Posts by Haku

Microsoft boffins think VR visions will rival drugs by 2027

The internet is already a drug. Just look at how many people are addicted to it.

VR may just become another facet of it.

BTW I'm not addicted, I can quit any time I want.

I'll prove it.

,

,

See, I didn't look at my screen for a whole 2 seconds!

Canada asks citizens: How would you like us to spy on you?

Take off you hosers!

Is in the general direction of how people should respond.

Plastic fiver: 28 years' work, saves acres of cotton... may have killed less than ONE cow*

Re: Get a life.

Furthermore, how many of the vegans/vegetarians rely on being able to live their life because of things other people do (like keeping the power grid going, road maintainance, phone service etc. etc.) who eat meat?

Are they eternally angry at the rest of the world who do eat meat so jump at the slightest of chances to proclaim their 'holier than thou' status?

Psychologically they must be a very fragile crowd.

Problem with materials? No, it's when you fold them the trouble starts

The fold is almost impossible to flatten out, especially annoying when you've got to feed them into a machine at the Post Office / supermarket etc., and what about the people working on tills? They'll now have to be extra careful the stack of folded fivers don't spring out of the tray.

Brit upstart releases free air traffic app for drone operators

I still want someone to do a Mythbusters type 'can you spot an object is a drone' test

Involving someone moving at X miles an hour reliably confirming an object at X hundred feet away is a drone or plastic bag or something else.

I'd happily do it if I can do the driving, though I'd have to borrow a Bugatti Veyron (or something else that goes very fast) to drive on a runway at very high speed whilst someone else does the spotting. I wouldn't enjoy the ride, it would be purely scientific research... ;)

Woman rescues red pepper Donald Trump from vegetarian chilli

Jesus on food? Naah, everyone knows he appeared in

a dogs bottom

Don't click the link if you're easily offended, or eating lunch.

UK's new Snoopers' Charter just passed an encryption backdoor law by the backdoor

"No such backlash happened in the UK over the Investigatory Powers Bill"

That's because just about fucking nobody knows what's going on in relation to their online activities being snooped on by the very people who are supposed to protect them!

I've been telling everyone I know about this snoopers charter, only ONE of them knows of its existance and what it entails, and that's because his job is computers & networks, EVERYONE else is totally ignorant to this draconian shit being forced on us because it's just not being reported on enough in the mainstream media.

I expect more people know what their favourite celeb had for breakfast than what's happening to their civil liberties.

Jeremy Hunt: Telcos must block teens from sexting each other

I heard that for his next public outrage, the sea eroding the coastline, he's going to stand on a beach and command the tide to stop coming in.

Canadian cops cuff 11-year-old lad after Grand Theft Auto gets real

Re: Sorry to sound like an old grumpy.. ..

A friend of mine won't let his 10 year old anywhere near the GTA series, but he'll happily play Counter-Strike with him...

BUSTED!

I expect the police also took away all his ammo.

Must've been a really good GTA driver then if he didn't knock down scores of light poles, or run over dozens of pedestrians, let alone side-swipe most parked cars and repeatedly crash into oncoming traffic.

Small ISPs 'probably' won't receive data retention order following IP Bill

Re: Next steps

I'm reminded of a Bill Hicks bit on the definition of pornography - http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2gzsxp

Re: Next steps

"Citizens will not be permitted to know what is on the black list"

For now there is at least a publicly accessable list of UK blocked 'pirate' sites https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_websites_blocked_in_the_United_Kingdom

But it only seems like a matter of time before the list is made secret. In the meantime sites are constantly being added to the list:

https://torrentfreak.com/uk-blocking-more-than-100-pirate-sites-after-new-court-order-150324/

https://torrentfreak.com/uk-internet-providers-expand-pirate-site-blockades-160304/

https://torrentfreak.com/uk-pirate-site-blocking-whack-a-mole-continues-160429/

https://torrentfreak.com/uk-piracy-blocklist-expands-with-123movies-and-other-streaming-sites-161028/

https://torrentfreak.com/uk-piracy-blocklist-silently-expands-with-hundreds-of-domains-161120/

Space crap: Flap, zap or strap? $30k from NASA for your pooper scooper

Re: I always wondered how toilets worked in the Star Trek universe.

I secretly think Star Trek was all about the captain's bowel movement diary, why else would episodes often start out with "Captains log, stardate...."

I always wondered how toilets worked in the Star Trek universe.

Did they just teleport the waste out of you?

Microsoft's nerd goggles will run on a toaster

Re: Pastor Martin

....no one left to speak for me.

What about Tron? He fights for the user.

That's all very nice, but will it enable me to hack the Gibson whilst listening to some kickin' 90s tunes?

More than half of punters reckon they can't get superfast broadband

I've had true 74mbit download with Infinity 2 for years here in Gloucestershire, until recently when BT screwed up and cut me off for 2 weeks because their internal departments don't communicate with each other properly, especially when it comes to billing...

During that time my next door neighbour kindly let me use their TalkTalk wifi, it was a 'dialup' experience of 1.3mbit. So today I'm wrestling with a cheap TP Link router flashed with DD-WRT to make it a guest wifi hotspot so visitors and next door can use. The biggest problem I'm having is that the "information stupid highway" contains too many guides on this subject using old firmware & settings that don't always translate into the present firmware.

Emergency services 4G by 2020? And monkeys could fly out of my butt

Won't crooks start singing that Bob Marley song?

All together now!

We're jamming

I wanna jam it with you

We're jamming, jamming

And I hope you like jamming too

Ain't no rules ain't no vow we can do it anyhow

...

British politicians sign off on surveillance law, now it's over to the Queen

Tuttle. Buttle.

Need I say more?

Married man arrives at A&E with wedding ring stuck on todger

A video recently surfaced on LiveLeak of the removal of a wedding ring from a Chinese man

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=038_1475133562

Probably best you don't watch it at work, or at all if you have any semblance of sanity...

2016 in a nutshell: Boffins break monkeys' backs to turn them into tragic shuffling cyborgs

Who else remembers Project X (1987)?

Dubbed as a comedy, it was a bit depressing really, especially with the apt use of Peter Gabriel's Shock The Monkey song.

A cardboard desk? I won’t stand for it (actually I will)

Re: Video Nasty

"Is there not an El Reg rule against posting scary videos?"

That's a bit harsh, Alistair Dabbs isn't very scary.

Next time you assemble a cardboard box, video the full process.

Jeremy Clarkson did.

Sony: Get out Comedy Central, MTV – we've built a wall around Vue, the greatest wall ever

Re: More wall-building headlines/subheadlines please

I'd stick to the cheesy jokes, they work best with the grater meme.

"we've removed a part of the product so we can offer the best value to you..."

I've heard that sort of spiel before, quite recently actually...

OI TOBLERONE! GIVE US BACK OUR TRIANGLES!

Robot solves Rubik's Cubes in 637 milliseconds

Re: Next challenge: Rubik's Magic

Yeah I can do the switch between the three separate rings to the the interlocked rings in about 3 seconds, but the challenge here would be the dexterity of a robotic arm/hand/wotnot.

Next challenge: Rubik's Magic

I still have my original one bought in 1986 from Woolies, with its box. The new silvery coloured one they brought out a couple of years back isn't very good as it just doesn't have the same tactile feel to it because it's about 2/3 the thickness of the original.

GoPro drone moan brings more bad Karma

Re: over priced stuff.

For my quadcopter filming I would have gone with a GoPro if I had that amount of spare cash floating about for such a toy, but I went with a Xiaomi Yi because from what I saw the video quality was really good and it has scripting capability to tweak things beyond the initial settings, notably increasing the video bitrate beyond its normal selectable settings, and I wasn't disappointed with the 1080p60 quality from it, especially as it only cost me about £55 at the time.

When the opportunity came to buy a couple of Turnigy 2k (rebranded Sjcam SJ4000+ 2k Wifi) cameras cheap I went for it because I have more than one quad and more than one gimbal, but oh dear, the video quality is bad, there's not even a setting to select bitrate just resolution/framerate, and the image appears to be artificially over-sharpened which just makes the compression artefacts look worse. Plus it can't properly do framerates of 60fps or higher, the hardware just can't handle those high framerates so it duplicates frames randomly to pad out the framerate to 60/120/240fps, which kills any possibility of smooth motion shots.

Re: 2,500 sold

@stu 4

Drones are generally not paid for in installments over a 12/24 month contract.

Trump's plan: Tariffs on electronics, ban on skilled tech migrants, turn off the internet

Time to code a new website & app:

www.nearestnuclearbunker.com

UK prison reform report wants hard-coded no-fly zones in drones to keep them out of jail

Re: GPS

With enough determination and practice even you might be able to pull this stunt off with what looks like a Syma X5C-1:

lightbulb (YouTube, 44 seconds)

Hard coded no-fly zones? Yeah good luck with that!

Especially when open source multirotor flight controllers are so prolifically available to buy as stand alone purchases and in ready-to-fly multirotors from vendors across the globe.

Windows 10 market share stalls after free upgrade offer ends

Re: Horseless carriages

What if your business only sells Windows 10 computers?

Samsung are amateurs – NASA shows how you really do a battery fire

Chinese battery?

I think this one was... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMuu9NNplWU

Uber drivers entitled to UK minimum wage, London tribunal rules

Re: Will this do anything...

It appears Tesla are steering well clear of any association with Uber, Lyft and their ilk as they have stated you can't use their new Model X car as a taxi, because they're planning their own car share taxi-ish system 'Tesla Network' in the near future. www.theverge.com/2016/10/20/13346396/tesla-self-driving-ride-sharing-uber-lyft

Re: So called Tech

This guy does a pretty good job of explaining why Airbnb should probably be avoided:

Adam Ruins Everything - Why Your Airbnb May Be ILLEGAL (YouTube)

Vodafone rapped with RECORD £4.6m fine for failing customers

#DeathTo Vodafone

For killing Demon and other atrocities.

/Black Mirror

DNS devastation: Top websites whacked offline as Dyn dies again

Re: ENOUGH!

"Have you never watched films?"

I've heard of them. Doesn't Samuel L Jackson always play the black guy in those?

Oh joy. You can now buy a gold plated quadcopter drone

£20,000? Pfff, look what I recorded with what cost me about £350*

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pITHouGr948

*quad + camera + gimbal + realtime camera viewing equipment (not including cost of batteries, charger & carry case)

.

.

edit: Oh yeah, the CAA is having a drone picture/video competition right now, #400ftBritain http://www.caa.co.uk/News/Drone-s-eye-view---CAA-and-VisitEngland-launch--400ft-Britain-/

See the entries so far: http://offerpop.com/commerce/gallery/24451

Drone idiots are still endangering real aircraft and breaking the rules

Re: Heavy regulation

Furthermore, once you've got the skills to build your own drone (airplane / helicopter / multirotor), there's nothing stopping you from buying the parts to build one from a vast array of sources.

For example you can build a drone using parts exclusively bought direct from China and will often arrive in untracked packages marked "toy parts" or "electronic parts" etc. that make it near impossible to keep track of who bought what.

Which is probably why the EASA are trying to push through rules that limit people to building drones that weigh a maximum of 250g, a weight that severely limits the craft's capability in terms of distance and flight time.

Not to mention that currently (as far as I'm aware, though I keep seeing contradicting rules) we're allowed to fly a maximum of 500 meters away and 122 meters (400 feet) high in the UK, but the EASA want to limit that to 100 meters away and 50 meters high. If you convert those numbers into cubic meters of flight area, that equates to a reduction of over 98%! Making it blatently obvious they want to stop drone usage by the general public.

Re: Heavy regulation

@Ken Hagan

Very few multirotors use actual wifi, they're usually small toys such as the Cheerson CX-10W that use your phone/tablet to control it and view a realtime picture from the onboard camera.

Most radio control systems use 2.4ghz and the different manufacturers have developted their own protocols. So for example a Taranis RC transmitter uses plug-in radio modules so you can control different brands of receivers just by swapping out the transmitter module.

Re: Prove it

"Bad logic. Not a parallel case until cats can fly."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjiuA1HVWFc

Re: Any real evidence?

This is where Mythbusters would the perfect people to step in and try to answer the question: Can you really identify an object is actually drone at X hundred feet distance whilst travelling at X miles per hour?

But sadly Mythbusters is no more :(

Re: RIP Areomodelling

Brexit may not help the RC flying hobby as it looks like the new proposals are due to come into effect before we leave.

Model plane fliers and clubs must be collectively spitting blood at the EASA, they've had literally decades of virtually no trouble and then suddenly they're being lumped with the multirotor crowd just because they're in the air too.

But at the end of the day, they can bring in all the rules and regulations they want - it won't stop twats being twats and everyone is aware that the workload of the police is always high and they can't be everywhere, plus when some twat recently did go and fly their £3,500 quadcopter over a football statium the police held him in custody for 11 hours because they didn't know what to charge him with!

http://www.examiner.co.uk/news/west-yorkshire-news/conrad-williams-avoids-punishment-after-11990446

Re: Prove it

"These drones are too light to physically do any damage and most of the supposed sightings are at physically impossible altitudes and speeds."

The sorts of multirotors that can be built to get to air traffic heights are not all 'small' plastic shelled toys of the DJI Phantom ilk, they use carbon fiber arms, a set of 6 or 8 motors can in total weigh easily up to 2 kilos or more, not to mention the battery required for such a craft to fly for the needed time is bound to be over 700g.

But really, the kind of people who can and do build such hexcopters/octocopters have a lot more common sense as they're vastly more aware of what damage their craft can do and are more protective of their creation than those who buy a ready-to-fly toy, charge up the battery then go flying with almost no previous experience of flying these things, and that's the sort of person the EASA want to stop but their proposals are going way way overboard.

I would welcome some sort of licensing / registration if only they do it right, in that they allow us to build drones (planes / helicopters / multirotors) over 250g but only after getting some sort of qualification to do so that's not easy to get but is doable, because currently the EASA's proposals are whack.

Re: Heavy regulation

"At the altitudes quoted in the article a drone would be way out of its WiFi command range. This means a drone using dedicated high power radio remote, drone with pre-progrrammable navigation and/or drone with mobile data control channel."

It's actually quite easy to boost the 2.4ghz signal coming from a hobby grade transmitter to turn its range from meters into miles.

Couple that a 5.8ghz AV transmitter which is way beyond the legal UK limit of 25mW and you've got yourself a realtime view from a very long way away.

Pound falling, Marmite off the shelves – what the UK needs right now is ... an AI ethics board

A.I. WILL SAVE HUMANITY!!

...until we disagree with its decisions.

Google Pixel: Devices are a dangerous distraction from the new AI interface

Re: Assistance...

Your local hardware store has a bunch of 'off' buttons to choose from, you'll find them in the hammer aisle.

Y'know that ridiculously expensive Oculus Rift? Yeah, it just got worse

Meh, you can keep your fancy shmancy holo glasshole cardboard vive rifts.

I'm banking on VRML, when it takes off it's going to be completely out of this world, because at the end of the day it's going to be a real game changer, it will distinctively reconceptualize backend ROI, whilst energistically monetizing performance based e-tailers, not to mention how it will efficiently harness elastic web services, plus authoritatively transition worldwide process improvements whilst helping to phosfluorescently foster multidisciplinary testing procedures.