Did the porn companies do something in particular? All I can see in recent news is the PornHub/Boston deal. I'm not entirely sure people got screwed on that one, but they definitely got plowed.

Normal car tires flex in about the same amount. If they didn't flex they would be very hard and seriously impact handling from both a ride-harshness standpoint and a grip standpoint (harder rubber = less grip). The flexing also allows for a larger contact patch with the road.

As many people on the internet, I mostly comment to gripe (not really, but sometimes yes).

Run-flat tires use air. They merely have a system - ribs like these tires have, reinforced sidewalls, reinforced tread liners, and/or less commonly a smaller non-pneumatic tire on the inside - to allow them to continue working in some sense when the air is let out, typically through a puncture or leak.

Also, I expect commercial versions on non-pneumatic tires to not be open-air like those pictured. I would expect there to be dangerous situations where rocks could get lodged inside and shot out at high velocities under pressure.

Alright, I'm done griping.

When I first got the city-provided power, it was fast-ish, but extremely flaky. Turns out the installer didn't understand how to polish the fiber.

After months of complaining - apparently by everyone - the city stopped hiring contractors and had their own people come out to each house and redo the connectors. It was pretty good after that.

Lots of cities go down this path to offer their own broadband. My hometown even provided basic cable access. They f'ed that up pretty badly, losing millions of taxpayer dollars in the process.

Years later they decided to try again with fiber. Once again, they f'ed that up pretty badly, losing millions of taxpayer dollars in the process.

They eventually gave up and handed the whole thing over to Google. That went fairly well. Comcast (cable) and CenturyLink (dsl) both started offering higher speeds for less. Everyone won.

Merely offering an alternative isn't any good. Offering an alternative that is at least as good, and preferably better, is required to actually cause the existing powers that be to compete.

I really don't get the fascination. I love the idea of having a gigantic screen to look at, but I also love being able to use my phone with one hand, and put it away in my pocket.

The feature list listed here seems aimed at providing the user security, rather than offering a secure OS.

I don't doubt that they have added things to help with being secure - like the listed sandboxing - but none of the rest of the list really strikes me as being geared towards a secure, locked down, OS. When you throw in things like "advanced proxy settings" and "everything through TOR" and "mandatory full disk encryption" this all seems to be targeted at the paranoid rather than those who genuinely require security (web servers, mail servers, etc.).

As far as the paranoid go, sure, use it; it probably can't beat Tails though.

I remember the days when the texting first hit the teenage audience in a widespread manner, and damn did they learn to type fast using just the number pad, which was their only input method. I can't fathom how impossible it will be to use the itty-bitty touchscreen anywhere close to as quick. I'm still convinced the physical keyboard will always be the quickest input method, regardless of how large or how smart the touchscreen is.

Now get off my lawn.

The "home offices" being improvised on street corners with homeless and loiterers camped out on overturned newspaper stands around the city

That sounds like exactly what they should be trying to do. It is very literally helping "break down the digital divide." If they didn't want people using the kiosk for the internet, then why did they ever turn them on to begin with?

It sounds like what they really wanted was for the population of people who already have access to the internet, whether it be at their jobs, on their phones, at home, or at a neighbors, to get more access. Restricting access to people who can tether their device almost explicitly reinforces the "digital divide."

Colleges shouldn't need to pay sales reps. That alone seems like a potential source of future problems. If people need convincing by a salesperson, they probably aren't all that interested in the first place.

For the security conscious, yes, you can setup password protection so that only people with the password can connect to the device.

"Can setup a password" instead of "randomized password/SSID" equals so many people with so many leaked files.

Oh, and since it's a WIFI connection, when you connect to this device your internet connection goes away and any apps you have that eat data in the background are now eating into your wireless data quota.

...but it's only $24 for 32gb, so that's pretty good.

WIMPS, MACHOS...very dad humor.

Reminds me of what they call the gene that dictates whether a fruit fly develops a heart or not: tin man.

Was it, like Soylent, also infested with rats?

Why anyone would want to pay extra for a poor-safety-record Ensure/Slimfast/Medifast copycat meal-replacement shake?

Wow. It's been such a long time that I've been to /. that I'd completely forgotten about it. It was good when it was good, but the "look how rich I am" speech was the beginning of the end. RIP Slashdot.

But they impacted at 42,120 km/h, creating thousands of new pieces of space debris, of which 364 are still being tracked. They were calculated to miss each other by 584 meters. Oops?

Dang, and here I was hoping for 50% less frequent.

No tears were shed.

I never had a Nokia phone, but their bulletproofness is legendary. If the new devices aren't amazingly resilient, they are doomed. Considering they're going for a an Android-based device, I'm guessing they are indeed doomed.

Interesting. It's essentially a dry version of an old technology. Quite likely cheaper and more environmentally friendly to boot.

Ah Heinlein, king of the dirty old men.

How can a Brazil court fine an American company?

By having a large market.

If you don't obey them, they can kick you out of their market, and you would lose more money by being left out. Admittedly, this is somewhat difficult to do with websites.

This won't stop until people are prosecuted and sent to jail. That won' happen until there are laws on the books criminalizing this behavior. That won't happen until the same corporations peddling this information aren't the same corporations that buy politicians.

USA! USA! USA!

Of course super glue is in the top; it's amazing. I use it to attach corals underwater because it a) will bond underwater, and b) the chemical reaction that sets the glue doesn't release any chemicals in to the water.

I can believe it would make sense economically for the user to do it.

That's what Tesla's betting on.

I'm sure Mr. Bezos' prior art seems a bit more recent.

Seriously though, why the uproar over SpaceX being an historic "first," when really it's just a "first" for them?

I get that it's the first to do so after launching satellites into orbit, and with a much larger rocket, but give credit where credit's due.

FTFA:

"People have a day-to-day life despite conflict," said Abdulhaq. "Despite the sadness and the war, people like to listen to music and even comedy."

I remember reading about how movie ticket purchase rates were very closely linked to tragedy, economic downturn, etc. I imagine for most people listening to these radio broadcasts, the music and comedy are the often the highlights of their day; just like the movies, they offer an escape.

Welcome to the world where you don't own your device. Your device is merely a convenient way for companies to sell more products to you. If it needs updating, they will do that for you, as, after all, it is really their device.

I think this type of problem is one of the biggest reasons (after, of course, not knowing about VPNs or why to use them) people don't use them more frequently. Ironically, if everyone used VPNs the payment provider would have to stop as people would shop elsewhere and online stores that use them would be up in arms at the lost revenue.

I'm not sure I get the distinction between protecting forest ecosystems and desert ecosystems. As someone who lives in the west I can tell you there are lots and lots of plants in the "mostly-empty" desert. Very few parts of the vast expanse between the continental divide in Colorado and the Sierra Nevadas in California are not filled with sage brush, juniper trees, pinyon pines, etc. Just because it's not an old-growth forest doesn't mean it isn't worth protecting. The whole "it's just the desert" mentality is why there are hundreds of threatened, endangered, and critically endangered species in the west. The whole idea of protecting individual animals and plants is that all species play a role in the ecosystem, and taking one species out threatens others in ways that are often unpredictable.

Building cities outwards necessarily either requires removing farmland or destroying ecosystems, which is far and wide the largest contributor to extinctions. Since a significant goal of lower emissions is to save the environment and all its inhabitants, urban sprawl goes directly against this.

Building out fiber to remote areas doesn't help either as jobs continue to demand the worker be there during work hours. Look at what Yahoo did for an example.

I'm not saying building up is the answer either, as skyscrapers aren't exactly environmentally friendly either. If the answer were to be to retrofit existing buildings, and the process to build the transparent solar cells was sustainable and economical, then I'm all for it. Unfortunately, we've all heard the spiel before, and yet years have gone by and no one is building buildings with integrated solar windows. I'm not holding my breath that it starts now.

It's sad that the little guy needs these protections. If there were built into the law disincentives for the abusers, say, a million dollar fine, paid to the defendant, per faulty claim, then there wouldn't be the need for this.

I'm glad it's there, but I'm also sad that it is.

I continue to be amazed at the race to the bottom. I know I can get a microprocessor for dozens of cents in quantity of 1, and have been for some time, but a fully built computer with a fast, fairly popular processor architecture (sans case, monitor, "hard drive," etc.) for $5 is something wholly different. Yay technology I guess.

From that link:

For now, it's not clear from the FBI's statement which part is inaccurate: the specific payment amount or its involvement entirely.

So really, they're just trying to save face. It likely happened, but the news misses enough details for them to say "that exact thing you are talking about didn't happen." Considering how many of these types of things the FBI has done with impunity, I don't know why they even bother denying it. There is probably a large enough "for the children" voting bloc to keep this type of illegal activity going strong for generations to come.

This has been sitting here for roughly a day with no comments. I can only presume it's because everyone is becoming desensitized to this type of news. "Government Overreach," "Warrant-less Searches," "FBI Hates Tor," are all headlines that just feel like the new norm.

Why do I feel that this is the equivalent of Microsoft, mid-90s, deciding to merge Bob and Windows? In my mind there is little inertia behind Chrome OS, but a freight train with Android. Why bother? Why not just add extensions to Android to allow the display/window manager (or whatever they call it) to have the parts of an OS that keyboard-ists want? Off the top of my head adding a "start" menu, full libreoffice suite, control of things like firewall, etc. and easy root access would be all they need. Apps will adapt to the world of supporting keyboard/keyboard and touch/touch, or dwindle in obscurity behind those that do.

I'm not sure if this is a play by Google to distance itself from Red Tube [nsfw] by hoping people associate "red" as part of YouTube, or if they're hoping people get them confused so more people end up on YouTube instead; a sort of self-promoting search engine optimization if you will. I would think really any name other than "YouTube Red" would have been more appropriate.

"The data suggest that longer and larger trials are associated with bigger placebo responses,"

So, really it's not about a greater placebo effect in the US, but longer trials that change the placebo response. This isn't surprising considering how many drugs take several weeks to have any effect at all. The subject assumes that the drug is working better the longer they are on it, regardless of if its a placebo or not. This should not make it "harder for pharmaceutical companies to prove that the drug being tested is more effective than treatment with a placebo" as suggested in the summary, but the normal response to a longer trial.

The FDA's standards for response above placebo are very, very low. They are already looking into changing the rules to exclude drugs that solve the same problem that aren't just "above placebo," but "above what's available." (google "fda comparative effectiveness"). It should be harder to make new drugs that solve the same problem as existing ones: if it's not better, why should people have to pay higher prices for it (new drugs get new patents)?

The uptick I've noticed is websites serving ads from their own servers, with URLs that are very similar to their content. I've had the experience multiple times now where I go to create a new block filter and the URL is something like "www.example.com/images/3582351294521.jpg," and all of their visual content is along the lines of "www.example.com/images/3392354894900.jpg." I'm left with the filter "^www.example.com/images/.*" (or creating a more complex, and my-time-consuming, filter based on the html entity containing the ads) and everyone loses.

The more websites that follow this tactic, the less useful ad-blocking filters, as they are designed today, will work.

VW cheated, but on the plus side, it brought to attention the fact that almost everyone is missing the target. I'm not convinced though that every manufacturer that targets the American and European markets isn't well aware of the gaps between the tests and the requirements. It may not be cheating, but it's still gaming the system.

The end result should be VW pays massive fines (at least as much as they got in profit from the cars they sold) and the rules/test fixed to close the gap that the other manufacturers are clearly exploiting.

They could also just rotate various containers 180 degrees, and swap some front to back, etc. That would be more in line with how cargo planes (and passenger planes) deal with uneven loads.

If you only log in to your Google account at home, and you're the only one who sees your computer monitor, then sure, they're just letting companies target you based on what people statistically like you have bought. For some, that may mean lots of ads for clothes, other lots of ads for adult services.

What if you log in to your Google account at work and at home. Your at-home purchases should not lead to targeted ads at work. Lots of people buy not-safe-for-work items; most wouldn't appreciate related ads being shown at work.

This is only "privacy-safe" if all the computers you use are 100% private, and even then, being lumped together with others based on how you use your computer is still a basic privacy breach. Unfortunately, in this day and age it's not only expected, but accepted.

From everything I've heard about Verizon FIOS, these rural (or semi-rural) cities really dodged a bullet. Towns should work with proven contractors to deploy and manage city-run/city-sponsored broadband. I used to live in a city that tried multiple times to do it on their own, and that was a special kind of disaster (that 10 years later, they're still paying for), but there are many communities that make it work, and any new deployments will have huge resources to look to for what to do and what not to because of the successes and failures of other cities.

Sushi may as well be called "cold dead fish" as almost everyone I know immediately rejects it on that basis, regardless of whether there is fish in it at all or if the fish is cooked or not. Admittedly, Utah isn't exactly known for its good sushi (or fresh fish in general), but it can be had. People are just missing out based on bad publicity.

I remember someone coming by my house and doing energy savings fixes (seal holes, add attic insulation, etc.) to my house for free. There was some government program (I don't remember if it was state or federal, but I'm fairly sure federal) that paid the contractor directly for each house finished.

My limited economic knowledge says if the government says "we'll pay up to X of the cost," then that's the exact number contractors will charge. The free-ness of the project is felt by the same person who reaps the benefits (lower monthly bills), and so I'm not sure I'm against this at all. While it is, as far as the article is concerned, wasteful, it's only wasting money and the energy needed to do the upgrade, which I'm sure is offset by the energy saved. If it only costs the state and federal governments money (by which I mean, if it only costs everyone a small amount of money) to help against climate change, then I'm all for it. If there is graft or gouging going on (which if there's a government contract, there almost definitely is), then I'm also for fixing that. These two choices are not mutually exclusive.

Almost every raise I've ever received (some updwards of 50%) have been because I've presented data others have collected (typically the computerworld.com annual survey). This type of information is readily available to various fields, and everyone that can should use it. The idea that CEO salaries have risen across the board because of laws requiring reporting sounds plausible, but without hard numbers (good luck with that) I'm not 100% sold. The people in these jobs are very much the people whose skills in negotiating financials are very much at the forefront of why they are getting hired.

I've used Xen and Vmware, and they are both leaps and bounds better than Virtualbox, but mostly in the world where running hundreds of VMs is the norm. For my laptop and desktop computers, Virtualbox still wins out for ease of use over the competition (libvirt, et al.) IMHO...or maybe I'm just used to it. Nevertheless, I'm happy it isn't completely abandoned, even if development and markedly slowd.

I remember LSD. It was great.

So he funneled it through Mt. Gox before it exploded? Or while it exploded? Or he caused it to explode while he was there? The little tin-foil-hat-wearing conspiracy theorist that lives inside me wants to it be the latter.

If the only evidence they have is the genetic similarities, then I certainly hope they're taking into account Egypt's close location and continual trade (and one presumes, cross-pollination over thousands of years) with the Mediterranean cultures. According to TFA, they "controlled for recent migrations," but does recent take them back 10,000 years? 1,000? 100? They themselves acknowledge the original migrations took place between 125,000 and 60,000 years, so recent is obviously relative. Color me skeptical.

I can see it now: rows of pimply-faced teenagers sitting through vintage videos of not car wrecks, but identity theft cases and pedobears, all while the teacher sat in the back thumbing through playboy (yes, still the print edition: driver's ed teachers/internet ed teachers are all the same).