Comment Re:Time to rename the company (Score 1) 41
Sonny, I remember when the /. effect was a real thing, DSL was blindingly-fast, Perl was king, and CmdrTaco was active. (I lost my 6 digit account with a post c. 2003.)
Comment We really need FuckedCompany.com to come back (Score 1) 41
There's just so much fucking destruction going on, it's impossible to keep up.
Comment Re:Time to rename the company (Score 2) 41
Private Equity.. the lowest ranking vampires with far too much money.
Comment Oh good (Score 1) 19
When the AI bubble finally bursts, there will be lots of cheap HDDs.
Comment If you're not anti-corporate by this point... (Score 2) 40
Then you're not the sharpest tool in the drawer. Doesn't mean communist or even socialist, just against unregulated greed with impunity like this and private equity leveraged buyouts to defund regional hospital specialty departments to force delays in care and life flights to other hospitals because you also own life flight services.
Submission + - School bus routes cancelled in Quebec because of e-Bus fire (globalnews.ca) 2
sinij writes:
The 1200 Lion buses operating in Quebec were pulled from service Thursday night as a precautionary measure after a bus caught fire in Montreal earlier in the week. Several children and a driver were inside the bus when it went up in flames, but no one was injured. It was the third fire involving a Lion school bus in the last year.
Submission + - CISA incentive bonuses went to, well, everyone (cybersecuritydive.com)
ole_timer writes: CISA gave $138 million in bonuses to hundreds of people "...not involved [directly] in security..."
Submission + - Senator accusses Microsoft of "gross cybersecurity negligence" (bleepingcomputer.com)
joshuark writes: Oregon Senator Ron Wyden has sent a letter to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) requesting the agency to investigate Microsoft for failing to provide adequate security in its products. The Senator highlights Microsoft’s prolonged failure to take decisive action to effectively mitigate well-documented security risks in its products.
The Senator says his team spoke with Microsoft in July 2024, urging the tech giant to warn customers of the dangers of using RC4 instead of more robust options like AES 128/256, and to make the latter the default setting.
Microsoft responded with a blog post published in October, which the Senator said was highly technical and failed to clearly convey the warning to decision-makers within companies.
Wyden explicitly frames Microsoft’s practices as a serious national security risk, expressing certainty that more high-impact incidents will occur unless the FTC intervenes.
"We have it on our roadmap to ultimately disable its use. We’ve engaged with the Senator’s office on this issue and will continue to listen and answer questions from them or others in government," a Microsoft spokesperson said.
An open microphone caught a Microsoft accountant stating that PR spin, insincere apologies, and empty promises were cheaper than actually spending money for fixing a product; especially after the recent layoffs to boost profits for managers to get their performance bonuses.
The Senator says his team spoke with Microsoft in July 2024, urging the tech giant to warn customers of the dangers of using RC4 instead of more robust options like AES 128/256, and to make the latter the default setting.
Microsoft responded with a blog post published in October, which the Senator said was highly technical and failed to clearly convey the warning to decision-makers within companies.
Wyden explicitly frames Microsoft’s practices as a serious national security risk, expressing certainty that more high-impact incidents will occur unless the FTC intervenes.
"We have it on our roadmap to ultimately disable its use. We’ve engaged with the Senator’s office on this issue and will continue to listen and answer questions from them or others in government," a Microsoft spokesperson said.
An open microphone caught a Microsoft accountant stating that PR spin, insincere apologies, and empty promises were cheaper than actually spending money for fixing a product; especially after the recent layoffs to boost profits for managers to get their performance bonuses.
Submission + - If We Want Bigger Wind Turbines, We're Gonna Need Bigger Airplanes (ieee.org) 2
schwit1 writes: The world’s largest airplane, when it’s built, will stretch more than a football field from tip to tail. Sixty percent longer than the biggest existing aircraft, with 12 times as much cargo space as a 747, the behemoth will look like an oil tanker that’s sprouted wings—aeronautical engineering at a preposterous scale.
Called WindRunner, and expected by 2030, it’ll haul just one thing: massive wind-turbine blades. In most parts of the world, onshore wind-turbine blades can be built to a length of 70 meters, max. This size constraint comes not from the limits of blade engineering or physics; it’s transportation. Any larger and the blades couldn’t be moved over land, since they wouldn’t fit through tunnels or overpasses, or be able to accommodate some of the sharper curves of roads and rails.
So the WindRunner’s developer, Radia of Boulder, Colo., has staked its business model on the idea that the only way to get extralarge blades to wind farms is to fly them there. “The companies in the industryknow how to make turbines that are the size of the Eiffel Tower with blades that are longer than a football field,” says Mark Lundstrom, Radia’s founder and CEO. “But they’re just frustrated that they can’t deploy those machines [on land].”
Radia’s plane will be able to hold two 95-meter blades or one 105-meter blade, and land on makeshift dirt runways adjacent to wind farms. This may sound audacious—an act of hubris undertaken for its own sake. But Radia’s supporters argue that WindRunner is simply the right tool for the job—the only way to make onshore wind turbines bigger.
Bigger turbines, after all, can generate more energy at a lower cost per megawatt. But the question is: Will supersizing airplanes be worth the trouble?
Called WindRunner, and expected by 2030, it’ll haul just one thing: massive wind-turbine blades. In most parts of the world, onshore wind-turbine blades can be built to a length of 70 meters, max. This size constraint comes not from the limits of blade engineering or physics; it’s transportation. Any larger and the blades couldn’t be moved over land, since they wouldn’t fit through tunnels or overpasses, or be able to accommodate some of the sharper curves of roads and rails.
So the WindRunner’s developer, Radia of Boulder, Colo., has staked its business model on the idea that the only way to get extralarge blades to wind farms is to fly them there. “The companies in the industryknow how to make turbines that are the size of the Eiffel Tower with blades that are longer than a football field,” says Mark Lundstrom, Radia’s founder and CEO. “But they’re just frustrated that they can’t deploy those machines [on land].”
Radia’s plane will be able to hold two 95-meter blades or one 105-meter blade, and land on makeshift dirt runways adjacent to wind farms. This may sound audacious—an act of hubris undertaken for its own sake. But Radia’s supporters argue that WindRunner is simply the right tool for the job—the only way to make onshore wind turbines bigger.
Bigger turbines, after all, can generate more energy at a lower cost per megawatt. But the question is: Will supersizing airplanes be worth the trouble?
Submission + - The sweetpotato's DNA turned out stranger than anyone expected (sciencedaily.com)
alternative_right writes: The research revealed surprising complexity. The sweetpotato genome is a mosaic assembled from multiple wild ancestors, some of which have yet to be identified. About one-third comes from Ipomoea aequatoriensis, a wild species found in Ecuador that appears to be a direct descendant of a sweetpotato progenitor. Another significant portion resembles a wild Central American species called Ipomoea batatas 4x, though the actual donor may still remain undiscovered in the wild.
"Unlike what we see in wheat, where ancestral contributions can be found in distinct genome sections," says Shan Wu, the study's first author, "in sweetpotato, the ancestral sequences are intertwined on the same chromosomes, creating a unique genomic architecture."
This intertwined genetic heritage means that sweetpotato can be tentatively classified as a "segmental allopolyploid" — essentially a hybrid that arose from different species but behaves genetically as if it came from a single one. This genomic merging and recombination gives sweetpotato its remarkable adaptability and disease resistance, traits crucial for subsistence farmers worldwide.
"Unlike what we see in wheat, where ancestral contributions can be found in distinct genome sections," says Shan Wu, the study's first author, "in sweetpotato, the ancestral sequences are intertwined on the same chromosomes, creating a unique genomic architecture."
This intertwined genetic heritage means that sweetpotato can be tentatively classified as a "segmental allopolyploid" — essentially a hybrid that arose from different species but behaves genetically as if it came from a single one. This genomic merging and recombination gives sweetpotato its remarkable adaptability and disease resistance, traits crucial for subsistence farmers worldwide.
Comment Re:Hey Kim! Just "donate" a mil to the Trump campa (Score 1) 29
When sweaty makeup Giuliani was running things, pardons cost 2 megadollars 15 years ago. Add inflation and the extra special handling fees, and that's like 10 megadollars or like 120k Trump coins. Pardons only happen after conviction though, so there's always a chance that he could avoid conviction through jury nullification.
Comment Re:What's his crime? (Score 1) 29
I'm the chief prosecutor of San Escobar, World Police Division, and I charge you with treason, obstruction, and resisting. Seize him!
Comment Re:Studies show people work less hours W (Score 1) 66
Only a fool would ever believe corporate lies. Workers need to unionize as step one. And then they need to gradually form employee-owned co-op businesses to sustain themselves as alternatives to the capricious whims of publicly- and private equity-owned megacorps that treat them like tools.
Comment Re:Huge productivity increase next quarter (Score 3, Insightful) 66
The beatings will continue until the slaves praise the master's technique.
Comment More control and more passive layoffs (Score 2) 66
Megacorps are really trying hard to lose top talent. I think they're trying really hard to make themselves irrelevant with blind faith bets on AI while rationalizing morale-killing layoffs, cutbacks, and increased worker misery to suppress wages and cut costs using myopic and cruel methods.
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If computers take over (which seems to be their natural tendency), it will serve us right. -- Alistair Cooke
