bornabox

Ah come on. Yosemite is not a stable, reliable OS? That's just hyperbole... Running 10.10.3 on half a dozen machines, mostly older ones, and it's stable, reliable and working just fine. MBPro's, Mac Mini's, MBAir, iMac.

Doesn't sound like it's about city planning. Nowadays you can simulate that quite well. No need to pluck down Billions.

City planning with real buildings just doesn't make sense. To iterate solutions you need to be able to change quickly, which doesn't work in this case.

But it says: "... research into applied, market-ready products by providing ‘end to end’ testing and evaluation of emerging technologies and innovations from the world’s public laboratories, universities, and the private sector"

So it seems it's more about testing of technologies inside an urban environment that cannot be tested in real cities (due to risk, exposure, secrecy ?).

Sure sounds a bit sinister if you read between the lines.

Don't know if this is even more worrisome. FBI and Boeing denying any threat.

Either the guy is/was delusional and his 15 min of fame (like mentioned below) blew up in his face, or the systems are vulnerable and it's being downplayed (while hopefully it's being fixed).

At this point though, it's difficult to trust FBI and a corporation that has a lot to loose...

I think Boeing needs to bring in independent researchers and let them loose on some planes on the ground, either proving or disproving this whole debacle...

In Brasil, the nascent middle class consumes cares. It's a status symbol and a dream for many. It's a different culture. In the big cities (São Paulo, Rio, etc) the public transportation is miserable. Buses and Metro are overcrowded and Metro doesn't have a good penetration. So, no, in Brasil at least, no Peak-Car for quite some time.

3 MacBookPro's (2x15" and 1x13") seem all fine. Nothing out of the ordinary. Mac Mini's fine as well.

Thesis is gruesome work, at least to some extent. Your job hopefully will be something you enjoy. And having worked first in an office for a few years, you end up appreciating working remotely much more...

You're being overly harsh. TaskRabbit is about cleaning and handyman stuff, Rabbit is about programming jobs. Different areas, no chance to get the two confused. And calling a task-oriented service Rabbit, seems common sense, it's a very obvious choice and doesn't imply all the negative stuff you're mentioning.

Still waiting for the Apple datacenter in the Swiss Alps. There are some de-militarized Bunkers available. And it's cold as it gets up at 3000m...

Astropad has a 7 day tryout. So, I've been using it to pretty great results. I like it.

With Wifi it's actually laggy, but with the USB cable, it has been very fast. Pressure sensitivity isn't that important to me - depends on your use-case.

Tried it with Photoshop and Illustrator and it works great. Being able to see what you draw is great, far better then a normal Wacom Tablet.

So far, it's a great option. A bit on the expensive side, but cheaper then having to buy a Cintiq or a Surface :)

The whole heirloom argument doesn't ring right. I mean, sure, this happens and is part of the market. But I'd wager it's a small part. There are many watch-guys and rich people who buy 20, 30K watches because they can and like them. Not because they might give them to their kids in 30 years.

You do realize, that a nice luxury watch costs easily 20k, 30, 50k or even 100k. It's a whole other category. 20K definitely doesn't sound totaly out of the ballpark for a 18K Watch with 18K Gold bracelet.

Doing it for professional reasons aside, I do get why reading something (good/deep) for 100x might be very interesting.

If you repeat the same word lot's of times, it starts to loose meaning to you after saying it 20x or 30 times. Then you keep going and it comes back. But it's different. Maybe like... "a Rose is a Rose is a Rose...".

In literature, repeating things definitely gives it a different meaning.

And then there are books/texts that are very dense. Like Wittgenstein's Tractatus.. that one you'll read a 100x if you want to understand it.

There are definitely lot's of movies, that show you something new (where you see something new?), each time you watch them.

It's small details. Some new connection. Maybe the mood you're in changes the way you interpret a scene (or the whole movie). Maybe your personal experiences since you last watched the movie let you see it in a new (personal) light.

The same applies to books. Even more so maybe. With books you make the movie in your head, so it's more open to your interpretation, and thus changes more according to your mood etc.

I don't know about 100x, but I've reread / re-watches some movies and books to much joy.

Seems like a lot of marketing talk. It's a mesh-network (so you need multiple units to make it work). Mesh is better then 'range-extenders' but slows down, as you add more nodes. Don't know if they're doing the mesh on one frequency (5.8 GHz) and the connection on the other (2.4 GHz) or vice versa, but it would make sense. The devices all talk both frequencies as per specs.

Still, well done video, using your phone to connect for the first time (via Bluetooth) is clever etc.

Don't know if I believe all the 'never reboot a router again'-spiel, even more expensive gear needs to be power-cycled once in a while. Unless they do that auto-magically at night when you don't use it (that might or might not be clever - depends on you use-case).

Reading the article, I thought this might be a UWB (Ultrawideband) device. But going through the tech specs, I'm not sure. It just might be, but it doesn't say in the specs.

"...of a stepped-frequency continuous wave (SFCW) radar transceiver...The RANGE-R cycles through a sequence of 120 frequencies in 2 MHz increments from 3.18 GHz to 3.42 GHz. At each of the frequencies, it transmits a maximum 32mW power level with no modulation."

UWB would work with 500 Mhz or more spectrum, here it's only 240 Mhz, but why not. And UWB would be a pulse-based system.

I thought that there were already UWB Radars deployed with firefighters. Can't find any right now.

If you're interested in UWB: (1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra-wideband (2) http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/ultra-wideband

Fröhliche Weihnachten & feliz natal

802.15 WPAN - It's kinda stalled for some time. And UWB really did get good press with some very promising features / performance back in the day.

If I remember they ended up using it in some system for firefighters that can 'see' through walls, and it might've been used for such a system in the army as well.

But overall UWB didn't deliver on it's promise.

Definitely. But it might make you more vulnerable to light - getting light into your night vision goggles will make you shortly blinded. With eyes altered due to drops or pills, it would make you vulnerable for the duration of the effect. Goggles you can take off quickly. But for non-military applications, not to have to use goggles to see (better) at night, would be so much more comfortable.

Give us an update, when you start shipping internationally. I'm definitelty interested enough to have bought a shirt to try - if available.

Will you guys start sending to Switzerland? We're soo close :)

Thanks for the Tip on Stanley's Parable, never heard of it. Sounds very interesting, will try the demo now. Thanks.

Oh boy. That's nice. Could you deliver to São Paulo, please? Pretty please :) But seriously, that's quite a great idea. If you can deliver in time, it would be supremely convenient. Reminds me of the milk bottles that used to be delivered by the milkman early in the morning.

By HARRIET AGNEW Joe Lewis, a billionaire foreign-exchange trader who teamed up with hedge-fund manager George Soros in 1992 to bet against the Bank of England, is the latest high-profile financier to throw his weight behind the virtual currency called bitcoin.

Mr. Lewis leads the Phoenix Fund, a Zurich-based private-equity fund that on Tuesday plans to invest $200 million in Avalon, a company that makes computer servers aimed at creating bitcoins, according to people familiar with the situation.

Bitcoin is a virtual currency that exists online and isn't backed by any government or central bank. Bitcoins were invented in 2008 by a computer programmer who goes by the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto, who describes it as a peer-to-peer electronic cash system.

The Phoenix Fund's investment in Avalon reflects the growing popularity of virtual currencies, which are also coming under scrutiny from regulators. Other bitcoin enthusiasts include Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, who are best known for their role in the creation of Facebook Inc. FB +1.50% They have proposed an exchange-traded fund that is tied to bitcoins.

Bitcoins are created through a process called mining, in which computers solve complex mathematical algorithms to earn the bitcoins. The total number of bitcoins that can be mined is limited to 21 million. There are now about 11.5 million bitcoins in circulation, according to Blockchain, a website that monitors bitcoin transactions.

The Phoenix deal will also involve Taiwanese microchip maker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., 2330.TW 0.00% which is set to supply the state-of-the-art microchips that will power the hardware.

The Phoenix Fund was set up this year to invest in bitcoin mining-hardware companies. It looked at several of Avalon's rivals in the sector, including Butterfly Labs and KnCMiner but decided against investing, according to a person familiar with the private-equity firm's strategy.

Investors in the Phoenix Fund, which includes a small number of individuals who made their fortunes in currency trading, believe that the currency will become more stable and popular if more parties are involved in the mining process, this person said.

Mr. Lewis moved into currency trading in the 1980s and 1990s. In September 1992, Mr. Lewis teamed up with Mr. Soros to bet on sterling crashing out of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism, an event that was later named "Black Wednesday." Mr. Lewis didn't respond to a request for comment.

Mr. Lewis had big losses investing in U.S. brokerage firm Bear Stearns Cos, in which he began amassing a stake during 2007, The Wall Street Journal reported at the time.

Mr. Lewis is the main investor in an unlisted company called Tavistock Group, which has investments in more than 200 companies across the globe.

Tavistock Group includes ENIC Group, which has a Bahamas-registered subsidiary called ENIC International Ltd., through which Mr. Lewis owns 85% of the shares in U.K. soccer club Tottenham Hotspur.

The Phoenix Fund is independent of Tavistock.

The bitcoin deal was put together by Andrew Laurus, a former government-bonds salesman at Lehman Brothers who is also an investor in the fund. Avalon was set up by Yifu Guo, a pioneer in the bitcoin-mining industry. He was part of the team that developed the first ASIC bitcoin mining hardware. ASIC stands for application-specific integrated circuit, a type of custom-designed microchip. Mr. Guo couldn't be reached for comment.

Separately, Coinflash, a company that planned to set up kiosks for bitcoin enthusiasts to buy the virtual currency, is shutting down before it even opened its doors. "Due to an unforeseen change in our personal circumstances, we've made the difficult decision to suspend Coinflash's services indefinitely," the San Diego-based company said in an email statement.

Coinflash was established earlier this year and had planned to open the bitcoin kiosks in California and New York this summer.

As part of the deal, Avalon will gain access to TSMC microchips based on 20-nanometer processes, which are much faster than other chips. TSMC recently won a contract to supply chips to Apple. The increased processing power should give Avalon an edge in solving the algorithms that control the supply of bitcoins.