Given that the effect of nutation is ~20 seconds over a period of 18 years, it's measureable but minute. It's circa a second difference per year, which seen per day can be effectively ignored. It was seen first with changes in latitude, and was some time before the changes in longitude were measurable.

The one second per year difference is more than 3 magnitudes different to with the 35 minutes a year that solar time varies by.

Sidereal time does *NOT* have a variable length day. Since it's defined as the average time between successive transits of any particular star, it's *ALWAYS* 23h 56m 04s (approx, or for the decimal preferrers 23.9344696 hours). Apparent solar time does have a variable length, due to the Equation of Time - the function of the difference between a perfectly circular Earth solar orbit and the actual elliptical orbit that we follow.

The sidereal day was always much easier to time, with transit telescopes.

Makes me very happy that I have XPrivacy installed on my rooted S4 Active, and I now have a fine-grained security model with the ability to control what apps have access to what.

It was an eyeopener to see some apps that were misbehaving or just outright being illegal. My flashlight app now only controls the LED on the rear, and cannot see any of my private details - and they earned themselves a 1-star review..

Why do people constantly think to use biometrics as passwords, instead of as usernames? The fuzzy nature of digitising a biometric makes the system fall between two stools - few false negatives at the expense of many false positives or the reverse. In practice this means that you either need to scan a few times to get a good id, or run the risk of scanning as someone else. Given that you cannot change a biometric, why on earth would you use it as a single factor authentication system. It's far far better to scan a biometric then use a PIN as you can change a PIN... If you use a biometric as a single factor, you have not gained anything over the use of e.g. only a PIN, and you must allow for the possibility of false positives (equivalent of entering someone else's PIN).

The company can easily say "no, thanks" to the offer of the reduced price. After all the sticker prices are not final, they are only an offer to treat. There's nothing to stop someone negotiating a price that suits. If both parties agree to it, it's not illegal. Ergo, it's not stealing. If using fake prices as a negotiation tool, it is underhanded yes, but illegal, no.

If you have broken your promises and failed to make good on it - honest and free market forces mean that you'll be remembered for that and punished appropriately. Personally if I was the recipient of such broken promises I would ensure that everyone knew about it so they would not fall victim to the same lies. The internet does make it easier, and that's a very good thing for cases like this where snakeoil salesmen can more easily be outed.

Having said that - if the promise breaker made good on the restitution, I'd also make sure that everyone knew about it so that the good work done by the promise-breaker.

You may consider that changing your mind does not constitute a lie, and you may be correct in saying that. However, changing from the product as described up front at the beginning of funding to a product that has significantly changed from the original premise - that constitutes FRAUD.
I bought in on the kickstarter on the assumption - validated by the original text - that there was going to be a single-player offline game mode, that did not require always-online.
I d not want a game based on an external set of servers - I want to be able to play my game at my pace, on my own computer, without the need to phone externally for in-game items, transaction etc. Frontier Developments have shot themselves in the foot here - two-thirds of those that have already paid want offline play, and one in 5 of those that have already paid have stated that they need offline.
I've a funny feeling that the consumer protection laws will apply here, as one thing was sold pre-development, and another is being delivered. You would not be happy if you pre-bought a watch only to find that the production version, while having numerals on the face, does not tell you the time; as such I am not happy at all with this development.

My feelings on this matter? :(
I intensely dislike systemd and all of its methodology - it's not the Unix way, and I really dislike the systemd developer's attitudes towards bugfixes and other problems with their processes. Systemd is a solution looking for a problem.
As an admin in a company with something like 50,000 *nix machines, of which I have root on about 10,000 of them, systemd will not be making an appearance on any of these systems and the vendors have been appraised of this fact. Any vendor that cannot provide an alternative to systemd will not be in the running for the next phase of server rebuilds.
Personally, I think I'll be migrating all my own personal servers and the servers of my University's computer society to something a lot more useful and not requiring systemd to boot. Going to be a fun time.

Make it so that the average solar noon is some time between 11.30 and 12.30 on the clock. No change of clocks during the year. Exactly as convention has had it for centuries. The timezone divisions are about right.

If you need more time in the evening, then petition your boss to have differing hours of work. There's no real reason why you can't wake at dawn, be at work shortly after sunrise, lunch at local noon, and finish work and have hours of daylight left to play with.

Current NFC payment schemes actually in operation and not just theoretical exercises like Apple's scheme, only require the waving of the card over the reader. Nothing else required. At least the exposure is limited by most banks to a certain value above which the PIN is required. I suggest you read up on the "Visa Paywave" or "Mastercard Paypass". My original comment referred to all NFC payment types, not specifically to Apple's. Given that the Apple fingerprint sensor fails the same tests as all biometric schemes, it's still not an adequate response. At least with pin&chip, no transaction occurs until you enter your PIN, and you can easily change your PIN if required. Good luck changing your fingerprint.

Biometrics, if used, should be used as usernames, not as passwords.

For one, there is far less physical security. There's no physical feedback for a transaction to have taken place when the card is e.g. in a wallet or pocket. The card doesn't even need to be visible for inspection, nor does it even need to be present at the reader terminal for a transaction to take place.

I've seen a proof of concept described that bypasses a lot of the physical security that is assumed to be present with NFC payments. Take two reasonably powerful and sensitive NFC transmitter/receivers, both portable and each connected to a comms device like a rooted Android phone, give one combination pair each to two people involved in the demonstration. Put one of the aerials inside a wallet, carried in the hand with the cable hidden e.g. up a sleeve. This person would be the one "paying". The other person just need to be nearby the "mark" whose card is to be used to pay for the transaction, close enough for the card interrogation to take place. Create a channel where the received data at one aerial is transmitted by the other, and vice-versa. Then when the payment is requested, the shops' cardreader has no way to recognise that the device being waved at it is not the actual one being interrogated for the transaction. The "mark" has no knowledge that their card was just used for a purchase. The merchant has no way to know that the transaction was fraudulent.

The same type of paired-device communication will also work to get through doors that require only a wave of a card in front of it.

So, if you want to have something that can be as easily bypassed as this in your pocket, please ensure that there is a decent faraday cage around it to prevent signal leakage when you don't want it used.

Agreed. I'll happily use NFC for non-critical/toy items, but there's no way in hell that I'm using anything RFID or NFC for payment options. Just not secure enough for me, no matter what the card companies and payment handlers say, as they aren't as interested in my security as I'd like.

I'm going to watch these types of development very closely. I've got the earliest symptoms of macular degeneration, only spotted this early (too early for the retinal thickness measuring laser to definitively measure) due to using astronomical equipment including a hydrogen-alpha scope. Also the fact that I am utterly pedantic about my sight is another factor in my being able to spot the early onset symptoms.
The prospect of a valid retinal transplant is something that I would certainly look at in the future if/when I lose the central portions of my vision, and the possibility of sight restoration is something I know I would like the option of.
It's a nasty complaint for a lifelong astronomer that likes extreme sports :(

Ah, but the EULA is completely non-enforceable in the EU, and has been continually shown as such in the courts. It's not a contract and cannot be treated as such. When there's no contract in play as in this situation, it's standard consumer protection laws that apply. FTDI would almost certainly face criminal proceedings for this action in any/all EU legislative areas. The EULA presentation upon installation has no legal standing for ordinary people that buy computer stuff. The end-user/purchaser/consumer cannot have their rights restricted at any time, and most certainly not my some text on a click-through text with unsigned agreements.

EULAs are nothing more than wishlists for the selling company and can be completely ignored. When I click through them I say out loud "This EULA states I will be paid" and it has the same legal standing.

Those of you living under certain fascist regimes that have allowed the legal recognition of EULAs, well you've got bigger problems..

My place of work, with ~50,000 *NIX boxen of various flavours and vintages, has decided to not go with systemd at all. It's proving to be a complete shitstorm in the enterprise-level environments here, from an administration POV and for breaking the existing management tools that are present.

(we've recently moved from a RH contract to an Oracle Linux contract, and Oracle will bend over backwards to keep us happy..)