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Comment Re:See, this is kinda what I meant (Score 1) 75

www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00C37AZXK is $11 with free 2-day shipping for prime members (US). It's a cheap DV-B TV dongle using a chipset that has a "debug mode" where it spits out the raw RF data, and wide ranging tuning chip that makes it usable as a general purpose SDR reciever (known as an RTL-SDR). Windy's mentioned using one on her blog in many of her other posts.

I just got one this week, and it's been awesome to play with. Check out rtlsdr.org for more information about how to set it up, and rtl-sdr.com for a blog of cool projects you can do with it.

Comment Re:Health, convenience, and scale (Score 1) 98

Because it will encourage you to brush more often? I'm good about brushing in the morning, but I'm very inconsistent at night (or consistent about not brushing).

If I had one of these, I'd keep it in my pocket and brush after every meal, snack, or peice of candy, or whenever my mouth felt I could use it. There'd be a big benefit in going from once or twice a day to 10-15 times a day.

Comment Re:CBS screwed themaselves even more (Score 1) 314

It's not the streaming providers who are forcing the differentiated content, it's the content owners (such as CBS).

They don't want a single streaming provider to gain too much market share, because that provider would be able to dictate terms (like Apple/iTunes does with music). So, they enter into exclusive contracts with different providers for different subsets of their catalogs, to ensure things are spread out over the market.

Comment Re:Be Careful What You Wish For (Score 2) 214

It's not just that there are 7000+ districts, but they all have their own rules. Back in 2010, Washington had an extra tax on candy. However, Kit-Kat bars were exempt and charged at a normal food tax rate. Why? Because they happened to contain flour and were considered a baked good. Imagine trying to handle thousands of different jurisdictional rules across the millions of products Amazon carries. It'd be insane!

Comment Re:That was the point of the original TLDs (Score 1) 186

And they have many subsidiaries including:
  • Amazon Services LLC
  • Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
  • Amazon Web Services, Inc.
  • Amazon EU SÃrl
  • Amazon Europe Holding Technologies SCS
  • Amazon Fulfillment Services, Inc.
  • Amazon Services International, Inc.
  • Amazon Corporate LLC
  • Amazon Technologies, Inc.

which all use the term "Amazon" without the ".com".

Comment Re:SF museum in Seattle not an option??? (Score 1) 131

Sorry, but having seen the former permenant collection, I was incredibly disappointed at the temporary "Icons" exhibit. It's nowhere close to the original in scale or impact. It takes up only about a quarter of the space the other one did (when I was there, the part that used to have robots had a horror exhbit and they redid the wall so you can't even get to the part with the cool weapons and all the old pulp mags, let alone where the death star used to be). It's also way less dense, and has almost none of the literature scattered around that the old one used to.

Comment Not just research telescopes (Score 3, Insightful) 37

There was an incredibly relevant article[1] in Analog Science Fiction & Fact recently. The basic premise is that it's not just smaller research telescopes that are valuable - in astronomy, even amateur observations are incredibly valuable (often because they happen to notice things the bigger telescopes aren't pointed at). The author details a large number of findings that are rooted in observations by amateurs.

Mr. Olusevi shouldn't limit himself to just $30,000 research telescopes. He should also be trying to get $300 telescopes in backyards all over Africa.

[1] Plummer, Alan. Atlas' Apprentices: Amateur Contributions in Astronomy and Astrophysics

Comment Re:Newbie question (Score 3, Informative) 105

Actually, yes. The most common format for storing RSA keys is PEM and it looks like this (randomly generated key just for this post):

-----BEGIN RSA PRIVATE KEY-----
MIIBOQIBAAJBAKLdFpep/qw/SIf/wsO4T17GnttlhLjLrVCfM9p4D2gnnz3OiO45
Xw1wonFOPR0D9ewAIi4yAhcMFXc2jyw3GbMCAwEAAQJAJV7R1k89jsyemgZH7J0Y
KUkuHm22/KhPxpYhUdoGvwEqvuyEFdM6kGuFj5AwMD/R8E9g1JFrQSej1aXCvHM5
oQIhANE3nxoo1pSLRrPv3/dPkq8l9VYtTcjCkiivbh6XHVa5AiEAx0gCx6DMBiGA
rxdplBG9pA91lUptz6wQbiMsFsvzfcsCIB1zD+E1yGamaDBh3ovIVqRy2mLkA6Pz
x3EUqJKDwOx5AiBW7DgaLy8O9YoV1VZ9+YcIip21MrPXQ6we/kR65RceJQIgYDV0
I5e4ncpwsbz6q+VWjZ3mNaOnNgkxESmtQY4vzQo=
-----END RSA PRIVATE KEY-----

The base64 data in the middle is a structure that contains a bunch of numbers. The numbers present in a private key are different (a supserset) of a public key, so even if it's in a format that doesn't have the BEGIN..., by parsing the structure, you can see what's in it. (Try pasting the key block above into the stdin of openssl rsa -noout -text.)

Comment Re:Man rating of Dragon and Falcon (Score 2) 282

The Soyuz has a limited on-orbit lifetime though. After the recent loss of a cargo Soyuz, there was a threat we'd have to abandon the station if the currently docked capsule expired before they could re-certify the platform and launch a replacement mission. Being able to fly a rescue dragon to the station for re-enty could be a posisble way to avoid this in the future by allowing a crew to stay up longer.

That being said, it's of course incredibly unlikely that we'd see such an convergence of event during the short time between the certificiation of Dragon and that of Falcoln that would cause NASA to pay for such a flight. Since I doubt you could even fit much cargo on the passenger version on the empty ride up, it'd be incredibly expensive to do except in the case of extreme emergency.

Comment Re:So (Score 5, Insightful) 545

Without knowing exactly what they did, it's reasonable to assume they searched his car. Generally, this requires a warrant unless it's incident to an arrest, and even then, there are limits.

There's not much legal precentdent either way as to whether or not slight radioactivity consitutes probable cause, but it's a very worrying slippery slope if it does. Cop wants to harras you? All he has to do is put a few drops of some nuclear medicine on your bumper (or worse, on your person) and you'll be stopped and searched thoroughly, just because he thinks you're guilty. Hell, he can just claim you registered, search your car illegally and haul you in for whatever he finds.

TL;DR: It's a slippery slope for due process.

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