admford's comments

I also received this email, and there have been a number of similar emails in the past that seem to be from the same person/group that advocate various conspiracy theories. You can probably find copies of those emails on forums or other places on the web.

Personally, I think that universities in Italy just stuff you full of theory and practical, hands on work is extremely limited. I did Aerospace Engineering in Milan, and it was all books and nothing else (I started supplementing my studies with high powered model rocketry just to keep me interested in the courses, it didn't last long).

If you're passionate about a profession, that you know you have talent in it, then use it. A degree is just a piece of paper showing that you've gone through the usual path that says "you know the subject". What most companies look for is what's in your portfolio. What kind of projects do you help out on github? Do you make your own programs, just to make them and see what you can do?

I've heard stories of some game developers that literally did a game a week and posted them on their own site. Sure the games were crappy most of the time, but it showed how that person advanced in their knowledge in game development and design. And if that's not your thing, grab an Arduino and start messing around with it, make some projects (like an internet or android remotely controlled robot, make a weather station and a website for it, anything like that).

Your business card as a programmer is not what courses you finished or how well you did, but how well you know how to apply your knowledge to the real world. These small projects are your calling card.

Even if you're down in a rut, just look around for inspiration, or just pivot and try something else for a while. The road in one's life isn't linear, so you can't expect to continue to find inspiration/motivation doing the same thing over and over again continuously.

Same here, been out of the States for 15 years and family have our own business. We've been paying taxes locally and filing tax returns yearly for the States. There's a minimum which one can make before they have to pay taxes to the US (about $70-80,000 a year individually).

For an average person or family, it's hard to reach this amount, and as said before you can write off taxes paid in a foreign country.

Though the main problem would be if you're registered as a Professional and individual business (contractor/consultant). Then you're liable for taxes in both the country you live in, and the US. I've been made a number of offers of work as a contractor and had to refuse (due to low pay since companies didn't want to hire employees only contractors, the fact I'd have to pay for all benefits, and also on top of that pay taxes on what ever I made).

A bit of a stupid argument by the blog's author. Marathon, Marathon 2 (1994, 1996) were released originally only for Mac OS, and only later ported to PC. Heck, even Halo was originally supposed to be a Mac only product, before Bungie was bought out by Microsoft.

The economics of making top tier games requires a large platform in order to have some kind of return of investment. Do you make a game that costs 100M or more, and release it on a platform that has 10% of the PC market? If you include the number of consoles on the market, the Mac market percentage drops. So the return on investment is even harder to achieve, and even less acceptable to investors.

But does this mean that Macs don't have good games? No, if you can wait for releases to be ported, then any casual gamer can use a Mac as their primary game machine. It all depends on the type of person one is when it comes to games. The ones who really want to get the most recent games as soon as possible, consoles are the way to go, and not PCs.

Oil cooling in general is more useful in overclocking situations where one uses a TEC. The main problem with TEC cooling is that you can get under 0 degrees, and that leads to condensation on the logic board (not something one would want). Mineral Oil freezes at around -30 degrees C, so you can cool components below zero without having those problems. Though if you're using TECs for cooling, then efficiency isn't something that one would be interested in.

Otherwise, mineral oil needs pumps, and in general could be harder to design cooling components due to the different density of the fluid. High surface area coolers that are used with fans might not let the oil pass through fast enough to limit heat accumulation. You'd need to design laminar flow heat sinks and pumps that keep the oil flowing over the most critical parts. If one pump fails, you risk localized overheating. At least with standard fan/air cooling you can have multiple fans that keep the hot air from staying in the case (or some racks have A/C vents entering from the bottom front and exit from the top rear to keep positive pressure and continuous cooling.

The limiting factor could be logic board design to make sure there's no turbulence between the components and cooling equipment so there aren't any hot spots that could damage components. It's costly engineering and you risk starting to make or use parts in non standard sizes or designs.

Oh this is a classic move by Nvidia. I had a gaming PC with two GeForce 8800 GTX cards in it. I used a softmod to get them to be recognised as Quadro 4600's so I could work better in Solidworks.

NVidia makes decent video cards and such, but they're almost all based off a single reference design. It saves money on component costs and production time for third parties. Why make three different boards, using three different GPUs, when all you need to do is determine how much RAM you want to stick on it and choose the component layout for the specific product.

100km per charge is about 62 miles. That's less than what's advertised for the Nissan Leaf. Given the cost, I also wonder how well will it hold up to EU and US crash tests.

Also, the brochure says it's top speed is 83km/h (51mph). The Leaf can do 150km/h. Additionally, the kerb weight of the E2O is 830kg. The Leaf is 1521kg & the G-Wiz is 400kg.

This car isn't a revolution, it's just a built up G-Wiz. The E20 and the G-Wiz have similar speed limitations and range. So this is just a competitor to the G-Wiz (which is also built in India by REVA).

Here's the link to the brochure. http://www.mahindrae2o.com/pdf/e2oFutureofMobilityBrochure.p...

> Visit NY for a week or two.

I can also agree to this. I was more or less in the same boat (possibly a bit worse at times). I had my idea for a startup and decided to use it as an objective to get me moving forward again. The first step for me was going to London and checking out the startup scene there (Techhub). It in a way, it gave me a boost and energy to flesh out my ideas and plans.

Sometimes, a change of atmosphere helps give you the initial push that one needs to move forward.

The problem with a pod system is weight and complexity. Generally speaking, you'd need to create at least two pressure vessels (main cabin, and cockpit), which would have to be joined by a hermetically sealed passage.

Between the inner pod, and the outer skin, you'd need to make sure that doors would work in almost any condition. Sure, you can blow the bolts holding the tail on and use parachutes to make the pod descend, though without the pilots since they're in a separate pressure vessel. But what if there's a fire when the plane is on the ground? Parachutes won't work in that situation, and neither would ejection rockets (unless you want to crush the passenger's spines by launching a multi-ton pod high enough for parachutes to deploy).

The main problem facing airlines is simple. How to pack in as many people as possible onto a flight in order to cover it's costs (airport fees, fuel, food, wages, etc.). More people who can cover the flight's costs means more profit for the airline, or lower costs for the passengers.

The real question with the Pod idea is this. Either way people have to board through a door and go to their seats, so that remains the same. But consider this, would people have to board a pod immediately at the gate, or would they wait in a lounge until the plane arrives? Because if they board the pod immediately, it may save time, but passengers will be sitting in cramped seats, with only airline food, and the limited toilet facilities available for possibly HOURS (if the plane is delayed or the flight cancelled in the end. Since these passengers are not physically ON the plane, the passengers' rights would be questionable in these situations.

Technically you could also fill out a pod and have it wait in a holding area on the airport tarmac while the plane arrives, freeing up gates for other airlines. But this impacts the airport retail system (restaurants & stores), which all pay rent to airports. If you eliminate passengers waiting in gates, you eliminate the need for retail. You eliminate retail, you make it that airports would increase fees for airline operations at the airport. And in the end, it would impact ticket prices negatively.

1. You can probably design a cross structure that would hold cabin cylinders as so:

O|O --- O|O

But it creates a problem. The surface area of an A380 is about 1009 mˆ2 (45 meters long, 7.14 wide). If we use four 727 (a narrow body airliner) as models for the cabin tubes. The surface area of one tube that size is 537.2 mˆ2 (45 meters long, 3.8 wide). Multiply the result by 4 tubes, you get 2149 mˆ2. That's an increase of 213% in surface area.

Given the structural reinforcements within the host aircraft, the need of aerodynamic surfaces to make sure four interlocking tubes don't create dangerous aerodynamic forces & stresses, and the fact that just for the outer covering, the weight of the tubes increases twofold over a standard A380. A minimum reduction in weight would have to be at least by 50%, if not more in order to be competitive. The 787, with a fully carbon fiber fuselage and other weight saving methods reduces weight by 20% at most over a comparative aluminum structure (http://www.boeing.com/commercial/aeromagazine/articles/qtr_4...).

At this point, the use of separate cylinders to hold people and cargo is more or less moot since the weight reductions needed aren't currently possible (physically, or economically), even with the newest materials.

Interesting article, but there are some flaws in the author's reasoning.

1. Containerizing passenger space.

Not a good idea, it would require a massive re-engineering effort in the structure of the cabin, since a whole tube is a much more reliable pressure vessel rather than half of one with a 90 degree angle where the floor meets the wall. You generate a ton of stress at those joints with pressurization cycles. Hard angles were in part what doomed the first generation of De Havilland Comets. You can possibly add a smaller, whole tube in the cabin area, but then you get the space of a narrow body aircraft & increase weight.

Reinforcing the rest of the structure of the aircraft if you remove the cabin area would also add in a ton of weight. We all know how a cylinder of paper can support many times its weight in compression, cut a big hole in one side and it will collapse. The survivors of Aloha Airlines Flight 243 didn't know if the floor structure of the 737 alone would be strong enough to survive a landing without having the plane break in two.

2. Meshed chairs.

The FAA requires that all aircraft chairs withstand a 16G impact in order to keep passengers safe. There's a reason why the seating is so heavy and bulky, it's to keep us safe during an accident. The seat structure absorbs most of the impact, so our spines and legs don't. Mesh chairs may be cool (both figuratively and literally), but I doubt they'll hold up to 1.5 tons of impact force (16 times the average weight of an American male, 191 lbs) without tearing.

3. Noise

The 787 is heading in partially the right direction to reduce cabin noise. Other than the air rushing by the plane, most noise is from the air conditioning units, and general vibration of the structure. Most planes use bleed air from the turbofan to pressurize the cabin. Basically you take some of the hot air from the compressor stage of the engine and send it through different parts of the plane (to the wing leading edges for de-icing as an example). A good part of this superheated air is sent to the airconditioning units which work to cool it down and direct it into the cabin. The 787 eliminates bleed air completely, and uses other means (mainly electric alternatives) for most systems. Additional insulation & physical isolation of parts that can induce vibrations into the structure also help.

Much like Nixon's Madman theory when it came to US foreign policy in the early 70's.

From the Evernote support pages:

What type of encryption does Evernote Use?

If you encrypt text within a note, we derive a 64-bit RC2 key from your passphrase and use this to encrypt the text. This is the longest symmetric key length permitted by US Export restrictions without going through a complex process to gain export approval.

We do not receive any copy of the key or your passphrase, or any escrow mechanism to recover your encrypted data. I.e., if you forget your passphrase, we can't recover your data.

User authentication (i.e. username + password) is always performed over SSL when you communicate with Evernote. This uses 1024-2048 bit RSA keys and a symmetric session key that's negotiated between your client/browser and our server.

The data in user notes is also transferred via SSL.

Several of the company's founders come from a strong encryption background (founders of CoreStreet, recently acquired by ActiveIdentity). For Evernote's consumer product, the current encryption algorithms are chosen more for exportability under the Commerce Department rather than strength, since our software permits the encryption of arbitrary user data with no escrow.

We'd be interested in offering something stronger in the future when we have the staffing to fight the lengthy export battle, but Premium users can currently use an external encryption solution to encrypt important files and then add these encrypted into Evernote.

Ugh, real nice. The country which I live in is in 72nd position. Given the next elections here, I wouldn't be surprised if we dropped even lower.

Third from last in ALL the EU nations isn't something a country should stand for.

Seems that Twitter it's self is trying to fill the hole left by Instagram.

http://allthingsd.com/20121208/twitter-aims-to-release-photo...

It might just be me, but the Apple logo seems to be a sticker put on the ad, and not an icon in the actual picture. The other icons and shapes are a bit skewed on the screen due to orientation & perspective, while the Apple logo isn't.