TFA says he was arrested in Guam (a US territory). The "kidnapped in the Maldives" thing seems to be coming from the Russian media, which isn't exactly the most trustworthy source on the planet (but at least it's a lot better than North Korea! ;) )

Russia (148th) might have been lower in the index had it not been for the stubbornness and resistance shown by its civil society. But the authorities keep on intensifying the crackdown begun when Vladimir Putin returned to the Kremlin in 2012 and are exporting their model throughout the former Soviet Union. From Ukraine (127th, unchanged) and Azerbaijan (160th, -3) to Central Asia, Russia’s repressive legislation and communications surveillance methods are happily copied. Moscow also uses UN bodies and regional alliances such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in its efforts to undermine international standards on freedom of information.

Criticism of the regime is common since the major demonstrations of 2011 and 2012 but media selfcensorship is far from disappearing. The federal TV stations continue to be controlled and, in response to the “return of politics in Russia,” the authorities have chose repression. Ever since Vladimir Putin returned to the Kremlin in May 2012, more and more draconian laws have been adopted. Activists, news media and bloggers have all been targeted. Defamation has been criminalized again, websites are being blacklisted and the range of activities that can be construed as “high treason” is now much broader. “Traditional values” are used to justify new restrictions on freedom of information, including the criminalization of “homosexual propaganda” and “insulting the feelings of believers.”

Not like the US is a bed of roses - its #46 standing puts it below countries like Botswana and Papua New Guinea, only one place above Haiti. But compared to Russia....

There wouldn't be so many injuries if such a large chunk of the people setting them off weren't drunk ;)

If there's was any country with that special combination of whale-hunting and pyromania to do it, it'd be Iceland ;)

Forgot to mention this: https://www.schneier.com/blog/...

That's probably the funniest noir moment about this. The Washington Post, a newspaper, is being trusted with data so sensitive they don't even want to reveal some of it publicly.

A newspaper! I think I'd rather give my credit card information to Target than trust a newspaper company with knowing anything about the internet.

I would count the days until lax security leads to the raw data leaking onto the general internet, but it's probably already been read by Unit 61337.

It doesn't specify all of them, but it does specify some of them:

There are others, too, but this would imply that if one of the legitimate targets had a slashdot account, or some other message board, anyone posting or reading the same site might be scooped up into the list of "incidental" targets.

Anyone showing signs of being a "likely" American, according to the article, were then "minimized". ie, their names were scrubbed. Of course their criteria for determining likely American status is not very rigorous.

Out of curiosity, where did you hear this?

I think it's really interesting that of the "minimized" identities listed in the article, one of them is

Does this mean they were reading Obama's communications after he was elected to become President, and then scrubbed his name from it?

They're sucking up all kinds of communications metadata, but it's separate and unrelated to the programs discussed in the article.

Here's the relevant paragraph from the article:

They use this information from Snowden, the 160,000 intercepted messages, showing that nearly 10 people were targetted "incidentally" for every 1 legitimate target. With that 10 to 1 ratio, and a transparency report released in june showing that there were almost 90,000 legitimate targets, the math comes out to approximately 1 million Americans "incidentally" targetted.

Of course it's a crock to say these people's communications were spied upon "incidentally". They were explicitly targetted for incidental reasons such as being in the same IRC channel, using a foreign IP address, etc.

What I don't get, though, is that the list of "minimized" targets whose identities were scrubbed as being likely Americans includes "a sitting President". Does this mean they spied on President Obama's communications, and then scrubbed his identity from it? Were these legitimate targets sending threatening emails to thanksobama@whitehouse.gov or what? Did they scrub any reference to his name, even when it didn't involve communications originating from him?

How did he wind up as any of these "incidental" targets?

Every single country in the world treats its own citizens differently from how it treats foreign nations' citizens. Governments as we know them could not even function if this were not the case.

??? I don't see that all. The links are just google image searches on "reykjavík fireworks", "brenna gamlárskvöldið", and "jóðhátíð í eyjum". Oh, hmm.... I'm betting that because I'm searching from Iceland I get differently biased results. I know that my regular google searches at least bias towards Icelandic sites. Okay, well, basically picture this for an hour while several dozen of these are ongoing, or summer festivals like this.

We kinda like fire.

Hmm, interesting, they actually limit how many can be shot off?

Yes, your description of size, wind, etc are accurate. Also it's a rather moist climate, not much fire risk. And most buildings are concrete. And the city is half surrounded by ocean. And since the money goes to support the rescue services, the incentive is to encourage people to shoot off as many as possible, rather than the other way around.

Whoops, included the wrong link for the "The whole city looks like this" part - it was supposed to be this link. The first one is a link to just a small festival display.

What's the actual price there?

I think a lot of people spend so much here because the profits go to the rescue services. Also, I guess since we have no military we've got to blow something up ;)

Irrelevant. You're still limited by supply rates and feed wire heating.

LOL. No, you most certainly are not. Supply for the vehicle is from local storage, charged slowly over time, ready for fast discharge when needed

LOL yourself. You were crediting ultracapacitors with fast charging. Now your "counter" is saying that no, you're talking about slow charging. Well, make up your damned mind.

As for feed wire heating, that's absurd. At these lengths, and these voltages, it's simply not a problem.

At the *thousands of amps* needed to surpass the charge rate capacity of li-ions, yes, you bloody well are talking about wire heating problems.

I know that with multiple high energy motors, motor peak current demands can be very high, particularly in the case of high power motors that batteries aren't good for, and that semiconductors can be arranged for very high parallelism.

Oh, please, get real. The supercar-performance Tesla Roadster uses a 215kW motor peak, max 100kW sustained. To drain the whole pack with the pedal to the floor constantly (which, as noted, the car doesn't support) would take over 15 minutes. The fastest you can actually drain it without overheating the car is about 45 minutes. And this is for a car that does 0-100 in 3,7 seconds.

Learn to admit when you make a mistake and move on. The concept that there's sort of car performance limitation from not being able to instantly discharge the whole pack is utterly absurd.

Oh heck no, not even close.

Then follow the instructions in the very next sentence that you ignored. But given that few car parts last longer than 10 years, and most ultracapacitors don't last that long, I think that's an unreasonable demand.

Montana's not a great environment for batteries at times. I'd have to rig a cover for it all, probably lose 6 inches of depth in the bed. Hmmm. :)

Montana? You did see that one of the supercap info sheets linked showed that they're only rated down to -25C, right? Why would you choose that over good li-ions which go down to -40C (some varieties go even lower)? Are you fond of getting stuck out in the cold?

It's only when they are unused for long periods of times that they don't.

In fantasyland, perhaps. Check the specsheets for actual real-world ultracaps, like the ones I linked. They explicitly state that capacity declines from having energy stored in them. So unless your plan is to fully discharge your car after every use, yeah, good luck with that.

The idea that their lifespan in use is ten years is a complete myth.

Yeah, what do those stupid nuthead supercap manufacturers know about their own products? fyngyrz, you tell them what's what!

Yes, yes, of course you can break them if you misuse them

You can break them by precisely the same method you said that you can't, as per the spec sheets of the manufacturers.

UC won't overcharge if a continuous supply is applied to them that is under their rated voltage.

The spec sheets explicitly contradict that.

Show me one in continuous, low cycle rate use that needs to be.

The spec sheets all explicitly describe the exact same internal resistance rise with time. There's tons and tons of peer-reviewed research on it. But no, no, we have fyngyrz here to correct all those stupid boffins!

According to all manufacturer information out there, the primary loss mechanism is not cycling but energy storage. You can cycle them tons without problem, but each second you leave them charged raises their internal resistance. The higher you charge them and the further the ambient temperature is from the optimal, the faster they die.

Look on EBay. Search for them. Look at all the used ones pulled from equipment. Why do you think that is?

For the exact same reason I can do that for batteries?

All of mine are; my initial curiosity resulted in a buying spree, and that eventually turned into the DC supply for my radio station, which requires about a kilowatt and a half when fully dialed up. I get a solid hour of runtime there, more without the linear running. Not a battery in sight. That's been working flawlessly since it was put into service just before 2000.

Whoopee. Because I'm sure you're storing full power in them continuously when you're not using your station, right, and they're operating and being stored at outdoor temperatures? Surely that's the case, because otherwise you'd be making a stupid analogy, and I know you wouldn't do that!

Well, you can say anything you want, but I don't think you've demonstrated any of this

Yeah, damn the manufacturer spec sheets!

Yes, that's exactly what I was talking about. Are you actually ignorant of the rate of technological disruptions we've seen pop up in tech after tech?

And your reason for presuming that they'll apply to supercaps but not to batteries, when the trend is precisely the opposite, is...?