What I have in mind for the "companion tool" is the sawblade, the metal file/metal saw, magnifying glass, and possibly pliers. Plus whatever else they can fit without making it any wider.

The problem is that they sell a knife that has everything my knife has on it, plus some or all of the above list. (Example: the Craftsman) I don't want the weight or bulk of a single tool with all of that stuff.

Brother, you better hope you never fall off a pier, or you're gonna sink like a stone.

According to my kitchen scale, everything I listed (other than the cargo pants and the extra money in the wallet) together weighs 360 grams. That's 12.7 ounces or a little over three-quarters of a pound, and it's spread across two pockets.

When I wear dress pants, like for a suit, I don't carry all that stuff but it's more because the pockets would visibly bulge and not because it's a lot of weight.

Almost all the time, I wear cargo pants because I want pockets.

On my keychain, I have a simple tool for poking reset buttons that are inside small access holes; I made it from a paperclip. I also have a SwissTech folding pliers tool, which I mostly use for its screwdrivers.

I also try to never be without a paper towel or at least napkin in a pocket. If someone spills coffee or something I have the fastest response time, and sometimes I want to dry my hands in a bathroom that is out of towels.

I carry a Swiss Army knife, one that isn't as thick as my forearm so it doesn't have pliers or a saw. It does have both scissors and a corkscrew. I used to carry one with a Phillips screwdriver, but the SwissTech on my keychain covers that now, and once when someone really needed a corkscrew I didn't have one. Never again! Not on my watch!

(By the way, I have always wished that the Swiss Army knife companies would make a "companion" tool, that doesn't have the basic knife blades and screwdrivers but has the saw, the file, and the other more exotic tools. I'd sooner carry two slim tools than one thing as thick as my forearm.)

I carry a Fenix E11 pocket flashlight. It runs for many hours on a single AA cell, with plenty of light, and it has a high-power mode. It claims 8 hours for the 35 Lumens mode, and less than 2 hours for the 100 Lumens mode. I haven't verified those numbers. I love this thing: it uses a Cree LED to produce a really bright white light. It's 21st Century technology; nobody could make such a thing in the 20th Century.

I carry a Spyderco "Delica" folding knife. It's just the thing for opening packages from Amazon or whatever. It locks open for safety, and I love the thumb hole for one-handed opening. (I'm amazed that they were able to patent that. Once that patent expires I reckon most lock-back knives will have a thumb hole for opening.)

I also carry a Spyderco "Rescue Jr." folding knife. It's specifically designed for tasks like cutting a seat belt when rescuing someone from a crashed car. I've never needed it for this purpose, so its other purpose is that I keep it clean, and if someone needs a clean and sharp knife for food, I offer that one. The Delica usually has little slivers of packing tape or other crud on it from opening delivery boxes.

I carry an "unbreakable" pocket comb. Not only do I use it to comb my hair, but I usually use it to prop a door open when I want to make sure the door doesn't lock closed behind me.

I carry a Fisher "space pen" in black ink, and a cheap disposable pen in blue ink. I can easily tell which is which, and if someone wants to borrow a pen I usually loan them the cheap one and don't get upset if I don't get it back. (If I loan the Fisher, I keep the cap; this reminds people that they need to give it back.)

I carry enough cash for cab fare or a meal, buried in my wallet. I try never to use this as I want it to be there if I ever need it.

I also have a backpack that has a whole bunch of stuff in it (USB charger and USB cables kit, mini first aid kit, etc.) but the above is what I carry all the time.

I'll state up front that I agree: Keurig coffee isn't great. The beans were ground months ago, the amount of coffee isn't a lot, and it's pretty easy to do better.

Yet these machines fill a niche. There is a reason why they are popular, and that reason isn't "everyone but you is an idiot".

Several places the Keurig works:

A small office, where a conventional coffee maker would result in throwing away half-full pots of unused coffee. The Keurig contains the mess, so the office won't have coffee grounds everywhere. (If you work at an office where nobody ever makes a mess and leaves it for others to clean up, great! Get a real coffee grinder and something better than a Keurig!)

A small restaurant like a burger shack, where sometimes people order coffee but it's not that common. The Keurig is fast and the coffee will be better than most ways a burger shack could make coffee.

At home, for someone who values convenience more highly than saving money or having tasty coffee. Or, as a way someone who doesn't drink coffee can offer coffee to guests. (The K-cup capsules have a longer shelf life than fresh coffee beans.) Also a way for someone who normally doesn't drink decaf to keep a little bit of decaf around.

I don't own a Keurig and I don't want one. But I don't sneer too much at those who choose to own one.

P.S. If you run a burger shack and you want to serve coffee, look into the AeroPress. Not as convenient as a Keurig but convenient enough, and makes better coffee.

I think perhaps my original post doesn't give enough credit to Linus himself. I'll correct that here: not only was he diligent in rolling up contributed code, he was skillful at managing the project. Like Steve Jobs, he gave "unity of command" and made many more correct decisions than incorrect decisions.

Not only that, but he was able to adapt as the project evolved. I imagine that what he does these days is very different from what he was doing in the earliest days, but he has grown and learned and he's still doing a fantastic job.

So add that to the list: another reason why Linux became the kernel that succeeded: because it had Linus Torvalds managing it, and Linus managed brilliantly.

Linux is not a copy of Minix, the code is quite different.

Yes. Linux and MINIX are both *NIX-style kernels. But MINIX uses a microkernel design while Linux is a monokernel.

Professor Tanenbaum famously told Linus "Be thankful you are not my student. You would not get a high grade for such a design :-)"

https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/comp.os.minix/wlhw16QWltI%5B1-25%5D

So anyone who claims that Linux is a "copy" of MINIX really doesn't know what they are talking about.

A few more comments to expand on the above.

A project like Linux would not have been possible without the GNU project, most particularly the GCC C compiler. Commercial UNIX releases charged something like $2000 for a C compiler, but thanks to Richard Stallman there was a free C compiler for Linus to use, and Bash and everything else.

Before Linux was released, MINIX was a popular choice for a free *NIX. But licensing issues tangled up MINIX: to build MINIX you needed to buy Tanenbaum's book, get the source code that came with it, and then apply all the community patches (which had to be kept separate purely for licensing reasons). If Professor Tanenbaum could have released the source to MINIX under GPLv2, and he or someone else had worked as hard as Linus did to collect and apply patches to improve it, maybe MINIX could have gotten the snowball effect going. (Note that MINIX was what Linus was running when he wrote Linux!)

As others have noted, there was at least one BSD available around the time Linux got going, but there was the dark shadow of a lawsuit and the future of BSD looked uncertain. Linux had the advantage of being all-new code with no legal uncertainty. Absent the lawsuit, maybe BSD could have gotten the snowball going.

It's not a big mystery. Linus released a primitive kernel that worked, at the right time, with the right license, and then diligently kept rolling up contributions and releasing the result.

Expanding a bit:

While the first release of Linux was primitive, it worked. People hungry for a free *NIX were able to grab it and run it. At the same time, HURD was a big research project; if you just wanted to run *NIX on your own computer, HURD was not at all ready.

Linus released it at the right time. It was just becoming possible for large numbers of people to get the kernel from him, and to send contributions back to him. Something like Linux might not have worked at all before the Internet and/or BBSs; it would have been too difficult to send releases out and collect contributions of code.

Linus used the right license. He has said that the choice of releasing under GPLv2 was the best decision he ever made. Arguably a BSD license could have worked as well, but many people have a fear that if they contribute to BSD projects, that evil companies might benefit from their work; with GPL they are comfortable contributing. Also, IBM contributed some code that uses IBM patents; because of the GPL, IBM knew that commercial entities wanting to use the patents would still need to license the patents from IBM. So Linux got the largest possible pool of contributors.

And then there is the fact that Linus worked hard managing Linux. He collected patches sent by people and rolled them in. These days he writes very little code himself; almost all he does is manage patches. I'm not sure how much code he wrote in the early days, but I think his diligent application of patches sent to him helped Linux to become stable and useful.

Given all of the above, Linux was a success, and success bred more success (the "Snowball effect"). People who just wanted something that worked could grab Linux as it worked better and better all the time; people who wanted to join an active project joined it as it was the most active project.

If Linus hadn't released when he did, another project might have gotten the snowball momentum thing going and become the big popular project. But he did, and he worked hard to keep it going, and the result is the kernel that changed the world.

Dude, are you seriously this worked-up about a throwaway joke?

In any event, as the other AC noted, I was suggesting that this shipped port would never be official as it is not patented, and that a future watch would have a different and patented port.

My little bit of snark is somewhat founded on fact: Apple really does like to patent their connectors. MagSafe power connector: patented. Lightning: patented. So it is possible that Apple is going to keep this connector unofficial and undocumented, and later release a documented and patented connector. But really I was just having a bit of fun there.

I remember the first model of iMac had an undocumented card slot. People speculated that Apple used the card slot for factory diagnostics on the iMacs; third-party companies took advantage of the slot to add 3D accelerators; and then Apple revised the iMac design and left that port out.

http://www.macworld.com/article/1014902/imacboards.html

If Apple hasn't announced the port, the port may be gone from the next iWatch release.

Likely the problem is that there aren't enough patents on the port. Perhaps Apple will add a documented expansion port once they find some patents to encumber it.

I lived in Aptos, CA when the Loma Prieta earthquake happened. My home was about 10 miles from the epicenter.

My home came through it okay. Our cats were pretty freaked out but I don't think we even had any broken windows. (I've heard that the waves increase in amplitude as they get further away from the epicenter, so perhaps we were lucky to be so close.)

We were without power. I think phones were down but I'm not sure.

We didn't have much else to do, so we spent a lot of time listening to the radio. We learned some useful stuff:

* stay at home; the roads should be clear for emergency services.

* Cook and eat the contents of your freezer and fridge before things go bad.

* don't drink the water without boiling it, but it's okay to flush toilets.

* (Later) Okay, the water lines tested out, so go ahead and drink the water.

Also, we heard updates about the freeway bridge that collapsed, the destroyed buildings in San Francisco, etc.

But for the most part, the people talking on the radio didn't have anything too important to say. They filled a lot of airtime with repetitions of the above points, comments like "oh this is terrible", etc. So we stopped listening after a while and read books.

Still, in any future emergency, I will want a radio. The Internet could be down but the radio will still work. Lower-tech old-fashioned solutions are great in an emergency.

Just get a low-tech radio, rather than relying on a radio feature in something complex like a smartphone. Bonus points if you have solar cells and/or a crank to power the radio.

I'm not a codec expert. I'm just a dilettante, reading blog posts from time to time. I trust that if I screw anything up, someone will correct me.

VP9 is superior to H.264. It's based on VP8, which is not as good as H.264, but it's roughly in the ballpark (meaning it's much better than H.262 used in MPEG-2). My guess is that VP9 probably isn't quite as good as H.265, but it is definitely in the ballpark.

Google got VP8 by buying a company called On2. On2 claimed that their video coder was the best thing ever, better even than H.264, but now that people have seen the source code it's clear that was just puffery. (I guess VP8 is better than the "baseline profile" of H.264, but hardly anyone uses that; they use the more advanced features of H.264 which are better than the best VP8 can do.)

Google paid over 100 million dollars for On2. I believe they did this mostly to get insurance for their YouTube business. YouTube really needs a good video coder: if the videos are terribly high in bandwidth, Google spends too much on the bandwidth and the customers have a bad experience (videos take forever to buffer on phones and/or look bad). But if H.264 is the only game in town, Google would be totally at the mercy of the patent owners. It was worth 100 million dollars to Google to hedge their bets and have a Plan B if the MPEG licensing guys ever tried to take advantage of Google's critical need for a really good video coder.

After buying On2, Google was silent for almost a year. I believe that during that time, Google lawyers were poring over the VP6 code and making sure that nobody would win a patent infringement suit when Google released the code. Then they released the source code to VP8, and forever gave up any patent rights. VP8 is completely open source and unencumbered by patents.

The general strategy of On2 seems to have been to read all the patents from coders like H.264, and then implement something similar, but different enough not to infringe. When VP8 was released, several people here on Slashdot opined that VP8 simply had to infringe on some patents, being as similar as it is to H.264. Well, it's years later now and the lawyers haven't gotten rich by suing Google yet. I think Google is in the clear.

In fact, the MPEG Licensing Authority tried to put together a patent pool, with all the patents VP8 infringes. Over a year later, there were still no patents in the pool. Google made a one-time payment to MPEG-LA, and MPEG-LA gave Google a lifetime promise to not sue. Some here on Slashdot opined that this meant Google was admitting they had infringed on H.264 patents, but no; this was unconditional defeat for MPEG-LA, who got a little money but are not able to charge royalties or in any way control what anyone does with VP8.

Now, here's the thing: VP8 was too late to win the war with H.264. All modern phones contain hardware acceleration for H.264, but likely not for VP8. But VP9 is not too late for the war with H.265; and I'm personally cheering for the BSD-licensed technology to win over the patent-encrusted technology.

I'll still count it as a win if every phone ships with H.265 and VP9. I don't need H.265 to lose to be happy.

The one thing that worries me a little bit was the recent story that someone is putting together a new patent pool, outside of MPEG-LA. The only sane reason I can imagine for this: MPEG-LA has agreed never to sue Google; maybe someone wants to sue Google and this is the first step.

My guess is that Google lawyers didn't screw anything up, and Google would eventually win the court battle; but perhaps the FUD caused by a lawsuit would make the hardware manufacturers pass on VP9. By the time the court battle was over, H.265 would be the hardware standard the same way H.264 is now.

I hope I'm just wrong about this last part. It could simply be that a few companies want to get more money from H.265.

In the first handful of pages you have terror weapons being used on Skinnies, something to the effect of "I'm a bomb and will explode in 30 seconds". Tactical nuclear weapons being shot off left and right. Just with the opening I don't want a future where these are valid military tactics.

I disagree. One of the points in the book was that the Terran military does have the power to obliterate whole cities from orbit (in the same way the "Bugs" obliterated Buenos Aires) but instead of doing so, they use infantry to make the destruction more selective. Right in that scene you describe, Johnny Rico says that destroying the city's waterworks is exactly the sort of thing they are supposed to be doing... it will be a massive headache for the locals with few casualties.

As for the bomb, you may call it a "terror weapon" but I put it in a different class than what we usually call terrorism. Terrorism is cutting off heads and burning people alive and crucifying people with cameras running... blowing up small children, slaughtering civilians in a deli, slaughtering shoppers in a mall, and so on. A bomb that advertises that it will blow up soon, in the locals' language, allows the locals to run far away before it blows up. Johnny Rico said the thing would give anyone a nervous breakdown (or something like that) but it's not remotely in the same class as the horrors we call terrorism.

Also, in the 50's, people believed that tactical nukes would become a battlefield staple. It was a science fiction novel; it's not surprising that it imagines tac nukes having a place on the future battlefield. In the book, most of the infantry didn't have nukes; Johnny Rico had a few, but only because he was an officer (a very junior one). Most of the bombs were simple explosive devices. And keep in mind that this was written not that long after World War II, where the normal course of things had airplanes unloading entire cargo bays full of bombs on cities. As I said earlier, Heinlein was imagining a precise application of force, and at the time that was a pretty science-fiction idea. (These days, American troops can call down a bomb or missile that can hit a single building and leave the buildings around it untouched. That's actually pretty amazing when you think about it.)

One of the core concepts of the book is the franchise is only available through Federal service.

Yes. The narrator protagonist, Johnny Rico, only wanted to serve in the military; but there were other options. His friend wanted to work in a research lab, and since the friend was brilliant, he got his wish. His other friend, a female, wanted to be a starship pilot and got that as well.

The basic idea was that by serving in the government, you showed some ability to put your needs second and the needs of the many first.

So in order to vote you must be indoctrinated into the government and there is no concept of loyal opposition.

Your biases are showing. "indoctrinated"? "no concept of loyal opposition"? I claim that these are not valid statements, and if you want to stand behind them, please cite which chapter illustrates each point.

I don't recall the exact name, but everyone was required to take a class along the lines of History and Moral practices.

"History and Moral Philosophy" They were required to take it, but not required to pass it and indeed I don't think received a grade for it.

My high school had a class called "Civics" that was not completely unlike this class, but I had to pass it. Are you horrified? Is that "bleak"?

One thing that has always stood out for me in those sections is the concept of total war.

Yes. I think it's fair to say that Heinlein believed in "total war", as so: Don't get into a war if you can help it; but once in a war, fight to win. I personally agree with this idea. Don't send our soldiers to die in penny packets; either don't send them, or send so many that they roll over everything in their path. Personally I'm a "live and let live" kind of guy, although it troubles me to think about the Islamic State throwing gay people off of buildings and all the rest of it.

Again I may have the specifics wrong, but the teachers makes a comment about "ask the leading fathers of Carthage how war never solves anything"

A student made the comment "Violence never solves anything" and the teacher used Carthage as an example of how violence had permanently solved something. Note that the teacher never said that what Rome did to Carthage was moral.

In the book, the "Bugs" attacked human colonies with the specific plan of killing every person and taking over the planets. (Johnny Rico said something about "they like the same kind of planets we like".) Therefore, in the book, there was no chance of simply negotiating a peace with the "Bugs". They started the war, they intended to prosecute the war, and the only way to stop the war would be to render the Bugs unable to continue. For that specific situation, violence was the only way to solve the problem.

Also in the book, an alien race known to humans as the "Skinnies" was initially allied with the "Bugs", but convinced (in part by that raid you didn't like at the start of the book) to ally with the humans. The humans did not exterminate the "Skinnies" and I didn't get the sense that the humans were planning to exterminate all the "Bugs".

Implying that wiping out your enemies is not only a valid tactic but is the best one.

Not in the book. You brought that yourself.

And I'll say again: the humans preferred to use the Mobile Infantry to hit exactly what needed to be hit, rather than smearing whole cities at a time from orbit. If your assertion was correct, why did the humans bother?

I think there was a single throw-away reference to a bomb of sufficient power to crack a planet open, but humans never used such a thing in the book, and there wasn't any dialog like "gee I wish we could just destroy this planet and kill every Bug."

A key message throughout the book is that the ends justify the means, that to me is bleak.

Not in the book. You brought that yourself.

If you want to stand behind that, please cite a chapter that supports it.

Link

The point of that xkcd comic is that cancer drugs need to be safe as well as effective. A patient whose cancer cells are all dead is not better off if he is dead also.

I read the recipe for the salve and it does not appear to be something that would kill a patient. In fact, you could eat the medicine and it wouldn't hurt you; it's onions or leeks, garlic, wine, bile salts, and some small amount of copper. According to TFA the lab where they tested this smelled like garlic and people thought they were cooking food in the lab.

I'd be willing to have this stuff put on my skin.

P.S. I'm excited by the new technology being called "nanobots". (I think "nanobots" might be overselling what it is, but they didn't ask me.) A nanoscale cylinder is made that can hinge open; some drug is placed inside; and two latches hold it shut. The latches are designed to open only in the presence of a specific protein, such as a specific cancer cell type. Thus we have a nanoscale "robot" that can do exactly two things: it can open when it bumps into a specific cell type, and it can close again when it's away from the specific cell type.

This is exciting because it decouples the two problems of treating cancer: you need to kill the cancer cells and not hurt the patient. With this, you could use a very effective anti-cancer medicine that is as dangerous as a handgun bullet, but make sure that only a nanodose is delivered, and only to the cancer cells (I guess with high but not perfect accuracy).

http://nextbigfuture.com/2015/03/ido-bachelet-dna-nanobots-summary-with.html

I tried to find out more about the human trial, but couldn't find anything beyond the video linked in the above article. If these nanobots really do get tested on a human and he really has his life saved by them, I expect significant news coverage. The claim is that the guy would be dead by summer with conventional treatment, so if it's real we won't have to wait more than a few months to read more about it.

I stand corrected. Mod parent up. Mod me down if you like.

US patent: http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=8981261.PN.&OS=PN/8981261&RS=PN/8981261

With each of the embodiments discussed, the system 10 is deployed to attenuate the energy of an advancing shockwave 24 form an explosion 22 by creating a second fluid medium 30 that differs from the first fluid medium 26, which may be ambient air, positioned so that it interacts with the shockwave. As shown in FIG. 10, as the shockwave contacts the interface 90 between the first fluid medium 26 and the second fluid medium 30, the difference in refractive index reflects a fraction of the incoming energy toward the explosion 22, as indicated by arrows A. This partial reflection occurs a second time as the shockwave passes through the second fluid medium 30 and contacts the interface 92 between the second medium and the ambient 26 as it exits the second medium. All gradients or discontinuities in the medium provide a reflection point for the incoming shockwave 24. For example, if the second medium 30 is non-uniform, reflection will occur at each of many places within the medium.

As shown in FIG. 11, shockwaves 24 obey Fermat's theory of least time and therefore an effective refractive index for the shockwave can be defined that is inversely proportional to the shock speed. The properties or composition of the second medium 30 are chosen such that the effective refractive index of the second medium 30 differs from the first medium 26 in at least one of temperature, molecular weight and composition. As the shockwave passes into or out of the second medium 30, the difference in effective refractive index refracts the wave, as shown by lines B, diverting it and defocusing it away from the protected asset 18. In the disclosed embodiments, the second medium 30 is created such that the shockwave travels faster in the second medium 30 than in the first medium 26, so the refractive index of the second medium is less than that of the first medium. Further, the second medium is created to have a convex shape and therefore acts as a divergent lens, so that the energy of the shockwave 24 spreads out, as shown by lines C, so its intensity drops as it approaches the protected asset 18.

In addition, the second medium 30 may absorb some shock energy as the shock travels through it. Factors contributing to the absorption of energy include energy retained in the molecules of the second medium itself (e.g., enhanced rotational energy, excited molecular bonds, excited electrons, molecular decomposition, and ionization) and shock energy converted to electromagnetic energy through blackbody emission from hot particles or photon emission from de-exciting various excited states.

A further mechanism for attenuating the energy density of the shockwave 24 is momentum exchange. If the second medium 30 is moving relative to the first medium 26, then it will exchange momentum with the shockwave 24. The result is a combination of reflection, slowing, and redirection of the shockwave. Any or all of the foregoing mechanisms may operate in a given embodiment. The composition, temperature, speed and location of the second medium 30 may be chosen or created to create any one or all of the aforementioned mechanisms.

So, it's not necessarily lasers that generate the plasma, and the protection comes mainly from the plasma having a different refractive index than the air through which the shock wave has propagated.

My comment that this serves as a "counter-wave" is in the patent but only as a "it might also do this" thing, not as the main thing.

Countering a shock wave with a generated one would be horribly complex.

I never thought they were trying to cancel out the explosion with another explosion whose sound waves have opposite phase to the first.

I tried to read TFA and figure out what the invention really did. You are right, going to the actual patent text was a better idea. That article did not do a good job of explaining the science.