Posts by Boring Bob

Intel offers Loihi 2 to boffins: A 7nm chip with more than 1m programmable neurons

Been there, seen it, never happened, 35 years ago. Difficult to get excited about the same old, "every chip will have a dedicated neural processor in it".

That's not long division, Timmy! China school experimented on pupils with mind-reading tech

So the teachers stuck some wires to the kids' heads and told them they could see if they were concentrating and those who didn't concentrate would the thrashed. And then they noticed an improvement, what a surprise.

Cubans launching sonic attacks on US embassy? Not what we're hearing, say medical boffins

Climate change

You can add the climate emergency to the mass hysteria list. A new world science based on computer models programmed for free by post grads who know nothing about computer science using data that has to be massaged before it can be used. Any form of conclusion relies on data 100s of years old (short-term changes are meaningless) most of which does not exist and must be filtered and modified for "good" data - so much for controlled experiments.

Before the climate crisis no one was interested in climate science now 18 year olds want to study it in order to save the world. So most of these scientists who are filtering data and creating the computer models are climate change believers on a crusade to save the earth.

All you need to add is the population on mass simply repeating what everyone else is saying and calling that "understanding science" and some grown men crying because a penguin doesn't have to suffer as cold a winter as usual and you have all the ingredients of mass hysteria

Boffins blow hot and cold over li-ion battery that can cut leccy car recharging to '10 mins'

The future is hydrogen.

Very few people seem to understand just how much energy there is in a litre of petrol. There is 36MJ, in a petrol station you pump about 1/2 litre per second into your tank. That is a power of 18MW! It is okay to rely on science to solve issues in the future but you are wasting your time if you are relying on magic.

The callosal energy production requirement could be met in the future with nuclear fusion. However the electricity transfer issue will require magic. Forget batteries, the future is hydrogen powered cars.

I assume you are based in the USA and on 110V. In the UK with 240V you can comfortably have the kettle and fan heater on at the same time. However you would still probably be better off with a gas hob.

Isn't going to happen

However you look at battery cars on mass isni going to happen. The energy on a litre if petrol is too big to replace with electricity. To produce the electricity needed we will need nuclear fusion, will happen one day. Burt the problem is the distribution and energy transfer to the car, the only way I can see to solve this is to use hydrogen.

Literally braking news: Two people hurt as not one but two self-driving space-age buses go awry

Painfully slow

In the Austrian case the pedestrian is definitely at fault. Until recently Navya has a bus operating where I work in Le Défense near Paris. The busses are painfully slow. On the rare occasion that you see someone inside one they appear trapped, regretting ever entering it as everyone else walks past them.

Can't quite cram a working AI onto a $1 2KB microcontroller? Just get a PC to do it

What is new here?

In the 1980's I was program neural nets on micro-controllers smaller than this for audio recognition. I assume they have developed something clever to deserve an article on this website, could someone point out what is new here?

Ahem, ahem... AI engine said to be good as human docs at spotting lung cancer developing

It is only at the end of the article that it is stated that the radiographers and AI results are the same when all previous scans are used. I'm not surprised by this. The neural network cannot be better than the training data and the training data relies in part on the radiographers analysis (I can imagine it is easy to create a record of radiographers false positives, but a record of false negatives would be more difficult).

China trade tariffs? Fuhgeddaboudit, say Cisco execs. We, er, shifted some production

Re: Don't be daft

"Religions started that 2000 years ago". What a ridiculous statement. Firstly, why should all religions suddenly start doing this 2000 years ago? Secondly, religions do not actually do anything, they are abstract concepts. It is people who put fear in other people, they may try to abuse the concepts of different religions to manipulate people for there own ends, however all ideologies and objects are vunerable to this type of manipulation why pick on religion?

"politicians pull off these days". Are you really so naive as to believe that there was ever a time when humans didn't do this?

Great news, cask beer fans: UK shortage of CO2 menaces fizzy crap taking up tap space

Tetleys hasn't been the same since they brought out the round tea bags.

Who will fix our Internal Banking Mess? TSB hires IBM amid online banking woes

Re: But what about Damon?

https://www.linkedin.com/in/damon-yates-1421b43/

Am I correct in understanding that TSB hired someone with only one year of project management experience as their head of IT infrastructure?

Perusing pr0nz at work? Here's a protip: Save it in a file marked 'private'

Re: The real story

Aren't jokes supposed to be funny? Your comment was an idiotic repetition of insults and brainless prejudice. Which part of it would you consider to be witty?

Vodafone won't pay employee expenses for cups of coffee

Re: You guys are nuts

Like the UK you get what you pay for. The difference is most companies heavily subsidise a canteen (small companies share one), those that don't provide luncheon vouchers. It is very rare that people buy sandwiches, generally only if they are in a hurry (this is often considered badly by colleagues as the purpose of lunch is to share time with them) If you were eating sandwiches for lunch everyday in Paris there is a problem somewhere.

You guys are nuts

You English people are nuts, you are so used to being scr*wed you bend over at every opportunity. Here in Paris my company has two different sites, both with subsidised canteens (about £2 or £3 for a three-course meal). When we go to the other site (a 30 minute drive away) we put the lunch on expenses. This is considered normal in France, no one would consider paying for their own lunch when traveling and no one would ever consider buying a sandwich ????

Radioactive leak riddle: Now Team America sniffs Europe's skies for iodine isotope source

Re: errant missile

"as it was a test, the missile was not loaded with real warheads (It would be stupid in case it failed and it actually did that)"

If the warheads were real it would not be so bad if it failed. Now it would be really stupid using real warheads if the test worked

You know IoT security is bad when libertarians call for strict regulation

"corporations will pay for private security within their own networks."

Like I said, the internet is dead, long live private networks. Today the internet only works because nearly everything connected to it is based on a small number of regulary updated OSs. IoT will kill this. I've spent 10 years trying to sell security to IoT companies. Most end customers will not spend a penny for security and don't give a s**t about security and privacy (if they did you would not be reading this on your Android phone). The automobile comparison is a false one. It involves protection against known knowns, it is economically viable for devices that cost 15000+€ not 15€ and a country can control nearly all devices connected to its road network (try stopping a rogue IoT device in another country connecting to your countries network)

Laws can't solve this

The government can pass a law that will magically stop hacking and will remove all unknown unknowns?

Let's face it, IoT will kill the internet. It was fun while it lasted, now it is time for the new generation to move on to the next thing.

Too much landfill, too little purpose: CES 2017

Re: Lack of imagination

More like too much imagination. People using their imagination to create solutions like IoT for non-existant problems which is why there is so much crap.

My fortnight eating Blighty's own human fart-powder

Re: Food is not only sustenance

You need to change companies. I have lived in France for over 20 years and everywhere I have worked has always stopped work for at least an hour at lunch.

Tesla set to up prices by 5% in new year because of 'currency fluctuations'

Re: wait until corporate welfare is shut off...

"fully recharge in 5 minutes.". Well let's think about that: 1 litre of petrol contains 36MJ of energy, a 60 litre tank contains 2GJ. Filling that in 5 minutes requires an energy transfer of 7MW. Replace

that with electricity at 250V and that will require a current of 28kA. That is one meaty connector.

'Extra-supermoon' to appear next week

Re: That's no moon… It's a space station!

Could draw a man's face.

Uncle Sam's boffins stumble upon battery storage holy grail

Pump rate

Can they achieve a charge rate equivalent to a petrol pump's delivery rate ?"

A petrol pump delivers 1/2 litre of petrol per second and there is 36MJ of energy released when burning 1 litre of petrol. Hence a petrol pump transfers energy at a rate of 18MW. This is enormous, a typical coal fired power station produces 200MW and a nuclear reactor 1500MW. So I doubt they can achieve the equivalent delivery rate as a petrol pump.

Banning handheld phone use by drivers had NO effect on accident rate - study

Re: re : James 51

Virtually all pedestrians will cross the road if the red man is showing and it is safe to do so. For some reason they (i.e. everybody) think the highway code does not apply to them. What is the difference between a cyclist passing through a red light when it is safe and a pedestrian (i.e. you) doing the same?

Sit back down, Julian Assange™, you're not going anywhere just yet

Mad

Have I understood this correctly? The UK has spent £6 million preventing Assange from escaping because a Swedish prosecutor cannot be arsed to get onto an aeroplane to London? The English should stick their fingers up to the stuck-up Swede and give her until the end of next week to shift her arse over here and then let Assange leave. If she can't be arsed to come here then she clearly does not consider the case against Assange to be that serious.

Britain's costliest mistake? Lord Stern defends his climate maths

Re: Here's a suggestion...

"My descendants being warm and unburdened by material goods will be in a much better position to pay off my debts! Or they will just carry on kicking the can down the road and not bother doing anything about it either..."

Nothing new here, this is how national debt works. Anyway, scientists will have figured out nuclear fusion by 2200, so what is there to worry about?

Travel much? DON'T buy a Samsung Galaxy Note 3

G does not stand for Global

The G in GSM does not and never did stand for Global. GSM is named after the people who wrote the standard, "Group Spécial Mobile".

You thought NFC tags were Not For Consumers? Well, they're in Maplin's

Re: short range is good, but...

Water does not have a great effect on NFC. NFC uses a magnetic field not EM waves (think transformer coupling rather than radio waves). This explains both the short distance it can communicate and how it can transmit sufficient energy to power a micro-controller (NFC can do a lot more than simply read tags). UHF tags use EM waves and so can be read at a long distance, however the energy transmitted is so weak that they can only respond with an ID.

Pair of complete tits sorry for pervy app

That's nature

Here is a link to an image of the app, it looks harmless enough.

http://money.cnn.com/2013/09/09/technology/social/titstare-app/

Men in their 20's will always be overdosing on testosterone, thereby guaranteeing the continuation of the species. It is nature dear, you can only go so far with forcing people to hide their sexuality.

Polish man mistakes hot iron for mobe

Re: The truth is out there...

Also what nurse put that bandage on? I doubt if he uses his left eye to listen to the telephone and there does not appear to be padding on his ear. Bit smelly this one.

PayPal drops into McDonalds, begs meat-guzzlers to give it a bonk

Re: Phones with NFC ?

Other (future) applications perhaps?

Today the "killer" application is payment but there are God knows how many other possible applications out there. The important letter in NFC is the N, if you can thing of an application that transmits data or performs an action simply by touching another object with your telephone you have a potential NFC application.

PayPal whips out barcode app for high-street glad rags

Re: Laser scanners on reflective screens

Could it be because 1D laser barcode scanners work on reading the reflection of the laser beam so need a support that is based on reflection (e.g. paper) and not on emission (e.g. telephone screen)? However scanners that are based on a camera (some 1D and all 2D barcode scanners) will work with both reflective and emission based supports.

Barclaycard slaps pay-by-bonk plasters on mobes

Re: NFC enabled Phone

In theory no, the contactless standards takes in account the possibility of several cards available at the same time. The terminal will detect all the cards (including the NFC phone) and choose one to communicate with.

FBI frets about dumb security in smart meters

Re: Seems again

"they deserve every lost £/$ they suffer."

The electricity companies will not lose a penny, they will just put up the cost of electricity. As long as most people stay honest, then honest people will pay.

Parents shocked by priestly PowerPoint pr0n

The local rag

Looking at the comments section on this article in the local (Tyrone) paper, it looks like most parishioners think that he has been framed. It seems as though he has upset some people in the parish who have been trying to force him to leave for some time.

Google Wallet PIN security cracked in seconds

So what?

So with this attack my Google wallet becomes as secure as my normal wallet. Well not quite, if someone steals my normal wallet they can use my cards immediately. If they steal my phone they will to do a far bit of manipulations on it before they can use my credit cards.

New sat data shows Himalayan glaciers hardly melting at all

This is all wrong

Surely global warming should cause glaciers to grow? Global warming heats sea causing more evaporation so more humidity in climate. However hot air reduces rain fall meaning more humidity reaches in-land mountain ranges resulting in more snow and glaciers growing rather than shrinking.

Why so shy on pay-by-wave, Nokia?

"If this happens there is suddenly no market for a phone-based NFC system"

It already has happened. Contactless payment cards exist in the USA, France and many people unknowingly have them in the UK. I suspect that when the contactless cards and NFC phone systems are up and running it is the contactless cards that find themselves suddenly without a market.

Why will people interested in the convenience that paying instantly by phone will give them? The same reason as why people buy grated cheese. When someone first started selling grated cheese it was ridiculed in the news, how could people be so lazy to pay someone to pre-grate cheese for them. Once it is there people will use it. Once NFC is in phones you will be surprised by the number of applications people will invent for it.

Smut oglers told to opt in to keep web filth flowing

People who want to hate someone will always find an excuse, a way of differentiating themselves in order to turn a group of people into enemies. In the early 20th century there were problems between Catholics and Protestants in England but then with the mass immigration that occurred in the 60s those who were bent on hate found new targets instead.

Most religions preach pacifism. Those who do not attempt to be pacifist cannot correctly claim to be aligned to such a religion. For example, Catholics and Protestants who attack each other cannot claim to be Christian. Calling themselves Catholic or Protestant is an abuse of the label. The fighting is not caused by too much religion but rather a lack of it.

iPlayer founder launches next big TV thing-Zeebox

Crap time-shifted is still crap

Being a TV addict I made up a PVR using MythTv. At the time I thought, "Great now I will only watch good programs", so I ended-up hardly ever switching the TV on. The iPlayer is fine for the little that I watch these days.

UK punters happy to pay £3 to top up e-wallets

Rubbish

I bet the 300 people they questioned work in marketing in the electronic wallet industry. "And do you think most people will be willing to pay more than 25p to charge their wallet?" "Of course I do otherwise my job makes no sense and the company I work for is bankrupt"

Woman nabbed for 'senseless' stiletto ATM attack

So she has paid Barcleys for the damaged she caused yet the police are still asking the public for help identifying her ?

PayPal to move into the shop - without cards or NFC

Typical rubbish that comes from thinking, "How can we make money from this market" instead of, "How can we fix this problem".

It is an option so it depends up on how the store is set-up. Before the selfscan tills Safeways use to let you scan your things as you put them in your trolley and pay on the way out of the shop. They would stop people randomly to check they had not made any "mistakes".

The world minus the UK is still a big market place.

Dyson spouts hot air

There is no such thing as an inefficient fan heater; all "wasted" energy is turned into heat.

French bloke fined for failing to shag missus

Exceptional case

This an exceptional case which is why it is in the news. The woman was 45 when she divorced him for lack of sex for 21 years (i.e. from the age of 24) !

This does not compare to one's wife's right to say no when one returns drunk from the pub at 3:00am.

Double what?

It is so English to think that marriage implies not having sex with each other.

French letter shock: Tax us more, demand rich people

Screw the French

As with everything in French politics this letter is a set-up. Sarko has increased taxes for the rich and for the poor so it all seems far, except as the letter requests the increases in tax for the rich is an exceptional one-off levy, the increase for the poor is permanent.

August is always a bad month for workers in France. Most of the country goes on holiday for the entire month, so this is the month the government screws them - every year. No wonder the French go on strike every autumn.