Posts by Zack Mollusc

Internet samurai says he'll sell 14,700,000 IPv4 addresses worth $300m-plus, plow it all into Asia-Pacific connectivity

why so cheap?

IPv4 addresses have been running out for years, with much wailing and prophecying of doom, so why are they only worth 20 dollars ? You can't even buy a toilet roll for that.

Boss planning to tear you a new one? Google Glass is back: Weird workwear aimed at devs, but on sale to all

Re: Privacy of others

Good point. There is no way for an operating system to intercept the data of an application running on it.

Microsoft takes us to 2004 with new Windows 10 so you don't mistake it for Server 2003

Re: gaming platform

Neat. I won't need a powerful PC to render locally generated 500fps 8k video, I will just need a stable 90TB/s internet connection.

Tonight on Tales from the Crypto: It lives! GPU flinger Nvidia bouncing back after miner affair

Re: design wins

My eyes can see in total darkness much better than LIDAR as long as, like the LIDAR,I am allowed to use a bright light source to illuminate objects and interpret the reflected light.

Remember the Uber self-driving car that killed a woman crossing the street? The AI had no clue about jaywalkers

Re: What's the standard for success?

The person had almost completed crossing a three lane road before impact. The car was probably not in sight on the empty road when the person began crossing. The published logs of the car have it first detect the person over five seconds before impact. Plenty of time to either fully stop or change lanes to go behind the person.

Re: Surely

You won't be able to train that. Where would you find any examples ?

Re: Don't forget the orientation

I agree that the car was not trying to track possible threats before trying to identify them, I contend that the sensory input has not the resolution nor accuracy to reveal the course and speed of the possible threats and that sufficiently sensitive input would give too much data to process in real time with computational resources that would be practical to fit in a car.

Re: Surely

Well put. I would add that the AI seems quite relaxed about vaious objects teleporting into existance near it while it is travelling at 44mph. "Pfft, that thing that I have only just become aware of will probably stay out of my way. Oh, I can't see it any more, maybe the road is haunted or something. Ooh, a different thing has appeared even closer to me, well it might stay where it is or something, oh good it seems to have vanished again so i can just forget about it, hey another thing has appeared even closer to me and even closer to my path, i assume it is nothing to worry about..."

Re: Reasonable defaults

I very much doubt that the pedestrian was the only 'unclassified' object the car saw on that journey. I bet the 'AI' sees an enormous number of objects that it cannot classify or accurately position and if it tried to drive conservatively would get nowhere.

Don't forget the orientation

The person was pushing a bicycle across the street, thus the bicycle and its shiny hard metal surfaces was broadside on to the car's sensors, giving the best possible chance for detection.

A cynic might think that the problem is data processing. If you give the car enough sensors to give a detailed and accurate picture of its environment, the computers needed to interpret all that information in real time won't fit in a car (or maybe cannot be built).

The eagle has handed.... scientists a serious text message bill after flying through Iran, Pakistan

Fake news!

Nothing in this article makes any sense. Eagles have been migrating for hundreds of years, why would they need to use GPS and why , when 'eagle-eyed' is a byword for keen vision, would they miss the fine print and get hit by roaming charges?

We're going deeper Underground: Vulture clicks claws over London's hidden tracks

building roads tends not to decrease traffic congestion. All it does is increase traffic.

"building roads tends not to decrease traffic congestion. All it does is increase traffic"

I think it more a case of building roads at a slower rate than the population increases tends not to decrease traffic congestion. All it does is increase traffic .

Inrcementally increasing bandwidth on a saturated channel will not eliminate contentiion when the demand is also inrcementing.

Oh dear... AI models used to flag hate speech online are, er, racist against black people

Re: crafted in the style of African American English (AAE)

I don't think racism and offence work that way. A statement is made by entity A. Entity B hears the statement and decides if it offends entity B . If entity B is offended then Entity A is racist for making the statement.

Multitasking is a myth: It means doing lots of things equally badly

Re: Agree with the myth comment.

You seem to be under the impression that management cares about efficiency and profit. This is an easy mistake to make, because management spend a great deal of time screaming that they care about efficiency and profit. Management cares about underlings doing what they are told.

Time to check in again on the Atari retro console… dear God, it’s actually got worse

too lazy to google, but

.. how long did the original VCS take to design and build ?

Cloud, internet biz will take a Yellowhammer to the head in 'worst case' no-deal Brexit

Re: What's in a name?

You obviously haven't read the posts in the hypothetical universe that we are discussing.

Re: What's in a name?

I am just trying to rationalise the Brexit position.

Assuming the Remain position "the EU isn't perfect, nobody claims it is, but any brexit option from a "deal" to "no deal" is clearly going to impact our economy to a lesser or greater extent. Together with the loss of workers rights and the threat to our institutions like the NHS, we would be insane to leave the EU" is entirely factually correct and based on the application of massive intellects to all the pertinant facts, why any Brexit votes ?

Is it more likely that Brexiters feel that they get shafted by the economy whether it goes up or down, and the NHS and workers rights are threatened anyway, or that Brexiters were temporarily afflicted by racism and now bitterly oppose Brexit and long for a second vote?

Re: What's in a name?

In this alternate history where the referendum went the other way by the same margin, the Brexiteers would not be abiding by the result of the referendum and would be implementing the Brexitting . Pretty sure the referendum-victorious Remainers would be screaming at, threatening and physically attacking the Brexit camp.

Anyway, you have hit the nail on the head. Democracy is being able to change your mind. Democracy said leave. We leave. And perhaps in a few years time there would be another referendum to see whether opinion had changed.

Re: What's in a name?

If that is bugger all to do with membership of the 'EU' , how about if I say the Remainer position seems to be I'm alright, Jack ?

There wasn't this level of stalling and second-guessing the meaning of the referendum held to join the common market.

Re: What's in a name?

And yet, if the vote had come out 'Stay' by the same narrow margin, would we all still be arguing and calling for another referendum? Or would the result have been respected and implemented immediately ?

Re: What's in a name?

On the other hand, maybe the Leavers had already lost their jobs, were already living out of tins, and could see themselves on the streets in the future. Trying to climb into a lifeboat will rock said boat and cause the comfortably dry occupants to object.

Mystery database left open turns out to be at heart of a huge Groupon ticket fraud ring

surely necentigrades ?

The time a Commodore CDTV disc proved its worth as something other than a coaster

Re: BAUD

interesting. Do you change the sound when going from pure to purify ? I definitely rhyme pure and cure while rhyming pour and poor. Maybe i use a sound you never use ?

Re: BAUD

Phonetic spelling ?

Re: BAUD

...but poured rhymes with cured.

Pored rhymes with baud.

Pored does not rhyme with poured.

Bus pass or bus ass? Hackers peeved about public transport claim to have reverse engineered ticket app for free rides

Re: Why have the Plod become involved?

I wonder if those lost hundreds of pounds would have been spent on improving the service or executive bonuses ?

Rebel Galaxy Outlaw: Well, lookie here! For once a space game that doesn't promise the universe

In-game music?

Surely the only tune you need is 'When twilight falls on NGC891' ?

The top three attributes for getting injured on e-scooters? Having no helmet, being drunk or drugged, oddly enough

Re: That's all very well....

Oh no! Inconsiderate entitled slowcoaches getting in the way! This must be an entirely novel concept for cyclists.

Eight-hour comms lags and shock discoveries: 30 years after Voyager 2 visited gas giant Neptune

.... wouldn't it also require the polaruty to be revesed?

Got a burning desire for a Hololens 2.0? Microsoft insists its math coprocessor won't be too hot for headgear

It runs a Microsoft-specific real-time operating system.

Neat! Sign me up immediately! A winner if ever I heard one.

Electric vehicles won't help UK meet emissions targets: Time to get out and walk, warn MPs

Charging at work

Had to laugh at that one. You are damned lucky if your place of work has anywhere to _park_, let alone provide somewhere to charge an EV.

It's a fullblown Crysis: Gamers press pause on PC purchases, shipments freeze

Over(st/cl)ocked gpus

I was just testing out a ouiji board that had been re- laquered and got through to an A Smith. I didn't really understand everything as economics is pretty complex and technical, but he seemed to be suggesting that if Nvidia lowered their prices, there would be more people willing to buy their products ? Does that sound right? I don't know how much people will pay Nvidia to keep their products in warehouses for months then scrap them, so maybe that would be better? Anyhoo, just passing that along.

Science and engineering hit worst as Euroboffins do a little Brexit of their own from British universities

Re: Brexit bollocks

Or the older people see how membership of the EU has affected them through their working lives and want to throw the young people a lifebelt from which they themselves will not live to benefit.

Re: Brexit bollocks

Of course, those old people you villify grew up before the UK joined the common market, heard all the propaganda about how awesome it would be to join the common market, saw how that panned out , saw how the common market transformed into a superstate, saw how that panned out and then got an unprecedented chance to vote to leave.

The young who will have to live with the results have only experienced life within the EU and so are wary of any change.

1Gbps, 4K streaming, buffering a thing of the past – but do Brits really even want full fibre?

Re: £30b would be better spent on Brexit or not at all

It will be far worse than £1000 per taxpayer as millions of taxpaying Bremainers will have emigrated by then.

Not my problem

Since the majority of my bandwidth is used for purposes against my interests, ads, javascript, telemetry, 'updates', tracking etc , I see no reason to pay for more than the minimum service.

Ouch. Reinstalling Windows 10 again? By 2020, a 'cloud download' may be all you need

I wonder......

.....wiill this cloudy reinstall have everything set to "maximum spying" ?

Meet ELIoT – the EU project that wants to commercialize Internet-over-lightbulb

Simple fix

The line of sight and interference problems are trivial to fix. Simply run fibre optics from the light bulb to the client device.

Fix LibreOffice now to thwart silent macro viruses – and here's how to pwn those who haven't

Re: Disappointed muchly

People called Romanes, they go, the house?

If at first you don't succeed, Fold? Nope. Samsung redesigns bendy screen for fresh launch in September

Larger screens are pointless

Larger screens seem like a good idea. You have a certain amount of information on a screen, you naively think that a larger screen would hold more information. In the real world, huge amounts of money and man-hours are spent on increasing whitespace, forcing font sizes, preventing zooming, splitting content across pages and forcing ads inside, instead of, and in front of content.

Boeing's 737 Max woes trigger BEEELLIONS in losses – and that's just for the latest quarter

The closest I have been to piloting an aircraft is standing on a stepladder, but it seems really odd that the TRIM can have a bigger effect on the aircraft than the CONTROL SURFACE.

Is this normal for aircraft ?

I imagined the control surfaces controlled where the aircraft pointed and the trim would be just fine tuning of those.

Crappy car analogy : tracking==trim steering==elevators your tracking can be way out but you can override it with steering input.

Apple strips clips of WWDC devs booing that $999 monitor stand from the web using copyright claims. Fear not, you can listen again here...

Re: Palpatine

Quite right. That is why execs alway save the shareholders money by driving used cars, flying economy class etc.

It was that gosh-darn anomaly again, says SpaceX as smoke billows from Crew Dragon test site

Re: SpaceX is not a news organization

Cloning Hitler is justifiable if there is some kind of Hitler-field which helps rocket development ( I am not a rocket scientist, so I am jist guessing here ) , but withholding cancer cures seems a bit mean. Boo Spacex . Boo.

Idiot admits destroying scores of college PCs using USB Killer gizmo, filming himself doing it

Clearly, the college got what they deserved for being so trusting!

I seal all my USB ports with superglue, attach internal surge suppressors, and keep all my electronics sealed in a subterranean vault so that this sort of thing never happens.

Only one Huawei? We pitted the P30 Pro against Samsung and Apple's best – and this is what we found

regarding phone lenses

just wondering how 'deep' a ccd/lens unit would have to be to make it much better ?

If, say, an optically far superior unit was fitted that was an inch 'deeper', the phone could be made an inch thicker, with the extra space used for a battery of 7 times the capacity, a faraday cage credit card cubby hole etc.

Uber won't face criminal charges after its robo-car killed woman crossing street

timing

judging by how long it took the pedestrian to cross one lane from the dashcam footage, it seems that they began crossing the road before the car was in sight. When the car spotted that there was _something_ in the road, it lacked the resolution/accuracy/intelligence to predict the course and speed of the something and realise that it was on a collision course.

Lessons from the Mini: Before revamping or rebooting anything, please read this

old mini space

You can get quite a lot of that shopping in the door pockets of the sliding-windows minis.

The biggest annoyance of the old mini was the classic British manufacturing error of never fixing the design faults, just churning out the same crap until the customers fled.

Robot cars probably won't happen, sniffs US transport chief

Re: Teleporting trucks

Yes, like how your phone seamlessly and reliably switches between wifi APs to get the best signal, or like how your computer always has no problem connecting to your printer. Only with much, much tighter timeframes.

Hard-up Brits 'should get subsidy for 10Mbps'

Discount Broadband?

Surely the skiving pikey dole scum underclass scratters use their iPhones to get on the internet?

Cheapest Apple iPhone 7's flash memory is waaaaay slower than pricier model

Re: You're complaining about a half-empty glass

Surely with a smaller storage volume you will be writing to it _more_ frequently as you get bored with the current cat videos and want fresh ones?