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Comment Re:Look Up... (Score 1) 108

by mosch (#64191230) Attached to: Aviation Sector Sees No Fast Tech Solution To GPS Interference Problem

I also wonder how much it would cost to have the flight deck track location based on gps _and_ location based on an inertial reference system; then perhaps warnings could be provided if those locations diverge, and the pilot could opt to use one, the other, or neither as appropriate.

A super high-end inertial reference unit is in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, but I'd wager that something good enough to get you to the other side of a war-zone should be feasible for low five figures; maybe less if it could reuse components from cars or mobile phones.

Submission + - Encrypted Snapchat message led to panic response (bbc.co.uk) 2

Submitted by Bruce66423
Bruce66423 writes: A Spanish court has cleared a British man of public disorder, after he joked to friends about blowing up a flight from London Gatwick to Menorca.

Aditya Verma admitted he told friends in July 2022: "On my way to blow up the plane. I'm a member of the Taliban."

But he said he had made the joke in a private Snapchat group and never intended to "cause public distress"....

A key question in the case was how the message got out, considering Snapchat is an encrypted app.

One theory, raised in the trial, was that it could have been intercepted via Gatwick's Wi-Fi network. But a spokesperson for the airport told BBC News that its network "does not have that capability".

In the judge's resolution, cited by the Europa Press news agency, it was said that the message, "for unknown reasons, was captured by the security mechanisms of England when the plane was flying over French airspace".

The message was made "in a strictly private environment between the accused and his friends with whom he flew, through a private group to which only they have access, so the accused could not even remotely assume... that the joke he played on his friends could be intercepted or detected by the British services, nor by third parties other than his friends who received the message," the judgement added.'

So does the UK's GCHQ have a hack into Snapchat? Or how else did it get to the security services?

Comment the original comments are interesting (Score 5, Informative) 98

by mosch (#64186404) Attached to: Boeing, Not Spirit, Mis-installed Piece That Blew Off Alaska MAX 9 Jet

This article was sourced from these two comments on the Leeham News website. I found the original comments more informative than the Seattle Times version, and while I can't be certain, the author seems credible.

I'm half tempted to apply for a job over at Boeing, just so I can understand if they're learning the right lessons from this (about fixing their culture and processes), or if they're doubling down on the post-McD merger nonsense.

Comment Re:I'm very curious about this. (Score 2) 108

I ordered one.

My planned primary use case is to watch movies while I'm traveling for work. I've been on the road a lot, and hotel TVs aren't fun to use; something with a great screen and sound that's always with me seems ideal. The wife has been talking about getting an RV, and it'd be great for that use case too.

Hopefully there'll also be some good games, and ways to do work, but I don't have a clear vision of how that'll work.

Comment Re:If harvard were a Chinese university (Score 1) 172

1) Cultures contain multitudes. The fact that there are negative idioms present in American culture doesn't mean that every American is always acting negatively; nor does it mean there are no positive idioms.

2) You are redefining the idioms to be much narrowly used than they are in practice. Additionally, the list of such idioms is nearly endless... people will say "might makes right" to argue that the more powerful entity can do whatever it wants and shouldn't be restrained... they'll say "history is written by the victors" both as a reminder of the flaws in history, but also as a call to ensure that their team is victorious regardless of what it takes.

3) I'm capable of googling. But the fact that a bunch of weird youtube videos claim something is an idiom does not, in fact, make it an idiom. The phrase exists, but I couldn't find it in a print corpus at all, and when I found it on the web it seemed to be used by people ranting about dishonesty, example translation: "people who steal money, steal food, cheat in school, robbing society, cheating whenever they can, don't they have any shame at all??" or "Taiwan is in a moral depression; some people are not ashamed and will not hesitate to cheat if they can".

Comment Re:If harvard were a Chinese university (Score 5, Insightful) 172

There are countless American idioms meant to indicate that it's okay to do immoral things to get what you want: "the ends justify the means", "you can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs", "desperate times call for desperate measures", "it's a dog eat dog world", &c, &c.

As for your claim about the chinese idiom, I've never heard it. Can you please provide the precise chinese language translation, so I can verify if it even exists at all?

Comment the examples are interesting (Score 5, Informative) 172

Great work by the investigators here! I enjoyed reading through the specific examples they found. There are a few that looked like people making mistakes with matplotlib and not catching it; a bunch that looked like people deliberately filling in missing sequence info with other data; and a few that are just baffling (little possibility it was a mistake; but also no obvious reason to fake that specific data). A bit of a shitshow, and clearly unacceptable. I mostly hope that this nonsense hasn't negatively impacted too much research and progress, and that the professional repercussions are appropriate.

Submission + - Lamborghini Licenses MIT's New High-Capacity, Fast-Charging Organic Battery Tech (techradar.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Thanks to new Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) research, which was part-funded by Lamborghini, we could soon see the end of difficult-to-source and often problematic rare metal materials featuring in the batteries of future electric vehicles. The MIT study's aim was to replace cobalt and nickel, typically used as a cathode in today's lithium-ion battery technology, with organic materials that could be produced at a much lower cost. This would also reduce the impact on the planet and conduct electricity at similar rates as cobalt batteries. [...] The research, which has been running for six years, has culminated in a novel organic material that could be a direct replacement for cobalt and nickel. According to details recently released by MIT, this material consists of many layers of TAQ (bis-tetraaminobenzoquinone), an organic small molecule that contains three fused hexagonal rings.

It's a complicated subject for those not donning lab coats for a living, but these TAQ layers can extend outward in every direction, forming a structure similar to graphite. Within the molecules are chemical groups called quinones, which are the electron reservoirs, and amines, which help the material to form strong hydrogen bonds, which ensure they don’t dissolve into the battery electrolyte (something that has previously blighted organic cathode compounds), thus extending the lifetime of the battery. It comes as no surprise that Lamborghini has licensed the patent on this technology, seeing as it funded the research and has a certain Lanzador high performance electric vehicle in the pipeline.

Researchers say that tests of the material revealed that its conductivity and storage capacity were comparable to that of traditional cobalt-containing batteries. Also, batteries with a TAQ cathode can be charged and discharged faster than existing batteries, which could speed up the charging rate for electric vehicles. This speedy rate of charge and discharge could help give something like Lamborghini’s Lanzador a performance edge, while super-fast charging capabilities will negate the need for lengthy charging stops – something the Italian marque's discerning clientele will likely be opposed to. However, Lamborghini is also part of the wider Volkswagen Group and seeing that the primary materials needed to manufacture this type of cathode are already commercially available and produced in large quantities as commodity chemicals, we may see the battery tech filter down to more affordable EVs in the future.

Comment Re:It's a trap! (Score 1) 9

by garcia (#63808314) Attached to: Google Launches BigQuery Studio, a New Way To Work With Data

I have been using GCP/BQ heavily for 7+ years now and we're GCP native at my current company for nearly 5 years.

Google's penchant for deprecating products is a constant worry for me, particularly our insane reliance on BQ. While BQ StandardSQL is close enough, lifting and shifting to something like AWS or Azure's cloud warehouse tooling would definitely be a headache.

That said, with their deep integration w/GA4 reporting and continued development of BQ, I am guessing they make enough money (particularly after their 25% price increase for on-demand) that it'll stay around for another few years.

Fingers crossed because, honestly, I don't want to have to deal with management of our warehouse and BQ makes it easy for us not to worry about that at all.

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