Comment Re:Major flaw in design (Score 1) 78
- Most card readers today use the smart chip only.
In the US most card readers don't even have chip support. Although that's supposed to start changing over the next year.
Comment Re:I'm missing something about this product, I thi (Score 4, Informative) 78
You must not be in the US. I've never had a card with a chip. Mine doesn't even have raised letters, the only option is the magnetic strip. I suspect the US is the target audience for this.
Chips are coming in the US. The credit card processors are shifting fraud liability in October 2015. Merchants will have to take responsibility for fraud committed on mag stripe transactions, but not chipped ones.
Comment Re:why carry crude to in tanks on moving vehicles? (Score 1) 144
It wouldn't surprise me if some existing refineries have been upgraded to higher capacity though.
This happens.
The recent big example was when Motiva completed the expansion of their Port Arthur refinery. They added 325,000 barrels/day of capacity. If that were built as its own refinery, it would have been the tenth largest in the US. Since it added to an existing refinery, it bumped the refinery up to the largest in the country.
Does US Owe the World an Education At Its Expense? 689
An anonymous reader writes "'Right now, there are brilliant students from all over the world sitting in classrooms at our top universities,' President Obama explained to the nation Tuesday in his pitch for immigration reform. 'They are earning degrees in the fields of the future, like engineering and computer science...We are giving them the skills to figure that out, but then we are going to turn around and tell them to start the business and create those jobs in China, or India, or Mexico, or someplace else. That is not how you grow new industries in America. That is how you give new industries to our competitors. That is why we need comprehensive immigration reform." If the President truly fears that international students will use skills learned at U.S. colleges and universities to the detriment of the United States if they return home (isn't a rising tide supposed to lift all boats?) — an argument NYC Mayor Bloomberg advanced in 2011 ('we are investing millions of dollars [actually billions] to educate these students at our leading universities, and then giving the economic dividends back to our competitors – for free') — then wouldn't another option be not providing them with the skills in the first place?"
Comment Re:A strange game.... (Score 1) 597
The nearest NK ICBM bunker would be slightly more than 35 miles from Seoul. Please explain how these nukes work that could destroy such a bunker, but not kill most of the 2.4 million people in Seoul.
They work by not having a 35 mile blast radius. The yields of nuclear weapons have fallen significantly from their 1960s peak. A B61 bunker buster couldn't blow up Seoul from the far side of the border under ideal conditions, much less after ground penetration.
Comment Re:How about a picture? (Score 2) 52
is it two binary systems circling a common centre?
Yes.
Then where do you put a planet in... orbiting in a wide circle around the outside of the stars, figure-8ing between two pairs of stars, some elaborate knot weaving in and out around all 4?
There's a diagram of the inner binary system in the paper. It's near the end.
Two stars orbit each other at a distance of about 0.17 AU. The planet is in a circular orbit around both of them at a distance of 0.64 AU.
The other binary pair is about 1000 AU distant from the first pair. It's irrelevant to the planet's orbit.
GoDaddy Goes Down, Anonymous Claims Responsibility 483
An anonymous reader writes "A member of the Anonymous hacktivist group appears to have taken down GoDaddy with a massive Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS). The widespread issue seems to be affecting countless websites and services around the world, although not for everyone. Godaddy.com is down, but so are some of the site's DNS servers, which means GoDaddy hosted e-mail accounts are down as well, and lots more. It's currently unclear if the servers are being unresponsive or if they are completely offline. Either way, the result is that if your DNS is hosted on GoDaddy, your site may also look as if it is down, because it cannot resolve."
Best Buy Chairman and Founder Resigns Ahead of Schedule 322
lightbox32 writes with the news as carried by MSNBC that "Best Buy's chairman and founder Richard Schulze has announced his resignation from the board of directors Thursday a year ahead of the planned transition at the helm of the struggling retailer. The resignation of Dunn and Schulze come after Best Buy reported a quarterly loss of $1.7 billion after same-store sales dropped 5 percent." This sounds like a bad omen for people who get their electronic fix there. For all its imperfections and limited range, when I'm looking for computer stuff new, at retail, and in person — meaning it's not at the Goodwill and I need it right now — I'm usually glad to be near a Fry's location. What brick-and-mortar stores make sense where you live?
Comment Re:More info and video (Score 1) 282
Why does the SLS need to exist? It won't be able to do anything that projected private sector products won't be able to do for a fraction of the cost.
The SLS has one thing the currently-projected private sector boosters don't have: maximum payload capacity. The Falcon Heavy is only supposed to hit 53,000 kg to LEO ("only"). SLS is supposed to be around 100,000 kg. It's basically the Space Shuttle, and those were damn powerful engines. They just had the drawback of hauling 68000 kg of orbiter on every trip.
Falcon X might beat SLS, but that's almost purely concept art at this point. But then, my confidence in the SLS project isn't really any higher.
Suggesting Innovative Uses For Retired Space Shuttles 127
coondoggie writes "It was a sad event when the iconic NASA Space Shuttle program ended last week with the landing of Atlantis. After the last mission the flying shuttles will all be assigned to museums where millions will admire them as static displays. But wouldn't it be cool if they were put to use in places where you might not expect?" (Best viewed with the slide-show consolidating software of your choice.)
Comment Re:Tons of lumber? (Score 1) 452
Aren't most houses made from concrete nowadays?
They certainly aren't in the US.
Comment Re:No surprises here (Score 1) 391
What is the declared value of a dollar?
The value of a dollar is the ability to pay one dollar's worth of US Federal taxes.
Stellar Wormholes May Exist 94
seagirlreed writes "Pairs of stars could be connected via wormholes filled with 'phantom matter,' according to Kyrgyz researchers. If a wormhole exists within a star, the stellar body may exhibit measurable properties astronomers might detect. Although interesting, other scientists are skeptical, pointing out that this is highly speculative research."
Yahoo IPv6 Upgrade Could Shut Out 1M Users 290
alphadogg writes "Yahoo is forging ahead with a move to IPv6 on its main Web site by year-end despite worries that up to 1 million Internet users may be unable to access it initially. Yahoo's massive engineering effort to support IPv6 — the long-anticipated upgrade to the Internet's main communications protocol — could at first shut out potential www.yahoo.com users due to what the company and others call 'IPv6 brokenness.'"
Comment Re:Could someone explain... (Score 3, Informative) 481
What percentage of Internet users in the United States have even visited Wikipedia, much less would feel the loss?
Visited? Um, basically all of them?
I think you meant "edited".
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