I know that makes a great right-wing talking point, but in fact vaccine makers are shielded from almost all liability, barring gross misconduct.

Congress created the vaccine court that evaluates people who may have been injured by a vaccination (no action is 100% free of side effects in 100% of people 100% of the time, including taking no action which in the case of the target diseases is millions of deaths and maimings or stuff like allergic reactions in the case of giving vaccines).

If you are injured by a vaccination, the vaccine court awards compensation, up to and including lifetime medical care if needed.

Part of the reason these diseases are coming back is the anti-vaccination conspiracy nut jobs. If herd immunity drops below a certain percentage then the disease can persist and grow. Above that line and you have essentially 100% protection even though some people can't or won't get the vaccine (and some people who do don't develop perfect immunity). Unfortunately so many people are willing to but "JUST ASKING QUESTIONS" and "TEACH THE CONTROVERSY" bullshit that we are below the herd immunity line for some diseases. We can look forward to a lot more dead and crippled kids before Jenny McCarthy and Andrew Wakefield's body counts are tallied.

If the rumors are to be believed, Futurama cost $1.3 million per episode to produce back in 2003 during the original run. We know Comedy Central gave them a smaller budget this time around, so let's just assume a million per episode.

So let us say we all want to fund a season of Futurama (putting our money where our mouth is):

16 episode season x $1,000,000 = $16,000,000.

Now assume the average audience is 2 million. Some would be willing to pay, some would not. But assume the lost TV viewers are made up for with the DVD buyers (who are worth a lot more). That works out to around $8/person to fund a season.

If I had the option, I would gladly pay $8-$10 per season.

For reference, AMC's Mad Men cost between $2-2.5 million per episode. In the first season, it didn't even break a million viewers. The second season had 2 million, same as Futurama.

I don't believe the economics are at the root of the cancellation; it's probably an executive trying to make their mark by shaking up programming and cancelling Futurama makes way for his/her pet project - one they can take credit for launching.

Can you clarify your sources for this? I was under the impression that the new Apple Push Notification system (on which iMessage is based) does a standard certificate request to the auth service (after logging in with your Apple ID), then uses that certificate to encrypt the APN connection. So at no time does Apple have your private key.

What I don't know is whether the service does a similar key exchange between the sender and recipients so the message contents are never decrypted on Apple's servers. In theory the device could simply generate a key for each unique conversation, do the public key exchange, then be sure the body was safe, the headers and overall body would themselves be encrypted over the secure connection between your device and Apple using the client and server certificates you got when you turned on iMessage on the device.

Chrome blazed the trail on multi-process isolation of the web engine (so one ill-behaved tab doesn't crash the whole browser among other things) but that trail was built above the WebKit API layer. The WebKit team implemented a similar model, but cross-platform and inside WebKit itself so anyone using WebKit can take advantage of it.

Google has a lot invested in Chrome, so it doesn't surprise me they'd rather fork and do their own thing, rather than adopt the common model. It also allows them to stop caring about so much of the cross-platform stuff, though Chrome for MacOS will continue to exist so its not like they are saving anything compared to adopting Apple's commits (which typically target the OS X core).

The North Korean regime is based on several odd pillars.

One is that the Korean people are racially superior to others; their naturally superior, child-like nature is why they've been repeatedly conquered in the past. Kim is their mother-protector who gently guides them while sheltering them from the evil, corrupt world outside. They are encouraged from a young age not to think about things, merely to embrace their instincts and emotional reactions; as the naturally most superior race, their instincts are pure and right and thinking too much can lead them astray.

A corellary to that is Americans are inferior half-breeds who can't help but be aggressive war-mongers and Korean baby-killers. Not even American women and children can be spared or trusted because their nature precludes it. Korean mothers are told if they leave their kids alone with American children, the American children will attack or kill theirs because of their nature. That isn't treated as a weakness by the way... Merely a result of the natural state of Korean innocence. In fact the Chinese, Europeans, Africans, et al are all inferior races, naturally untrustworthy, and beneath contempt.

Second is that the NK population is well aware they have a reduced standard of living, but it is a sacrifice they must all make to ensure they aren't conquered by a foreign power again... Necessary to preserve the superior race of the Korean people. It's the military first policy. The information firewall has been down for some time - that's why they came up with the military first policy as a way to explain the discrepancy. Think Germany in January 1945. They've obviously lost the war, yet they fight on... Some even fanatically so. Why? Why bother showing up to build tanks? Why volunteer for suicide missions? To protect the homeland (and what else can you do anyway?)

So without an ever-present enemy threatening to massacre the Korean people in a genocidal rage, an enemy that can't be reasoned or negotiated with, the reason for the NK's existence is removed.

Remember: they have been repeatedly promising that when the US is vanquished from the penninsula, the one true master race will finally be united.

When you understand these things, NK's actions make plenty of sense.

Power loss protection (super capacitors) was stated on four of the drives (the four least expensive to boot). Only three performed flawlessly in the unserialized writes test. Those aren't great odds. In fact only two drives passed all tests with no errors, and it wasn't necessarily the SLC "enterprise" drives, though those two also passed the serialized writes test.

In case you aren't aware, unserialized writes invalidate *every* assumption, including write ahead, journaling, even your fancy BTRFS/ZFS. His example is a database where the transaction log write was sync'd before the data page write, then after a power failure the data page is persisted but the log write is gone.

You can recover from many of the other errors or at least detect them but unserialized writes can silently corrupt data or even ruin the entire filesystem.

Obviously the metadata/dead failures are the exception... Those render the whole SSD useless.

The vast majority of the federal budget is mandatory, necessary maintenance/upkeep, earned benefits people paid for years of their lives for, or temporary benefits.

The amount of the budget that funds everything else, stuff like NASA, scientific research, etc makes up a relatively tiny slice of the budget.

So yes, 85 billion isn't huge compared to the overall total but when you subtract out Medicare, Social Security, etc it ends up being a bigger chunk than it first appears.

Besides which, to find total government employment you have to include state and local governments. Total government employment has dropped significantly over the past few years. If the government had held steady we'd have 6% unemployment (or lower) right now. If households, the private sector, and government cut at the same time it's called a depression.

Oh and anyone comparing the government to a family budget is a complete and utter moron. Families don't pay bills and receive income in a currency the family prints in their basement; by definition the federal government can coin or print as much money as they want, including without borrowing if it so chooses (the Fed credits the government account with cash ex nilhilio when the US Mint makes coins). Granted, if you do too much of that interest rates will rise... And if the economy were closer to 100% utilization it would distort the market. But we aren't and interest rates are still at historic lows; banks, corporations, and the richest of the rich are hoarding cash in massive amounts.

We should have automatic stabilizers that kick in and out without requiring Congress' approval. In recessions, government spending kicks up to cover the gap. In boom times spending cuts back and the debt is repaid.

Fat chance at funding research, NASA, infrastructure, or anything else.

Congress passes budgets, not the president, and the GOP controls the House. I hope you like more slash & burn, tax cuts for billionaires, etc. We no longer have the capacity to do anything great because the Koch brothers don't want to pay any extra taxes. As more money funnels to the top, the consumer class (making up 70% of our economy) no longer have the money to consume. This further depresses the economy, making the labor market worse, leading to a self-reinforcing cycle, unless the government comes in and jump-starts things by increasing demand... Of course when things return to normal those same government actions turn into distortions and the debt must then be repaid. No idea why so many seem to think the same solution must be applicable to all circumstances.

Of course those genius job creators are investing and hiring more.... Aahahahahahaah I can't even finish that sentence. Their money is either parked doing nothing or rapidly chasing anything that looks like yield, regardless of quality.

China is mis-allocating capital in much the same way, though for different reasons. When too much money accumulates at the top it drives investment bubbles as the money looks for something, anything to invest in, driving the cost of borrowing/taking on investors down even for risky propositions. As the risk no longer correlates with costs, people dogpile into wasteful areas (overbuilding in China, empty cities, etc or tech bubble/housing bubble here).

Some idiots think the CRA or deadbeat borrowers caused the housing collapse but the banks were desperate to fling loans at anyone with a pulse because they wanted the sweet, sweet commissions and investors were eager to buy anything related to housing like CDOs, MBS, etc because they offered a nominal return of ~6% with supposedly "no risk". Banks went on a branch-building binge, including in poor ghettos, because they ran out of prime customers. They heavily pushed subprime and alternative loans as a way to find new people to loan to.

Anyway the point of this ramble is until the Republican FYGM generation dies off, we're destined to be a has-been country with no ability to accomplish great things. Losing the USSR as an enemy was the worst thing to happen to us because we no longer have a bogeyman we can use to shut down the conservative's bullshit. No one can argue against a tax to pay for an interstate system when we have the Ruskies to worry about! The people who bitched and moaned about science spending/NASA were told to STFU, we have to beat the Russians to the moon! We saw the pollution and environmental devastation of east Germany and Nixon signed the EPA into law.

It's just sad.

This conflicts with Google's model because it would require paying for customer service. Instead, Google makes the developers handle refunds, etc and simply acts as a payment processor/facilitator.

In that respect they get to wash their hands of the whole thing and let everyone else deal with it on an ad-hoc basis.

By comparison, Apple is the seller/merchant and handles all the customer service (including device install/compatibility problems), paying sales taxes, etc. App developers are paid sales commissions/royalties.

There are benefits/drawbacks in both cases but I personally prefer the Apple model, since as a single developer working on my apps after-hours I don't have the time to deal with credit card issues, refunds, device support, etc.

Apple handles iAds differently from other purchases. In the case of the ad network, it pays that out to individuals as income/profit and provides tax forms.

For regular app and IAP sales, it is structured as a sales commission/royalties so Apple is the seller and obligated to pay sales tax. As the developer you receive the commission and no tax forms are sent. You are responsible for accurately reporting your commissions to the IRS.

This is for the US; for other countries it depends on your local laws and how they treat royalty/commission payments.

A Renault engineer got on the phone with the guy and walked him through various attempts to stop the car, stop the engine, go into neutral, etc. I would hazard a guess that the engineer had him try anything considered safe (don't want to accidentally lock the steering wheel at that speed).

If the computer were sending commands to disengage the throttle but there was a mechanical problem or a bug in an electronic component the engine simply may not have responded to the command. Depending on the transmission design, at max throttle it may have refused or been unable to disengage and slide into neutral either.

I think this sort of thing highlights how important it is to have an alternate emergency cutoff, one not dependent on the electronic control systems. Something like a secondary switch contact in the on/off button that if held down for 15 seconds automatically cuts power to the fuel pump with a simple, dumb electronic relay circuit.

Of course if you've ever looked at the "security" or "design" of these in-car networks (CANBUS, etc) then you realize how awful they are. Think along the lines of your average cable company DVR. They are full of holes - eg a radio that had a bluetooth stack full of buffer overruns, allowing you to hijack its CPU, which cross-connected various supposedly segmented busses, giving you remote access to the ECU. The demo I saw just rolled the windows down or remotely flash the headlights, but you could certainly stop the engine, turn off traction control, unrecoverably crash the ECU, etc.

Here's the real version of that conversation:

Users are bombarded with dialog boxes, permission boxes, info bars, tray notifications, software update notifications, and so forth all day long. They don't read them, they just click YES/OK. If it pops up again, they try CANCEL (even if the text is different - remember they don't read it!)

That's why IE's ActiveX scheme was a massive failure - it relied on users to know what ActiveX was, know what digital certificates were, then make an informed security decision for each and every control that wanted to install. Even if the native code execution wasn't a huge hole all by itself the whole scheme is a massive failure because most users don't know what ActiveX is, wouldn't know how to verify a certificate if they wanted to, and can't control what the control does after it's installed.

This is also why Android is a huge security fail. It relies on the user to understand what the permissions mean and what the consequences are at the time of install. Even if you understood exactly what those 18 permissions were (including scrolling down to expand the list and finding identically named permissions but with slightly different detail text under them)... you can't enable-disable them if you decide the app shouldn't have some of them. Should App X be able to modify or delete USB storage? maybe... depends on what it wants to do! Should it be able to make phone calls or send text messages? Maybe... too bad you won't be asked about it when it signs you up for $9.99/mo SMS services. What about manage accounts? Maybe the app wants to legitimately manage accounts... or maybe it will delete your entire google account. Who knows, but you sure won't be prompted about it.

Any system that relies on the user to make potentially dangerous security decisions is an automatic failure; doubly so if the decision is irreversible and persistent for all time (which covers the vast majority of security systems in use today).

I'm almost certain that in the future we'll grant permissions to different apps and websites by answering at the time the app wants access to the resource, not forever. Further I think the system will want to keep a history (think git, but for the entire filesystem), allowing you to effectively "roll back" a bad security decision. That probably means browsers and apps all run isolated in their own OS-provided VM/sandbox and all sharing or filesystem access routes through the version control system.

Same exact thing happened to me, only I was a paying customer previously. Once I stopped paying for their credit monitoring service, I started getting spam to that email address.

I know it was them because I own my own domain and use unique addresses for everything; all the spam was clearly addressed to XXXXX_equifax@XXXXXXX.com

Here's the thing... These batteries should have on-board controllers, with temperature and physical deformation sensors on each cell.

Any sort of over-voltage, current over-draw, overheating, or cell bulging should trigger a temporary disconnect.

It should be literally impossible to damage the battery, no matter what the airplane systems attempt to do to it. That is obviously not the case if they are relying on circuits external to the battery for safety.

This is the long term future for a lot of manual labor across the board. What that will mean for the future of human society is anyone's guess. Perhaps we'll all work 10 hour weeks. Or maybe most will be surfs, crushed under the boots of the aristocracy (robot owners).

How a consumer-driven economy can survive these changes is another huge question mark.