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What was highest label on your first car speedometer?

  • 80 mph
  • 88 mph
  • 100 mph
  • 120 mph
  • 150 mph
  • it was in kph like civilized countries use you insensitive clod
  • Other (please specify in comments)

[ Results | Polls ]
Comments:46 | Votes:109

posted by n1 on Sunday September 21 2014, @10:11PM   Printer-friendly
from the cruel-and-unusual-punishment dept.

September 18, 2014
Hollywood Insiders: Directors, Actors, Producers, Camera People And More Demand Peter Sunde Be Freed & Treated With Dignity

While we've written plenty about Peter Sunde, the former spokesperson for The Pirate Bay, we didn't cover his eventual jailing earlier this year. Given all the coverage of his trial and efforts post-trial to have the results revisited, the fact that he finally ended up going to jail didn't seem like much of a story. However, the way in which he's been treated in jail is simply inhumane. He's been put in the equivalent of a maximum security prison and basic requests for more humane treatment have been rejected.

The latest outrage was that Peter's father recently passed away, and while prison officials have said they'll make arrangements for him to attend the funeral, he'll have to wear handcuffs. TorrentFreak says he'll have to wear handcuffs while carrying his father's coffin -- but from Peter's brother's quote, it seems clear that the prison officials were actually saying he can't even carry his father's coffin. The handcuff remark was just their way of saying "fuck you."

September 20, 2014
Humanity: Peter Sunde Attends Funeral Without Handcuffs

Following anger at the news that Peter Sunde would have to attend his father's funeral while handcuffed, humanity has prevailed. Mats Kolmisoppi says that following all the attention focused on his brother's predicament, Peter was allowed to pay his final respects with dignity.

His treatment in prison, including solitary confinement, is completely disproportionate to what was, until recent years, a tort and had not been subject to criminal charges.

posted by n1 on Sunday September 21 2014, @08:22PM   Printer-friendly
from the because-you're-poor dept.

Many startups want to design something that mimics the fit and finish of an Apple product, but it's a good way to go out of business.

What happened when Apple wanted to CNC machine a million MacBook bodies a year? They bought 10k CNC machines to do it. How about when they wanted to laser drill holes in MacBook Pros for the sleep light but only one company made a machine that could drill those 20 µm holes in aluminum? It bought the company that made the machines and took all the inventory. And that time when they needed batteries to fit into a tiny machined housing but no manufacturer was willing to make batteries so thin? Apple made their own battery cells. From scratch.

Other things that Apple often does that can cause problems for a startup include white plastic (which is the most difficult color to mold), CNC machining at scale (too expensive), Laser drilled holes (far more difficult than it may seem), molded plastic packaging (recycled cardboard is your friend), and 4-color, double-walled, matte boxes + HD foam inserts (It's not unusual for them to cost upwards of 12 US$/unit at scale. And then they get thrown away.).

If you see a feature on an Apple device you want to copy, try to find it on another company's product. If you do, it's probably okay to design into your product. Otherwise, lower your expectations. I assure you it'll be better for your startup.

Foxconn, the Apple supplier that doubled factory pay after a spate of worker suicides, buys 800 programmable Robodrills from Fanuc every month - for about 62 000 US$ each - to make the stainless steel band that wraps around the iPhone. The Fanuc Robodrill is the world's common CNC machine measured by installation numbers and by total value thanks to Apple.

Seems form and style are essential for the marketplace (yuck).

Edit: It's come to our attention that this was originally submitted to Slashdot by Hugh Pickens and some of the text appears to have been copied. We apologize for the mis-attribution. Further, this practice is frowned upon, you must write an original submission when submitting article summaries.

posted by martyb on Sunday September 21 2014, @06:45PM   Printer-friendly
from the ungood++ dept.

The warning can supposedly be found inside the in-flight magazine of Philippine Airlines and has been circulated on Twitter.

Passengers with Philippine Airlines are told that "Despite being under military control, Thailand is very safe for tourists" but are offered five tips to help "blend in".

They include "carry your passport (or a copy) with you at all times", "avoid wearing red t-shirts, which are associated with a group opposed to the military government", and "don't carry George Orwell's dystopian novel '1984'. You don't want to be mistaken for an anti-coup protestor."


[Editor's addition follows]
The Telegraph has a more recent article which lists eight things that can get you arrested in Thailand:

  • Wearing T-shirts that could "promote division"
  • Eating sandwiches in public
  • Reading certain books
  • Posting anything deemed critical of the military online
  • Gatherings of more than five people
  • Raising a "Hunger Games" salute
  • Being labelled "problematic", or a political activist
  • Playing a non-approved computer game

We here at SoylentNews endeavor to promote journalistic independence and freedom. Some may find it easy to laugh at such dystopian rules in a foreign land, but these can be a wake-up call to those in a country which claims greater freedoms. Are these freedoms still in effect? Are they being encroached? Where and in what ways? What can be done about it?

Consider recent efforts to have ISPs provide filters in the UK and for logging of customers' net traffic in the UK and Australia. Consider, too, the reports of the NSA's huge new data processing facility in Utah and the Snowden-leaked documents which identify massive data collection.

"Eternal vigilance is the price we pay for liberty."

"If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him. (Qu’on me donne six lignes écrites de la main du plus honnête homme, j’y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre.)" Armand Jean du Plessis, Duc de Richelieu (1585–1642).

Do you find pervasive recording of your physical and on-line travels troublesome? What steps have you taken, if any, to protect yourself? Firewalls? Installed https-everywhere? Used a VPN and/or TOR? Encryption? What would you recommend as best practices to your fellow Soylents and others in the world at large?

[Update: Added indicator of where the original submission ended.]

posted by martyb on Sunday September 21 2014, @04:52PM   Printer-friendly
from the but-can-it-run-in-a-browser? dept.

A developer that goes by the handle Vladikoff has tweaked Google's App Runtime for Chrome (ARC) to allow any Android app to run on any major desktop operating system, not just the handful announced last week which were also limited to Chrome OS. His tweaked version of ARC is re-packaged as ARChon.md. The install isn't very straightforward, and you have to be in developer mode on Chrome. But there's a support forum on reddit. The extension will work on any OS running the desktop version of Chrome 37 and up as long as the user also installs chromeos-apk, which converts raw Android app packages (APKs) to a Chrome extension. Ars Technica reports that apps run this way are buggy, fast, and crash often but expresses optimism for when Google officially "opens the floodgates on the Play Store, putting 1.3 million Android apps onto nearly every platform.

posted by martyb on Sunday September 21 2014, @02:55PM   Printer-friendly
from the nobody-wants-a-sick-vampire dept.

There's an article over at The Conversation on using magnetic nanobeads to treat sepsis. Sepsis occurs when the response to infection can:

trigger inflammatory responses throughout the body. This inflammation can trigger a cascade of changes that can damage multiple organ systems, causing them to fail.

This leads to many deaths each year, with estimates of Sepsis affecting more than 1 in 1,000 people in developed countries each year, and can reach fatality rates of 30% to 80% depending on the severity of the condition.

This treatment uses tiny (128 nanometre) magnetic beads coated with a genetically engineered protein, which can bind with pathogens and toxins, and the beads can then be filtered from the blood using a dialysis-like device.

We found that it was able to remove more than 90% of bacteria from the blood of rats in a few hours.

...

The device simply and effectively cleans the blood without the need to first pinpoint the pathogen responsible for the infection because the MBL protein binds to more than 90 different causes of infection and sepsis, including bacteria, fungi, viruses, parasites and toxins.

This has been tested on human blood samples, and in small scale animal trials, and will now go on to larger animal studies. Human clinical trials are expected to be at least a couple of years away.

The original press release is available at the Wyss institute, although the actual paper appears to be paywalled. There are also summaries at Discover magazine, Nature and the Harvard Gazette.

posted by martyb on Sunday September 21 2014, @01:09PM   Printer-friendly
from the the-hole-is-greater-than-the-sum-of-the-parts dept.

ArsTechnica reports:

Former information technology employees at Home Depot claim that the retailer’s management had been warned for years that its retail systems were vulnerable to attack, according to a report by the New York Times. Resistance to advice on fixing systems reportedly led several members of Home Depot’s computer security team to quit, and one who remained warned friends to use cash when shopping at the retailer’s stores.

In 2012, Home Depot hired Ricky Joe Mitchell as its senior IT security architect. Mitchell got the job after being fired from EnerVest Operating LLC in Charelston, South Carolina[sic] Charleston, West Virginia—and he sabotaged that company’s network in an act of revenge, taking the company offline for 30 days. Mitchell retained his position at Home Depot even after his indictment a year later and remained in charge of Home Depot’s security until he pled guilty to federal charges in January of 2014.

See our earlier stories: Credit Card Breach at Home Depot and Home Depot Estimates Data on 56 Million Cards Stolen by Cybercriminals.

[Update: EverVest was reported by Ars Technica to have been in Charelston, South Carolina but according to the linked indictment was actually located in Charleston, West Virginia.]

posted by martyb on Sunday September 21 2014, @11:25AM   Printer-friendly
from the getting-a-charge-out-of-old-batteries dept.

Over at the UCLA newsroom is a report into the possible emerging market in used electric vehicle batteries, the opportunities and the ways in which that market could be encouraged to grow.

Put simply the idea is that the used EV batteries which have come to the end of their operating life, and no longer have the capacity to run vehicles effectively, can then be re-purposed as part of centralised or distributed storage capacity for renewable power generation systems:

“Most batteries will retain much of their capacity and value after the use of the car,” said report author Ethan Elkind, associate director of the Climate Change and Business Program at UCLA and UC Berkeley law schools, which leads the initiative. “As a result, repurposing them can absorb excess renewable energy and dispatch it when the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing.”

This isn't a new idea, with an earlier report going into more detail on the technical feasibility, and an earlier article at Consumer Reports quoting previous work as:

Holmes’ studies of electric car batteries have shown that even when a car battery has only 70 percent of capacity left—too little to serve in a car—that it may have about 10 years of useful life left as storage devices on the grid

This report looks at the political and economic challenges, as well as summarizing the technical. The report is available for download is an easy overall read, and chock full of references.

Originally spotted via Scientific American.

posted by n1 on Sunday September 21 2014, @09:11AM   Printer-friendly
from the welcoming-our-new-ecommerce-overlords dept.

Ars Technica has a story about Alibaba's IPO.

When Alibaba stopped trading its shares on Friday, the Chinese e-commerce company had officially logged the biggest Initial Public Offering (IPO) in US history, raising $21.8 billion in its first day on the New York Stock Exchange. The company's earnings give it a market capitalization of over $200 billion, "putting it among the 20 biggest companies by market cap in the US," the Wall Street Journal notes.

Alibaba's IPO beat out record IPOs like Visa's $17.9 billion IPO in 2008 and General Motors' $15.8 billion sale in 2010. And Alibaba beat out its peers in the tech sector too, like Facebook (whose first-day earnings were $16 billion) and Google (whose 2004 IPO raised only $1.67 billion—paltry in today’s terms).

... this NPR Planet Money story goes a long way in explaining the nature of Alibaba’s business—basically, Alibaba is known for making it easy to buy almost anything from manufacturers in China online, and directly from the manufacturer, at that.

The New York Times story is behind a subscription-wall; try instead these links:

posted by azrael on Sunday September 21 2014, @07:37AM   Printer-friendly
from the use-as-much-as-you-want dept.

A developer affiliated with boycottsystemd.org has announced and released a fork of systemd, sardonically named uselessd.

The gist of it:

uselessd (the useless daemon, or the daemon that uses less... depending on your viewpoint) is a project which aims to reduce systemd to a base initd, process supervisor and transactional dependency system, while minimizing intrusiveness and isolationism. Basically, it’s systemd with the superfluous stuff cut out, a (relatively) coherent idea of what it wants to be, support for non-glibc platforms and an approach that aims to minimize complicated design.

uselessd is still in its early stages and it is not recommended for regular use or system integration, but nonetheless, below is what we have thus far.

They then go on to tout being able to compile on libc implementations besides glibc, stripping out unnecessary daemons and unit classes, working without udev or the journal, replacing systemd-fsck with a service file, and early work on a FreeBSD port (though not yet running).

Responses from the wider Linux community are yet to be heard.

posted by n1 on Sunday September 21 2014, @05:53AM   Printer-friendly
from the how-was-your-day? dept.

A study has found that a spouse's personality can influence career success; those who had a conscientious spouse had a higher rate of occupational success.

In an effort to gauge whether these spousal personality traits might be seeping into the workplace, they tracked the on-the-job performance of working spouses using annual surveys designed to measure occupational success — self-reported opinions on job satisfaction, salary increases and the likelihood of being promoted.

Workers who scored highest on measures of occupational success tended to have a spouse with a personality that scored high for conscientiousness, and this was true whether or not both spouses worked and regardless of whether the working spouse was male or female, the study found.

Jackson and Solomon also tested several theories for how a spouse’s personality traits, especially conscientiousness, might influence their partner’s performance in the workplace. Their findings suggest that having a conscientious spouse contributes to workplace success in three ways.

First, through a process known as outsourcing, the working spouse may come to rely on his or her partner to handle more of the day-to-day household chores, such as paying bills, buying groceries and raising children. Workers also may be likely to emulate some of the good habits of their conscientious spouses, bringing traits such as diligence and reliability to bear on their own workplace challenges. Finally, having a spouse that keeps your personal life running smoothly may simply reduce stress and make it easier to maintain a productive work-life balance.

posted by n1 on Sunday September 21 2014, @04:05AM   Printer-friendly
from the innovating-packaging-and-presentation dept.

U2 and Apple are collaborating on a new, “interactive format for music”, due to launch in “about 18 months”. Bono spoke to Time [paywall] about a new tech scheme which “can’t be pirated” and will reimagine the role of album artwork.

Although initial reports compared the project to Neil Young’s Pono, or to Apple’s early DRM-restricted FairPlay files, Billboard reports that this is a bit of a misunderstanding. “It’s not a new format, but rather a new way to package and present an album,” said an unnamed source “with knowledge of the situation”. “This is focused on creative advances, versus shifts in technology.”

Ultimately, U2’s venture may be much more comparable to iTunes LP, which Apple premiered in 2009. That technology lets artists bundle visuals, interviews, and bonus content with digital album purchases.

posted by martyb on Sunday September 21 2014, @02:12AM   Printer-friendly
from the ask-and-ye-shall-receive? dept.

Jon maddog Hall blogged:

I am never again going to tell people why they should be using Free Software.

Instead I am going to ask them why they insist on using closed source software.

Is it because they love paying lots of money for software that does little more (if anything) than suitable Free Software?

Do they use closed-source software because they love waiting weeks and months for patches that they might have gotten much sooner in the Free Software community?

Perhaps they love getting new versions of the software thrown out at them every so often, instead of being able to directly interact with the developers through forums and mailing lists.

I will wait for these people to tell me that they use closed-source software because of the software warranty (laugh) or the support they get (bigger laugh).

What I really expect is that when I ask the question, I will get a sort of puzzled look and they will say "I do not really know why I use closed source software" and I will be most of the way to converting them.

There's also an old adage along the lines of "Tell me and I will forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and I will understand." Has anyone here attempted the above approach? What results have you had?

posted by n1 on Sunday September 21 2014, @12:41AM   Printer-friendly
from the market-wants-to-be-free dept.

Former economic adviser Lawrence Summmers is pushing the US government to lift its ban of exporting crude oil. Summers claims there is research showing lifting the ban would actually lower gasoline prices in the US.

CEO of energy giant Royal Dutch Shell argues US oil and natural gas exports "would reinforce the long term future of North American energy production, [...] help to make the global energy system much more stable," and of course significantly improve the US balance of trade.

The U.S. currently bans exporting crude oil, but allows the export of refined oil products. Refineries want to keep the ban because it ensures access to cheap and easy to refine crude oil. Environmentalists oppose the ban because they want to cut back on fossil fuel usage in general. Opponents also argue that lifting the ban could make oil products expensive or hard to get in the long term.

According to NPR, the POTUS could lift the ban with an executive order.

posted by n1 on Saturday September 20 2014, @10:54PM   Printer-friendly
from the when-freeciv-is-no-longer-enough dept.

Michael Larabel over at Phoronix has this little gem for us.

Besides the Linux release of Tropico 5, also available as of today is the official release of Wasteland 2, which is coming twenty-five years after the release of the original Wasteland.

[...] You can learn more about Wasteland 2 (or buy the game) by visiting the Steam Store. The Wasteland 2 classic edition is $39.99 while the digital deluxe edition will set you back $59.99.

The year of the Linux desktop? Yeah, probably not. A nice step forward for Linux gaming though for certain.

posted by martyb on Saturday September 20 2014, @09:30PM   Printer-friendly
from the if-you-hear-it-enough-it-must-be-true dept.

Some ads are straightforward: if you want really good quality for a reasonable price, buy Brand X. On TV, most are more indirect: evidently they're an appeal to our subconscious desires for status, love, sex, friendship, and recreation, or our fears of becoming a social outcast or a loser. Or maybe it's just "Mad Men" showing off their mad creative chops. Blogger Kevin Simler thinks there's something more subtle going on — his idea is that effective ads are designed to raise or maintain the social acceptability of the product, with the viewer thinking in terms of everyone in his or her peer group consuming the same ad. He dissects the Corona ad campaign feature an attractive young couple sitting in lounge chairs on a beach quaffing beer, first from the theory of a direct Pavlovian association of the product with love/sex/relaxation, and then from the alternative theory of establishing Corona as a 'good choice' for a brew at a club.