It seems unlikely to me that you would (a) aim the gun at yourself while flying like he does at the beginning and (b) test it out so close to yourself without being behind some kind of a safety shield. I'd bet it's bogus.

I know so many people who just eat that shit up. Basically it tells (some) people what they want to hear: "here's a very simple trick you can use to win while everyone else loses."

I once priced the difference between cattle-class and business-class travel on a round trip from Toronto to South Africa (definitely a long multi-leg trip and interested in having a bit of extra leg room). The economy ticket was about $6000 and the business-class ticket was $21,000. I really don't see how having *maybe* twice as much area on the floor accounts for 3.5 times the price, no matter how many free drinks you want to throw in.

If the code they based their changes on was GPL'd and they never distributed it, then the GPL's share-alike clause doesn't kick in. Assuming he did the work for-hire and it was for internal purposes only, then the changes are still copyright Goldman Sachs and the programmer does *not* have the right to copy them to share with anyone else. In fact they can legitimately do anything they want with the GPL'd code including stripping out the headers as long as they never distribute it. Saying it's copyright Goldman Sachs is dubious but of almost zero importance if the code is kept internal.

I thought we just called those people Browncoats.

First of all, it's only control power that's off (sensors are always on). Measuring a voltage is one thing, but if you need to replace a motor, you have to lock out the energy. Secondly, the electrical devices that do the controlling are usually located in electrical panels accessible from outside the guarding. Third the cell is normally designed so you can see pretty well what's going on from outside (the guarding is typically something you can see through like lexan or square mesh painted black).

I can't believe I heard about this story on the radio this morning, with the radio hosts likening it to the movie Terminator. I work in industrial automation and let me assure you that these industrial robots have absolutely nothing even remotely approaching "AI". An industrial robot is no more than a multi-axis motion control system with some fancy co-ordinate transformation math on top of it. The programs are as simple as "wait for this input, then move to this point, turn on this output, wait for this input", etc.

When we're starting up any industrial automation workcell (whether it as a robot or not), the cell design has to be certified (stamped by a professional engineer in our jurisdiction) that the safety system meets appropriate regulations and is built with certified components, all of which are specified to specific safety requirements based on hazard, etc.

The thing is, those regulations are there to protect factory workers and people interacting with the cell in normal operations. If you take any machine apart using a wrench, you're supposed to be properly trained in how to lock out all sources of energy in the machine. That said, when you're programming the cell, you're allowed to be inside the cell and power up the robot using a teach pendant with a special enabling switch you have to hold down. This requires you to put the robot in a special teach mode which also limits the robot speed to less than 250 mm/s. If the cell was built correctly, the interlock switches on the gates have to be wired into the gate inputs on the robot, and when you open the guarding, the robot can only be energized while in teach mode with the teach pendant enabled.

The system isn't fool proof. We all know impatient people. Maybe the person programming the robot didn't check that the gate switches were wired in properly, or maybe he asked his buddy to close the gate behind him and press the reset button because he wanted to see what was going on (something I've seen several people do, and have always chastised them for). Maybe the guarding wasn't completely installed yet. Maybe he mistakenly put it in "Teach 2" mode which allows full speed operation with the teach pendant enabled. This mode is generally illegal in the United States, but some jurisdictions do allow it as long as you take other safeguards, like striping out a dedicated area on the floor where the robot can't reach where you're allowed to stand.

That's why this is most certainly human error. The question is, who is liable? Did a manager pressure the guy to continue programming the robot even though proper safeguards weren't in place? Did he just get impatient and ignore his own safety training? I see lots of people do that, and I also see lots of people with missing fingers - go figure.

Presumably your card # and other information were stolen manually or via an online transaction. The article is specifically mentioning going after the data from the mag stripe. I have presumed, but don't know enough about it, that the chipped cards encrypt the verification between the card and the bank, so the vendor doesn't ever have that info, and thus any malware running on their POS terminal can't access it either. That doesn't stop your waiter from writing down your card details of course... it's just a matter of degree.

Data most targeted: In 31 percent of cases Trustwave investigators found attackers targeted payment card track data (up 12 percentage points over 2013). Track data is the information on the back of a payment card that’s needed for an in-person transaction. Twenty percent of the time attackers sought either financial credentials or proprietary information (compared to 45 percent in 2013) meaning attackers shifted their focus back to payment card data.

I assume this is mostly because the US still doesn't have chipped credit cards, or has that changed since a year or so ago when I was there? I thought the magstripe was going away.

No, I'm saying if there was a STEM shortage, then these people would all be able to find better jobs, and the game companies would have to pay better and provide better working conditions.

There's no STEM shortage, just a shortage of people willing to work 80 hours per week for under $50k per year.

I think the GP's point is obvious. When you see/read the Hunger Games, your first reaction is disbelief that this could happen, and then it hits you that it did happen (Rome, etc.). I think that was one of the major points of the book: same old human cruelty in a different setting.

Nothing you do in school, no project, certainly not a "keystone project", can come anywhere close to the complexity of a real-life engineering, IT, or software project. All of the things like best practices and methodology you were learning in school were methods for managing complexity, and yet they could never actually show you real complexity like you're going to see in the workforce.

There's a lot of talk about the fact that this would mean tracking everywhere you went. Why not just track miles driven by your odometer? I don't know about Oregon, but here you report your odometer reading when you pay for your license plate. You could just also pay the estimated tax (you already tell your insurance company how far you're probably going to drive) when you license your vehicle, and then pay/receive the difference when you re-register it next year, plus when you sell it. Seems a lot simpler and less expensive than a GPS tracker.

Also, seems like there should be a per-distance tax for roads, plus a gas consumption tax just to cover the increased societal costs of using gas. Use the gas tax to build out charging stations.

Yeah, no kidding. My wife wanted one for Christmas, so she got one (not from me). Thankfully it's a Keurig 1.0. I insisted on finding one of the good re-usable stainless steel filters and I just put regular ground coffee in it. Works great for me. She only cares about the convenience, and won't use the re-usable one. It's sad to me, but it's her choice. Honestly, how people can think throwing out all these plastic k-cups are a great idea is beyond me.