Posts by Stevie

Fitbit picks up Pebble, throws Pebble as far as it can into the sea

Re: No support or warranties, threat of it turning into a dumbwatch

How is UK law when the underlying business no longer exists?

Bah!

In othr news, my Casio PAG 240 is working just fine, being immune to the internet.

Sigh... 'Hundreds of thousands' of... sigh, web CCTV cams still at risk of... sigh, hijacking

Bah!

I know I'm feeling the strain when I find myself reading this article and thinking "couldn't that nice Mr Trump just order the NSA counter-geek-geeks to run a massive program to pwn-and-brick these threats to national cybersecurity?"

If the devices stop working, and do so when replaced, eventually the buyer will beware on their own.

Because warnings of a nebulous intrenet-borne threat are incomprehensible and therefore ignorable by the vast majority of normal people.

Guessing valid credit card numbers in six seconds? Priceless

Re: Bah!

Yeah, I knew that. I was pointing out that the author was singing a song which is largely pointless in the online commerce world.

And it was vendors in the US who put up resistance to C&P, not the banks underwriting the cards.

Bah!

I keep seeing smug comments about how chip-and-pin makes fraud "like this" harder, but exactly how do you implement chip-and-pin when buying from [pick-any-company] dot com?

This attack would seem to emulate the very sort of e-commerce that is fast becoming the preferred way of shopping in the urban eastern seaboard of the US.

And how does it work over the phone? As in when the electric bill is discovered sitting behind the sideboard instead of having made it into last month's post?

Burning desire helped us collar arson suspect, claim Danish cops

Re: Hardly conclusive

The reasonable doubt has to be about the bloke accused, not some nebulous third party you made up to play devil's advocate.

In order for this doubt to be "reasonable" you'd have to demonstrate that the other bloke, the one run down by a bus, actually existed. As in a corpse, preferably smelling of smoke, lying in a morgue in Odense. Without that your doubt could be called unreasonable by the prosecutor.

Absent national news coverage about Mr Fist von Offderwrist, the lack of new deliberately-set fires is persuasive, if circumstantial.

Engineers say safety features got squished out of cramped Samsung Note 7

Bah!

Under pressure!

Pressing down on me,

Pressing in on me,

Think I'll explode ...

It's the horror of knowing that Samsung is a liar

Watching some good friend scream "My ear's on fire!"

Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter and YouTube team to ID terror content

Re: what is to stop them

Nothing. That doesn't change under the new rules of engagement. You never had "free speech" on any online platform. The owner/operators always had and still have total fiat of what they'll let you put on *their* server farm.

The number of times I had to explain that to the Militant Few when I moderated a couple of forums was depressingly high. You want free speech, get a soapbox.

And a permit.

'Toyota dealer stole my wife's saucy snaps from phone, emailed them to a swingers website'

Bah!

Dumb to take nude pix with a phone.

Dumb to hand that phone to a stranger who took it out of sight.

Dumb of the two fuckwits to go through the phone.

Criminal and dumb to do anything with those photos, especially what was done.

Dumbest of all to leave the evidence lying around when handing back the phone.

Everyone dumb, but car guys too dumb to live.

No good guys in this story.

Apple again late to another market others pioneered. Or is it?

Bah!

Fools!

This is the opening announcement that Apple plans to sue every local municipal bus company for having busses with rounded corners.

Take that, creationists: Boffins witness birth of new species in the lab

Bah!

This will convince no-one. Those of us with the blinkers off will say "interesting, but duh!" and those who can look at horse skeletons in the museum and still say there's no such evolution will cling to their position because, like a Trump vote, it's not a matter of intellect but one of emotional faith.

Cargo capsule goes AWOL, explodes on its way to Space Station

Bah!

Do the astros have enough potatoes to get them through, or will that git from The Newsroom have to be worked around all over again?

American supremacy, space, liability, funding, openness – AI gurus lay it all out to US senators

Bah!

Presenting anything to those Disgraces to the Country, the Do Nothing Senate, is largely a waste of time except for the expense account lunches.

Really weird quantum phenomenon spied lurking near neutron star

Bah!

Yesyesyesyes vacuum biro refrigerants. OK.

But what makes those little tell-tale crosses glow like that in the first place?

Sysadmin figures out dating agency worker lied in his profile

Re: Well...

For the love of Azathoth, we are talking about a mere eight and a half seconds here. Four rounds of meditative deep breathing should cover it.

RAF Club members emailed fake invoices. Has it been hacked?

Bah!

I believe in this specific case the correct term is not "hacked" but "pranged".

Imagine every mistake you can make with a new software rollout...

Bah!

I wonder how much money was set aside for the inevitable raft of class-action suits to be filed on behalf of those victimized by this visit from Mr Cock-Up.

Jersey sore: Anchor rips into island's undersea cables, sinks net access

Bah!

Maybe this is actually the Jersey Balliwick moving pre-emptively to thwart the new back-door friendly legislation being -h-a-n-d-w-a-v-e-d- "debated" in th UK.

Bah!

An entertaining story, but I think probably, when the fuss dies down a bit, it will turn out that someone unplugged the cables so they could run a vacuum cleaner or boil a kettle. My experience has been that network failures run as follows:

Vacuum Cleaner : 65%

Coffee Time! : 20%

Idiots with a big carbide wheel cutting up the street : 5%

Jim from Spares taking it upon himself to "tidy" wiring closet : 5%

Horseplay with the forklift, compressor and sundry other kit : 4%

Miscellaneous electronic infrastructure failures : 1%

PC sales outlook improves: Now terrifying instead of catastrophic

Bah!

So laptop sales insignificant, then?

Another Canadian uni hit by ransomware, students told to keep Windows PCs away

Re: you can generally get a better education from Youtube.

If you are willing to spend three times the time necessary and can listen to the stupid music, incessant "um, ah, um" instead of lucid recitation, and ad-hoc backtracking to cover forgotten precursor information or alternative approaches without hitting first CTRL-C and then the bottle.

And that's before we get into the camera technique that has hands, heads and bodies blocking whatever it is the blithering drooler on screen is exhorting us to watch closely.

I never saw an "educational" YouTube video that couldn't be improved by deleting it. GIMP and Blender bring out the cream of the crop of dithering blither, but don't take my word for it. Grab some strong drink and go on a voyage of discovery.

The best YouTube footage comes from Russian dashcams. At least there the inevitable wreckage flying all over the place belongs to someone else.

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

Re: Sad, sad day.

"the Magna Carta that rewrote the rules of the absolute power of the monarchy,"

My favorite part is the bit that drones on interminably about the setting up of fish weirs.

Don't cite Magna Carta to me unless you've read a copy (even in translation). It gave no power to the ordinary people like you'n'me, Sir Coward, but moved it from one over-privileged git to a bunch of different over-privileged gits.

You'n'me still got to walk ten paces holding a red hot iron bar to see if we were guilty as charged, assuming your specific over-privileged git didn't just chop you in half to save time.

Bah!

The UK has a software industry?

systemd free Linux distro Devuan releases second beta

Bah!

Great idea.

Lamest name for a Linux distro ever.

GET pwned: Web CCTV cams can be hijacked by single HTTP request

Bah!

All your housedoor overwatch are belong to lightbulb.

'Tesco Bank's major vulnerability is its ownership by Tesco,' claims ex-employee

Bah!

" ... and there are much bigger and better targets if a gang has access to relevant zero-days."

Odd how this argument is vehemently rejected by one and all as a contributing factor as to the relatively low rates of infection of Apple and Linux-based kit vs the hated MS, yet is floated as a Keep Calm and Carry On edict when it comes to a bank.

UK National Lottery data breach: Fingers crossed – it might not be you

Bah!

All your Premium Bond are belong to lightbulb.

Chernobyl cover-up: Giant shield rolled over nuclear reactor remains

Re: I'm disappointed...

The world's largest concrete mobile shed.

It's the next inevitable phase.

Radiation is not instant death.

"Come on in; the fallout is lovely!"

A Dustbin of Milligan by the magnificent Spike.

Goon, but not forgotten.

Drops the mic... Hang on, hackers could be listening through my headphones?

Re: Bah!

If you are referring to "Ma-Na Ma-Na", it fails as an earworm by mentally conjuring up the version sung by Monster and the cow chorus, (accompanied by Zoot on sax) instead of the original.

Bah!

An opportunity arises!

I will market a Styrofoam "head" containing a simple sound chip with a looped sample burned in.

The "ears" will be speakers.

One simply places the headphones over the "head" and pressure-activated micro-switches turn the thing on, delivering unobtrusive-to-the-owner playback of "Hey Mickey" to the hackers, earworming them for their trouble.

The device will be completely and utterly airgapped since it will never need an upgrade over the web. Should the hackers ever develop an immunity to "Hey Mickey" (all-but impossible), a mail-in card will cause a new proprietary chip to be sent out that can be substituted for the original. This new chip will contain the subscriber's choice of "Sugar Sugar", "Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep" or "Love Grows Where My Rosemary Goes".

Premium subscribers can access nuclear options like "Da Da Da", "Two Little Boys", or "I Was Born Under A Wandrin' Star".

Three certainties in life: Death, taxes and the speed of light – wait no, maybe not that last one

Re: Creates more problems than it solves?

Not if we designate this new, faster light "C++".

Then the sums about "c" still make sense (mostly, for given values of "sense") but Science can still Be Done.

e.g. E=m(C++ - SCF*)

SCF - the Stevie Correction Factor needed to nudge C++ back towards c so the sums work again.

Job done.

Re:You need entire galaxies to warp spacetime

But, Professor Dropbear, you have failed to account for the effects of The Miller Proposition: Time keeps on slippin', slippin', slippin' into the future.

Bah!

I believe that the incoming president has pledged to trim science budgets by declaring that by law, the speed of light is "a bajillion miles an hour, everywhere in the Miss Universe".

This makes my usual lightspeed variance proof response (Prediction: No it isn't) superfluous.

100k+ petition: MPs must consider debating Snoopers' Charter again

Bah!

And now there are 100K more names on "The List".

How-to terror manuals still being sold by Apple, Amazon, Waterstones

Bah!

I suspect that were my home to be raided I would be in deep trouble. I have organic chemistry texts that describe how to synthesize all sorts of bang-bang-goodbye-fingers left over from college somewhere (haven't any idea where, didn't crack them while in school and don't see any reason to change that policy 45 years on), wire and electronics components left over from all sorts of dilettante experiments with analogue electronic music and Steampunky SFX, as many power tools as you care to find lying around, from a lathe (still in box after 28 years because no room to deploy it) and a floor standing drill press down to a bunch of Dremel and Dremelclone things and perhaps most damning, a .22 gauge percussion-cap nail gun.

Also some old Estes rocket motors (left over from brief fad with model rockets). And some flash cotton (stage magic effects).

I can envision the headline now:

"British Ex-Pat Had Cruise Missile Factory In Home"

Cripes, I'm living on borrowed time in the New Trump Era.

Reg man 0: Japanese electronic toilet 1

Re: Translation

No dryer function?

Then you probably don't want to trust the hand towels in that bathroom.

International Space Station celebrates 18th birthday in true style – by setting trash on fire

Re: Yes Burn the Trash

"Having been on the wrong end of experiments that juggled too many variables at once, I approve of the methodical Saffire approach. The data won't get lost in the noise if you start small."

But all great science advancements start with an explosion from the inconvenient disintegrating magnets of the HHC to the seminal "Me throw geode in fire and see what happens" experiment by that great Neanderthal Father of Science (and inventor of the silent mammoth whistle) Gak Eisenberg.

Why, I've even done a little to advance the field myself.

NASA trying to rein in next-generation super-heavy lifter costs

Re:Shell's take on it seems to be that we need to move over from oil and coal to Gas

I wonder which oil company has leased prime "fracking" sites lately? Hmmmmm ...

Re:extend our reach into space.

Yes. Then we can go and ask the aliens living under The Cydonia Face where they stashed the Ark.

Re: James Hansen will be furious

As for NASA somehow managing to be efficient at it, good luck. No govt. entity has ever been able to compete with private enterprise for long. They don't seem to feel the need to do so, for some reason.

Government entities are not supposed to make a profit. They provide services that are crowdfunded by the taxpayers *because* they are fundamentally unprofitable.

But I suppose somewhere it makes sense to have a private industry using taxpayer-funded facilities to deliver taxpayer-funded projects into orbit at private industry rates.

That is, after all, how most government overspending happens: private contractor gouging and working behind the scenes to ensure minimum oversight as they gouge. Really Large Projects have other factors at work, and should be banned outright because of that. (NHS? Anything with "cross agency" in the title or document of scope.)

I work in the public sector, and am often called to task by people who find out what I do for a living (I'm in a quite visible bit that gets bad press more than is strictly called for by the facts). They get quite an eye-opener (and an earful) when I "reluctantly" explain where the money goes, and why. The best part is when I tell 'em that they made the rules limiting who the government is allowed to ask to provide services from a list of The Usual Suspects.

"What do you mean, I voted for it?"

Hackers electrocute selves in quest to turn secure doors inside out

Bah!

Why do you need a computer to run a HV coil "at different frequencies"? Wouldn't a Bakelite knob do the job?

I don't suppose anyone noticed that any radio, like the sort carried by security guards, would likely be fizzing and crackling and giving the game away as their hunchback threw the third switch?

Dirty code? If it works, leave it says Thoughtworks CTO

Bah!

Excellent advice.

In the same vein:

There's no need to stop for petrol if you have enough in the tank to get you there and back again.

China gets mad at Donald Trump, threatens to ruin Apple

Bah!

"should Trump make good on his campaign promise"

No need for China to worry overmuch. The President Elect has been busy all weekend publicly backing away from just about everything he promised in his campaign rallies.

Hillary Clinton is now, and I quote from a TV interview, "good people".

He also no longer "hears things", even on social media. In that same interview he expressed mild surprise at and complete ignorance of several high-profile hate crimes that had been perpetrated by supporters. I expect his ears are ringing from people explaining how hard the job of president actually is.

Post-outage King's College London orders staff to never make their own backups

Re: Backups never fail.

In what alternate Universe do backups never fail?

I just spent a week diagnosing a very twisty method by which one particular backup was failing here, and a colleague "won his spurs" as a new hire consultant by diagnosing intermittent failures of backups positively as a function of the arm-parking algorithm of one of our robots.

Even in the old days backups could and did fail, sometimes quietly because resources were not what they should be in terms of amounts available and sometimes spectacularly when the outer side of a tape reel decided to go for a bit of a walk while the reel was mounted and in use.

Backups never fail. This is the sort of wooly thinking that brings Universities to their knees for days on end.

Bong: Let me talk to Trump

Re: disappointed || appalled

Don't attempt to speak for me "Steve 124". I already have an annoying orange-skinned twat doing that and he isn't even the boss of me (in his own eyes) yet. I come here for all sorts of reasons.

And to claim that "we" removed ourselves is to fall into the same trap as Don the Orange Raccoon when he speaks about "more than half the American People" loving him.

Only half the electorate turned out to vote this time (making The Donald's mandate more like just over a quarter of the people, just like George the Second's was), and latest research suggests strongly that the whole 18th century independence thing was split Become A Nation | Stay British | Can't Be Arsed To Take A Position at about 33 1/3% | 33 1/3% | 33 1/3%.

"The people of the United States of America" indeed.

Pythons Idle and Cleese pen anti-selfie screed

Bah!

Shouting at clouds? No, I think the problem is what they say it is. Famous people have, or had, the same problem with idiots asking for autographs who had no pen and nothing to autograph. Same issue: time wasting.

Anyone who has answered the phone only to have to wait while the autodial robot signals a real human that some fool has picked up the call should be sympathetic to the message.

Swedish prosecutor finally treks to London to question Julian Assange

Bah!

What in Azahoth's secret syllable are "pre-written questions"? A blank sheet of paper?

For pre-fuck's sake.

IoT worm can hack Philips Hue lightbulbs, spread across cities

Bah!

All your lightbulb are belong to other lightbulb.

US citizens crash Canadian immigration site after Trump victory

Re: How can any decent voter (4 Mark 110)

"How the fuck do you invent a system where someone wins by getting less votes. And yes thats a rhetorical question. I know why and I know how. Its not going to help close divisions."

How it was invented is not germane in today's world, but I can tell you how we still have such a system: by not doing anything about it in the intervening 16 years since the popular vote last favored the candidate beaten in the electoral college, that's how.

We could start by sorting out the will-of-the-people defeating gerrymandering nonsense.