them are designed, it won't be surprising if they actually did restart from epoch 0 (or some hard-coded arbitrary point like date of product launch) each time they got power cycled.
These *won't even notice* that the 2038 is a problem.
Roomba up to 700 & 800 series are dumb, just aimlessly wandering around until eventually covering the whole surface.
There isn't much data to collect, and the device only transmit wirelessly using infrared (remote control, virtual walls) and some ZigBee-like (to remotely start the virtual walls, and by the bigger remote).
In short: they aren't able to do any telemetry.
The 900 series is the only one with a camera, that has a concept of its environment (it can map it and has a notion of its position) and has wifi connectivity.
unless you have some really weird dwelling place, just get a 790 or 890 if you're concerned about telemetry.
I have an idea: NUCULAR POWERED STEAM ENGINES.
In theory, it's not such a bad idea :
it's already used by military nuclear submarines, by military aircraft carrier, and by a few russian civilian icebreaker (when you're out in the polar ice in the middle of nowhere for several months in a row, it's much more practical than having to refuel every couple of days back in the civilisation).
I think there have even been a couple of experiments with trains.
In practice :
it's going to be hard to scale down all this, including all the radiation shielding, to the size of a car.
And still correctly shield against radiation even in this small form factor.
And still pack enough oomph to carry around this heavy car including the super-heavy radiation shields.
That's why on Earth, for manned vehicle, this has been limited to concepts.
On the other hand on Mars, unmanned vehicles like Cursiosity use RTG - Radioisotope-powered Thermoelectric Generator - to supplement their battery charging.
It's still a nuke drive, except that there isn't a sustained chain reaction (as a nuclear reactor) but just natural isotope decay, and the reaction's heat isn't directly driving a steam engine, but is directly producing electricity - basically the opposite of a Pelletier cooler, which slowly charges a battery (and keeps the rover hot enough against the cold weather) that can then subsequently be used to drive normal electrical motors)
But if there is anything other than trivial logic involved, shell scripting is the road to eternal damnation.
Meanwhile, somewhere, some devil is abusing bash' "/dev/tcp/" virtual device to implement a fully functionning web server...
I don't want to write a {...complex...} algorithm {...} in any kind of shell script.
Yup, that's why I put in parenthesis in my answer.
In your specific case - I suspected - you need at least some more advanced logic available.
(Whereas I've seen bioinformatics pipelines where all the "gluing" could be handled in bash, specially given its support for native regex, arrays, hashes, integer math and filtered expansion of variables [ NOTE: this monster even has a functionnal tcp/ip lite stack ]).
But over all, python just happens to be the current popular language to glue such things together. .NET, VisualBasic, Lisp, Lua, etc.
Move a few years back, and the exact same could be said of Perl, Java (though JNI seem to be a mess to get right in a portable manner),
Move a few years into the future, and maybe Ruby or Javascript will get popular traction. Or something else (Go or Rust - though the later is really more system-oriented and less likely).
Heavy lifting is done with a low level language (C/C++ mostly. Or FORTRAN in your situation as for other engineer and physicists. Or assembler a couple decades back),
and the higher level language "du jour" is used for the glue and control.
He found a pharmacy in India that would sell him a six-month supply for the same price. When he got his first package, it was the same drugs that he got at the local pharmacy.
Maybe he got lucky and got indeed a real pharmacy in India, that simply sells the same drugs, only produced locally (usually also in India) for the Asian market and thus have their sell prices adapted to what that market will bear.
Maybe he could instead have got what was actually a small scam ran out of china, selling drugs in counterfeit packages, and produced by much less well controlled means. Meaning that not only the concentration of the active component might be off, but there might be other unwanted active components or the desired component might be entirely missing.
The problem with product sold over internet is that it's harder to correctly guess in which of the above situations you are.
Unless you go for a very well know and well tested reputable source. At which point it will end up not being so cheap (or outright banned).
Do yours.
Do you suggest that every vaper should acquire expensive chromatography / tandem mass-spectrometers, just to be able to check that the fluid their inhalating doesn't contain any extra additive? that the manufacturer didn't try to smuggle a few extra substances just below the tolerated/detectable concentration? that the manufacturing processus didn't leak any accidental substances in it?
e-cig fluid is an industrial product. There's a gigantic potential for abuse.
(see the problems with industrial food products to get a good idea).
Food-grade vegetable glycerine and peppermint oil just don't scream, "I am chemical death" to me, but what do I know.
If you source your fluid from a local organic pop-and-mom shop that makes a product that is basically just pure glycerin, and peppermint oil and nothing else :
sure, you're going to get something which has the potential to be a lot less toxic than burning dried leaves treated with tons of additives.
But as soon as you speak about cheap industrial products, you know that the manufacturer will try to get away with any thing they can within tolerated / detectable concentrations.
(The same as with industrial food : if it's processed to the point that you cannot recognize actual fruits/vegetables/chunks of meat - be afraid, very afraid).
{smoke} which is a byproduct of combustion. They produce a vapor fog that LOOKS like smoke, but isn't.
Yup, in theory, at least e-cig don't burn things so they don't toxic products of combustion, they instead deliver their durg by ultra-sound vaporisation.
So e-cig should have been the less harmful one when considering the burning fire.
In practice, there's only that many additives that you can add to dried tobacco leaves before you start to have more chemical than actual dried plants.
Whereas, e-cig fluid is basically any mix the manufacturer can manage to cram together while staying under the tolerated maximma.
So e-cig are actually the ones with the most potential to deliver toxic shit to the consumer.
In theory :
- regular cigarettes (and other classical tobacco product) work by *burning* dried leaves.
- e-cig work by electronically delivering the fluid (mostly ultra-sound vaporisation).
Thus cigarettes have much more potential to release combustion toxic products.
In short : e-cig are not burning, in theory they are better.
In practice :
- there's only that much additives that you can add to tobacco before you start having more tobacco than actual dried plants.
- e-cig fluid is more or less a free mix of whatever the manufacturer can manage to cram while staying within tolerated maxima.
Thus e-cig have way much more potential to contain toxic shit.
In short : e-cig use an artificial fluid. Be afraid. Very afraid.
(The same rule applies to any industrially processed food product).
I was always under the impression it was other chemicals in cigarettes that were even more harmful.
Yes, harm comes also from nearly everything else beside nicotine, too.
In theory : cigarettes (and other classical products) work by burning dried leaves, so they could potentially release more toxic combustion products, whereas e-cig work mostly electronically (ultra-sound vaporisation) and should create that many extra compounds.
In practice : cigarettes work by burning dried leaves and there only as much additives that you can add to the leaves before starting to have more chemicals than plants. e-cigs use a fluid that is more or less a free mix of everything they can manage to cram in it while staying under the tolerated maximma.
So e-cig have way much more potential to contain harmful shit.
(Basically the same difference that exist in industrial processed food)
I was surprised the FDA didn't ban them outright.
At least, the FDA (and the various similar government agancies in other jurisdiction) are consistent.
Cigarettes, cigars, smoking pipes, and other tabacco products aren't banned.
e-Cigarette (basically the same as above, the only slight difference being that it relies on a complex electronic system to deliver its harmful chemical components instead of an open fire *) shouldn't be banned either.
The only *actually* surprising at first sight thing, is that Marijuana smoking is banned.
---
* - As the delivery isn't done by burning but by electronic delivery (ultra-sound vaporisation, mostly, as far as I know), in theory that means it shaves off a few harmful substances compared to classical tobacco (at least there aren't toxic combustion products).
In practice, that means that e-cig fluid productors can go batshit crazy in their mixes (classical tobacco product are merely treated dried plants - i.e.: there's only so much that you can add before you start having more additivies than dried plants. e-cig fluids are mixes of whatever they can think of) and, in practice, there's way more harmful potential in e-cigs (specially if they can manage to get their toxic mixes below the tolerated maxima).
or, in other words :
Congratulations, you've successfully re-invented Perl (and bash to some intent).
More seriously :
yes, Python seem to be the current popular "glue code" language.
Like Perl and shell-scripts before it.
(and some BASIC dialects at some point in time in the microsoft ecosystem).
So, you can see the attraction of Python for, say a scientist - there are modules for many specialised, mathematical areas, all of which are very difficult to code from scratch, and although there are similar packages for C, C++ and FORTRAN, they are less easy to just pick up and use.
Note that often, the Python modules *are bindings* to the C/C++ & FORTRAN packages.
Python is literally the glue code layer that makes these modules "easy to just pick up".
So, I receive a suspicious email, which I need to click on to open.
And before that, you need to click on your browser or e-mail client.
And before that, you need to click to log into the computer.
And before that, you need to push the physical power button.
Zero-click malware. Meh.
Except that random joe 6 pack user...
...does click on any e-mail, because that's what they are used to.
...also recognizes PowerPoint file as one of the few "safe" attachment that they can open.
In other words: all the clicks that a normal user will accomplish in this infection are normal regular action that they do on an everyday basis. The users would be click all things you mention anyway.
The thing that actually starts the infection is the "zero-click" part. The unusual action that would be happening on any other day is triggered by a mouse-over instead of a click. That's the peculiarity.
You can train (more or less) the users "Do not click on weird documents/attachments"
It's more difficult in this case because opening a power-point is something that they are expected to do as part of their normal work.
That's because this dupe got time-warped by gravity time dilation.
(The distant star is massive, after all)
While she wasn't so foolish as to reveal any methods or resources, we can't be certain whether Russia was aware we were onto them.
It's motherfucking *Russia*.
Home of FSB, and before that KGB.
Do you really believe that they could genuinely be unaware of this ?
That they, with all their might, were totally unable to know things that an inexperienced, extremely young, and rather emotionaly unstable / immature contractor has managed to get hold onto ?
Or is it more likely that they were aware, but simply pretended not to, and this leak a convenient pretext to stop acting surprised anymore.
(The same argument I've been repeating about any actual use of Snowden for Russia beyond the obvious PR / Propaganda).
are you sure it is not age related? between 20 & 50 is a long time
Age was taken into account. : there's a statistical link between the two.
Still, some people degraded faster than others in this span of time.
And those were significantly more likely to also be drinking.
- Thus the actual conclusion that one real scientist should take home
- Thus also the baseless spin that the press (and even the original BMJ article) are trying to take on it : even light drinking cause brain destruction
Did the study state there was a concrete cause-and-effect aspect? Or did they just show their results that show a correlation?
Yes they impled cause-and-effect :
the original BMJ article title is Moderate alcohol consumption as risk factor for adverse brain outcomes and cognitive decline: longitudinal cohort study.
It implies that moderate drinking is a potential factor that contributes to the brain damage.
This is then speculated even further by the press, with titles such as "Can Damage The Brain".
The PHDComics on Science News Cycle applies as usual.
The correct wording would have been " Link found between drinking and brain".
i.e.: we know that they are correlated (we have a link in the numbers), but we haven't yet a model explaining why (not a model which reasonnably explains most of the observed data).
- Is the drinking causing the brain damage ?
(it's plausible, as alcohol is toxic. And other situations have proven that repeated damage, even if each one should be small enough to recover, can cumulate over time and could sometime cause degenerative disease. See the problem with degenrative diseases and contact sports).
- Is having a stupider brain make the person more likely to drink ?
(again it's plausible. people with psychiatric problems are more likely to seek substances, both for the "feel better" kick and as misguided attempts to self medicate (feel functional). See alcoholism and depression, etc.)
- Are both drinking and brain damage just appearing together in people as a consequence of some other factor that the researcher haven't controlled for.
so guess what the result of those negotiations is going to be? exact same as it is now.
Except that now UK isn't part of the EU and doesn't have anything to say anymore about its politics.
UK went from a full blown EU member, to probably the same status as Switzerland and Norway, two countries who were never members of the EU to begin with, and just sign treaties to be able to participate anyway.
Basically, UK just lost its voice at the EU table - its share of sovereignty.
Which sounds ironic, when a good chunk of the campaign's argument was something along the lines of "we want to be in charge of our own".
--
Or, UK could decide to go bonkers, completely sever ties with EU, and apply a request to be accepted as the 51st state of the USA. :-)
Airstrip One.
Or is this something like scrypt (before that goes to asic too)
Scrypt *has gone* ASIC too.
(Except, due to it being a key derivation function, not hash, even with its very conservative parameters, isn't as easy as sha256 to accelerate.
ASIC Scrypt isn't many order of magnitude faster than GPU Scrypt - unlike sha256. But its much more power efficient)
Ethereum is the *current hot stuff* for GPU. And is even more tuned against ASIC than Litecoin's Scrypt.
Primecoin is another exemple which is currently mainly mined on GPU (which actual scientific use in the results).
But above all, these motherboards and "light" GPU are also extremely useful for scientific computing, (specially for task which are more GPU than memory-bound, where the PCIe x1 isn't limiting).
(Which I think was the primary target market before the marketing department decided to run for it with buzzwords).
And the machines can also be used for much more nefarious purpose : that is also a very good hardware platform for comp
No it's not. It's very simple. It's 2017 how do you think drug deals work? Smoke signals?
No.
SMS.
Which basically have the same level of privacy/intrusion prevention as post-cards. Or smoke signals.
There's a reason why your low-ranking street-trotting drug dealer is exactly that.
If he had a little bit more brain and could understand all the intricacies of cryptography and data security,
he would have enough brain to actually land a better paying job.
Lots of the information critical to investigate small fry drug dealer can easily be eavesdropped without even needed access to the culprit's phone.
Of course, there's going to be a few of them a tiny bit more tech savvy that will try to use some app to communicate...
but given the above mentioned brain deficiency, they'll probably end-up discussing it on Facebook. On somebody's public wall.