10753212
submission
Nuclear Elephant writes
"Yesterday I test drove a 2010 Lincoln Navigator equipped with the MS Sync feature advertised to make driving safer and easier. In the audio below, it took me a total of three minutes and thoughts of suicide to assign a simple destination using MS Sync. I was forced to take my eyes off the road several times to read numerous lists of possible voice matches for city, street name, and more. Have a listen to my conversation with the onboard computer. And to think that only yesterday, I considered texting to be the most dangerous thing to do while driving."Link to Original Source
10499244
submission
Nuclear Elephant writes
"A nasty windstorm blew through a couple weeks back and decimated the power infrastructure in my town. A large part of the town was out for as much as six days. While most of us have generators, many neighbors were still unreachable via their telephone, and weren't online. No connection to the outside world, ... and most importantly – no 911. Come to find, they were all on Comcast. ... But our FiOS was up, even though telephone poles had been torn down into the middle of streets and intersections, roads were closed, and live wires were flying around. To understand what’s going on here, you need to understand the differences in the technology..."Link to Original Source
2140905
submission
Nuclear Elephant writes
"I don't know how long this will last after somebody notices that others have noticed, but I had several people confirm this on different machines and operating systems. It looks as if Mr. Obama's website, which has recently added a new feature called Open Government, might be censoring certain questions submitted by the American people. The website appears to be filtering visitors' ability to find certain questions, preventing them from being voted on. I've included two screenshots, showing that a search for "assault weapons" suspiciously returns zero results, while a search for "ssault weapons" brings up 15 results. Searching for similar topics, such as "assault" and "ban" or "assault" and "atf" or "assault" and "rifle" seem to also provide empty results unless part of the spelling is removed. Strangely, a search for "gay marriage" returns plenty of results, so the issue obviously isn't one of multi-word searches. Longer multi-word queries such as "environmental protection" return results too, so the problem isn't one of query length. This suggests that someone might have hard-coded certain key words to return empty, leaving those questions to rot at the bottom of the pit. It is uncertain just how many votes were cast on these questions, and whether they were voted on before this suspicious behavior started. Clearly when the questions could be found, they were considered good questions to ask. How much confidence can we put in an administration that censors the thoughts and concerns of the American people? And of equal importance, what other topics are suspiciously returning no matches?"Link to Original Source
1203223
submission
Nuclear Elephant writes
"Our federal HIPAA laws have forced me to watch my father's meantal health degrade as if from behind iron bars — knowing that our federal government has rendered me helpess to do anything to help him pro-actively. He has hit bottom and become only a shell of the gifted, intelligent man I used to know him as. HIPAA has helped to destroy this man by affording him the ability to isolate himself amidst a disease whose symptoms include delusions inciting isolation and paranoia, and has castrated families across the nation who are seeking to help their own loved ones in similar situations. I've written a brief account of events that have allowed my father's psychological illnesses to fester and worsen as a result of the HIPAA privacy rules."Link to Original Source
821855
submission
Nuclear Elephant writes
"It's been a personal decision of mine to steer clear of Apple's SDK and stick with open development. There were many reasons for this, such as being able to write better software, but one of the key reasons was Apple's NDA, which I anticipated would be around for "as long as it took" to get patents filed in every country in the world. Unfortunately, many of my brothers in development were not as smart and have sold their souls to Steve for the "privilege" of writing software for his AppStore system. Developers worldwide have no doubt given much thought to Apple's policies concerning the SDK and its confidentiality requirements. From the comments I've heard on the subject, I decided to redact their thoughts and mine into ten reasons that I believe violating Apple's NDA is both ethical and beneficial to the consumer market."Link to Original Source
