Indeed, sounds like a non-compete-clause type of snit... the old "you can't work in the field you work in because you learned lots of stuff while working for us".

All (valid) complaints about the continuing dumbing-down of the interface aside, have they fixed the FF28 behavior where opening a new tab/window gets progressively slower with use, until after a few days of use, opening one freezes FF and pegs the CPU for upwards of 20 seconds before it appears? (Or just crashes.)

Closing and re-opening FF resets the molasses clock, but that's a poor substitute for just working correctly in the first place.

Indeed. Specifically, they are taking the approach already found by at least one previous court decision to be lawful. The one off the top of my head is Cartoon Network vs. Cablevision; digging up the actual decision will reveal a goldmine of related cases and the nuances (at least to the 2nd Circuit) of how the ugly "rented, remotely hosted DVR, separate redundant copies per user" technical workaround differs from more logical approaches. IIRC the Cablevision decision as to whether transmitting video from a remote-rented DVR was a public performance or other infringing use hinged on whether it was the cable co or the customer that "pressed the button" that initiated the recording (copy).

Ha ha, apparently proselytizing about the "Internet of Things" is trendy again. Don't hold your breath kids; until IPv6 is a thing that's really a thing, enjoy your "small home network of things", where your game console, thermostat and toaster have 192.168.x.x IP addresses dangling from your cablemodem, and require a 3rd-party cloud service to mediate contact with your neighbor's toaster.

Seriously though... if anybody but major datamining companies are going to get remotely enthusiastic about this IoT shenanigans, two things need to happen: IPv6 and dirt-cheap low-bandwidth wireless uplinks (think cellphone plan with pay-by-the-byte or 512kb/month dataplans and low/no monthly maintenance fees) so that all the applications (smart stoplights, weather/pollution sensors, whatever) that would benefit from not dangling off someone's cell plan or cablemodem don't have to do so. Maybe on the 3rd revival of the IoT hype, about 10 years from now, it'll really catch on and be actually kind of useful. (See also: "M2M".)

The 'threats of violence' thing appears to be a naive misunderstanding of German, if not an intentionally sensationalist one: have a look at the comment by user "Required" following the article, which explains the original German idiom.

The actual "curbstone" quote in question is:
"Ein geistiger Tiefflieger, er soll aufpassen, dass er nicht mit dem Kinn am Bor[d]stein hÃngen bleibt."

It's not a threat to curbstomp anyone, but a colorful insult that loosely translates as "someone with such a low-flying intellect, they have to watch out for curbstones lest they hit their chin on one". Indeed, Google auto-translates it as:

"A spiritual low-flying aircraft, he should be careful that he does not hang with the chin on the curb."

There are definitely some interesting ideas mentioned in the 1996 patent (e.g. tying playback stats back to a billing system; voice commanded playback), but much of it sounds similar to the systems commercial radio stations used at the time to schedule programming and handle royalties. But the patent claims are written so broadly as to cover just about anything. For example, Claim 1 could easily encompass a playlist feature in any audio program. I can't imagine there wasn't a single audio program in 1996 with playlists. In fact, this claim would appear to cover plain Audio CDs, which have been around since the mid 70s and include just such a "playlist" (TOC data) at the beginning of each disc, with the player providing the customary play/next/stop/repeat controls. The CD-changer I had in the early 90s allowed programming an arbitrary playback order as well. Interestingly, the more advanced CD-Text specification, which includes human-readable track listings and other metadata in the TOC, was officially released a month before the priority date of the patent.

"Safety Yellow" is a thing. (See also: yellow and black, striping, police tape.) Especially for test equipment that may be presently connected to high voltages. Also, easy to spot at a distance, or in dark places (such as the bottom of a toolchest or bag). Aircraft "black boxes" are usually bright orange, for the same reason.

I don't claim to be an imaging expert, but a few odd details about the experimental method jumped out at me. It's been known for some time now that diffusive and other scene-perturbing objects (e.g. grossly distorting 'lenses' such as a Coke bottle) can be nullified using a structured light technique to characterize and effectively 'undo' the perturber. A simple structured light example is to replace the light source with a DLP projector and take multiple images with only one pixel illuminated at a time. More clever implementations can replace the single pixels with speckle patterns, zebra stripes, etc., and replace the 2D imager with a single-pixel photocell. Other neat tricks can then be performed such as reconstructing the image from the POV of the light source rather than the imaging device.

The experimentals shown in this paper all seem to have two things in common: 1) the "object" in each case is a backlit, 2D binary pattern on a transparency film or similar, with a relatively small illuminated area, and 2) an extremely narrowband (laser, actually) light source is used. The paper does mention several times that the light source is non-coherent, but it is a laser under the hood. This explains the numerous references to "speckle" in the images, which may leave most readers scratching their heads since things don't normally speckle when looked at through a slice of onion under ordinary light. Speckling is a laser (de)coherence phenomenon where the rays are put slightly out of coherence so as to interfere constructively and destructively.

These things suggest to me that while the paper is definitely interesting, there is no need to worry about the neighbors snapping passable nudes through your shower door or Feds cataloging your grow farm via pictures of a blank wall through your window. This sounds more like a modest extension to what's already been done stirring coherent and structured-light in a pot with convolution and autocorrellation methods.

Since the coherence length of cheap semiconductor lasers (e.g. laser pointers) can be on the order of 1mm or less, it's possible to call even a straight-up laserbeam "non-coherent narrowband light" with a somewhat straight face. Likewise, the quasi-point-sources created using a sparse geometric 2D aperture in transparency film, backlight by the aforementioned source, is pretty close to structured light for practical purposes. The takeaway message is these are very special lighting and "scene" conditions that are not representative of everyday photographic circumstances. So not to worry just yet :-)

Seeing this reminded me of an old handheld electronic pinball game I found in my grandparents' attic as a kid. I figured it had to be almost this old, possibly predating the Merlin, and so Googled it... Sure enough, it is from 1979 and invented by one Bob Doyle.

Yes, this! According to a quick check on Newegg, a GB+ Flash drive can be had retail for less than $3.50 USD. Bulk-buy millions from China and I expect it's quite a bit less (and they only have to work once...). Instructions: "Plug this into the port under the dash the next time you drive. When the light on the port turns green, remove it." No taking off work to visit the dealer, no "professional installation" costs, no wasted fuel, no remote exploits. Plus, the customer gets a free thumb drive for their trouble. Score.

I shudder to compare that to the cost of of embedding a cellular radio in every vehicle (AEC-Q200 qualified, extreme temperature and shock rated), plus supplying data service to them (even if they can schmooze a sweet bulk rate there too for very infrequent usage). You'd need a whole lot of recalls to break even on that.

(That's without it being a last-minute-bolted-on hacker's paradise, and the many other practical considerations, such as: Recalls are sometimes issued for vehicles 10+ years old. Do YOU know what wireless standard your cell carrier will support in 10 years? Or if they will still be in business, or still honor the agreement and provide service for as long as the vehicle/radio continues to be operational?)

I like the idea in theory, but I have to say the hair on the back of my neck stands up stiff at the thought of giving a vendor - or worse, a government - the power to legally mandate forced install of software on something you've already paid for as a condition of your continuing to use it. If it's anything like the wider consumer product world, not every update is in the consumer's best interest, and said consumer will not be able to pick-n-choose, only get patched up to "current" as maintained by the vendor.

"Yes, we fixed a significant bug in the cruise control module in r27, making this a mandated safety update. Meanwhile, we got in a snit with the media center vendor around r25 or so, so mp3 and handsfree features have been removed. Oh, since it runs FooOS, you now need a Foo Account to use the builtin GPS or update the maps. It collects your location history, but they pinky-swear it won't be used for anything naughty. Ah yeah, around r23 there was a patent dispute with the airbag vendor, so uh..."

See also: Playstation 3 Linux, OnStar remote surveillance mode, Sony Rootkit, disappearing ebooks and other vendor "self-help" features in any number of gadgets, Kindle text-to-speech...

My work bought one. We were looking for a consumer-level (RepRap-level) FDM printer for quick prototyping; Lulzbot TAZ came pre-assembled and calibrated (no need to spend billable hours fiddling with it before first print), had a large build area and unlike some other RepRap-derived designs, is truly open-source.

Suits might care about a silly name; engineers not so much :-)

Wait, someone can control something by physically plugging something into a control port designed for that purpose?

It's a neat trick, but if the bad guy has physical access, it doesn't take a wireless dongle in the CAN port to mess shit up...

The actual text of the reviews is not included, but the description of the implicated posts suggests that in at least some cases, it may have been possible to correlate the description of work performed to a customer record, or potentially rule out the reviewer as a customer (e.g. the New Jersey customer). With many caveats and unknowns, of course.

10. The negative reviews in Exhibit 5 are false and
defamatory. For example, user âoeBob G.â from Oakton allegedly
relates how he was in a desperate need of emergency carpet
cleaning and was ripped off. User âoeChris H.â from Washington
reported that his precious rugs were shrunk. User âoeJ8.â from Falls
Church reports that he was charged for work never performed.
User âoeYB.â from Fairfax reports that unauthorized work was
performed and his rug was stained. One user, âoeAris P.â from
Haddonfield, N.J. reports that the price was double the quote and
that Hadeed was once bankrupt. Many of the negative reviews
report that the price was double what was charged [sic]. After
combing it customer records, Hadeed was at a loss to find record
of these allegations. Regarding Aris P., in particular, Hadeed
conducts no business in New Jersey.

The above sound like they are written as pretty clear-cut customer testimonials (e.g. I actually did business with X, was quoted Y, charged Z), but this ruling brings up an interesting question: what is VA's legal criterion for being a "customer" to post reviews? An example that comes to mind is a user that posts a negative review of a business because the owner was rude/threatening/racist/etc., and left the business for this reason prior to completing a purchase. The Yelp page of a local yarn store is full of such reviews, where the prospective customer indicates he/she left in disgust before purchasing (i.e. does not assert that any purchase was made or service rendered). Would such reviewers also be unmasked?