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Comment Re:Just like food, your food itself is what it eat (Score 1) 116

It looks like the secret is to feed them vat fed plankton instead of similar or identical species of the wild plankton they normally eat - which was apparently much hard than that sounds. The big deal is it means a more reliable supply.

So is the vat-fed plankton as healthy as the wild stuff? Because if not, then the unhealthy part of that diet will exist in the farmed prawn. Basically take the GPP's argument "Just like food, your food itself is what it eats. " and follow that down the food chain.

Comment Apple Migration Assistant: PPC - Intel (Score 1) 641

The reason it isn't easy is because a lot of old drivers and software do not work on it. Otherwise you could have just reinstalled everything on it again. Or Microsoft could have made a migration tool.

This is a really shitty reason, to be honest. Apple puts a lie to Microsoft's rigidity and inflexibility by showing how (nearly a decade ago) it's possible (using Migration Assistant) to move from a PPC system to Intel - clearly drivers won't work there, but it all happens, and works well (yes it's a migration, but the tooling works and is well supported). If it's a newer version of OSX (i.e., younger than 6 years old), then you can upgrade in place.

I never understood why Microsoft didn't work harder to make this possible - maybe because they don't actually do much of the driver work - that's done by the manufacturer or part

Australia

Australia May 'Pause' Trades To Tackle High-Frequency Trading 342

angry tapir (1463043) writes "The Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC), a government financial watchdog, is reportedly contemplating the idea of implementing a 500 millisecond delay on trades in an effort to put the brakes on high-frequency trading. ASIC last year knocked back the idea and stated that fears about HFT were overblown. However, in a government inquiry today representatives of the organization said the idea of a 'pause' is still on the table."

Comment Re:Why stop there? (Score 1) 496

What about ditching the windshield and replacing it with a 4k HD screen? Then you can embed the driver lower-down and deep inside a protective hardened shell. A no-glass car all around.

Might be interesting for fighter pilots. Hell, why stop there? Just make the entire fighter remotely controlled - all that would be left is a "droning" noise.

Comment Amen - Aint no sharing going on here (Score 1) 353

Uber/Lyft are purely a play to disrupt the taxi industry by getting around the medallion tax.

Don't get me wrong - the taxi medallion's cost is prohibitive due to very low supply and the only justification I can see is that the city wants to limit the number of taxis to improve air quality. However, with hybrid/electric cars around now that vastly reduce or eliminate any tailpipe emissions, I think cities need to reconsider possibly having "green" medallions that are not as limited in number, and require the car driving it to have AT-PZEV (Prius 2004) emissions profile or better (not difficult; many of these kinds of cars around that still get 50 mpg+).

Comment Re:Customers may benefit... maybe (Score 1) 455

I'd add that they also maintain this illusion by sometimes (often?) selling similar-but-inferior products. For instance, a vacuum that is identical to a top-rated cordless vacuum, but with a smaller motor and battery. If you run through there with a bar code scanner on your phone you can see just how many of the products are actually different than the ones available through Amazon and friends.

They are notorious for advertising they will meet any advertised price for the same product. The problem is that many of their products, while similar, are only a model that Walmart sells, at least in electronics.

This isn't limited to Wal-mart either - I've noticed that all retailers do this, and manufacturers have come to support this (except for companies like Apple) by simply having thousands of different serial numbers that share the same specific model - that's what's advertised, but YMMV apparently.

This problem results in a real lack of commoditization and alignment, and prevents customers from shopping around or even getting consistent and reliable support - hell even the support rep may not know your specific video card on your laptop.

Comment Not going to happen (Score 1) 824

Regardless of the merits of Eich's actions, or the merits of those calling for his ouster, the fact remains that all that's going to happen is that there will be a kerfuffle and Eich will either ignore it or make some pro-LGBT concession and then things will continue on, the same way things have been going.

Does anyone doubt that the Eich is capable of handling the job? I don't hear that anywhere. Perhaps this whole thing is to focus away from the fact that he may not be the best person to head Mozilla (and remove other candidates from the spotlight by hogging all the attention)? That's a bit CT [1], but I've been accused of worse kinds of thoughtcrime.

[1] http://acronyms.thefreediction...

Comment Re:WTF if Waze? (Score 2) 75

It's basically google maps with a different skin, and you can report things like speedtraps and accidents. And you get points, so there's a game aspect I suppose.

That's it. It's one of those "tech" companies that seem absurdly overvalued based on how little they actually do. In no sane world would it be worth the billion google paid for it. And on top of that, although the interface for reporting stuff is designed to be as minimal as possible and they prevent you from typing and driving, there's no way it's safe to use. I've used it, so I'm a hypocrite there, but it is a driving hazard.

Riiiight - just a map overlay and gaming aspect. No mention of incident reporting, showing aggregated speeds of waze users, the ability to share your location/trip,nope. None of that takes coding or infrastructure I guess.

Waze is more useful than google maps, apple maps, or navigon for me in estimating my commute times - it simply works. It even noticed a traffic disruption that had only really lasted for about 1 hr, showing me an alternate route through residential streets such that I got to my freeway onramp with only a 5m loss rather than what I guess would have been much longer.

I don't like that Google bought it - I don't trust Google very much, but I can't stop using Waze (I kill the app when I get home/work).

Comment Mileage = not the motivating factor to go electric (Score 1) 282

Repair? Tesla themselves, free of charge in many cases. They'll even come get the car for you if needed, most dealerships won't do that.
Regular maintenance? *What* regular maintenance? Les Schwab or your preferred local alternative can rotate the tires and check the brakes for you. Not much else is needed... no oil, no spark plugs, no transmission (in the conventional sense), etc.

Most folks not into the electric/hybrid ownership thang just don't get this - the dividends for a hybrid (and doubly so for a pure electric) are in the small things - great acceleration "curves", quieter cabin, keyless entry, reduced maintenance, no transmission changes ever, oil changes that always came back clean even when I do them yearly, etc etc. And the Tesla takes it to a whole new level.

It's not the MPG that sold me on the Prius 10 years ago (and that I still drive daily with 50+mpg), it the fact that it felt like spaceship when it "booted" and all the other things that no other car at the time could do. The new Telsa faux-mercial exemplifies this: http://www.thecarconnection.co...

Comment Re:To be fair (Score 3, Insightful) 282

You are going to need a LOT of solar panels to do this and also note most people are home at NIGHT when this is not going to work out so well ;)

Note: using solar to power your car is through offsetting your daily electricity use and powering at night - you don't actually have to use the *specific electrons collected by photonics deposits on your solar panel* to power the electric car.

The end result is the same - car gets juice (usually the cheaper variety if you're hooked up with a smart meter) and you pay less.

Hell, Musk even has a company that helps homeowners do just that - SolarCity - without all the overhead of buying the panels and installing them yourself.

Comment Re:Well, that sort of explains Windows 8... (Score 1) 164

...although I'd say the devs were on something stronger than antidepressants.

All kidding aside, Win8 does seem to be a product of "Who cares what our customers want, we'll do it our way and they can just suck it", which pretty much defines comfortable complacency.

Amusingly when Apple does it, most of their users either don't complain about it, or actually appreciate it.
Hmm - maybe execution and taste matter?

Meaning - Microsoft probably not only ignored it's users, it likely ignored it's own influential employees that were critical of it (especially those who weren't vocal because it would be a CLM). That's poor taste.

Comment Re:Banks are responsible too (Score 2) 87

Not precisely correct.

Chip & pin is coming, it's not mandatory on merchants (yet) but if fraud is indicated and the merchant failed to have a chip terminal, and the customer has a chipped card the merchant will lose the chargeback automatically.

Liability shift, will now be on one of two entities.
The merchant, for not having the terminal, or the consumer, for not protecting their pin.

the liability also shifts almost 100% OFF the card issuing bank....
(the real reason)

I wonder how this will impact online payments - how will chip/pin be supported there?
Given most of my CC activity is online, I fathom this is a huge loophole to the new security structure...

Comment Deflationary by design = Asset (Score 1) 273

Common sense, despite all the hoopla, bitcoin really does make a poor "currency". It's really like buying commodities at a certain price, and selling them again at another price

Best example off the top of my head is Oil futures - since both that and BTC have a) a steady increase in value due to limited supplies and b) incredible volatility at times as the market itself is really controlled by big players

Exactly the type of market that Wall Street loves.

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