Worst case, replace the keyboard with something like the Optimus Maximus keyboard with the keys changing characters every time a password is asked.

What really is needed are what we had before everything got linked to the Internet. We need separate networks. Examples of this would be SIPRnet, NIPRNet, and GRU's equivalents.

Yes, this network can be hacked, but it adds an additional barrier -- one has to hack the network (which likely will be designed with this in mind from the ground up), forge access as a trusted machine (tough, due to machines having their own public keys), then try to attack the targets themselves.

I wonder why this isn't done. I would think a "BIPRNet" would be obvious since it gets sensitive traffic and things like wide-open SCADA systems completely off the Internet, but still allows remote access and management.

Another problem with electronic voting is the complexity. Paper ballots are simple. A mark or a hole punched through some wood pulp.

With electronic voting, there are so many vulnerabilities. From voting machines that will change one's vote to Kodos before it even gets registered on the machine, to votes being switched in transit, there are no real ways to actually protect that info from a determined, well-heeled intruder. Paper trails are still forgable, but we have had thousands of years dealing with paper, and it requires a definite physical presence to alter results.

This isn't to say it cannot be done, but it would require a cryptographic infrastructure from a dedicated smart card that the voter has, to cryptography at every link (so votes added/subtracted from a county would be detected)... and all this assuming the hardware maker didn't add their backdoors.

Maybe NYC is right... time to go back to mechanical voting machines or at least pen and pencil.

Supercap technology is one of those that addresses it. Yes, it takes a lot of amperes, but instead of feeding a battery a constant voltage/amperage and nursing it along with its chemical reactions, while watching its SoC and temperature level, a supercap can be charged quite quickly, since the charge is a physical process (electrons stashed at one end of the dielectric.)

Of course, the problem is that batteries have such a relatively low energy density per volume. Get battery energy within an order of magnitude of diesel or gasoline, and this revolutionizes things. Ineffecient diesel and gasoline engines that have a sizable chunk of their energy spat out the tailpipe now get replaced by vastly more efficient electric motors. Noxious fuels get replaced by whatever electrical source is usable in a region, be it geothermal, wind, solar, or others. Petroleum can be used for its most important use -- making plastics, rather than just turned into carbon dioxide.

I have a machine of a similar vintage running an age-old copy of RHEL. I keep it, but the chances of me firing it up are slim to none, because I can fire up VMWare Workstation with an older OS release. Plus, even if the hardware is rock stable, it uses more energy than a modern computer and OS. Running a VM from a SATA SSD consumes a lot less power than an older 3.5" IDE HDD which might have at most 128 or so gigs.

It is fun to fire up old hardware, but other than having the right stuff to play a game (DOSBox is good, but some older MS-DOS games won't work correctly unless they are on bare metal, and don't sound "right" unless they are played on an antediluvian FM-synthesis sound card), there isn't much of a point to it.

Of course, said code module can change, so even if your deps are right now... it might be that the black box code library that does some essential functions might not work the same after it gets updated. In some ways, this is easy to find (if you do a library upgrade and things break, with no other changes.) However, if there are other confounding variables, this might be a fairly difficult task.

When in CS, I had a prof that had one rule that for release (not beta/alpha/dev) code, if the code had even a single warning, it was unshippable unless there was an extremely good reason (which would be part of the README) of why it happened. Yes, this was a PITA, but he was trying to teach something that seems to have been lost.

It verges on astounding. I've read for years that Germany has ceded sovereign control of its land to Russia for natural gas, and that German citizens would freeze by the tens of thousands if Putin turned off the taps. However, Germany is still going strong and doesn't have brownouts or rolling blackouts as naysayers have been saying would be a certainty.

This doesn't mean nuclear power is bad. The ideal would be to work on the latest generation plants, maybe even thorium plants. However, due to NIMBY syndrome and fearmongering, any advances in nuclear power are swept under the rug, while anything that might happen bad with 50-60 year old plants that (by moratoriums in place) cannot be upgraded/replaced will be blasted on the front pages of any periodical or website.

I do agree about storage. I'm hoping Germany is a frontline player when it comes to higher energy density per volume and weight when it comes to batteries. If a battery is made that even comes within an order of magnitude of gasoline or diesel's energy by volume, this would fundamentally change transportation as we know it.

I would love a spiritual successor to NWN, or a NWN-like RPG that one can fairly easily build player-written modules and other content, with characters that can persist between modules.

This was the nice thing about NWN1 and NWN2. Both had long tails, and had not just single player campaigns, but player-written content that was just as good if not better, as well as persistent worlds which has the long-lost roleplay feel of MUDs gone by.

So far, I've dropped a little bit of cash on a failed Kickstarter, but there just isn't anything in this genre [1]. I would love a spiritual successor to NWN.

[1]: I'm not meaning F2P MMOs like Neverwinter, but a game that focuses on the RPG aspect as well as the player creation tools, as opposed to just buying the latest DLC.

I feel stupid by asking this, but what would be a decent off-the-shelf permissions/licensing manager suitable for a small business?

Expanding on that, the US Navy (and I'm sure other nation's ship fleets) have excellent nuclear reactors. Even with current technology, thermal depolymerization wouldn't be that hard to do, especially near the Pacific Gyre with the large amount of floating waste available there. Then said ship either stays put, transferring the recovered crude to another vessel, or returns to harbor with useful resources.

I do a similar version of this. I have a few document escrow services and a couple friends that have pieces of my master keys. It is a system that requires "x out of y" pieces to re-assemble the keys, so if one person is out, the key can still be recovered.

I have a couple symmetric keys and a private key. That way, if RSA or ECC get broken, the core data is still protected until all the escrow places plop down their segment of the keys.

To be safe, the key part and the SSSS (Shamir's Secret Sharing Scheme) utility is not just stored on an archival grade DVD and a USB flash drive, but also UUencoded and printed out (with a QuickPAR recovery record just in case.)

Some Android devs are trying to do their best to work around it. It requires root, but I highly recommend the XPrivacy tool, which will allow you to restrict what apps can actually contact. I also like using a DroidWall successor as a thing of last resort, especially with apps that are bandwidth hungry, so they get forced to Wi-Fi only and not on the cellular network.

LBE Privacy Guard used to be a good tool, but the successor has yet to be officially translated to English yet.

The bad thing is that apps from the Play Store are all or nothing. The good thing is that the people at xda-developers and other sites have spent many man-hours to rectify that.

We are getting some advances in that direction (where people/organizations want to cover a large surface area cheaply, so they get some energy coming in, even though it may not be as much as panels that are more expensive, but are made for getting as many watts per square centimeter as possible.

Flexible panels come to mind. Similar with window film that might get 5%, but covers a large expanse on a building. Flexible panels still have a ways to go, but they are getting there. For RVs, they are a lot easier to mount than a rigid PV panel (no holes need to be drilled for the panel's mountings, as the flexible panels are taped into place with double-sided adhesive.)

What I'd like to see are not just solar roof tiles, but the corrugated fiberglass or polycarbonate panels that are used for carports have some sort of solar capability. It won't be near as much as having dedicated panels, but it will bring in some electricity on otherwise wasted space.

I see two types of panels being sold:

One type that is used for limited space, engineered to get as many watts from each square centimeter as possible, even if it is more costly. RV-ers come to mind, because for most rigs, space is at a premium.

The second type is to obtain a decent amount of watts, but be cheaper, for larger areas such as a roof. Here, price per watt is more important.

In both cases, reliability is very important and not to be overlooked. Panels don't take much to maintain once in place, but are expensive to install and replace if something breaks.

I have found that the cost and quality of solar deployments can vary tremendously. For example, I can buy panels at 75 cents per watt. However, if I go for a kit, that cost jumps up significantly. If I let a "solar installer" do it, that might bump costs up a good amount too.

I have found that solar can be used in increments, so a starting investment can be relatively small. For example, having a 15 amp circuit or two in a house that runs off of batteries is a good way to keep the parasitic devices that draw a 10-20 watts, but draw that 24/7, off the electric bill. It doesn't sound like much, but the watts used by the little devices (battery chargers for example) can add up. If one buys a high quality pure sine wave inverter, it also prolongs the life of devices on that line as well because they don't eat power transients or surges/sags that might come from the utility company. In fact, one's computer might be able to be put on one of these circuits, so a UPS wouldn't be needed, barring a direct lightning strike.

As part of a new house, I see solar as a "why not" as opposed to a "why bother" item. With a PV cut switch so that a fire causes the panels to automatically disconnect, safety issues are mitigated. Plus, with hybrid grid systems, it can be used for feeding the grid, providing UPS power, or both.

I think the key is how the solar install is packaged and sold. There is a wide price range and wide quality range [1]. I'm hoping as companies get more experience with this that install quality becomes more consistent and improves overall.

[1]: One thing often neglected or skimped on in solar installs is wire thickness. Too skinny wires between the charge controller and batteries, and the batteries will never be completely charged.