"... an electric car is emission free, it's a lie, it's a big, big lie.

Fine. Let's do an experiment. Ulrich (or you) can lock himself up in a garage with the non-electric car of his choice, I'll do the same (different garage) with the electric car of my choice. Then we'll let the motors run for a couple of hours. Winner is whoever walks away afterwards.

Now, electric power production may not be emission free (depending on the source), but the car itself is (not counting trivial vapors from lubrication etc). Ulrich shouldn't lie.

Yea, shame. The article only lists a bunch of thingies that all start with: ws-cloud112-blur.svcmot.com:443/blur-services-1.0/ws/

Too bad that isn't a URL :(

Not reproductions of robots from famous works of fiction.
Not models of actual robots used in real life.
Not functional in any way.

This looks like something a young kid would build with some super glue and a box full of electrical fittings and cabinet hardware from Home Depot. What's next, bleach bottle pigs?

This was years ago. I think it was even on Slashdot.

SELinux isn't claimed to be secure. NSA's defensive side, the Central Security Service, created it because they wanted application developers to start writing applications that would run under a mandatory security system. Once all major applications could run under SELinux, it would be possible to swap out the Linux kernel for something smaller, with far less trusted code.

That didn't work out. Not enough applications were redesigned to run under the tight restrictions needed to make most of their code untrusted. A good example of commercial developer incompetence in this area is Matlab, which won't run with SELinux enabled. So Matlab's official instructions tell users to turn SELinux off. There is no justification for Matlab requiring security privileges.

There is also a new "backdoor" to SELinux in Linux installed recently to support a competing "security" package.

Yes, this is a son of the old "company store" scam. I just looked at the California Labor Code section on this:

212. (a) No person, or agent or officer thereof, shall issue in payment of wages due, or to become due, or as an advance on wages to be earned:
(1) Any order, check, draft, note, memorandum, or other acknowledgment of indebtedness, unless it is negotiable and payable in cash, on demand, without discount, at some established place of business in the state, the name and address of which must appear on the instrument, and at the time of its issuance and for a reasonable time thereafter, which must be at least 30 days, the maker or drawer has sufficient funds in, or credit, arrangement, or understanding with the drawee for its payment.
(2) Any scrip, coupon, cards, or other thing redeemable, in merchandise or purporting to be payable or redeemable otherwise than in money.
...
(c) Notwithstanding paragraph (1) of subdivision (a), if the drawee is a bank, the bank's address need not appear on the instrument and, in that case, the instrument shall be negotiable and payable in cash, on demand, without discount, at any place of business of the drawee chosen by the person entitled to enforce the instrument.

So California law prohibits the "company store" scam - employers can't pay with a "gift card" that doesn't convert to cash. And if they pay using a bank, the check or card must be cashable, without fees, at any branch of that bank. The problem is ATM fees for off-network ATMs, which have become a huge profit center for banks.

If the card is from a bank with a huge number of branches and lots of ATMs, it may not be too bad. If it's from some second-tier bank, it's a rip-off.

Thing is with the MPAA etc the way they are, wouldn't it be risky to use your phone obtrusively while the movie is going on? They might think you're trying to record the movie: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/01/AR2007080102398.html

I haven't seen this at a Century theater in Silicon Valley in the last year, and I see about two movies a month. Even at the Mountain View theater complex, which is surrounded by Google's campus, it doesn't happen. Century runs two warning messages, a cute one from Sprint ("When you turn off your phone, does it dream?") and a hard line one from Century ("You will be asked to leave the theater.") I've seen people using a smartphone when they're running commercials (not trailers), before the house lights go down, but not once the theater goes dark.

The Nao is a quite capable little robot. It costs $16,000, though. (There are promotional discounts, developer discounts, academic discounts, etc. But that's the list price.) The lowest priced good humanoid (the Bioloid) is around $1200, so these things are approaching affordability in half-meter size. The low-end robots use improved R/C servos (ones that talk on a bus and provide useful feedback info). Nao has custom mechanics and even a 3-fingered hand.

The locomotion control of the little guys is still rather disappointing. They're mostly still at the "walking on big feet" level. The actuators and inertial sensors are good enough for dynamic running, and there's enough processing power, but the control theory and software aren't there yet.

It used to be that if you went to a major academic robotics lab, none of the robots were running. Now, there will usually be something going.

"Creates a direct connection between your wallet and our bank account."

Yes, the initial costs were high, but most of the costs you cite are reaction costs. How much did a week of grounding all airlines cost? How much does additional TSA infrastructure cost? How mush of that $1.4 trillion lost stock valuation was real vs just numbers in a computer, and how much of that was due to panic reaction?

As the grandparent pointed out, if we'd reacted with the attitude "shit happens, deal with it" (as was, for example, the attitude in Britain after the first few days of the Blitz), that final cost would have been far smaller; still 3000 lives, but probably less than $0.01 trillion dollars.

As OP alluded to, bee stings don't kill people, the anaphylactic shock reaction does.

But Santa brings us presents. (Or, worst case, coal.) When was the last time NSA ever did anything nice for you?

Movie-theater-big like Ruby Skye, yes. Warehouse-big like King St. Garage (closed 2002), no. All the vacant warehouses in SOMA were converted into dot-coms or torn down for new buildings. Oakland has some warehouse-sized nightclubs, but those have too many shootings.

San Francisco is not as "fun" as it used to be. Higher rents drove the artists out a decade ago. SF has about 8,000 homeless people, out of a population of only 750,000. Most of the bookstores have closed. The nightclub scene is slowly being crushed by gentrification.

The financial district is struggling to stay relevant. The big SF banks either tanked or merged with banks elsewhere.