Slashdot is powered by your submissions, so send in your scoop

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror

Comment Re:Blades of death (Score 1) 148

It's not just blades that are the problem. Typical World Cup speeds in racing disciplines are:
Slalom: 25 mph
GS: 50 mph
Super G: 80 mph
Downhill: 90+ mph

You tell me if you want to hit a drone or ski over a drone at those speeds, never mind the blades. Drones need to be kept farther away from the racers and should never be directly overhead.

Comment Re:Konjac flour already has zero calories (Score 1) 159

noodles made from it already taste good

I've had shirataki noodles before. You can get them in small quantities from your local Asian grocery store if you just want to try them out.

My general impression of them was that there was no taste once properly rinsed, but that the texture ranged somewhere on the spectrum between nauseating and revolting.

YMMV.

Comment Re:Bigger problems (Score 1) 94

If you can convince a user to run a malicious payload, then having an IP address exposed is the least the victim's problems.

It's not as hard as you'd think. All you have to do is convince a user to make a connection to the VPN provider's IP at a specific port.

In a common VPN use case where the VPN user doesn't want his IP known to the world, torrenting, it's pretty easy to convince a torrent client to connect to a specific IP/port: just join the swarm on that specific IP/port and wait for your target's torrent client to connect to you! It doesn't matter how savvy the computer operator is when the torrent client is a dumb piece of software.

If I were to torrent via VPN, I'd definitely be blacklisting my VPN connection's external IP address from my torrent client!

Comment Re: Note if we can stop.. (Score 1) 428

(Usually something someone would call "junk food", but some douchebag somewhere will complain about any food except lettuce.)

I'm just going to be honest. From the other side of the Internet, you are coming across sounding like an asshole. Perhaps others are also being assholes, but that doesn't change the way that you come across.

My experience has been somewhat similar, but somewhat different from yours. I, too, was overweight, and my doctor was giving me a hard time about all sorts of things. Cholesterol, blood pressure, problems in my blood chemistry, and god knows what else. He said that I'd need to go on blood pressure and cholesterol meds soon.

Well, I got my weight down to healthy levels and suddenly all of my other levels were in the normal range, as well. I'm sure it's different for different people, but for me, it seemed being overweight was causing a bunch of health problems.

As for losing weight, as you note, the answer is always "eat less". But the trick bit is how do you do that? It's a simple matter to eat 1500 calories worth of potato chips and soda, yet still feel starving again in a few hours. When most people (myself included) feel hungry and there is food around, the answer is to eat the food, whatever it is. Most people lack the willpower--over the long run--to say, "I'm starving, there is food right here that will take away my pain, but I know that it will make me fat so I'm just not going to eat it." They can deny themselves once. They can deny themselves twice. But sooner or later, they will give in. Some people have above-average willpower, and it sounds like you might be one of those people. That's great for you, but it won't work for most people.

What worked for me was keeping a food log of what I ate, how much, how many calories it was, and most importantly, how long it made me feel satisfied for. Only once I had that information could I eat less without feeling hungry and irritable. And it just so happened that the foods with the highest satiety to calories ratio were high in fiber and protein. Fats also led to satiety, but tended to pack a higher calorie wallop. Anyway, those high in fiber/protein foods tended to be what most people call "health foods". Vegetables, nuts, hard cheeses, cottage cheese, etc. What most people call "junk food" was the worst. It had high calories, but did hardly sated me at all.

So in order to lose weight, I simply banished junk food from my reach and I stock health foods and water in easy reach. I drink water all day long, and when I'm hungry, I snack on high protein/fiber things.

After a while, I started doing weight training. This provides further motivation to continue with the healthy eating, as I am much happier seeing myself looking muscular than seeing my old self. Make no mistake: working out did not help in the "eat less" department. It's definitely got me eating more. But now I'm more concerned with how I look in the mirror rather than a number on a scale. I would advise people starting out in weight loss not to add in exercise as it tends to lead to overeating, and as the old saying goes, "You can't outrun your fork."

I guess my point is that, while I agree with you that eating less is the way to lose weight, I have to point out that for most people, the secret to eating less is to eat "healthy food". Apparently you did not need that, but I definitely did and still do. And for the record, I still eat junk food. But I only do so a few times a week.

Comment Re:Woohoo (Score 1) 56

The target market for the Gear VR is people who already own a Samsung smartphone. I.e. you'd buy the $99 device and plug in the phone that you already have.

If you don't already have a Samsung smartphone, you'd probably be more interested in a dedicated VR headset like the Oculus Rift that's coming out next year.

Comment Re:Comcast giveth and I taketh away (Score 1) 229

They're getting perilously close to the point where that feature will be "TV".

Already did that. I don't miss it even for one minute. Verizon Fios raised my rates by something like 50% so I just sent them all their gear back and am on Internet only. Bought a cheap antenna for digital OTA shows and I'm good to go.

Comment Re:Is that even worthwhile? (Score 2) 113

It's worth it if you only use it to help you decide where to stop for gas. If you're going out of your way to pay a few cents less per gallon, you're wasting your time.

I'll use it to see which gas station of my way to work is cheapest. I know I'm stopping for gas anyway, it's just a matter of where. So why not stop at the cheapest one? Again, I'm not going out of my way. Just deciding which of 15 or so gas stations that I will pass by anyway is getting my business.

Comment Re:Don't buy the cheapest cable (Score 1) 391

Buy the cheapest digital cable that works reliably and don't spend a dime more.

You and grandparent are saying the exact same thing. The point that GP was making is that some of the cheapest of the cheap cables don't even meet the relevant specifications and that that can cause problems.

You don't need cables made out of gold, but you often do need them to conform to the specs. I've had this problem with cheap as shit HDMI cables where my components wouldn't recognize each other until I replaced the cables with monoprice cables. So it's not like I had to spend a ton, but I did have to get actual certified cables.

Comment Re:Don't buy the cheapest cable (Score 1) 391

Even for digital data, really cheap cables often don't meet spec, and can cause frustrating intermittent problems.

I have also experienced this with uber-cheap HDMI cables. Tried to connect components with the cheapest HDMI cables possible (they came for free with some of the components that I bought) and there were problems. I forget what it was, but I think the TV wouldn't talk to to the Blu-Ray or the Tivo or something. I don't remember, but anyway, shit wouldn't talk to each other until I replaced the crap HDMI cables with monoprice cables. Still very cheap, but at least they are tested and meet the relevant specs.

Comment Re:quickly to be followed by self-driving cars (Score 1) 904

If you don't like car payments, then don't finance it. Car loans are, for the most part, a pretty dumb financial decision.

Uhh, no. My car loan is 0.9%, which is less than inflation, never mind my return on the money. I'd have to have rocks in my head to pay cash.

A much better choice is to do your homework and decide on a 2-5 year old model with high reliability

I tried to do that, but nobody is selling their cars these days so the used care market is inflated. I wound up buying new instead.

Comment Re:Too much (Score 1) 574

How likely do you think Trump is to end up as the Republican nominee?

In July of 2011, Michele Bachmann was in second place in the polls and closing in on Mitt Romney. I think the likelihood of Trump ending up as the Republican presidential nominee is equal to the likelihood that Bachmann was going to be the Republican nominee for the 2012 elections. It ain't gonna happen.

Comment Re:No network / firewall / boot problems in ten ye (Score 1) 157

Nope. I have not seen a single physical server in a decade, and at this point, I run everything in AWS. If an instance has a problem, I just snapshot it, kill it, and launch a new one. Once that's done, I can take my time reviewing the logs and state from the failed instance's snapshot to try to avoid future faults.

I literally have every password in /etc/shadow set to *. There is not a single account on any system with a valid password hash in shadow (as is the default on most AWS images). This is why I give zero hoots about brute forcing passwords.

Slashdot Top Deals

Pascal is not a high-level language. -- Steven Feiner

Working...