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leecbaker

27 karma · joined January 27, 2011

lee@leecbaker.com
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leecbaker··on FlyKly Smart Wheel
If you slow the bike from either the front wheel or the back wheel, energy is removed from the whole bike. There's little to no benefit from harvesting from both wheels.
leecbaker··on Why I gave up my US passport
As I understand it, if you ar a resident of the another country as defined for the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion (330 days a year outside the US _or_ have permanently settled with no evidence of intention to return to the US), you are exempted from the insurance requirements.

This really sucks for people who leave the US long durations (8 months in my case) at a time, but return occasionally. Have to either get insurance for the 8 months that isn't usable, or pay the fine.

leecbaker··on Moto X Feature Video Leaks
In the leaked Rogers video, they say "OK Google now, what is the weather." Maybe that is the keyphrase?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=bUmuI...

leecbaker··on Google flights
Kayak when in the Western hemisphere, Skyscanner in the Eastern hemisphere.
leecbaker··on New leak shows NSA harvests To, From, and Bcc lines of e-mail data
I talked to a company that did this kind of work, and they used tiny MEMS mirrors made of gold plated silicon.

They wouldn't tell me much about their customers, but they specialized in switching and splitting high speed data at the physical layer.

http://www.glimmerglass.com/solutions/cyber-security-and-law...

leecbaker··on A new Gmail inbox
I appreciate the ability to browse around my inbox while writing an email, and I suspect that is why the change was made; however, I wish they had left in the ability to compose from the old compose window.
leecbaker··on Google blimps will carry wireless signal across Africa
That picture is not a free-flying blimp, but an Army aerostat (tethered balloon). About 10 are used to enforce the southern US border.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tethered_Aerostat_Radar_System

leecbaker··on My first year freelancing
Programmer, artist, technical writer, etc.
leecbaker··on US FAA Grounds Boeing 787 Over Battery Concerns
IIRC, they had a lot of problems with engine failures, as the 747 really pushed engine technology and size at the time. Joe Sutter's book [1] is an interesting look at the history of the 747 design (he was the lead designer).

There was also an issue with the wing resonating, which they fixed by putting trim weights in the wing of the 747-100 made of depleted uranium.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/747-Creating-Worlds-Adventures-Aviatio...

leecbaker··on Why an Airline That Travelers Love Is Failing
Some quick corrections:

Southwest operates from Dallas Love Field (DAL) instead of DFW- almost all commercial flights at DAL are Southwest flights. Midland(MAF) is a city about 350 miles away that they also fly to.

Southwest merged with Airtran, not Frontier about 18 months ago- they are still in the process of integrating their routes and operations.

leecbaker··on T-Mobile Announces Truly Unlimited Nationwide 4G Data
I have heard rumors that they use the TCP TTL field to detect tethering, regardless of device type. If you open a connection from a tethered device, the TTL field will be one count smaller than if the connection originated on the device itself. (This assumes that all devices being used have the same default TTL).

Ref: http://netmgt.blogspot.com/2011/03/detecting-obscuring-tethe...

leecbaker··on T-Mobile Announces Truly Unlimited Nationwide 4G Data
T-Mobile won't allow you to tether a phone that uses this package, so they presumably wouldn't allow another device to share the package.

Src: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/08/t-mobiles-service-to-...

leecbaker··on The Cheapest Route to 6 Continents
6 to 12 weeks in advance according to this reservation agent.

"IAMA Delta/KLM/Air France reservation agent that knows all the tricks to booking low fares and award tickets AMA" http://www.reddit.com/comments/v82rz/c524yi7/?sort=best

leecbaker··on Mining asteroids: Going platinum
Gold is an inferior conductor to copper, and is used in electronics because of its corrosion resistance, and would not make better wire for most purposes.
leecbaker··on Google (PageRank) based ranking of CS schools
I quickly typed Computing Science in Google, and got the following list:

University of Auckland

Victoria University of Wellington

University of Waikato

University of Alberta

Simon Fraser University

Toronto

CMU

University of Glasgow

Oxford

Stanford

Georgia Tech

Berkeley

Newcastle University

UT Austin

UCLA

University of Canterbury

University of Cambridge

Harvard

Caltech

Auckland University of Technology

Stony Brook

My location is probably pretty clear (New Zealand).While on some level it is useful to get a ranking weighted by places that are geographically relevant, it does mean that we will probably all have different lists.