That actually happened here - one government corporation recently came under FOIA discovery, and their FOIA procedure was to post all requests fulfilled on a public website.

So naturally, the FOIA requests came in, and the results were well, made public.

The news agencies made such a loud noise about it and filed lawsuits all about it, to the point where the company stopped putting the data up for 24 hours.

While the intention was to foil FOIA requests, I always felt that putting the results up immediately was the proper way to do it, not trying to hide it so someone else can make big bucks from it. We the taxpayer paid for that too.

Funny, that's exactly what contractors do. I was a contractor for 4 years at a desk where I had to show up in exact hours, attend OIG presentations about sexual harassment and child pornography on business systems, and of course was not allowed to post on Facebook where I work.

Then more likely you weren't a contractor. You were an employee treated as a contractor.

It's why tax agencies are scrutinizing employment contracts because there are a bunch of differences between a contractor and an employee. And simply calling an employee a contractor doesn't make them one - there are many things a contractor is free to do, and tax agencies look to that.

In other words, most "contractors" are really working in an environment where the employer is just screwing them over - they aren't real contractors.

Uber's probably looking at the same as well - paid indentured servant perhaps? I mean, it isn't that hard to make them real independent contractors - you just have to run the risk that half your Uber drivers might also work for Lyft and competitors. Binding them to Uber and making them follow Uber's way is closer to employee than contractor.

I did not choose the SSDs. They came with the industrial panel pc and were marketed as industrial grade.

Yeah, that'll be the problem.

"industrial grade" is typically code for "industrial temp" and they just pick whatever crap meets that requirement. And knowing that you probably want that, the controllers are probably full of bugs.

I'd actually trust the good consumer version of the SSDs than the buggy industrial ones where the technology dates to before Intel SSDs made them good.

We've improved things a lot -SSD failure on power loss is generally limited to the cheap non-name brand crap or they have built in power protection, speeds have exceeded what SATA can do, etc.

Heck, sometimes what's inside those "industrial ssds" is probably just a CompactFlash type card which have poor speeds and so-so reliability.

By far the biggest failure among dozens of SSDs deployed is power failure induced loss, and it was rare. We did limit ourselves to good quality SSDs from Intel and Samsung. The data loss happened when the owner dropped his laptop while it was on and it shattered into many pieces. (Laptop was a write-off, as well). But the SSD was recovered by a secure erase.

In an industrial environment, I can see sudden power loss crapping out the SSDs - no one takes the time to properly shut down the PC, and industrial SSD vendors typically don't follow the advancements in SSD technology that's happened in the past few years.

The problem is how to judge expertise on a resume.

So certifications get you past the HR filter.

Only then do you get to talk to someone who (in theory) knows programming/whatever enough to evaluate your actual expertise.

So, what is it worth to get past that first hurdle?

Well, you bypass HR.

HR is only if you're really just starting out and have no clue how to get started. If you're in secondary school, start making friends and visit job fairs held there. Especially the ones where the companies are interviewing on the spot because it's real employees (not HR) looking over the resumes and doing the interviews.

And after that, make sure you're keeping tabs on people as they join and leave because these people will form your network, and networking gets you at those jobs that aren't listed. And using your network means you're bypassing HR. Plenty of hiring is done word-of-mouth and there are even hidden jobs posted publicly to meet HR rules.

You skip the HR filter, and you get involved with someone who can champion your cause and push your candidacy forward.

it's an usb ethernet dongle.

True, but it's actually a USB power adapter with a Ethernet port on it. The USB-Ethernet adapter is in the power aadapter and the single USB cable goes to the Chromecast.

So it's not a dinky adapter dangling from your Chromecast (and slowly unplugging it if your HDMI ports are the wrong orientation), but it accepts Ethernet at the power adapter and asingle cable goes to the Chromecast. Quite elegant a solution, really.

Then how is Apple having such good luck with them? Granted, Macs aren't generally used as high-transaction-count Servers; but people who do media creation/editing can sure churn through some R/W cycles in a hurry.

First off, the problem is Linux is somehow triggering a bug in the TRIM implementation on Samsung SSDs.

We know Windows doesn't do it, as Windows users are probably the biggest consumer of Samsung SSDs and there isn't a mass loss of data problem from Windows users. (And from querying Windows 7 via the command line, Windows does use TRIM).

OS X may be using TRIM or not (depends on whether you're talking Apple-approved SSDs which are OEM versions, or third party user installed SSDs replacing the hard drive that was shipped). It's possible OS X may use TRIM in a way that it doesn't trigger the bug. Or maybe it does it less aggressively than Linux, so the bug incidence is far lower and no one noticed it yet.

All we know is that Linux definitely triggers the TRIM bug, OS X and Windows doesn't, yet (but there are no guarantees that Apple or Microsoft won't change the way Windows 10 or El Capitan does TRIM which WILL expose the bug).

The bug is in TRIM. That's all, if you don't use TRIM, it'll be fine. Maybe even using fstrim periodically is OK over using discard mode.

So, basically Microsoft successfully killed the actual Nokia, successfully transferred the IP to themselves, have completely screwed the pooch in terms of being able to manage an acquisition which never made any sense ... and now they've written off the purchase.

Nokia is still around, they've just reverted back to their core business - selling telephony equipment.

Nokia's well known for their handsets, but handset business is awful, due to its consumer nature. It's low profit, mass production, with lots of time wasted on stuff like warranty and support.

Microsoft bought that business.

Nokia's core business of selling equipment used to run cell networks is still around - Microsoft didn't buy that, and the core is honestly where the money's at. Think whenever a carrier goes and sets up a new cell tower all the equipment they need to buy - controllers, baseband processors, amplifiers, exciters, receivers, antennas, etc. all costing 6 figures minimum. And one set for the bands in question, another set for 2G, 3G and 4G, ... and you're talking millions of dollars of hardware, the BOM cost of which is probably well under $100k.

And with 5G on the horizon, that's more opportunity.

The real Nokia is still around, and they've shed the crappy parts of their business.

Actually, the truth isn't that.

His contract with Fox and the Simpsons states he's to get 5 weeks off guaranteed. He's always been allowed to pursue other projects on his on and off time, and he's actually fairly rich as it is (and old - so more money just means more inheritances).

What happened was last season, Shearer was on his contract-given break when Al Jean wanted him to do some quick voice work, and that was what broke the camel's back.

His wanting more time to pursue other things was probably a veiled attempt at explaining this - while he was free to do it during his contracted time, the Simpsons would always be first priority (so he would have to drop everything, do whatever The Simpsons wanted, then return back). So his options were limited and he really only 5 weeks where he could go and do other things where the Simpsons were not his priority.

So Al Jean wanting to impinge on that time (which to be honest, probably Jean thought it was a minor thing, like a one-liner or something and he'd be in and out in an hour) sent him over the edge to tell Fox to screw it.

And that's how it is - he's free to moonlight and provide talent all year, but when he's "on Simpsons time" he's required to put that first ahead of his other work he's pursuing. When he's off, he can do what the f*ck he wants, even the Simpsons can't stop him.

The layman version is - he gets 5 weeks of vacation a year. He got screwed because his boss wanted him to come in to do a quick something or other. He blew his top.

Worthless if you are trying to build your own HFT system perhaps. But not so worthless if you can reverse engineer critical parts of the code and demonstrate that its purpose is to front-run other people's trades rather than just being really fast. If you can show this, you can make a very good living testfying in civil court cases on behalf of clients that got screwed by Goldman Sachs.

That only works for clients of Goldman Sachs. It doesn't apply to the stock market in general. Because HFT is regular trading - by the time you are notified of the trade, it's already happened.

You don't need HFT to front-run a trade - if a client says they want to buy one hundred shares of XYZ Inc., you as the brokerage could front-run that yourself. You always could, and it doesn't take a computer to do that.

HFT just trades really fast. Once a trade takes place, it's broadcast to everyone who adds that trade to the algorithm. But once you hear about a trade, it's happened. The only way to "see into the future" is inquire into the bids and asks queue which will show you the most a buyer is willing to pay (and the amount they want to buy), and the lowest a seller will sell for (and the amount they want to sell). This spread is where everything happens. In an ideal world, if you want to sell stock, there will be a willing buyer at the price you want, and vice-versa, but if the bid-ask spread is high, then your stock is a lot less liquid - either you have to dump it because the bids are low, or you have to overpay because the asks are high. (Remember, you can't just sell stock - you only put it up for sale. The trade happens when buyers and sellers come together and agree - i.e., the buyer is wiling to pay the seller's price, and the seller is willing to accept the buyer's price).

Now there are isolated incidents where trading centers get confused and you get arbitrage happening, but that's a normal behavior as well - surely you must've thought about buying up a bunch of product that doesn't sell in your area, then reselling it where it's constantly sold out.

So many people don't realize how the stock market works, which is a shame, because the stock market is just like any other market or store. Just because you "sell" something doesn't mean it'll sell - all you did was put it up for sale. You can ask anything, but it's up to the buyer or seller to accept.

All markets work the same way - even eBay. Putting something up there doesn't guarantee a sale if the buyers feel the price is too high. Even "sniping" isn't a bad action - it's just putting a bid close to the end time of an auction to try to get the item at a price close to its current bid. But if someone put in a bigger bid earlier, that prevails.

In fact, there's a very accessible "stock market" that with some patience, you can earn a few bucks without any investment. Go get a Steam account, and wait for a sale, and do whatever you can to get cards. Then sell those cards In the marketplace. The marketplace works just like a stock market complete with bids and asks, and the Valve trading server will perform the sales as buyers and sellers agree on a price. You can see trendlines, volume, etc., and learn a lot. And it won't cost you anything - you can easily make $2-5 this way, which isn't a bad way to go for an education in how markets work.

You can experiment as well - sell too low and the trade happens immediately because you'll have buyers. You can be a buyer and put in a bid and see how long the bid takes to be fulfilled.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't that much reduction be fairly pointless? Wouldn't you basically have to make it out of unobtainium (the high-torque parts, anyway... most of it, that is) in order to do useful work with it?

I think the point is it's a gearbox that's quite small for its reduction ratio. And to make it that small requires basically being unable to assemble it in the traditional fashion because there's a lot of gears that going about inside one another.

To assemble a gearbox with that kind of reduction ratio with even the smallest parts the traditional way would make it quite big, short of using extremely small precision gears like that in a mechanical watch.

In other words, it sounds like the Greek government is living in a fantasy where everybody else pays for their society.

This sounds like the USA, where all the world economy is sustaining the dollar's value.

Except the USA isn't bankrupt, and there's plenty of people who don't mind investing in the US. Sure the country may be spending more than it gets through taxation, but everyone feels that the US fundamentals are good, and there are valuable assets in the country. And in general, the US economy is generally good.

Greece, well, other than tourism and exports, doesn't have much. Their economic fundamentals are far weaker, and the only reason people were investing in Greece was to prevent their economy from collapsing. Unfortunately, Greece's economy is basically dead with very little economic output (mainly tourism, but even tourism is suffering because tourists need to bring cash, not credit or debit).

By the time the US gets to the point where Greece is, the world has far bigger problems as in everyone else has screwed up quite badly.

All Constitutional issues aside (Free Speech, Prior Restraint, etc.) They can't keep details of their spying program out of the news. They expect to prevent people from exchanging these documents?

Actually, ITAR is a brilliant solution.

Because no, they don't expect you to not post the information. Because you can - as long as it's within the US or to people in ITAR-approved countries.

It's just like the "strong encryption" thing of two decades ago. You were free to distribute software containing strong encryption, but only to ITAR countries.

And export of such content was basically a criminal act.

So yes, you can post your 3D gun plans, but you need to verify the user is in an ITAR approved country lest you be charged with export of munitions.

The study is only available on HD DVD.

You jest, but the real truth has shown what really decided the HD format wars - money. And lots of it. The better part of a billion dollars paid out by Sony to the studio.

Because consumer acceptance of HD-DVD was quite strong - it was anywhere from 10:1 HD-DVD to Blu-Ray to 2:1 at the lower end.

In the end, what really happened was Sony was getting quite worried because Blu-Ray was performing poorly. So poorly a lot of studios were actually thinking of switching away. Warner was telling the HD-DVD camp if they could get another studio to switch, they will switch. HD-DVD knew Fox was going to switch, so that would cause Warner to switch exclusively to HD-DVD as well.

A week before Fox was to make the switch official, they canned the deal - it was later revealed Fox was paid $120M to stay Blu. Warner was also paid $500M to stay Blu.

So yeah, Sony was pretty desperate and threw a lot of money around.

How do they know what is significant? I assume that after earthquakes in the past some zoo employee reported that he/she saw the animals behaving strangely but didn't realize they were trying to tell him an earthquake was imminent. This in the country that uses rhinoceros horns and bear gall bladders as aphrodisiacs.

Well, that's why you do ... research!

The hypothesis is "animals can predict earthquakes and we can detect it because they behaved 'funny'". Well, we need to find out what 'funny' is. So you're going to have to do a lot of post-earthquake interviewing with the animal handlers to see what they report. And you're going to have to do observations of animals as well.

This is going to basically amount to a TON of data collection and observation, and we won't know until an earthquake happened. And we'll have to observe a lot of animals - both of the same species, and of different species to see if the behavior transfers.

Once you narrow down "funny behavior" then you can do research with large numbers of animals to see if they all exhibit the same behavior, if the behavior is accurate, if it's statistically significant, etc.

The short answer is - we don't know, which is why we're doing research. But the sheer scale of the exercise (and the general lack of earthquakes on demand) may mean the study goes on for decades.