simoncoggins

9 anni fadiscuss

Same happened to me. I think I may have used the social media login via Google, which I'm guessing could get your email into the leak without any password being present.

simoncoggins

13 anni fadiscuss

We signed an NDA so I can't say too much, but the first interview was basically an IQ screening - a full day of computer based tests for maths, physics, memory, spatial orientation etc. The second interview was much more in depth, hands on and focused more on team work. Both were physically and mentally exhausting.

The people I met, particularly at the second interview were pretty remarkable: smart, driven but also friendly and down-to-earth. It was quite intimidating to spend 5 minutes talking to someone and find out they have a PhD in bio-informatics, a masters in computer science and oh, by the way, they fly acrobatics in their spare time.

Still the whole thing was great fun and I came away pretty impressed with the process (and off course the few who got selected at the end).

simoncoggins

13 anni fadiscuss

That wasn't my experience. I got through the first 3 rounds in ESA's most recent astronaut selection, and near the end about half of the candidates were from a military or commercial flight background. The rest typically had significant research experience but almost all them had some kind of flight experience too (private license, parachuting, stunt flying, gliding, etc).

simoncoggins

14 anni fadiscuss

I've seen something similar with a PNG file for user supplied profile image [1]. The image was a 10000x10000 all black PNG image which compresses to a pretty small file size.

Unless you validate the image dimensions as well as the file size it may cause problems, for instance when GD is used to try to resize it exhausted the memory limit.

[1] https://bugs.launchpad.net/mahara/+bug/784978

simoncoggins

14 anni fadiscuss

I'm surprised that they seem to require course creators to build courses using HTML and Javascript, when most online learning environments focus on browser based course builders.

simoncoggins

16 anni fadiscuss

When I was in Nottingham they installed an art installation called the Sky Mirror[1] in the center of town.

Somehow my PhD supervisor (who was a professor in astrophysics at the city's university) ended up get a consulting gig to calculate whether or not there was any danger of it focusing light and blinding anyone.

He ended up doing a media interview, where he explained that carefully placed shields would protect anyone at ground level from being at the focal point, but then he made an off-hand remark that "it might fry a few pigeons". Of course that turned out to be the only line that got repeated in the ensuing media frenzy[2].

I'm not sure that's what they had in mind when they hired him to consult for them, but we found it pretty funny.

[1] http://www.nottinghamplayhouse.co.uk/about-us/sky-mirror/

[2] http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2001/mar/07/paulkelso1

simoncoggins

16 anni fadiscuss

There's a solution here:

http://hintsforums.macworld.com/archive/index.php/t-82501.ht...

'stty -iexten' fixed it for me on my Mac.

simoncoggins

16 anni fadiscuss

I learnt something handy in BASH recently - operate-and-get-next (Ctrl-o). If you type:

  $ echo one
  one
  $ echo two
  two
  $ echo three
  three

Then up-arrow back to 'echo one'. Then press Ctrl-o instead of enter it will execute the command and display the following one in your history ('echo two' in this case).

Very handy for replaying a series of commands.

http://www.faqs.org/docs/bashman/bashref_101.html

simoncoggins

16 anni fadiscuss

Reminds me of these images of Russia made with Digichromatography:

http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/empire/

simoncoggins

17 anni fadiscuss

Surprising that they would choose not to take a cut of sales, as it seems like a natural opportunity to earn some revenue. Then again it might make people more willing to get started and then find themselves needing the Pro features further down the line.

simoncoggins

17 anni fadiscuss

I'm not sure which clients would indicate they were browsing from Antarctica.

All the British stations use a satellite link to the British Antarctic Survey headquarters in Cambridge, UK. The link to the Antarctic is transparent to the outside world so all browsing down on the stations (and ships) appears to come from a Cambridge IP address. I'm sure many of the other Antarctic stations work the same way.

The VoIP phone system works the same way so you can ring the station using a "local" Cambridge number. This often lead to strange conversations when people dialled the wrong number and found out they had accidentally phoned the Antarctic.

simoncoggins

18 anni fadiscuss

I agree, in previous natural cycles it did. Increased temperatures (due to orbital effect) lead to increased CO2, which increased temperatures further, releasing more CO2. A positive feedback mechanism. The problem is that man-made atmospheric CO2 has upset that natural balance (CO2 is now significantly higher than it has been in the last 400,000 years - see second graph). Will that increase global temperatures? Scientists think so, and there is some evidence it is already happening. If so, the results are likely to be very serious indeed. Should we wait to find out?

simoncoggins

18 anni fadiscuss

Indeed it is. This shows global CO2 and temperature data from the last 400,000 years (several ice ages and interglacials):

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/archive/6/63/200611...

Most would agree that they appear to be correlated.

This shows a close up of the increase in CO2 since the industrial revolution (time axis reversed from other plot):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Carbon_Dioxide_400kyr.png

The sudden CO2 increase is consistent with the quantity of CO2 output from human sources.

It is not hard to understand what is happening. I work for the British Antarctic Survey and my girlfriend is an atmospheric chemist. Many of my friends are climate change or environmental scientists. Let me tell you there is as near to complete agreement about what is happening as it is possible to have in science.

Of course it is possible to find some people who disagree. It would be unhealthy if you couldn't. Science works because of debate.

The post is pretty awful, but what really got me was the claim that because 650 is a bigger number than 52 more people are sceptical than support the IPCC. That is laughable:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intergovernmental_Panel_on_Clim...

simoncoggins

18 anni fadiscuss

This link (http://worrydream.com/MagicInk/) from the comments is fascinating also. A long article but well worth a read.

Some of the techniques could be just what a start-up needs to give it the edge over, "just good enough" web apps.

simoncoggins

18 anni fadiscuss

I've often thought this approach makes sense and wondered why it didn't seem more common.

The two challenges are gathering the information and interpreting it. Logging which links are clicked is obviously easy but not necessarily a good indicator of interest (for instance I'll often Ctrl-Click a number of links then read them rather than click one at a time until I find what I want).

It sounds like they are using a representative sample of users with a plug in to allow them to collect more advanced information (such as time spent) which is an interesting approach.

I can imagine that there may be false positives though - for instance a site that looks like it should contain the desired information (but actually doesn't) might occupy users for longer than a page with the answer they want right at the top.

simoncoggins

18 anni fadiscuss

A very interesting article.

My first thought was how it relates to Microsoft as mentioned in this article: http://seekingalpha.com/article/80363-why-microsoft-will-nev... . Their fear of web apps undermining Windows/Office prevented them from taking a lead in the emerging market.

simoncoggins

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