CommentRailroad is Union Pacific (more info) (Score 1)34
Progressive Railroading reports that Union Pacific is using those drones to survey for track "washouts" and such damage.
Washouts are when the rock and such underneath the tracks is washed away, especially where the track bridges streams and rivers. The rail road companies lay down large (1 yard or more) pipe for the streams to flow through, then building up sand/rock/gravel into a "road bed" to lay tracks on, to bridge these small streams and rivers. When that goes in major flooding, all you have left is rail and the wood/concrete "ties"... and that's not strong enough for heavy (several tons) of engine and track cars.
Houston isn't the only one that had that. New York's Metro North Railroad had washouts on it's Port Jervis line north of the NY/NJ border during Hurricane Irene in 2011.
CommentSome responses (Score 1)82
I have three responses from sites that use Cloudflare. Essentially, their boiled down response is "We don't use those features that were affected. Cloudflare told us we weren't affected." One art site, Weasyl, just forced everyone to log off just to be safe.
CommentRe:I thought they originals were destroyed... (Score 1)304
Won't matter what Lucas says. Disney owns the Star Wars franchise now. Lucas is 100% removed from it.
CommentFirst non-Amazon device was a Raspberry Pi. (Score 1)109
Too late on the "Echo on a non-Amazon device": Amazon Echo DIY with a Raspberry Pi
CommentWin, Mac, Linux picks (Score 1)352
Windows: PuTTY, followed by Cygwin's own terminal.
MacOS: iTerm. It what the Terminal is supposed to be.
Linux: rxvt-unicode. It's a classic terminal, but it's just a terminal. Nothing more, nothing less. XTerm is just too bloated.
CommentSomeone forgot to tell Apple. (Score 2)242
Someone forgot to tell Apple that they're not hashable... because that's how they're storing them.
But then, you don't use them as a key to encrypt, you use them to *verify* that you are you. This takes care of dumb people trying to break into your phone. The smart ones just open up the phone and try to read the flash and security EEPROM directly.
CommentMicrosoft. Where SaaS means Solitare as a Service. (Score 1)296
TSIA.
CommentCost... and charging... (Score 2)688
The big thing is cost (which will go down over time with improvements in battery technology), but you also have to figure out charging as well.
The Tesla Model S has a 85 kWh battery bank. The average price for power is 10 cents per kWH in Maryland (even solar). So that's $1.20 to "fill up the tank" in raw power alone. Plus, it's not a quick fill-up.
That's not economical for a gas station. A rest stop or a restaurant (even a Royal Farm)? Drop in the bucket. So you'll have to dot rest stops with charging stations, seating and a lunch counter all over the place.... instead of gas stations. Well, that's a shift in thinking. And something the gas/oil companies aren't ready for.
CommentHave they gotten him out of the white room? (Score 1)147
We definitely need to see him out and about.
CommentRemember the AIR Presidental Election Algorythm (Score 1)676
If you remember the AIR Presidental Election Algorythm, you'll find that she has to get a damn good vice president, because she's no governor, no head of any college, nothing. She scores a 0, while Martin O'Malley scores a 88 (8 years Maryland governor).
CommentWait, they couldn't of... (Score 1)185
...supenoed Facebook for her current address?
CommentArticle got it wrong (Score 5, Informative)101
Almost all the reports are getting the gist of the paper wrong -- any press summation that doesn't go into the paper to understand it will get it wrong. The paper goes into deep detail that Apple has several services that, while protected by several layers of security that could be bypassed, can transfer data in the clear. There are also several services that don't have any obvious connecting software.
It's a rather deep hacker-style dive into iOS.
A good video about this is by TWiT Network. At http://twit.tv/sn465 Security Now ep 465 has expert Steve Gibson explain the actual paper.
CommentThe commits are funny into themselves. (Score 4, Informative)379
A Tumblr site popped up a few days ago called OpenSSL Valhalla Rampage. The blogger there is going through all the commits and posting the juicy funny comments there. This includes killing... and rekilling... VMS support (which reminds me of Maxim 37: there is no such thing as overkill...), stripping out now-stupid abstractions and optimizations of the unoptimizables, and more.
CommentOr, free Mathematica with $35 purchase of a Pi* (Score 2)99
An offer of over $300 in value! Get yours now!
* Based on purchase of a Model B from direct authorized sellers. Does not include shipping or purchase at authorized resellers. Must be run from a Raspbery Pi computer board. Storage, display, keyboard, mouse, and power supply not included. Model A does not include Ethernet.
