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Comment Re:In town or reclamation bond. (Score 1) 120

To be fair this is the correct play.

Most of those communities are used to the noise from a steel mill and would welcome any tax revenue even if it's low. Electric grid is either already in place or worse case needs to be refurbished rather than completely built and rezoned for large line runs, Truck and Rail lines are usually available for large scale shipping if necessary and most brownfields are close to a water source such as a river or municipal plant which can be further filtered if necessary.

The Youngstown/Warren and Akron/Canton areas alone could provide miles of usable brownfield for data center space.

Comment Newage Programmers Need Adult Intervention (Score 4, Insightful) 99

My college professor in a user interface design class back in the 90's said it best after telling us a story about the NASA space program and it's UI design for Apollo:
If you can't train a monkey to use it, you can't train a human to use it.

I'm sick of apps that look good. I want Apps that WORK GOOD!

I'm sick and tired of having to relearn an app or report endless bugs because some just out of college app designer wants to vibe code some fancy app remake so he can say "I DID THIS MOMMY!!" to his parents like he's a fucking kindergartner holding up a finger painting.

Worse, I'm sick and tired of having to retrain other users and clean up bug mess because of said app designer.

I want a program that works. That is all.
I don't care that a program that works looks like something out of Windows XP. I don't care about bullshit features and UI elements that never work. I especially don't need a fucking box popping up every fucking five minutes to tutorial me about your bullshit feature or design that no one wants or cares about with a "GOT IT" button like a stripped down text based new age Clippy.

Firefox has (or at least used to have) skinning. How about working on that so that the kindergartners can play with their crayons and the adults can get work done instead of babysitting your slopcode for the umpteenth time. It's bad enough I had to create a theme so I can easily see what tab was active without having to waste time thinking about it because some idiot in your UI Dept thought white on white for the tab UI was a good Idea because some idiot at Google though it was a good idea instead of white on black or at least offsetting colors so you can easily differentiate like a good functional UI should be. I don't have time to retrain employees or submit endless bug reports and feedback loops because your "My First Sony" obsessed VTech Leapfrog Toddler app team is trying to justify it's existence again by reinventing the wheel for the 15th fucking time.

This is way I miss cutthroat managers like Steve Jobs. I hate Apple products but I have to admit that Jobs kept this bullshit in check at Apple when he was alive. If it didn't make sense, broke things, confused people or wasted time he would shoot it down and if the designer kept insisting, he was fired which kept the other app designers in line. The split second his body was cold you started seeing Apple UI's redesign themselves to the point you have a UI that's more art than function and then you wonder why your customers are bitching because they can't understand or even see your glass looking UI.

And if you happen to work as a manager in a App development studio. Print this post on wallpaper and hang it on the wall in your break room instead of some bullshit motivational speech or word cloud to coddle the kindergartner's safe space feelings. You'll probably be facing a harassment charge from your HR dept afterwards but It will be more valuable to your team and your customer's overall heath than any motivational new age crap you were going to put there anyway.

Comment Re:Do we have the right tool for the job? (Score 1) 109

It's the computer.

More accurately, it's the power of the computer. It's too capable and it encourages students to doomscroll AI slop more then learn.

If I designed a school for education, it would literally be a better built Brother Geobook: Dirt cheap. Vastly under powered. black and white screen with optional backlight (preferably e-ink if the price was right to purposely keep screen refresh low to discourage videos) with a huge battery to get battery life measured in days instead of hours, and can only browse basic internet sites and email. It would have cloud connectivity for storage backup and the like, but just use a basic word processor, spreadsheet, presentation and notebook software. It would also have built in programming using either python or basic.

When I was in high school. I had a Ti-92 and later in college I had a Palm IIIc. I took all my notes on it did spreadsheets on it and programmed anything else I needed that it couldn't do on it. Saved a ton of paper and was easier to sort notes once I got home at my computer. Anything more powerful than that is basically overkill for learning and is all but guaranteed to suck kids focus from learning to playing.

Science

Scientists Found a Way To Cool Quantum Computers Using Noise (sciencedaily.com) 7

Slashdot reader alternative_right writes: Quantum computers need extreme cold to work, but the very systems that keep them cold also create noise that can destroy fragile quantum information. Scientists in Sweden have now flipped that problem on its head by building a tiny quantum refrigerator that actually uses noise to drive cooling instead of fighting it. By carefully steering heat at unimaginably small scales, the device can act as a refrigerator, heat engine, or energy amplifier inside quantum circuits.

Comment Idiocracy in action (Score 3, Funny) 32

As Joe and Rita lay dormant, the years passed and mankind became stupider at a frightening rate.
Some had high hopes that genetic engineering would correct this trend in evolution.
But sadly, the greatest minds and resources were focused on conquering hair loss and prolonging erections.

For the Longest time, I thought the future was either going to be the Demolition Man Future or the Robocop Future. I'm now convinced that the Idiocracy future is the most likely future of mankind.

Comment Re:Wow. (Score 1) 116

One of my ram sticks went bad in my computer after running for 7 years. Because of the way I bought them (1 kit of 4x8MB DDR4) I had to send all four back and decided to drive to Micro Center to upgrade to 4x16 DDR4 Sticks in the interim and use the RMA'd sticks for another build.

On November 10, that cost me $299.
A year ago I could have upgraded using the same sticks for $149.

On Black Friday, I went to the same Micro Center to see what deals they had and decided to check on the RAM prices since they were inflating.

On November 26. The same exact RAM sticks were $399.

They literally went up $100 in less than 30 days.
It's even crazier since those sticks are DDR4 and have less demand since most people are upgrading to DDR5 at this point and were probably there in stock when I bought some of them on the 10th. They just marked them up since it would cost that much to replenish the stock when (most likely if at this point) they get more DDR4 RAM.

Comment Re:wow! That's terrible (Score 1) 259

I posted this over two years ago. it's still true today: K12 Does not teach kids to think. It teaches kids to react

Basically, kids today can't do math because they were taught to react to math from a game on an iPad while using a Ti-83 calculator to pass standardized tests.

So imagine giving a 7 year old Frog Fractions on an iPad that he plays between his Screaming Minecraft vtuber and AI Chinese generated Spiderman / Super Mario Bros. YouTube watching sessions and then wondering why he can't do fractional math and sounds like someone from Idiocracy.

Privacy

Manufacturer Remotely Bricks Smart Vacuum After Its Owner Blocked It From Collecting Data (tomshardware.com) 123

"An engineer got curious about how his iLife A11 smart vacuum worked and monitored the network traffic coming from the device," writes Tom's Hardware.

"That's when he noticed it was constantly sending logs and telemetry data to the manufacturer — something he hadn't consented to." The user, Harishankar, decided to block the telemetry servers' IP addresses on his network, while keeping the firmware and OTA servers open. While his smart gadget worked for a while, it just refused to turn on soon after... He sent it to the service center multiple times, wherein the technicians would turn it on and see nothing wrong with the vacuum. When they returned it to him, it would work for a few days and then fail to boot again... [H]e decided to disassemble the thing to determine what killed it and to see if he could get it working again...

[He discovered] a GD32F103 microcontroller to manage its plethora of sensors, including Lidar, gyroscopes, and encoders. He created PCB connectors and wrote Python scripts to control them with a computer, presumably to test each piece individually and identify what went wrong. From there, he built a Raspberry Pi joystick to manually drive the vacuum, proving that there was nothing wrong with the hardware. From this, he looked at its software and operating system, and that's where he discovered the dark truth: his smart vacuum was a security nightmare and a black hole for his personal data.

First of all, it's Android Debug Bridge, which gives him full root access to the vacuum, wasn't protected by any kind of password or encryption. The manufacturer added a makeshift security protocol by omitting a crucial file, which caused it to disconnect soon after booting, but Harishankar easily bypassed it. He then discovered that it used Google Cartographer to build a live 3D map of his home. This isn't unusual, by far. After all, it's a smart vacuum, and it needs that data to navigate around his home. However, the concerning thing is that it was sending off all this data to the manufacturer's server. It makes sense for the device to send this data to the manufacturer, as its onboard SoC is nowhere near powerful enough to process all that data. However, it seems that iLife did not clear this with its customers.

Furthermore, the engineer made one disturbing discovery — deep in the logs of his non-functioning smart vacuum, he found a command with a timestamp that matched exactly the time the gadget stopped working. This was clearly a kill command, and after he reversed it and rebooted the appliance, it roared back to life.

Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader registrations_suck for sharing the article.
EU

New Large Coral Reef Discovered Off Naples Containing Rare Ancient Corals (independent.co.uk) 13

Off the southwest cost of Italy, a remotely operated submarine made "a significant and rare discovery," reports the Independent — a vast white coral reef that was 80 metres tall (262 feet) and 2 metres wide (6.56 feet) "containing important species and fossil traces." Often dubbed the "rainforests of the sea", coral reefs are of immense scientific interest due to their status as some of the planet's richest marine ecosystems, harbouring millions of species. They play a crucial role in sustaining marine life but are currently under considerable threat...

hese impressive formations are composed of deep-water hard corals, commonly referred to as "white corals" because of their lack of colour, specifically identified as Lophelia pertusa and Madrepora oculata species. The reef also contains black corals, solitary corals, sponges, and other ecologically important species, as well as fossil traces of oysters and ancient corals, the Italian Research Council said. It called them "true geological testimonies of a distant past."

Mission leader Giorgio Castellan said the finding was "exceptional for Italian seas: bioconstructions of this kind, and of such magnitude, had never been observed in the Dohrn Canyon, and are rarely seen elsewhere in our Mediterranean". The discovery will help scientists understand the ecological role of deep coral habitats and their distribution, especially in the context of conservation and restoration efforts, he added.

The undersea research was funded by the EU.

Thanks to davidone (Slashdot reader #12,252) for sharing the article.

Comment Re:Return to office (Score 1) 125

No. They probably don't want to hear the Roosters crowing in the background when employees are working from home on a Teams call and figure that since livestock isn't allowed in the office they can avoid that type of interruption.

And no. This isn't a joke. I've had at least three calls like this from Xerox Support over the past 5 years when their support site would crash and I had to call them for toner and parts support. To be fair I always got the parts and support on time so Kudos on Xerox but its definitely not something you expect to hear on a business support line.

Comment Re:Professor Dingleberry (Score 1) 224

You seem to have forgotten to delete the word "derelict" when describing the land, try not relying on AI so much.

Derelict in this use case is correct. In this case, you have landowners who don't have any interest in farming the land. Think a landowner who inherited the property from their farmer grandpa and don't have any plans to farm it but don't want to sell it for some reason. In those cases they lease the use rights yearly to farmers that do. Otherwise the farm would sit there growing grass and trees and therefore become derelict.

I'm going to need some significant proof that "farmers offered more than what the solar company did" for the land.

It shouldn't take a genius to realize that if a landowner is just profiting from land use, an energy company offering Lease + energy profit sharing looks better than just a straight land lease, even if the land lease is significantly higher up front.

Comment Re:Professor Dingleberry (Score 0) 224

First off, he's right about farmer destroying solar. There are big energy groups buying any farmland they can get cheap and putting Solar farms on them.

Locally there's a solar group that bought out leases for land that farmers were planting on that would otherwise be derelict. Even when the farmers offered to buy or lease the land at significantly higher value than what it's worth (or in one case, higher than what the solar company was leasing it for) the leasing company refused because the solar group offered stock in their company that if the solar farm is profitable would result in a solid revenue stream that would be sustainable for at least a few decades until the panels wear out.

The problem with this is that food demand is not getting smaller, and once you dedicate farmland for solar, it basically makes the land useless for anything but solar since the solar shade blocks plant growth and once the solar panels are degraded and/or the company goes under, now you have rows and rows of useless solar panels that were cemented into the ground as well as their wires and conduits (and possibly chemicals if batteries are involved) that you will absolutely have to find and remove at a significant cost in order to even attempt to return that land back into farm capable condition.

Meanwhile, Malls, Stores and Plaza's have these huge parking lots that you can easily install solar canopies in that not only shade the cars of customers and can be used to charge parked electric cars, but you immediately have an electrical customer in that Mall, Store or Plaza and the stores aren't going to care since they see it not only as a green thing, but as a customer service thing due to the shade.

Now to be fair I don't know if Trump is banning all solar or just farm solar, but it makes sense to ban farm solar to encourage more parking lot canopy solar if that is what he's planning. As for wind, I'm not sure why he's banning them other than because he doesn't like the look of them or he read that study from 50 years ago that says wind turbines kill birds (because wind turbines in the 70's moved at significantly higher RPM's than modern turbines) even though 1 solar thermal plant reportedly killed more birds and insects per year than all of the bird strikes on all modern windmills combined.

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