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Comment Re:What we don't know... (Score 1) 564

But maybe we'll hit some point where it all cascades very quickly.

If we ever create even minor AI that can learn on its own like humans do, then it can easily cascade very quickly as it turns into simply 'adding cores' and letting the AI improve itself.

Replace 'adding cores' with whatever is actually relevant to the technology of the time.

Comment Re:crossed the 5million mark at about 9:30 Eastern (Score 1) 117

Then you shouldn't have allowed it to be sold in the first place.

The whole thing is still silly, a single person like Bill Gates, Larry Ellison or Steve Job's wife (to pick the popular easy to recognize names) can easily out fund this PAC with nothing more than a signature and a laugh about it ... there are thousands of people who can do it. This PAC is one.

Comment Re:There need to be costs (Score 1) 349

Better still, the company claiming infringement has to claim a monetary cost with the DMCA take down request, and if its bogus, they have to pay at least twice that back, half to the ISP/hoster, half to whomever they made the false claim against.

i.e. I file a DMCA request against your content on github., I must claim the monetary damages I expect should I go to court. If you counter the claim, you have the option of requiring a hearing. That hearing results in me getting my monetary claim (and not a penny more) against you and the take down stays down, or I have to pay twice the amount I claimed, half to you, half to github, and it goes back up.

Lets see how this shit goes under those rules.

Comment Re:Not likely in modern communications (Score 1) 109

And if they record to a VHS tape, I might be concerned. Once it hits the MPEG encoder, not so much. The entire point of MPEG is to throw out as much data as possible if it isn't perceptible by humans and recreate it as something that is much smaller but looks the same to human senses.

MPEG is perceptual encoding. The imperceptible would be lost by design, not because they were trying to ensure privacy but simply as a side effect of the design.

Yes, they could easily design cameras that could use stenography to encode data in the mpeg stream that would survive, but that isn't what we're discussing. We're discussing power line noise making its way through the entire system and being used to ID a recordings location.

Even so, assuming an analog recording, I'm still inclined to believe it would rarely work just based on modern electronics having so much built in power supply conversions and filtering. Digital ballasts for example are going to make it hard to see fluctuations in lighting.

Comment Re:FAA possible influence (Score 1) 112

No one gives a shit about your crappy little 5.8ghz FPV system. Your toy is not a serious problem.

People who fly anything more than a pre made toy don't use 5.8ghz, it sucks ass for range. 2.4ghz is only marginally better, and anyone who actually cares uses 900mhz.

As was stated if you'd bothered to read, the bandwidth in question is also right around the area used by most doppler radar stations, which means random broadcasts from unregulated devices screw with doppler radar.

Also, again, if you'd bothered to read ... you'd see that the story is actually about the FCC getting irked that some devices allow end users to override existing rules for limiting power and frequency usage in the 5.8ghz band. Basically, because some shitty link sys WAP doesn't properly restrict power/frequency selection in firmware, and it can be configured by the OS to go beyond legal limits, the FCC is cracking down and getting onto manufactures who don't properly lock down their firmware.

Comment Re:5GHz ? (Score 1) 112

You're apparently unaware that farmers need Internet access in the modern age, too.

You are apparently unaware of the meaning of the word need .

No one needs the Internet. Using the wrong words utterly destroys any point you might be trying to make by showing how you don't actually know what you're saying or are just being ridiculous in your statements.

Comment Re:OP vs Reality (Score 0) 112

Finland's average speed to the sites in Finland may be awesome. Average speed to the sites I want to visit?

Just because the last mile is fast doesn't mean that its useful.

Stop cherry picking metrics to go off ranting about. There comes a point when faster isn't really needed for your usage. I can get 50mb, but why bother, 99.99% of the time it would be wasted and do nothing but cost me more.

Of course, I'm also in a city thats on the list for Google Fiber soon so I'll probably be changing my story after getting it :O

Comment Re:So who is behind this? (Score 4, Informative) 112

No, no need to rush.

They just stop the radio from being modifiable by software in such a way the violates the rules. The radio firmware for radios sold in the US just won't let you use those bands at too high of power.

Guess what, they ALREADY WORK LIKE THIS.

Your OSS router software can't make random changes to the radios currently, never has been able to as there are already laws in effect governing these issues.

Some devices allow you to get buy with more than you should, but thats generally an oversight, and easily fixed in the next hardware revision ... as already happens.

This isn't going to take away your precious, no need to get your panties in a knot.

Comment Not likely in modern communications (Score 4, Informative) 109

Due to the amount of signal processing that goes on with modern television, its highly unlikely. MPEG compression probably stops it at the source since its instantly fuddled with and massive amounts of the data they use is lost right then and there.

If you were actually afraid of the NSA finding you, as a whistle blower, getting around this form of tracing is trivial.

Use a UPS for power, unplugged from the power grid. No power line tracking.

Or the more old school way that people have done for a while, record it and leave before broadcasting it. Locating the source of the recording doesn't mean much if the target is already 800 miles away.

Government

California Property Tax Exemptions For Solar Energy Systems Extended To 2025 76

New submitter DaveSmith1982 writes with word from PV Tech that A property tax exemption for solar power systems in California has been extended to 2025, following the passing of a bill as part of the annual state budget. Senate Bill 871 (SB871) was approved during the signing of the budget by governor Jerry Brown, which took place last week. The wording of SB871 extends the period during which property taxes will not be applied to "active solar energy systems," which includes PV and solar water heaters.

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