It didn't work as I expected, or maybe it will now :)

It won't fall off: it is the metal material itself, and it won't stop working until there has been enough abrasion to the outer structure and that would normally take a long time. Vigorous knifing probably would damage it but not all that much, it might not even be noticeable, metal files, sandblasting, acids (if they manage to touch it), and severe oxidation (same disclaimer) would wipe it out completely and the only question is how fast.

I hope they make a few small RC boathulls of this material to test that. If that works it should reduce drag a lot and save a lot of energy/money. Next up would be submarines lol :D If it works it's like supercavitation without the supercavitating, without any gas/air.

I wonder if barnacles are able to stick to this? Unpainted of course, painting this stuff is out of the question and it might be tricky to get it in any color but black (the color it already has) using nanopattering since that would impact the nanopattering they're already doing for hydrophobicity.

I will avoid systemd at all costs, You might think I live in Soviet Russia when I say I won't run it because it has hookers (begging for digital STDs) and blackjack (taunting financial loss/downtime hell and you can't win) :3

So far my distribution is safe-ish until 2017 or so, maybe 2019 and I have some hope that they have the wisdom to avoid it since they and it exist because they've avoided other awful things of a similar nature. I think and hope Linux will survive (and systemd die) but it has made me more interested in BSDs and surprisingly GNU/Hurd.

If I ran serious servers I would have moved to BSD already. Congratulations to those that have. Thank you to the companies that have started offering BSD-based alternatives for their services.

_{Can you guess which distro I run? And hip hurray for the subscript button woohoooo!}

You explained it much better than me and beat me by a second :) Also: I agree.

I think he means adding a link that says "Parent" somewhere close to the one saying "Reply". If this/my comment had such a link it would point to your comment https://pipedot.org/2WXS and so on.

Same here and I also want to add my congratulations.

Slashdot dropped the ball. Pipedot and Soylent News and others picked it up. You and we are all far ahead of the times: all other sites and communities have either diasterous comment fields or outdated forums. Both kinds would be wastly improved by the various directions SN and Pipedot have taken and keep exploring.

So for any improvements or further challenges maybe it could be interesting to generalize further into replacing such comment fields and forums. For a comment fields version it might include removing a lot of the superstructure and mainly using the commenting part, and for a forums version it would probably involve a different kind of front page much more akin to ordinary forum front indexes and subforum indexes where topics are pushed up front with new comments.

There is also blogging of course. It could be interesting to set up a personal blog based on pipecode but 1. I don't have time, 2. I don't have content, and 3. I could already use Pipedot and SN journals for it.

Just throwing a few thoughts out there in case anyone finds it interesting.

Thank you for all the work that has been done, it is impressive.

Hmm okay I have to say I still don't truly get it (it's still alien to me) except for the business part: sometimes one doesn't truly have a choice or simply can't afford the effort (like virtual machines), I think that's entirely valid and of course simple preference is entirely valid as well. GNU/Linux can't force people to use GNU/Linux or develop for GNU/Linux and that's a good thing :)

If I have a script on my Mint/MATE desktop I can open it (usually double-click just like in Windows) and allow it to be run as an executable (it asks). I've never done it except by accident and always said no so maybe it actually doesn't work (that would be surprising though, however just as in WIndows it will need to run with the appropriate permissions for what it's trying to do, Windows used to be a lot more permissive in that deparment and maybe they still are). Both Ubuntu and Mint has or had (in Ubuntu's case, haven't used any of their crazy new stuff) this behavior, maybe other distributions too, maybe only Gnome & Gnome-inspired stuff has it but probably all of them do.

Btw have you tried out Mint? For straight use it's pretty much the same as Windows was when I quit Windows, none of the new Windows nonsense and none of the new Ubuntu nonsense :D (but sadly systemd nonsense soon).

Since I'm not your father or aunt or in college I don't know precisely how bad those snags are, anyway here's my thoughts:

• Maybe those porn sites use silverlight or other super-propriatory stuff (both non-free and with added cost/requirements) which does require lots of hoops and jumping like RealPlayer used to (don't know if that ancient stuff still exists/is used), that sounds like it would require work. Linux can't change things like that, they have no influence on it on their own just like if I made something propriatory and didn't allow others to easily use it without paying up (like XChat did/tried on Windows a few years back).
• Your aunt's phone sounds like it's weird then again so much stuff is crippled these days; when I plug my (admittedly old non-Apple, non-Android, non-smartphone) mobile into the computer with the appropriate USB cable the computer opens up the folder on the phone and then I copypaste the pictures or videos or recordings or music or anything else I've put there. I've also done the same only by moving the microSD card between phone and computer (that was before I bought the USB cable). There's nothing Linux-specific about that, nor anything specific to the phone-maker (it's just a cheap Nokia from a few years ago).
• This could be only me and my machine (most likely is, I really haven't put any effort into this at all) but I have to admit I don't use Youtube since they (or I) managed to break both Flash and HTML5 in Firefox (it stutters, although I haven't tested it recently, other video sites work fine or at least I haven't noticed anything) so if there really is something there I have to watch I'll just download it (one of the FireFox plugins) and watch it locally (the transfer from Google is fast enough to max my frugal connection for the few seconds it lasts). Other LInux users will have to chime in but I suspect it works for most Linux-using people and/or there's an easy fix, it used to work for me for years and I just haven't bothered (and nearly all the good stuff started being removed from YouTube anyway, the stuff I used to watch isn't there any more, I get it elsewhere).
• I find it a tad hard to believe LibreOffice-created .doc files aren't good enough for college (aka high-school) or that .doc files are a requirement for college (aka university). Yeah they're called something else than .doc now aren't they? Still... MS formats are an important priority for LibreOffice, last I heard they had better backwards compability with Office versions than Office itself has. Or for that matter that .rtf or anything else doesn't work either. Even so Microsoft is moving towards Office as a service on the web aren't they? (Just as Adobe did with their suite including Photoshop, I had forgotten that when I wrote the last comment, or maybe that failed? I don't know). Since I don't use it (MS office, Adobe) I can't claim that it works on Linux but either way once again it's not something GNU/Linux can be blamed for.

From memory when I still used Windows I had to do a lot of stuff to figure things out or tweak or fix broken stuff (and defragmentation and reinstallations and blue screens lol!) if it was possible, run updates both from Microsoft and others, not to mention the constant fight to stay reasonably secure (i.e. not NSA stuff, back then one really though they had better things to do). I've done far less of that kind of stuff on Linux, a lot of it simply isn't necessary or even there because it doesn't apply and updates & "normal" security is fast and simple.

TL;DR Using a computer will always involve some work.

Anyway whatever works for them/you is fine by me, thanks for getting specific :)

If only someone could package a nice GNU/Linux or BSD that offered the average consumer a better value than Windows...

This is so alien to me, what is missing? What magical awesomeness have I missed out on during the last decade thus depriving my life of joy and laughter and all things good?

Photoshop? Nah it can't be that, I mean it has to be something really impressive and I haven't even bothered installing Krita yet although I'm planning to (I do have InkScape and GIMP though). Nerflix? Don't use it but it's coming now isn't it? Games? The Steam is picking up but I don't need that either. Skype? Didn't Microsoft just kill that everywhere anyway?

What hidden gems are you hoarding Venkman! You better tell us or we'll slobber you :D

Methane detected from afar.
Methane not detected on ground.

Methane produced some distance above ground?

Maybe a tiny lightweight probe that launches a balloon (or lightweight plane) is in order. It doesn't ever have to land (although couldn't the backside of those heatshields easily be made into some nice big antenna dishes?), it could be launched while the heatshield etc. continues its fall. They already have concepts and some work done on both. Suggested names: Cowboy 1, 2, ..., n, better than Fart Fairies (although I would not object to that so now I'm undecided) :D

What would you spend a billion on if:

1. You had to use it all on a single thing; a science or technology or engineering improvement not directly benefiting yourself, family members, etc. any more than any other random bystander.
2. The billion has to be enough to either make or break it, i.e. either the aims are realized or they are proven not to be viable for the near future.
3. The choice with the combined highest likelihood of success and most benefit gets the billion, i.e. a smaller likelihood of success can be outweighed by massive benefits or smaller benefits can be outweighed by near certain likelihood of success.

No, I don't have a billion :( but somebody must have xD
Considering the amount of money flowing around some country or individual (or one billion people contributing) could easily make it into an annual award.

I don't know what the list of choices should be (or how the debate will turn out) but I'd like to suggest Focus Fusion/Lawrenceville Plasma Physics as an alternative.

Please :)

If I could my solution for good food would be quite simple, to live in East Asia: China (including Hong Kong and Macau), Singapore, Taiwan, the Philippines, South Korea, or Japan. It's not that I'm horrible at cooking, it's that so many people are so much better, skilled, and experienced and in addition in my opinion these countries have an accessible food culture beyond any other places. I read a philippine food magazine today and it reminded me of how much I miss it.

Err that post wasn't finsihed at all, I discovered I had been a little bit wrong (ARM2 is more powerful that the first PCs) and was correcting myself when it accidentally got posted partially through the edit. Sorry about that :|

I'm not saying the NSA has any need to use ancient stuff like ARM2, as we all ought to know they have their own foundries and could easily make task-focused implants small enough to be unnoticeable to the naked eye.

You sound like you don't know anything at all about computers. While the processing power in a SD card is just about between a third and half of the very first PCs that's more than plenty. The chip in the SD card is tiny, cheap, and fairly old (ARM2 is common, I've used the numbers from ARMv2 and ARMv2a and compared to the first 80386).

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instructions_per_second :
Intel 286 2.66 MIPS at 12.5 MHz0.20.21982 [5]
ARM2 4 MIPS at 8 MHz0.50.51986

The people in the article are looking at one aspect: which components got destroyed by the GcHQ when they wanted to remove data and possible traces of data. It doesn't mean these are implants (if you want pictures of the implants go to Schneiers blog and look at the TAO stuff, there are some pictures there courtesy of the NSA themselves).

"Luddite" is the new "racist": a self-inflicted insult to whoever utters it demonstrating their lack of cognition and a total submission which isn't the survival mechanism you may hope it is (submission is irrelevant).

The NSA has done what the Unabomber couldn't achieve.

Nothing wrong with that, if you like it you like it, I'm just gently mocking the smartwatch/wearable computing hype and/or fashion thing :)

My necklace is an abacus of physical bitcoins so I can do my accounting anywhere (front vs. back, multiple rows) and when the IRS calls I only have to walk in the door :P

Sure it's big and weighs a ton but it also costs several millioioioins dollares because of the bitcoin and nobody will ever steal it because nobody steals necklaces and nobody thinks that anyone wearing a necklace would be wearing anything but a cheap trinket and it's not like it's the most visible, alluring, and easy theft around except for dumb smartphones.

That's what I think of wristwatches, they were enough of a pain when they weren't computers :)

Yes I know the shallowness of human social interaction requires something easy and nontaxing to latch on to for the bragging rituals to start, wear a colorful band-aid on your forehead and it will serve the same purpose for cents and be even more "in your face", in addition you will know it's "you" that's wanted because who the hell digs for band-aids? :D

"Did you hurt yourself?"
Genuine smile. "Yes emotionally, I use this to get into conversations with people and to invite members of the opposite sex"

Consternation = avoid, interest = snog, laugh = marry.

Computer security being broken is not really the big issue, nor is it about the lack of control, nor is it that computing and its results can't be trusted or taken at face value. Security, control, and trust are to a very large extent delusional notions and computers didn't change that. These things are water under the bridge.

The big issue is the amount of effort and resources spent on not only actively removing such of your (imagined or not) "property rights" (security, control, and trust of the tools you own) but on doing the same to everyones entire "objective" existence past, present, and future and doing it continuously, simultanously, efficiently, scalably, eternally, and tied to the accelerating technological improvement and how they were nearly done completing the rudimentary working prototype of this setup two years ago .

That is what Snowden revealed even if he perhaps did not realize it. It is the sum total and the conclusion and it doesn't matter the slightest whether this meta-tool was intentional or not: it is going to be used and improved upon.

While I have plenty of past (and passed) loved ones (particularly a Sanyo 178^Hkg luggable /**had to leave that typo in lol**/) my "best" computer must be a relatively new eMachine 10 inch notebook. The little guy refused to stay dead (I killed it once by disassembling it and cleaning out some of the "goop" but after two weeks it came back to life). Of course the fan is long gone because I smoke two packs a day (and so does it) but it don't mind :D

Currently it's running the newest Mint and I use it primarily for small & rough Inkscape work. If it ever does die I'll still keep it.

What has this got to do with true retro computing? My point would be that a lot of the love for the old ones came from the fact that they were relatively accessible i.e. cheap, and "good enough". They could be a bit hit and miss but when they hit it was love :) "Making do" has plenty of charm on its own and there are still new-ish computers (not just awesome Raspberries & similar) that carry a lot of the retro legacy in spirit.

By the way I wonder how many used "butterfly keyboard" ThinkPads are still alive and well? Never used them but they looked damn sexy from a distance. I find it "easy" to love small laptops but perhaps it's that old Sanyo* forever leaving its mark on me :)

* I even changed the fuses on that thing several times! Fuses!!! Like those you can find in a dimmer lol! And my beard is only slightly gray.

We can't.

It's that simple and it ought to be obvious: by definition we are unable to predict the result of any general intelligence that is significantly improved over our own. It's not as we're any particularly good at predicting ourselves either or far "simpler" things like Langton's Ant but we're extremely good at pretending we can "predict" outcomes after we've done the same thing over and over again (which of course has nothing at all to do with any real prediction).

99.999999% of humanity has no clue as to the severe limits of determinism in complex uninhibited systems i.e. the real world. Maybe at most a few will cry out "but science!" without realizing that most hard science as it applies outside of laboratory environments is based on generalized empiricism rather than an imagined (because no such thing exists) form of hypothetical deterministic super-accounting.

Anyway back to the "we can't" answer: it is not an "acceptable" answer, in particular it is completely unacceptable to anyone with an interest in hard AI be it academic, financial, megalomanic, tangential, or anything else. Thus denial.

As for "weak AI" the same might apply but because (as with humans) any upsets would rely on unintended emergent properties and/or chaotic or orderly confluences it becomes a far harder argument that easily obfuscates and occults; and this makes it superb for derailing any and all discussions about hard AI so that one can even easily pretend one isn't in denial!

In addition to the above those involved seem fixated on viewing their work as hyper-deterministic "machines" instead of beings . To me that sounds like an incredibly efficient one-step recipe for disaster (both for humans and the AI).

Pretty much the same here. I haven't noticed any breaches anywhere either and I find that exceptionally interesting given 1. reports/possible proof it was being exploited, and 2. the severity of the bug.

I know that smell by now, maybe they should just come clean? They could even spin it as having control over what they're doing, hell it might even be true in this case but it's still a horrible idea since it relies on continuous perfection .

Love the site/html, beautiful and clean. Like the fresh approach to the strength of Slash-style moderation.

I like the voting system and it would be a huge step up for most systems (particularly political ones).

That said by starting to vote it got me thinking:
- I happen to only have two definite positive preferences I'll vote for, those are easy.
- Then among the remaining five options (not counting the NSA one) there are some I really don't want or want to hold back until a future date, I obviously don't want to vote for those, so those are easy.
- But since I've only chosen two out of seven options I could be wasting my influence if I don't push for at least some of the options that aren't outright "bad" in my opinion. It could end up weakening my own choices or it could end up weakening the choices I want to avoid, this starts to get hard.

It's like ranking without ranking; if I vote for all options I might as well not vote and if I vote for none I'm not voting so those two examples are the extremes and intuitively that tells me I should try to choose roughly half of the options XD

Maybe I'm just evil¹ :3

¹ "lawful chaotic" chaotic? *head asplodes*

P.S. I would like (more) unicode support but I'm in no rush , the code barfs at superscript 1 unless it's written using predefined html entities (ampersand sup1 semicolon) but on preview it changes the html entity (numeric doesn't work either) in the comment entry box to the character so if you preview it twice or preview and post it will fubar all over the place :o

There are plenty of systems and complete (even slightly overlapping) coverage in the area the signal was lost, that's why it's an actual mystery. A birdie asked for seismic information and some Chinese had a positive answer but it doesn't seem to be widely used as news yet, possibly too embarrassing or maybe someone got cold feet after all the duds. If that's where it is then we're still unlikely to learn what actually caused it.

TURBINE started round about 2011. 3 years ago. It should scale much faster than your average botnet. 3 years is a long time; they're already everywhere they can be. If you're ever interesting enough they use it and encryption and obfuscation won't do any good at all. They own the bare metal.

Is that why you're all so very very quiet? I thought "everybody" was scheduled for at least five more years of deep denial.

You don't want to do that, trust me :3

It could scale, make the pseudocode "var modpointValue = totalCommentsNumber / userbaseNumber" stick to some fixed ratio close to what it is now. Change the variables to what makes most sense. Define it per article if necessary.

This comment is two days late, influential people might not see it, please spread the idea and modify as needed.

I like that people are aiming to create safer more secure software but unfortunately I have no reason to trust any hardware :|