How is this all that different than the System76 Meerkat??

To rephrase what an earlier poster (modded to 0 for whatever reason) said, SMS is used because secure alternatives are viewed as unworkable by both ends of the transaction chain. I would much prefer to use a private key, either software or hardware (Yubikey-like) for verification, but most institutions don't make that option available for mere raggedy-assed-masses customers. They don't make it available because most of their users won't want to (or can't) use it. Whether secure enough of not, SMS is easy and ubiquitous and the best-we-can-do approach is to try to make it as secure as possible given all the known limitations.

While it makes me cringe to paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld, we don't fight security issues with the tools we wish we had, we fight with the tools we have. In this case, "have" means "realistically available."

From the article: "SpaceX gained permission to build a commercial launch site in the area after a years-long process with the FAA and various stakeholders." The obvious questions are (1) were the local homeowners included as "stakeholders" (quite possibly not), and (2) if they were included didn't they realize that experimental rockets explode at times? Maybe they were included and Elon Musk told them not to worry about explosions. There's more to this story yet to surface.

Ah, but many in Alaska see the dismemberment of the UA college system as a feature, not a bug. Poke those pointy-headed liberal elitist ivory-tower types in the eye and bring them down a notch. Unfortunately for the UA folks, they don't have big football and basketball programs with GOP alumni supporters. This type of supporter for universities in many red states is all that keeps the meat cleaver from coming down on the likes of Duke, UK, or 'Bama.

Good god man, don't tell Apple about this!

I don't use Advantage 2 (the one mentioned by Parent) but I've used the Freestyle and Freestyle Pro (https://www.kinesis-ergo.com/shop/freestyle-pro/) on my Mac systems for over a decade, replacing the no-longer-made KeyTronic Flex Pro (which I used on Windows and Mac machines). I built a simple platform so I can crank these up to near vertical, and they saved me from what probably would have been crippling CTS. Takes a while to get used to this orientation, but if you're a touch typist (and who isn't these days?) it gets to feeling normal pretty quickly. The only time I hunt for keys is if I'm typing in some line-noise-like password. Your hands and wrists (and forearms) will thank you.

From what little I remember from when neural networks made their first buzzword splash back in the 1990s I think all the buzzwords in the summary are basically saying that they need an architecture that is really fast at doing multiplication of large matrices. Yes? If so, this really is not in any way a new problem - fast matrix math has been a staple of high performance computing since day 1, and these guys are just saying (I think) they want to build a processor designed just for that purpose. Or am I missing something, blinded by the sheer wonderfulness of their choice of buzz-ness?

What scientists (and engineers) call this is a POSITIVE feedback loop, in which an action causes a reaction which then increases the level of the original action. This sort of loop is highly unstable and can lead to extreme behavior in the system. There are also negative feedback loops, in which the reaction decreases the level of the original action. This is a stable behavior, and one that is quite often designed into all sorts of systems on purpose. If warming in the arctic ends up releasing large amounts of methane gas (something that has been postulated for a long time) that could end up making many of today's estimates of how fast the climate will change look very conservative.

Does anyone here have any experience with their POP!_OS flavor of Linux? I'm getting tired of waiting for Apple to remember that it is (was?) in the computer business and am looking to come back to Linux. I like the System76 hardware, but I'm not sure what distro to use (I used CentOS last time out).

This has happened before. If you google 'skylab ionosphere' you'll find that a large hole was made in the ionosphere during the launch of the Skylab space habitat. After a bit if study it was decided that this was due to the injection of water and other materials into the ionosphere which caused the sudden large decrease in ionization. Basically, this injection changed the electron loss rate in the area to the point where it was much greater than the solar EUV-driven electron production rate. The shock wave can create the ripples, but not the large hole. This will happen any time the main boosters are running when the rocket passes through the main part of the ionosphere (roughly 300-400 km up).

Didn't know this was a contest. Wrote my first professional code in the summer of 1968 at Kitt Peak National Observatory on a CDC 3200, and wrote my last program yesterday on a Mac (both in Fortran). My first "program" of sorts was on an analog computer kit that I helped put together in my 6th grade class in 1962.

CES isn't about how successful a company is today, it's about the future. Yes, Apple is still financially successful, but they are 'eating their seed corn' in that they are living on past technological leaps and have become rudderless as far as future tech is concerned (or they are way out ahead and Apple's legendary secrecy is keeping it all under wraps). My own feeling is that leadership is focused on fashion, or internal fighting over the company's direction/future, and there is no real work/plan for future products beyond getting rid of the tab at the top of the iPhone X display.

Sure we're wise - look who we elected President! OK, so we're fsck'd.

You cannot ‘solve’ a problem that is only identifiable through statistics (there are more male programmers than female) or anecdotes (my career was held back by sexist men in management). If hard facts can be documented of bias in hiring practices, or in how promotions are made, or how supervisors do their jobs, then you can identify problems that can be fixed. I believe this sort of thing is being done all over the US by companies that want to be gender-neutral, or at least don’t want to leave themselves open to clearly-supported lawsuits.

The only ‘solution’ to a statistics-defined problem is the solution-du-jour of quotas. If the population has X% of some identifiable sub-population (female, black, smokers, whatever), then the company will have X% of people of that sub-population in every job. This is not a solution, this is a hack on a major scale. It solves nothing, and arguably makes everything worse.

There is absolutely no place for sexism of any kind, male-on-female or female-on-male, in our society. However, sexism is not fixed by quotas.

Interesting response, however I was asking for the opinion of lawyerly types, not trolls.