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cheeseprocedureon Sci-Fi Novels You Should Read

Check out "Riddley Walker." It takes place in a devolved post-apocalyptic England where the folk mythology is an echo of everything lost from the information and nuclear ages, and it's utterly haunting.

(I'd recommend it to anyone looking for fiction, and not just sci-fi.)

cheeseprocedureon Why Peak-Oil Predictions Haven't Come True

> This "recent boom" in the US remains cash negative - about 600b capex for about 500b in oil. And we don't know yet whether that's going to change.

Yes! This is the critical point: Peak Cheap Oil. We're pouring money into more and more costly holes in the ground.

We'll never run out of oil; it's never been about running out of oil. We've just run out of the cheap stuff. It's not coming back.

cheeseprocedureon Want to fight climate change? Build more nuclear power

"Sustainable Energy - without the hot air" [1] suggests renewables don't stand a chance at displacing conventional power generation without radical efficiency gains across the board and massive investment in infrastructure. They are not ready to drop in at massive scale.

As for Fukushima: I can't find a single source suggesting there is any danger short of eating fish caught right in front of the facility, which would indeed be a bad idea.

[1] http://www.withouthotair.com/c27/page_203.shtml

cheeseprocedureon Terraform

Looks like you can't pass EC2 user-data to a launch config either, which is frustrating (I'm sure that'll be rapidly fixed, though):

http://www.terraform.io/docs/providers/aws/r/launch_config.h...

https://github.com/hashicorp/terraform/blob/9b0ba70537a440b3...

cheeseprocedureon Migrating From AWS to FB

Maintaining thousands of forwarding/routing configs sounds just as nasty as implementing Neti.

At any rate, Instagram's been around since 2010 and GCE didn't exist until June 2012 (and wasn't generally available until this past December).

cheeseprocedureon Awesome Sysadmin: Open-source sysadmin resources

> Under SMTP Servers: Zimbra - excellent top-of-class email server, and open source.

Zimbra is a groupware suite with Postfix under the hood. It doesn't really belong in that category. (Agreed though... it's fantastic!)

cheeseprocedureon Migrating From AWS to FB

Are you sure? This document suggests GCE instances use the 10.x.x.x address space (just as AWS instances in EC2 Classic do):

https://developers.google.com/compute/docs/instances-and-net...

cheeseprocedureon Apple Introduces iOS 8

Wouldn't it be more sensible to just carry that information in hard copy?

If you're hit by a car and your phone is smashed...

cheeseprocedureon Show HN: Compare book prices across Amazon, Wordery, and the Book Depository

One narrow use case would be textbook shopping. I don't understand the underlying reasons, but the prices of textbooks between e.g. Canada and the UK can be substantial, and more than enough to justify shipping overseas.

cheeseprocedureon Driver caught using cell phone jamming device

Does anyone here work for a wireless service provider? It would be interesting to hear how major sources of interference are identified and dealt with.

cheeseprocedureon A Motion-Sensing Keyboard

I wonder if there's RSI implications when hands-off-keyboard gestures are used more than sparingly.

cheeseprocedureon US Nuclear Missile Silos Still Use Floppy Disks

One would hope so. "Command And Control" is worth a read; it reviews the history of nuclear weapons, focusing mostly on their safety record. (Spoiler alert: it's bad.)

http://www.amazon.com/Command-Control-Damascus-Accident-Illu...

cheeseprocedureon Nuclear plants release less radiation into environment than coal plants (2007)

> The Chernobyl RBMK design is criminal

Indeed - it was considered so poor that the European Union required closure of RBMK-type reactors as a precondition for EU membership.

http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/Safety-and-Security/Safety...

cheeseprocedureon Consul, a new tool for service discovery and configuration

Agreed! I also appreciate that they tend to drop with robust documentation pages already in place.

cheeseprocedureon Using Docker with Github and Jenkins for repeatable deployments

Not sure if Cameyo meets all your needs, but it's worth a look:

http://www.cameyo.com/

cheeseprocedureon Security Hole in Sendgrid

> [...] the lack of bounce/rejection diagnostics [...]

My employer has been making more and more use of SES, and we've just started looking at automated processing of feedback notifications [1]. Did you find them lacking?

[1] http://docs.aws.amazon.com/ses/latest/DeveloperGuide/notific...

cheeseprocedureon Element 14 Holding Orders Based On US Government Watch List

I had no idea grep was so effective in fighting terror.

cheeseprocedureon What side projects did you start in 2014?

Procedural storytelling is something I would LOVE to learn more about. Are there any resources you've found particularly helpful or interesting?

cheeseprocedureon Network Solutions Auto-Enroll: $1,850

My guess is the same legal team that OK'ed this.

cheeseprocedureon You can use Facebook to identify people by their email or phone number

Or use an Incognito window.

cheeseprocedureon How printers and Photoshop detect and refuse to process images of currency

On a related note: many colour printers leave a tiny encoded pattern on each page (based on model/serial/etc), ostensibly to help track counterfeiters. [1] [2]

Unfortunately, they're printed all the time.

[1] https://www.eff.org/pages/list-printers-which-do-or-do-not-d...

[2] https://www.eff.org/issues/printers

cheeseprocedureon I flew on a plane without going through security. It was amazing and no one died

That comparison is valid only if you have data demonstrating that the TSA has successfully deterred/foiled aviation terror plots.

If you have that data (which I'd love to see), there are still powerful arguments that TSA funding would have been better spent in many other ways (better training budgets for security/investigative personnel, more "soft" layers at airports, fewer kneejerk infrastructure upgrades).

cheeseprocedureon Jesse Willms, the Dark Lord of the Internet

It seems like a number of problems (erosion of privacy, abuse of advertising channels, etc) would cease to exist if users were charged some small sum for the use of Web services that are now ad-supported.

As someone who's utterly naive when it comes to building a Web property, I'd like to understand why this idea is bad/hard/crazy. What is a typical set of eyeballs really worth on a high-traffic site? Are paywalls the kiss of death?

cheeseprocedureon Navy sailors have radiation sickness after Japan rescue

Even someone with an anti-nuclear stance should look at an article whose primary source is an attorney suing TEPCO and think "this is not adding anything valuable to the conversation."

cheeseprocedureon Explain Shell

This is brilliant. (I've forwarded it to novices and pros alike, and everyone else's response has been much the same.)

If you were to open up donations to support development, I would HAPPILY contribute.

cheeseprocedureon 'Algorave' Is the Future of Dance Music (if You're a Nerd)

Check out SuperCollider [1] and Csound [2] as well.

[1] http://supercollider.sourceforge.net [2] http://www.csounds.com/

cheeseprocedureon 'Algorave' Is the Future of Dance Music (if You're a Nerd)

Pictured here: nobody dancing.

cheeseprocedureon The Cheapest Generation

I think step 1 should be "reduce the influence of money on electoral outcomes." That would significantly lower the bar to putting pragmatic and thoughtful humans into positions of power without leaving them chained to the well-funded interests that helped put them there.

The problem is, I don't really know HOW to do that.

cheeseprocedureon Skype does a clever trick when bandwidth is scarce

Ha! That was actually my first thought after submitting my comment.