gnaffle

He's talking about tea _leaves_ though. With some kinds of tea you should actually throw away the first brew.

Anecdotal, but I've had an one RCD installed and have only seen it trip once in about 15 years, incidentally when my old kettle broke (I could reproduce it instantly by turning the kettle on).

Newer installations will often have an the RCD integrated with the regular circuit breakers, so you get one for each branch (as well as one the covers the entire installation).

When did he say that?

While I think the book was worth the read, I think Isaacson was wrong on so many small and big things and failed to go into others, and he really did a poor job with the book. I recommend the two Hypercritical podcasts about the book, which really goes into some depth about the problems with the book:

http://5by5.tv/hypercritical/42 (starts 18 minutes in) http://5by5.tv/hypercritical/43

Then again, isn't the current Nest made with metal (and I would guess, CNC milled just like Apple computers)?

Well, my feeling was the opposite. I was impressed with the execution, but not the content. My first thought when I read "it's about what we make you feel", was that someone at Sony saw this spot by Apple and decided they wanted to do something similar: http://www.apple.com/designed-by-apple/

They start by saying "we are engineers, but we are also artists", then they spend the rest of the ad creating this separation between engineers and artists, that seems to be common to most electronics companies, like this:

"You don’t wear a TV. You do wear the Personal 3D Viewer. So, we had to rethink our process. We started by designing from the inside out but ended up with a chunky, unwieldy viewer. So we reversed tack and designed the outside first. Only then did we arrange the internal workings and make something desirable to both watch—and wear."

The reality is that Sony has _always_ been focused on how things look and on making things smaller, there are many stories about how their product managers would carry around a wooden replica of the final product as they wanted it to be, challenging the engineers to make it smaller and make it all fit (open up an early MiniDisc player, and you'll see this process at work :).

So this just makes the whole ad look like it's created by a marketing department that doesn't know anything about Sonys history and its design philosophy.

From what I understood, it wasn't the intelligence community that directly requested the changes, but rather the British part of the GSM working group (whatever that was called at the time).

AFAIK LTE/3G security is way better, but as you say it's possible to intercept calls in other ways, either by tapping lines or by doing MITM.

It would be interesting to know if LTE, being packed based, is is susceptible to attacks such as there: http://boingboing.net/2008/06/19/listen-in-on-encrypt.html

I don't think it's manipulative at all. He says that he wishes the pro-drone people would be know more or be more forthcoming about the realities of the drone programs, and that they should be more transparent. The point of view that of the "other" side has also been mentioned many times, by The Guardian and other newspapers.

I find amount of pro-drone comments here quite stunning, including the complete lack of appreciation of how the economies of scale of drones will radically alter the equation of whether these are a good idea or not.

"Now, all right we killed some innocent civilians, but that happens in war and we're at a constant war against terror now so there you go. Lets not jump to any conclusions about drones before all the facts are in!"

All I can say is that these people will probably shut up and at least moderate their views as soon as the police in their country starts deploying drones en masse.

Of course everything is _possible_. But with the added space of DIMM sockets, something has to give. Bulkier laptop, less battery space, or something else. That is why you don't see iPad or iPhone competitors with DIMM sockets either.

Of course Apple doesn't have a big incentive to add such ports, but the fact that they've left them on the desktop Macs and the non-retina (and bulkier) MacBooks are an indication that it's not primarily a business decision, but more likely a design decision.

Didn't the Magic mouse add (touch sensitive) middle and right buttons? Didn't the iPhone 4+ add non-soldered batteries? Didn't the latest Macbook Pros include HDMI output?

It's noteworthy exactly because most people, including you, seem to think that Apple is on a mission to lock down the hardware to the maximum extent possible, and seem surprised when they miss an opportunity to do so.

Yep, I would say that, as far as I remember there were also several other warnings at the same time. There were some recommendations in the accident report regarding UX improvements.

I think there was a similar problems at Qantas Flight 32, where the crew had to spend a lot of time going through 54 error messages after an uncontained engine failure.

That would not be practical or necessary. What is necessary (and is being worked on after AF447) is giving pilots more hands-on flying experience. This is a concern not only for Airbus pilots, but for Boeing pilots as well.

Yep, and this is backed up by all the other airplanes taking off and landing visually that same day without any issues.

I think he might have noticed, but not fully realized the implications of it. His behaviour following at least did not indicate that he was concerned about a stall, and there were no further mentions of this warning.

I think the main problem is the more automation still has to be accompanied with more training of the pilots, up until we have a situationally aware computer that can consistently make better decisions than their human counterparts. For safety critical aviation software, I think we are a few decades away from that.

Well, AFAIK a modern Boeing plane like the 777 / 787 will also prevent stalls just like the Airbus, the difference being that the pilot can override the airplane. So a 777 pilot would also assume that the airplane would normally prevent a stall.

In this accident, I think the main problem was not anything Boeing vs Airbus, but more a lack of experience with hands-on flying visual approaches, and a lack of monitoring, which would quickly have uncovered the fact that the auto-throttle wasn't operating. If the linked PPRune posting has any truth in it, I think we a have a substantial part of the explanation there.

Why would they threaten that? An encrypted laptop would be useless to them without the password. The worst they could threaten you with is denied entry or detainment, so I think it's far more likely that they would threaten with that to compel you to produce the password.

In any case, if you are worried about protecting your data, you put yourself in a pretty bad situation if you rely on encrypting that data and hide the password. Bringing a relatively clean laptop will just avoid the issue altogether and will allow you to be cooperative with them.

Remember that they don't _need_ any cause to deny you entry or detain you, as long as you're not a US citizen.

Actually, what you should do is to carry laptops and phones without much data on them, and during the travel store your real data encrypted somewhere online.

The real risk here is losing your electronic equipment for an extended period of time.

That's a really bad idea, especially if you're not a US citizen. If they want to access your computer, they _will_ call your superior back home and might tell him that they will either get the password or deny you entry.

Great for you, but I think that you understand that not everyone would feel the same in such a situation?

There are many, Eastern Germany is perhaps the worst example where 1 in 6 people were at least part time informants.

So, instead of living a life in relative safety, you get to spend the rest of your life on alert and in fear. I really don't see how you can argue that this would be an acceptable solution.

Agreed. I think even arguing this point shows a lack of understanding of how these cases work. Believing that information equality is the same as power equality is a fallacy.

I'd love for you to ask the person what she would think about you sharing her diary with everyone she knows (her family, her coworkers, her boss etc). Would it be equally meaningless and uninteresting to them?

It's not even about the surveillance state. You never know what will happen in the future and who will use the information. Maybe you're happy with the code you write now, but in 5 years you may regret publishing it for everyone to laugh about. I'm old enough that there are some pretty embarassing usenet posts from me archived forever. Luckily they take quite a while to find nowadays, but I've certainly learnt my lesson.

But I think that's completely untrue. I'd rather argue that most people are too oblivious about what they should and shouldn't keep secret.

What in general would you say people keep secret that adds to their stress?

Maybe some people here on HN might be over the top paranoid, but Joe Average? Sure, maybe they shouldn't have that secret affair and hide it from their spouse, but they probably already know that's a bad thing.

Thanks for this post. This is exactly the issue. No dystopian future is needed to prove the value of privacy, one only has to look back at history to see that.

My implication was that the problem with both communism and capitalism (at their extremes) can only work well under circumstances that aren't met in real life (because humans are what we are). As you say, there are no easy answers, especially so when we face problems that require global cooperation.