teuobk

Thing is, now they've shown a willingness to make this change, so from here on out people will be worried about them trying it again at some point.

The only way they have a hope of putting this genie back in the bottle is to provide a loud, strong, clear mea culpa, stating that they were categorically wrong to propose dropping SMS support, plus a strong promise that they will continue supporting SMS for the life of the product. Maybe something along the lines of, "if we ever propose dropping SMS integration again, you can consider that a warrant-canary type of alert".

Ain't this the truth. If COGS for the electronic gizmo is over about 10% of retail price, and you're making boutique-scale runs (<10k units) of whatever it is, good luck with that.

I strongly suspect that, to a rounding error, 100% of new small-electronics products on, say, Kickstarter, sell at a massive per-unit loss. And yet people will still bitch about the price.

Interesting. A few questions that come to mind:

1. What is the dew point of the compressed air? Many applications using compressed air require very dry air so as to avoid corrosion issues (e.g., air tools) as well as problems related to heating of water vapor (e.g., tires). For small applications, the dew point is reduced using simple traps, silica gel beads, or molecular sieves, but for even-drier air or larger applications, refrigeration-based dehumidifiers are needed. If the use of water in the compression stage leaves the dew point significantly higher than what you get from reciprocating or Roots-type compressors, that added complexity could be a deterrent to adoption.

2. What's the energy efficiency of the process? Does the claimed "20% lower cost of ownership" account for the difference in efficiency (whatever it is)?

3. What sort of pressures can be achieved with a tabletop or shop-sized compressor? Presumably, this is related to the speed at which the drum is spun, but what are the practical limits?

I mean, I use a decent amount of very dry air at 300 bar (yeah...), and I'd love to replace the noisy beast of multi-stage compressor with something quieter and more efficient.

I've heard something similar for the past two years, except mine is at 78 Hz, and only in my left ear. As with you, I hear it only when it is extremely quiet. When the room ambient noise is above about 35 dBA, I never hear it.

Also, oddly, it comes and goes over a scale of months, seemingly at random. One day, I'll wake up in my quiet bedroom and hear it, and I'll continue to hear it in quiet environments for a month or two. Then, after those several months, I'll wake up again and find it gone.

I notice a very loose correlation to it abating after a loud weekend, like a weekend spent driving my race car or doing metal fabrication, but otherwise it seems random.

A while back I ran it down with medical professionals, but the gist of that expensive adventure was that it was likely idiopathic. It appears to be of the subjective type rather than objective, but -- long story short -- that's not definitive.

My "solution" for now is to run the ceiling fan at night during the months it's present.

The further in time I am removed from my university years, the more convinced I become that the social interaction was the true root of the experience's value. To quote Stephen Leacock's 1920 take on university life:

"The real thing for the student is the life and environment that surrounds him. All that he really learns he learns, in a sense, by the active operation of his own intellect and not as the passive recipient of lectures. And for this active operation what he needs most is the continued and intimate contact with his fellows. Students must live together and eat together, talk and smoke together. Experience shows that that is how their minds really grow.

[...]

If I were founding a university -- and I say it with all the seriousness of which I am capable, I would found first a smoking room; then when I had a little more money in hand I would found a dormitory, then after that, or more properly with that, a decent reading room and a library. After that, if I still had money over that I couldn't use, I would hire a professor and get some textbooks."

Source: https://news.library.mcgill.ca/stephen-leacocks-the-need-for...

The energy density of this betavoltaic battery is only about half that of an LiMnO2 primary-cell battery, about 370 mWh/cc versus 650 mWh/cc. Examples of LiMnO2 batteries are the extremely common CR2032 or CR2450 coin cells.

Self-discharge isn't much of an issue with LiMn02 batteries, either, at only 1% per year.

And, of course, LiMnO2 cells have the benefits other commentators have mentioned, such as the ability to supply more than just 75 uA short-circuit.

Free alternative: use one of several tools that implement Shamir's Secret Sharing Scheme to split your master password into chunks. You can create a bunch of chunks and require that at least a certain subset of them be used to recover the password.

For example, you could encode your password into 10 chunks and require that at least 5 chunks be presented together to recover the secret. Any 5 chunks of the 10 (in this example) could be used, but it is mathematically impossible to recover the secret with just 4 or fewer of the chunks (in this example). Thus, you could spread those 10 chunks among 10 trusted friends, the idea being that they would recombine the chunks only in the event of your death. Moreover, if you are not yet dead, at least five of your trusted friends (again, in this example) would need to betray you for your secret to be stolen.

Yeah, seems like SoftBank isn't doing this just to save face. They're doing it to prevent the whole party from coming to an end, right quick.

This is positively shiver-inducing.

Microcenter is a great counterexample. The one here in Denver is always full of customers, and it's stuffed with all manner of computer parts, hobby electronics, and so on. It's how I too remember Fry's being back in the day.

I don't really understand how Microcenter does it, but they often have equal or better prices than Amazon, and in any case, they'll price-match. Also, there's no worry about whatever I buy turning out to be counterfeit.

The one slightly odd thing about the Microcenter experience is how all of the salespeople have little stickers to take credit for when they help a customer find something. Are they on commission? Is this Microcenter's way of identifying the most useful floor staff? They're never pushy about it, but it does stand out in stark contrast to pretty much every other retail shop I can think of.

Embedded is definitely a place where this sort of Goldilocks environment can be found. I suspect it's because embedded -- and I mean really low-level stuff, not "We run embedded Linux!" level -- requires a lot of EE knowledge in addition to software engineering skill to do it well. That, in turn, requires test instruments and such, which lends itself to an office or at least a dedicated section of lab bench rather than an open office. In addition, embedded often seems to be sort of voodoo for managers, so I've found they tend to keep their hands off more than on, say, front-end web dev projects. Lots of guys doing it remotely, too. There are guys (and gals) in their mid 20s who are doing it and good at it, but I'd say overall it skews towards late 30s or older.

Or maybe I've just been lucky.

The joke as shown in the movie Primer:

https://youtu.be/fN-VAdAnoZ4?t=25

Intense IR can damage the eye; more specifically, it can lead to cataracts.

Prior to learning to arc weld, I always thought the primary danger of looking at the arc without protection was UV exposure. However, it turns out that IR exposure is also problematic. See, e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glassblower%27s_cataract

Nintendo also sued Galoob over the Game Genie, which Galoob had licensed (purchased?) from Codemasters. Nintendo lost, and then they lost again on appeal. The issue was whether the Game Genie created derivative works.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_Galoob_Toys,_Inc._v._Nin....

I'm not sure about a general source, but there's a real estate agency in Summit County, Colorado that puts out similarly detailed reports for that area:

https://www.breckenridgeassociates.com/statistics.php

Their reports show data going back to about 2000. It's interesting to see the rise and fall of inventory levels, days-on-market, price per square foot, etc., as the economy has gone up and down. They also break it down by housing type, so you can, for example, see the changes in condo stats separately from single-family home stats.

Cash purchases are already pretty common for gun sales. All gun retailers accept cash, obviously, and many of the smaller ones offer discounts for purchasing with cash (usually framed as an extra 3% or so fee for purchasing with a credit card). The tinfoil-hat crowd is also fond of purchasing with cash, and many person-to-person gun sales are done on either a cash basis or as a miscategorized PayPal transfer.

Indeed. Story time!

Last Monday evening, I had an accident with an angle grinder in my garage. The cutoff disc went through my leather glove and bit deep into the middle finger of my left hand. After deciding against gluing the cut back together, I drove myself to urgent care and received five stitches.

Did I need any painkillers, the doctor asked? I declined; my finger was pumped full of lidocaine at the time.

In the middle of the night, the lidocaine wore off, and while the finger hadn't hurt in the immediate aftermath of the injury, it certainly hurt then. After tossing and turning for about an hour, I decided to get up and try to find something to take.

The only analgesic I had in the house was an expired tiny bottle of ibuprofen. I needed about five minutes of digging before I found even that.

I simply don't use painkillers very often. I might take ibuprofen once or twice a year. I can't remember the last time I took anything other than ibuprofen, not even acetaminophen, not even when I twisted my knee.

I'm not sure if I have a higher tolerance of pain than other people or if other people like to self-medicate when the least bit of pain rears its head. Or, perhaps, I've simply been lucky enough not to have much pain.

Another idea that has worked well for me: get a dog.

It can get lonely working alone at home; dogs keep you company. It can be easy to stay in the house all day; dogs are a good reason to talk walks outside. It can be easy to let the workday roll into the evening; dogs get hungry for dinner and let you know, which serves as a reminder that, yes, you should stop work for the day.

Regarding grand jury indictments, it's very, very rare for a grand jury to refuse to indict somebody, so that isn't necessarily a good measure of the quality of the case against the accused. Of roughly 162,000 federal cases brought before grand juries in 2010, indictments were returned for all but 11 of them.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/ferguson-michael-brown-i...

Turns out that you can pop a normal (non-rechargeable) CR2032 in the K750 to replace the rechargeable ML2032 that's already in there. Pretty decent chance of a CR2032 being at the hotel front desk or at the corner store. However, if you do that, it's important that you disable the solar-recharge feature, perhaps by taping over the solar cells.

After having my K750 for about three years, the ML2032 stopped accepting a charge, which made the keyboard nonfunctional. I did the ML2032->CR2032 replacement, put black tape over the solar cells, and the K750 came back to life. That was about a year ago with 8+ hours per day of use, and the CR2032 is still going strong.

Am I the only one who never liked those clicky, long-throw mechanical keyboards? I much prefer the very short throws of laptop-style keyboards, particularly the Logitech K750.

That's not to say I like mushy keys. I just don't like having to press very hard or very far for a keystroke to register.

I think it's more like 2 billion monthly active users, based on this projection from earlier this year:

https://www.theverge.com/2017/2/1/14474534/facebook-earnings...

Still impressive, regardless.

Based on some poking around, it appears that the focus is mainly on John Deere because it's mainly John Deere imposing these software restrictions.

Relevant thread on The Combine Forum (because that's a thing, apparently):

http://www.thecombineforum.com/forums/31-technology/239314-w...

Interesting. What are the tax implications, if any, for doing something like this? If it's an American giving a grant to another American, would it be treated as a gift (and thus be tax-free), or would it be treated as income?

Isn't it strange how the appraisal always seems to come in just a little above where it needs to be in order for the financing to be approved?

Incredible -- I just did the same, and my house's "zestimate" went up about $20,000.

Of course, if I compare my house to actual sales in the neighborhood over the past few months, that's probably 10% high, so correcting Zillow's data about my house made the zestimate less accurate, not more.

The patent ended up being issued: https://www.google.com/patents/US9386790

It depends on what you're trying to prevent and what your risk factors are.

For patients with existing heart disease or prior strokes, the NNT is between 50 and 333 depending on the outcome you're considering. Source:

http://www.thennt.com/nnt/aspirin-for-cardiovascular-prevent...

For prevention of a first heart attack or stroke, the NNT is between 1667 and 3000 depending on the outcome. Notable is that no deaths were prevented by the therapy. Source:

http://www.thennt.com/nnt/aspirin-to-prevent-a-first-heart-a...

Amendment 71 also made it harder to pass amendments: the threshold is now 55%. The only exception is for amendments that repeal things from the constitution, for which the threshold is still 50%

Details: https://ballotpedia.org/Colorado_Imposition_of_Distribution_...

The article you linked to cites a price of about $250k per round, not $80k/rd, and the government is apparently buying over 7000 rounds. Given the lower purchase quantity and similar technology, a 3x increase for the new round seems believable.

I mean, it's still crazy to be spending so much per round, but it's believable.