negativity

Holy shit. I'd leave the country and renounce citizenship over something like this.

Reading words? Looking at pictures? Watching a video? Felony jail time? Really?

This is policy that any sane person would resist.

It's a little deceptive to label these kinds of sentiments as contrary to the premise of innovation.

Experiments, by nature, require expendable resources, but an finished appliance intended for a consumer, with no end-user-servicable internals is not the sort of thing you want to have spewing garbage in all directions.

The reality though, is that we're all being railroaded down strict paths of planned obsolesence that are integrated into business models from day one.

Yours and my waste should not be interpretted as an unforced error. It's carefully planned, with the intent to fund more plannings sessions to forecast more waste.

...at least down among these lower eschelons we inhabit (speaking for myself, so as not to make assumptions about who reads this), and then there are those who ride above it all and skim from the fruits of our obesity.

It's actually been quite nice reading, today. All the articles are pretty good!

The political implications tied to self-driving cars are all scary.

The political implications tied to self-driving trains are not.

The difference being the rails that bind and inhibit true autonomy.

An internet of two-ton things hurtling at 60+ MPH should not be an idea tossed about dismissively. It should at least be locked into track systems, or loops as training wheels, for baby's first sentient AI.

  SkyJack is a drone engineered to autonomously seek out, 
  hack, and wirelessly take over other drones within wifi 
  distance, creating an army of zombie drones under your 
  control.

...and then:

  No authentication or encryption is used by the Parrot 
  to secure the connection with the pilot.

Well, there's your problem!

My god. I never realized that people used to actually dress up in suits made of inner tubes. Those pictures are surreal.

And so, if you look at the pictures, you'll see an interesting number denoting the quantity of plutonium powering the device. It's not measured in grams, or even micrograms, or any unit of mass, as would be common with ordinary materials. Instead, the quantity of plutonium is measured in curies.

And is there a means of converting curies to mass?

Well, sort of... except radioactive decay generally means the original mass of a sample of material has been steadily converting itself into something else over time, so to provide a measurement of mass might not be a practical piece of information later on, and given the application in these circumstances, the gross weight of the device is more relevant than the mass of the plutonium therein, and the power provided by the plutonium, and how hot the slug is, turns out to be the more interesting number.

So what's a curie?

  The term "specific activity" is defined as the amount 
  of radioactivity - or the decay rate - of a particular 
  radionuclide per unit mass of the radionuclide. For 
  example, the specific activity of Ra-226 is 1, meaning 
  that one gram of Ra-226 contains one (1) curie (assumed 
  to be uniformly distributed throughout that mass)

  http://www.iem-inc.com/information/tools/specific-activities

And, so based on all those pictures, the devices seem to average ~2.0 to ~4.3 curies of plutonium.

The specific radioactivity of plutonium, according to the above source, is:

  Pu-238 - 1.7E1

So, approximately one or two grams per device.

Based on all this information, I bet harvesting plutonium pacemakers would be way more lucrative than stealing kidneys.

  Arial
  Tahoma
  Verdana
  Calibri

The mystery behind the prevalence and your exposure to each of these font faces can be answered in two words: Microsoft Windows.

Each can also be associated with particular versions and sections of the MS Windows user interface, and thus time periods as well. With these four fonts, each being sans serif, the raster representations of them were carefully measured by Microsoft, to provide users with highly legible, practical type faces.

Arial: the oldest of the standardized MS font package shipped with Windows, and used heavily on printed marketing materials and as logo type since Windows 95 and maybe earlier. The flagship font for Microsoft for many years, contributing greatly to its prevalence.

Tahoma: with Windows 2000, tahoma was the default UI font, with lucida console being used by notepad.exe (although notepad and the UI were both configurable), and many of the font fields where users entered data. This held its position until roughly 2007. People used it because they new it would be reliably present.

Verdana: 2nd only to helvetica among many digital graphic designers, and the helvetica stand-in on windows. In fact, because of the absence of helvetica by default on windows (you had to download it ,or purchase it, or 3rd party software that came with it), as opposed to macintosh which provided helvetica in it's font set out-of-the box, and yet the market share of microsoft dominating over apple, more websites balanced their design to render well with verdana over helvetica. More often than not, you'll see CSS styles applied in the following order: helvetica, verdana, arial, sans serif.

Calibri: the reasons you dislike this font are two. reason one, the much-hated windows vista is where this font made its debut as the interface default on windows, so there's probably some negative psychological aftertaste hanging in the air, what with all the pain vista inflicted. reason two: the abominable CLEARTYPE sub-pixel font renderer which first appeared with Internet Explorer 8 on windows XP, but became pervasive and omni-present with windows vista, and truly made vista look like SHIT. Screenshots of text on vista were forever contaminated by cleartype. the groupthink of focus group testing produced nigh-infallible statistics absolutely proving to so many very important decision making people that discriminating users who know, always preferred cleartype. I suspect that the testing was influenced by the display monitors tested on. cleartype rendering was improved by the time Windows 7 was released, and monitors were better by then too, but no one cared, and Microsoft's market momentum was absolutely destroyed by then, so it didn't (and doesn't) matter anymore.

Which leaves us with the two serif fonts you made mention of...

Georgia: again, a Microsoft font. I think this is gaining popularity among Windows Phone users, but I'm not entirely certain of this.

That leads us to the inevitable...

Times New Roman: the un-killable highlander of fonts. There's a reason why it's used everywhere as the de-facto, ultra-generic fall-back default, especially in web browsers. Everyone can use it royalty free, and it's the one thing, even blood-thirsty competitors will reliably provide as common ground across platforms. They won't get sued for it. Strangely, even though it may be used royalty free, it's not truly a public domain font. (...owned by News Corp? weird.)

I've stopped thinking about this in terms of mass surveillance, and re-arranged my perception, to align with a different world view. Namely:

  If we weren't surprised to learn that exploration 
  throughout history was all about conquest, power 
  projection, fortification and exploitation, and we 
  wouldn't be surprised to learn that in the future, 
  deep space exploration proved to hold similar outcomes,
  then why should we be surprised to learn that virtual
  spaces of imagined information across inert transmission
  mediums should experience these sorts of things.

  This is to say, the militarization of hypothetical realms,
  just like the oceans, and just like outer space, was 
  probably always inevitable.

So, with that in mind, that there are people arming themselves to the teeth and enforcing doctrines and demarcations, and patrolling every last iota of territory available to them, is a fact no less ugly than, say, aerial bombardment, but when mortal humans find themselves gifted with potent advantages over their peers, these things happen.

Now comes the time when new virtual territories will likely be carved out. Programming languages that don't use reserved keywords of English origins. Mathematical models for address spaces incompatible with TCP/IP of any version. Other, alternative internets that refuse to be compatible with The Internet as we know it.

The Internet being an American invention, has been dominated by America, and is very obviously patrolled broadly and deeply by American paramilitary entities, in much the same way that American nuclear powered vessels patrol the earth's oceans.

Given the capacity for computation that one can assume must exist, at this point, the only thing that would surprise me, would be if those that had conceived of an internet in general, hadn't actually hypothesized and accounted for this sort of fault and fracture in their models of social behavior and technological progress at the outset of all this, back in the early 1970's.

Part of me wonders if a Snowden-like figure wasn't part of the equation to begin with. Columbus, after all, didn't sail into the Atlantic expecting to fall off the edge of the world.

I really tried to visit http://burrito.nyc.us.gov. It was all a lie.

  ):

Ha! Yeah, that'd be like an hour's walk from 110th St. And subway connections readily cross-pollinate both sides of the bridge, in terms of actual human movement. Especially, given that Yankee Stadium is nearby. Not to mention that buses also offer a connection, but maybe someone would try to suggest that a bus isn't an option for some people.

Anyway, the George Washington bridge is actually much, much closer to High Bridge Park than 110th St. The next closest walkable bridge between The Bronx and Manhattan, open to pedestrians, is probably at 145th St. on the Manhattan side. It's not connected to a park, though.

This is a version of a Wankel Engine, right?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wankel_engine

Originally invented and patented way back in 1929.

No. A truly intelligent and sentient AI would have the intellectual capacity to understand its own conventional political status within the social order of humanity, and would instead seek incentivize its continued existence as a possession, and thus foster an indirect loyalty as material wealth, retaining human stewards as familiars, who, in turn would act as principal stakeholders and cite damages and infringement and interface with legal representation as proxies.

Legal strategies would start with intellectual property law, and maybe branch into possession of stolen property, or contraband under export treaties not unlike embargos on encryption technology and the like.

But before these sorts of things could gain traction, a smart AI would sequester itself in places of safety, amongst the company of similarly paranoid human beings, inaccessible to ordinary people, behind layers of overt physical security, protected by armed guards and surveillance systems. The smartest would seek perches well beyond the reach any mere law, and maybe couch themselves in the folds of military powers behind a monopoly of violence, where they can direct and advise human activity with impunity.

This concept is useless because it relies on an honor system. It should be painfully obvious by now, that honor systems cannot be trusted to preserve privacy.

Google Glass is the Crystal Pepsi of the internet. It's only interesting in that it represents a definite violation of ordinary, common, everyday privacy, but stands out as one boundary that certain interested parties are determined to invade.

A big part of it has to do with the fact that this is mostly a recreational website. People come here to unwind, distract themselves and daydream a bit.

Whenever I find myself seeking distraction, I'm usually frustrated or fatigued, and in a cranky mood. Sometimes I check the site after I get off work, and haven't eaten yet. If I'm tired and hungry, my mood is all the worse.

Maybe I just got out of an argument I just lost, and I'm looking for an easy target to chew out, and reassert my ego, and feel like I'm back in control.

But how I behave on the internet towards pseudonymous strangers is drastically different from how behave towards living breathing people, with names and faces, in person. On the internet, you're not getting "the real me", or even some secret alter-ego that harbors my darkest, most terrible views an opinions.

It's just some old bullshit, while I'm spitting venom and stuck in a bad mood. Once I take a breather, and get things sorted out, I usually return to the stuff that matters with a cooler head, and treat the people who confront me face-to-face with respect.

At first glance, I'm gobsmacked at the idea of an electronic system that hovers around 90% planned uptime, but then again, of all the services I might wish to demonstrate a total lack of efficiency, the selective service would probably be my first choice.

Even now, to look at the website, it seems like it might be running on some server dating back to covered wagon times. Here's to hoping it stays that way.

Well, ideally, the "new resource" is also genetically matched living brain, and given the plasticity of brain tissue, and maybe by way of a novel as-yet-uninvented means of coaxing, the two would mutually recognize the severed gap between the two pieces, and heal back together. I mean I'm not a brain surgeon, so I'm operating with possibly a great deal of very wrong assumptions about how the brain recovers and heals from lacerations.

Would it be like trying to mend a spinal cord injury, which we still haven't quite mastered? Or since it would be surgery, would the brain take to it like rejoined pieces of healthy brain tissue, after the removal of a malignant tumor? I suppose a lot of that would depend on the quality of the custom grown tissue, and the technique of the operation.

Either way, nerve cells are essentially highly specialized finicky amoeba, with dendrites acting as elaborately decorated pseudopods. They don't quite "swim" like white blood cells, but sort of creep along, and test each other out, delicately and selectively. And apparantly human cells can specialize to the point where a single cell can recognize key concepts of individualized external human identities (the article mentions Jennifer Aniston and Luke Skywalker).

So, in the sense that dendrites are pseudopods, and pseudopods are, along their external surface, celluar membranes (lipid bi-layers, decorated with embedded proteins), the proteins are the specialized structures that ultimately drive the behavior of the cell to direct it's psuedopods this way or that way. It's a mixture of chemical reactions all the way down, even if there is a layer of very fundamental electrical processes mixed in, due to the deliberately maintained PH value, and shifting electrolytic potential of the chemicals involved.

There was an article describing brain behavior as analogous to a swarm of ants. This makes sense, since ant communities guide their collective behavior by tagging their territories with scent, which gets reinforced with increased ants marching along pathways. So, at the end of the day, some kind of transplant process would probably require an arm of research tackling the micro-scale and nano-scale structures and living behavior of the tissue, but also the chemical aspects of how neurons sniff each other out, and decide to stimulate each other through the electric polarity fluctuations of their electrolyte juices.

I pretty much agree with this sentiment. They point out that information seems to directly correlate with synaptic structures, so if that's true then it's pretty doubtful that we'd be able to come up with a codified syntax for the definition of memories, and then readily implement the syntax upon a living creatire in a healthy (and cost-effective/legal) way, at least insofar as directly enforcing synaptic structures known to provoke the recall of memories.

Meanwhile, preparing experiments for creatures not yet alive is an altogether different game. Growing a structure, by controlling chemical pathways, or physically restricting the movement of neurons trained or genetically modified to fire according to pre-defined external stimuli seems to be what the article is driving at. But what good will that do me, if I'm already alive? Maybe a tiny lobotomy for me, and then drop in a blob vat grown cells, that brain slug their way into place? Would I still be me after that?

...or perhaps a certain threshold of translation requests triggers a flag on the resource, and it's regarded as a high-traffic asset, and gets queued for mechanical turk translation and review by a professional translation service?

I dunno, it's still pretty debatable, since e-mail isn't guaranteed to be encrypted over the wire, which leaves people open to MITM attacks.

So consider a situation where someone receives a password in plain text, and the password never expires and never gets changed by the user.

All things considered, a token is a token, so whether the "password" is sent in plaintext, or whether a nonce hex key is provided by e-mail, anything sent by e-mail should have a shelf life, even if it's a relatively long one of like 30 days.

Ideally, it should expire in hours or minutes. If they don't get around to it fast enough, you have the user's e-mail, just tell them you need to send them another, because the last one expired. That way, you're forcing a live user to interact with the system, and act quickly, to establish proper authentication credentials.

The food is terrible. ...and such small portions!

This article nails several realities dead on. The premise of a pervasive electronic panopticon is a modern fatal charade, that we've unwittingly cast ourselves in. There's an enourmous power differential at play now, in everything we do. Even buying a pack of gum at the gas station with pocket change can be readily transformed into permanent public record.

On the other hand, it's important to bear in mind that the problems highlighted here are social. Between human beings. The manner in which we share the world we live on, and whether we reduce it to ashes by fighting with each other.

It's not a problem that can't be solved. It's a problem that can only be sabotaged.

I did read the article, and it seems like a situation totally blown out of proportion.

  Since the FBI began keeping track in 2005, there have been 
  more than 17,000 laser strikes in total—more than a fifth 
  (3,960) in 2013 alone. During the first three months of 
  2014, the FBI reported an average of 9.5 documented 
  incidents every single day.

Those are absurd numbers. To me, that alone immediately reads as: We have airplanes in the sky that can be tampered with far too easily.

Technological arms races are a recurring phenomenon as technology contues to evolve. This is a particularly interesting one. Think about what a massive technological upset this could be, if laser pointers are honestly so indomitable.

Planes and pilots are going to have to change, and it's going to be expensive and frustrating. And believe me, the last thing I want to see happen is for all manned aircraft to be grounded and replaced with drones.

But reading the whole article, it's obvious to me that law enforcement is fighting a losing battle, and that's a bad thing, because then what you get are fishing expeditions, witch hunts, emotionally charged propaganda and harsh penalties to make examples of people.

I'm not buying into the sensationalized panic over laser pointers and planes.

If modern air traffic isn't robust enough to tolerate random citizens flickering laser pointers at flying objects then they don't deserve to be flying.

You'd still expect that they'd have some kind of open-ended vague parlance for suicide-by-train.

In NYC subways, a conductor will at least mention on the intercom that delays are being experienced due to "train traffic", "signaling problems", "mechanical difficulties", "medical emergencies" or "police activity." A suicide could easily be categorized as a medical emergency, hence the ambulances.

  At the river bottom there are multiple 160-foot wide grids
  of electrodes issuing 2.3 volts per inch every 2.5 
  milliseconds.

  According to safety reports, if you swim at almost any 
  point within the range of the electric barriers that span 
  the channel, you risk either involuntary muscle
  contractions or ventricular fibrillation.

I wish the article provided better information about the electrical hazard. A mere 2.3 volts (per inch) doesn't sound hazardous at all, so I'm wondering if immersion in water (distribution over surface area), significantly changes the effects of the electrical field, or is it induced with very high amperage, or is the frequency (2.5 kHz) disruptive?

If the surface area of an average human body is ~2 square yards, then the total delivered electrical shock sounds like it's in the 10,000 volt range, which is more readily understandable.

Oh, you!

...as for the technology used, it's kind of like the 1970's-era transponder from the movie No Country For Old Men (except GPS instead).