Posts by Bebu sa Ware

Abandoned US Army 'city under the ice' imaged in serendipitous NASA find

Re: Sounds like ...

Sound like a very popular location for modern Doctor Who, a secret base, covered in snow.

Wasn't that the episode featuring Santa Claus and face hugging Aliens?

Heck weirder stuff happens in America.

Man accused of hilariously bad opsec as alleged cybercrime spree detailed

Good luck finding a job after he gets out.

The incoming administration will probably be looking for another replacement to head homeland security by then.

QNAP and Veritas dump 30-plus vulns over the weekend

Debasing the currency

Veritas? Is anyone still using that?

Personally I would hope not. Any mob that can inflict this ugly coinage "Veritas is rearchitecting..." on their clients deserves obscurity.

My aging gray cells parsed it as rear-chi-tecting which might be a perverse practice of some long dead group of taoist schismatics.

I am guessing the Joke Icon indicates that it should be read as "Does anyone still have any use for the truth?" Sadly events would suggest not.

Mysteries in polar orbit – space's oldest working hardware still keeps its secrets

Re: "Alignment was taken care of by strapping large magnets "

I had a look at the pdf wondering what type of magnets they used as I didn't recall rare earth magnets were thick on the ground in '74. They were Alnico-5.

I was also thinking the solar propellers continuously applying a, albeit varying, torque should have eventually spun Oscar7 giddy. [T.dt=I.dω]

Looks like from my reading an iron bar with high hysteresis losses was used to dissipate excess rotational energy. I guess the satellite rotating in the earth's magnetic field induces eddy currents in the rod which applies an opposing (3rd law) torque and are dissipated in ohmic heating. Presumably reaching a steady state where the work done by the torque applied by the solar propellers is just equal to the heat dissipated in the iron rod.

I imagine you would need some type of damping anyway as any perturbation of the spinning satellite could lead to pronounced precession.

Really clever stuff by really clever people. Having the Lady (Fortuna) blowing on your dice also helps.

Musk agrees with fan that worries over orbital Starlink traffic a 'silly narrative'

Re: Kessler syndrome isn't what I'm concerned about

"It is the death of Earth based astronomy"

"No problemo," says our hero, "I can offer you a deal on my launch capabilities to relocate your observatories."

Create the malaise and sell a nostrum.

Based on this I can envisage Musk going into big pharma.

The fool is probably already testing a ketamine-semaglutide concoction on his own sorry carcass.

Re: I had no idea

that Elon Musk is a Fellow of the Royal Society

I was under the impression that the Royal Society was originally for the naff dilittante aristocrats (dills), their assorted lackies, sycophants and wannabes, while the British Association for the Advancement of Science (BA) was where the real work was done.

The RS have really returned to their roots if they have admitted arguably one of the naffest dills extant.

I am sure if Space Karen were to pump enough cash into the UK economy, sir Kerr would arrange for the letters patent so that the Marquis Karen could be sufficiently aristocratic for the RS.

(If only the silly sod would accept a title of nobility.)

If Musk attends the RS Xmas party, there might be a couple of "pedoguys" waiting outside with a wee score to settle. :)

Hell no!

"He'll pay attention when physics makes it impossible for him to go become Emperor of Mars because of all the debris in the way."

His SpaceX engineering minions will justly omit to inform his Imperial Highness* of that hazard or if a hint of the hazard has impinged on his Majesty's spice ketamine enhanced consciousness the same humanity's benefactors will reassure the Emperor elect that the coating of recycled tyre rubber on his ship will absorb any wayward satellite debris.

_{* Karen I, Emperor of Mars, Margrave of the Asteroid Belt. (Please there be Ice Warriors.)}

Imagine a land in which Big Tech can't send you down online rabbit holes or use algorithms to overcharge you

Order the barrel of fish now?

"the service of aggrandizing Xi"

Should be properly off by the time Pooh becomes "immortal."

Re: Some good ideas but at what cost

right wing neanderthals.

A bit unfair on our nearest hominid relations.

There is no evidence they weren't hippy, tree hugging lefties or alternatively that they weren't cold dead hands NRA crazies. (Although outside of the US, no neanderthal remains have been uncovered with much other than soil clasped their skeletal hands. Inside the US there are probably NRA museums with these chaps' bony hands grasping assault rifles.)

On the other hand these Denisovans were a right menace. ;)

Re: Some good ideas but at what cost

Windows 8 is the best os

Possibly was once... just for the free upgrade to a Win 10 license. If any version of Windows melts your butter.

Clearly would be two tier...

Using algorithms for discriminatory pricing is also on the naughty list. China's e-commerce industry – a business segment on which Beijing has pinned its hopes as an economic driver and source of export revenue – has increasingly come to rely on the algorithms.

The regulations applicable to exclusively outward facing sites would likely be exempt from chinese domestic rules and continue to play by the same wild west rules as the rest of the internet. I cannot imagine CCP would wish any of this to limit chinese e-commerce from separating the gullible gweilo from his hard earned.

The domestic site sans algorithms and other enshittifications* would probably not need be any cleverer than a basic early noughties e-commerce site. The "export quality" site could presumably be the domestic version enshrouded by layer upon layer of algorithms, AI and other shite, rather like a Sara Lee chocolate croissant.

The irony is that until now vpn technology has mostly been used to get out of the PRC bypassing the Great Firewall but for a better deals foreigners might pay for vpn services to get inside. ;)

I suppose for good or ill, authorities everywhere will be following the PRC's progress in this undertaking with great interest.

Interesting times. Indeed.

* not the OED but not too shabby.

No, no not that...

"The Chinese government does and will go ham on you and anyone who speaks out, rebels, or goes against the regime's wishes"

An excruciating death by amateur theatrical?

Cruel and unusual punishment even by the brutal standards of PRC's CCP.

On the brighter side it's not traditional chinese opera which is probably more lethal than Vogon poetry.

RHEL 9.5 debuts alongside AlmaLinux, Rocky, and Oracle updates

Even more amusing

Even more amusing when you know that Lennart works for Microsoft these days.

At least they know whose door to knock on and won't have to walk too far. :)

"Hey Lennart! Your shit is shitting on our shit! It's not as though we all work for a sewerage utility?"

"...

We can clone you wholesale: Boffins build ML agents that respond like specific people

I thought this AI insanity was already scraping the bottom of the barrel and then...

"We anticipate that within our lifetimes it may become common practice for people to create a custom AI agent to interact with [...] the [...] world after death"

Technological necromancy? What a ghastly, even sacrilegious idea!

Requiescat in pace - less likely if the deceased's AI simulacrum is still abroad in the land of the living.

Would we require the technological equivalent of a wooden stake and interment at crossroads to keep the dead from haunting the living?

I can imagine that the data from pre-employment psychometric tests that are apparently de rigueur in many large companies could be used to construct these models without the explicit consent of the candidate.

AI PCs: 'Something will have to give in 2025, and I think it's pricing'

Re: What in the heck even IS an AI PC?

"It has a Tensor Processing Unit, or possibly a GPU that can do CUDA or ROCm."

In that case I imagine the CPU's embedded graphics hardware might eventually acquire GPU cores.

Rather embarrassed to admit I reached old age without realising why I couldn't run my Xeon workstation without a graphics adaptor. ;)

I always thought embedded graphics meant a separate adaptor soldered onto the board.

Re: What in the heck even IS an AI PC?

"I've got a "TURBO" badge leftover from the 90's if that helps?"

I once had a 286 PC with a turbo button which lit a led when in turbo mode.

On tracing the wiring I found the only function the turbo switch implemented was to light the led. (A resister from the 5V supply to the led.)

I don't imagine extra functions promised on an AI PC will be any more in evidence than with my turbo switch.

A fraudulent go smarter switch v. a fraudulent go faster switch.

BOFH: The devil's in the contract details

Never a truer word...

"It means software developed by people with pony tails. And beards. Beardy, pony-tailed people who use words he doesn't understand. And women!"

Very amusing and rather too close to reality. Pretty much how manglement think of FOSS. Pony tails, beards pretty much de rigeur, perhaps, sadly, not so much women. Conversely the use of words that no one *can* understand is all too common in many projects.

This is probably how communism started – and they'll come for the managers first!!!"

《Man, stop making it sound so good!》

I think, at least in Russia, the drivers of the communist revolution were from the strata of society that typically supplied the management ranks and not from the peasant class (unless he had tucked in his shirt.)

So managers coming for other managers which is another perspective on some of the early soviet purges.

Still anything that reduces the ranks of manglement cannot be all bad.

The boss is a slow learner but...

Hopefully the boss had not chosen the parking space by the building that day.

If the current boss has been there long enough he might have been a early adoptor of the Tesla Cybertruck leasing one to meet these contingencies.

Although I imagine the inevitable impact hemorrhaging wouldn't help with the Cybertruck's rust problems.

Re: Checking the boxes

Although it does require pressing 4 keys in Emacs

Thoroughly pissed myself on that one! :))

I will have to be more careful in future. I only know the key sequence to exit emacs but often forget even that and just have a punt no realizing the potential hazards of such cavalier behaviour.

AI Jesus is ready to dispense advice from a booth in historic Swiss church

Re: Ascended already?

guide its flock to the rapture in silicon heaven?

If the practitioners of these dark arts ultimately manage to construct conscious artifacts I fear they might well be able to eventually reconstruct an individual's consciousness in such a device.

The Mephistophelean transaction offering the temptation of an eternal "existence" in a silicon heaven would likely seduce most of the population.

Although I suspect after a few centuries inhabiting a simulated world resembling a collage of cheap 1960s American TV sitcoms the majority of these reconstructed consciousnesses will conclude the "heaven" part was rather oversold and might begin to understand why their corporeal contract required a sanguineous signature.

[AI Jesus] is ready to hear thoughts,... "is explicitly not a confession."

lead me to wonder whether the original could have heard confession. From my school days' religious instruction classes I think Jesus was a Rabbi but I cannot quite see how he might have been ordained a christian priest.

Curiously this particular church is St Peter's, named after the Apostle from whom the Roman church derives the papal succession.

As far as I (an infidel) understand these matters, confession is only one part of the sacrement. They being (i) contrition, (ii) amendment or remediation, (iii) confession and (iv) penance.

Protestants presumably have similar processess but omit the need for an intermediary between their consciences and their God.

Counterintuitively AI Jesus might pose fewer doctrinal problems for protestants than for its catholic creators.

Seriously anyone that understands that fundamentally, religion is for the living and is an attempt to convince people to live better lives in greater accord with others, with their environment etc, will have serious concerns about introducing a mechanical non human component into what is essentially a human to human interaction.

Replacing one half of the interaction with an automaton must ultimately dehumanise the remaining half.

Not that I imagine Hell needs any further assistance in filling its pits. If Hades were landfill it would have been obliged to convert to recycling eons ago...

Andrew Tate's site ransacked, subscriber data stolen

Re: Buried in the lede

But it must be quite a challenge to spend that amount of money in Romania. Especially if you don't get out much.

One suspects there are a number of Romanian institutions where his millions might be profitably invested so that he might get out a bit more.

First I heard of ths prat was his legal problems which must have had some AU connection because the story ran for a while here.

I imagine his ill-gotten gains might be going into accounts frozen by the courts in various less venal jurisdictions.

In any case the details of hundreds of thousands delusional and gullible fools are now available which will undoubtedly provide rich pickings for the internet's underworld. I don't imagine any of these drongos suffering such predation will attract any sympathy from at least one half of the population and sod all from the other half.

Microsoft flashes Win10 users with more full-screen ads for Windows 11

Re: Not new

M$ FAIL

We don't appear to have progressed far from: Abort, Ignore, Retry?

Notably MS added Fail in DOS 3.3, taken the sentiment to heart and never looked back.

Personally I recommend Abort, walk away, Ignore and never regret tossing these tossers.

Re: Is there anything more guaranteed to induce aneurysm-level rage than a full-screen Microsoft ad?

There's an entire circle of Hell for whichever fuckwit marketing executive thought that was appropriate.

I think Microsoft has had its own ditch in Dante's 8th Circle for a very long time but now is looking to upgrade its subscription to a full Circle.

Although, given Microsoft products are likely to have overpopulated the 5th Circle, the big dude under the 9th Circle would probably extend a deep discount on enterprise Circle licensing.

Ultimately Microsoft would want their own Pit. I imagine Oracle has long had one.

Whomp-whomp: AI PCs make users less productive

Never old enough...

I'm not old enough that I need assisted living thank you very much.

I don't think I will ever permit myself to be sufficiently decrepit to require AI to assist my continued existence.

Now kindly fuck off.

From a certain age that was an implied closure to any verbal exchange of mine. Rather less polite than Vetinari's "Don't let me detain you" although lacking that autocrat's veiled but nonetheless credible threat.

Re: At Last!

"Powerpoint makes* people stupid"

Any tool that discourages critical thinking (or any thinking) will nourish the seed of implicit stupidity native in the human condition, allowing it to blossom into a mind boggling bloom of explicit stupidity.

AI/LLM appears to supply the ultimate nutrient for an unprecedented efflorescence of human stupidity.

* "No," as the daemon Crowley, I think put it, "they do it to themselves."

AI PCs

When all the tulips have withered and their bulbs have rotted in the ground AI augmented PCs might be repurposed for better optical character recognition systems (and handwriting recognition.)

Many decades ago I imagined systems that could be presented with a manuscript of technical writing which included equations, figures and text which the system could classify each textual component to produce an electronic version where the natural language text is represented as such, similarly equations, and figures as (vector?) graphics.

Basically the logical content, which could be processed to produce any number of presentation formats as well as being searchable or amenable to semantic processing.

(The semantic web was once(?) a thing but I have no idea what it was (or is?) as at the time I was too busying bofh~ing - every open window an unmissable opportunity. ;)

Not much of this has come to pass. I can scan a printed page from a journal but any software purporting to usefully process it is pretty piss poor at best.

Handwriting recognition isn't too bad when entering plain English text but try and enter anything technical like (∀x)... no dice. You are stuck with typewriter conventions like (x) or (Ax) and [x] or (Ex) which you might postprocess later or using Latex or eqn forms.

David Gries text The Science of Programming (1981) used (A x: ...) and (E x: ...) which definitely lacked a certain aesthetic elegance.

Not really the good old days but just that much has not improved, much has gone backwards and more has gone, as Cory Doctorow's coinage would have, to shit. So little time, so much sky to shout at (2π sr actually.:)

Re: I'm not surprised...

Text colour RGB.

I remember reading, when still of an impressionable age, a page of text sporting "meaningfully" coloured words in Michael Palin's Bert Fegg's Nasty book for boys and girls☆ which, I think, featured the titular Dr Fegg and his axe but I vividly recall red as in <span style='text-color: red; font-weight: bold; font-family: spatter-pattern;'>blood</span> was greatly in evidence.*

While not being at all squeamish in the matters of blood and gore, that experience induced a lifelong aversion to varicoloured text. Chromokeimenophobia?

* along with the trite examples like <blue>sky</blue>, <yellow>sun</yellow>,...

☆ Methuen 1974.

Re: I'm not surprised...

《Unsurprisingly, searching directly for that quotation to confirm it didn't find a hit; mostly I got online grammar checkers, or (with quote marks) nothing at all. I had to search for a libretto for Iolanthe and then search that...》

DuckDuck quacked on

Gilbert and Sullivan "I can spell all the words that I use, and my grammar's as good as my neighbours'."

on the third entry after two adverts (grammar training, then the usual ebay bait [& switch] :)

https://gsarchive.net/iolanthe/web_op/iol08.html

I am surprised that Bing wasn't too shabby at this, particularly given it's a Microsoft creation.

Looking at the libretto, some of the versification sails pretty close to doggerel. Tabors/Neighbours, Hearty/Party - end rhymes to die for, or do I mean lethal? If I were Gilbert I mightn't set my hopes on Poet Laureate (actually he wouldn't have been the worst.)

Neuralink brain chips head for the Great White North

Great White North?

Newfoundland? Finding enough brain cells to insert a 1000 electrode might be a challenge, I understand.

"Neuralink is looking for people with limited or no ability"

Wouldn't need to look any further afield than the incoming US administration, one would have thought.

"Eventually it has the potential [to] be better than natural vision."

Space Karen has likely got the wrong end of the stick here [again.]

As understand the physical optics of the human visual system are actually pretty rubbish and the signals sent to the rest of the brain aren't exactly hires.

Apparently it is the processing brain applies to these signals that extracts fairly decent images (or at least they appear to be :), augmented by a fair bit of "filling in" the missing bits (AI doesn't have a monopoly on hallucination.)

I am not sure the human brain could do anything useful with a 100 megapixel (stereo) images in 24 bit colour shovelled in at 30 fps.

Years ago the eye was remarkable for the dynamic range of its light sensitivity. I don't if modern cameras can match this yet.

One has to hope that "Government Efficiency" won't involve its nominated Tsar mandating electrodes for the "less efficient" members of society so that they will have a "better" view of Lumic's Musk's vision.

If the track record of the Cybertruck is any indication, Musk's cybersuits for these "newly envisioned" would be more of a downgrade.

(Anyway I must find out who manufactures blue leds and acquire some of their shares. :)

Job seekers call BS on the workplace AI revolution

Re: "So, WTF is the point then?"

"TBH I've always though speaker dependent voice recognition would be faster, given how many developers are not touch typists."

If you listen carefully to informal (extemporary) speech it is really is a of a dog's breakfast of incomplete and ungrammatical (syntax) utterances which if transcribed literally would be barely readable and that doesn't even take into account the hand waving and other para-language that isn't captured.

Assuming developers were capable of composing a comprehensible, literate natural language sentence (a gross assumption in many cases) leveraging the technology used in LLMs to improve handwriting recognition both in speed and accuracy might well be a better approach.

A good many developers I have encountered were touch typists and were quite particular about their (sometimes peculiar or reprogrammed) keyboards but on reflection they were all products of tertiary institutions (with a decided emphasis on institution.)

Billionaire food app CEO wants you to pay for the privilege of working with him

200 words or less..

"I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God."

I suspect this chap has a bloody great needle and I do encourage him to pass a camel through its eye but I suspect he is destined to dwell amongst the flames of the dark kitchens of the hereafter.

AI hiring bias? Men with Anglo-Saxon names score lower in tech interviews

Anglo-Saxon names?

Ethelred (Æþelræd), Byrhtnoth (Byrhtnoð), Ecgberht etc not making the cut? Dylan, Cadwgan, Emrys are likely to fair better?

The defectives behind this nonsense are definitely "unræd" and have definitely earnt a share in Byrhtnoth's fate.

I would guess a fair proportion of modern western European names are biblical in origin with slight variation in form eg John, Sean, Jean... with a fair proportion of the remainder a common European heritage which would take care of Tom, Dick and Harry.

I guess Space Karen has got this covered with the unusual, if not unique, names he has bestowed on his spawn.

It seems names used to have more variety eg Wilkins Micawber, Uriah Heep or Hablot Browne. The puritans or non-conformists had some interesting Christian names and in that vein I rather like Pratchett and Gaiman's Anathema Device - goes to the top of my shortlist. :)

Might be worth adopting an alias like Abomination Bofhell if I were sufficiently deranged to apply for software engineering position.

Mlle. De Nadai has a valid point that when you attempt to remove a complex weighting set (bias) that is reflected in the training set of an insanely more complex LLM you inescapably create another bias that could quite possibly never be the result of any actual training set or a least one that is feasible in this world.

Really rather akin to performing brain surgery to remove bigotry, racial discrimination, belief in the wrong god (or any), or lust for the wrong sex. (Not that this nightmare hasn't been tried.)

Kyndryl insiders say there's little new business

FY2025

From a nation whose financial year ends 30 June it looks weird when those nation whose financial years end in March talk of FY2025 when 75% of the period (Q1..Q3) is in 2024.

"They're trying to get customers pregnant on it. And then customers can't get off." I am sorry but the pictures that evokes are definitely NSFW. (Think Calamity Jane [reverse]. ;)

Selling the Brooklyn Kundryl Bridge is almost foundational for American capitalism. No?

Data is the new uranium – incredibly powerful and amazingly dangerous

the medium ...

Not quite channeling Marshall McLuhan but once upon a time all the "older" data was migrated onto tape which was stored nearby and after a period was shipped off to cold storage in some warehouse in the boondocks to molder and be forgotten.

Unfortunately there is now so much hot storage that old data lingers on like an ancient inconveniently long lived relative kept alive by a mercantile medical industry.

A lot of big tech would benefit from an extensive application of involuntary euthanasia. (Literally and figuratively. :)

A decent Carrington Event could solve this and a few other problems. ;)

Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 struggles to take off

Simulating 737s?

I have only seen Flight Simulator once, way back when, and that was on a peculiar Olivetti PC - pretty impressive at the time.

But these are simulated aircraft in clouds so a bit of turbulence then. I wonder are all the concurrent users' aircraft flying in the same simulated sky?

Windows 95 setup was three programs in a trench coat, Microsoft vet reveals

"three programs in a trench coat"

"In a trench coat" reminded back at that time, in the parts I then dwelt, there was an affiction of fœtid old gits attired (only) in filthy trench coats flashing their family jewels before the more vulnerable members of the public.

Nice look Redmond nicely mirroring the 90s' Zeitgeist.

Microsoft goes thin client with $349 Windows 365 Link mini PC

Codenamed "Diddly"

because at the price it will diddle ye, and does diddly squat.

Although by that reasoning most of their offerings might be codenamed "Indolent Fornication."

Microsoft breaks timezones in Settings and calls on an unlikely ally for help

Re: As anyone tried to install Arch will tell

«Under UNIX, the timezone is just a single, simple symbolic link to file create/modify. This is what they can't beat. The raw simplicity underneath.»

Individual users can set their TZ environment variable which leverages the same raw simplicity :)

export TZ=":Australia/Sydney"

or

setenv TZ ":Australia/Sydney"

Thanks Mr Olsen. :)

Re: It's the Millennial Bug

Looks pretty, but doesn't work.

Not so sure about that.

A priori any generation should have received about the same amount of attention from the wielder of the ugly stick. Although incompetent tattooist (including do-it-on-yourself artists) might have augmented Mr Ugly Stick's efforts.

Microsoft 365 Copilot trips over angle brackets, frustrating coders

&lt; required?

Years ago having on occasion to create web pages explaining some simple points about HTML for the great unwashed I got used to typing &lt;p&gt; etc I am glad MS has been stung in this way. (Schadenfreude. :)

Sweden's 'Doomsday Prep for Dummies' guide hits mailboxes today

Re: Any mention of 'bug-out-bags'?

«Yeah, Hadrian's wall hasn't been maintained well, I expect the Scots might come marauding again»

Not that the Tories have left much to pillage.

I imagine the Scots might reinforce the Wall to prevent Sassanach climate refugees from swamping the high(er) lands of Caledonia. From memory a great deal of England is not much above the current sea level and until relatively recent times much of the country was actually swamp. A couple of continental ice sheets go slash and the French might well be turning back the boats from across the channel.

Re: 'Doomsday Prep for Dummies' guide...

A one pager as you suggested:

6. ... böj dig och placera ditt huvud stadigt mellan dina ben ... 7.kyssa sedan din rumpa hejdå.

Please don't blame me for the Swedish it's all rather more Greek to me than Greek was to Casca. The kudos are all Google Translate's

Musk, America PAC sued for allegedly rigging $1M election prize

"I don't think he meant what Musk thinks he meant."

Mentioning Knuth and Musk in the same sentence is likely to strip the gears in the mechanics of the English language.

"Musk thinks" I can see a problem there for a start. The subject and verb aren't supported by the semantics.

"Musk [has] been reading Knuth." I would be very surprised if Space Karen was aware of Donald Knuth in any context let alone his havng read any of Knuth's work.

The new Doge has claimed at some point that he is an engineer but hasn't elaborated on what branch of engineering but I would conjecture it's that branch of civil engineering that specialises in the management of sewerage.

"claims of a rigged election"

«Amazing how all the claims of a rigged election that went on for 4 years suddenly stopped, isn't it?»

Pretty stupid not to drop it.

Otherwise the otherwise the other side could come back with: "Sorry mate, yep you did win the 2020 election. Bad luck you were excluded but unfortunately it was actually your second term and consequently you weren't an eligible candidate in 2024."

Quelle embuggerance!

Re: Best solution

«Give everyone who signed up $1M USD. It's not like he can't afford it or anything.»

Better. Give everyone who signed up a FSD cybertruck. ;)

That would pretty much guarantee that they won't be as foolish, or indeed likely have the opportunity, to repeat their mistake.

Re: In this case

«vote for Trump because "Eggs are too expensive"»

Sorry. I read that as "eggs were too expensive to throw at the prat, so instead vote for the arsehole."

Such logic seems natural in the insane US political context but could also explain the last two decades of UK politics.

"No, the orange one won without this anyway, because 51% of Americans are idiots."

I suspect it's worse than that - those 51% were just those idiots who could work out how to register to vote, locate a polling place, how to get to it, know what month it is and whether it's Tuesday, and finally whether they could read the names on the ballot.

I understand adult (il)literacy is a real problem in the US to the point that it hampers military recruitment.

From a foreigner's perspective any eligible US resident who didn't vote is, by definition, an idiot and, have by that default, can be said to just as effectively voted for the nutjobs now infesting or soon to infest all three branches of the US government.

Hardware barn denies that .004 seconds of facial recognition violated privacy

While agreeing with the decision...

it is ironic whenever a serious offence is reported in a suburban street the police quickly appear to the surrounding householders for any footage from their security cameras which by implication must be capturing faces etc, vehicle number plates etc etc 24x7 almost always without any warning signage.

Ditto for vehicle dash cameras.

If Bunnings had a large graphic at their stores' entrances depicting a camera directed at face icon with:

"WARNING: Facial Recognition in Use!"

in large bold lettering I am fairly sure the commissioner and I would have been satisfied.

It would help if the camera and facial recognition system were a sealed unit into which only the banned individuals' facial parameters were loaded and when operating the only output was the banned individual's identity when recognised (in real time) so that it is immediately clear nothing apart from the uploaded parameters are ever stored in the recognition system.

The Hammerbarn enjoys ambivalent relationship with Australian consumers. The hardware merchant's near 400 stores means they are convenient but their near monopoly has meant that a fair proportion of their products are overpriced and of inferior quality - mostly sourced (but rebranded) from the PRC as one might have expected.

Generally, if you can be arsed, it is worthwhile seeking out one of the smaller retailers to source a branded alternative which while more expensive but of a better quality than the corresponding Hammerbarn branded offering but generally a little cheaper than the same branded item if Hammerbarn offers it.

Unfortunately most hardware including power tools is now considered by consumers to be disposable - used for the project in hand then binned. I would be surprised if anyone cleans paint brushes nowadays or sharpens or resets handsaws.

Cory Doctorow again I suppose.

Mystery Palo Alto Networks hijack-my-firewall zero-day now officially under exploit

Doesn't surprise me.

Never used these devices and having seen inside a couple sitting on the network perimeter was just another tick in the "locate the nearest exit" box.

Ignoring the cosmetic and ergonomics the thing that caught my attention was the multiple concerns the box was attempting to address simultaneously and the compromises which were thereby entailed.

In my mind the device sitting on the network perimeter should do one thing - restrict ingress (and egress) to (only) that permitted by the explicit (static) policy which basically reduces to sources, destinations, protocols, ports, sequence numbers and flags.

If you wish to inspect packet content, terminate vpn connections, etc do it in secured enclaves on the other side of the border device. KISS = knowing its simple & secure. ;)

When you are filtering shit you start with the coarsest sieves and apply succesively finer filters until with micropore filters you might drink the water.

Yes there is an element of "firewalls all the way down" if only to implement the secure enclaves but in any case an unpartitioned network is the proverbial chewy centre of the Cadbury Caramel Creme Egg model of network security.

Having any security sensitive management interface on any (sub)net directly reachable either internally or worse, remotely should be an anathema.

I have a fondness for screening bridges which, by not having transport layer addresses, are the Headless Monks of network devices in being rather difficult to subvert.