* Posts by Lotaresco

1501 publicly visible posts • joined 24 Sep 2007

No nudes, bloated apps, Android sucks and 497 other complaints about Apple to the FTC

Lotaresco

International dumbness

" I can no longer do anything on the US store because my address is in Spain. HOWEVER, I also CANNOT do anything on the Spanish store since my CCs are American."

This isn't just a problem affecting Apple though. I live some of the time in Italy, they have a similar attitude to the Spanish about extra-territorial payment and debit/credit cards. I can fill my car with fuel and pay with a UK credit card but only if I decide to have someone fill the car and charge me 20c extra per litre for the pleasure. The self-service takes only Italian credit cards. I can't top up my Italian PAYG SIM using a UK debit or credit card it has to be either direct funds transfer from an Italian bank, an Italian debit card or it's a trip to a tobacconist to buy a scratch card, with cash. Most ludicrous of all is that Tre Italia offer to accept payment via PayPal. But they only accept payment from Italian citizens - the PayPal site will take you through he process but the Tre site then says "payment not authorised". Do it with a PayPal account registered to an Italian citizen and it's fine. So much for "Free movement of goods, services and people."

Lotaresco

The great <insert nation> public

"Dude, you have no idea."

I have some idea, not much because I've never had to deal full time with the public but I used to see FoI requests and once for a whole year, during the construction of a system to provide information to drivers from roadside signs, as one of the design team, I had to take calls and emails from member of the public and provide a response. After about five emails I wanted to tell them to stick it where the sun don't shine. After ten I wanted to hunt then down, lay waste to their home and salt the land so that nothing could grow there for a hundred generations.

Some examples: "I've just passed a new sign by the side of the road. It has a message on it about a car accident blocking the road thirty miles ahead. I'm not driving that far and I don't need to know this, why are you bothering me with it?"

" A roadside message says there are roadworks in ten miles. I checked with my GPS and the roadworks are 9.6 miles away. Why are you giving inaccurate information?"

"It says ten minutes to the next junction. How fast do I have to drive to make it on time?"

And a memorable phone call... "You have large signs that say "ACCIDENT AHEAD SLOW DOWN". I don't see any sign of an accident and I don't see why I have to slow down. There's nothing here. Please remove the message... Oh, Oh, Oh no... Sorry I'll have to call you back I've just run into the back of a van. I have no idea why he's stopped in the middle of the road."

Coming to an SSL library near you? AI learns how to craft crude crypto all by itself

Lotaresco
Meh

Lack of understanding

Having worked with neural net recognisers for medical imaging, it's true that it is difficult and close to impossible to understand how the neural net is making its decisions. Sometimes it is possible to infer from the results what is going on and in those cases the basis of the decision is sometimes surprisingly dumb. For example in a case where a neural net had been trained to identify the symptoms of a disease from an infra-red image of a patient it was doing very well when compared to the performance of a human operator. Then someone tried some images that weren't of a patient and were of random objects in the lab, as a negative control. The neural net saw disease everywhere. Eventually it was possible to work out that it had trained to see a patch of bright pixels at slightly over 37C. This wasn't what the human operator was doing, their decisions were more subtle but the neural net had reduced the problem to the absolute basics. It succeeded because all the test images could be reduced to a patch of pixels representing something slightly warmer than normal body temperature. When challenged with more imagery from a wider set of results it was an utter failure.

Not call, Intel – not call: Chipzilla modems in iPhone 7s fall short

Lotaresco

Re: And a bunch of people start to see conspiracies in this?

"As an aside, it seems like more and more people are posting on this site without a basic understanding of it's culture. "

s/it\'s/its/

BTW, if you had been bothered to check you would have seen that my posting history here goes back to 2009. I think I've got the hang of "the culture" by now.

" If you can't take criticism of Apple, or Google, or MS or Ubuntu or Oracle or whoever, you're in the wrong place."

Oh if only you were right. Dare to post a criticism of Google/Android here and one's post will be downvoted hundreds of times by dweebs who can't be bothered to engage in a discussion.

I'm happy to take criticism of any business, the tech I own is varied and covers most of the major manufacturers and I know it all has faults. However ranting about conspiracy theories is self-defeating. It just makes the ranter look like a grade-A net loon.

Anyway, thanks for the passive-aggressive nuzzling. It was like real, man.

Lotaresco
Devil

Let me get this right...

Apple is following similar engineering practices to its competitors. It second sources components[1] and tries to ensure that customers get performance that's as good as can be for the market where the phones are sold. It (quite rightly) doesn't take a decision to build some unobtanium chipset that would be custom fabricated just for Apple because that would be stupid. It goes to two vendors each of them well respected for the designs they churn out. One vendor produces a modem that performs (slightly) better than another.

And a bunch of people start to see conspiracies in this?

From any other manufacturer these design decisions would not attract adverse comment, yet because Apple is involved there's <insert hysterical overblown conspiracy theory here> to be a-feared of?

[1] A basic and rather essential manufacturing engineering decision.

NASA wants to sell International Space Station to private enterprise

Lotaresco

Re: Well, actually...

"...with all that money we saved, we could probably afford several!"

Indeed, we have £350,000,000 a week to spend on all the toys we like. Then we can spend it again on the NHS and again on massive tax cuts. O Brave New World!

Lotaresco

Re: OK. So...

Who needs Hugo Drax when we already have an airship, airline, high speed boat, media, volcanic island hideaway owning beelionaire with his very own spaceport and fleet of space ships?

Lotaresco
Coat

There is precedent...

For years HMG has been selling obsolete military installations to private buyers. While it's true that most of them end up as data centres, document storage depots etc. some of them end up slightly more interesting.

Forts and former gun platforms are repurposed as knocking shops bijou hotels for those who rent rooms by the hour. There are also casinos, restaurants and other types of pleasure palace built in suitably difficult-to-get-into premises. I'm sure Mr Branson could find many well-heeled punters who would like the chance of a zero-g Ugandan encounter who would not flinch at paying the requisite meeelions for the pleasure.

Schneider Electric plugs gaping hole in industrial control kit

Lotaresco
Holmes

Re: Industrial cybersecurity firm Indegy

"How about running it on a private VPN with a hardware dongle at either end to provide security. Just saying here :)"

Because it's just ever so slightly more complicated than that. There are good hardware encryption devices available but most customers flinch at the up-front and maintenance costs. Also it's not possible for private customers to get hold of the best algorithms and keys because governments keep those to themselves. You'll notice on the order forms that if you want the top-of-the-range encryption standards that you need to get the order approved by a government agency. The maintenance costs accrue because you either need access to both ends for key changes (which should be done several times a year) or you need a hardware device that can be managed out of band and that brings in a raft of other problems.

The easiest way to implement what you are asking for is to have a point-to-point link from one set of premises to another via a firewall pair. It doesn't solve the key management problem.

If what you are proposing is to have laptops or remote desktops as the endpoints then you need to consider how you issue the certs and "dongles" in a manner that prevents interception.

It's not impossible, many organisations manage it, but it ends up relatively costly and also frustrating for the end users who usually have to arrive on site and prove who they are before they can get the laptops/keys/dongles.

Having gone to all that trouble, how do you make sure that the end device is not compromised? It's not unknown for an engineer to work on a company system by day then pop off back to his hotel and surf "***Yes Big Boy*** Donkey Porn!!" all night on the Hotel WiFi. All the VPN in the world then will not stop the malware that was dumped onto his laptop invading the company SCADA when the laptop is connected to the management LAN via a VPN.

Lotaresco

Re: "nothing specific to cybersecurity was inherently built within them"

"Systems built 20 years ago did not need cybersecurity because there was no such thing."

Oomph! That's a bit wide of the mark. Ignoring the silly and irritating term "cybersecurity", which wasn't in vogue at the time, there was awareness among professionals that IT security was essential and a priority. Netscape Communications had implemented HTTPS in 1994. Computer security and the need for it had become a hot topic a decade before when, in 1984, Schifreen and Gold were arrested for the Prestel hack.

Security was rather basic in most cases and consisted of security through obscurity, being the best that could be done at the time. "Don't publish the phone numbers for your modems." was a standard approach along with "Lock up your data in a central data centre." Industrial control systems at the time were a mixed bag. Pneumatic logic (pretty much unhackable even today) was as likely to be found as electronic logic and was both reliable and cheaper than the electronic systems of the time. Later electronic systems were rarely used remotely and if they were remote tended to be on unidirectional links.

It's safer to say that twenty years ago that internet connectivity for industrial control equipment wasn't a requirement. What has caused problems is the failure of those building industrial control systems to realise how quickly hackers work to develop exploits. Control systems are installed with an expectation that they will have a twenty five year operating life. That assumption ignores the more usual IT technical refresh cycle of five years and the rapid evolution of new exploits.

Possible reprieve for the venerable A-10 Warthog

Lotaresco

Re: Costs per hour for F-35

@Beachrider

I'm sorry son, you don't know what you are talking about.

There is nothing magic about UAVs (or "Drones" as you call them). The UAVs that are used by so-called ISIS are hobbyist UAVs that haven been adapted to carry an explosive device. A small explosive device that is probably not going to scratch the armour on an A10. A hobbyist UAV is going to be insignificant to an A10 now and for the foreseeable future. It's a little like claiming that ISIS could strap a hand grenade to Milton-Bradley Bigtrak and take out a Main Battle Tank. It's not going to happen.

The F35 continues to be a festering pile of dingoes kidneys. An ill-conceived aircraft that will linger around for a time then be rightly forgotten. It's a shame that the money spent on the F35 wasn't put in to improving the Harrier. However it's difficult to sway the airforce and their peanut gallery from whoopin' it up for anything capable of supersonic flight. The Top Guns like to ignore the fact that few aircraft can outrun a missile and none can outrun a Starstreak. They also like to ignore the fact that when Harriers went up against Mirages, the Harriers won.

Lotaresco

Re: Too easy to shoot down with a hand hold missile

"One issue is that the A10 is too easy to shoot down with a hand hold missile if it is flying low enough to use its gun."

But not what the combat statistics show. Of the six A-10s shot down/damaged beyond repair in Operation Desert Storm, one was shot down by an Igla-1 MANPADS. The others were shot down by Strela-1 and Strela-10 SAMs. Of the six aircraft downed only one pilot was killed when he loitered over another downed A-10 to protect his wingman.

That doesn't make it look like an aircraft that is "easy" to shoot down with a MANPADS. It does make it look like an aircraft that has high innate survivability. Part of that is clearly the armour, another part is possibly the location of the engines.

So that's six losses for 4,102 kills. That's an impressive record by anyone's standards.

Lotaresco

Re: A10 has a unique role doesn't it?

"A10 may be old, but what may be needed is a new type of A10 not new faster shinier expensive aircraft with far less damage resilience."

... is the right answer. It probably also galls the aircraft manufacturers that the A-10 showed that a cheap aircraft can fit a combat role perfectly. The $1.7 million budgeted cost per aircraft is a fraction of the cost of the F-22 ($380m per aircraft) or the F-35 ($130 m, airframe only, engines an "optional" extra).

Lotaresco

F35

The F35 is a ludicrous design, fit for nothing in particular. It keeps the tax dollars rolling in for Lockheed-Martin and that's about all it is good for. The decision to lug around a great big fan that does nothing for most of the time in the F35B version is particularly laughable. I'm convinced that the Generals and Air Marshalls who sign off on this stuff are swayed only by how shiny they think it looks, the possibility of a paid consultancy when they retire and the freebies while they are working.

The A10 dates from an era when the US had come to its senses and designed a ground attack aircraft by having a designer listen to ground attack pilots and build the aircraft they wanted. That seemed to be a unique sweet spot in military requirements with the best aircraft that the US has/had being designed roughly in the same decade. The A-10 is now not wanted by air force pilots because they all want to be Top Gun (or Biggles in the UK) and fly something that does not stay aloft by repelling the ground with ugliness.

PayPal patches bone-headed two factor authentication bypass

Lotaresco

Errmmm

Isn't that Henry Hoggar t d of MWR Labs who discovered a man-in-the-middle attack on Blackberry a couple of years ago?

Swedes ban camera spy-drones for anything but crime fighting

Lotaresco

Re: Muppets

"Even if you are deliberately spying on some children in their garden, that is not of itself an offence in the UK..."

Indeed, the usual moral hysteria whenever children are mentioned is a laughable meme among the British at the moment. People seem to have got the crazy idea into their heads that it's an offence to photograph a child. There are also people, probably the same ones who think it's an offence to park on the street outside their home on "their" road, who think any photography in a public place or from a public place toward a private garden is illegal.

Quick! Lock up The Google because they are violating children....

Lotaresco

Re: Muppets

"Wow, it didn't take long to drift into "what do you have to hide territory" to justify drones..."

No, it drifted into "post a sarcastic comment about the people who think that 'what about the children'" is a valid argument, rather than an appeal to emotion which is a logical fallacy.

Lotaresco

Re: Muppets

"I have a fenced off garden and my kids are playing in it"

Oh please, won't somebody think of the childruuun?

Lotaresco

Re: I welcome this

"I wonder what will happen the day the flat is not empty. "

One of the things that you can do to help yourself is to make the flat look occupied when you are not there. If you want to go über cautious and über techno you can use home automation and a controller to activate lights around the flat to a pattern. If you want to do it on the cheap some Ikea mains timers and lamps can be used to make a pattern of arriving from work, entering and leaving rooms and heading to the bedroom. You can also use "TV simulators" to give the impression that you are watching TV in the living room or bedroom, these switch on when the light level falls and will activate patterns of LEDs that recreate the flicker and colour changes of a TV screen. A radio on a time tuned to a speech channel can be used to convince a listener that there are conversations taking place in the flat.

Net curtains can be used to prevent prying cameras from seeing into rooms. This doesn't work at night when the room is brightly lit but shining a strong light onto net curtains can be used to dazzle a camera at night time.

The aim is to make a thief doubt whether the flat is occupied or not so that they will play safe and attack someone else instead.

Lotaresco

Re: Muppets

"If I have a fenced off garden and my kids are playing in it, you spying on them over the fence is a sure way to get yourself on the sex offenders register"

No wonder you want privacy if just glimpsing what you get up to with your children in the garden could get someone on the sex offenders' register.

Lotaresco

Re: Oh the possibilities...

"I read the above and immediately saw (in my mind's eye, that is) a squadron of drones with flashing blue LEDs and little sirens chasing illegal camera - equipped drones."

There is another way.

Drone Catcher

Lotaresco

Re: I welcome this

"No, I didn't record it. I wish I had. Actually when it happened I was stunned into a kind of useless shock."

That's a shame, but I understand how you could be stunned into being unable to do the right thing. I watched someone vandalise my car. When I thought about recording it using my phone, it was too late and I fumble-fingered turning the camera on. Hence the person got away.

As to drones, there's something to be said for having some polypropylene thread to throw at the drone. It will melt as the propellers spin then harden and cause the drone to crash from the sky.

Lotaresco
Coat

Re: I welcome this

"I take it being close enough to evaluate the camera you were able to take his number plate and report this to the police? Such a shame you didn't have a mobile phone or you could have at least taken one picture."

Or a drone could have been used to follow the car.

This is not a drill: Hackers pop stock Nexus 6P in five minutes

Lotaresco

Say whaat?

"Each team under the contest rules has five minutes, over three attempts for a total of 20 minutes to pop devices."

Someone's arithmetic seems to be off by 33.3333...%

Hacktivist crew claims it launched last week's DDoS mega-attack

Lotaresco

Re: Bah!

"You know how much it costs and how long it takes to train an engineer?"

I have worked in companies where the view taken by management is that if the alternative is pushing broken product out of the door or employing an engineer to fix the design flaws before the product is punted then they will just sell the product. After all the cost of lawsuits and refunds tend to be a drop in the ocean compared to the costs of extending development and testing functionality. Those companies usually last long enough to burn the investment capital, make large salary and bonus payments to the senior managers and then collapse meaning no one can be recompensed for damages.

Meanwhile the senior managers boast about their impressive CV and push off to do the same again.

See: Lane-Fox, Martha for example.

Lotaresco

Re: IoT

"There is nothing inherently insecure about IOT, many run Linux, or other embedded OS's that are infinitely more secure than Windows, AS LONG AS A UNIQUE PASSWORD IS USED..."

This is just evidence that you haven't begun to understand the hacks. A unique password does not help in cases where the inherent security of the system is flawed and it is far from true to claim that "many run... OS's that are more secure than Windows". Many embedded devices use unsupported and out of date versions of Windows, mostly Windows CE. As shipped today many IoT devices *are* inherently insecure. If you read the detail on how these hacks are achieved you will find that in the worst cases the connections to the devices are not secured at all and that the devices will, on request, give you the passphrase of the WiFi router they are connected to.

PCs, bad as they are, are generally better secured than IoT devices. All the "LOL"ing in the world won't make that change.

Lotaresco

Re: IoT

"Convenience. The kettle will boil just as you enter the house as it would have been tracking you on the way home, the fridge can order the extra milk when you're low, etc etc etc."

In reality no, that won't work. The kettle would have to be filled in advance and left ready to boil. It's easier and cheaper to stop off at the off-licence on the way home and buy a pint of milk than to have your fridge order a delivery for just a pint of milk. If always-on milk is your thing then you can consider having a pint of dog milk[1] in your nuclear Armageddon cupboard.

[1] Red Dwarf Series II, Kryten

Holly: Cow's milk. Ran out of that yonks ago. Fresh and dehydrated.

Lister: What kind of milk are we using now?

Holly: Emergency back-up supply. We're on the dog's milk.

Lister: [looks at his cup in horror] Dog's milk?!

Holly: Nothing wrong with dog's milk. Full of goodness, full of vitamins, full of marrowbone jelly. Lasts longer than any other type of milk, dog's milk.Lister: Why?

Holly: No bugger'll drink it. Plus, of course, the advantage of dog's milk is that when it goes off, it tastes exactly the same as when it's fresh.

Lotaresco

Re: IoT

"This is nothing to do with IOT"

It's everything to do with IoT. Almost every IoT device punted by the consumer electrical/electronics industry has significant flaws. Many of these flaws manifest because of a triumvirate of stupidity.

1) Naïve developers;

2) Cheap components;

3) Lack of awareness of the issues.

These flaws affect a wide range of devices. Kettles, Coffee makers, fridges, Smart TVs (Proof of concept announced but not yet published), Media boxes, thermostats, doorbells, Your kid's toys and, yes, CCTV/Webcams.

It's worth keeping up with Pen Test Partners via their blogs because they are rattling through shonky IoT trash as quickly as they can.

Parliamentarians ask Obama to withdraw Lauri Love extradition request

Lotaresco

"If you go to Spain, acquire a hunting rifle, go stand next to the Portuguese border and shoot across the border, killing someone who's in Portugal - it's the Spanish police who'll arrest you, and the Spanish courts who will try you."

That's not true.

In cases of murder the default rule is that the trial takes place in the jurisdiction where the victim died, irrespective of the physical location of the accused at the time. The accused may, in your example, be arrested in Spain but would, by default, be tried in Portugal. However various national legislation permits people to be tried - in the specific case of murder and manslaughter - in the country which the accused is a citizen of. However the legislation is permissive, not prescriptive.

So, for example, the Offences Against the Person Act 1861 permits English courts to try people accused of murder or manslaughter committed in another country. But also states (Section 9) "Provided, that nothing herein contained shall prevent any person from being tried in any place out of England or Ireland for any murder or manslaughter committed out of England or Ireland, in the same manner as such person might have been tried before the passing of this Act." That is, if the country where the crime was committed elects to prosecute the case then English law does not take precedent. Section 10 which addresses the case where the where the murder takes place outside the England but the accused is within English jurisdiction states that the case *may* be dealt with in England but does not say that it must be dealt with in England.

CPS rules make it clear that the only cases where the UK may exert extra-territorial jurisdiction are sexual offences against children, murder and manslaughter, terrorism or bribery. For other cases the prosecution is guided that there must exist a "substantial connection with this jurisdiction" for courts in England and Wales to have jurisdiction.

In Love's case the crime he committed was against the US and there is no "substantial connection" with a crime in the UK; therefore the US has jurisdiction.

Lotaresco

Re: Aspergers when it suits

"Asperger's has been cited as the reason why Love lives at home, why he depends upon his family, and why to extradite him to the US where he has no support network would be to unduly infringe on his human rights."

And yet he was able to serve in the army, attend two universities and take part in the occupation of university buildings. He now claims he runs a security company. Not quite the poor little unable to fend for himself soul that his father (who should know better since he serves in the Criminal Justice System) would have everyone believe. It is white middle-class male syndrome, the belief that they are too special for the law to apply to them. Instead of being honest and admitting guilt they immediately start the appeals to the gallery.

Interestingly there was not the same support for the criminals over the extradition of the Enron three Giles Darby, David Bermingham and Gary Mulgrew. Indeed the same people falling over themselves to have Love avoid justice were quite keen to see the Enron three sent to jail. I have as little sympathy for them as I do for Love.

If Love is miraculously innocent, despite having boasted on social media that he did it and that he intended to do harm to the USA (i.e. he has already admitted guilt), then he can face a trial and walk free. If found guilty there's a high probability (based on the experience of the Enron 3) that it will result in a short prison stay in the USA followed by permission to transfer and serve out his sentence in the UK.

In short, storm in a tea cup over someone who does not deserve this much sympathy.

Lotaresco

Re: Just don't send him

"Should that not read: He actually allegedly committed at least three offences under the act:"

No, because one thing that stands out in the statements made by himself, his family and supporters is that none of them are claiming that he did not do these things. They are all claiming that his retrospective diagnosis of Aspergers obtained via a high-price shrink absolve him from culpability.

Lotaresco

Re: Just don't send him

I'd take you seriously... oh hang on, no I wouldn't you're an Anon Troll.

Of course he didn't do it. Thats why he's kicking and screaming about facing justice.

Lotaresco

Re: Just don't send him

"What he did wouldn't be considered a crime here."

That's not true. What he did is a crime under the Computer Misuse Act 1990. He actually committed at least three offences under the act:

S3(1) Unauthorised access to computer material..

S3(2) Unauthorised access with intent to commit or facilitate commission of further offences..

S3(3) Unauthorised acts with intent to impair, or with recklessness as to impairing, operation of computer, etc.

"Her Majs government couldn't request the extradition of a US citizen for the same alleged crime"

Also untrue.

S4(1) Except as provided below in this section, it is immaterial for the purposes of any offence...

(a) whether any act or other event proof of which is required for conviction of the offence occurred in the home country concerned; or

(b) whether the accused was in the home country concerned at the time of any such act or event.

Lessons from the Mini: Before revamping or rebooting anything, please read this

Lotaresco

RS6

"Try an RS6 for that particular smile on face and frown on arse cheeks combination."

Oh please, it's a horrible car. It has the same problem as all Audis, Engine/Transmission too heavy and too far forwards. It's a car that seems to have been designed for "suits" who like to blag about bhp and 0-60 times in a sort of estate agents Top Trumps. And, at the end of the day, it's just another joyless VAG box.

The GT86 is more of a driver's car, that will put a smile on your face - and save a shedload of cash. Although if anyone is intending to spend RS6 money on a car they should just dig that little bit deeper into their pockets and get an MP4-12C. Then the only way they need to look at RS6s is as little dots disappearing in the rear view mirror.

Lotaresco

Re: ...modernised the Mini without losing its essential character. So how did he manage it?

"He didn't manage it. At all."

I can agree with that. My "utility" vehicle is a Jeep Grand Cherokheep, which most people tell me is a "monster". It's only one foot (30cm) longer and half an inch (12mm) wider than a "Mini" Countryman.

Lotaresco

Re: Impressive..

"That's a pretty impressive portfolio of designs"

I like most of his designs but find his "retro" stuff to be a bit disappointing. The Fiat 500 and the Mini are ultimately less good than the cars they ape, although he did a much better job of the Mini than the Fiat 500. One of his designs, the MP4-12C, is a car I love. I think that one was just right and it's a shame that its target market didn't appreciate what a brilliant car it is. It appears that they would rather have a Ferrari made of cheese than a beautifully engineered British car. The BMW X5 is just all-round vile and seems to attract a particular sort of driver, so I wish he hadn't designed that one.

From the article: "Stephenson ... didn't think much of what BMW subsequently did with his revamp comparing it to a small SUV."

Alex Moulton was generally positive about the New Mini, although more because it was providing UK jobs than any particular feature of the design. Dr Moulton has also expressed his sadness that manufacturing in the UK is in decline. However he did make one comment about Stephenson's "New Mini" that reflects Stephenson's dislike of later "Minis"; "If we had wanted to make it that big, it would have been easy."

Is Google using YouTube to put one over on Samsung?

Lotaresco

Re: You're missing the real conspiracy!

Will never not link this

Hmmm, Phagors or Sheep In Space?

Jeff Minter was clearly aware of the Helliconia books, since he even used the Phagors or Ancipitals in his games.

Lotaresco
Coat

Corporate mottos

"Don't be evil"

s/n\'t//

"Do the right thing"

s/o t/on\'t do t/

This speech recognition code is 'just as good' as a pro transcriber

Lotaresco

IMO

Speech recognition still has some way to go. Place names and technical language are still not handled well and I suspect that 'just as good' as a pro transcriber means "about as good as a really poor transcriber".

"We should migrate our lemon flutes to a hard flea."

Dilbert Monday 5th April 2010

Probe boffins: Two balls deep in Uranus's ring

Lotaresco

Two dark bodies...

The famous Dagnut and Pile, presumably.

Samsung halts production of Galaxy Note 7

Lotaresco

Re: Waterproof

"Boom! We want to sell you our brand new headphones next. And because we are the Dark Force - it will have to be our interpretation of Blue Tooth."

<sigh> Which phones without a 3.5mm jack socket in the case prevent the owner from using their own headphones? All of the Samsung phones that I have owned that do not have a 3.5mm socket provide an adaptor to allow headphones to be connected. The same for the iPhone. No one is forced to use Bluetooth or to buy new headphones.

Lotaresco

Re: A lesson to be learnt

"If the Galaxy Note 7 had a removable battery much of the great expense of recall & exchange could have been avoided."

This isn't true. You seem to be forgetting that Samsung recalled phones and changed the batteries using a different manufacturer. The phones still overheated.

Samsung are not being clear about what the fault is, and I suspect that now that they have canned production that we will never know what the problem is. However I suspect that if it were just the battery Samsung would have switched to another battery pack and continued to happily make and sell GN7s because that would have been the cheapest option. Stopping sales and halting production lets the world know that the problem was more of an issue than just a battery pack replacement.

If you want a phone the size of a brick then I'm sure that expandable RAM and a replaceable battery could be on the agenda. It may also be possible to fit a 3.5in floppy drive and a punched card reader.

Skin tattoo will tell your phone when you've had a skinful

Lotaresco
Coat

Have you had a drink sir?

No officer, I've had a skinfull.

Smell burning? Samsung’s 'Death Note 7' could still cause a contagion

Lotaresco

There's no doubt that the Huawei is a nice phone. However it does have its weaknesses. The sound quality on headphones is poor and that appears to be due to the use of a cheap DAC. Users have reported that using an external DAC dramatically improve sound quality but this means spending an extra £100 all the way up to £1000 for an external DAC/Headphone amplifier. Which makes other phones look a bargain by comparison.

Also the "Leica" cameras are mostly a branding exercise since Leica appear to have provided design input but not the components.

Galaxy Note 7 flameout: 2 in 5 Samsung fans say they'll never buy from the Korean giant again

Lotaresco

Re: Idiot public

"my new S7 is very nice and in my opinion superior to even the iPhone 7 from all aspects"

Not all aspects. The S7 Snapdragon 820 is "quite a bit" slower than the A10 in the iPhone 7.

"When compared to the Galaxy S7, the iPhone is 40 percent faster on multi-core performance and about twice as fast on single-core performance." [source: PC World Magazine]

Lotaresco

Italy returns Galaxy Note 7s to South Korea

Italian news sources cover the first return shipment of Galaxy Note 7s via the port of Ancona.

Truck shipping Galaxy Note 7 phones to the port of Ancona.

Lotaresco
Headmaster

Re: When will they learn...

"I call bullshit."

You can "call" what you like, it's just abuse and reflects badly on you.

"What is that wonder phone?"

It's an iPhone 7.

"4 times from a power bank means that it's either a huge capacity power bank"

10AH, not particularly large. The iPhone's battery is 2AH.

Rearrange these words to form a popular phrase "math the do".

"you can take out the micro SD card out of the phone and copy files to and from the phone without the use of additional software."

Thank you for that insight into what removable media is for. I'm rolling my eyes at this point.

"Your phone may have 256 GB built in, but the vendor has the final say in what you can use to access it (good bye USB mass storage) and what goes into the phone (want to copy your legally-owner music and videos? No. You have to buy it from the Appgle Play App Store."

I suspect you have not been keeping up to date with the latest developments since Mr Babbage's Analytical Engine. I suppose it's just possible that I am hallucinating about having my entire CD collection on my phone... no, I checked it's still there. I'm probably hallucinating about the DVD titles that are on my phone... no, I checked they are still there.

There are multiple ways to flay a feline.

I can use File Explorer to download the content from my NAS.

I can use iTunes to copy the content to my phone.

I can use iExplorer to mount the phone as a USB drive and copy files to it via the OS.

So, sorry chum but you're just plain wrong and probably very out of date. I've been able to load content I own that I have not bought from Apple to all of my "i" devices, iPod (Classic), iPod nano, iPad, iPhone 4 and iPhone 7. The vendor does not prevent me from doing this.

The UK's 'Universal Credit mega cockup was the coalition's NPfIT' - Margaret Hodge

Lotaresco

Re: FiReControl project

'When it was announced to our team that we had lost the bid, the only comment from the back was "thank the f**k for that".'

One engineering consultancy that I worked for used to have meeting if we won a bid for a government contract to work out what we had done wrong. It's obvious that if you win that you have cocked up and have submitted the lowest bid, possibly because you didn't spot a large hidden cost element in the tender document.

Lotaresco

Re: Here we are again

"Obligatory reminder that toll charges on the Dartford Crossing are only supposed to be in place until it was paid off."

Obligatory reminder that the system is designed to force users into having to pay fines[1]. The payment methods are poorly explained. There's no option to pay at the toll booth. If you are busy, hassled, late and not likely to back in front of a PC for several hours then you are going to find payment difficult if you are not a regular user of the Crossing.

[1] As is the Kengestion charge.

Netflix reminds password re-users to run a reset

Lotaresco

Passwords

Today I'm despairing about the site that attempted to improve security by changing password rules. I tried to log in and was directed to change my password to match the "new password policy". That policy is that "All passwords must contain three numbers (only) one 'special' character and must start with a capital letter all passwords must be exactly 12 characters long. This represents a significant improvement in security,"

No it doesn't you muppets, you've just reduced the entropy of your passwords by specifying a fixed length of which three characters must be numeric. This is actually worse than your previous "minimum of eight chars, no maximum" policy that it replaces.