Comment Re:It's fine as long as the government goes away (Score 1) 389
Government will be involved, as Google and other Autonomous Car manufacturer will lobby government to may autonomous cars mandatory, "for the children," of course...
Comment Been riding for years (Score 1) 947
I've ridden an average of about 5k miles/year for the past 15 years, including 45 miles/day in almost daily commuting in busy traffic times.
I've had precisely zero accidents and zero injuries during that time, probably because I don't run stop signs or red lights, and try to be a courteous rider on the road. I see a lot of the same cars every single day, and they've seen me. When you don't ride around like a "critical mass" dickhead, chances are you're not going to get yourself into any trouble with traffic.
Comment This is an absolutely awful idea (Score 1) 162
First, loser-pays only incentivize businesses and people who are not rich to settle out of court and admit defeat without a trial. That is not justice.
Second, small-time inventors don't always productize their inventions, either because they don't have the money, don't have the time, or for other reason. This shouldn't stand in the way of them profiting from their hard work and inventiveness.
This is just another pro-corporate bill churned out of our for-profit, insider-trading Congress.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk: Fuel Cells Are 'So Bull@%!#' 479
Frosty P sends this quote from AutoblogGreen:
"Elon Musk is unafraid to speak his mind. Whether he's talking about other players in the electric vehicle space or sub-par reporting from The New York Times, this is a man with few filters. Musk says that fuel cells are not part of the solution that electric vehicles offer for giving up the hydrocarbon addiction. After commenting that the only reason some automakers are pursuing hydrogen technology is for marketing purposes, that lithium batteries are superior mass- and volume-wise for a given range, and that fuel cells are too expensive, Musk capped it all off with the safety issue. 'Oh god, a fuel cell is so bull@%!#,' Musk said. 'Hydrogen is quite a dangerous gas. You know, it's suitable for the upper stage of rockets, but not for cars,' he said."
Comment Re:Brother (Score 1) 381
I can attest to this. I got sick and tired of inkjets waking themselves up in the middle of the night to dump ink into the little sponge inside that let it evaporate. They call it "cleaning," but in reality it's just wasting ink so you have to buy more.
Inkjets are crack cocaine. We just have to break the cycle of addiction.
I bought an OKI B-4200 LED printer back in about 2005 and it is still working flawlessly today. I think I'm on my third toner cartridge in 8 years (we don't print that much).
We're thinking about replacing it with a Brother color laser, so it's good to know they have good driver support because I'm 100% Linux at home.
Comment !div0 (Score 1) 530
If these scientists are correct, then it is also possible to divide by zero, because bogodynamic quantum entanglement coefficients become both observable and reversible in the magnetoreluctant quasistatic interface between the non-observed static universe and the observed temporal-dynamic universe. Crossing this entanglement boundary requires continuous and differentiable traversal of an asymptotic gravitational cotangent function in the real plane by a moving observer.
Clearly this results in a !div0 error.
Comment Re:Quantum stuff is too weird (Score 1) 530
It both sounds like bullshit and not like bullshit, until you listen to it. Then, it'll sound like one or the other.
ACA Health Exchange Contractors Have History of Security Failures 144
Lucas123 writes "Two of the contractors involved in developing online health insurance exchanges under the Affordable Care Act, which have been plagued by technical problems since launching this month, have had serious data security issues in the past. Quality Software Services developed the software for the Affordable Care Act's data services hub and oversaw development of tools to connect the hub to the databases of other federal agencies. Last June, an audit report by the Health and Human Services Inspector General found QSS failed to adhere to federal security standards (PDF) in delivering IT testing services for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. Additionally, services firm Serco suffered a major security breach in 2012. Serco won a five-year $1.3 billion contract to process and verify paper applications for health insurance via the online exchanges. Serco's breach exposed sensitive data of more than 123,000 members of the Thrift Savings Plan, a $313 billion retirement plan run by the U.S. Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board. The exposed data included full names, addresses, Social Security Numbers, financial account information, and bank routing information."
Comment Automakers need to just... (Score 1) 187
... put a tablet-like device in the dashboard running Android and write apps that perform the infotainment functions. They need to stop wasting time on these proprietary implementations and just start doing what most consumers are doing already - pairing bluetooth stereo and using their tablets/phones as their primary source of media and entertainment in the car.
Comment Re:My wife and I have zero-tech times (Score 1) 111
I am the last person anyone should be calling in an emergency. I am not a firefighter, paramedic, doctor, or anything else that would be helpful in an emergency. There is no emergency out there that anyone should be calling me about.
Then again, as a society, we seem to have changed the definition of "emergency" to "anything that is the slightest bit inconvenient."
As another poster said, the human race survived thousands of years without being constantly connected to each other.
Comment Trust No One (Score 2) 330
They really are out to get you.
Call Yourself a Hacker, Lose Your 4th Amendment Rights 488
An anonymous reader writes "As described on the DigitalBond blog, a security researcher was subjected to a court ordered search in which a lack of pre-notification was premised on his self description as a 'hacker.' From the court order, 'The tipping point for the Court comes from evidence that the defendants – in their own words – are hackers. By labeling themselves this way, they have essentially announced that they have the necessary computer skills and intent to simultaneously release the code publicly and conceal their role in that act.'"
Comment How did Saturn do it? (Score 1) 470
Wasn't Saturn a direct-sales manufacturer before the failure and GM buyout? How did they sell cars in Texas, or did they?
Cow Burps Tapped For Fuel 85
Dave Knott writes with this intriguing snippet from CBC: "Argentine scientists have found a way to transform the gas created by the bovine digestive system into fuel, an innovation that could curb greenhouse gases that cause global warming. Using a system of valves and pumps, the experimental technique developed by Argentina's National Institute of Agricultural Technology (INTA) channels the digestive gases from bovine stomach cavities through a tube and into a tank. The gases — which otherwise are commonly known as burps, or "eruptos" in Spanish — are then processed to separate methane from other gases such as carbon dioxide. Each head of cattle emits between 250 and 300 liters of pure methane a day, enough energy to keep a refrigerator running for 24 hours."
Comment Re:No Generic OS for Mobile devices yet. (Score 1) 116
Mod parent up. Cyanogenmod comes conveniently stripped of Google Apps and can be used as a "generic" operating system. I use CM on my devices without Google Apps and it's very pleasant. Battery life is amazing too as long as you don't have apps running that track you constantly (Facebook and other spyware) in the background.
I have a Gen1 N7 that I use basically just for playing music in the car, and Torque Pro for gauges. Vanilla CM is perfect for it.
