Slashdot reader yeokm1 recently installed Linux on a 1993 PC. But in a new blog post he lists every keyboard he's owned over the last 12 years -- to explain why he's now typing on a 5.3-pound Model M keyboard from 1987 that's older than he is, "with its legendary buckling-spring switch." It'll probably last me the decades to the day that keyboards should become obsolete... It is sad that with all the advancements in computing, the one piece of equipment that we use the most to interact with our computers has regressed technologically in the name of costs. We don't usually expect to be using 30-year-old hardware on a daily productive basis but the IBM Model M keyboard is that exception.

Today, I don't really care about fancy features like great aesthetics, RGB backlights, media keys and extra USB ports. I just need something that gives me great tactile feedback, be durable, enable me to easily swap keys to fit my Programmer Dvorak layout. The Model M fits my needs perfectly.
"Really can use this as a weapon," the blog post jokes. There's even a video "to show clicky sound difference" between two different versions of the Model M -- and in true geek fashion, he even removes the casing screws to see whether the inside had rivets or bolts.

The original submission drew a tip from long-time Slashdot reader Spazmania based on his own experiences with the Model M. "The thing I most like? There are little plastic caps on the keys. When they get dirty I can pop them off and run them through the dishwasher."

Any other Slashdot readers want to share their own experiences with Model M keyboards?

The advent of streaming TV services and over the top devices that support them has come at a cost. They used to work on a simple, unwritten principle: being different from normal cable services. You didn't have to pay for large, non-configurable bundles of channels that played shows in linear fashion and required you to use a digital video recorder built into the box (often for an extra fee) if you wanted to create your own collection of programming to watch on your own schedule. But that's not the case anymore, argues veteran technology columnist Walt Mossberg. He writes: The general idea is that each of these TV services will appeal to cord-cutters and cord-nevers who merely consider old-style cable and satellite TV too costly. To overcome that, each offers what are called "skinny bundles" of channels, with fewer choices, at various prices. On Sling, for instance, you start at about 30 channels for $20 a month. On DirecTV Now, it's 60 channels for $35 a month. Both offer other, costlier plans, with more channels, or add-on plans for HBO, or for specialized programming such as sports, or kids' shows. Both are working on DVR offerings. In other words, while the bundles may be cheaper and skinnier, they're still bundles, not unlike the tiers of programming offered by traditional cable and satellite services. And you can't assemble your own custom bundle. Also, unlike in the Netflix / Hulu model, the emphasis here is on networks, not shows.

Gizmodo, in its typical sensational voice, ran a story this week in which it argues that smartphones are in a "ridiculously boring place" right now. Alex Cranz with the publication expresses her discontent with some of the recently launched smartphones such as the iPhone SE, the LG G5, and the Galaxy S7. "These devices have not redefined the way we phone, nor have they blown us away with unprecedented speeds, or wowed us with extraordinary battery life. Each of these new phones is merely a marginal improvement over last year's model." I agree with most of what Cranz has to say. In the past one year, we've seen QHD display panel, Snapdragon 810/820 SoC, 3 to 4GB of RAM becoming a norm. Nearly every manufacturer has reached that point, and then sort of stopped there. Compared to the Nexus 4, for instance, the Nexus 6P offers a significant improvement. But when compared to anything you purchased two years ago -- in the echelon of your choice -- the latest offering isn't going to leave a big impression on you. The industry is currently making small noises about what it thinks could be the next big thing. Some players including Samsung and Lenovo believe that it could be the virtual reality addon. We will have to see how much traction that gets.

My contention with Cranz's story is that it doesn't talk about how these devices are impacting people's lives, hence missing the big picture. I believe that it doesn't necessarily matter if our smartphones aren't going to get any smarter. The first-generation Moto G, from a few years ago, can also help you quickly get information from the Web, and it can also allow you to book a cab using Uber app, and do pretty much everything that you do on a flagship smartphone. As Venture Capitalist Fred Wilson pointed out last month, the next "second smartphone revolution" could enhance the lives of millions of people in places such as Asia, where most of the population still doesn't have a smartphone. When you look at that, it becomes unnecessary to talk about the top-of-the-line specs and the rate at which these smartphones are receiving incremental improvements. The vast majority of people in the emerging world are in a desperate need of a bare-bone smartphone that allows them to make phone calls, even if it doesn't do it in a "redefined" fashion, and works with speeds that don't blow them away, a couple of things that I think we are taking for granted. Wilson wrote: The first 2.5bn smartphones brought us Instagram, Snapchat, Uber, WhatsApp, Kik, Venmo, Duolingo, and most importantly, drove the big web apps to build world class mobile apps and move their userbases from web to mobile. But, if you stare at the top 200 non-game mobile apps in the US (and most of the western hemisphere) you will see that the list doesn't look that different than the top 200 websites. The mobile revolution from 2007 to 2015 in the west was more about how we accessed the internet than what apps we used, with some notable and important exceptions. The next 2.5bn people to adopt smartphones may turn out to be a different story. They will mostly live outside the developed and wealthy parts of the world and they will look to their smartphones to deliver essential services that they have not been receiving at all -- from the web or from the offline world. I am thinking about financial services, healthcare services, educational services, transportation services, and the like. Stuff that matters a bit more than seeing where you friends had a fun time last night or what it looks like when you faceswap with your sister.At this moment, it does seem to me that over the coming months, our smartphones are unlikely to get a major hardware boost. The biggest milestone we have on the horizon is what happens when everyone has these smartphones, and how does it impact our businesses, culture, and social lives. What's your take on this? Do you think we are yet to reach the peak point in the smartphone world? What's the big picture in your opinion?Update: 04/23 18:55 GMT by M :Robotech_Master's take on this is pretty insightful.

New submitter sh0wstOpper writes: The topic of the Internet of Things (IoT) is gaining a lot of attention because we are seeing increasing amounts of "things", such as cars, door locks, baby monitors, etc, that are connected and accessible from the Internet. This increases the chances of someone being able to "attack" these devices remotely. The premise of Abusing the Internet of Things is that the distinction between our "online spaces" and our "physical spaces" will become harder to define since the connected objects supporting the IoT ecosystems will have access to both. Keep reading for the rest of sh0wstOpper's review.

An anonymous reader writes Researchers say that the different colors of the hot springs in Yellowstone National Park are caused by human contamination. From the article: "Researchers at Montana State University and Brandenburg University of Applied Sciences in Germany have created a simple mathematical model based on optical measurements that explains the stunning colors of Yellowstone National Park's hot springs and can visually recreate how they appeared years ago, before decades of tourists contaminated the pools with make-a-wish coins and other detritus. If Yellowstone National Park is a geothermal wonderland, Grand Prismatic Spring and its neighbors are the ebullient envoys, steaming in front of the camera and gracing the Internet with their ethereal beauty. While the basic physical phenomena that render these colorful delights have long been scientifically understood—they arise because of a complicated interplay of underwater vents and lawns of bacteria—no mathematical model existed that showed empirically how the physical and chemical variables of a pool relate to their optical factors and coalesce in the unique, stunning fashion that they do."

Bennett Haselton writes The corruption of the #Ferguson and #Gamergate hashtags demonstrates how vulnerable the hashtag system is to being swamped by an "angry mob". An alternative algorithm could be created that would allow users to post tweets and browse the ones that had been rated "thoughtful" by other users participating in the same discussion. This would still allow anyone to contribute, even average users lacking a large follower base, while keeping the most stupid and offensive tweets out of most people's feeds. Keep reading to see what Bennett has to say.

Frequent contributor Bennett Haselton writes: Facebook threatened to banish drag queen pseudonyms, and (some) users revolted by flocking to Ello, a social network which promised not to enforce real names and also to remain ad-free. Critics said that the idealistic model would buckle under pressure from venture capitalists. But both gave scant mention to the fact that a distributed social networking protocol, backed by a player large enough to get people using it, would achieve all of the goals that Ello aspired to achieve, and more. Read on for the rest.

An anonymous reader writes with news about a possible new direction for Julian Assange. Julian Assange is expected to make his London Fashion Week debut this September. The Australian WikiLeaks founder will reportedly model for Vivienne Westwood’s son, Ben Westwood, at a fashion show staged at the Ecuadorean Embassy, where he has been seeking refuge for the past two years. He is avoiding extradition to Sweden, where he is wanted for questioning over claims of sex offences. “Julian’s been in the embassy for two years and it’s important that he doesn’t slip into obscurity,” said Ben Westwood. “I want to highlight Julian Assange’s plight. What happened to him is totally unfair.”

cartechboy writes "In early October, a Tesla caught on fire in Washington state — and that created a little bit of a stir. Then just before Halloween a second Tesla caught fire. Yesterday, a third Model S caught fire in Tennessee. With the third fire in the books, all happening in similar fashion, today federal investigators are saying they are going to take a look at the situation more closely. As electric car maker's stock shares continue to tumble, some are saying the fires aren't a big deal."

gregrolan writes "Evans's Trousers Of Reality series attempts to understand the interplay between neurology, psychology, and sociology in the context of finding a better path through working life. I previously reviewed the first book in the series, Working Life a few years ago, and the second volume The Ingenious Engine Of Reality has now been published. While the first volume outlined the themes for the series and focused on work-life balance, this second volume digs deeper into the science behind knowledge, learning, and mental models.It then uses this background to explore the relationship between knowledge, behavior, and process in a software project setting." Keep reading for the rest of Greg's review.

Last week, you asked questions of Eugene Kaspersky; below, find his answers on a range of topics, from the relationship of malware makers to malware hunters, to Kasperky Labs' relationship to the Putin government, as well as whitelisting vs. signature-based detection, Internet ID schemes, and the SCADA-specific operating system Kaspersky is working on. Spoiler: There are a lot of interesting facts here, as well as some teases.

theodp writes "When it comes to Google's futuristic Glass goggles, people seem to fall into two camps. On the one hand, you have people like NY Times Arts critic Mike Hale, who goes gaga over how fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg put Google glasses on models who walked in her recent Fashion Week show, enabling them to capture video from their point of view as they walked the runway. 'For a preview of how we all may be making movies in a few years,' Hale breathlessly writes, 'take a look at DVF Through Glass .' On the other hand, you have folks like NY Times commenter JokerDanny, who says he's seen this Google Glass movie before. 'David Letterman used to call this Monkey-Cam,' quips JD, referring to the mid-1980's Late Night bits in which Letterman mounted a camera on Zippy the Chimp, enabling the monkey to capture video from his point of view as he roamed the studio. Thanks to the magic of YouTube Doubler, here's a head-to-head comparison of POV video shot by Zippy in 1986 — the year Larry Page and Sergey Brin celebrated their 13th birthdays — to that taken by a DVF model in 2012."

Frequent contributor Bennett Haselton writes: "The distributed-social-networking Diaspora Project recently announced that their software will be released as open source. I don't know if Diaspora specifically will be the Next Big Thing in social networking, but I hope that social networking moves to a decentralized model within the next few years, where anyone can set up and run a hub to administer profiles for themselves and their friends or clients, and where profiles can interact with each other in a distributed fashion instead of on a centralized system like Facebook." Read on for Bennett's thoughts on how that model could work.

Earlier this month you asked Principal Scientist at the BAE Systems Advanced Technology Centre, Dr. Ramsey Faragher, about his NAVSOP navigation system and the future of positioning systems in general. Below you'll find his answers.

Hugh Pickens writes "The Atlantic reports that the Israeli parliament has passed legislation that prohibits fashion media and advertising with models who fall below the World Health Organization's standard for malnutrition banning underweight models as determined by Body Mass Index. The new law also stipulates that any ad which uses airbrushing, computer editing, or any other form of Photoshop editing to create a slimmer model must clearly state that fact. Advertising campaigns created outside of Israel must comply with the legislation's standards in order to appear in Israel. 'I realized that only legislation can change the situation,' says Rachel Adato, an Israeli parliament member with a background in medicine. 'There was no time to educate so many people, and the change had be forced on the industry. There was no time to waste, so many girls were dieting to death.' The measure has been controversial within Israel for raising the question of where free speech bumps up against the fashion industry's responsibility — and its possible harm — to its customers' psychological well-being. Donald Downs, a professor at the University of Wisconsin and an expert on the First Amendment, says that it would be very tough to pass something like Israel's law in the US Congress. 'In the US, it would be hard to justify this type of law on either legal or normative policy grounds,' says Downs. 'The Israeli law is paternalistic in that it prohibits something because of the effect it might have on others in the longer term.'"

Hugh Pickens writes "Swedish Clothing Giant H&M recently disclosed that the images from the company's website, showing models wearing the latest swimsuit and lingerie in generic, stock-form, are not just photoshopped but entirely computer-generated. 'We take pictures of the clothes on a doll that stands in the shop, and then create the human appearance with a program on [a] computer,' H&M press officer Hacan Andersson said when questioned about the company's picture-perfect online models. Advertising watchdogs elevated the controversy by criticizing the chain of lower-cost clothing stores for their generic approach to models, accusing the chain of creating unrealistic physical ideals. 'This illustrates very well the sky-high aesthetic demands placed on the female body,' says a spokesman for the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation, one of the groups most critical of H&M. 'The demands are so great that H&M, among the poor photo models, cannot find someone with both body and face that can sell their bikinis.'"

MrSeb writes with this excerpt from an Extreme Tech article: "With 400 transistors and standard CMOS manufacturing techniques, a group of MIT researchers have created the first computer chip that mimics the analog, ion-based communication in a synapse between two neurons. Scientists and engineers have tried to fashion brain-like neural networks before, but transistor-transistor logic is fundamentally digital — and the brain is completely analog. Neurons do not suddenly flip from '0' to '1' — they can occupy an almost-infinite scale of analog, in-between values. You can approximate the analog function of synapses by using fuzzy logic (and by ladling on more processors), but that approach only goes so far. MIT's chip is dedicated to modeling every biological caveat in a single synapse. 'We now have a way to capture each and every ionic process that's going on in a neuron,' says Chi-Sang Poon, an MIT researcher who worked on the project. The next step? Scaling up the number of synapses and building specific parts of the brain, such as our visual processing or motor control systems. The long-term goal would be to provide bionic components that augment or replace parts of the human physiology, perhaps in blind or crippled people — and, of course, artificial intelligence. With current state-of-the-art technology it takes hours or days to simulate a simple brain circuit. With MIT's brain chip, the simulation is faster than the biological system itself."

Last week, you asked questions (many rather pointed!) of Amir Taaki, co-founder of Bitcoin Consultancy, which develops Bitcoin related services, exchanges and Bitcoin itself. (They also own Britcoin.co.uk.) Says Taaki: "When creating video games I spent much time imagining tools to make artists lives easier, and how we could keep funding developers to write free software. One contribution of mine to the community was a site where developers could get funded for developing features and I'd love nothing more than to pay people to write free software." With regard to Bitcoin, similarly, "We need fulltime developers thinking about the problems and solutions needed to keep this system running. We aim to get all the creative thinkers from the community and provide a mechanism for enabling their work." Below find his answers to the questions readers raised.

brothke writes "If Gartner were to have created the CERT-RMM framework like what is detailed in the book CERT Resilience Management Model (RMM): A Maturity Model for Managing Operational Resilience; it likely would be offered to their clients for at least $15,000. With a list price of $79.99, the book is clearly a bargain. Besides being inexpensive, it details an invaluable model that should be seriously considered by nearly every organization." Keep reading for the rest of Ben's review.

ecmguru writes "My first impression of the book was that the author did an excellent job in presenting records management (RM) concepts, describing how Alfresco implemented the RM features in Share, and how you could customize this features if necessary. I was somewhat excited about reading this book because I am currently working on an RM project." Read on for the rest of ecmguru's review.