Category Archives: Technology and Society

Business, Technology and Society

Microsoft Edge

33 Comments

Will it start the browser war we so desperately need?

I hope so. Everything currently sucks. I’m tempted to do the upgrade to 10 on her machine just to check it out. I might do it on my laptop, too, though I rarely boot it into Windows.

[Update a few minutes later]

This is sort of related: “Farewell to Android.”

I’ve never owned an Apple product, and don’t want to go to an iPhone. I guess I’ll just live with the security issues for now, as I don’t really live on my phone, and only use it when out of the house. Even when traveling, I still use laptop for most of my access. There’s not that much personal data on it to hack.

[Thursday noon update]

New vulnerability found in Androids, that can put it into a “persistent vegetative state.”

I suspect I’m safe; I don’t go to unknown web sites with my phone very often.

[Bumped]

Law, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Technology and Society

Lois Lerner’s Hard Drive

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The curious case of the physical damage to it:

TIGTA’s testimony states that the laptop as a whole appeared undamaged. When Lerner’s laptop was first inspected by both an assigned IT specialist and Hewlett Packard contractor they both stated that “they did not note any visible damage to the laptop computer itself.”

The testimony does not speculate how the hard drive was “scored” while the computer itself remained visibly undamaged. However, given these facts it seems logical to question what — or who — caused the damage to the hard drive.

Hey, “accidents” will happen.

Business, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Technology and Society, War Commentary

The F-35

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I haven’t been following the fiasco that closely, but Richard Fernandez has some thoughts:

The reality of modern day information combat is that China can win a war without killing a single person or disrupting a single reality TV show. What if America could lose World War 3 and not even know it, especially if it relies on its politicians to tell it an attack has occurred.

Sadly true.

Business, Political Commentary, Space, Space Science, Technology and Society

NASA Advisory Council, Day Two

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I’m going to switch from listening to NTSB meeting to hear the status on exploration systems at 9 AM PDT. Phil McAlister will be discussing Commercial Crew status later this morning. I would note that in this morning’s meeting in the House, Chairman Culberson was very enthusiastic (as expected) about the Europa mission, but he still insanely imagines that SLS is the solution to it.

Business, Political Commentary, Space, Technology and Society

The NTSB Meeting On SpaceShipTwo

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I’m listening in live now, but Leonard David already has a story up.

[Update a few minutes later]

Doug Messier has the executive summary. Full report won’t be available for a couple weeks.

[Update a while later]

Temporary adjournment to wordsmith final findings. Sumwalt wants to make clear that while it was pilot error (Finding 1), it was an institutional failure at Scaled that made it possible for such an error to be catastrophic. There also seems to be some (IMO, undue) criticism of FAA-AST, and talk of “political pressure” to prematurely issue licenses/waivers. People (including NTSB) need to understand that AST currently has no statutory authority to regulate safety of the spaceflight participants, including crew, and they are chronically under-resourced to carry out the responsibilities that they are authorized to do. In fact, George should be careful what he wishes for, because if the learning period expires this fall, he still won’t have the budget he needs to expand his authority.

One thing that’s not clear yet (to me): If part of the problem was inability to read instruments due to vibration under thrust. If there was a digital readout, that (and other critical information) should be replaced with an actual Mach meter.

[Late-afternoon update]

Here‘s Jeff Foust’s report.