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New Zealand Spy Agency Deleted Evidence About Its Illegal Spying On Kim Dotcom 222

Posted by samzenpus from the was-that-wrong? dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The latest news in this: GCSB appears to have deleted key evidence in the case in a ham-fisted attempt to cover up its illegal activities. Even more ridiculous, GCSB is trying to cover this up by claiming that the material had 'aged off' — implying that it was deleted automatically. New Zealand Prime Minister John Key claims that they had to delete the information under the law. Of course, there are a few problems with that. The first is that under New Zealand law, like most countries these days, parties have an obligation to preserve documents likely to be necessary in a legal case. But, even more damning is that there's video of John Key in the New Zealand Parliament trying to defend against an earlier claim that GCSB had deleted some evidence by insisting that GCSB does not delete anything ever:"
Science

Dried Meat "Resurrects" Lost Species of Whale 87

Posted by samzenpus from the it-was-delicious dept.
sciencehabit writes "A gift of dried whale meat—and some clever genetic sleuthing across almost 16,000 kilometers of equatorial waters—has helped scientists identify a long-forgotten animal as a new species of beaked whale. The 'resurrection' raises new questions about beaked whales, the most elusive and mysterious of cetaceans. Overall, the saga shows 'that there are probably even more species of beaked whales that we don't know about,' says Phil Clapham, a marine mammalogist at the National Marine Mammal Laboratory in Seattle, Washington. 'We don't see them because they're very deep-diving and live far from land.' They also live in a poorly surveyed part of the ocean, Baker says, where very few people dwell on remote atolls."
Math

Second World War Code-cracking Computing Hero Colossus Turns 70 110

Posted by samzenpus from the piece-of-history dept.
DW100 writes "The Colossus computer that helped the Allies crack messages sent by the Nazis during the Second World War has celebrated its 70th birthday. The machine was a pioneering feat of engineering, able to read 5,000 characters a second to help the team at Bletchley Park crack the German's Lorenz code in rapid time. This helped the Allies gather vital information on the Nazi's plans, and is credited with helping end the war effort early, saving millions of lives."
Open Source

Build an Open-Source Electric Car In About One Hour 188

Posted by samzenpus from the new-wheels dept.
First time accepted submitter joe5 writes "Like what Elon Musk has done and want to go all Etsy and build your own electric car? That's apparently now possible now thanks to the OSVehicle Tabby — dubbed the first "Open source vehicle" (memo: it may be cool, but it ain't the first). The OSV guys are taking pre-orders for the Tabby starter kit, with both the two-seater or four-seater configurations going for €500. Then you click to add options. (Note: seats is an "option" so that's the level of luxury you are dealing with here.) When the transaction's complete, OSV sends the parts to your home and you can download the plans and start building. Since the Tabby is open source, OSVehicle will also look to a community of owners and tinkerers for suggestions and recommendations."

Comment Vanilla.js FTW (Score 5, Funny) 573

by c0lo (#46170607) Attached to: HTML5 App For Panasonic TVs Rejected - JQuery Is a "Hack"

jQuery is a hack too?

Vanilla.js. Have a look over their jQuery/Vanilla-JS comparison examples and consider if you really want jQuery.
At a glance:

Vanilla JS is a fast, lightweight, cross-platform framework for building incredible, powerful JavaScript applications.
...
Vanilla JS makes everything an object, which is very convenient for OO JS applications.
Native support for HTML5 and other cutting-edge technologies makes me keep coming back to Vanilla JS, time after time.
Vanilla JS is the lowest-overhead, most comprehensive framework I've ever used.
NASA

NASA Pondering Two Public Contests To Build Small Space Exploration Satellites 127

Posted by samzenpus from the build-it-for-us dept.
coondoggie writes "NASA today said it was looking into developing two new Centennial Challenge competitions that would let the public design, build and deliver small satellites known as Cubesats capable of operations and experiments near the moon and beyond. The first challenge will focus on finding innovative ways to allow deep space communications with small spacecraft, while the second focuses on primary propulsion for small spacecraft."
Programming

HTML5 App For Panasonic TVs Rejected - JQuery Is a "Hack" 573

Posted by samzenpus from the lets-try-this-again dept.
An anonymous reader writes "I have been working on an HTML5 app for Panasonic VIERA TVs, specifically a client for the Plex Media Server. After paying $129 for the developer program, version 1.0 was submitted for inclusion in their VIERA Connect marketplace several weeks ago. After a few requested tweaks, they inquired about how the client communicated with the Plex Server. As many/most web developers do, I used jQuery and its $.ajax call (which is just a wrapper for XMLHttpRequest()). They insisted this was not standard Javascript, and after several communications with them, they replied back with "A workaround like this is considered a hack.". I'm stunned that anyone familiar with HTML would consider jQuery a hack. I've been patient in attempting to explain how jQuery works, but I am getting nowhere. Any thoughts on how I can better explain jQuery to an app reviewer? Yes, I know I can write my app without any Javascript library, but I am really hoping avoid that."

Comment Re:I love numbers but.... (Score 2) 253

by c0lo (#46159051) Attached to: India To Build World's Largest Solar Plant

77 sqkm=77e+6 sqm
Solar constant approx 1300w/sqm
=>total incident power = approx 1e+11 W.

Declared output 4000MW =4e9 W.
if assume this to be the peak power, the conversion efficiency is 4% - WTH??

if assuming this to be power averaged over an entire daylight period.... mmmm... let's ignore axis titl and assume equatorial position=> (-pi/2, pi/2) Sun's ecliptic travel over daylight. Cosine law integrated over the (-pi/2, pi/2) gives a factor of 2, while the max area (if the sun would be straight on top the entire day) would be pi. So, an averaging (fill) factor of 2/pi=0.64. so, if we are speaking 4000MV averaged over the day, the peak power would be 6283.18 MW. Dividing to 1e+11W=> conversion efficiency: 6.28%.

What type solar panels are they going to use??!!! The regular/consumer grade PV panels are somewhere around 11-12%!!

Comment Re:i hate fat fucks as much as the next guy... (Score 1) 225

but that's uncalled for!

What exactly from

the texts are for those ... who have proactively signed up to receive the motivational messages.

is unclear?
Or... did I miss the yesterday evening memo and the semantic of "signed up to receive" no longer cover the meaning of "called for"?

Comment Re:OT (was Re:Flawed Question) (Score 1) 269

by c0lo (#46157325) Attached to: How Voter Shortsightedness Skews Elections

You targeted the unnecessary use of one of the two adjectives. I would have asked what he did with the ugly one.

Naaaah... as I'm well aware by direct experience: beauty it's at best a metastable state. Given enough impulses and pumping... and the system looses all the excitation and falls onto the ground state (ugly, that is). Empirically, seems like a rule that applies no matter the sex, religion, race, etc.

Comment Re:"Looks like we got ourselves a thinker!" (Score 1) 412

by c0lo (#46157233) Attached to: Audience Jeers Contestant Who Uses Game Theory To Win At 'Jeopardy'

The classic 'American dream' is possibility. It's the idea that anyone can potentially work their way to great success, regardless of starting position. Even if they are born in poverty. It may be very difficult, but it can be done.

You know? There is a difference between possibility and probability.
To exemplify: there are higher odds you'll be injured on or near your toilet than it is to win the lottery - and, lemme guess, one necessarily takes more frequent chances with a toilet than with lotto (if you know what consequence I'm alluding here).

There are plenty of examples of people who did it via some mix of skill, luck and hard work. This is in contrast to the old way, where family background defined one's role in society to a much greater extent.

Well, one doesn't need search hard to find those thousands that lost (and were forgotten in the next minutes) for every one that has been a winner.

I guess I can take break to ponder a bit over the necessary vs the sufficient.
See, being cautios, having hope and staying positive, persevering and keeping cool will go long way in overcoming the obstacles and may seem like a necessity , but ...
even if you deeply believe in you, better stop kidding yourself: having rich parents is absolutely sufficient and certainly helps more than any and all the above.

Well, enough with the dreams and cliches, I really need to get back to work

Comment Re:One of the flaws of democracy... (Score 1) 269

by c0lo (#46156569) Attached to: How Voter Shortsightedness Skews Elections

I thought that this applies to meetings.
The election and the results of it seems better summarized by If you thing the problems we create are bad,

For the impatients (or less inclined to ponder the nuances) here's my point: it is not entirely the fault of the voting constituients, "absolute-or-rate comparions" won't matter too much if all that's on the different plates to choose from is the same shit in other presentation

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