teuobk

Societal problems are not necessarily business opportunities.

That said, I do agree with the general point of the article. I cringe whenever I talk with the latest would-be entrepreneur who is "solving" the current trendy non-problem.

If you put everything on a good cash-back card, and you pay off your balance every month, it can really add up. Let's say you run $30k a year through your card and have something like the 2% cash back Citi DoubleCash Mastercard. That's $600 a year you're foregoing by not caring about cash back. Just a thought.

How did they "specifically advertise for young developers" without running afoul of age discrimination laws?

This is more about stock price manipulation than it is about implantable medical device security.

Having worked in the medical device industry for over a decade, I know first-hand how bad the security situation is on the vast majority of devices. It's by no means unique to St. Jude. The fact that these issues exist is also old news, as noted in the Bloomberg article linked by jevinskie.

In addition to new devices continuing to take a lax approach to security, there are the ongoing vulnerabilities in the older devices. The older models continue to be sold, and many of the older devices are still implanted in patients.

Is it an issue? Yes. Should something be done about it, perhaps by withholding FDA PMA or 510(k) clearance on new insecure devices? Probably. Is it unique to St. Jude? Not in the least.

There are early signs that the real estate boom of the past few years might be beginning to ebb. For example, home prices in Aspen have begun to fall, apparently unexpectedly:

http://www.denverpost.com/2016/08/12/aspen-real-estate-in-a-...

While Aspen is obviously different than Palo Alto, there is some crossover in terms of who buys houses in each of those locations.

It turns out that part of the attack does exactly that. It was glossed over in the Wired article, but the slides describe how the lockout-penalty feature in the lock was defeated by manipulating the EEPROM. Basically, if you kill power to the lock at just the right time (i.e., midway through the EEPROM erase cycle as part of the larger/longer EEPROM write cycle), those bytes in EEPROM will be left with a value of 0 instead of whatever had been there.

The 1/4" hole is in the steel of the safe door, and then behind that is the hardened steel body of the lock-proper, so no, I don't think that would be feasible.

There's an elderly lady at the end of my block (in Denver-proper) who uses the dial-a-ride service nearly daily. The only other times I can recall seeing the service used also involved elderly or disabled people. In fact, it took me years before I realized the service was even available to normally-abled, non-elderly people -- but I still don't use it, because my car, Uber, or a walk to the nearby light rail station are all far more convenient.

This is just a guess, but perhaps it's a very strong magnet?

Many gas flap locks seem to be simple solenoids, and it's often relatively simple to change the state of a solenoid using a powerful magnet. Certain low-end electronic-lock safes are susceptible to similar attacks (that's part of the reason why better electronic-lock safes use motor-driven bolts instead of solenoids).

Not making any judgments or assumptions about what happened in this case, but there are better and worse ways of informing a police officer that you're carrying.

To start, not all states obligate concealed carry permit holders to inform police that they are carrying. However, if you're pulled over, and you do want to inform the officer, keep your hands on the wheel and calmly tell the officer that you have a permit to carry concealed. Tell them that you are currently doing so -- again, without having moved your hands. Ask them how they would like you to proceed.

You will probably be asked where the firearm is located. They might ask you to step out of the car so they can temporarily relieve you of your weapon. They might just say something like "don't reach for yours, and I won't reach for mine." Bottom line: let the officer guide you, and keep your movements slow and deliberate.

DON'T say the words "gun" or "weapon" or anything like that. Those are keywords that can trigger an instinctive reaction in the officer, and they might not be able to hear anything else you say thanks to a rush of adrenaline.

Interestingly, Minnesota is not a state where CCW holders are obligated to disclose their permit or weapon to peace officers.

Ironically, this article is on a site that has a mixed-content warning (i.e., there are both HTTPS and normal HTTP assets on the page).

This article ignores the fact that it takes less energy to cool a home in a hot climate than it does to heat a home in a cold climate. Since people have been able to more easily move to hot climates thanks to air conditioning, the net effect has been a reduction in energy use.

A somewhat more balanced article is this one from the Economist:

http://www.economist.com/news/international/21569017-artific...

Not quite forced registration: it can be dismissed by clicking the "x" in the corner (cropped out of this screenshot -- EDIT: There might not be a way to dismiss it in all of the variants; see comment below).

Also, it's part of an A/B test and is not universal.

More information:

https://www.reddit.com/live/x3ckzbsj6myw/updates/be54fb90-32...

I wouldn't write them off yet. Apple has been late to several markets (e.g., iPod and iPhone) and yet ended up doing quite well in them.

It's more like 6:1, though I don't have a good citation handy.

However, some people seem to have a strong reluctance to defecate in public bathrooms, so the ratio in an office bathroom might be much higher.

In the embedded world, sometimes you can't even be a puts/printf debuggerer. There have been some situations, typically early in development, where I've had to be a "turn the LED on or turn it off" debuggerer. Amazingly, that binary output is usually enough to fix whatever problem is happening and bootstrap into printf debugging or full ICE interactive debugging.

Bloomberg's views on guns are such that many Republican voters would refuse to vote for him.

Based on my search this year, that isn't necessarily true. Here in Denver, all of the insurers that were offering PPO plans in years past have left the individual market (not just the ACA exchange), save one: Anthem BCBS.

Availability appears to vary widely, both from state to state and within states. If I lived in western Colorado instead of on the Front Range, I'd have a couple of PPO insurer options. If I still lived in Minnesota (where my previous health insurance policy was written), I'd have dozens of options from at least four different insurance companies.

I really miss my insurance policy from BCBS of MN.

Here's the bad news: after spending a decade working in the medical device industry, I can say that security is not always a high priority in medical device designs.

I don't think the situation is likely to get better until the FDA starts requiring security audits as a condition of approval -- and for 510(k)s too, not just for PMAs.

Clearly he is not a graphic designer, but he would benefit from contracting that out. The sites as they exist today give a poor impression of him. Appearances do matter.

Even ignoring all of the dates mentioned, his sites and his resume do not look like the work of somebody who has up-to-date software development knowledge.

Perhaps more surprising is that they now use a 9mm sidearm for that role, at least according to the article's speculation. Good luck doing anything other than making the bear mad with that.

On an intuitive level, it isn't surprising that a chemical so similar to BPA that it could be an "easy" substitute would in fact also share similar harmful effects.

There are early rumblings (e.g. http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/pr/2009/090415.htm ) that there might be something similar going on with the replacement of trans-fats with palm oil. Palm oil behaves similarly to trans-fats, which makes it attractive to industry, but then it isn't too surprising that those same similarities might also make it similarly unhealthy.

Still lacking is consensus on why violent crime has declined. Depending on who you ask, reasons cited include:

- Mass incarceration (usually credited with about 25% of the crime decline)

- More gun control (e.g., the 1994-2004 assault weapons ban)

- Less gun control (e.g., the rise of "shall-issue" concealed carry permits)

- Cultural change

- Banning of lead in automotive fuel [Nevin 1999]

Perhaps all of these mattered; perhaps none did. We don't really know.

So what if the car can't drive itself in anything other than familiar roads during clear weather? I would guess that the majority of my current driving is done under those conditions. If the car could take care of itself most of the time but fell back to my control during rain, snow, obscure roads, or construction zones, I think it would still be a net benefit to me.

Whiskey is not alone in this. A good chunk of American vodka is apparently actually made from ethanol purchased from Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), the same company that distills ethanol for use as a motor fuel.

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-18360315

My favorite explanation of why tuition continues to rise is simple: people are still willing to pay ever higher prices. One step removed from that, the explanation hinges on student loans being too cheap and easy to get.

I've always found it baffling that anybody expected to solve the college affordability issue by making student loans cheaper and easier to get. When we do the same thing with mortgage rates, we expect the prices of homes to rise. Why do we expect any different of college tuition prices?

Here's some intuition about how the Doppler effect can be used to find location of a transmitter given a single receiver: objects (transmitters) moving in a straight line that are far away from the receiver will have less of a shift in frequency when they "pass" the receiver than objects that are close to the receiver.

What's more, you don't actually have to wait for the transmitter to pass the receiver: the radial velocity is what's important, and if you measure that at several points, you can fit a curve. That will tell you how far the transmitter is from the receiver.

Do this several times, and you can make a constellation of possible locations, and then fit those points to a line.

Globalstar does this with its satellite phones. Their situation is easier than with Inmarsat, because Globalstar uses fast-moving (relative to points on Earth) LEO satellites rather than geostationary satellites. Given a single LEO satellite on a known orbit and assuming that the phone on the ground is stationary, a fix on position can be made relatively quickly using the Doppler effect.

Here's a paper about how Globalstar does it: http://www.eng.tau.ac.il/~nadav/pdf-files/Instant_active_pos...

The popularity of the AR-15 is related to the popularity of the M16, but the "pretend you're a soldier" aspect isn't the main reason. A more complete explanation includes:

- Lots of manufacturers

- Reliable action (depending on manufacturer)

- 5.56mm NATO and/or .223 Remington ammo is (or, before late 2012, was) relatively cheap

- Light recoil

- Tons of accessories available

- Relatively accurate

- Fun to shoot

And also, among gun guys, there's at least a little bit of the feeling that by owning one, you're giving the middle finger to people who want to ban them.

Looks like the thermal imaging resolution was about 30x45 pixels, based on some quick measurement in Photoshop. However, it's interesting to see how much higher the apparent resolution is thanks to the overlaid edges from the visual camera.

Thermal imaging sensors have been export-restricted for some time, though the details depend on the type of sensor. Here's a handy chart from DRS Technologies, which makes thermal sensors:

http://www.drsinfrared.com/Support/ExportGuidelines.aspx