Posts by easyk

Why Nobody Should Ever Search The Ashley Madison Data

Re: WTF?

am I wrong? this is a humor piece, no? The author put cookies in quotations ffs.

Re: WTF?

"did you realise what site that shit was to be published on?"

That's what I'm wondering about you...

keep it moving

Nothing to see here folks. Keep it moving. I'm sure you all have much more important things to do than to look up your spouse, coworkers, neighbors, etc. Isn't there that interesting program on the TV tonight?

Microsoft picks up shotgun, walks 'Modern apps' behind the shed

Re: Modern Applications

4 RPN LIFE?

Woman dumps ultra-rare $200,000 Apple 1 computer in the trash

The lady had it right.

That is the appropriate location for junk.

HUGE Aussie asteroid impact sent TREMORS towards the EARTH'S CORE

Re: Sensational

You may have known but in scientific journalism nothing really exists until it is published.

Magnifico! Galileo satellite nudged back into correct orbit

Re: Failure or test scenario?

Rocket Economics: The Dismal Rocket Science.

DISPLAY DESTRUCTION D'OH! Teardown cracks Surface Pro 3 screen

Re: Here's an idea

Solder paste does a fine enough job of keeping the parts in place durring reflow.

BGA packages are actually better than many larger (DFN) packages for vibration (from what I've read)

Yahoo! Mail users see crying baby who says firm is 'over capacity'

Re: Wait, people still use Yahoo! Mail?

better question is why not? It does the job does it not? not everyone is so driven to be fashionable.

El Reg's contraptions confessional no.4: Yamaha retro synth, valve oscilloscope and more

Re: Quite.

$15K Tek scope I have is great but having to update a Oscope firmware because it has bugs in the is distressing. When set to trigger from the logic analyzer it would fail to sample the analog every other trigger. The prices for the serial decode is ridiculous but It has saved me many many debug hours and it wasn't me paying for it so..

We go joyriding in the Google Maps-killer's ROBO-CAR

Lidar

That unit is a Velodyne HDL32. Neat device, it has 32 indvidual laser diode, reviever diode pairs. I can vouch for the precision being 2cm as advertised but not so the accuracy. It may have changed but is was necissary to calibrate each one of those 32 channels to get them to all report the same range. After calibration it was accurate.

Velodyne is a bit of an odd company. They started making audio stuff and almost as a lark decided to make a Lidar (Ladar) product.

Brit boffin brews INSTANT HANGOVER RELIEF

They've invented synthohol.

you know... from star trek.

BETHLEHEM-grade SUPERNOVA possible 'within 50 years'

IR future

In the future everyone will have a microbolometer. They are so damn fun and useful I don't want to live in a world where they don't.

Low res models from FLIR are now about $1000.

Lighting bods blind designophiles with LED-powered lounge lamps

Re: I'd be happy with ...

Maybe you should move somewhere sunnier?

I started replacing failed bulbs with Phillips LEB bulbs 3 years ago. I have seen 0% failure rate. I don’t get so angry with the kids when they leave them on. They are instant on and dimmable. I have no complaint about the light spectrum.

But I live in sunny Colorado and spend a lot of time outside. Maybe if I lived in a persistently overcast region I would care more. I suspect though you just like complaining about light bulbs.

In case of LOHAN flight emergency, gobble THIS Iridium-Arduino sandwich

FECK, BOLLOCKS

only to be used in case of an adverse situation right?

Floatation

Elimination

Control

Krank

or something using BOLLOCKS

Wow! British Gas bungs a million remote-controlled sales-droids in UK homes

Air conditioning?

In heated envoronments all waste heat offsets heating costs so is not wasted. How often is an English house running its air conditioning? Waste heat that cannot be harvested for heating is of course waste so turn off your outside lights. Seems like worrying too much about electricity consumption in your area is a waste of time.

Only 1 in 5 Americans believe in pure evolution – and that's an upswing

Re: has your code evolved lately?

That just the thing buddy... evolution is the best fit for the available evidence. Alternative explanations (we call them hypothesis) have to be able to fit a lot of pieces into place and do it better than the existing explanation. If you are suggesting that developing that alternative explanation is not supported (rubbished) because too much has been invested in the status quo, well yes that is sometimes a problem. But it is a human problem and the best hypothesis seems to win in time (the old generation dies off). I don't think that is what you are saying. I think you just a shallow troll. You also seem to be confused by "belief" and building testable hypothesis.

100-metre asteroid 2013 NE19 zipped past Earth today

Re: More distant or... ?

I suspect it is a product of proximity and potential harm. A fast massive object can be unsettlingly close at 11 times the distance of an object that is 1/11th as menacing.

US Supremes: Human genes can't be patented

Re: Monsanto?

I don't know... let us find some lawyers and pay them millions of dollars to find out!

Linus Torvalds threatens verbal assault on developers' pets

That should work.

They should fall in line after that. If anything scares Linux kernel devs it is someone shouting at them on the internet.

Look out, fanbois! EVIL charger will inject FILTH into your iPHONE

Re: Counterfit Chargers?

I've never heard the term "hash filter" outside of people rolling their own special cigarettes. Is that like a the RFI choke?

It would not be very expensive to make a circuit board that would fit in a itingy charger like space. Micro controllers are available in CSBGA these days and circuit boards are pretty cheap. It would be thousands of dollars including engineer time not millions.

They WANT to EAT YOUR COMPUTER - welcome your ANT overlords

maybe

A PCB is made up of sandwiches of epoxy, fiberglass and copper. I doubt ants can sense glass or copper but they might be picking up a chemical signal from the the epoxy. A small change to the epoxy chemistry might put them off.

It is not clear to me that they are attracted to the PCB though. It could be a chemical signal from wire insulation or something to do with electric fields. Some research is required. No matter what it probably doesn't make economic sense to make special electronics for what is now such a small market segment. Some other mitigation is needed.

Boffins find world's oldest virgin water trapped in Earth's crust

bottle it

and make sure the label says "fresh".

Dish boss: We're English-speaking Americans, hire us!

personal

Maybe it got personal because the dish CEO is generally known to be a dickhead. Japs are saying "You don't really want to work with THAT guy, do you?

Spanish boffins increase GPS accuracy by 90%

Just skimmed the paper

It looks like they are using a Novatel OEMV which in the configurations I'm familiar with will run you about $6000. An IMU on the from crossbow similar to the one they describe is another $6000. I guess it is better than the $100K systems that some reaserchers strap on their systems but not cheap.

Japanese boffins tout infrared specs to thwart facial recognition

IR filter

IR filter could probably counter this counter measure. If these cameras use silicon detectors then they may already have an IR filter in place.

Boffins develop microwave weed-zapper

depth

You are not going to penetrate very far into the soil. Even if you did it is trivial to toss down a box of worms after the radiation. One way the device could work is you microwave an area to kill the existing plants and seeds and then till the soil.

Dotcom titan funds 'Mark Cuban Chair To Eliminate Stupid Patents'

So did I !

want to hang out later?

"...To Eliminate Stupid Parents"

I misread the title. I was mighty confused by the first paragraph of the article. I then read the title correctly and was mighty disappointed.

Senator threatens FAA with legislation over in-flight fondleslabbing

One experience

Once I had a pilot come on the intercom before we started to taxi saying something to the effect of "whoever has the elctronic device on, turn it off. It is interfering with out navigation equipement". After the flight as I was deboarding I walked by the pilot and asked him if he was kidding. He was serious and said no his GPS was giving him the wrong heading until after he made the announcment. I still think it is bullshit but apparetly some pilots think otherwise.

US Army demos first robot Black Hawk helicopter

LADAR vs Lidar

I'm glad they used the term LADAR instead of Lidar. Lidar sounds so limp.

Flash memory made immortal by fiery heat

magic smoke

I've heated semiconductors to >400C before but the result was less good. There was less self healing and more molten jets of plastic and smoke. I must be doing it wrong.

Real sci-fi space ships coming at last? NASA tests nuclear engine

Re: Earth orbit?

They orbited the moon. They also orbited the earth but in the same way that when you orbit the earth you are still orbiting the sun. It we all go round and round.

"Just remember that you're standing on a planet that's evolving

And revolving at nine hundred miles an hour

That's orbiting at nineteen miles a second, so it's reckoned

A sun that is the source of all our power"

Mexican Zetas ENSLAVING engineers to run crimelords' radio net

Re: Savagery

The Norsemen were pretty savage.

Alienware assimilates Dell FROM THE INSIDE!

Re: Flawless operation? Not a chance...

@ seiñor pott I do posess the ability to subtract 2005 from 2012 :-) it goes <windows key>+r and then "calc"

We have since purchased another alienware for the lab, I think 2 years ago. I have not used it as it ended up in the hands of one of my managers and I never saw it again. I think it performs just fine.

Re: Flawless operation? Not a chance...

We bought 3 alienware lappies in about 2005. They used P4 chips that got so hot when rendering data they became uncomfortable to type on. Putting them on a lap would be spermacidal.

Re: XPS extinct?

I bought an XPS earlier this year based on the reputation of the the old good XPS that is still running fine after many years in the lab. I sent it back the next day. The build quality was pure crap, not the fine machine my previous experience indicated it would be.

Skydiver Baumgartner in 128,000ft plunge from brink of space

Booooorrrrrrrring

Now if he would have set off a small model rocket while he was up there....

How hard is 3D printing?

Re: PCB

LPKF can do it but you need a lot of equipment.

Bitcoin exchange shuts after heist

Nerds should love bitcoins

What a fantatstic Idea!! i need to go set up an exchange right away!. Unfortunatly I'd probably have to spend all the stolen money protecting myself from hitmen.

The criticisms really are over the top. If you don't like the idea then don't use it. Paypal is still accepted. I'm pretty sure I don't understand the concept fully as I've only read the Spectrum article on it and The Register has helpfully pointed out some of the problems with the practial use of the currency but it is very very very neat technically. I have no desire to do anything illegal or untrackable but I am interested enough in the cryptography and technology that I find bitcoins facinating.

What was my point again?

Ubisoft: 'Vast majority of PC gamers are PIRATES'

as for validity...

I can not comment. But I wanted to share my personal experience. In my youth I bought many games but pirated many many more. Since 2006 though I have bought and played 3 games (and pirated 0) and every second I was playing I felt guilty for using my very limited free time not with my young family or doing something useful. I can't handle that stress.

Hello nasty, don't use my music: Deceased Beastie Boy to admen

NDA Jam

New for xbox360. Non Disclosure Agreement Jam 2K12. Extreeme Paperwork Filling Action for up to 4 players! New Notary mode!

Deadly pussies kill more often than owners think

Re: The blindness of cat lovers...

A fine statement of truth. I am at a loss as to why anyone would have a problem with what you said. Is it because you called their house pets "stray"? People need to think rationally about this. Emotion is clearly clouding their judgement.

Re: Kil em all

I here-by enter into record House Resolution #4721: the georgecloonylookalike "F*ck Them Pussies" bill of 2012.

Valve: Games run FASTER on Linux than Windows

:)

This fills my heart with glee.

DDR 4 sets the pace for fast memory

Re: Picture = Fail

My fellow engineers and I have postulated that boards are immune to ESD as long as the source of the ESD is the person who designed the board. Maybe they designed it.

Also nothing bad can happen to you as long as you are wearing an ESD wrist band. (plugged into ground or not)

it hurts

One of the consequences of knowing the diference between Volts, Amps and Watts is the painful twinge you feel when they are misused in conversation or reporting. The pain is felt quite often and I suggest it is even worse than the pain others feel from the whole there, their, they're problem.

Bradley Manning in court as lawyers wrestle over secret docs

my stupid opinion

When this man joined the military he gave forth this oath. "I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God."

This, as well as when he accepted a security clearance, placed upon him responsibilities above and beyond those of a normal citizen. In my opinion he violated his oath and the duties of his security clearance. Whether this was an act of valor or treason is irrelevant. Until and unless he is pardoned he must be prosecuted.

Hackers expose 6.5 MILLION 'LinkedIn passwords'

I'm all for overreacting with extreme violence…

that is all I wanted to say. Proceed.

It's a trick. Get an axe

This just a ruse by LinkedIn to get you to visit their website again when you change your password.