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Comment Not SHARING economy! (Score 4, Insightful) 37

by Jinker (#54725429) Attached to: Uber, Airbnb Lead the Way as Sharing Economy Expands

Tool libraries and open use maker spaces: sharing economy
Traditional libraries: sharing economy
CopyLeft media, designs etc.: sharing economy
Open/Free software: sharing economy

Commercial taxi services with a phone app: Not SHARING
Short term home rental: Not SHARING

For crying out loud, the criteria is RIGHT there in the FREAKING NAME!

Comment Re: Serial Entrepreneur (Score 5, Interesting) 226

by Jinker (#53880855) Attached to: Elon Musk Is Really Boring

I don't get it. I see teslas on the road almost daily here in the frozen north. I can only imagine there's more in warmer climes and where there's more luxury cars on the road. They have some of the highest customer satisfaction levels for any car. They flat out outperform the competition in many regards. He built a better mousetrap, but instead of a mousetrap it was a multi billion dollar project to launch some of the most complicated consumer hardware people can purchase into an extremely mature competitive environment.

Whether or not Tesla survives or wins in the car sector, other manufacturers have been forced to respond to the market disruption.

Calling him a failure seems like an ad hominem attack, really.

Comment As a pilot, you are ALWAYS responsible (Score 5, Insightful) 178

by Jinker (#46681005) Attached to: UAV Operator Blames Hacking For Malfunction That Injured Triathlete

While learning to fly full scale airplanes it was drilled into me over and over, it is *always* the pilot/operators responsibility.

You either screwed up, or failed to ensure you were using reliable equipment, or failed to account for uncertainties in how you operate it.

Running what is essentially hobby hardware (radios, speed controls, batteries etc.) over top of people is just plain irresponsible.

"Oh, but I haven't crashed before."

Yeah, until you do.
Space

Beyond Kepler: Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite Set For 2017 Launch 43

Posted by timothy from the it-is-in-fact-made-of-starstuff dept.
astroengine writes "NASA has selected a $200 million mission to carry out a full-sky survey for exoplanets orbiting nearby stars. The space observatory, called the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, is scheduled for a 2017 launch. Like the currently operational Kepler Space Telescope, TESS will be in the lookout for exoplanets that orbit in front of their host stars, resulting in a slight dip in starlight. This dip is known as a "transit" and Kepler has revolutionized our understanding about planets orbiting other stars in our galaxy by applying this effective technique. As of January 2013, Kepler has spotted 2,740 exoplanetary candidates. "TESS will carry out the first space-borne all-sky transit survey, covering 400 times as much sky as any previous mission," said TESS lead scientist George Ricker, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research. "It will identify thousands of new planets in the solar neighborhood, with a special focus on planets comparable in size to the Earth.""
Security

Researcher Evan Booth: How To Weaponize Tax-Free Airport Goods 288

Posted by timothy from the tech-crew-at-the-security-theater dept.
New submitter MickeyF71 writes "At the Hack in the Box security conference security expert Evan Booth shares the results of his two year research on the effectiveness of airport security. He demonstrates how easy it is to produce lethal weapons from goods easily bought from the tax-free section at most airports." Google's translation of the Dutch in that link isn't ideal. For those who prefer English to Dutch, Booth's presentation at CarolinaCon 2013 (YouTube video) may be a better bet.
United Kingdom

British Library To Archive One Billion UK Websites 89

Posted by timothy from the why-not-one-hundred-billion? dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The British Library is to begin archiving the entire UK web, including one billion pages from 4.8 million websites, blogs, forums and social media sites. The process will take five months, with the aim of presenting a more complete picture of news events for future generations to read and learn from."

Comment Not sure this belongs in 'idle' (Score 2, Insightful) 287

by Jinker (#33937590) Attached to: Ontario School Bans Wi-Fi

Anti-scientific 'ban everything' movements are the flipside of the pro-CO^2 believers. People who think they intuitively know more than those who study that field in particular who have research to back up their claims.

It's a failing of our education system that more people don't understand science, the concept. You don't need to understand all the branches of science. You just need to know that 'my kid complains of headaches at school' does not mean you can pin the blame on WiFi without any further tests.
Canada

Ontario School Bans Wi-Fi 287

Posted by samzenpus from the balance-the-humors dept.
St. Vincent Euphrasia elementary school in Meaford, Ont. is the latest Canadian school to decide to save its students from the harmful effects of Wi-Fi by banning it. Schools from universities on down have a history of banning Wi-Fi in Ontario. As usual, health officials and know-it-all scientists have called the move ridiculous. Health Canada has released a statement saying, "Wi-Fi is the second most prevalent form of wireless technology next to cell phones. It is widely used across Canada in schools, offices, coffee shops, personal dwellings, as well as countless other locations. Health Canada continues to reassure Canadians that the radiofrequency energy emitted from Wi-Fi equipment is extremely low and is not associated with any health problems."
Software

Amazon S3 Adds Option To Make Data Accessors Pay 80

Posted by kdawson from the by-the-byte dept.
CWmike writes "Amazon.com has rolled out a new option for its Simple Storage Service (S3) that lets data owners shift the cost of accessing their information to users. Until now, individuals or businesses with information stored on S3 had to pay data-transfer costs to Amazon when others made use of the information. Amazon said the new Requester Pays option relieves data providers of that burden, leaving them to pay only the basic storage fees for the cloud computing service. The bigger question with the cloud is, who really pays? Mark Everett Hall argues that IT workers do."

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