Posts by Harry the Bastard

Beaming boffins feel the rhythm as neutrinos oscillate over 500 miles

Re: Aiming the beam

seems there's considerable spread...

http://www.quantumdiaries.org/2014/12/12/how-to-make-a-neutrino-beam/

ice melting in a bucket?

we used to dream of ice melting in a bucket, would 'a been an lhc to us

we measured string wit' wooden ruler and teacher would thrash us to class with a broken retort, if we were lucky

Beware, skateboarders! Hackers can switch your 'leccy plank into reverse at warp speed

Re: Electric Skateboard?

http://www.lexus-int.com/amazinginmotion/slide/

...gets a bit expensive laying the track though

electric skateboard?

as a species, we're doomed

Want to download free AV software? Don't have a Muslim name

Re: so, let me see...

er, we're talking about downloading "free av software", not getting on a plane

these are two different things

if your name is not on the list, you are not going to be asked for your passport before you get the software

you are simply going to get the software

so, let me see...

step one, download baddie list from convenient us government website

step two, check list for name

step three, use different name

am i missing something, or did they not think this through?

Pope loses grip on Antarctica: Clergy withdraw from austral landmass

Re: "Tiny Nuns"

for some reason the instant connection my brain made was to "tiny little men" by electric six, and wondering how the tiny nuns were involved in their plight

Stephen Hawking to rattle off answers online for more than a week

if....

soz, couldn't resist

HP slaps dress code on R&D geeks: Bin that T-shirt, put on this tie

many many moons ago there was a visitation from one of the global overlords of our megacorp

i was resplendent in secondhand nato overtrousers (by laurence corner of camden) and an iggy pop sweatshirt

my manager (who was really ok) blenched as the overlord was introduced to me, probably wondering if he was in for a ticking off, but all was good and subsequently the overlord offered me a job resulting in the most fun i ever had in business

happy times, will we ever see their like again ---reverie--- oops, must prepare for my first webex of the day, sigh

impotent management always resort to dress codes, another favourite is 'tidy' desks

it gives them a feeling of accomplishment every time they see people complying

Help! Our Virgin Media TiVo boxes are stuck in a loop! Help! Our Virgin..

Re: London time??

greenwich is in london

Pan Am Games: Link to our website without permission and we'll sue

it'd be much funnier if the rest of the interwebs took them at their word and didn't link to their site

Black and Latina boffins regularly mistaken for janitors, study finds

happened to one of our hr bigwigs a few years ago, usa expat over in uk for a year of cv buffing and headcount/benefit slashing before heading home again

she turned up after hours in rather casual dress and the security guards decided she was a cleaner

hr, well, you can imagine h̶o̶w̶ ̶w̶e̶ ̶l̶a̶u̶g̶h̶e̶d̶ the sympathy

Norks execute underperforming terrapin farm manager

Re: Putting aside the absurdity of the punishment...

well, one day the glorious leader saw a report on the need for terascale processing farms

orders were given

no one's going to point out the faux pas, they just need to keep a straight face and take plenty of notes

WHY did NASA probe go suddenly SILENT - JUST as it was about to send pics of remote ice-world?

cover up!

clearly it was taken aboard an alien ship thus causing loss of communications

after examining it to learn about it's creators and whether we are hot for interspecies bunga bunga or merely prospective slaves/food/whatever, they released it to carry on it's mission

watch the skies!

UK TV is getting worse as younglings shun the BBC et al, says Ofcom

wholesale title oriented outcome

"There might be a need for a wholesale re-evaluation of how to deliver the public service outcomes Parliament has specified,"

as a species we're doomed

This whopping 16-bit computer processor is being built by hand, transistor by transistor

more of this heroic nonsense!

designed a cpu with 10k ecl once, i thought that drew a lot of power, but 500w has me beat

hurrah to him!

Google's new free music service is classic Google: Take someone's idea and slap ads on it

curated title

i see in the blog post they use the c word

not sure who started it, but every time i see it used in the context of some trivial task such as making a playlist i just want to slap the perpetrator, hard

Polish airline LOT was grounded after 'IT attack' took hold

there are worse places to be stuck (as long as you are in a nice hotel)

i was stranded there where eyjafjallajökull hiccups

it only takes about a day to get back to london by train, sleeper warsaw-köln (book in the highest class you can get), thalys köln-brussells, eurostar brussels-london, it's advisable to take a hamper and plenty of beer and/or wine

Facebook tosses creepy Place Tips beacons at stateside retailers

rather disingenuous to claim "designed for privacy"

sure the beacon cannot identify or track users, but the moment an app uses a beacon's id code to call home the user is nailed

Bank: Without software mojo, Android OEMs are doomed to 'implode'

simple solution

samsung's problem is not that google crushed it's ui, it's that samsung is unwilling/unable to maintain software on it's devices and issue updates in a timely manner if at all

this is even on sim-free phones where samsung has no carriers to delay things with extra bloatware

fool me once etc., the s6 is lovely, but now there's no way i'm paying top whack for the latest samsung shiny if they're going to treat it as unmaintained landfill within a year or so

i'm no fan of the iphone, but this is one area apple really got it right

Trial halted as Kartoon defence attorney arrested after warrant discovery

better call saul

(body)

Hacker data dumps scrape to make huge grey marketing database

so he's selling stolen data

what could possibly be wrong with that

I say Zuck off, YOU say Zuck off, we ALL say Zuck off

shouldn't that be...

zuck off, bitch

Ricoh rolls out electrifyingly exciting RUBBER!

Re: ideas

trampoline, encouraged by the increasing zaps you bounce ever higher until reaching escape velocity

The Harder They Come, Hunters in the Dark and Fall of Man in Wilmslow

"as he is brewing up the potassium cyanide with which he killed himself"

was it ever reasonably proven that he did?

i'm sure i'd read that the apple was never tested, the amount in his body didn't suggest a large dose and it may simply have been accidental by inhalation/contamination from chemistry experiments he was doing with perhaps less care than advisable

So what would the economic effect of leaving the EU be?

by sheer coincience there are a lot of people in government who were, are or will be employed in the finance business

as usual, a reasoned piece - though the bit where we somehow become richer is pure fantasy, nice theory but the world has changed, now we get screwed and squeezed, tha's reality even in the usa where these pesky eu rules have no power - but there's more to life than economics

i do like not gettng messed around over travel, import/export, customs, and access to services in my travels, and do really rather enjoy meeting johnny foreigner wherever i encounter him be it bloomsbury or bruge, it'd sadden me to no longer be part of that, maybe enough to upsticks before an exit

the uk does not have the greatest employment/human rights in europe, but judging by the venom heaped on the eu 'interference' in this area by various robber barons i have the distinct impression that exit would be followed by an even greater loss of protection for the average person

i think it's also clear to any reasonable person that a big factor for many, not all, 'kippers is immigration, (and for some, not all by any means, that seems to boil down to simple racism), but what's the impact if we ban/deport immigrants? the average age in the uk is rising, surely we'll need people to keep things running, change our bedpans and wheel us about in our dotage

the eu has major issues, but i'd rather see an *honest* and sustained go a fixing it, which the uk has never tried, than a sulky retreat into what i'm sure would be a poorer and nastier island

Going up hills past blokes with coke-bottle legs: The Smart E-bike

"It's 200W added to the power you're supplying yourself, so 400W flat out."

it's not as simple as that...

going uphill it is power to weight ratio that counts, on the flat aerodynamics hits hard from around 30-35kmph

i'd think a heavy upright leccy rider would be hard pressed by even an uncategorised road cyclist, a proper roadie would easily leave it in the dust

but for commute etc. it's a great solution if you haven't the benefit of showers etc. at work

Spooks BUSTED: 27,000 profiles reveal new intel ops, home addresses

don't tell him pike!

[words, just words]

Building the world's biggest telescope array - with machines that don't yet exist

tennis courts?

any fule kno the correct measure of 33,000m2 is 1.5883 microwales

Apple to devs: Watch out, don't make the Watch into a, well, a watch

apple is still sore from the rogering it got after stealing the swiss railway clock design

it would only be time before apps with 'fake' timex/swatch/seiko/citizen/etc. watch faces appear and fanbois go wild to upgrade the look of their wrist jobs

apple does not want a repeat

Looking for laxatives, miss? Shoppers stalked via smartphone Wi-Fi

Re: Apple fixed it for you.

unless/until you connect to free wifi, at which point the device's true mac is used and trackable

afaik apple hasn't published details of how these 'random' mac addresses are generated and shuffled, if it were truely random within mac space they'd risk duplication of legitimate macs, so presumably they instead use a smaller block registered to apple, but if they use a small fixed per-device pool then over time it'll still be possible to infer device id

but it's no big deal, mac anonymity is a red herring, idevices are still trackable by other means

more interesting is that apple introduced the feature around the same time that ibeacons were launched, a cynical person might think there was a connection and that apple's motivation was not this sham privacy but simply to disrupt established companies with push wifi tracking and boost a new imonopoly for app-based pull tracking via the beacon (if you use the app, you're agreeing t&c and you are then 100% trackable), though of course ibeacon has no special appleness, any ble beacon plus app will do the trick irrespective of platform

London man arrested over $40 MILLION HFT flash crash allegations

meh

hft is exploitation of computational oomph and minimum latency to screw the less well equipped, it has nothing to do with investing or even speculation, spoofing is simply gaming the gamers, good luck to him

iPhone vs. Galaxy fight hospitalises two after beer bottle stabbing

article misses out the most important information...

who won?

High on bath salts, alleged Norse god attempts tree love

damn, i acted on the headline

now i've got suds all over my keyboard, am still mortal and it tastes bad too

Drones to bring DEBT FROM ABOVE in Switzerland

Re: They have it covered from the other angle too

in the uk we get the first two parts done already, so adding on the email stage should be a doddle

Alfa Romeo MiTo Quadrifoglio Verde: Less fun than it should be

Re: quadrifoglio verde?

yes that's the meaning, hence the eponymous quadrilobe spinach laden cheesy savoury

beer because pizza

quadrifoglio verde?

i'm sure i've seen that on a pizza menu

What's Meg Whitman fussing over: The fate of HP ... or the font on a DISRUPTIVE new logo?

what's that rumbling i hear...

yep, it's the sound of bill and dave spinning in their graves

Finally, Mozilla looks at moving away from 'insecure' HTTP. Maybe

never knew about the yiff version of the logo

furries get in everywhere

Chrome version 42 will pour your Java coffee down the drain: Plugin blocked by default

grrr

i understand the desire to expunge legacy nastiness for the sake of the children, but for grown ups it causes problems

as above, there are many existing systems and applications, including supposedly modern fluffy cloudy ones, that either will not work at all, or will have surprise malfunctions when accesed

oh, and then there's the updated microsoft webmail my megacorp just deployed, far more bells and whistles than the old version, oh, and now i can't attach files, chrome doesn't work, firefox doesn't work, safari (ptuii) works a bit

at this rate i'll be firing up a vm running ie just to get work done, hardly a step forward

Dev gives HBO free math tips to nail Game of Thrones pirate leakers

"I think that binge-watching the first four episodes is a stupid idea that will make you ache for a month waiting for the fifth episode"

surely that should be, "I think that watching this dross is a stupid idea, it will rot your brain and leave you obnoxious, stupid and lazy"

Snakes on a backplane: Server-room cabling horrors

Re: Underfloor can be much worse!!!

i remember one like this

there was so much cable we couldn't get the floor tiles to lay flat, didn't stop us adding more though

Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge in Vulture's claws: we find looks AND brains

still on my s2

with no sd card it seems they're trying to head down the fruity lock-in path, but they're not apple, they don't have the content infrastructure with over a decade of itunes behind them and the cross-device integration, imho the more they try the less they'll succeed

if only they'd stop adding bloatware and undeletable apps, instead just ship good hardware with a straight build and then maintain it

unless/until samsung (and others) commit to providing timely, long term updates for their android-based devices i'm not buying something that's going to be hung out to dry in a year or so

waiting for a nexus of similar size/weight to the s2, at least i'll get updates for a reasonable period and have only one set of garbage apps to ignore

Belgium to the rescue as UK consumers freeze after BST blunder

mmm belgium

beer

chocolate

cobbled classics

vlaamse stoverij with frites

gets my vote

Unlimited stolen Uber accounts flogged for $5

no evidence of a breach

that'll be no evidence other than the sale of what seem to be customer details

well, that's alright then

Building a better society from the Czechs' version of Meccano

the mere sight of the caterpillar tracks makes me want to buy that set

i would need to add radio control

and lasers

Forum chat is like Clarkson punching you repeatedly in the face

unacceptable to hit a minion, but on the other hand he is reputed to have punched piers morgan in the face, so he's not all bad