sorbus

I'm a bit surprised that the Asus U36SD isn't in the comparison too; it's slightly lighter than the X1, although not quite as thin, has a better battery life with the integrated battery (and identical with the slice battery), the highest configuration has the same processor as the X1 (though I haven't found anywhere that actually sells that configuration), and a much better GPU.

The low-end configuration of the U36SD is about $400 cheaper than the low-end X1 or 13-inch Macbook Air, too, as well as having a better processor than both, although this comparison focuses on the high-end, so that's not too relevant.

The article seems to be saying that the neutrinos appear to have exceeded c. If it were just neutrinos moving faster than photons through some non-vacuum environment, that would be completely non-notable - experiments have already succeed in slowing light down to almost nothing, after all.

> If it really is miles ahead of everything else then the whole concept of that type of software probably needs to be radically rethought.

That's pretty much what I thought, reading that. The college I'm at right now uses Moodle, and while it gets the job done it doesn't do so particularly well. Might just be because of how the professors use it (there's a lot of variability in how useful it is between classes), but even in the best cases it's nothing special.

> btw: the kindle, with passive E-ink, has 2 months battery (i.e. over x100 longer)

And my TI-84 has had the same batteries for at least two years (it's getting to the point that I'm starting to wonder when they're going to run out, since I know that it will be the worst possible time). It doesn't matter, it's an irrelevant comparison, unless you're saying that something more similar to the kindle would be better for developing regions where solar power is a major selling point (which is a really good thing to point out - why does a solar powered netbook need a 250GB HDD? Why not a small SSD, if that would save power?).

I'm hesitant to put an exact figure on how much that would cost, but, including all the RnD that you would need to get even a basic working system, I would say upwards of 1 million. To get something that would work well (not requiring frequent modification to keep it running) and be somewhat realistic, anywhere in the region of 15m to 50m. Once the first one was running and you could just duplicate the design, I would guess that parts and assembly would cost around 100k.

If anyone went into this project with less than 1m to spend, I would be skeptical of their success even if they weren't paying for labor - this is something that would take perhaps dozens of prototypes to get perfect, and the cost would add up quickly even if it was very modular.

However, that's just an arm chair estimate. It's not my field of expertise (I'm not an engineer), and it's quite likely that a committed group of people could pull it off for much less.

Given that Prey is free, open source, and has been around for quite a while, I think that it's fairly unlikely that this is a hoax.

Yeah, if it's impossible for a thief to use the computer then Prey is useless. It's why I have a guest account on my computer: if someone steals it, I want them to be able to get it online so that I have some chance of recovering it.

> Seeing the Fangguo logo in a super market clearly doesn't conjure up images of Apple products, but imagine an electronics store featuring products plastered with the Fangguo logo - it stands to reason that consumers might get confused and mistake one company's product for another.

I suppose that if you had never seen the Apple logo, and merely had it described to you very badly then you might confuse the two. Maybe, if it was a really bad description and you had poor eyesight. I didn't even get that Fangguo's logo was supposed to be a stylized apple until the article said so.

My understanding is that it's not considered "true" open source by many people, because of the license that it's released under, but their website gives easy access to all the source code.

In vitro meat has been coming (in that it's been researched) for at least the last 16 years, and there have been edible forms since 2000. None of the other breakthroughs have lead to large-scale production, which I believe was due to the poor taste and that it's currently more expensive to produce than normal meat, per-pound. So don't get your hopes too high.

I'm generally an Asus person, but the Sony Z series is just amazing. 16 hours of battery life with an additional sheet battery, 2.5lbs, a nice processor and an option for a 1920x1080 display. Looks pretty good too, but it's the portability and battery life that really gets me. Sadly, the basic model with a sheet battery is about $2060, and configuring it to be really shiny would bring the price up to a bit under $3000, which, being a college student, is rather out of my budget.

If jamming becomes common, it would take very little time for drones to be modified to be autonomous, or to follow a predetermined flight path if they lose contact with the controller. It might be effective now, and it gets points for being fairly easy to implement, but it's not going to be effective for long.

It's called a hellban. You can continue to read and comment, but no other users see your contributions. It's a really good way to deal with users who are posting spam (if you browse with showdead turned on, you'll occasionally see long dead posts filled with links), or trolls. If there were an indicator of a hellban, it would be somewhat ineffective, because then users would just make new accounts.

Anyways, looking at your comment history, there doesn't seem to be anything that deserves it. No spam, just a few lightly downvoted comments. But there's a lot going on behind the scenes, and most of this is automated, so you probably just ran into whatever indicators or metrics HN uses to determine whether to hellban users (or take away their ability to flag, or whatever else). The only way to deal with it is probably to email PG, if you want your old account back.

It would be really irritating for many people; that behavior is best left to the user and the browser (most mice have middle-click which opens a link in a new tab, and - on my laptop, at least - tapping with two fingers opens a link in a new tab. Browsers can also be configured to open off-site links in new tabs).

He's already in the USA, and his identity has been known for a while. That makes it sound pretty different to me - no issues with jurisdiction or identifying him. If Apple had a legal case against him, or if the FBI feels that he has committed crimes, there's nothing stopping them going after him.

> I wouldn't say security is impossible, but it isn't worth the time and effort some companies put into it.

That's why I said that perfect security is impossible. It's entirely possible to lock something down to the point where 99.9% of people who would be interested in jailbreaking a device don't have the technical knowledge or skill required to break it (or just aren't willing to risk destroying the device), but some people will still figure out how to get around the security, even if it takes them a while (of course, if a jail-break isn't available until the version it's jail-breaking is obsolete, then the manufacturer could be said to win the battle).

"It's probably better to have him inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in." - Lyndon B. Johnson

Seems like an apt quote; from Apple's point of view, it's much, much better to have Comex helping them increase their security and make it harder for their devices to be jailbroken than for him to be trying to circumvent their security, especially as he's shown himself to be quite effective at circumventing it. Admittedly, we don't don't what he's going to be working on, and his subsequent tweets show an expectation that future versions of iOS will still be jailbroken, so perhaps he's not going to be involved with security (or, just as likely, recognizes that perfect security is impossible).

> A little known-fact Dhuey recalls is that Jobs has hearing loss.

> “When we did the iPod we had to make sure it would be loud enough for Steve to hear the music,” says Dhuey. “We had to balance his need for volume with a French law against things that were too loud."

Well, that explains a lot. It's a pity that Jobs needing to have music louder to be able to hear it has led to a generation of people who are getting hearing loss from having their music turned up too loudly.

> Would you rather talk to an expert on a subject matter, or post a question on SO and hope someone has had a similar experience?

Personally, I would rather that people post their questions - and then receive the answers - somewhere that's easily searchable, so that when other people have the same questions they can easily find an answer. There is certainly value in increasing the number of experts, though, so perhaps that's what you were pointing at.

"We're rolling out sharing and +snippets globally over the next week, but if you’d like to try the new +1 button now, you can join our Google+ Platform Preview."

It's been known for just under a month, since five days after OS X Lion was released, so that interpretation of his statement seems incorrect.

Are you saying that the fact that this issue doesn't effect many people means that it's not a serious security problem?

Do you have any proof of that? A quick search doesn't turn up any other assertions of it being fake, much less a good refutation of the claim that dogs in Moscow have learned to ride the subway.

EDIT: According to an article on FT.com, 20 dogs out of a population of 35,000 have learned how to ride the subway. If you're saying that the claim that most dogs know how - which is certainly suggested by this article - is fake, then you're certainly correct.

Looks great! Sort of in the same vein as the service that sends you Japanese candy once a month (I'm blanking on the name). However, your website has a few problems (mostly related to lack of information):

- What's the difference between the three sizes? How many snacks you putting in the boxes, or are the boxes just larger? Is it just that there are more snacks in the largest box than in the smallest, or is there some other difference? An easy way to correct this might be linking to photographs of example boxes of each size - that would also illustrate what people could expect to find in the boxes.

- Your About page contains the marketing blurb from the main page of the site, a thing about facebook, and nothing else. Standard convention for About pages, as I understand it, has been to actually put some information about the company on them. Who are you?

The current title of this article is "Amazon Kindle's new logo (looks like a rifle sight picture?)".

That is ridiculous editorializing. There is absolutely no evidence that this is going to be the Kindle's new logo; in fact, even suggesting that demonstrates that the submitter didn't read the article, or even skim it. The logo (and name) being trademarked is that of Lab126, the group at Amazon which developed the Kindle. Amazon is expected to be releasing a tablet soon, and this article theorizes that either Amazon is growing more serious about defending the name and logo, or possibly that the name and logo would be used in a future tablet. It does not even hint at the possibility that the logo would be used for the Kindle.

The article's original title, "Amazon seeks Lab126 trademarks in advance of expected tablet debut", is far superior.

> And I'm not sure selling 10 million would even be enough of an inroad.

Elsewhere in this thread, earl claims that around 25 million iPads (both generations) have been sold. So selling 10 million tablets would be a pretty huge inroad.

I may be hugely misreading the article, but when it says "The mouse will be anchored to that position and the mousemove events are going to set a virtual position" and "Everytime the user moves the mouse ... the cursor is moved to the center of the screen" I find it difficult to interpret that in any way that doesn't effectively mean that a website is able to move or lock the cursor. I admit that I use cursor and mouse interchangeably, when they're actually not the exact same thing, however.

So you go to a malicious website and it's able to move your mouse around or lock it in place. That would not be a good situation to be in, especially for the segment of the population that doesn't understand keyboard shortcuts (which would, presumably, allow escape from this). Even if it's not used maliciously, it seems very plausible that it would be used to make advertisements harder to avoid (on websites like Hulu that run ads during a video, preventing most users from being able to go elsewhere during them could be a tempting idea).

I get why something with this effect is necessary if we are to have FPS games running in the browser, I just don't think that it's a good idea to allow websites to do so without explicit user permission. Admittedly, there are few things I hate as much as programs moving my mouse around, so I'm a bit biased.

Posted somewhat earlier, with a bit of discussion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2906473

I used it as my first introduction to Ruby, and it was perfectly suited for that. Easy to read, whimsical, and it actually managed to communicate the joy of programming. I've been recommending it to friends who don't know any programming languages for a while. (For context, when I read it I already knew C, Bash scripting, and bits of PHP and Python).