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Who were the corporate sponsors for the legislators that put this through the state house in order for Brown to sign?

If you've got any facts to that effect, I'd love to hear it. However I don't see any use in vague speculation about possible sinister motives and actors...

The interested parties listed in the articles are environmental groups pushing for STRONGER restrictions, and dairy farming groups pushing back, which seems obvious. The sponsor of the bill happens to be a gay Hispanic man (whose parents were illegal immigrants), representing a depressed corner of Los Angeles (which notably lacks cows), and who doesn't appear to be getting significant money from any organizations that might be interested in this bill.

Even if some ulterior motives were involved, the law can still be evaluated on its face without worrying too much about those side-concerns.

Who stands to profit from this? Who were the corporate sponsors for the legislators that put this through the state house in order for Brown to sign? Could it be the vendor that wants to produce the methane digesters the one that greased the palms, or was it the industrialized dairy lobby seeking to edge out the last of the family-farm type producers?

Of course, any real line of inquiry as to the actual motivations of who produced this legislation will be met with 'why do you hate the environment so much'.

News at 11.

They could just kill the cows. Where I work they fix morale problems by firing the unhappy people.

Jerry Brown is elected governor and all kinds of crazy ensues. Now they are looking at regulating cow farts.

3. Then collecting the gas from the other end.
4. Proffit

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.

> The only question we have is: Can we get rid of it?

How about you just buy CPUs without it? The obvious solutions (AMD, ARM) are there and even Intel themselves release chips without it.

Pipedot source is available for anyone who wants to fork it to make their own version.
Download links are at the bottom of https://pipedot.org/source

Looks like the perfect way to track people across multiple government systems including tax medicare hospitals and all government services.

I wonder where they hid the profits.

I know someone who used to work there. Ten years ago, basic sales rep making $56,000/year plus benefits. Seems a little pricey for an entry-level sales person...?

Did they still run TV commercials non-stop on nearly every public channel like they did 20 years ago? Not much of a TV watcher, so I'm unsure. Maybe Progressive Insurance has one-upped them in advertising quantity.

Just in time for early Christmas present ordering:

Silent Pocket Faraday Cage Sleeves - http://www.thinkgeek.com/jlsn/

"The patented Radio Frequency shield in the phone and tablet sleeves effectively blocks all wireless, cellular, GPS, WiFi, Bluetooth, RFID, and NFC signals in all frequencies. And there's an alternate internal side, which shields only against RFID and NFC (so you can protect yourself from hacking on those frequencies, without missing a phone call or text)."

And, I found the article I was thinking of when I posted the original question (I was the above AC). I read the Schneier on Security blurb, but here's one of the articles it linked to with more info. (The headline annoys me by assigning all the credit to Snowden, but at least they acknowledge Huang's work in the body.)

https://www.wired.com/2016/07/snowden-designs-device-warn-iphones-radio-snitches/

It looks like it requires modification - wiring things directly to the phone's circuit board via the SIM slot - and it's only a prototype. Still cool though. Especially since, "Faraday bags can still leak radio information," according to the article.

Two things: I don't generally like a camera in my face.
and having gone through a computer engineering program I've seen my share of jokes played through remote access to cameras, microphones and even cd tray motors... so it's not a rare thing in my experience (although I'd hope it might be now that I'm older) ;)

My point was: we can't go back to exactly 9 planets. You'd be hard-pressed to write a criteria that includes Pluto without including Eris... And frankly, we'll probably find several even larger trans-Neptunian planetoids, in time.

Eris is 27% more massive than dwarf planet Pluto, though Pluto is slightly larger by volume. From it's orbit, Eris would be #10.

I know people are out to get me.

Nope.

I so did NOT need this reminder today

I can't imagine an external device that would be able to work out the difference between desired and undesired signals from your phone.

You could make a tiny little $5 pocket signal detector with buzzer. When idle, you get only a brief little buzz every few minutes (or maybe entirely omit notifications for any transmissions that short). When a call is ongoing, or data is being transferred, buzz continually... That would raise the veil, giving people an idea of when their phone is sending data, and how much. If it starts going full-blast when your phone is sitting around in your pocket... a big red flag!

Of course you could do this pretty well in software, too. In fact the status bar icons show all cell/wifi xmit/recv activities on some few phone models. Or you can just pay attention to your battery consumption and get nervous when it suddenly lasts a fraction as long as it normally would, because either an app has started going nuts, or your phone is now transmitting a lot more often...

I think you're after a Faraday bag. I can't imagine an external device that would be able to work out the difference between desired and undesired signals from your phone.

Taking into account human nature? Certain.

when you connect to this device your internet connection goes away

The review mentions you can pair it with your home WiFi:

"Enter your WiFi network details, and this should make the Connect Wireless Stick available over the network - letting you access its storage and Internet at the same time."

and any apps you have that eat data in the background are now eating into your wireless data quota.

Android has a nice "Restrict Background Data" option I always use, which will stop those background updates whenever your internet access is via cellular.

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.

Because I actually take video and use video chatting apps and I have yet to find a cover that's convenient and will work with my choice of phone case. (It was a gift, I love it. I'm not changing cases if the new one doesn't offer a significant advantage.)

Besides, the microphone scares me more. No one's going to blink if some idiot hacks photos of me staring at my phone in the bathroom. If they hear me say the wrong thing, though, I could lose my job.

So far the only real security I've seen was an idea pitched for a phone case which alerted the user if the phone became untrustworthy and started sending signals without permission. AFAIK that idea has not yet become reality.

Anybody got a pitch for something that blocks the phone's mic AND camera?

I also cover my cameras, and for much the same reason.

Not because I think that someone is going to take a video of me for blackmail. It's just creepy watching videos of people who have been hacked like this. It is bad enough now Microsoft has admitted that they take data off your PC. No need to entice hackers. Perhaps like car alarms, if everyone covered their cameras by default then there would be less incentive to do this.

Snappy comeback.

That Ceres is a whiny bitch? Yeah, completely.

I think this says it all.

Eris is 27% more massive than Pluto. It even has one known moon. You can't have just 9 planets. It's either 8 or 10+.

We already have a ninth planet ThankYouVeryMuch

Arizona is a sad case because libertarian fools run the state, and they refuse on principle to regulate and manage their natural resources sustainably, like adults.

California is a better model. Aquifers are recharged, usage restrictions are enacted, tiers are lowered, grey water is required for commercial landscaping, etc. Desalination is used to some extent as the technology gets cheaper, and tertiary treated sewage goes back into the water supply, creating a loop. Those last two offer a practically endless supply of water that can scale up to any population size.

Arizona could do all of this and would have ample water, but it's politically unpopular to talk about such things there, and they may need a harsh wake up call before the necessary reforms can be implemented.

But more importantly, even with that mismanagement, they're still doing infinitely less damage to infinitely fewer species than if people were developing old growth forests into cities and suburbs, or building just about anywhere else in the country, for that matter.

You have to keep in mind that there's almost NOWHERE with enough water. Forty out of fifty US states expect water shortages: http://pipedot.org/C373 . It's best to just accept that we can't stick a hose in the ground and pump enough water for everyone. Then we can move forward to practical management efforts, and it's doable everywhere, even the deserts. With California's jump-start on water management decades before anybody else was interested, I'm sure there are much wetter locales which will be hit much harder by droughts. Atlanta is one such example.

A problem: there is no extra water to be had here and humans are thirsty beasts. Having lived in Arizona and being keenly aware of the water situation here, I can tell you that the current population is already draining the water table as fast as they can. In Tucson AZ, for example, the aquifer has already fallen several hundred feet since the 1980s. A single human lifetime ago the Rillito and Santa Cruz rivers flowed year round, whereas now they only flow when flash flooding occurs in the summer months. The city of Phoenix has drained local water sources so rapaciously that it is forced to steal water from the Colorado river and the White Mountains to the north.

The massive amount of development that has occurred in the southwest in just the past fifteen years is affecting changes in the seasonal rains, increasing temperatures in the cities by as much as 5 degrees from the temperatures in surrounding areas, and is disturbing the natural hydrology of the southwest and causing destructive flooding and massive sandstorms. Humans are poisoning the very delicate ecosystems with foreign and invasive plant species and salty water drawn from relatively saline rivers that accumulate in the soil because of the hard clay layer just below the ground.

The southwest cannot support the cities on the scale you're suggesting unless people are willing to live in enclosed arcologies built below ground to limit the damage that this bunch of hairless apes do everywhere we go. We're already swinging toward a tipping point in our local environment. This doesn't even account for the energy consumption that running AC all day does (which is necessary, I assure you). Please don't move here.

You forgot the latest twist: Short the stock

Find it. Hack it. Publish the method. Intel will have to recall millions of CPUs or kill the subsystem.

I had hopes that Rackspace would open a neat datacenter in my hometown of San Antonio when they bought a large shopping mall to serve as their main point of presence. Sounds cool, right? Take down the JCPenny/Mervins/Sears signs and install rows and rows of computers, etc... However, years later, the site is still largely empty. Sure, they renovated a few areas to serve as a large cubicle farm for phone support personnel, but they don't actually host anything or run any servers in the building. They continue to use a few third party datacenters with remote-hands in Dallas for their server needs. As far as I know, they don't even have the transit from the network providers to host anything in San Antonio, even if they wanted to.

Plus, their main business has turned into selling you a really expensive full service experience. No build your own server or collocation options, you just tell them you want a webpage and they do everything for you. Kinda boring.

We used to host our local Linux group meetings there, but support from Rackspace rapidly waned, and lack of interest to continue to push for room every month means we stopped meeting altogether. If we ever continue, we will probably go back to meeting at the local community college and skip the Rackspace option - which is kind of sad for company that claims that it is "Linux friendly" and even originated the whole OpenStack thing.

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.

If you really think that chainsaws are as a big a potential danger as autonomous vehicles are, I have some wonderful seaside property in Arizona I'd like to sell you.

There are lots of wooden bridges out there. A chainsaw will allow you to sabotage such a bridge very quickly, with no visual indication from above. If you do so shortly before the scheduled passenger train comes through, it could be a mass-casualty incident more serious than anything a car could do.

>I'm pretty sure all those companies developing autonomous cars are doing their damned best to secure them.

Heh, you really think so? Oh I'm sure they're paying some lip service to making them secure, but they're likely doing it in a sloppy, low-cost way that will be full of holes and vulnerabilities. Look at the whole IoT thing...their security may be a little better than that, but not much.

>There's no way they're going to release a car that's any MORE dangerous than existing manually driven cars.

Oh boy, I'll take that bet! Just by dint of being autonomous or remotely controllable it's automatically more susceptible to misuse by malicious people. I guarantee you that an autonomous car is potentially more dangerous than a standard vehicle in terms of being used in a deliberately harmful way by outside parties. Any hardware or software that manipulates the vehicle only adds to the existing risk factor.

My original comment was meant as a joke.

That said.
There are people working on autonomous drones.
This flying chainsaw is basically a chainsaw attached to a drone.
It's not a huge step to imagine some doofus thinking it would be a good idea to attach a chainsaw to an autonomous drone, for reasons. After all there was some doofus that thought attaching a chainsaw to a regular drone was a good idea.

I'm pretty sure all those companies developing autonomous cars are doing their damned best to secure them. They'll be sued into oblivion pretty quick if someone can demonstrate an easy method to hack these cars to go running people over. I think someone would have to be pretty dumb, or at least extremely dishonest, to think autonomous vehicles are going to pose any significant danger. There's no way they're going to release a car that's any MORE dangerous than existing manually driven cars.

> It isn't that difficult right now to just drive a truck through a crowd full of people in France

My point exactly. It's easy enough now, how much more likely will it be when you can do it by remote with almost no chance of getting caught?

Nonsense.

There are loads of companies working on developing autonomous vehicles; I doubt there's even one working on developing autonomous chainsaws.

If you really think that chainsaws are as a big a potential danger as autonomous vehicles are, I have some wonderful seaside property in Arizona I'd like to sell you. I also own a bridge in New York I'd be willing to part with for the right price.

Oh my sweet, sweet, summer child.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Viwwetf0gU

NOTE: I realize there's probably someone controlling this from a remote, which you see at one point, but it's a pretty small step for this to be automatized.

Having had someone try to run me over with a car, and having driven through a few things in a car, I completely agree with this statement.
Cars are weapons. Shields. Armour. All in one!

It isn't that difficult right now to just drive a truck through a crowd full of people in France.

chainsaws aren't on the verge of being able to operate autonomously

Oh for the love of... STOP GIVING THEM IDEAS!

http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2016/s4422415.htm

The head of the 2016 census program, Duncan Young.

DUNCAN YOUNG: So in order to take full use of that data, we need to be able to bring census data together with other data sets, like education data sets, or like health data sets, to allow us to make better decisions in Australia to help people's outcome.