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salem

361 karma · joined August 1, 2011

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salem··on PostmarketOS: Aiming for a 10 year life-cycle for smartphones
It would be great if phone makers commit to something like this as part of their environmental plans
salem··on Self-Driving Cars Have No Place in Racing, NASCAR Fans Say
Who wouldn't love race car battlebots?
salem··on Kristen Stewart co-authors AI paper
My source?

I would ask what is the source of that quote? The article no longer contains it.

salem··on Kristen Stewart co-authors AI paper
No, they actually did write parts of the paper.

Leaving them out as co-authors would be misconduct.

salem··on Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance SNMP Remote Code Execution Vulnerability
Makes you wonder if they could have made more money by pretending to find them and reporting them to the respective bug bounty programs.
salem··on Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance SNMP Remote Code Execution Vulnerability
So it seems the dump contains at least one legit 0-day, and it's been in use for 3 years.
salem··on Jeep Hackers Are Back Proving Car Hacking Gets Much Worse
Companies that make bluetooth ODB2 devices and smartphone apps should pay attention to this too.
salem··on 64-bit ARM desktop hardware?
There were loads of DEC multia workstations selling cheap at some point. But even those where a pain to get booting into linux of FreeBSD.
salem··on LZFSE compression library and command line tool
There was an Apple presentation that claimed lower decompression energy usage:

https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2015/712/?time=4...

On an iOS device this is a pretty hot path, since it's used to decompress the asset catalog, including some images, so most of your apps on iOS probably already use this algorithm.

salem··on Freedom and security issues on x86 platforms
It's called covert channels. It could be done by flipping some unused/ignored bits in ip4/tcp headers in a stream of traffic that goes past a collection point.
salem··on After Zenefits, Will VCs Rein in Their Unicorns?
But maybe a better chance of getting away with it
salem··on Employee Equity Is Broken – Here's Our Fix
What's wrong for asking for the same terms as the latest round?

Let's acknowledge that there is an opportunity cost for early hires.

salem··on Employee Equity Is Broken – Here's Our Fix
These side-letter deals and exits optimized for founders are probably not legal since they are often not in the best interests of shareholders, but I've never heard of them being investigated.
salem··on Employee Equity Is Broken – Here's Our Fix
Longer exercise windows and more info are great and all, but if you are still expecting employees to take less than market rate salary in exchange for options, you should be giving people the same equity and terms (e.g. liquidation preferences) that investors get for the cash that you forgo.

Founders I've talked to are sympathetic and see it as fair, but none have the courage to try it.

salem··on Self-Driving and Electric Vehicles Will Kill These Businesses
It would probably make taxi medallions worth even less money.

Package delivery subcontractors and couriers might also be out of business if a package delivery can be made on demand - when you are there to meet the car and open the trunk.

If car ownership plummets, and is replaced by on-demand services, businesses making/installing after-market accessories for cars would suffer e.g. stereos, parking sensors, etc.

AAA and other road-side services.

Towing companies would lose much of their business moving illegally parked cars.

salem··on Large Companies Game H-1B Visa Program
I would add one thing, that the quota be issued throughout the year for immediate use. So you get a better signal of the winning compensation thresholds and so that people with serious job offers for highly skilled jobs have a chance at starting work within a couple of months, regardless of the time of year.
salem··on Israel Is Already Selling Kamikaze Micro-Drones That Will Change Modern Warfare
It's got to be cheaper than the USD $246,000 Javalin, which is often used against non-armored targets, like trucks and buildings.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FGM-148_Javelin

It's like a miniature version of the "missile in a box" from the future combat system

http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/cheap-fast-deadly-the-ne...

salem··on Project: A Simple Operating System
I think it was. We got good feedback from TA's who checked our progress to the milestones. At the time I went through, the work was done on the MIPS L4 microkernel, so the boot loader and much of the system init is done already, and all the work was done in C.
salem··on Project: A Simple Operating System
This was hands down my favorite course at UNSW.
salem··on Project: A Simple Operating System
I took this course, and was told that visiting a professor from MIT noted it was comparable to an advanced course there.
salem··on Project Fi by Google
What I'm curious about is the privacy policy. With the automatic VPN usage on wifi and the potential network architecture of the MVNO, Google could be in the path of all your cell phone data traffic. The opportunity to learn more about you for advertising purposes is very very high.
salem··on Project Fi by Google
No, the big difference here is that Google's MVNO is dynamically switching between multiple providers.

Most MVNOs are just resellers of a single network. They may migrate users between networks as contracts expire, but dynamically balancing between multiple networks is less common. I'm sure many people have thought of this idea before (Apple included) but actually getting multiple carriers to agree to a deal is what's interesting about this.

It's also probable only recently feasible with a mass market phone that can handle all the difference frequencies (and potentially different network types) involved.

salem··on Google’s MVNO to offer pay-per GB plans, rollover data, accompanying app, more
This is interesting in the context of Apple's patents on MVNOs

http://techcrunch.com/2011/06/02/apple-wants-to-be-its-own-c...

salem··on Programmers: Before you turn 40, get a plan B (2009)
I'd say micro controllers are pretty relevant to the latest rebranded hotness, the internet of things...

MFC and flash can die though.

salem··on How Growers Gamed California’s Drought
Charge market prices for water, and let the tech industry help with efficiency.

That's how Australia did it: http://irrigation.org.au/documents/publications-resources/co...

salem··on Actually, that 'off target' 1995 anti-Internet column was amazingly on-target
Those pessimistic predictions that were 'correct' are just more difficult problems that don't have slick mature solutions, yet.
salem··on Google to Sell Wireless Service in Deals with Sprint, T-Mobile
It would be very disruptive if Google offered a plan that could dynamically roam between Wifi, Sprint and T-Mobile.
salem··on NASA’s $349M monument to its drift
I think it's pretty unfair to say that this facility does not fit within NASAs new side-job of assisting commercial enterprise with vehicle development.

I'm sure that this facility would be useful to lease to aerospace companies such as SpaceX and Armadillo that will want to QA and optimize their second/third stage engines.

This facility could be a pretty huge competitive advantage to US space industry.

salem··on Is Apple's next product the stylus Steve Jobs said nobody wanted?
Isn't that also classic Steve, dismissing ideas until he is ready to ship his version of it?
salem··on Anesthesia Miracle: No Power, No Oxygen Tanks, No Problem
This sounds like a great example of well meaning donors not really understanding the people they are trying to help.

It would also be exciting to see some of these re-configurations reducing costs in developed countries.

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