Posts by Haku

A sarcasm detector bot? That sounds absolutely brilliant. Definitely

Re: A massive market

If they think a sarcasm detector bot will be the best thing since sliced bread, an irony detector bot will be the toaster, or something, I need an analogy bot.

London Mayor slams YouTube over failure to remove 'shocking' violent gang vids

Like when Richard Madeley did an Ali G impression?

UK publishes Laws of Robotics for self-driving cars

Fucking with the 'robots'.

I read a comment recently about drivers who have been screwing with the autopilot feature of Teslas; whilst on freeways people purposely swerving into the lane of a Tesla driver so their car has to react, ie automatically braking or changing lanes.

I did try and find video evidence of this happening, but all I could really find was YouTube videos of how the autopilot has avoided crashes due to the incumbency of other drivers (often rather reasurring evidence of how computers will spot something a human driver misses) but also the occasional piece of footage of the car screwing up and swerving into oncominrg traffic, causing the driver to take back control of the steering wheel, indicating the technology still has a long way to go before full automation on the roads can be completely trusted.

It leaves me wondering what the future of driving will be like when the ratio of computer to human drivers gets close to 1:1.

In the case of human drivers 'trolling' the computer drivers, swerving into the path of them etc., at least those computer driven vehicles will have dashcam evidence of the himan drivers acting like arseholes, because who would design a computer driven vehicle without cameras recording everything that's going on for in the event of something going wrong.

UK taxmen slammed for tech glitches rampant on child benefits website

The future will be a paperless office they said.

But you don't need electricity or any knowledge of computers to use a pen & paper.

Upgrading your pen won't render your paper useless.

Your pen & paper can't get infected by ransomware.

Downsides? Reading people''s handwriting and other numerous things you can only do with digitial information (ease of copy/backup/instant distribution to other people etc.)

Google drops poker face, allows gambling apps on Play Store

Gambling is like playing against the WOPR

"the only winning move is not to play"

Capita's smart meter monopoly is owed £42m by industry

Someone's making one hell of a payday out of these devices that are being touted as money savers for their users.

'Real' people want govts to spy on them, argues UK Home Secretary

Re: I must be a fake person.

What if the real part is actually imaginary and the imaginary part is actually real?

Re: Amber alert

Sounds like the "Yellow warning of rain." alert I sometimes see on the BBC Weather page, which my brain automatically translates to "It's going to piss down."

I haven't grown up, I just got older :)

I must be a fake person.

Because I do not want to be spied upon.

UAV maker swipes at sponsor of opaque Qinetiq drone study

Bringing facts to an argument BALPA et al is clearly dodging:

From the Clear Vision Security article about the drone collision study:

Non-Certified Windscreens

One of the proven threats involved the testing of non-birdstrike certified helicopter windscreens. These were shown to fail when hit by drones, which is no great surprise since they also fail when struck by birds, as their name would suggest.

In general aviation (GA), windscreens don’t need to be certified to withstand birdstrikes, so the findings of this study are applicable to a wide variety of aircraft within the GA field. In short they found that if your windscreen won’t withstand a birdstrike it won’t withstand a drone strike either.

To put this within context there were 1835 confirmed birdstrikes reported to the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) in 2016. To date there has never been a single confirmed drone strike reported to the CAA.

Re: I'm torn...

Registration won't work in terms of tracking down law breakers - it's just security theater, giving the authorities the ability to show they're doing something about the 'problem'.

All that will happen is that those who do, and those who are going to, fly safely within the current regulations will continue to do so, but those who have no intention of good flying won't register, so the list will be useless.

If you're thinking about the notion that you'll have to register when you purchase a drone, that'll just make people buy from places that don't make you register, like direct from China which was my where I ordered my first 'proper size' drone from.

Steve Bannon wants Facebook, Google 'regulated like utilities'

I think I'm getting latent Dyslexia.

Everytime I see words that start with "tr" my mind automatically replaces them with "ch".

It's especially bad when I'm reading anything about current US politics.

Clear August 21 in your diary: It's a total solar eclipse for the smart

And Tintin will use it to save himself from being sacrificed by Trump voters...

It took DEF CON hackers minutes to pwn these US voting machines

"but you won't hear about it from articles like this"

That's because the articles on this site are primarily based on aspects of information technology.

Have you not learnt this yet?

USA to screen tablets,
e-readers and handheld games before they fly

They wouldn't like my old beat-up tablet.

There's a suspicious looking wire sticking out the side with a JST connector.

I had to modify the tablet to charge its battery directly with a small USB lipo charging module because it won't charge through the USB port anymore.

UK.gov: You can't have our drone test results because... er, security

Re: could not find a way to launch...

What about using gravity?

You know, drop the small object onto the big object from a great height.

If they couldn't find a tall enough building they could carry it up high using a bigger drone...

Think you could deliver a Register lecture? Tell us why

Re: These are not the speakers you are looking for....

I once did a best man speech, in a completely packed pub, I was nervous as hell but it went down a storm and I ended it with "By Grabthar's Hammer, what a wedding." which I only wrote for the bride & groom to understand

You know what’s not so throttled at O2? UK sales. They're up 2.6%

You know what else is going up at O2?

Pay-as-you-go prices. https://www.o2.co.uk/pricing/f

Revealed: 779 cases of data misuse across 34 British police forces

Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Stop giving them so much unrestrained power!

iRobot just banked a fat profit. And it knows how to make more: Sharing maps of your homes

Rearrange your furniture every day so the floor plan spells out the letters

F

U

C

you can see where I'm going with this :)

Time-rich netizens marshall ballot-stuffing bots against... Radio Times contest

"It's not as if Star Trek versus Star Wars is under discussion."

About that, they should just put aside their differences and get along...

http://www.haku.co.uk/b3ta/StarTrekWars.jpg

Could be interesting, but I'd watch the crap out of this mashup:

http://www.haku.co.uk/b3ta/StarDwarf.jpg

Las Vegas locks down ahead of DEF CON hacking conference

Not accepting USB sticks? I don't blame 'em.

This USB stick can destroy most computers in seconds - usbkill.com (url purposely non-clickable)

There are several YouTube videos if you want to see how deadly those things are - https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=usb+killer

Creepy tech tycoons Zuck and Musk clash over AI doomsday

Re: "letting algorithms decide the fate of people's lives in the fields of healthcare "

If we do get wiped out by robots it'll probably be due to apathy not a Terminator style war.

"I for one welcome our robot overlords, because I'm too lazy to fi.... Siri, turn the tv to the funny clips channel."

I don't think the current worry of AI is sentient robots who see the human race as flawed so must eradicate them, but more along the lines of people letting algorithms decide the fate of people's lives in the fields of healthcare & insurance, especially with the ever increasing research into human DNA and the how people are trying to use that information to give a percentage on how likely you are to get certain types of cancer in your life.

That would really suck, unable to get life insurance even though you're fit as a fiddle but the computer says no because it looked at your DNA.

Brits must now register virtually all new drones and undergo safety tests

Idenitifying a drone thousands of meters up, hundreds of meters away - bullshit!

I've flown my 380 size quadcopter, about 1.2kg with the camera & gimbal attached, straight up 100 meters to get some scenic view footage.

At that distance away it can be near impossible to spot it when you're looking at wide open sky, even though you know where it's supposed to be and can hear it, and see its camera view from the ground.

If it's so difficult to spot a stationary drone from a stationary spot, that's only 100 meters away, how the hell do those pilots, flying at hundreds of miles an hour, can say with absolute certainty that tiny speck in the distance is a drone?

I call bullshit on that.

Re: Call the RSPB

There are an estimated 7.4 million cats in the UK, I think the number of bird deaths by drones pales into comparison with that of bird deaths by cats.

You can't stop idiots breaking the law.

All this will do is screw over everyone who is already going by the rules.

Making a list of drone owners will only give them a list of people who aren't likely to do bad things, namely because they registered.

There won't be a list of people who fly drones where they shouldn't, because they won't fucking register!

How are they going to police it? It's not like the police force is suddenly going to get a boost in funds to deal with all the new 'crime' they plan on legislating.

Al Capone was done for taxes. Now Microsoft's killing domain-squatters with trademark law

Anyone else remember this?

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/01/19/microsoft_lawyers_threaten_mike_rowe/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_vs._MikeRoweSoft

Volterman 'super wallet': The worst crowdsource video pitch of all time?

I bet it can't do something my wallet I bought from a Glastonbury festival 30+ years ago can:

Drop it in water without anything getting damaged.

But how does our ransomware make you feel?

Ransomware & victim's feelings?

I bet that shit would make a vegan want to kill.

Mozilla hoping to open source voice samples for future AI devs

"I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that."

Sci-fi films/tv have had people talking to computers since the start but my interaction with computers began with almost unresponsive flat keyboards (ZX81) which progressed to rubber ones (Spectrum) then 'proper' keyboards (BBC Micros), then mice, then touchpads & touchscreens (not forgetting joysticks/joypads for gaming), which could explain why it always feels weird talking to my phone unless I'm actually making a call.

Are those futurists still predicting everyone interacting with computers through speech? Because for many uses it's far simpler/quicker/easier to press buttons/screens than to talk to the device.

UK regulator set to ban ads depicting bumbling manchildren

Re: This is a bad thing

If someone will sponsor me, I will take offence at those who take offence on behalf of others.

Jodie Who-ttaker? The Doctor is in

Regenerating from Male to Female means The Doctor is transgender

Re: The good old days

I'm totally with you on the whole spoilers thing, often friends ask me "have you seen the trailer for [new film]?" to which my answer is almost always "no", especially when it's a film I want to watch because I like going in 'blind' and knowing as little about it as possible beyond the title.

The internet has really helped erode the element of surprise in this respect.

Nearly three-quarters of convicted TV Licence non-payers are women

Can you imagine a programme like Watchdog on a paid-for-by-adverts tv channel?

It would be muzzled so heavily it couldn't breathe properly, producers would be told that certain topics cannot be covered, because companies that pay their bills through advertisments would not want their products being the focus of the programme.

Beware, sheep rustlers of the South West of England! Police drone spy unit gets to work

Re: Battery life

@ Adam JC

High quality 3-axis gimbals are extremely good at filtering out 'wind wobble' and vibrations from the drone itself.

This is one of my most stable pieces of quadcopter footage I've taken, using a Zhiyun Z1-Tiny2 3-axis gimbal holding a Xiaomi Yi camera, granted there was practically no wind on that day but even on windy days it's still just as stable in regards to filtering out vibrations: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSLPnH5nmGc

Battery life

One of the biggest problems with using drones for spy work in this way is the lack of airtime per battery, you're looking in the region of 15 useable minutes for an Inspire.

To get the kind of flight time that would really help tackle rural crime, a hydrogen fuel cell system is what the doctor ordered to give you hours instead of minutes of flight time.

Something like this: http://www.mmcuav.com/drones/hydrone1550/ But the lack of prices anywhere on the web mean it's probably going to cost a small fortune.

However there is an alternative, tethered power systems like this http://cardinalsecurity.co.uk/tethered-drone-systems/, enabling the drone to stay aloft indefinitely. But the drawback is the only place it's likely to fly is straight up, which actually could be advantageous if you attach a camera with a powerful zoom lens to the drone to track where the 'criminal' is, what they and their vehicle looks like and where they're going.

An AI can replace what a world leader said in his video-taped speech. This will end well. Not

Re: I BIT clonton Is AREADY DOIN thug To TRUMPI

What the covfefe?

Re: video-taped?

Not many do, it has turned from a physical act into a recognised expression.

If you want to go down the pedant route, you might want to think about what digital video recorders do with their captured video, they effectively save the video data to their storage medium.

But having a title with "said in his video data saved speech" doesn't seem right, so "video-taped" is still appropriate.

Hey, remember that monkey selfie copyright drama a few years ago? Get this – It's just hit the US appeals courts

Don't let PETA get access to monkeys with typewriters.

Because eventually they'll want to own the copyright on Shakespear's work.

Viking storms storage monastery wielding 50TB SAS SSD

50TB! I'll take twelvety.

How would I like to pay?

Would sir be interested in some magic beans?

May the excessive force be with you: Chap cuffed after Star Trek v Star Wars row turns bloody

Re: Challenge accepted.

Hadn't seen that video before, I liked it.

But the possible reality of an actual working transporter is far far scarier than accidentally merging two entities together.

Sleep tight!

Re: Challenge accepted.

Whilst I'm on the subject of TV show mashups, an old picture I made:

haku.co.uk/b3ta/KnightTeamTrek.jpg

"I aint getting in no transporter, fool!"

Challenge accepted.

haku.co.uk/pics/BabylonStargate.jpg

"Get a life will you people, I mean, for crying out loud, it's it's just a TV show"

haku.co.uk/kirk.wav

While USA is distracted by its President's antics, China is busy breaking another fusion record

Re: At that temp, marshmallows will melt!

Can you imagine the reaction of US residents if their next president decided to follow suit with France's ban on the sale of vehicles that are soley powered by petrol or diesel by 2040?

I'd probably end up in hospital suffering from an acute laughing fit.

Bonkers call to boycott Raspberry Pi Foundation over 'gay agenda'

Brass Eye - Paedogeddon!

I had to closely look at the site to see what that whacko was complaining about - that little rainbow sticker on the back of the monitor in the drawing??

What the hell?

Reminds me of that Brass Eye episode where Gary Lineker showed a photo of a hillside and said the small, almost unrecognisable blue speck was a child and a paedophile would try and attack the picture. Watch the first 35 seconds of the episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RcU7FaEEzNU

Photobucket says photo-f**k-it, starts off-site image shakedown

Someone should start their own free/low cost image hosting called "Liza"

"There's a hole in the bucket, dear Liza, dear Liza,

There's a hole in the bucket, dear Liza, a hole."

Shock: NASA denies secret child sex slave cannibal colony on Mars

Re: most entertaining video about alex jones

I think that theory is some conspiracy nutjob trying to see a correlation between the words "joke" and "funny", because:

Bill Hicks is funny.

Alex Jones is a joke.

Joe Rogan podcasts - some are seriously interesting listening.

I say that because he's had 2-3 hour long chats with some really interesting people such as Louis Theroux, Brian Cox and Neil deGrasse Tyson etc. (YouTube links)

But the one Joe Rogan podcast I refuse to listen to/watch is the one with Alex Jones because that guy is an absolute fucking nutjob, his perception on the world is completely whack, plus I just can't stand his voice.