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Comment Re:Taiwan is Part of Canada? (Score 4, Informative) 32

I was referring to the overseas murder statute in the U.S., 18 U.S.C. sec 1119. It prohibits murder of a U.S. citizen overseas, but only applies to U.S. nationals, i.e., citizens. Because the defendant is Canadian, he cannot be prosecuted in the U.S. for killing a U.S. citizen overseas. He is a free man unless and until they can prove he planned or covered up the crime in the U.S.

Submission + - Jury verdict of $23.2 million for wrongful death based on Gmail server evidence (andrewwatters.com)

wattersa writes: In 2022, I wrote here about a complex missing person case, which was partially solved by a Google subpoena that showed the suspect was logged into the victim's Gmail account and sent a fake "proof of life" email from her account at the hotel where he was staying alone after killing her.

The case finally went to trial in July 2025, where I testified about the investigation along with an expert witness on computer networking. The jury took three hours to returned a verdict against the victim's husband for wrongful death in the amount of $23.2 million, with a special finding that he caused the death of his wife. The defendant is a successful mechanical engineer at an energy company, but is walking as a free man because he is Canadian and no one can prosecute him in the U.S., since Taiwan and the U.S. don't have extradition with each other. It was an interesting case and I look forward to using it as a model in other missing person cases.

Comment The article is, itself, a perfect example. (Score 1) 249

It's full of ads (at least 80% of the screen as you scroll) and auto-playing videos that prevent me from reading in normal, logical order. I don't think they even realized the meta irony of posting an enshittification article that is, itself, enshittified. What the hell happened to Ars Technica? And Slashdot for that matter?

Comment You're my twin, no joke (Score 5, Interesting) 112

I have done exactly the same thing, also since 1999, and I've also been faced with the same issue. My conclusion is that the benefit of continuing to understand all of my code is greater than the benefit of attempting to standardize it with someone else's framework. The problem with using a framework is, in my opinion, (1) not understanding fully how it works, and (2) not being able to just take a blank file and write a script into it-- and (3) what if the framework falls out of favor or someone pulls the plug on supporting or updating it? There is no substitute for being able to hand-code PHP from a text editor, which results in a deep understanding of the LAMP stack and many other benefits. Lately I have hired a new software engineer and tasked him with learning this method of writing code, and he says it's a wonderful experience because now he understands how a web application really works. I also have code that has run perfectly for many years, and it would take a lot of person-hours to convert it. So my vote is no, don't bother transitioning your code to a framework.

Comment Waiting for this for years (Score 2, Interesting) 82

My whole challenge with a recent computer vision project is maximum performance, and we initially chose C++ and x86 assembly because we simply don't think that interpreted Python is fast enough for what we need to do. If what they are saying in their product unveiling post is all accurate, in addition to having high performance, Mojo will save a large amount of time and money by letting us recycle existing Python code and knowledge instead of essentially creating new C++ and assembly code. Chris has an amazing track record and this new project shows leadership in the field. Can't wait to try it.

Comment Re:Two-tier justice system (Score 1, Insightful) 46

You are absolutely correct.

This case is in the less than 1% of cases where the victim's family can afford to do something. This investigation lasted three years and cost the family more than $100,000 for two lawyers and a substantial amount of work during that time.

One idea I broached to the state Attorney General, whose office I've been corresponding with, is publishing a web page about this statute that explains the process. At least that way, the family has the option of doing a GoFundMe and then hiring a lawyer to execute this model.

Comment Response to your questions (Score 1) 8

Long-term (1998-present) user here. Will try to answer your questions.

> What do long-term Slashdotters think of the changes over time?

Due to the stagnation of Slashdot (going from 1,000+ comments on popular stories to 20-50), Reddit seems to have captured much of the Slashdot audience by offering a more user-friendly system, as well as hyper-specialized subreddits that address every area covered by Slashdot. Example: Reddit lets any user post a story in almost any subreddit, without moderation. That gives a more "raw and uncut" experience but also gives an organic way of seeing what other people think are hot stories. On Slashdot, the Firehose is useful and seems like an attempt at the same functionality, but it's not the same.

> How would you make Slashdot better?

I would democratize editorial choices on the front page and also make the front page non-linear. The front page is too tied to chronological ordering and not enough based on what is actually popular.

> Was ending what made Slashdot famous in favor of SEO-centric content readily available everywhere else a good thing?

No, that's what made Slashdot great.

> Would you prefer the genuinely techy "News for nerds, stuff that matters" character of Slashdot restored? Do you like it better as a generic news site or something else?

Yes, it is much better as a news for nerds website than trying to be everything to all people.

> What's your opinion of editorial quality in recent years vs pre-2012 Slashdot?

Poor.

> What would you like to tell the owners?

Bring back the old Slashdot.

> Please post at length because most current users have little or no idea of what Slashdot once was.

That's sad. This website is a shell of its former self. I wish I could do something other than write this comment.

Submission + - Complex international missing person case solved with subpoena to Google

wattersa writes: I am a lawyer in Redwood City, California and a Slashdot reader since 1998 (not sure when I registered, lol). I recently concluded a three-year missing person investigation that unfortunately turned into an overseas homicide in Taiwan. I was authorized by my client to publish the case study on my website, which is based on our recent court filings and is linked here:

https://www.andrewwatters.com/...

There is an apparently rarely used statute in California that allows conservatorship of a missing person's estate (Probate Code sec. 1849). After a couple weeks of pre-lawsuit investigation, I filed that case in late 2019 and then used the subpoena power to try to solve the disappearance, which seemed appropriate. We solved the case in late 2020 due to a fake "proof of life" email that the suspect sent from the victim's email account, which he sent from a hotel where he testified he was staying alone on the night of the disappearance-- after (according to him) dropping off the victim at the local train station. The victim could not have sent the email from the other side of Taiwan, which is where the email indicated it was from. This is similar to the case of U.S.A. v. Brimager, a prosecution under 18 U.S.C. sec. 1119 in which the defendant sent fake emails from the victim's account and later pled to overseas murder in Panama. The suspect in my case is a Tony Stark-level supergenius with a Ph.D. and dozens of patents, who works at a prominent engineering company in California. He is currently wanted in Taiwan.

The case was solved with a subpoena to Google for the login/logout history of the victim's Gmail account and the originating IP address of the proof of life email. Although Google does not include the originating IP address in the email headers, it turns out that they retain the IP address for some unknown length of time and we were able to get it.

When it became clear that this case was a homicide, co-counsel and I dismissed the conservatorship case and filed a wrongful death case against the suspect in 2021. We continue to gather information through subpoenas, depositions, and interviews, all of which show that the victim died in a 10-hour window on November 29, 2019. The wrongful death case goes to trial in late 2023 in Santa Clara County. This is a rare case in which the family can afford an expensive, lengthy, attorney-led private investigation.

This obscure statute in the Probate Code was instrumental in solving the case because we didn't have to wait for law enforcement to take action, and we were able to aggressively pursue our own leads. This gave the family a sense of agency and closure, as well as the obvious benefit of solving the disappearance. Also, Taiwan law enforcement could not do subpoenas from Taiwan, so we ended up contributing to their investigation to some extent as well.

This model of using the missing person conservatorship statute to solve cases appears innovative, in my opinion. I would like to draw people's attention to it in the service of missing person cases generally, as well as the use of electronic evidence from civil subpoenas to develop cases independently of any criminal justice stakeholders who typically hold all the cards.

Submission + - Source code of postScript publicly released (computerhistory.org)

guest reader writes: The Computer History Museum is excited to publicly release, for the first time, the source code for the breakthrough printing technology, PostScript.

From the start of Adobe Systems Incorporated (now Adobe, Inc.) exactly forty years ago in December 1982, the firm's cofounders envisioned a new kind of printing press—one that was fundamentally digital, using the latest advances in computing.

Comment Summary of article/post (Score 5, Informative) 166

I devoted most of today to reading Dr. Wolfram's blog post and technical papers, and I've had some time to digest this. I am very impressed. Yes, the size of his ego is basically infinite, but it's worth looking past that in order to gain real insight from what he proposes. From the perspective of an enthusiast researcher, at least, this appears to be a groundbreaking discovery in the area of theoretical physics and new ways of looking at many problems. I can forgive that it's also a long-form advertisement for Mathematica (full disclosure: I'm a Wolfram customer for Mathematica).

I interpret his central theory as being that space is a lattice of infinitesimal nodes with relations between them defining "space," which emerge from a simple rule of substitution iterated around 10^500 times since the beginning of the universe. He explains a surprisingly large amount of properties and equations (including Einstein's equations, dark matter, the speed of light, etc.) using only the geometric and relational concepts he describes. It's truly impressive and I strongly believe this work has applications in, among other things, relational databases.

He speculates that our universe is "approximately" three dimensional. That leaves an interesting question. Until reading his persuasive article, I refused to believe that we live in non-Euclidean space. But now I'm not sure anymore. If I had to guess, I think we're going to discover that there are "Pi" dimensions.

He presents a novel theory that "oligons," which would be far smaller than the Planck length, are the source of dark matter halos around galaxies. He believes we are only scratching the surface and are looking at the "big" particles in the Standard Model. He presents arguments for why his estimates of the masses of particles are so small and what it means.

You also get the sense that Dr. Wolfram is seriously dedicated to this cause; he is open-sourcing his research and tools plus internal video documenting the process. I was left with a sense of wonder that there are people like Dr. Wolfram out there who are dedicated enough to spend millions of dollars of their own money proving their research. Fortunately, he still has a lot of good years left and it seems like maybe a fundamental theory of everything is within reach, possibly even within his lifetime. It's obvious he wants to live to see it, and that is great to see.

Submission + - Stephen Wolfram presents a new fundamental theory of physics (stephenwolfram.com)

wattersa writes: Mathematician/Physicist Stephen Wolfram, founder of Wolfram Research and creator of the technical computation program Mathematica, has announced a discovery in the area of theoretical physics. His long-form blog post discusses the emergence of physical properties of our universe from what he describes as simple, universal, computable rules. He claims the emergent properties are consistent with relativity and quantum mechanics through a 448-page technical paper on the subject, which is posted on a completely new website that just went online.

Comment What it looks like in 8K (Score 4, Interesting) 21

I have a 8K monitor...here is what the original video looks like at native resolution. Wow! BTW, it only plays properly with GPU acceleration enabled in ffplay (with Nvidia GPU: ffplay -vcodec hevc_cuvid First-8K-Video-from-Space~orig.mp4). Otherwise, it's unwatchable. Here are some screenshots: http://www.andrewwatters.com/r...
There are a lot of stuck pixels in the camera they are using.

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