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But it takes a lot of space (Score: 1, Interesting)

by Anonymous Coward in Iron-Chromium Flow Battery Aims to Replace Gas Plants on 2014-06-02 20:08 (#209)

From what I've read flow batteries have some very nice features, if you can get the price down, but they *do* take up a lot of space.

Exciting if it works and scales (Score: 2, Insightful)

by rocks@pipedot.org in Iron-Chromium Flow Battery Aims to Replace Gas Plants on 2014-06-02 16:47 (#208)

Definitely like the idea of being able to use relatively abundant, low cost materials in a system that can be indefinitely charged and discharged... wow!

OT: Usability (Score: 0)

by Anonymous Coward in Linux is awesome except for: on 2014-06-02 15:33 (#207)

Almost missed that this was a multi-choice poll. Maybe some text to make that clearer would be helpful, like a "Choose any" on the line after the title.

Re: Went with apps, but that's not really accurate (Score: 1, Insightful)

by Anonymous Coward in Linux is awesome except for: on 2014-06-02 14:18 (#206)

So the deeper question is "what makes it not attractive to release a commercial linux version of most software?". Besides the obvious smallest userbase, the large number of distros makes support a very complex topic. Even among the top few, there are some quite big differences.

Went with apps, but that's not really accurate (Score: 5, Insightful)

by zocalo@pipedot.org in Linux is awesome except for: on 2014-06-02 10:59 (#205)

It's not that Linux is lacking software, quite the opposite in fact, it's lacking viable alternatives to commercial software for which there is currently nothing that can come close in terms of capabilities and/or is as convenient to use for which the vendor hasn't released a native version, or simply won't do so.

Re: But Why Not Just Sell The Plastic Parts? (Score: 1)

by ploling@pipedot.org in Intel's 3D Printed Robot on 2014-06-02 09:15 (#204)

If I could my solution for good food would be quite simple, to live in East Asia: China (including Hong Kong and Macau), Singapore, Taiwan, the Philippines, South Korea, or Japan. It's not that I'm horrible at cooking, it's that so many people are so much better, skilled, and experienced and in addition in my opinion these countries have an accessible food culture beyond any other places. I read a philippine food magazine today and it reminded me of how much I miss it.

Re: It depends (Score: 1)

by harmless@pipedot.org in Favorite story image style: on 2014-06-02 01:34 (#203)

Oh, that's nice, thank you.

Could we also get a setting for the font size of articles and comments? While I can read the current size - and I think is plenty big enough for the interface (menus etc.) - a slightly larger font for the actual content feels a bit more comfortable.

In addition I did shrink the width of the right column a bit, since I felt it takes up too much space in comparison to the articles/comments section. So I guess I'll keep using the extension for now. ;)

Re: LUKS was a better alternative anyway (Score: 3, Interesting)

by fatphil@pipedot.org in TrueCrypt Project Problems on 2014-06-01 23:05 (#202)

Any system which is designed to give you plausible deniability is guaranteed to give you no plausibible deniability at all.

You show them one thing, they say "yeah, yeah, you're running something which permits you to have multiple views - now show us the other one", and get out a bigger wrench.

Re: Impressive (Score: 1)

by computermachine@pipedot.org in Robot Velociraptor Now Fastest Thing on Two Legs on 2014-06-01 22:49 (#201)

I watched it again, and you are right. It looks like the tether keeps it on the treadmill.

Re: Impressive (Score: 3, Informative)

by fatphil@pipedot.org in Robot Velociraptor Now Fastest Thing on Two Legs on 2014-06-01 21:18 (#200)

Getting over the obstacles? No hassle? Did you not see its tether go taught? Without that tether it would have fallen asimo over tit.

However, more importantly, it's a planar biped.

Planar bipeds are not interesting. Everyone in the robots community, apart from students who work on planar bipeds, will be cringing at this "advance". The little robot in the icon at the corner of the summary is more interesting, from a robotics perspective.

Re: Woo, I guess (Score: 0)

by Anonymous Coward in Stargate Reboot Trilogy on 2014-06-01 19:05 (#1ZZ)

I agree, SG:U felt as if written by soap opera writers. We can do without all the drama and teenager problems in science fiction. I hope they leave the annoying Eli character out of the new movies.

Re: Termiraptors! Velocinators! (Score: 1)

by danieldvorkin@pipedot.org in Robot Velociraptor Now Fastest Thing on Two Legs on 2014-06-01 18:17 (#1ZY)

No doubt. :)

Re: Woo, I guess (Score: 0)

by Anonymous Coward in Stargate Reboot Trilogy on 2014-06-01 17:38 (#1ZX)

SG:U was the biggest shit that they ever produced. I would have been okay with it under a different brand, but not "Stargate". The Startrek Voyager and Battlestar Gallactica merge that they called SG:U is a total insult to the Stargate brand.

Maybe they can get shamalamadingdong to direct... (Score: 1)

by entropy@pipedot.org in Stargate Reboot Trilogy on 2014-06-01 15:19 (#1ZW)

And he can tell us Stargate(as prounounced in he hundreds of hours of existing content) is actually pronounced "pyramid thign" from the chiense roots.

possible (Score: 3, Informative)

by tdk@pipedot.org in TrueCrypt Project Problems on 2014-06-01 13:19 (#1ZV)

stlth is a project that supposedly gives you deniable containers on Linux. Hopefully it uses plain dm-crypt for inner containers because LUKS has a distinctive header. FreeOTFE can create inner containers on LUKS volumes, but only runs on Windows

Linux? Switch to tc-play (Score: 1, Informative)

by Anonymous Coward in TrueCrypt Project Problems on 2014-06-01 12:25 (#1ZT)

This is an alternative, compatible implementation of truecrypt. I'm surprised it is not more widely known and supported.

https://github.com/bwalex/tc-play

Also, cryptsetup-LUKS can now mount truecrypt containers.

Re: LUKS was a better alternative anyway (Score: 0)

by Anonymous Coward in TrueCrypt Project Problems on 2014-06-01 12:19 (#1ZS)

From what I read, the alleged "plausible deniability" of "hidden" containers was pretty weak anyway.

Content is the new black gold (Score: 0)

by Anonymous Coward in Stargate Reboot Trilogy on 2014-06-01 11:16 (#1ZR)

So, they have finally figured out that content is worth more than gold and have decided to capitalise on Stargate. Oh well, there it really goes down the drain.

Which is really a pity as SG:U actually was looking much better towards the end ... and SG:SG1 just had a new cast infusion (while we are here, thanks for killing Farscape guys :-( ) which would have allowed SG:SG1 to continue for another 5 years. Lots of places they could have gone but no sciffy decided to shut it down. Shame, shame, shame.

Shall we kill another Firefly while we're at it?

Re: Termiraptors! Velocinators! (Score: 3, Funny)

by computermachine@pipedot.org in Robot Velociraptor Now Fastest Thing on Two Legs on 2014-06-01 08:07 (#1ZQ)

Is Cyberdino Systems behind this?

Termiraptors! Velocinators! (Score: 3, Funny)

by danieldvorkin@pipedot.org in Robot Velociraptor Now Fastest Thing on Two Legs on 2014-06-01 03:05 (#1ZP)

Everybody, it's been nice to know you.

Woo, I guess (Score: 3, Insightful)

by fishybell@pipedot.org in Stargate Reboot Trilogy on 2014-06-01 00:29 (#1ZN)

I'll probably see them because I liked the film and I loved the series, but I'd much rather see them either continue SG: Universe or do a new series. Anytime Hollywood does a "reboot" it's really saying to fans "we know you like this, and it won't matter how shitty it is; you'll still pay." Stupid Hollywood.

Impressive (Score: 1)

by computermachine@pipedot.org in Robot Velociraptor Now Fastest Thing on Two Legs on 2014-05-31 23:44 (#1ZM)

It's very impressive seeing it get over those obstacles at that speed with no hassle.

Re: LUKS was a better alternative anyway (Score: 3, Insightful)

by fnj@pipedot.org in TrueCrypt Project Problems on 2014-05-31 06:40 (#1ZK)

What LUKS doesn't give you is HIDDEN, deniable containers.

Re: Huh, Flawed After All? (Score: 0)

by Anonymous Coward in TrueCrypt Project Problems on 2014-05-31 03:11 (#1ZJ)

I haven't seen anything to substantiate that claim. He can speculate all he likes, but I won't believe it until there are a lot more details.

Huh, Flawed After All? (Score: 1, Informative)

by Anonymous Coward in TrueCrypt Project Problems on 2014-05-31 02:11 (#1ZH)

http://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=14/05/30/1318243

German dude says there's a vulnerability.

Still hardly a reason to dump rather than fix the project...

better link (Score: 1)

by pete@pipedot.org in Robot Velociraptor Now Fastest Thing on Two Legs on 2014-05-31 01:10 (#1ZG)

Discovery had a better, more indepth article i only saw after-the-fact: http://news.discovery.com/tech/robotics/velociraptor-inspires-fast-running-robot-140531.htm

Re: LUKS was a better alternative anyway (Score: 0)

by Anonymous Coward in TrueCrypt Project Problems on 2014-05-30 23:22 (#1ZF)

TrueCrypt mainly catered to Windows users.
I would say it catered to multiplatform users just as much. With TC I could have files in containers on a NAS and still be able to use them from any machine. And while I like the OSI direction, featureset comes first.

LUKS was a better alternative anyway (Score: 1)

by bryan@pipedot.org in TrueCrypt Project Problems on 2014-05-30 22:42 (#1ZE)

LUKS encrypted file systems have been natively supported in most Linux distros for 5+ years. These encrypted file systems can be easily created on the command line or with a GUI tool like "gnome-disks". If you, for example, insert a thumb drive formated as a LUKS, the desktop environment pops up a password dialog to automatically mount the file system for you.

TrueCrypt mainly catered to Windows users. Also, the TrueCrypt license was incompatible with both the free-software and the Open Source Initiative philosophies.

Re: What about emergency steering? (Score: 1, Funny)

by Anonymous Coward in Google's Self Driving Electric Car Prototype on 2014-05-30 19:14 (#1ZD)

So, the world as pilotless Disney monorail? I can dig it.

I hope they use JonnyCab from the original Total Recall in these Googlebots.

Re: An Encyclopedia Is Not A Medical Journal. Film at 11. (Score: 2, Interesting)

by entropy@pipedot.org in Trust your doctor, not Wikipedia, say scientists on 2014-05-30 18:07 (#1ZC)

What if you compare against what a doctor says? As much as we'd like to pretend Doctors know everything: They do not. Comparing against a source such as a peer reviewed scientific journal is going to be quite accurate..but do you look up every single answer in a book before giving one? I certainly don't, and I'm pretty sure most doctors do not either.

They make plenty of mistakes with medication and other things... So really that would be a much more fair comparison.

Re: What about emergency steering? (Score: 0)

by Anonymous Coward in Google's Self Driving Electric Car Prototype on 2014-05-30 17:47 (#1ZB)

I envision the two converging in the distant future. Think a massive network of tracks instead of roads. The vehicle only needs to make a decision at junctions, and then has a limited number of paths. You only need to really be worried about what is on the track in front of you, and that is much simpler to do in a safe and redundant manner.

Re: Not Accurate to Say Warrant Canary? (Score: 1, Insightful)

by Anonymous Coward in TrueCrypt Project Problems on 2014-05-30 17:08 (#1ZA)

Isn't it supposed to be something noticeable by its absence, BEFORE a secret warrant turns up?
Not necessarily. I would define it as any sort of signal that a warrant was involved. Since they didn't have any scheme predefined, so they may be doing the best they can. It is still entirely speculation, though.

Not Accurate to Say Warrant Canary? (Score: 0)

by Anonymous Coward in TrueCrypt Project Problems on 2014-05-30 16:46 (#1Z9)

I think perhaps people are misapplying that term in this case (not Pipedot specifically, everywhere).

Isn't it supposed to be something noticeable by its absence, BEFORE a secret warrant turns up? At best what we have here is a warning or sad cry for help, after the fact. There should be a different catchy term for this. Maybe "dead canary".

Re: An Encyclopedia Is Not A Medical Journal. Film at 11. (Score: 1, Interesting)

by Anonymous Coward in Trust your doctor, not Wikipedia, say scientists on 2014-05-30 13:38 (#1Z8)

It would, however, be nice if there were at least SOME competition in the sorta-trustworthy, sorta-authoritative, crap-free general interest information marketplace.

But you know, there just isn't. :(

WP owns that space the way that Google owns search or Facebook owns social networking. (Interestingly WP is the only one of those three that I use.)

Re: What about emergency steering? (Score: 0)

by Anonymous Coward in Google's Self Driving Electric Car Prototype on 2014-05-30 13:17 (#1Z7)

Public transportation is better in EVERY respect. It's a pity there's a place for these toys. It's one of the failures of contemporary infrastructure (the lack of it).

Re: What about emergency steering? (Score: 2, Insightful)

by computermachine@pipedot.org in Google's Self Driving Electric Car Prototype on 2014-05-30 13:03 (#1Z6)

I assume these cars will have several safety mechanisms in place to make sure something like that happens only once in a while...

These kind of cars can be used by people who lack a driver's license, or are intoxicated. Since it is not possible to take control of the car, there is no reason to put any requirements on any of the passengers. Perhaps self driving cars with manual controls will have a locked mode, or something, to also allow this.

Re: What about emergency steering? (Score: 1)

by pete@pipedot.org in Google's Self Driving Electric Car Prototype on 2014-05-30 12:59 (#1Z5)

exactly. or plowing through the boardwalk. will the inevitable electrical or camera fault fail-safe by jamming on the brakes on the highway?

...and all i can think about is that scene from austin powers, the 60-point turn...now imagine sitting through that with no steering wheel. no thanks :)

Re: An Encyclopedia Is Not A Medical Journal. Film at 11. (Score: 1, Insightful)

by Anonymous Coward in Trust your doctor, not Wikipedia, say scientists on 2014-05-30 12:44 (#1Z4)

I remember the days when Wikipedia was "not to be used as a reference". People still pay lip service to this principle, but increasingly I see myself and others using Wikipedia as the first go-to-place to quickly get up to speed on something unfamiliar. One can progress to more "authoritative" texts, of course, but in so many cases the Wikipedia summaries are sufficient. I actually think the new mantra could be "you can use Wikipedia for a reference and you will only be penalized for doing so if it is shown that a given Wikipedia summary was wrong."

Re: TrueCrypt: Is The Party Really Over? (Score: 1, Informative)

by Anonymous Coward in TrueCrypt Project Problems on 2014-05-30 12:43 (#1Z3)

Best comment there:

"sls "ยข May 29, 2014 11:05 AM
"WARNING: Using TrueCrypt is Not Secure As it may contain unfixed security issues"
Did nobody else pick up on this?"

Re: But Why Not Just Sell The Plastic Parts? (Score: 0)

by Anonymous Coward in Intel's 3D Printed Robot on 2014-05-30 12:39 (#1Z2)

That might help those in the latest generation who have not really learned to cook. I wonder if 3D printed food will become a fad or whether this will, in contrast, make "all natural" food even more "good", in the minds of consumers?

Have been using an Intel 330 (Score: 2, Insightful)

by Anonymous Coward in SandForce Sold Again on 2014-05-30 12:35 (#1Z1)

in a 2008 aluminum Macbook for more than a year now and it works well. I understand that Intel put some extra work into validating the SandForce controller, but Seagate may have picked up a decent foundation for moving forwards.

Re: What about emergency steering? (Score: 3, Insightful)

by Anonymous Coward in Google's Self Driving Electric Car Prototype on 2014-05-30 12:33 (#1Z0)

From a statistical viewpoint, I can imagine a time when autonomous vehicles are actually safer to use (for avoiding accidents) than running the roads with a large conglomerate of human drivers with various attributes of skill, fatigue, and sobriety. What is perhaps more of a concern to me is if the vehicles can be hacked and used to create accidents intentionally, for whatever purpose.

Never used TrueCrypt (Score: 0)

by Anonymous Coward in TrueCrypt Project Problems on 2014-05-30 12:28 (#1YZ)

But this is an interesting story...

I still wonder whether the philosophies of privacy versus power and the distribution of autonomy in society is workable or whether Animal Farm/1984/Brave New World scenarios are inevitable after any post-revolution period of time. TrueCrypt was a tool for those interested in securing some privacy for data? I can imagine many legitimate personal, political and business use cases, as well as, more nefarious intentions. Nonetheless, I hope that we can devise a system/laws that allow such tools to have an accessible, operational and audited presence in the Computer Age. Basically, I feel it is important that power (for privacy or anything else) be distributed and this is a basic principle of democracy. Many of the possible explanations for TrueCrypt's demise appear linked to the lack of enough money to justify continued development though, which begs the question of how an interested community could best fund key programs like OpenSSH, TrueCrypt, etc, and how they might handle key developers moving on?

What about emergency steering? (Score: 2, Funny)

by skarjak@pipedot.org in Google's Self Driving Electric Car Prototype on 2014-05-30 12:25 (#1YY)

An emergency stop button is something, but one would think there'd be some steering in case the thing's about to drive you into incoming traffic or some other dangerous situation. I'd rather take public transport than risk my life in this, to be honest.

TrueCrypt: Is The Party Really Over? (Score: 1, Interesting)

by Anonymous Coward in TrueCrypt Project Problems on 2014-05-30 11:22 (#1YX)

By: Anon | 05/2014

Fiction: Do you remember the scene near the end of the movie Scarface where the group of criminals conspired in an attempt to remove an individual speaking out against them before he spoke at the UN? (UN - IIRC)

Reality: Do you remember the individual who died just shortly prior to speaking out about pacemakers (and possibly other technology) and how they are vulnerable to hacker attacks?

Possibility: Sn0wd3n and/or others about to deliver a speech which mentions the useful tool TrueCrypt to a wider audience - TrueCrypt project dies.

I'm interested in the results of the complete TC code audit, but give this comparison some thought.

However, I was concerned about the project when releases ceased after 7.1a. There were steady releases up until that time and I'm curious if 7.1a was released as low hanging fruit with a backdoor and the site was allowed to operate for a few years before closing shop when the hunger for enough interesting people who downloaded/used TC was satisfied.

TrueCrypt WTF @ Bruce Schneier blog
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2014/05/truecrypt_wtf.html

Also contains TC posts:
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2014/05/friday_squid_bl_426.html

Defacement? (Score: 1)

by bryan@pipedot.org in FalseCrypt? on 2014-05-30 01:01 (#1YW)

Ya, I've been waiting on a more official reply from the maintainers. The current homepage on SF really looks like a web-defacement and not something that is official.

To make things worse, the "new release" of the software is signed using the official key. Does that mean that they were able to deface the site and nab the private keys at the same time?

Re: Waa waa (Score: 0)

by spacebar@pipedot.org in S & P sets Tesla's credit rating to B- on 2014-05-29 20:07 (#1YV)

I've heard some competent economists say that Tesla's been fudging their books, which would make this much less about credit rating ego and more Elon Musk's.

Re: But Why Not Just Sell The Plastic Parts? (Score: 1)

by spacebar@pipedot.org in Intel's 3D Printed Robot on 2014-05-29 20:05 (#1YT)

If we're going all the way geek here, I'm thinking the best use for a 3D printer is printing models of your D&D characters. ...That said, I half agree with you--this is not an effective implementation of 3D printing. We're sort of in a pre-enlightenment period of the science. The really interesting stuff is going to happen when they start putting together synthesized chemicals and we get 3D printed food ala Star Trek.

But Why Not Just Sell The Plastic Parts? (Score: 1, Insightful)

by Anonymous Coward in Intel's 3D Printed Robot on 2014-05-29 18:31 (#1YS)

Who are we kidding here? All the real meat of the robotics and electronics are being delivered separately. All that the 3D printer is doing is producing plastic parts... slowly, roughly, and very inefficiently.

I'm not against it, but there's a huge hype train on 3D printing.

Why wouldn't this "kit" just also include the plastic shell parts, efficiently and cheaply mass produced in a real factory?

Is it really that thrilling for aging geeks to watch plastic getting melted in person?

Oh good! (Score: 1)

by useless@pipedot.org in Story Images on 2014-05-29 18:02 (#1YR)

Thank you for the option to disable images/icons completely. With a smaller width browser window, the images would cover up the headline/story. Got to be a bit annoying resizing the window each time.
Good work, B
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