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Comment "Please don't throw me in the briar patch!" (Score 5, Insightful) 152

This is supposed to motivate me to upgrade? Right now, on the rare occasion I use Google,* I have JavaScript completely disabled to make Google (search, image search, and news) actually work the way I want it to in my browser. If they're going to help with this by serving me their older---read "cleaner, simpler, faster"---search page, I say, thanks, Google!

* Google alternative. They use the Google index but don't track their users.

Submission + - Some raindrops exceed their terminal velocity (sciencemag.org)

sciencehabit writes: New research reveals that some raindrops are “super-terminal” (they travel more than 30% faster than their terminal velocity, at which air resistance prevents further acceleration due to gravity). The drops are the result of natural processes—and they make up a substantial fraction of rainfall. Whereas all drops the team studied that were 0.8 millimeters and larger fell at expected speeds, between 30% and 60% of those measuring 0.3 mm dropped at super-terminal speeds. It’s not yet clear why these drops are falling faster than expected, the researchers say. But according to one notion, the speedy drops are fragments of larger drops that have broken apart in midair but have yet to slow down. If that is indeed the case, the researchers note, then raindrop disintegration happens normally in the atmosphere and more often than previously presumed—possibly when drops collide midair or become unstable as they fall through the atmosphere. Further study could improve estimates of the total amount of rainfall a storm will produce or the amount of erosion that it can generate.

Comment Re:Right ... (Score 1) 175

That's what these large corporations all do.

Look at Google, grandstanding about moving things to HTTPS a few months ago, making things harder for the NSA, and so on, and yet at the same time they are now proactively scanning people's data for illegal activity and then handing it over to the government. Microsoft is doing the same thing.

What makes you think Yahoo will do anything different? The whole plan here is probably to get uninformed users to hand over their PGP keys so they can store them.

Comment "Highly concentrated life zone" (Score 0) 184

If you read the article, it explains this "dead zone" is actually full of algae---in other words, it probably has more life in it than the entire surrounding area (in terms of number of organisms, concentration of organisms, total biomass, and so on). Maybe this is a good thing, maybe it's bad, maybe it's entirely indifferent, but it is not a "dead zone."

But of course if we described the zone honestly, we wouldn't be able to use it as environmentalist propaganda, now could we?

Comment Re:so, I'm in the more than 8 yrs ago camp (Score 1) 391

I generally will upgrade some component(s) over that time frame. I built my first desktop back about 2000, using a Lian-Li case, which I still use (modular aluminum) the PSU has been upgraded 3 times, mobo 3 times, CPU 4 times, memory several times, video several times, storage several times and the OS twice.

Originally a 32 bit system with 256MB RAM and 1 80 GB HDD, it's now 64 bit, 6 cores, 32GB RAM, 256 GB SSD boot drive and 6TB RAID 5. Still screwing around with cheap video cards as I can do everything I need with a $49 card.

Submission + - How Facebook Sold You Krill Oil

An anonymous reader writes: With its trove of knowledge about the likes, histories and social connections of its 1.3 billion users worldwide, Facebook executives argue, it can help advertisers reach exactly the right audience and measure the impact of their ads — while also, like TV, conveying a broad brand message. Facebook, which made $1.5 billion in profit on $7.9 billion in revenue last year, sees particular value in promoting its TV-like qualities, given that advertisers spend $200 billion a year on that medium. “We want to hold ourselves accountable for delivering results,” said Carolyn Everson, Facebook’s vice president for global marketing solutions, in a recent interview. “Not smoke and mirrors, maybe it works, maybe it doesn’t.”

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