Not true. After the 2008 nightmare, the Dodd-Frank Act was passed which gives banks the authority to convert depositors' money into shares of stock in the bank. This is called a "bail-in" (as opposed to "bail-out") and is the new reality.

Notwithstanding FDIC insurance which in theory protects the first $250,000 of any single account balance, the rest is subject to "conversion" to bank stock. Now who out there wants their cash deposits converted to stock in a failed bank? (raise your hands).

This applies to United States banking institutions. I do not know how things are done in other countries but I believe the "bail-in" concept may be widely implemented now.

And on my previous comment about FDIC insurance coverage in theory, one should note that FDIC reserves are sufficient to cover about 1.5 percent of all the accounts they insure. They're fine to cover a single "medium size" bank failure, but who knows the outcome in the event of failure of very large institutions and/or systemic failure?

No mod points or I would mod this up (all the way up, except for the cynic about them getting a tax deduction). I was reading the post and discussing it with my wife and came to exactly the same conclusion. They could still be recycling the worn out shoes while selling the still usable shoes and that's a good thing

Oh, and anyone with Google Maps and the initiative to check can find that SIngapore is about 15 miles from Balam island - they are separated by the Singapore Strait. So saying it "crossed international boundaries" is about as impressive as saying something went from Detroit Michigan to Windsor Canada. (Well, a little more impressive as Detroit/Windsor only involves crossing a river.)

F22's flight ceiling is spec'ed at 50,000 ft. The balloon over NW United States was reported at being at 60,000 ft. If this one was at the same altitude, an F22 would have to shoot upwards almost 2 miles to score a hit with conventional projectile weapon (i.e. "gun"). I think this played a factor in choosing a missile.

IIRC, the AIM-9 (sidewinder) is a heat-seeking solid propellant rocket. It would have no problem reaching an extra 10,000 ft altitude after release. Not sure what "heat" it would lock on to. But as we do not know yet what the balloon's payload is, who's to say? Perhaps the USAF got an IR picture of the balloon and it was "lit up" sufficiently to indicate a sidewinder could lock on it. Perhaps it used an RTG https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... for power?

You can hit something at 60,000 ft. with a slingshot? What a stud!

We tracked the balloon through its flight. I went mostly up, and later came down. There was a brief period when a crosswind made it move sideways, but this was judged to be scientifically irrelevant.

The balloon carrying 10 grams of SO2 released its payload. The event was recorded visually and audibly. There was no visible impact of releasing the gas, in other words, nothing changed in the view through the before/during/after phase. The audio track consisted of a brief "hissing" sound. If you were to write it out, it would probably be spelled "sssssssss". To the relief of our scientists, there was no trace of a "wop" or "foop" character to the sound.

The duration of the hissing sound was precisely measured to be 1200 milliseconds.

Another balloon was recorded while releasing 500 grams of SO2. To the surprise of the team, the duration of the "sssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss" sound was 55,310 milliseconds. There was much debate around the surprising fact that the duration was not exactly 60,000 milliseconds, as expected based on the law of proportionality. One scientist steadfastly asserted this was due to a subtle "wop" sound he perceived near the end of the period, but independent verification efforts were unable to confirm this to be the case. This was also a great relief to all the scientists who did not hear the alleged sound.

In the video record, great excitement ensued when a brief flash of brilliance was observed during the release of the gas. Upon closer study, however, it was concluded that it was just a glint of sunlight off the carcass of the (now falling) balloon that had just recently released the 10 grams of SO2 in the prior experiment. The notes clearly show that future tests (future funding permitting) should ensure an adequate gap in time between SO2 releases to allow earlier balloons to fall fully clear of the video perspective of any subsequent balloon SO2 releasement experiments.

I had a ZIP drive once. Didn't like it. Slow and didn't hold all that much.

I became a fan of Syquest drives. The original (as far as I know) was a roughly 5 1/4" hard disk (and I DO mean "hard", both in the packaging and the platter). They kept advancing until they topped out at 270 MB per disk in a 3.5" form factor. I ended up with a stack of about a dozen. I finally installed an old SCSI adapter in my more modern computer and transferred all of them to my much larger standard hard drive. Probably still have all that stuff hanging around in my modern 2TB SSD.

In my opinion they were fast (a true hard drive) and very reliable. I did take good care of them, so perhaps if I had abused them they would have failed. The cartridges also came in a nice plastic enclosure that was somewhat padded - I think that make them more durable when stored.

Oh, and my first thumb drive was 32MB. I thought it was AWESOME and carried it everywhere on a lanyard around my neck.

You failed to mention the trillion dollars a year the US government spends in addition to tax dollars.

I worked for a startup that shut down (yeah, I know - surprise surprise). The American employees were all gone in about 6 months (would have been sooner except the WARN Act resulted in waves of layoffs, 20% at a time), but the Ireland office stayed open for, I think, about a year. I heard it was due to their worker protection laws.

I guess you've never heard of NXP semiconductor (previously Freescale, and before that Motorola Semiconductor) which is in Chandler AZ, a suburb of Phoenix?

Yes I know. I was too lazy to do the math :-)

Oh dear, where to start? Your GPS receiver listens to the entire sky. In order to provide you with location, it must be able to hear at least 4 (of 12) satellites which are above the horizon with respect to your position. So you would have to have a minimum of four phased array antennas, and a way to steer them. When a GPS receiver first starts receiving, it has no idea where the satellites are, so there is no information with which to steer a phased array antenna. Mind you if it could, this would have an added benefit of increased sensitivity in *that* particular direction.

Theoretically, a single phased array antenna could quickly steer from one satellite to another. However there is also the complication of your GPS receiver most likely not being in a stable, fixed location. So your GPS receiver must also have an IMU (inertial measurement unit) which can track your receiver's motion and orientation in space, and factor this into the beam steering function.

On the whole subject of authentication - well, I suppose GPS satellite signals could be signed with a private key for which the public key is known by all GPS receivers. But this would significantly increase the bandwidth required to be transmitted by the GPS receivers - and with today's design that speed is 15 bits per second. A complete redesign of GPS would be required to add public key signatures into the design.

As for "relay attack", not sure what is meant by that term. If you are thinking that the GPS satellites are transmitting your position, and there is a risk of a man in the middle, you are WAY off base. GPS satelites know nothing about where GPS receivers are, who they are, how many there are, or even if there are any at all. They simply broadcast their almanac and ephemeris and a time code. It is up to the GPS receivers to deduce where they are given this information. It is far beyond the scope of a Slashdot post to explain what all this means, so I won't try.

In short, methinks you have no knowledge of how GPS works, and are assuming it works like other "two party" communication systems (where both parties transmit at some point in time). If so you will never "get it."

Sorry to see you got a score of zero, because you are absolutely correct!

For those who know how exceedingly WEAK the GPS satellite signals are, this is no surprise. Perhaps newer birds emit stronger signals, but still signal received at Earth's surface is right about at the thermal noise floor. Doesn't take a lot to knock that out.

Military signals (sent from the same birds, but with a much longer PN code) may be more resistant, but still - a 1 watt transmitter in the vicinity of a GPS receiver is many thousands (if not millions) times stronger than the signals arriving from the satellites.

Well that may be how English (why don't we say english?) works, but a valuable distinction is lost when you don't capitalize "the Internet". Why? Because any two (or more) interconnecting networks constitute an internet. But there is only one "the Internet". Up until the time the Associated Press announced that they would no longer capitalize "the Internet", this distinction was significant and valuable, at least in technical circles. And so for my part, I continue to preserve the distinction in writing with my peers.

So it this practice were still observed, it would be possible to make a distinction between "the internet" (e.g. the concatenation of several, say, corporate - private networks) and "the Internet" (e.g. The One and Only global Internet).

Now today you have to spell out this distinction explicitly to avoid the ambiguity.

Well isn't that something? I have something in common with Bill Gates!

In the summer of 1994 I gave a presentation to the CEO et.al. of McCaw Cellular (my employer). After the presentation, the CEO - Jim Barksdale - asked me what I thought of the Internet.

I flippantly declared it a flash in the pan and unsustainable. He just replied, "OK, thanks".

About a month later he resigned from McCaw Cellular and became CEO of Netscape. That is probably one of the most significant career-damaging blunders I made in my career!