Posts by Scott Broukell

Trump backs Oracle as potential TikTok buyer

Re: How to do business in America 2020

A vote for Trump is a vote that will uphold the 'Merican Cuntstitution.

Google to pull plug on Play Music, its streaming service that couldn't beat Spotify, in favour of YouTube Music

Potify - An app which plays especially soothing/calming music and or sounds to assist toddlers (and thier parents), who are going through toilet training - just a thought. [I feel sure many here will feel the urge to poo poo the idea though.]

Bill Gates debunks 'coronavirus vaccine is my 5G mind control microchip implant' conspiracy theory

UPDATE FAILED - Please remain calm and remain seated. You may be feeling a bit blue and you may experience the visual illusion of random hexadecimal bits of text floating in front of your eyes. Please do not be alarmed. Please take pen and paper a write down as much information about the thoughts and feelings you are experiencing right now and send it to: Evil Bill, 10 The Secret Volcanic Lair, California. Please also include as much personal information about yourself as you can. Our engineers are working on a solution. Thank you.

Please sit down quietly for a bit, an update for your 5G Mind Control chippery is in progress. This could take some time. Please do not attempt to operate machinery or drive a vehicle whist the update is in progress. Please remain seated until the update has finished. Please close all of your current absent-minded thoughts and memories - failure to do so may result in memory loss and/or the onset of dementia. Thank you.

Detroit Police make second wrongful facial-recog arrest when another man is misidentified by software

You have been found guilty of causing our shiny new facial recognition system to malfunction by means of your own deliberate actions posing as another individual and causing a misidentification event to occur with the result that a potential miscarriage of justice may, or will, have occurred and valuable police time and court facilities have been wasted. It is therefore the courts final decision that you will need to be terminated forthwith in order to prevent further such errors occurring in the future. Next ....

Brit MP demands answers from Fujitsu about Horizon IT system after Post Office staff jailed over accounting errors

Computers seldom make mistakes, they just respond to a series of commands and carry out those commands without giving them a second thought, in fact no thought goes on at all. Humans on the other hand are very good at making mistakes and worse, very good at putting the blame onto some one or something else, in order to draw attention away from their errors. This is such an absolutely disgusting tale of blindly putting computational results above the human level that I believe many people involved actually began to think that they had indeed made errors! What I can't understand is that testing the system thoroughly, proir to release, should have shown up the system errors that led to this sorry mess! So, to my mind at least, whomsoever commited the system to go live, without having a thorough enough testing regime to spot such errors, should carry the can in this case.

Legal complaint lodged with UK data watchdog over claims coronavirus Test and Trace programme flouts GDPR

Is it just me, or should we all be a little worried when Dido Harding talks about 'sharing data' ? - just saying.

We spent billions building atom smashers – and now boffins think nature's doing the same thing for free?

Atom Smasher

Just keep banging those rocks together guys! (with thanks to one D.Adams)

75 million smartphone sales up in smoke in Q1: Let's drill down into which brands took the most pain

I think that it is high time humanity embraced the concept of individuals each having a new shiny phone every month! /s

Let's all just go ahead and embrace the Fphoney Fulfillment Factor Fun! /s

Trump issues toothless exec order to show donors, fans he's doing something about those Twitter twerps

Social Media Distancing

Perhaps things would improve in all manner of human realms if we all practiced Social Media Distancing, just a thought.

Danger zone! Brit research supercomputer ARCHER's login nodes exploited in cyber-attack, admins reset passwords and SSH keys

Hmmm . . . was this the result of a Cray Phishing attack!

<gets chest waders and coat>

It has been 20 years since cybercrims woke up to social engineering with an intriguing little email titled 'ILOVEYOU'

I feel duty bound to alert people to the subtle changes miscreants have recently made when sending out such vile spam. They tend to have dispensed with the subject line "I Love You" and replaced it with "LOL" (Lots Of Love). As somebody who likes to keep up-to-date with the very latest trends and always with an ear towards the social medias, I just thought I should pass that on to everyone. No need to thank me.

<insert sarcastic jokey thingamyjig>

Sweet TCAS! We can make airliners go up-diddly-up whenever we want, say infosec researchers

@ Robidy

Been some time since I was last on a flight deck but, aside from the fall back with MkI Eyeballs, as in this case, you would often find breather tubes from each engine bay, which would help the flight engineer / co-pilot determine the running state of an engine, should the related electronic instrumentation be a bit squiffy at any point. Also, a two-axis spirit level bolted very, very, securely to the airframe, this would help determine which, if any, sets of undercarriage might have a deflated tire(s), when stationary on the ground. I know things have moved on a lot since, but these sorts of fall back are still current I believe (?).

Wakey-wakey! A quarter of IT pros only get 3-4 hours' kip – and you won't believe what's being touted as the 'solution'

Look hear! they are always screaming at us NOT to turn the bloody equipment off! so they (IT Pros), can't expect to get turned off themselves! Any way, this is nothing a bit of heavily caffeinated fizzy pop won't sort out! Move along.

Fomalhaut b exoplanet may have been cloud in a trench coat: Massive 'world' formed after 'mid-space super-prang'

Perhaps those same astronomers should look again, really, really closely - there might just be a bowl of petunias or even a blue whale in place of said exoplanet Fomalhaut b - just a thought.

Brits swarm Dixons Carphone for laptops, printers, games consoles, fridges, freezers to weather out COVID-19 storm

Advice saught please.

So, now that I have purchased and taken delivery of, the last remaining stock of two dozen Super Duper Humongous chest freezers, do I put all the brand new laptops, game consoles and other assorted tech etc. into the freezers, together with the 350 multi-pack luxury loo rolls?

BT Openreach prepares to declare UK MBORCed* as all new phone line installations halted over coronavirus

Re: Possible to provide one by any other means

Indeed so and as a consequence, welcome one and all, to the Internet of Tins (IoT)

Tesla downs tools in California, New York amid 'non-essential' biz clampdown

No doubt this will have an adverse affect on the development of their flagship electric limousine - I've heard that it's going to be Elongated!

Thought you'd go online to buy better laptop for home working? Too bad, UK. So did everyone. Laptops, monitors and WLANs fly off shelves

I Hate This Panic Buying!

I just rushed out to the garden centre and bought a ride-on petrol lawn mower - I live in a flat!

Loo Roll(ers)

With the use of some half inch marine ply, some flexible hoses and five 360 degree casters I now no longer need to worry about the dreaded loo roll shortage! I can now sit "on the throne" all day at my workstation and can move about my office / work-space with relative ease, I can even reach hot coffee and snacks. I just need to have a quick shower at the end of the day and Bob is your mother's brother, no need for any bloomin' loo rolls anymore! I have even incorporated a small water heater so the ceramics involved are at just the right comfy temps for my bum!

(mines the one with the patent application in the pocket)

Uber takes a downer as ride-sharing app service crashes

Just a small thing you might say. . . . but

I really, really, wish that stock images, such as the one chosen to illustrate this article, which cast women in a negative light, just did not exist, ever! Ok, ok, I hear you say, it's just a very, very, small detail, but many such 'small' things as this repeatedly add up and multiply/amplify negative messaging and achieve absolutely nothing in terms of leveling the societal playing field twixt men and women. I feel sure it would probably take a lot longer to track down a comparable stock image depicting a 'befuddled' man in the same context! Imho we should be taking positive action to not reinforce such negativity in the first place. Negativity such as this seems to slip through so quietly, in the background, almost unconsciously and we all (men and women), just seem to accept it without questioning the multiplying effect it has, ("cos it's just like a bit of banter mate!"). Let's face it men have been in the societal 'driving seat' for ever, so we (men) are therefore best placed to take such positive action! Personally I want my daughters and sons to grow up in a better society than the one we continue with at the moment, after all, it is the fecking 21st bloomin' century! - (although we all seem to be doing our level best to drag all of humanity into a whole new Dark Age at the moment!). <grumpy rant over>

Come kneel with us at UK's Cathedral, er, Oil Rig of the Canal: Engineering masterpiece Anderton Boat Lift

I often wonder if a new system of additional, craftily engineered, canals (and plumbing/drainage), could not only be part of a solution to alleviate flooding in some of the worst affected areas of the country, but might also provide low emission transport links in certain localities as well (wind/solar charged electric boats etc.). But then again, I'm no expert in such matters (probably shows), just a thought. A very worthwhile article, thank you.

Delicious irony: Credit rating builder Loqbox lets customer details and card numbers slip after 'sophisticated attack'

Dear customer, we are really, really, sorry about this sort of a thing happening. Doh! there it all goes again! You do know that all these billions of bits of data that you gave us are flying around all over the place really, really, quickly, inside some very, very, expensive computers (that you are ultimately paying for), and that it's dammed difficult to keep hold of it all terribly securely.

But don't worry too much, there's probably a clause, somewhere, that you implicitly agreed to when you signed up to our service and we feel sure that that will be enough to exonerate us from any responsibility. Meanwhile may we suggest that you change your name by deed pole, move house, change all your phone numbers, change ISP, change all your social media account passwords, change all of your other passwords and switch your bank account to another bank, simple!!

We look forward to going forward with you on a forward looking customer focused data journey in the lovely fintech future and feel sure that we will be able to manage your personal data more securely in that shiny, shiny, future by, maybe, stuffing it all in some old manilla envelopes down the back of the filling cabinet, or something.

Go forward together with us to a brighter digital financial future (cos we don't like to look back too much at all the damage and chaos that we have left in our wake), or take any 'credit' for it.

-----------------

Oh! bright, bright, shiny SECURE! digital future wherefore art thou?! (cos a lot of people would like to know)

Rotherwood Healthcare AWS bucket security fail left elderly patients' DNR choices freely readable online

@katrinab - I can see absolutely nothing wrong with that whatsoever, it appears perfectly normal, almost as clear as something the current president of the United States might be pround to tweet!

Startup Mycroft AI declares it will fight 'patent troll' tooth and nail after its Linux voice-assistant attracts lawsuit

Voice-assistant

My computer is just like my wife - it seldom, if ever, responds to a word that I say! Yet, if I push the right buttons, everything runs just fine!

<mines the one with the relationship workshop leaflet in the pocket>

Coronavirus claims new victim: 'DEF CON cancelled' joke cancelled after DEF CON China actually cancelled

That's not to say that we in the West aren't immune from having our very own bio-security problems as well, the Blood Products scandal that impacted parts of Europe (and America?) is a case in point. Let's face it, if dear old mother earth wasn't just one big Petri dish of a thing, then no organic life would be here today. We all have a responsibility towards each other everyday of our lives to maintain all species in the best of health.

It's ok folks, they've found a cure! You simply need to mix up the adrenal glands of baby fresh water dolphins, the spleens of infant sea turtles, the lower intestines of pangolins and pour in the blood of a hundred endangerred baby cave salamanders and swill it all down with a glass of embryonic fluid from an unborn piglet. Oh! and don't worry if you make a bit of a mess, you can just wash the left overs down the drain. Also, the good news is that this cure will make you lucky in games of chance and also extra sexually attractive.

Remember when Europe’s entire Galileo satellite system fell over last summer? No you don’t. The official stats reveal it never happened

I really don't know where I stand on this.

<mine's the one with the paper maps in the pocket>

You're always a day Huawei: UK to decide whether to ban Chinese firm's kit from 5G networks tomorrow

Thin end of the wedge

Next thing you know the Chinese will be building all the Huawei stations along the route of HS2.

<mine's the one with the (replacement bus) timetables in the pocket>

Google and IBM square off in Schrodinger’s catfight over quantum supremacy

So, in the near future, your code and data will simultaneously be running/stored on the quantum processor cloud, whilst, at the same time, not being either accessible to you nor owned by you. The results, if any, that you get back both will and won't be the results that you wanted to see and both will and won't have been mangled with/duplicated during the whole process. But fear not, for there are two certainties, you will be using this and you will be paying for it (through the nose with a lot of hard ca$h).

And then there were two: HMS Prince of Wales joins Royal Navy

What they are keeping quiet about is the fact that each of these vessels is in fact two, yes, two warships! Notice how each has two superstructures on the flight deck, well hidden below decks is the ingenious mechanism for separating each of them into two very capable warships, with one superstructure each! Now that's really going to confound and confuse the enemy!

Totally Sardonic Bank: Well, it must be, to have a TITSUP* the same week as THAT report

I'm sure all this can be fixed quite easily - by substantially increasing the bonuses that are paid to senior executives. /s

Microsoft's first build of Armium Edge now lurks in Canary channel – go have a play if you dare

As others have suggested before me, this further enforces my own view that 19H2 (et al), are in fact variants of avian flu!

237 UK police force staff punished for misusing IT systems in last 2 years

I'm not trying to excuse this sort of action, just wondering if younger folk, perhaps in their twenties / early thirties, are generally less fussed about data privacy given that they have grown up within an ever growing digital culture where data / image sharing is a big part of social interaction? A minority may get a thrill therefore from leaking stuff onto the interwebs etc. If so, efforts to train both staff and officers comprehensively with regard to data protection etc. become increasingly important.

Microsoft's phrase of the week was 'tech intensity' and, no, we're not sure what it means either

Probably alludes to the desire to sign up all the worlds homeless folk, living under fly-overs and in run down former industrial parts of our super-dooper urban metropolises, to the wonderful world of Cortana, SaS, Surfaces and IoT - you know, Tech In Tent Cities.

Mines the one with the sheets of newspaper and cardboard in the pockets.

Open wide, very wide: Xerox considers buying HP. Yes, the HP that is more than three times its market cap

Those $$$ Billions of dollars - that would also be equal to the cost of the printer ink used for the legal paperwork involved would it? - just saying.

Behind time and way over budget, but the James Webb Space Telescope has finally been put together

"Oh! what a tangled Webb we weave" - everybody in the project assembly team (probably). Mine's the one with the poems of Walter Scott in the pocket.

Bit barn raising Arizona: Thirsty Microsoft mounts blazing saddle, plants 3 solar-powered server farms

El Mirage would, imho, appear a very aptly named location for hosting Cloud services.

City-obliterating asteroid screamed past Earth the other night – and boffins only clocked it just 26 hours beforehand

Well let's just hope that timing of such events is nothing like that of your typical London omnibus(ess) !

Apollo 11 @ 50: The long shadow of the flag

Future Headline

It's 2026 and what do you know, 'President for Life' Donald Trump is true to his word and has "sent humans back to the moon", only this time it's thousands of latino folk, people of an indeterminate darker complexion, folk of Middle Eastern origin and a lot of journalists. All of whom were located within the borders of the USA and were deemed to pose a threat to national security. They're all now housed in the brand new Lunar ICE complex, which was completed just six months ago. Daily flights now operate between the Mega-Shuttle space-port in Florida and the new Lunar Trump space-port located in the Mare Fæġer-Feahs on the moon.

Will that old Vulcan's engines run? Bluebird jet boat team turn to Cold War bomber

For me it has to be any number of Merlin engines, more especially if they are running over half chat. That said, I cannot deny that the awesome ground-shaking roar of the Olympus, et al, have a sonic presence that goes right through you to the core with an energy that can leave you quite pleasurably breathless. But for me the shear harmony of numerous pistons, valves, con-rods, widgets and cranks etc. that are orchestrated oh so beautifully, especially in the case of the Merlin, sing out to the soul in a truly inimical manner. In a word - delightful.

Frontiersman Cray snags $50m storage contract for 'largest single filesystem'

Errm . . . won't they need to acquire two of these beasts, I mean how else do you make sure that you can do a full backup/restore ? (just asking for a friend who has been out buying large quantaties of floppy disks recently)

Finnish and Russian comms giants shake hands on submarine cable across Arctic Sea

Re: Map projections

Bloomin' Poles, comin' over 'ere exaggerating distances!

She's just a Cosmic Girl but UK.gov is dangling £20m to have Beardy Branson's 747 launch satellites from Cornwall

Re: Bah!

@ Charlie van Becelaere

Reminds me of: Q. - Why are pirates so brilliant ? A. - Because they aaarrrgggh.

Ready with the 'welcome neighbour' fruitbasket, retailers? Amazon opens Manchester pop-up shop

What's next ?

Maybe they will just cut down what's left of the south American rain forest and open some garden centres there instead. What! I dunno but I'd like to know more about how sustainable (green), their trading model is? I know I'm an old fuddy duddy and this is all an amazing revolution in retail and all that, but I can't help feeling that we all need to be buying / producing less stuff, making what stuff we do buy last longer and, if need be, having the opportunity to easily take it back in store for repair / longevity treatment / complete recycling etc. Surely somebody like Mr. Bezos can see that the 'green light' is glowing more brightly these days, illuminating such a more beneficial business model.

. . . "retail outlets are set to er, pop-up across the UK this year."

Do they vanish just as quickly if you have a poor connection / signal ?

Buy, buy this American PCIe, drove my PC on the Wi-Fi so the Wi-Fi would fly

I am of the opinion that there should be a levy put on the use of such headlines.

In the claws of a vulture: Nebra AnyBeam Laser Projector

Re: "...a pure electrostatic biaxial raster scanning mirror."

Isn't that what the plod use for farcical recognition when the the Notting Hill Carnival is on?

Eggheads confirm it's not a bug – the universe really is expanding 9% faster than expected

No, no, no. Simple answer - it's just that the telescope had been put into reverse when they took the pics, easy enough mistake to make. As you were.

Altered carbon: Boffins automate DNA storage with decent density – but lousy latency

So presumably in the (distant) future data centres will be able to send off small samples of their data sets and discover their ancestry !?