Recent Comments

I only forget the salt when cooking, but when cooking, you can usually add the salt later with no negative impact to food safety and security.

It depends on whether this site is to become an independent site or if it's trying to find a niche where /. and SL don't cover them. I could be happy either way. I'd like to see different opinions drawn to the various sites so different discussions would happen, but I realise that's very hard to do and it might be too hard to avoid the 3 sites just becoming clones of each other.

Hmmm... I'm able to moderate my own posts.

And don't forget to salt them too! Lots of people always seem to forget the salt.

Or you can just right-click the start button (from the "Desktop" interface).

It is not just a bad idea to return a password through an API; a properly designed application wouldn't even be able to offer such an API call because it would store password hashes instead of actual passwords.

I've lived my entire life up to this point thinking that "Daylight Savings Time" was the correct wording. I intend to become a zealot for the correct nomenclature, similar to a born-again Christian proselytizing to anyone who'll listen (or at least stand within earshot long enough.)

Let's hold off on this for a bit. I'm not sure adding to the drama pool is the best approach atm.

Styling as well. And finally the article reply link is somewhere useful.

Testing

I should say that this is the danger of /dev/urandom rather than /dev/random. Non-blocking behaviour assumes nothing about the entropy in the pool and therefore while the underlying PRNG algorithm may be the same as /dev/random, the output will still potentially be weak even though the output might look random.

Here's a concrete example I like to use:

Say you have a DRBG/PRNG that has the following algorithm: starting at num=1 emit byte streams from sha1hash(num). Then increment to the next number and repeat. The resulting output stream will be indecipherable from random noise because sha1 is cryptographically strong. But the seed material is incredibly weak. (The algorithm is not really an issue in this case because it's just a deterministic algo with a hash conditioning function.)

I believe that the primary problem is simply waiting for high quality bits of entropy. High quality DRBGs are all about "quality in" = "quality out". Testing the quality of that entropy is actually a bit harder than it seems and in my line of work, we tend to overestimate how strong those sources of entropy are. If you need to generate 256 bit AES keys, then you need at least 256 bits of entropy: which is not the same as typing 256 random keys on the keyboard to get it. You might only get 1 bit of entropy for every 20 bits streaming into the entropy pool -- and this is the real danger of /dev/{u}random, rather than any blocking or non-blocking behavior.

As others have said I like the look of this much better than Soylent. But it's really about the stories and community so I'm going to be watching both, should be an interesting race...

we could make "winningest" go away.

I played the recent Sim City reboot (despite the whole controversy around the always-online requirement.) At least for that game, once the popularity decreased enough, they eventually allowed to an "offline" play mode. Here's hoping they continue along that path and remove all the required-online-bits before they give up all support for it (so that it won't be worthless in a few years.)

sweet looking website. slashcode is a dinosaur.

At Soylent's staff meeting last week they agreed to forbid editors (just editors, not members) from cross-posting stories to the different news-for-nerds sites. This had the obvious effect of reducing new story submissions on Pipedot. Of course, some stories are just too popular to not get reported everywhere, and I have no problems with dupes slipping through.

I have to admit, though, it's a little annoying to find a worthy news item, write up a story about it, submit it, then notice that the green/red sites already have a similar story posted.

That's a useful policy, methinks... occasionally I do wish I could alter or rearrange my mods.

[Tho I still can't find an 'apply' type button...??]

In SeaMonkey 2.5 -- aside from having to turn on JS to see any comments at all, I seem to have permanent moderation dropdowns for every comment, but no moderate button. [scratching head]

Have you thought about crosspollinating slashcode fixes with SoylentNews?

Bugs aside, I'm liking the site... another option for my preferred style of news.

Good by me. Even if it's on all three, I might only happen to notice the story on one of them, or the comments might be significantly different. So -- no worries.

Also it assumes "suitable paper available". Which in some areas might be a stretch. But a microscope is basically just two lenses and a sliding tube; it need not be complicated nor expensive. I use a toy microscope for livestock stuff, and it's sufficient to view bacteria and parasites.

I don't know if he was a good scientist, but I know his reputation wasn't because of his research. He was a good teacher though, and Cosmos series and his books inspired a great many.

not exactly intuitive, I forced a server off with the power button because it took too long to locate shutdown in win server 2012

Yes, but it's rather non-obvious to users who have not found the manual where Window+X is discussed.
It certainly breaks the workflow of Windows 7 and XP users who are familiar with Start >Start Menu >arrow beside Shutdown/Log Off button

Well, I had to enable JS to see any comments at all. :(
SeaMonkey v2.5 here.

I seem to stay logged in well enough, tho. And I seem to have mod doohickeys today. Must go test 'em.

I do wish there was a daily mailer so I'd remember to visit more often! Each of, uh, these sites definitely has its own personality. Thumbs up. :D

Win 8.1 -->Windows_key+x brings up much of the old start menu, including shutdown options.

As long as no one catches the HIV virus from an ATM machine, we're cool.

Apparently not.

[hey, does this site have a profanity filter?]

Fuck it, let's find out. If so, that shit's a bug, in my not so goddamn humble opinion.

shutdown -s -t 100 -c All your base are belong to us?

First, let me say that anyone the slightest interest in the topic of liquid fueled rocketry needs to read John D. Clark's Ignition! (pdf) . It's only 200-some pages, and well worth it.

Anyway, regarding methane, the ease of manufacture is definitely part of it, but there's more.

Two important, and largely at-odds, characteristics of a rocket fuel are that it must produce low-molecular-weight exhaust products, which maximizes Isp, and that it must be high-density, so a smaller volume is required, so the tankage weighs less. In the same vein, cryofuels are slightly worse than noncryos of the same density, because of the added mass of insulation required.

Hydrogen is a popular choice (particularly for upper stages) because its exhaust products (H2O, H2*) are the lightest you can get in a practical** chemical rocket.
Kerosene is also popular (particularly for 1st stages) because it's about 7x as dense as hydrogen, and not a cryofuel.
Methane is a chance to split the difference -- it's roughly 6x as dense as liquid hydrogen (it still has the cryofuel insulation penalty, though), but it has relatively light exhaust gases (2:1 H2O/CO ratio) compared to long hydrocarbons (H2O/CO ratios approach 1:1 for long-chain alkanes, and are 1:1 for simple cycloalkanes).

* fuel-rich mixtures are generally used for a combination of reasons (see Ignition!) including better exhaust mixture (H2 vs. H2O, or for hydrocarbons CO vs. CO2).

** such devices as Rocketdyne's test motor burning liquid lithium, liquid fluorine, and gaseous hydrogen (see Ignition!) are fascinating when viewed from a sufficient distance, but if that's what you would term practical, please tell me where you live and/or work so I can stay well clear.

If an atrocity like this persists, then what next? Allowing "X Windows" to pass?

I'm not so sure that they plan on finding methane as much as they can produce methane from other gasses that are there. Its an easier fuel to manufacture than kerosene and easier to handle than hydrogen.

Cheers,
-WW

It's like kicking a cripple. Sure, you can do it, but it's so easy. I usually have lots of unpleasant things to say about Windows, and I run OSX, Linux, and FreeBSD at home.

But I no longer have to badmouth Windows because Windows users are busy enough doing it themselves. Seriously, the amount of hate I'm hearing from people who'd otherwise never even think about installing another OS is incredible. A friend saved for a long time to buy his first laptop, and when he finally bought it and he realized he was forced to buy Win8, not Win7, he was seriously disappointed. To listen to him, you'd think he got sold defective goods.

In a way, he did. I use Win7 at work and it's surprisingly good, though it takes way too much space on a hard drive. But Win8 is awful, absolutely atrocious. Take that you f*cking cripple.

[hey, does this site have a profanity filter?]

My first reaction when I saw this blurb was, 'awesome - this will help.' But on further reflection, it's more of an interesting conversation piece than a technological improvement that is going to make any difference.

I happen to know something about life with malaria. I've lived in Senegal for nearly 4 years and lived in Benin for another 4 before that, and I've also spent 5 in Nicaragua and 1 in Indonesia. So that's fourteen years in malarial countries, and in the case of Benin, extremely malarial. But lack of microscopes isn't really the issue. Even in poor countries like Benin there are medical clinics with doctors, and state hospitals that even the very poor go to. And those clinics have microscopes and labs. Lousy ones, but they're there. Let's say this technology adds another 100 microscopes per country - that's useful, but not huge.

Because equally in short supply are doctors who know how to diagnose and treat malaria, lab technicians who know how to identify and categorize it under the microscope (there are several different strains, and you treat them differently), and of course you need the medicine as well.

So this is cool, and it would be fun to whip up an origami microscope at a cocktail party full of nerds. It might help you catch the eye of a potential love interest. But I suspect its impact will be that this level of creativity and technological advance will lead to *other* advances, with higher impact than this.

Or maybe I'm just jealous because I've never invented anything that cool.

It's not just MS, I have to say. Making shutdown hard to get to may have been a particularly boneheaded move, but it honestly seems like desktop UI design has gone to hell across the board the last couple of years. OS X, Gnome, KDE ... I can't think of a single major environment that isn't substantially worse than it used to be.

Okay, thanks.

The term is "Testing in Production"

Why hire testers when your users can do it for you

So MS does all usability testing after they release the OS?

I must say that shutting down Windows has historically been the least of its problems. *Not* shutting it down is usually worse. But I suppose we must take what we can get.

Apparently this was at least in part in the belief that it could be found on Mars. But I recall reading that Curiosity has found no methane. I know that we still believe there to be some, but I wonder how hard it would be to access?

I have no problem with it. Also, this site is so small and the story rate is so slow that any good ones should be submitted even if they have been posted elsewhere.

Cheers,
-WW

Depends on the dock. Some of my older USB2 docks have a 2 TB limit, while by nearly-brand-new USB3 dock complains at anything over 3 TB.

Because most onboard SATA ports allow hot swap, you can get a passive internal dock like this that will just pass the electrical signal through without messing with it.

My Rpi is *way* too slow for a HTPC.

I agree - I attended a university where Sagan had taught, or taught occasionally, and the aura around the guy was supernatural. In fact, he was rarely around and seldomly seen. Good scientist maybe, but his reputation outpaced his abilities, I think.

"ings" - http://www.itworld.com/open-source/407290/wind-river-outfits-vxworks-internet-things

I think the link is missing a few characters at the end.

I think the link is missing a few characters at the end.

The cult of personality around Tyson irritates the hell out of me, just as the cult of personality are Sagan did then. Both of them deserve a lot of credit both for their science and their popularization of science; I just wish it were possible for people to do this without developing the kind of aura that causes people to treat everything they say, no matter how banal, as oracular wisdom. But this is a personal objection, and for those who don't share it, I hope the show is informative and entertaining.

Over on Soylent, someone pointed out that this story was published almost simultaneously there and on Slashdot as well as here, and didn't seem particularly happy about it. Guilty; I submitted the story to each site because I think it's an interesting and important topic, and I honestly didn't expect it to be published in all three places. Do people object to this? If so, I won't do it any more, but I'd like to know what our evolving community's standard will be.