You've spent a lifetime debunking claims of the paranormal, and for that we thank you.

In your opinion, are there areas in modern society which are not identified as paranormal that should be investigated? If you were addressing a cadre of young scientists willing to make efforts into verifying or debunking things, are there important social issues which should be examined? Which issues would those be?

To frame the question in context, here are examples of the types of issues I am referring to:

1) Economic opinions and "schools of thought", "a little inflation is good" even though no one can state what the best value is, or come up with an analytical way of measuring it

2) Antidepressants have no effect, 90 percent of cancer studies can't be reproduced. The peer review process and scientific publishing in general.

3) Most soft science papers are confident to 95%, implying that on average the results of 1 out of 20 scientific papers arose due to chance.

I've read several of your books, used to have a subscription to "Skeptical Inquirer", and generally support your activities and those of other skeptics. (I sometimes point out that the emperor has no clothes on this very site :-)

Your books, and transcripts and stories of skeptic investigations, hold a generally belittling attitude towards the people you're investigating. Not at all the dispassionate, "here's the evidence, here's our conclusions" type of prose that is customary in scientific literature.

Regarding this tone of voice, what advice can you give to someone who does public writing? Has this attitude helped your cause, or served to impede it? If you were given the chance to start over, would you take the same attitude?

Basically, is "snark" a good writing style?

Nota Bene: For those who think this is a troll (it's not), I grabbed "Flim Flam" by James Randy off of my bookshelf (the first of his books I could find). Opening at random and starting from chapter 6 (Erich von Daniken &c) reads sentences/fragments such as: "The only facts in his four books [named] that I depend on are the page numbers", "perpetrated ... a literary diddle of enormous scope", [Chapter 8] "Along with Freudian psychiatry, this madness has persisted to the present day".

I found the book informative and interesting, but the tone, sometimes nuanced and sometimes explicit, fairly screams "prejudice!" to the reader. To my mind, the style detracts from the credibility.

Online, tone of voice is everything. We have an opportunity to find out whether snark writing is more effective than dispassionate, and perhaps that will inform online writing.

Yeah, I know. I should have been more explicit in my post.

I'm not saying that port knocking should be the product API. Port knocking is a terrible security measure.

I'm saying that a backdoor could be hidden in such a way that it would be impossible to find - and port knocking is one of those methods. It's simple and effective - even if it's "security by obscurity".

Since this exploit is not well hidden, chances are it isn't a purpose-built backdoor, but more likely an oversight of some kind.

Port knocking is where the inbound system won't connect until a series of unsuccessful attempts is tried on a known sequence of ports - the system will open the door only when the visitor gives the "secret knock".

For example, a system won't normally accept connection requests. If the visitor attempts (unsuccessfully) ports 1010, 1050, 3042, and 4725 in that order, the system then accepts a connection at port 9000. (Use different numbers and length as needed for security.)

It is nigh impossible for a security audit to detect this type of camouflage. This technique has been well-known for years.

If China were putting back-doors in hardware systems, they could make them virtually impossible to find.

That's circumstantial evidence that this isn't a case of espionage on the part of the manufacturer. It's more likely a flaw in the software or a debugging port that wasn't compiled out in the released version.

FWIW, I did get the reference (and I own the movie).

I was addressing the intent of the reference in its original context. There's lots of reason to despair the heartless actuarial calculations of corporations, but only where warranted.

Note that I didn't snark your post (an urge that I find difficult to control). Don't be disheartened - your post wasn't modded "Funny", even though it's a valid attempt. I was just trying to supply some background.

The actual answer is more nuanced.

FAA regulations define 5 levels of critical for safety systems: levels A through E.

Level A is for things that can knock a plane out of the sky when they fail; for example the stall speed alarm.
Level C is for things that can cause injury or at most a single death; for example, the cabin pressurization system
Level E is for things that don't affect flight safety; such as, in-flight entertainment or the microwave in the galley

For reference, I wrote the software for cabin pressurization systems. It's level C (hardware == B), which means that failure in pressurization is an emergency situation, but isn't expected to kill everyone on board. The masks drop and the pilot immediately dives to under 10,000 feet to restore breathable air.

If the cabin fills with smoke, it's not life-threatening per se. The pilot can override the pressurization system and "dump" the cabin atmosphere, and it clears pretty quick. (The captain also dives to under 10,000 feet if necessary.)

The battery catching fire isn't a problem SO LONG AS the fire itself won't cripple the aircraft. The battery underpowering the plane when the alternator dies MAY BE a problem which would kill people.

The people who design these things take these levels into consideration, and the general rule is "fail safe". If you can't "fail safe", then "fail in the least dangerous way". In my experience, the engineer must make many choices when designing an aircraft unit. The answer is always "do it *this* way, because if *that* happens it will be less dangerous.

Let's wait and see what the investigation uncovers. Here are some Cliff notes:

1) Li-Ion batteries might behave differently at altitude (cabin pressure is reduced while flying)
2) The battery may be performing to spec, while trying to compensate for a more dangerous problem
3) Smoke in the cabin is not as dangerous as you might think
4) Things that burn are designed to not damage things when burning
5) People who design aircraft are pretty smart, and have a generally high moral standard.
6) People who investigate aircraft incidents are really, really thorough, and have a good track record.

(Note: Glossing over some details to make an easier read.)

Epson printers (and most inkjet printers in general) have a single photo-interrupter that detects proper paper feed. These are simple units - not the complex photocopiers in your workplace.

In the case of Epson, once the motor starts the paper has to trip the photo-interrupter within a window of some milliseconds (like - between 1/2 and 1 second) or the unit will throw a paper jam error.

After removing all the gears and rollers in the back of the printer, you have the photo-interrupter in hand, still wired to the unit. An easy way to use it is to make a "carrier board" on which to place your medium (filter paper, for instance). Put a notch in the front corner of the carrier so that when the first part of the carrier goes through the paper feed it doesn't trip the interrupter, but past the notch it does. If you cut your notch to the right length the timing is obeyed and the carrier is processed as a piece of paper.

(IOW, the leading edge of the carrier is 8" wide, because a 1/2" strip is cut from one side. Two inches further in the paper is 8 1/2" wide. The photo-interrupter is placed so that the notch doesn't interrupt, but the full width does.)

The print head rides above the paper surface roughly .06" (varies with printer, and is adjustable on some printers), so you may need to raise the print head a little. A dremel tool cutoff wheel and some washers for spacing will work here.

Epson printers use piezo print heads. These are available for thin money everywhere, sometimes for free: salvation army store, town dump, craigslist.

Hackers are using these to print etch-resist directly to copper-clad boards for making PCBs. The Epson ink is wax based instead of pigment based, so some of the inks make good etch resist (Mispro yellow apparently works best.) (Glossing over a few details.)

The cartridges are counter locked, but you can purchase a reflash tool on eBay for under $5 that will reset the code counter on any cartridge.

You can also purchase new, empty cartridges for just about any printer online (example: inksupply.com). That might be more convenient than trying to wash out a used cartridge, and the used cartridge may have wear-and-tear anyway.

The original article claims that the small nozzle/droplet size of modern printers make them unsuitable for biological printing. I'm skeptical of this claim, but if they say so...

Slashdot, you're really not hitting the high registers with these videos.

A video of people talking is good, but you need to punch it up a little. Use some powerpoint-style slides with text bullet points, then have the speaker read out the text as the audience follows along.

Here's an example of what *not* to do.

All that action and movement does little to enhance the video, and the scripted text makes it seem somehow terse. Don't do that - the discluencies - "ah", "uhmmm", "you know", and so on - are what make the speech sound normal. Drag the dialogue out a little!

And the cuts! A dozen or more different scenes in the example video doesn't add to the experience - just use one or two as you are currently doing. Showing someone flipping screens on a tablet is good - we need more articles about apps and products that people can purchase.

And be sure to put your video intro at the front every time. That way if the viewer is uninterested in the video, at least they will have spent the time looking at your logo.

Overall though, it's a pretty good video. Keep up the good work! It's hard to find videos of interest to tech people.