Let's ignore (for now) how (US) laws make the major automobile manufacturers dependent on their dealer networks to sell cars (etc.) - and the dealers are dependent on their service bays to stay in business. Consider only the operational aspects of how software updates are applied to cars - which is a VERY manual process with technicians and experts trained in ways to communicate with each other, and with (typically) a several day window in which the update(s) can be applied while the owner finds alternate transportation.

The existing process is (relatively) forgiving, since a technician has documentation, experience, and additional technical support to call for help. The customer is already inconvenienced, so adding a few hours (or even days) to the update process while problems are worked out is (barely) tolerable. Moreover, two cars of the same model (and trim) but manufactured a few weeks or months apart may have different controllers - something that the technician could verify, but the owner might not.

I suspect that software updates for most major automobile manufacturers is more like the state of firmware, driver, and OS updates was for Windows back in the 1990s.

Changing this will take time.

Heck, just create your own Board to issue Certificates of Authenticity - just like Rand Paul tried to do for ophthalmology (see http://www.washingtonpost.com/... )

Also, "Herbal" remedies can be marketed and sold without FDA involvement. I'm not sure whether the alternative medicine culture regrets or revels in the lack of scientific testing of most remedies, but it sure creates a wide open market where shysters can sell snake oil. And if it's homeopathic snake-oil, they don't need to squeeze the snake.

There are also certain herbal remedies where the evidence is inconclusive - but where it has been a popular folk-remedy for a long time (i.e.: echinacea .)

The article is about scheduling access to thread prioritization lists implemented as linked lists, not scheduling individual instructions. The issue involves multiple CPUs contending for the root (start) of a linked list, which causes cache-invalidation in the CPUs, thereby causing systemic inefficiencies.

A very dumbed-down description of their solution is to have multiple "root" lists in order to reduce the frequency of cache-contention/invalidation.

Perhaps they mean "en-pheasant"

Thanks. That makes it more steerable (provided that the edges of the disk remain in a plane too.)

A disk 1/5 mile with a sensor 10 to 100 miles away (precisely aligned on the axis of the disk) isn't going to be very steerable, especially if the distances from the EDGES of the disk to the sensor all have to match within a half-wavelength in order for the interferometry to work right.

And wouldn't the changing relative positions of earth, moon, and sun cause disturbances in the disk? Is the solar wind sufficiently uniform over distances of 1/2 mile at earth orbit to not be a concern for causing non-uniform disturbances to the disk?

"geostationary" MUST be a mistake in the article. I don't see how the sensor can maintain a 1/2 wavelength position from the disk at a range of 10 to 100 miles unless the sensor is powered (ion drive?) somehow.

From the website: https://localmotors.com/3d-pri...

Is the entire car 3D printed?

Everything on the car that could be integrated into a single material piece has been printed. This includes the chassis/frame, exterior body, and some interior features. The mechanical components of the vehicle, like battery, motors, wiring, and suspension, are sourced from Renault’s Twizy, an electric powered city car.

Disney does have some control over it's employees. Just as it can fire employees for coming to work drunk - or for risking the lives of fellow employees or visitors, so it can take measures that affect their employment in regards to vaccinations and disease outbreaks, from banning un-vaccinated employees access to public spaces to limiting their leaves to making vaccination a condition of employment. (Of course, that doesn't solve the problem of employment practices that penalize people for taking sick-time, etc.) But that's not going to solve Disney's problem because it currently can't discriminate against visitors who aren't vaccinated and so the impression of large theme parks as being a Horrifying Den of Disease is going to persist.

Disney isn't going to want to alienate it's customers by running advertisements asking people who aren't vaccinated to avoid coming to it's parks. It'll just irritate the anti-vaccination crowd and scare off the conventional people who think the anti-vaccination crown is terribly, horribly wrong (and irresponsible enough to visit anyway.)

A trade association COULD run public service messages to the effect that willfully avoiding vaccination is as bad as drunk driving and killing a family in a car accident. The government COULD make vaccination records available on state issued ID cards (drivers licenses, etc.)

This is a public health and safety issue, and like most such issues, practical and efficient solutions can come into conflict with some perceived individual freedoms. Even worse for some people, it involves the dreaded word "compromise". For instance, I give up the freedom to drive a car where ever I want to so that I have some assurance that I'm safe from people driving the opposite direction on the same side of the road I'm on, or on my lawn.

Perhaps the right solution (compromise) would be standardized, opt-in credentials that indicate what kind of conventional (sensible) things I'm willing to abide by, like:

• (*) I'm vaccinated;
• (*) I'm NOT packing a firearm;
• (*) I don't chew gum in public.

People who think that such assertions are an infringement of their privacy don't need to opt-in. Privately run facilities could make decisions based on those credentials - although Public parks would probably not be able to.

While this is purely speculation, could China be aiming to offer itself as a global (or even regional) interconnect? Or is the the ability to play NSA-like games on international traffic within home-borders just not a realistic possibility anymore?

I'm thinking of how a "Chinese" error (in Germany) caused traffic between two Russian cities to be directed out-of-country (see http://research.dyn.com/2014/1... ).

I can take the tin-foil hat off anytime I want to, but I really do like the propeller beanie.

Ignore (for now) the possibilities of vendor-abandoned embedded software on your home network to cause mischief or frustration.

Ignore (for now) someone spear-phishing you with your fridge or washing machine.

Just think about all of the lovely data collected into one central place about a home address where people with lots of disposable income live.

The flaw we're seeing here is various "computer security journalists" (and journals) destroying their reputations.

This is on the order of discovering that big heavy things that fall on your foot can cause pain.

Definitely a weird article. If you ignore the hyperbole, all you get is a military boondoggle. The idea that it's part of some NSA spying operation falls apart in the face of the Raytheon promotional material - "double digits of swarming boats" and "hundreds of cars" in the Baltimore area sounds woefully insufficient, either for tracking suspected cruise missile delivery systems or giving the NSA anything more useful than what they have.
I suppose it might be practical for protecting Marquette, MI from an invasion from Canada.

Given how overweight most Americans are, I suspect that any effects of nude flying on TSA worker morale will be negative.

If the tolls were used to offset another public good (public schools being the only other one that's nearly as expensive), it might work to encourage either people living in-town, or some businesses leaving town. Of course, that would only work if schools and the toll roads were under the same authority. (FYI, I live in Ann Arbor, Michigan where while we might complain about traffic and parking, we don't have anything like LA's situation. But being part of Michigan, we probably have the worst roads in the nation and a GOP/Tea Party dominated state government that's so tax-phobic that it's even more dysfunctional than the US House of Representatives.)