These are well-established, well-tested, well-designed protocols with no suspect commercial interests involved. QUIC solves nothing that hasn't already been solved.
If pseudo-open proprietary standards are de-rigour, then adopt the Scheduled Transfer Protocol and Delay Tolerant Protocol. Hell, bring back TUBA, SKIP and any other obscure protocol nobody is likely to use. It's not like anyone cares any more.
Doesn't Germany have the equivilent of a Son of Sam law where criminals and their heirs can't earn a profit from their heinous acts?
I just want the search engine to stop changing what I'm searching for. I don't want to have to quote every word like I have to do with Google to make sure that the word is actually in the page, and by "the word", I mean "the word I type, not a word that Google things may be similar to the one I typed". It's worst when you're searching for foreign words, product names, acronyms, or whatnot and Google tries to treat them as if they're English words and declines them or chooses synonyms.
"Did you mean X?" is fine. Even "Searching for X (see original results here)", if you're very confident that the person made a common spelling error or whatnot. But just going in and swapping out words as if this is expected behavior? Terrible. At least let me disable it if you want to do that...
Beyond all this: I do like how one can do simple commonn operations on Google - math, conversions, etc. The more of these the better IMHO, so long as they have a standardized format - be they tracking numbers, flight lookups, whatever. It's okay in my book to be a bit Wolfram-y.
Keep the interface plain, simple, the sort of thing that'll work on any browser, from a modern Chrome to a simple text-only browser. Only use javascript where it's not essential for the site to work. Here's an example of something that would be a good use of javascript: if you need to track clicks, like Google does, do it through javascript rather than by having a link redirect like Google does. I hate how I can't just right click and copy link on Google without getting some massive Google redirect link.
Just my thoughts.
Uber is clearly racketeering. Are there special penalties there for it, as in the U.S.? There must be a solid extradition treaty between the two nations. If convicted, could the top Uber execs be facing years in Dutch prison?
Personally, I hope so. The idea that it's legal to be a crook as long as you're using smart phones and unlicensed contract labor to do it is pernicious. The Dutch literally invented capitalism. Let's hope they show the world again what it can be at its best, with the proper controls and ethics.
Apparently you don't know the meaning of the words "for fun".
About 10 years ago I worked on simulating a rocket with electric turbopumps for fun. The concept was the exact same as theirs - minimize the number of parts that have to operate in harsh environments to reduce cost, maintenance and risk of failure. You don't even need any penetrations of the propellant lines, the rotor of the electric motor is the compressor itself.
I have no clue whether the design will actually be practical. But it's certainly not new. I'm sure I'm not the first person that this concept occurred to.
He claimed he could hack the plane. This was bad and the FBI had every right to determine his motives, his actual capabilities and his actions.
The FBI fraudulently claimed they had evidence a crime had already taken place. We know it's fraudulent because if they did have evidence, the guy would be being questioned whilst swinging upside down over a snake pit. Hey, the CIA and Chicago have Black Sites, the FBI is unlikely to want to miss out. Anyways, they took his laptop, not him, which means they lied and attempted to pervert the course of justice. That's bad, unprofessional and far, far more dangerous. The researcher could have killed himself and everyone else on his plane. The FBI, by using corrupt practices, endanger every aircraft.
Did the FBI have the evidence that he had actually hacked a previous leg of the flight, or did they not?
If they did not, if they knowingly programmed a suspect with false information, they are guilty of attempted witness tampering through false memory syndrome. Lots of work on this, you can program anyone to believe they've done anything even if the evidence is right in front of them that nothing was done at all. Strong minds make no difference, in fact they're apparently easier to break.
Falsifying the record is self-evidently failure of restraint.
I have little sympathy for the researcher, this kind of response has been commonplace since 2001, slow-learners have no business doing science or engineering. They weren't exactly infrequent before then.
Nor have I any sympathy for the airlines. It isn't hard to build a secure network where the security augments function rather than simply taking up overhead. The same is true of insecure car networks. The manufacturers of computerized vehicles should be given a sensible deadline (say, next week Tuesday) to have fully tested and certified patches installed on all vulnerable vehicles.
Failure should result in fines of ((10 x vehicle worth) + (average number of occupants x average fine for unlawful death)) x number of vehicles in service. At 15% annual rate of interest for every year the manufacturer delays.
They talk about how they need to regularly pick up and relaunch balloons when they come down. I don't see why they would need to design the balloons without any sort of reinflation system. The leak rate is tiny, right? So:
1. A little more solar panel area than they already need.
2. Hydrogen filled instead of helium filled.
3. Tiny container of sulfuric acid (hygroscopic - self-dilutes down to a given concentration with atmospheric moisture)
4. Electrolysis cell (sulfuric acid is used as the electrolyte in some types of electrolysis cells).
Problem solved. Sulfuric acid draws moisture from the air, and during the day the solar power electrolyzes it it to produce a minute trickle of hydrogen into the balloon, which replaces the minute trickle that leaks out. Your balloon's lifespan is now as long as your electronics and envelope last.
Indeed, the figures Musk cited a couple years ago was that over 80% of the part count of a Falcon 9 is sourced in-house; it's a critical part of their approach to keeping costs down. He wanted to do that with Tesla as well but it proved impossible, only about 20% of their parts (at the time) were produced in-house. Unsurprisingly the biggest problems in their early days came from external suppliers, like the gearbox issue on the Roadster.
ESAB is a Swedish company. What use is it to NASA to dote largess on a Swedish welding firm?
I'm actually rather disappointed with ESAB here. I have one of their MIG welders from the 1960s and it still works; they're a respectable name.
I feel bad for NASA mind you, in that I don't think many of their problems are their own. They get all sorts of legacy systems forced upon them due to political reasons ("You can't do decision X that would be more efficient because 1000 people in my district would lose their jobs"), they never get the funding to engineer new things from scratch based on lessons learned, etc. I do wonder, mind you, whether their heavy reliance on external contractors is something they could reform.
When you have a comoany that knows how to do a certain thing , aka one of those evil corporations, getting hired by the federal government, some people want to do a lot of paperwork and stuff to keep track of what's going on, and other people go crazy with it.
If we're doing something important, like killing Hitler, or trying to beat the Commies to the moon, federal procurement can be remarkably efficient. Clear goals, and the stated willingness to accept some waste as long as the job's done, can do that.
Unfortunately since about the mid-1970s (Watergate you say?!), approximately zero "waste," of any kind is tolerated on any federal project, as this is "profiteering" or "wasting the people's money," so a lot of contractor time is spent on compliance. This makes the process incredibly loss-averse, and probably too risk-averse to actually accomplish anything.
The reality is that Elon Musk is able to do a good job, because he can destroy two or three recovery barges in a row and he doesn't have to explain it to anybody but his accountant. If the SLS had only one slip-up like that there would be a bloodbath of firings, senate hearings, press conferences with the President, and maybe the entire program might be scrubbed. Back in the late 50s NASA screwed up these kinds of operations all the time, but the American people tolerated it because of the Cold War. Nowadays the budget is so tight and public accountability is so fierce that frigging welding assembly subcontractors are apparently front-page news. We probably built and destroyed five facilities on the scale of this thing during Apollo and nobody batted an eye at the expense.
Remember, UNIX spelled backwards is XINU. -- Mt.
