Category Archives: Technology and Society

Business, Technology and Society

Big Brother In Redmond

10 Comments

This seems like a good reason not to enable Cortana:

Section 7b – or “Updates to the Services or Software, and Changes to These Terms” – of Microsoft’s Services EULA stipulates that it “may automatically check your version of the software and download software update or configuration changes, including those that prevent you from accessing the Services, playing counterfeit games, or using unauthorised hardware peripheral devices.”

And they decide what is and isn’t “authorized.”

Law, Technology and Society

Got A Drone?

14 Comments

Here’s now to fly it by the FAA rules.

I’ve been thinking about picking up a cheap quadcopter just to play with, but probably not one big enough to require filing a flight plan.

[Late-morning update]

Man versus drone versus the law:

I personally like some of the quirkier aspects of old English law. I think limiting self-help against drones to thrown T-shirts would make a wonderful common law rule. If you can take it down by throwing a T-shirt at it, then it’s too damn close. If not, then tough luck.

“Excellent. We could call it the rule of ‘quod tangit tunicula.'”

Heh.

Law, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Technology and Society

Hillary’s Emails

18 Comments

Do they all still exist?

The Denver based company that Hillary hired to watch over her server, Platte River Networks, says it is highly likely that a full backup of all of Hillary’s emails was made from her old server before it was wiped clean. This calls into question how truthful Hillary has been with the voters and law enforcement.

You don’t say.

Platte River networks is not a suspect in any crime and is cooperating fully with the FBI. Hillary must hate that.

Yes.

[Monday-morning update]

Just pardon Hillary now:

Not only would a pardon have legal consequences. It would have political ones. It would be a tacit endorsement of Clinton, a message to Biden not to run. Scrutiny of Clinton would fade. A few news outlets might continue to dig around—we at the Washington Free Beacon will never, ever stop—but most reporters, who’d rather not be writing about this scandal anyway, would turn elsewhere.

Obama would look magnanimous. The country would be spared years of Clinton drama it doesn’t want. A pardon would be a final display of Obama’s moral superiority to the woman he defeated long ago—exactly the sort of self-righteous gesture that most appeals to him.

As Elizabeth Price Foley notes, he’s not being serious, of course, but it is fun to tweak this gang of corrupt thieves and liars. As Nixon said, he gave his enemies the weapons they needed to destroy him. So has Hillary. And I suspect, at this point, one of those enemies is Barack Obama.

[Update a couple minutes later]

Former CIA operative: “You or I would be fired and maybe jailed for this.”

It’s almost as though, in these peoples’ minds, the greater the responsibility, the least the accountability.

[Update a while later]

Surprise! The discovery of thousands of emails that the State Department denied the existence of in 2013:

…this has to be either willful incompetence or a conscious effort to obstruct a court order. If they missed a few responsive e-mails, I’d chalk it up to incompetence; if they missed the most responsive e-mails in an avalanche of data, willful incompetence might still be a good explanation. This looks much more like obstruction of justice, and perhaps the judge in this case may be persuaded to haul State Department officials into court to testify under oath about it. The court can start with John Kerry and start working downward.

At least we still have a judicial branch. It doesn’t seem like we have a Justice Department any more.

If she’s not prosecuted for this, a lot of people who have been will have a good equal-protection case for clemency.

[Update a while later]

Who down-domained the information?

As noted, whoever it is should be questioned. Maybe with conditional immunity.

Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space, Technology and Society

“The Ferrari Of Rocket Engines”

39 Comments

This is what happens when a reporter has no idea what is going on, and is simply an uncritical stenographer for NASA PAO and officials:

“It is the most complicated rocket engine out there on the market, but that’s because it’s the Ferrari of rocket engines,” said Kathryn Crowe, RS-25 propulsion engineer.

“When you’re looking at designing a rocket engine, there are several different ways you can optimise it. You can optimise it through increasing its thrust, increasing the weight to thrust ratio, or increasing its overall efficiency and how it consumes your propellant. With this engine, they maximised all three.”

The resulting engine, according to Martin Burkey of the SLS strategic communications team, blows everything we currently have out of the water.

“They ‘maximized’ all three.”

Know what they didn’t optimize? They didn’t optimize on cost. Nowhere in that article does it mention that those are actually reusable rocket engines, from the Space Shuttle. But they’re going to throw them all away the next time they use them. Ferraris are expensive, too, but at least they don’t throw the car away each time they take it for a drive.