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nchaimov

78 karma · joined May 31, 2010

[ my public key: https://keybase.io/nchaimov; my proof: https://keybase.io/nchaimov/sigs/xfkHJSuf1tfBjwXVjtFg-OwWJlLKJj0-1pgrpo02W0E ]
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nchaimov··on Sequence of Events in the Cockpit on Asiana Flight 214
> It was not announced in big, red letters that the fly-by-wire system had in fact been deactivated

It was announced in medium-sized orange letters reading “F/CTL ALTN LAW (PROT LOST)”. At least one pilot did notice this; the co-pilot who wasn’t pulling up the whole time said “alternate law, protections lost” out loud, as recorded on the CVR, when the message appeared.

nchaimov··on The Student Loan Bubble is Starting To Burst
It isn't quite true that student loans can't be discharged through bankruptcy. Student loans are not excluded from discharge if excluding the debt would "impose an undue hardship on the debtor and the debtor's dependents":

11 USC 523(a) Exceptions to discharge ... (8) unless excepting such debt from discharge under this paragraph would impose an undue hardship on the debtor and the debtor's dependents, for -- an educational benefit overpayment or loan made, insured, or guaranteed by a governmental unit, or made under any program funded in whole or in part by a governmental unit or nonprofit institution; or an obligation to repay funds received as an educational benefit, scholarship, or stipend; or any other educational loan that is a qualified education loan, as defined in section 221(d)(1) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, incurred by a debtor who is an individual;

Per http://www.moranlaw.net/student_loan_brunner.htm, "undue hardship" means '(1) that the debtor cannot maintain, based on current income and expenses, a "minimal" standard of living for herself and her dependents if forced to repay the loans; (2) that additional circumstances exist indicating that this state of affairs is likely to persist for a significant portion of the repayment period of the student loans; and (3) that the debtor has made good faith efforts to repay the loans.'

nchaimov··on Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition for the iPad
For comparison, the original version of Baldur's Gate required 16 MB of RAM (32 MB recommended).
nchaimov··on I'm an American and I want to watch the Olympics. What do I do?
It's not clear that he has no terrestrial NBC affiliate. He might well have one that he can't receive with "spare coax cable used as my antenna" instead of, say, an actual antenna.

I can't imagine coax works well as an antenna, considering it's shielded to prevent RF interference.

nchaimov··on A Wikipedia Reader for iOS that visualizes the connections between articles
There was a program like this, specifically for Wiki articles, for Mac OS X, called Pathway, but it seems to have been abandoned. It hasn't been updated since 2007.

http://pathway.screenager.be/download

nchaimov··on What really happened aboard Air France 447
It does: there's an audible warning that says the words "DUAL INPUT"

The English translation of the BEA's third interim report on the flight is available here: http://www.bea.aero/docspa/2009/f-cp090601e3.en/pdf/f-cp0906...

It includes the full CVR transcript at the end, which shows that the dual input alarm activated five times.

nchaimov··on Steam loses user database
This took me a while to figure out. You have to open the Steam client, go to Settings (in Windows) or Preferences (in Mac OS X) and click the change password button in there under the Account tab.
nchaimov··on VeriFone Takes The Gloves Off, Accuses Square Of Serious Security Hole
> I don't see the download for their skimming app have they taken the app down? Probably a good idea, I doubt the credit card companies will appreciate them providing a skimming app regardless of what reading hardware it's using.

I imagine that part of the problem was that they were distributing an iPhone app binary along with their in-house enterprise distribution provisioning certificate to the public, which I imagine Apple isn't happy about.

nchaimov··on HIV is powered by RNA
Yeah, looking at the journal article the linked article refers to, it appears that this is the case.

http://www.jbc.org/content/285/50/39380.full

nchaimov··on HIV is powered by RNA
Retroviruses generally are.