I would never down-vote an article only because I it is of no interest to me. Down-voting is solely for crap.

I think it is 'Ubuntu Studio'. :-)

And of course, I believe them 100%. Just as I believe all advertising messages. :-D

The judge argued that it is too difficult to exploit to get the full content of a book, so it does not do any significant harm to the copyright holders. This need not to be true, if no pages are exempt from appearing as search result. The judge might overestimate the difficulty for a specialized program to repeatedly request parts of a book with different search terms and automatically stitch the pieces together.

...so it would be difficult for anyone to read any of the works in their entirety by repeatedly entering different search requests.

Ok.... I say 'stupid' with a very bad conscience. The ruling shows a remarkable common sense. But difficult? I suppose it never occured to them that people could write a script, which does this automatically. And then automatically stitches the pieces together. Unless of course, if there are certain pages, which regardless of search terms are never shown.

The closer you are to the equator, the less is the difference between day time and night time over the year. In spring and summer, where the days are long, I also need very little sleep. 5-6 hours. Absolutely within the range of above mentioned societies. In autumn and winter sometimes even 9hrs are not enough for me. Fortunately I can 'extend' the days with certain light sources.

And that is exactly what the article says:

Hunter-gatherers sleep an hour more in the winter than they do in the summer.

Even though:

It appears that their sleep time may have more to do with temperature than with light.

Maybe. The temperature in my bedroom is almost constant over the year... so no own experience here.

But I really would like to know, if there is a correlation of distance from the equator and sleep time.
Namibia is farthest away from the equator. Could it be that there the sleeping time is more in the 7.1 hour range? While in Tanzania, which is closest to the equator, the time is more in the 5.7 hour range?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CargoLifter

At least something useful was done with the hangar after they bankrupted.

More luck to Aeroscraft.

Sounds good, I know, until you check on the pricing...

But I am not military. I doubt that they are fazed by this prices. Furthermore, when no new 8" floppies are produced anymore and I still had a good stash, if they wanted to buy them from me, I doubt the would be much cheaper than the Sony MOs ;-)

You should at least have said CDs/DVDs or other similar data-only media.

I did not do this on purpose. I 100% agree with all you said about thumb drives. The point was just that to isolate a system the external storage type is not really relevant. For me an isolated system is a system, which is not connected to any network. Ok, perhaps to a well defined local network with no connection outside this local network. The horrible security of thumb drives is a different problem. And... I would not even raise a brow when they just have said that thumb drives are an absolute no-no, on the contrary.

I was looking for the capacity of punch tapes, but only found 'a few dozen kilobytes'. The first 8" floppies also had only a 'few dozen kilobytes. But more interestingly:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punched_tape#Current_use

Use of punched tape today is very rare and is used only in military systems.

Unfortunately "citation needed"... but it looks like I wasn't that far off with my 'punch tape joke' :-D

Perhaps. I never had any of those systems long enough to do such a comparison myself. But all magnetic media deteriorate in time. So I guessthat even 8" disks have to be refreshed from time to time.

I wonder how magneto-optical media compare to 8" floppies.

I assume they're talking about sneakernet, in general, being more secure than any kind of live data connection. The critical system can be completely isolated.

Critical systems can also be completely isolated when thumb dives are used.

Punch-cards may have too-little capacity to be practical

According to Google such an 8" floppy has a capacity of 80kb to 1024kb. Punch tapes should in theory have an unlimited capacity.

The disks also have a built-in protection against portable-storage attacks like Stuxnet,

Sounds convincing... at first glance. But it is not that they downgraded their modern technology with 8" floppies after Stuxnet. If this really was the reason to keep the old tech, for the first time people had a foresight, which I would call superhuman. The 5 1/4" disks came out 1978. They were more stable and convenient than the 8" disk. 1982 the even more stable 3-1/2" disk was introduced. What kept them from using those? Do you really think that 1982 someone was able to anticipate Stuxnet?

The security of this outmoded technology was difficult to replicate with modern materials.

This I don't understand. In what way are floppy disks more reliable? Sure, everything is bigger on a 8-inch floppy disks. You probably can see individual bits with a magnifying glass <---- slight exaggeration, I know. But does this really matter? A floppy contains data. In really mission-critical environments I certainly would not rely alone on what data I get from some hardware... regardless of new or old hardware. And exactly for this reason all kinds of techniques like checksums were invented to detect data corruptions.

My guess is that old floppy drives might be more resistant against EMPs. But then... perhaps someone should tell them about punch tapes. Even more secure. Can even be read manually in case of an emergency.

Interesting. We read the same texts and come to totally different conclusions.

Yes, might happen, could be, no guarantee... For me it means: We simply don't have enough data. Even your article states:

previous research suggests that planets the size of Kepler-452b have a good chanceof being rocky

and:

That's substantial opportunity for life to arise, should all the necessary ingredients and conditions for life exist on this planet."

Doesn't this also sounds like could be, no guarantee? IMHO yes. Under this circumstances calling it Earth's twin is the real life equivalent of click bait.

To forbid Google to show certain search results is like ripping the table of contents from a book. Google does not make the content it just indexes it. And how far goes Google's obligation to remove search results? I create a website, which claims rightfully 'x stole y'. If this is the truth, no one can forbid me to put this on my page. But Google might get a court order to remove my page from all search results. Ok... Now I create a second, a third , a fourth page, which says the same. Who will hinder me as long as I break no law? Does Google have to hide them immediately or can it wait for further court orders? One for each site? Or must Google proof read every single page before it can make it available? Automatic text recognition? 'x stole y', 'y was stolen by x'.... There is more than one way to express a fact. Do we have to accept false positives? Each page is hidden, which contains 'x' and any variation of thievery?

Perhaps soon there will be a new business? People who help to avoid accidental delistings? "No, you cannot use those three words within your webpage... these three word are also in a page, which was delisted because of the right to be forgotten". This information cost you $2000. There are three more dangerous word combinations... Do you want to buy another advice?

I don't know, but honest censorship and good old book burning sounds like much less trouble to me and would feel far more ... erm.....yes... 'honest'.

I am not sure this is a fair comparison. Not a great read? Perhaps. Not everybody is a good writer. But you make it sound as if it has no arguments at all. Actually most of the 'repetitions' in this article are quotations of several scientists of different fields. And practically all agree, that 'twin Earth' is not very likely. Maybe mini-Neptune, or huge-Venus. This does not necessarily rule out life, but probably even the Mars is more 'twin Earth' than this planet.

Oh, only in the EU. Then it is not a problem. Ok, the Germans, the Britons, the Italians, the Spanish... and many more have to forget, too, because a French court says so... But hey, their own fault that the live in Europe.

Perhaps not as scientific, but more fun to watch:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pFww_EaLiY

http://io9.com/could-life-have-emerged-on-earths-near-twin-1719964421

Yes, super-Earth.... or mini-Neptune. Above link gives a few more details.

...I'd be rich. Usually it is somemisinterpretation by a clueless journalist.

spam

while it was likely the politics and other trash that have driven its decline.

I don't think it is that simple. Other trash...can be entertaining now and then. And politics... I don't think politics in general is necessarily a problem. Upholding more or less forgotten journalistic standards (truthfulness, accuracy, objectivity, impartiality, fairness and public accountability) may provide a fertile ground for controversial, but still levelheaded discussions. But the biased propaganda, which goes as 'politics' on /. poisons every community. It is repulsive for more clear thinking members, but attracts at the same time fanatics and crackpots. Of course, fanatics and crackpots might generate more clicks, so this kind of audience might be favoured by /.'s owners.

Anyways, I like the stories here... though I wish there would be some more. Not that this is a complaint...

I doubt that today's lasers from orbit, through the whole atmosphere could even give you a mild tan. :-)

The ISS is only solar powered. What is their storage capacity? How long does it take to 'recharge'?

Hihi. when you said "M*A*S*H" I got curious... how long would it take for me to find it on a torrent site... Result: Less than a minute. All 11 seasons complete. Not that I would ever download something like that.... not my genre. ;-)

Not sure if this is a good idea. I never heard anything good about wikipedia. BUT hearsay. But I am also very often on Stackoverflow. The rights to edit, why edit, how to edit... I very often have the feeling it is more of a pissing contest. Ok, you get valuable points for edits there, so it might not be 100% comparable. Nevertheless, the problem is editing other peoples posts is some kind of power. And some people get high on that kind of power. Is the 'getting blasted' you mentioned above really a problem? Does this happen somewhere back stage, where I don't see it? Because I really don't see it.... much.

If you do this, I propose something like Stackoverflow: Almost everybody can edit everything, BUT up to a certain reputation (karma) edits won't show automatically, but must go through a review of higher-karma members.

Ok, I don't know how long I am member of /., I think it got worse, but it could be my imagination. Maybe I got older and less tolerant against b......t. Nevertheless, I gladly 'promote' |. wherever I can. :-)

As long as propaganda articles are filtered out, as it is done now, the less desirable parts of the /. community won't feel welcome here anyways.

Ok. The problem I see is... on /. I am nothing more than an evil troll, who tries everything to burn his once excellent karma. Since /. was taken over by dice I have only contempt for this click-baiting cesspool and my posts show clearly show it. So I might not be the best |. 'ambassador' on /, ;-)

*yawn*

Exactly what I expected: Minor problems with consistency: "Does email that comes in during that second get stored correctly?". Ok, for a service like Google this might not be a minor problem. But this is light years away from a system crash.

...but I simply don't understand the problem.

It's possible that programs not equipped to handle the extra second could have an issue.

What programs? If the clock is not correct I might have a minor problem with builds. I might recompile more than necessary. So What? But crashes? Especially so boring systems like websites? Possibly "lightly" corrupt databases, yes. Perhaps the order of a few posts mixed up, yes. This should be all. I'd probably have think hard how to crash a program on purpose just because the time is one second off.

It is based on a Windows application, and needs a FAT or NTFS file system on the hard drive to infect it, so non-Windows users are pretty safe.

All modern UEFI machines nowadays have at least one FAT file system. So, let's hope this is not enough and really a Windows is necessary.

62,000 hrs for blue OLEDs. Means 7 years 24/7 running. Means solved for my use cases. My TVs don't come even close to 24/7 runtime. If the OLEDs don't degrade when switched off, I expect a lifespan of at least 20-30 years for my devices. I never had a TV that long.

Initially this was the biggest problem.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OLED#Disadvantages

Seems to be solved, but in an article for an expensive product like this, I'd still like to read some numbers.

How he found his way to |. I don't know...

From time to time I drop the |. url on /.. Should I not doing this?

Pretty hard to follow, probably not native English,

I just saw a wall of text. No introduction of the topic and why it could be generally interesting for |.. It had no apparent 'story' so I ignored it.

...which made it through reviews. Is this one of those?

From your use case above I don't know, if you don't overlook something. Many families cannot afford two cars. So everything has to done be with only one car. Many people manage. Some probably with optimizations, which not require additional tours. If now a car can drive alone from one to the other owner, it really might mean more traffic. Less thinking and compromises necessary to achieve the same effect easier and more convenient. Additionally sooner or later people will notice 'hey, my car sits most of the time motionless around... it could make me money, if it transports people when I don't need it. So someone develops an app, which calls stand-by private cars, which are registered for this service... kills the cap driver business and possibly other forms of public transportations. It might make less cars necessary, but it might at the same time increase traffic. The net effect? I have not idea.

I think it is impossible for uneducated people

What do you mean with 'uneducated people'? I am very educated. Softwaredeveloper and consultant for years. And it still would be impossible for me to see what you are doing if you type on your laptop on the neighbouring seat. Especially since most people give others a modicum of privacy and don't constantly snoop what they are doing.

You think far too complicated. Do you really think the flight attendants are able to distinguish between a passenger playing tetris and one trying to hack the system? I suppose after reading the bulletin they look around to see if one of their passengers is wearing a black hat. They might have heard that black hats are evil hackers.

...he deserves jail time. But so does every idiot, who is responsible for implementing a passenger wifi system, which is not 100% separated from the flight systems. And jail time for everybody who could have done something, but did not after she was informed that something like that is possible.

I don't assume. I ask. I would like to know more about the specifics... but not in the article. Yes, I can believe that the added functionality sends with the same power than all the other signals. In hindsight this is stupid, but as it is said: Hindsight is 20:20. At least it should be easy to fix... just limit the damn key to 30cm, too.

Btw... one of the reasons why I always refused security related projects. :-D

Didn't you read my post? Apparently not. I have no problems with the device being bidirectional. But a repeater cannot repeat what it cannot receive. The thieve stands with the amplifier by the car. The cars sends its request. According to the article this signal it is so weak that it can only be received by the key when the key is in 30cm distance. The amplifier boosts this signal so it can be received by the key in 100m distance. Fine. The key might happily answer.... 100m away. But what good is this, when the key signal is also so weak that it can only be received in 30cm distance?If the key signal is too weak to reach the amplifier, it cannot be amplified. Bidirectional or not. Is this so hard to understand?

If the key has a reach of 30cm and the car has a reach of 30 cm... where do you place the amplifier that it can amplify both signals? Either the answer signal from the key is by far stronger than that of the car. Why? Or the amplifier is much more sensitive and can receive the car and/or key signal over a much larger distance than the key can, but this is info missing in the article.

The key responds to the amplified "Key where are you?" signal with its usual "Itsa me, the key!" signal, et voila, the car is unlocked.

Yes, of course... But the car has the megaphone, not the key. The key might answer "Itsa me, the key!", but why can it be heard of such a distance?

Sure, the amplifiers are bi-directional, but even such amplifiers have limits. If the normals distance is 30cm, you go within the 30cm range of the car and maybe amplify it to 100m. No problem. This I understood. But an amplifier can only boost what is receives. How far are key/car usually apart. when the car is parked and the owner at home? 20m? 40m? You say there is no way to limit a radio signal to a specific range. Of course not. But when the strength of the key signal is too weak to be detected by the amplifier in 1m distance, it effectively is limited. So, why is the signal strength of the key so strong, that the amplifier can receive and amplify its answer over such a large distance?

Ok, the car sends constantly some kind of 'hello' signal. Usually it has a reach of 30cm. Fine. The amplifier increases signal tremendously... understood. But now the key has to 'answer'. And its signal is not amplifies. So how far away its signal can be detected by the car? And where is the problem to limit this reach to perhaps 1m? Then the thieves you need two amplifier... And a way to get close to the key without the owner noticing it.

....not a single mention of systemd. ;-)

100% on the external drive. Every few days I rsync it with an identical one. So if one crashes I can immediately plug in the spare and have an identical system. The code I write is of course spread over several git repositories. So it is more up-to-date than 'every few days'. USB3 drives... so I am quite happy with the speed. And if my computer crashes, I don't have to open it, to get the internal disk... Of course, I don't throw it away, but I don't have to get it immediately. Nothing important on it.... only Windows and a few games.

??? I think all the options above are perfectly valid for rolling releases, too.

So no response?

I think you make a mistake. You are on a level, which is that high and certainly took quite some time to reach, that you forgot your humble beginnings. Seems to be a common trait. Happens to me, too. At first something new is difficult. Curses, when something does not work as expected, can be heard between here and alpha centauri. Finally the problem is understood and it becomes easy. And in a few years the initial problems are forgotten. :-)

Of course, installing LFS won't bring anyone even close to your level, but it is a stepping stone. And not everybody needs to setup his own DNS or email server. A web server and openssh is a nice practice, when done the first time without blindly accepting whatever is pre-defined by the distribution. But maybe LFS is doing all this now. The last time I used it was ~10 years ago.