"A new record" is false because while the unpublished raw score for the Tesla was 5.4, the same unpublished raw score for the Ford Mustang was 6.2.

Or maybe not. Since it's unpublished, I, you and Elon Must don't know if it's a record high or an A-.

Inverse square would apply if it were radiative (far field) and omnidirectional.
Inductively coupled coils that are also harmonically tuned get the best of both inductive and radiative fields.

>charging would have to be via beamed RF energy instead of magnetic induction.

At low frequencies or short distances they are almost the same thing. "Near field" is within about a wavelength or two, which at 30 Mhz is about 10 meters. So there's not really a hard cut off between induction and RF, more of a large gray area where you can say "this range generally behaves more like an inductor". There's no reason an "inductive" charger can't be tuned for charging devices within six to ten feet - anywhere in the room.

"If this were the case" - if what were the case? If our devices helped us out in those awkward moments?

It is a valuable skill to have. Not all of us have it. Some of us are more skilled in relational calculus. A moment ago, a coworker stopped by my office. We have apparently worked together via email, but never met in person. I had NO idea what we worked on. When she said "thanks for all your help on that" I had no idea what she was talking about. An onscreen reminder of our last email or two would have been welcome.

I saw the sarcastic GP of your post as its parent.

Some commenters seem to be missing the important point that it presents SUGGESTIONS - it doesn't send an automated reply as if it were from you.

The other day I ran into an acquaintance a I hadn't seen in a while. I had not kept in touch, and I don't remember what's going on in other people's lives, anyway, so I had no idea what to say. (Ie "sorry to hear about your mom" or "how do you like the new job?"). Had I heard any news about him and his family lately?

I remarked to my wife that it would be cool if I had something like Google glass with an app that would automatically (and quickly) pull up his last three Facebook posts to give me a clue. Not INSTEAD of genuine human interaction, but to help jump-start a conversation.

Might they move a few hundred meters across city lines to save $4 million X 20 years = $80 million. Yes!

This is very visible where I live, in Bryan / College Station, Texas. A large portion of both cities is within a mile of the border between them. Driving through the area, it's obvious which city has traditionally been friendly to businesses and which hasn't. The College Station side has new towers being built a couple hundred feet from the empty, decaying buildings in Bryan. A few years ago Bryan figured it out and is now attracting new investment. The downtown Bryan area has switched from hookers and gangs to restaurants and boutiques, but most of the city is still suffering from the fact that businesses preferred College Station for so many years.

> You're either trolling, or stupid, not sure which

I take it you're new to planet earth. The post to which you replied is a nice example of what we call "sarcasm".

Two other people did CD changing on YouTube. I don't have anything to add. Maybe one day I'll get a chance to post my DMX lighting stuff. the main thing I can tell you about that is it you do not need the DMX shield. All you need is a MAX485 and the connector.

The court has decided that in order to do their job most effectively, it's best that they give congress a chance to do theirs first. While congress is in the middle of debating the issue, it's counter-productive for SCOTUS to provoke pointless power struggles all the time. See "the chief justice has made his decision, now let him enforce it".

It's quite possible that congress will address the issue and there will be no need for SCOTUS to get in their face. If congress passes something that's not acceptable, SCOTUS has positioned themselves to have the last word.

Are you under the impression that Chrome changes the file associations? All they've done is treat PDF the same way browsers have always treated jpg - as content the browser is able to display natively.

Thanks for the reply. I was thinking that maintenance technicians would need to have access to the system, but you're right, that's not necessary. Assuming the display is separate, a $25 board could be replaced as a unit without increasing cost much, given the cost of the tech's time. That certainly simplifies assuring the customer that the unit hasn't been tampered with.

Generally, Arduino is a good way to interface the physical world with software. Other commenters mentioned an autopilot and a 3D printer, both examples of controlling motors or servos with software, based on sensor input.

One project I did was for controlling stage lighting, with programmed sequences of effects being "DJed" in real time. I prototyped an out-of-band management interface for web servers. It could power cycle servers and provide console access. I used a similar system to have computer controlled Christmas lights and 4th of July fireworks.

Another project was controlling a CD burning robot, to burn hundreds of CDs.

In general, pretend you had a robot that could run around doing anything you want, controlled over the network or pre-programmed, so the software side can detect the environment through sensors and then take physical actions through its gpio.

Slashdotters know about a lot of different small hardware.
Suppose you wanted to build a gas pump controller with a touch screen based on Android.
One issue is that in order to protect customers before certifying the pump, the department of weights and measures wants to see that the gas station owner can't easily manipulate the device to show an inflated reading. What kind of hardware would you consider?

The benchmarks I've read, which were reviewed by the kernel mailing list, indicated that dm-cache has the best performance in many cases. My gut feeling is that I'd rather use bcache, but I don't know why.

The current benchmarks have one huge failing, though. They test random IO by doing truly random IO all over the disk. Real random writes, in real workloads, is concentrated mostly in a relatively small number of blocks, such as the database and log files. That's important because the caching systems put the frequently accessed blocks in cache. True random benchmarks, with no blocks being frequently accessed, counteracts what the cache is doing. What's needed is a set of benchmarks run with random IO within four files of a few GBs each , to simulate a database, mail store, or other frequently accessed region of the disk.