VANCOUVER, WA—Unable to shake off an overall negative feeling he couldn’t attribute to anything in particular, local man Paul Carpenter confirmed Monday that something about the way society was exposed as a complete illusion over the past year was really getting him down today. “Maybe it’s just quarantine talking, but…
A few months ago, someone noted in the comments that they hadn’t heard about the Therac-25 incident. I was surprised, and went off to do an informal survey of developers I know, only to discover that only about half of them knew what it was without searching for it.
I think it’s important that everyone in our industry know about this incident, and upon digging into the details I was stunned by how much of a WTF there was.
Today’s article is not fun, or funny. It describes incidents of death and maiming caused by faulty software engineering processes. If that’s not what you want today, grab a random article from our archive, instead.
Morph is composed of 155 touch sensitive and illuminated modules, connected by a flexible and expandable surface. Each module is completely reconfigurable and features six individually addressable LEDs to illuminate the six edges of the hexagonal surfaces.Here’s a much larger and more menacing version 2: If you’re like me, your first thought was, “wait, how did they tile a sphere with hexagons?” And then you notice the pentagons. I think it’s actually a Golderg icosahedron, which is the dual of a geodesic sphere. (And which, incidentally, would have made the Well World map way less stupid.)It kind of feels like my “Splodesic” screen saver came to life!Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously,…
A warning for the segment of the left demanding these unaccountable Silicon Valley oligarchs have the final say over speech… You are spreading reactionary views, ones held by only the most extreme members of the right wing: even most libertarian-capitalists don’t think monopolists should have complete latitude like this. Not to speak of the way that Facebook and Twitter effectively operate as part of the public square now
Wolff’s post highlighted an Indypendentstory on the recent strike by workers at the Hunts Point Produce Market and in his caption he approvingly noted, “US political winds are shifting left. Key example is Hunts Point food market for New York City. First labor union strike since 1986: strong, solid, supported by socialists and much public opinion. Victorious and widely celebrated.” … When Wolff’s Facebook followers went to click on the article, they were redirected. When they went to share it, they received this notice:
US-based broadcaster DISH Networks has put a lot of effort into tracking down outfits and individuals who distribute the company’s content without permission.
This has resulted in dozens of lawsuits through which the company won millions of dollars in damages. However, the piracy problem isn’t going away.
Behind the scenes, DISH continues to explore new options to tackle copyright infringement. This includes an entirely novel anti-piracy system where copyrighted content is managed and secured through a blockchain.
Blockchain Anti-Piracy Patent
The company summarized its idea in a patent application filed two years ago. After going through all the necessary processes, the “anti-piracy management” patent is now officially granted. Right on time, it seems.
The broadcaster notes that “millennials” and…
NOComments Off on No One Could Have Predicted This
Feb152021
Shortly after sunrise on Jan. 15, FBI agents descended with guns drawn on a squat, red-brick apartment complex here, broke open the door of one of the units and threw in a stun grenade, prompting the frightened property manager to call 911.
Inside the apartment, furnished with little besides books and a sign declaring “THE REVOLUTION IS NOT A PARTY,” the agents found their target: a 33-year-old U.S. Army veteran and self-described “hardcore leftist” who had posted a flier on social media threatening to attack “armed racist mobs WITH EVERY CALIBER AVAILABLE.”
The man, Daniel Baker, hardly fit the profile of those who had been expected to cause trouble in the run-up to President Biden’s inauguration. After a mob of Donald Trump supporters invaded the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 in hopes of preventing Biden from taking office, the FBI had warned that far-right extremists were plotting armed marches in Tallahassee and other state capitals, as well as in D.C.
But Baker represents the flip side of that threat: As a far-right extremist movement wages an assault on American government and institutions, experts say an unpredictable battle is brewing, fueling potentially legitimate threats of violence from the opposite fringe of the political spectrum.
…
Baker’s friends said he had a bombastic social media presence that he stepped up to match inflammatory right-wing rhetoric. … The FBI agents who had been monitoring Baker’s social media posts since October described him as being on a “path toward radicalization.” … On Jan. 25, U.S. Magistrate Judge Michael J. Frank agreed that Baker posed a potential threat and ordered him held without bond, writing that the former soldier had “repeatedly endorsed violent means to advance the political beliefs that he espouses.”
The corporate establishment media is doing their job and continuing to manufacture consent for a new PATRIOT act, this time aimed (more so) at crushing internal dissent. One thing to note in the language the Democrats have used around this—they never say right wing “extremism,” it’s always just “domestic extremism.” Considering that fascism and capitalism are totally compatible, and some might argue neoliberalism is quite similar to fascism, it should be no surprise that the “right wing extremism” is being used (again, if anyone recalls the 90s) as a pretense for passing laws that are squarely aimed at the dissident and socialist left.
Unfortunately the mainstream “left” have been subject to an unhinged propaganda campaign over the last five years, and consists in reality of mainly conservatives if not outright reactionaries at this point, many of whom are cheering on these developments instead of recoiling in horror as they ought to.
January 6th is the new 9/11, only with far less justification. The state and its media organs have convinced the mainstream left to demand draconian prison sentences for people essentially charged with trespassing (using laws the left once correctly decried as criminalizing protest!), to call for strengthening the police state, to demand expansion of unconstitutional domestic surveillance programs, to demand that private actors censor on behalf of the state (as if a public-private partnership to sidestep the Constitution is justifiable, and worse using extreme right wing capitalist-libertarian views on free speech rights that in earlier times were only held by reactionary nutjobs like Pat Buchanan and Moral Majority types), to live in fear that their neighbors are extremists who would eat their children and murder them in their sleep for being good liberals were it not for the fear of an all powerful state apparatus of violence keeping them civilized…
Enlarge / Supporters of former President Donald Trump, including Jake Angeli, a QAnon supporter known for his painted face and horned hat, enter the US Capitol on January 6. (credit: Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images)
Facebook has gone out of its way to help law enforcement officials identify those who participated in the January 6 riot at the US Capitol, the company said in a Thursday conference call with reporters.
“We were appalled by the violence,” said Monika Bickert, Facebook’s vice president of content policy. “We were monitoring the assault in real time and made appropriate referrals to law enforcement to assist their efforts to bring those responsible to account.”
She added that this “includes helping them identify…
Enlarge / Why did the flywheel hybrid never catch on for road cars? (credit: GKN/Jonathan Gitlin)
When a Speed network television crew interviewed Margo T. Oge, then-director of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Transportation and Air Quality, during the 10-hour-long 2010 Petit Le Mans Series race at Road Atlanta, Porsche’s experimental 911 GT3 R Hybrid race car held down a top-20 position in the 45-car field.
The broadcast crew took every opportunity to call attention to the presence of the new Porsche. Hybrid street cars were becoming mainstream, and “road relevance” was repeatedly cited by Oge along with energy independence and low carbon emissions as EPA imperatives.
But, like its similarly new Formula One hybrid race car…
There are at least two kinds of 3D printer operators: those who work hard to make their prints look better after they come off the bed and those who settle for whatever comes off the printer. If you are in the latter camp, you probably envy people who have smooth prints with no visible layer lines. But the sanding and priming and multiple coats of paint can put you off.
[Teaching Tech] has a few tricks that might change your mind. He shares his technique for using different coatings for 3D prints that provide good quality with a lot less effort. The coatings in question are polyurethane used for coating pickup truck beds and bitumen rubber used…
Probably doesn’t count as a recipe (not enough for me to bother putting it on my website properly), but eh.
2x 16oz cans of black beans (no salt added)
1 lime, juiced
3 tbsp olive oil
1 tsp garlic powder
1/4 tsp smoked paprika
1 tsp hot sauce (I use El Yucateco Black Label Reserve Habañero to add a bit of a kick and some smokiness)
1/8 tsp msg
Drain the beans, throw them in a pot, mix the rest of the ingredients together in a measuring cup and allow to stand for five minutes (maybe it’s placebo, but maybe it develops the garlic flavor a bit), pour over the beans, simmer on medium-low for ten minutes, and you’re done. Works great to just eat or as a taco filling.
Two years ago Internet provider Cox Communications lost its legal battle against a group of major record labels.
Following a two-week trial, a Virginia jury held Cox liable for pirating subscribers which it failed to disconnect, ordering the company to pay $1 billion in damages.
Heavily disappointed by the decision, Cox asked the court to set the jury verdict aside and decide the issue directly. In addition, the ISP asked to lower the “shockingly excessive” damages or allow a new trial. All these efforts failed.
The court was initially open to lowering the amount because there were several overlapping copyrights at play. However, it later backtracked and confirmed the jury’s $1 billion judgment.
Cox Appeals
That was another setback for…
On Friday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released unscientific, politically motivated guidelines intended to justify school reopenings everywhere.
A very weak consumer data privacy bill is sailing through the Virginia legislature with backing from Microsoft and Amazon, which have both testified in support of the bill. The bill, SB 1392 and its companion HB 2307, are based on a Washington privacy law backed by tech giants that has threatened for two years to lower the bar for state privacy bills. If you’re a Virginia resident who cares about privacy, please submit a comment to the House Committee on Technology, Communications, and Innovation before it meets on Monday, Feb. 15.
EFF has long advocated for strong privacy legislation. Consumer privacy has been a growing priority for legislatures across the country since California in 2018 passed the…
Martin Gugino spent nearly a month in hospital after a Buffalo cop pushed him over, cracked his head on the pavement and left him to bleed there with a fractured skull. Though charged after the incident, officers Robert McCabe and Aaron Torgalski are off the hook: the charges have now been dropped. — Read the rest
A US appeals court has ruled that Customs and Border Protection agents can conduct in-depth searches of phones and laptops, overturning an earlier legal victory for civil liberties groups. First Circuit Judge Sandra Lynch declared that both basic and “advanced” searches, which include reviewing and copying data without a warrant, fall within “permissible constitutional grounds” at the American border.
Lynch ruled against a group of US citizens and residents objecting to invasive searches of their electronic devices. The group includes Sidd Bikkannavar, a NASA scientist who was detained and pressured to unlock a secure government-issued phone.
Enlarge / NASA originally studied nuclear thermal propulsion in the 1960s. Here is concept art for the Nuclear Energy for Rocket Vehicle Applications (NERVA) program. (credit: NASA)
Getting humans to Mars and back is rather hard. Insanely difficult, in fact. Many challenges confront NASA and other would-be Mars pioneers when planning missions to the red planet, but chief among them is the amount of propellant needed.
During the Apollo program 50 years ago, humans went to the Moon using chemical propulsion, which is to say rocket engines that burned liquid oxygen and hydrogen in a combustion chamber. This has its advantages, such as giving NASA the ability to start and stop an engine quickly, and the technology…
On February 12, the Federal Election Commission filed this brief with the U.S. Supreme Court in Level the Playing Field v FEC, 20-649. This is the lawsuit over who can be included in general election presidential debates. … Continue reading →
VANCOUVER, WA—Unable to shake off an overall negative feeling he couldn’t attribute to anything in particular, local man Paul Carpenter confirmed Monday that something about the way society was exposed as a complete illusion over the past year was really getting him down today. “Maybe it’s just quarantine talking, but…
