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Comment Are they going to fix the bugs? (Score 5, Interesting) 126

That's great that Google is going to enable device encryption by default. But are they going to fix the usability and security problems for Android L?

If you enable device encryption on Android, you can no longer back up and restore your data over USB or through third party tools. You can create encrypted backups over USB, but you can't restore them because of bugs in the ADB tools. The only way to back up and restore is by uploading your data to Google's cloud servers, where your data is much more likely to be purloined than if you had just left your device unencrypted in the first place.

When you enable encryption, you set a password. The encryption password becomes your lock screen PIN and there is no way to change it. So, which are you going to choose? A secure encryption password that you'll spend 15 seconds entering on the tiny keyboard every time you want to unlock your phone? Or a useable PIN that is trivial to crack if an attacker gets your encrypted data?

It's clear someone added device encryption to Android to check it off the list and didn't intend for anyone to use it. I hope their product team realizes this before they bring it to a wider audience.

Comment Meteorite my ass (Score 1) 107

If that's a meteor crater, where's the ejecta? It must have excavated ~200 m3 of dirt, which seems to have simply disappeared. None of the plants surrounding it show any evidence of violent impact, "shockwave", or explosion as reported. Maybe there is actually a crater somewhere, but this is just a photo of some sort of sinkhole?

Comment Re:Wrong (Score 1) 389

Agreed. The right incentives applied slowly could fix the carbon problem efficiently and with minimal disruption, at least in the United States.

I am already lighting my house with LED bulbs, taking the bus, and turning off the AC. That reduced my annual consumption by probably 20 GJ. But 35 years down the road I want to be able to harness more energy than is available to me today, not less. More computers, faster and farther transportation, 3D printing, stuff I can't even imagine yet, it's all going to take more energy no matter how efficiently we use it.

Comment Re:Wrong (Score 1) 389

For sure there is waste to be excised from the system. But you are thinking in terms of 5-10 years, not 35. In the past 50 years per-capita energy reductions have coincided strongly with economic recession. Over the longer term humans have tended to massively increase their energy consumption, not reduce it. In the last hundred years, per capita energy usage has increased by about 70%. We could perhaps get by with a 50% decrease in energy intensity through efficiency gains, but that requires economic stagnation and a very pessimistic view of the future.

Comment Ridiculous recommendations (Score 2) 389

As much as I agree that we need to reduce carbon emissions, these recommendations are a recipe for disaster. The USA research team, for example, recommends something like a 50% reduction in per capita energy intensity by 2050. That is flat out incompatible with human nature in a healthy economy and society. I neither want my children to live in a world ravaged by carbon pollution, nor do I want them living a life of energy poverty. Any sensible solution would avoid both outcomes by greatly expanding the availability of clean energy generation. The fact that no one seems to be willing to chart a course of clean energy abundance makes me suspicious that other motives are at work here besides saving us from global warming.

The French team starts with the only healthy and clean energy infrastructure in the world and _completely_dismantles_it_. Apparently their current administration has recommended that the country phase out nuclear power by 2050, and the team takes this as gospel, replacing it with biofuels. The projected results are predictably disastrous.

The only team to make reasonable recommendations here was China, but they also had the easiest job since China has the most low-hanging fruit and the only serious build-out of clean energy generation.

Comment Why bother printing humans? (Score 1) 323

If we're going to have to send a machine to do it anyway, why not start with a simpler organism? We can design a single-celled extremophile that would be viable on the target planet, then send a probe there to make them. Then all we have to do is wait a billion years or so for evolution to produce an organism that we could communicate with. Wouldn't the result be essentially the same?

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