Posts by Haku

Blade Runner 2049: Back to the Future – the movies that showed us what's to come

V for Vendetta, 1984 etc.

Human population under the thumb of oppressive overbearing regimes.

Oh, sorry, you wanted films predicting the future not the present.

Hollywood has savaged enough sci-fi classics – let's hope Dick would dig Blade Runner 2049

I have purposely avoided reading / watching anything about the new Blade Runner film because I want to go see it knowing as little as possible. The way movies should be enjoyed IMHO.

And on that note, I'm outta here! Catch you in some other comment thread :)

Six weeks later, drone biz DJI deploys control app 'flight mode'

Military helicopter & drone collision over Staten Island, US (Sept 21, 2017)

http://abc7ny.com/drone-hits-military-chopper-over-staten-island-/2443487/ (note: contains autoplay video of the story)

The picture of the broken off drone arm that struck the heli appears to be that from a DJI Phantom.

Not good news for us drone fliers when something like this happens.

Brit prosecutors fling almost a million quid at anti-drone'n'phone ideas

Solution - subterranean prisons.

Total block on drones and wireless signals.

Surely all those unused coal mines can be put to some good use again.

Can I have my £50k now please?

3D selfies? What could possibly go wrong?

Re: Masks

This could get interesting - take a selfie with a celebrity and suddenly you have the 3D image of you and the celebrity, which after the scene is 3D printed, some people's mantlepieces could end up looking really really creepy.

"I'm your number one fan..."

EasyJet: We'll have electric airliners within the next decade

Re: Electric planes do get lighter...

If batteries hadn't been invented we'd all have died from carbon monoxide poisoning long ago, as this video indicates youtube.com/watch?v=vog7yDmcDNQ

Re: Well....

"This is your captain speaking, can everyone who has a USB power bank please plug them in to the provided sockets on the arm rests, thank you."

Dyson to build electric car that doesn't suck

Wait, what?

Dyson are going to build something with an electric motor that doesn't produce noise on a decibel level close to that of a jet airliner from a few meters away?

Naaah, I'll believe it when I (don't) hear it!

Brit military wants a small-drone-killer system for £20m

Bionic dogs.

I've witnessed enough dogs barking & chasing drones to realise there's potential there, we just need to find those dogs that like chasing them and give them bionic upgrades - mechanical legs that are able to run at 50 mph and jump small buildings, titanium jaws & teeth and a sonic bark that knocks out electronics.

Behold, says robo-mall-cop maker: Our crime-busting dune buggy packed with spy gear

Re: It's all becoming very "Deus Ex"

Either that or Gene Simmons is going to start populating robots with evil red-tagged chips that make them attack people, thankfully Tom Selleck is still in the law enforcement business (Blue Bloods) so we'll be safe.

If you're wondering what the hell I've been smoking, you've obviously not seen Runaway (1984) imdb.com/title/tt0088024/ (trailer youtube.com/watch?v=zCZY9Z6WvSY)

Chrome to label FTP sites insecure

Re: FFS, stop the nannying

I'd like it if instead of all the nannying, every time you open up a browser a little popup window says:

Welcome to the internet.

Here be dragons.

FTP is insecure? OH NO! The sky is falling! The end is nigh! Run for your lives! Say what now?*

*delete as applicable

Stuff the movement of celestial spheres, let's sit down and watch Bonnie Tyler on TV

Re: Sheer Heart attack

How about watching the fly-on-the-wall "Ambulance" show whilst The Prodigy - Take Me To The Hospital is playing in the background.

Too literal?

Scottish pensioners rage at Virgin cabinet blocking their view

Re: Fail to see

Some of the big ugly pavement boxes I've walked past have the distinct whirring sound of a computer fan coming from inside so it wouldn't surprise me if they did.

Flying electric taxi upstart scores $90m from investors

Flying taxis? Uh oh, you know what that means...Big Bada Boom!!

There's a picture of me getting mine, you can see me checking it has the mul-ti-pass in the inside pocket.

Big Tech slams Trump on plan to deport kids

@AC, sort of like when you read the name "Iphis Knapton" and you think "Surely that's got to be made up", and you're right it is, just like everyone else's name.

Uber sued by Uber for tarnishing the good name of Uber

Uber articles are like busses.

You wait for one story to come along and suddenly you're deluged with half a dozen of em!

Uber squints, makes room for another probe: This time it's bribery

Probe related story?

We should start calling them Moon River stories, after that scene in Fletch.

Japanese sat tech sinks Sea Shepherd anti-whaling activists' hopes

Re: De gustibus non est disputandum

I don't think it's necessarily the diet they're concerned about, moreover they're concerned about what'll happen if the whale population number is detrimentally reduced or becomes extinct and what effect that'll have to the food chain in the ocean.

So thoughtful. Uber says it won't track you after you leave their vehicles

It's easier to ask for forgiveness than it is to ask for permission.

Asking for forgivness needs to be more difficult, then people & corporations wouldn't get away with so much underhanded crap.

Look, we know you're all hacking DJI drones. How 'bout a bug bounty?

It's the "up to" part of the reward offer that will make sure those who have discovered the bugs for their own personal gain through selling patches, won't be telling DJI how those patches do their thing.

If they sell the derestriction patch for say $200 then they only need to get 150 customers and they've matched the maximum $30k bounty offer, after that they're laughing.

Facebook will deny ads to repeat promoters of fake news

So now they'll only post fake news for the lulz or propaganda instead of financial gain?

Yeah, that'll work out just fine.

Boffins bust AI with corrupted training data

"Boffins from New York University have posed that question in a paper at arXiv, and come up with the disturbing conclusion that machine learning can be taught to include backdoors, by attacks on their learning data."

Oh, you mean like in the old 1980 sci-fi film Saturn 3? And probably several others I can't name right now.

Chrome wants to remember which Websites to silence

"ultrasonic tracking"

Just read up about it - holy shit! What a bunch of evil scumbags those marketing / advertising people are!

"By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing…kill yourself. It’s just a little thought; I’m just trying to plant seeds. Maybe one day they’ll take root – I don’t know. You try, you do what you can.

(Kill yourself.)"

-- Bill Hicks - full tirade youtube.com/watch?v=GaD8y-CGhMw

Headless body found near topless beach: Missing private sub journalist identified

Re: This story is still nowhere near as strange as...

I always loved dystopian sci-fi films because they would ask the question "How bad would life be like if..." and for a short while I'd live in an alternate, twisted universe, then when they end I would be thankful things aren't that bad.

But unfortunately, looking around at the current state of the world, "if..." appears to be happening and now after watching those sorts of films I don't have that comforting feeling anymore.

AccuWeather: Our app slurped your phone's location via Wi-Fi but we like totally didn't use it

"...but we like totally didn't use it"

Aaa

AAAaaa

AAAAAACHOOOOO!!!

I'm sorry about that, I have a bullshit allergy.

Sonos will deny updates to those who snub rewritten privacy terms

"You can't modify or repair the devices you use."

There's a worrying trend in technology where the manufacturer/creator is doing its level best to stop you actually owning the product you paid them for.

Case in point is the gaming industry where there's an increase in high priced games that contain no physical copy inside the box, just a download code, so you can't sell it on when you've completed it / got bored of it.

Companies like CEX must also be a little worried about this.

German police seize 5,000 Donald Trump-shaped dance biscuits

I hear some of the side effects to this dance biscuit are:

Bloated ego.

Orange skin.

Decreased capability of understanding basic science.

Inability to distinguish between white supremacists and their opposition.

Talking bollocks.

UK.gov to treat online abuse as seriously as IRL hate crime

Oh shit, does that mean we can't use downvote buttons anymore because they're a sign of dislike?

British snoops at GCHQ knew FBI was going to arrest Marcus Hutchins

It looks like they were quite desparate to pin something on him, judging by the last paragraph:

"Previously, FBI agents had tried claiming Hutchins might try obtaining firearms to commit crimes, based solely on his having tweeted about visiting a shooting range in Las Vegas – a common tourist pastime in Sin City."

Talk about clutching at straws!

Hey if he tweets "Free this week, for quick gossip/prep before I go and destroy America.", will he get kicked out instead? You know, like those boneheads at Homeland Security did to some Brits a few years back - https://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/01/30/tweet_deportation/

I say, BING DONG! Microsoft's search engine literally cocks up on front page for hours

Re: how many double entendres

Give me one.

London cops urged to scrap use of 'biased' facial recognition at Notting Hill Carnival

"These images will be retained for the purposes of analysis of this project only and will not be speculatively searched or disseminated for any purpose."

*sniff* *sniff*

Eww, something smells.

*checks under shoes*

Nope, not there, the smell must be coming from that statement.

Batteries that don't burn at the drop of a Galaxy Note 7? We're listening

Re: holographic crystal storage...

@Def

Take me to your leader, no not the orange one with the guinea pig toupe.

Re: holographic crystal storage...

I'm all for the holographic crystal storage in the future, totally 100%, but I reeeeaaally don't want to have to wear this* to get the benefits of such a storage medium.

.

* don't click the link, seriously.

Samsung's bantam SSD makes WD's 'passport' drive look passé

Re: Crikey - $800???

"It'd be nice to see an eSATA port though."

I agree, although an eSATAp port would be even better.

A glimpse of life under President Zuckerberg? Facebook CEO's boffins censor awkward Q&A

PR stunt.

The cheek of it! Beach bar owner shoots nude bather in the booty

I remember holidaying at that beach.

Though my memories are a little vague because I was 7 at the time, and that was a long time ago.

But it was a good holiday, and there was the time we went on a coach tour that went round the narrow roads on the mountain, and some idiot crashed into the back wheel, of which I was sat right above.

Their Citroen was written off, the coach only needed a new hubcap :)

Drone-maker DJI's Go app contains naughty Javascript hot-patching framework

"Once paid for, that's it."

Sadly when you've oughtright bought a product that doesn't have any ongoing payment contract, some companies believe you only have what approximates to a license to use it because they don't want you to take it apart or repair/modify/upgrade it yourself.

This is noteable in the car industry where they're practically computers on wheels that contain propritary software you're apparently not allowed to reverse engineer.

It's also very noteable in the agricultural industry in America, where farmers are not allowed to fix the vehicles they paid for and 'own' - https://www.wired.com/2015/04/dmca-ownership-john-deere/

Blighty’s beloved Big Ben bell ends, may break Brexit bargain

We've got modern technology now, how about an official bong app?

One in which the loudness is directly proportional to the proximity of the real bell.

Although, once the real bell starts working again, everyone's bell ends.

GoDaddy gives white supremacist site its marching orders after Charlottesville slur

Re: RE : Brexit

If you don't want to ever read about Brexit anymore, how about you stop reading the bloody internet?

It's still very much a thing, and I'm still very much pissed off about it and those who voted for it.

Re: 'scum in the shadows'

Much like how some have believed the Brexit vote result has given them the right to be openly racist.

Firmware update blunder bricks hundreds of home 'smart' locks

The Internet of Turmoil strikes again.

HMS Queen Lizzie impugned by cheeky Scot's drone landing

Re: Assuming it was armed...

Guns vs racing drones at a shooting range - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xq0oCM37oZA

It's funny watching the law enforcement guys bragging at the beginning about being so sure they're going to shoot down a drone, then they see how small & fast they are...

Best quote of the video is at the briefing from an FPV pilot: "I hope he's clear they have to shoot the drone not the pilot, that would be the easiest way to bring the drone down"

Lauri Love and Gary McKinnon's lawyer, UK supporters rally around Marcus Hutchins

Re: "98 per cent of people charged in America take a plea deal."

The US has more prisoners than any other country, including China.

http://www.icpr.org.uk/media/41356/world_prison_population_list_11th_edition.pdf

"There are more than 2.2 million prisoners in the United States of America, more than 1.65 million in China (plus an unknown number in pre-trial detention or ‘administrative detention’), 640,000 in the Russian Federation, 607,000 in Brazil, 418,000 in India, 311,000 in Thailand, 255,000 in Brazil and 225,000 in Iran."

Most certainly the number one country in which you don't want to be accused of a crime.

Burn the witch!

I got this weird feeling like I'm reading a news piece about a bunch of pitchfork weilding villagers who lynched the one outsider who came to defend them against an evil digital monster and decided his knowledge of the 'dark arts' meant he was to blame for something else they also couldn't understand.

70% of Windows 10 users are totally happy with our big telemetry slurp, beams Microsoft

"Happy" or "Ignorant"?

You can often substitute those two words with each other without changing the meaning of the statement/sencence etc. Look:

"70% of Windows 10 users are totally ignorant with our big telemetry slurp, beams Microsoft"

Still works.

Britons ambivalent about driverless car tech, survey finds

Re: I'll take a driverless car please.

You've seen Tron?

I'll take a driverless car please.

I passed my driving test first time with no faults, but I don't like driving, I'd rather be doing something more interesting, like posting crap online ;)

Foot-long £1 sausage roll arrives

Whilst we're on the subject of food stuff from Morrisons.

I do like their bread from their closest store to me, I vastly prefer it over the offerings from Sainsburys & Tesco, namely because it's denser so when I cut a good 2cm thick slab off a loaf it doesn't cave in or disintigrate when I spread butter from the fridge on it.

To me it's worth going 4 miles to there for that bread than 1 mile to the other major stores.

Re: You've got to question the quality

I'd put money on it being a loss leader to get free advertising whilst the footie season is on.