shaddi

Seconded. I wrote a little python script [1] that I use for this that additionally disables my network adapters during work time.

This is going to sound incredibly lazy, but I've found that a good way to keep myself off the internet during break periods (which often leads to extended breaks) is to play a game of Civilization. One turn per break and you'll be so absorbed you won't even think about HN or Reddit.

[1] http://sha.ddih.org/2010/09/04/pomodoro-py/ (it's rough but it works for me)

Damn, really? I've been craving a good bagel shop since I moved out here.

Science calls for repeatable results... I would be happy to volunteer for your future studies.

It sounds like he was making a voluntary donation to the state. Kind of like how I make a voluntary donation to the FreeBSD Foundation to "repay" them for giving me that operating system.

Exactly. Code is for expressing how things are done.* Comments are for expressing why.

* Or if you're not into the whole imperative languages bit, what things are done.

I generally agree with you -- I avoided stating that CS is more similar to math than the physical sciences for the sake of conciseness, and to highlight the science vs. engineering aspect.

That said, I find CS has some elements of what we generally think of as science. We can make hypotheses about unknown (and sometimes even quasi-natural) phenomena, and then test those hypotheses with empirical evaluation. The networking and Internet measurement literature is a good example of this, and I'm sure there are others as well (any measurement study, really). I don't think that's really the case in math.

I wonder how many people here consider themselves scientists versus engineers. I think computer science is in a pretty unique position because people in our field solve both scientific and engineering problems. Indeed, the heritage of our field comes from both mathematics/physics and companies that made things like typewriters. Building computational systems has always required solving problems of both types; I'm not sure this has been the case for a while in other engineering or science fields.

The main distinction that I've seen between EE (at least the part focused on computational things), CompE, and CompSci is what part of the stack you focus on; does this reflect others' experiences, particularly those in EE or CompE?

No clue, I don't know her personally. But speculating from what she writes about on her website regarding her interest in teaching, I would assume she is interested in a faculty position at some point in the future.

I really can't blame her for the self-promotion. I think this in some ways is the academic equivalent of the acquisition: she got the scoop on a really novel idea, she's well positioned to do future work in the area and be recognized as the global expert (catch the "more to come in the next 15-30 years!" in the press conference), and she's really excited about the work. I can only assume biogeochemistry is not having loads of money thrown at it these days so she's smart to take advantage of this opportunity to really make a name for herself.

It was a little off-putting to me when I was watching the press conference, but it's pretty understandable given where she is in her career. If you look at her CV, she just finished her post-doc work last year. This is most likely her first year on the job driving her own research agenda and getting your work published in Science and widely discussed in the mainstream press can only help your tenure prospects.

What happened to everything else that Wikileaks used to host? I remember when it first went live it was an actual Mediawiki site that had a lot of other whistleblower documents. Since this "War Logs" stuff went up I can't seem to find any of the old documents.

Firmware would not necessarily be modified in an attack like this, and this method would detect any persistent changes you make that are written back to NVRAM.

Definitely wise to prevent remote login from outside your LAN though. Also you can always run an IDS like Snort on your router; a proper IDS is probably the cleanest solution to this problem.

Maybe I'm just cynical but I'd imagine the answer would be something like, "The scanner. The devices are safe and we feel their use is important for ensuring the safety of US citizens. Next question?"

I'm having a hard time believing these are all actually Google Maps shots. Would have been nice if they had included a link to the image on Maps.

Main issue is one of scalability: they get a few conscripts covering their one airport and they're done.

Given some of the crap I've seen/faced going through various Israeli checkpoints though, it's just not a system I would want to see implemented in my own country. Anyone can feel free to disagree, but personally I think people should be able to travel freely within their own country without being treated as criminals (or sexually assaulted to prove their innocence, of course).

I mean, in reality TCP congestion control just isn't designed for today's Internet. We live in a world of huge bandwidth-delay products and short connections, the opposite of what was the case when Van Jacobsen proposed it almost 30 years ago (to be fair, it's pretty damn impressive that his basic idea has prevented congestion collapse from recurring despite decades' worth of network evolution). Google's position on window size definitely makes sense in that regard but the very existence of "magic numbers" would suggest that there's room for some fundamental improvement. I think there are some really great ideas in the RCP project [1], which basically uses some information provided by routers to allow all flows to achieve their maximum steady-state fair-share allocation within one RTT. Even if it doesn't see the light of day on the broader Internet, I think it has excellent potential for datacenter networks.

That's article you linked is a really great summary of this issue; thanks for sharing that with me.

[1] http://yuba.stanford.edu/rcp/

    network latency rather than bandwidth had a greater affect on the speed of browsing

This has been well-known for a while. I present to you the TCP throughput equation:

http://www.apps.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3448.html#sec-3.1

The fundamental reason for this result is that the rate that TCP's congestion control algorithm increases the congestion window is tied to round trip time. Congestion window determines how many packets can be "in the air" at any given time, and starts from 1-3 packets in modern OS's.

Moreover, packet loss dramatically reduces TCP performance, and this can happen whenever traffic traverses a congested router along its path: once the router queue is full, packets get dropped, and your congestion window is cut in half and grows slowly afterwards. It might be surprising to some, but the effect of queueing delays can often dominate the effects of propagation delays due to the physical distance that a packet has to traverse.

I know this type of measurement study has been done numerous times; I'm blanking on more recent ones but I know for instance the Rocketfuel project [1] from 2002 did perform large-scale Internet measurements that included link latencies from various vantage points on the network.

[1] http://www.cs.washington.edu/research/networking/rocketfuel/

This comment on the article particularly struck me:

    There was a time in the U.S. history could have launched
    a dozen or so satellites in its sleep. “Need another GPS
    communication satellite? It’s on order. We’ll build it by
    Friday and launch it by Wednesday. We’d do it faster, but
    it’s Presidents Day on Monday, and you know how those Unions
    are with holidays” I read some NY Times articles about the
    U.S. response to the Pearl Harbor attack. How in months, we
    built giant cranes, uprighted ships, and rebuilt our fleet.
    Now, we can’t even build another measly two track tunnel
    under the Hudson river without political posturing.

http://www.cringely.com/2010/11/any-port-in-a-storm/comment-...

    iPhone too, uses FreeBSD at its lowest level ...

Wait, what? Is this just a reference to OSX's BSD heritage or something that I've missed all this time?

At least one other is also replicating it; she seems to be doing a more thorough job as well, as she's explicitly varying the amount of moisture between her samples..

http://sparkasynapse.blogspot.com

First, I made a mistake: 1 in 6 women will be victims of sexual assault in their lifetime. [1] My apologies; despite the mistaken figure it's still a large number. This figure represents the number of women who will claim they have been a victim of sexual violence.

You are claiming that some (likely significant) portion of these claims do not meet your definition of harm or violence. I'm not looking to get into a pedantic argument here about what kind of touching counts as sexual assault, or how far an assailant needs to go before the victim is "really" hurt. All I'm suggesting you do is talk to someone you know who considers themselves a victim and try to understand why they do; I really think you might learn something new. All you've said so far is that sexual assault isn't really a big deal because you don't think it's a big deal -- something of a circular argument.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_assault#cite_note-1

You seem to not understand why people would call this violence, nor why serious harm could come from it. It might behoove you to take time to learn about why others might hold a different position. Not to sound sarcastic, but given that a sixth of women have experienced sexual assault in their lifetimes, it shouldn't be difficult to find someone who has been a victim of this who is willing to share their thoughts with you, especially if you approach them with a sincere desire to understand another viewpoint.

Edit: incorrect statistic.

I should have made more clear I think we're generally in agreement as well. My point was the respond to the implication that sexual assault is just a fact of life for women: it doesn't have to be. It's something we can change, and in that sense it's the job of all of us to make sure it doesn't happen to other members of our community.

In all seriousness, thanks for your articulate and reasoned comment.

She said no, he groped her. What do you propose she should have done to be a "steward of her personal safety"? Live as though every male could attempt to sexually assault her? Is that how you want your wife/girlfriend/daughter going through life? Do you think that's how they want to go through life? Is that how we want female members of the tech community feeling at these types of gatherings?

Look, I appreciate the fact you're trying to make a reasoned, pragmatic argument on an emotional issue. But the fact of the matter is this is a situation that we can change and do something about. Anyone should feel comfortable participating in our community without fearing for their personal safety; we have the ability to support victims and make clear to those who would commit these crimes that it's not something they can get away with, which is not the current status quo.

Interesting approach. Thanks for the clarification.

Robert Pirsig has some words to say on this. If the idea of pursuing quality intrigues you it might be worth your time to take a read through his books, "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" and "Lila".

I keep seeing this come up. I don't think Gmail has ever been noticeably "slow" for me. Which leaves me wondering, what do people mean when they say "Gmail is slow"? Searches take a long time? Delays in sending/receiving mail? Unresponsive UI? Would appreciate some clarification from someone who has this issue.

Probably looked at relationship status changes. I'd personally be interested in seeing the opposite -- i.e., peaks in people starting relationships, as well as the inter-arrival periods of relationships.

Seems like a hammock might be a good alternative.

I once had Cleverbot and an ELIZA clone "talk" to each other. After a few back and forth exchanges, Cleverbot spit out this:

  Eliza clone: What does that suggest to you?
  Cleverbot: A program like Eliza.

Not sure what the Ideapads use for wifi, but there is an issue with the iwlagn driver (what my Thinkpad X61 uses) that disables 802.11n modes. Not a problem if you're using not using 802.11n, but something to be aware of. Check the release notes for details.