From the article:
''But why stop at network data? The NSA also uses some fairly exotic tools to grab computer video, keyboard strokes, and even audio from inside more difficult-to-reach places by using passive electronic devices that are actually powered by radar. These devices, charged by a specially tuned continuous wave radio signal sent from a portable radar unit (operating at as little as 2W up to as much as 1kW of power in the 1-2GHz range), send back a data stream as a reflected signal, allowing the NSA’s operators to tune in and view what’s happening on a computer screen or even listen to what’s being said in the room as they paint the target with radio frequency energy—as well as giving a relative rough location of devices within a building for the purposes of tracking or targeting.''
I call BS on this one, everybody knows radar cant go through cars/walls. It would be a too big of an equipment to be of any practical use.
And according to them, valgrind (and linux) can be qualified as beautiful piece of code[1]:
"Valgrind is perhaps the most amazing and useful developer tool in the world. Valgrind is a simulator - it simulates an x86 running a Linux binary. (Ports of Valgrind for platforms other than Linux are in development, but as of this writing, Valgrind only works reliably on Linux, which in the opinion of the SQLite developers means that Linux should be the preferred platform for all software development.) As Valgrind runs a Linux binary, it looks for all kinds of interesting errors such as array overruns, reading from uninitialized memory, stack overflows, memory leaks, and so forth. Valgrind finds problems that can easily slip through all of the other tests run against SQLite. And, when Valgrind does find an error, it can dump the developer directly into a symbolic debugger at the exact point where the error occur, to facilitate a quick fix."
[1] https://www.sqlite.org/testing.html
I was reading [1], and was lectured on how the sun can be used as telescope and a very potent one, btw. Picture at [2]. Searching, I found the linked article. Quote:
"I anticipate that there will be a host of FOCAL space missions launched in all directions around the Sun, each probe launched in the direction exactly opposite to the star to explore with respect to the Sun position…. A FOCAL space mission could be used to magnify anything of interest outside the Solar System. One should then say that FOCAL will be used to magnify the nearby planetary systems, meaning not just the nearby stars themselves, but also their planets, halo disks, Oort clouds, etc."
According to some comments in the article (specially andy's, very informative), one could see another stars' Mercury! Very impressive. And since all EM range is focused, one can use the focal point for radio communication, ala NASA space network[3].
Some catches though: we need to send a probe to 550AU. That would take almost 200 years. Talk about planning ahead :).
From the article:
"...a black box monitoring of the system is not sufficient. Black box monitoring, including external monitors, canaries, and so on, only tell the system which side of an externally visible failure boundary a system is on. Many kinds of systems, including nearly every kind that includes some redundancy, can move towards this boundary through multiple failures without crossing it. Black-box monitoring misses these internal state transitions. Catching them can significantly improve the actual, real-world, durability and availability of a system."
The author uses RAID, but this observation is valid for systems in general.I really wished that was some kind of guidance, manual or best practices available on how to design and/or auto-regulate those internal state transitions.
Not sure if you are joking but I use bookmarks as my preferred read-later tool.
Firefox helps a lot with sync, open all in tabs, bookmark all and click/drag to reorder links.
I just put the link in "atHome" folder so to read it with more attention at,you guessed, home.
The folder "atWork" is reserved for links where I must run some code, test some new library, etc due to more powerful machine.
I have another folder "daily", for sites I visit every day (hn, soylentNews, hackaday, etc) and long posts eg with chapters (books, for instance);
The folder "Weekly", for low volume sites, basically comics.
This, together with some speed reading, BS skipping and troll detect works very well, to the point Im often run out of things to read.
I liked how he challenged our edge-detection NN in lesson 3. With a gray paper, it is possible to use a dark and white pencils, making 2D looks like 3D.
He does it again in lesson 8, drawing some leaves.
"A black man with an IQ of 85 and a white man with an IQ of 85
are about equally likely to have the character traits of poor impulse
control and violent behavior associated with criminality — and
both are far more likely to have them than a white or black man with
an IQ of 110" -Eric S Raymond