Posts by love not war

AI 'more profound than fire', Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai tells rich folks' talking shop

Re: Printing

People could *write* before the advent of printing.

Two can play that game: China orders ban on US computers and software

Re: Intellectual property

Because US corporations would not let that happen. US corporations may argue frequently in court about who owns a patent and whether a particular patent is valid, but they would not agree with a decision that valid patents can simply be ignored by government fiat.

Want an ethical smartphone? Fairphone 3 is on the way – but tiny market share suggests few care

Of course the only truly ethical smartphone is no smartphone.

You don't need a smartphone. It is a mindless, consumer-luxury good, that you have been deluding into buying.

The weirdly-synched life of the Google Nest household

Re: Don't see the point

Where the hell do you live?

Why don't you simply lock your door and call the police/insurance company if you do happen to be burgled (or other appropriate services in other cases).

By the Rivers of Babylon, where the Antikythera Mechanism laid down

Re: It's not a computer though

From the OED.

computer, n.

2. A device or machine for performing or facilitating calculation.

Google Glassholes haven't achieved 'social acceptance' - report

Re: I'd get some for the workshop.

Except that they're just not good enough for any of that. They're just a dumb, expensive, toy.

Your own eyes, spatial awareness, and memory (as unreliable as any of that may be) is much better at this job.

'I get it if you don't make money for 2 or 3 years, but Amazon's 21'

What's that in the sky?

@Eustace "I always wondered: what if you could design a system that would allow humans to explore the stratosphere as easily and safely as they do the ocean?"

FFS. Has he never heard of looking up?

Or an aeroplane, for that matter.

No bail for Kim Dotcom

By helicopter?

Where can he fly to from NZ by helicopter?

Does he have a secret base on a Pacific island?

Iran spy drone GPS hijack boasts: Rubbish, say experts

Sgt. Duffer and the Storm

Agree with LarsG, there are many plausible Sgt. Duffer scenarios that explain this. As he says, fuelling error, or something like a legitimate, but wrong, command and control signal from the US controllers easily explain this.

It is even plausible that a real mission went awry, for example, maybe the drone was deliberately landed in an attempt to re-supply a special-forces unit, but was intercepted by Iranian ground-forces.

Lots of other "natural" explanations work too --- hit by lightning or buffeting from turbulence causing some sort of system disconnection, for example.

If it did crash, as long as it lands in relatively flat terrain a fairly unscathed body is not that surprising either. The drone will probably be designed to glide --- as this saves on fuel for high altitude, long-duration missions. And it is surely designed to be rugged enough to experience a hard-landing without disintegrating into thousands of pieces. It will be designed such that it can land on an improvised/poor run-way when being used by a unit in the field, for example.

On the other hand, it would be foolish to assume that the Iranians hadn't figured out some method of causing a malfunction. And it would be equally foolish to assume that a propaganda statement (from either side) actually contained any truthful information about what this exploit was.

Gates: Killing the internet is easy

Killing is Easy

Any government capable of enforcing taxation policy on its population is also capable of turning off the internet if they so choose.

Even a government that has lost control over the majority of the population still only only needs to conivince a small number of corporations to follow the government's instruction in order to turn off the internet. Corporations are not in the business of bravely standing up for principles.

Ultimately, any government in control of at least a fraction of its armed forces can always seize/destroy the critical pieces of hardware.

Sure, there might be technical work-arounds that a limited number of people will have the technical nous to exploit. But, only a tiny, tiny fraction of the population will have the technical skills and the right equipment available at the right time.

Hitachi refrigerates rack rears

Money not for free

@StephenD " What does this mean? I'm pretty sure they haven't produced a power source with greater than 100% efficiency"

In refrigeration the COP is the amount of cooling you get (in kW) divided by the amount of energy required to run the refrigeration system (also in kW), which is usually the compressor and fans. COP is not an efficiency it is just a ratio of paid energy input to energy transferred.

In refrigeration you generally design the system so that you transfer a whole lot more heat from inside the refrigerated environment (to outside) than you put electrical energy in, thus the COP is typically bigger than 1.

In this case, because there is no compressor, they are claiming that the only paid energy input is the fan, thus because the fan energy is relatively small the COP is apparently large.

However, this means that the cabinet can't be refrigerated below the temperature of where they are condensing the refrigerant gas. Which is why in the example, they are sending the vapour off to a chilled water heat exchanger. The real cost is the cost of creating that chilled water. That is the COP which is relevant here; which is likely going to be on the order of 2-4.

So it is rubbish.

Iraqi insurgents hack US drones with $26 software

3 minds better than 1

Michael C. wrote...

> 5) if its anything like other flight computers I've seen, and worked on code for, it's not one computer, but 3, running on different hardware platforms and running on different OS.

So is this the inspiration for Culture Minds?