Posts by Deebster

Cloudflare coughs, half the internet catches a cold

Re: Not an attack or malicious activity?

Perhaps parsing the file caused used up too much memory, or there was an upper limit on the read which caused the file to be incomplete and fail to parse. I'd be surprised if disc space was the cause of the fault.

Google flushes cached search results forever

Are Google donating their cache to Internet Archive?

Great as the Internet Archive is, it doesn't have everything. Given that Google has some things IA doesn't have at all, if Google could work to import and backfill all of that content, it would be helpful.

I'm not holding my breath.

GitLab U-turns on deleting dormant projects after backlash

GitLab is publicly traded as GTLB.

Are you thinking of GitHub?

Startup Mycroft AI declares it will fight 'patent troll' tooth and nail after its Linux voice-assistant attracts lawsuit

The trolls backed off

Mycroft posted an update: https://mycroft.ai/blog/patent-troll-update-1/

<blockquote>We are pleased to announce that on February 11th the plaintiff voluntarily dismissed the case filled in the Eastern District of Texas.

This is a win. To be more specific we have won the battle, not the war. There are still many ways this could play out. Only time will tell, but rest assured we will keep the community up to date every step of the way.</blockquote>

What's the biggest danger to the power grid? Hackers? Terrorists? Er, squirrels

I like that The Register posts a video that complains about The Register's inaccurate reporting (see slide at 05:37).

Robotics is coming on leaps and bounds – literally: Bushbaby bot most vertically agile yet

Re: Underwhelmed by the video

It's not clear at all, but that video is of the TAUB robot that is the current high-jumping champion.

The Salto video is better but still doesn't live up to what's in your head.

Elon Musk's $4.9bn taxpayer windfall revealed

Re: Red-in-Tooth-and-Claw?

What makes you say "The Left" has a problem with Musk? Working towards the death of the petrol car isn't exactly something that's going to invoke Godwin's law from them.

Why has the web gone to hell? Market chaos and HUMAN NATURE

Re: Cimrman...

The Cimrman Wikipedia article reads more like a HHGTTG entry.

Measure for measure: We visit the most applied-physicist-rich building in the UK

"Like an ass whose back with kilograms of Concorde bows..."

I cannot even parse this subtitle, unless it's "'like a donkey who has returned with many plane parts" - in which case I'm still confused.

Stephen Fry rewrites computer history again: This time it's serious

In British English, "license" is the verb, as correctly used by Fry in his preceding sentence.

He also calls the LHC the "large hardon collider" and uses the US spelling of "archaeology", but who's counting?

Monkey poo probe reveals secrets of middle-management brains

Subtitle

<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0351283/">Madagascar</a> reference?

Japanese gov builds APT database to study targeted attack info

Re: honeynet?

Just the single honeypot, if the article's to be believed...

First Google wants to know all about you, now it wants a RING on your finger

Re: SMS code = good. Google Authenticator app = better.

I keep some backup codes in my wallet so I don't need to have a functioning phone at all.

Google's JavaScript assassin: Web languages are harder than VMs

Re: My Two Cents on A Browser Language

> Compile stuff directly into machine code

Which instruction set?

Or do you mean distribute the source and compile on-demand (which is pretty much what modern JavaScript engines do)?

Siri: Can you make a Raspberry Pi open a garage door?

Re: Issues

It doesn't work anywhere.

You need to be using your network because the hack requires you to override the DNS entry that Siri calls.

Russia steps into NASA's place on upcoming ESA Mars plans

Re: This Musk guy

Elon Musk was born and raised in South Africa.

Word wonks insist GIFs are really JIFs

*Animated* GIFs

MNGs haven't really taken off so this crappy format is still all over the place.

Observe: https://plus.google.com/s/%23gif

Petition for Alan Turing on £10 note breaks 20,000 signatures

The bank note or the celebrity?

XBMC coders acquire TVonics brand

Re: And next week...

TiVo are flexing their patent muscles: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/10/22/tivo_patent_spat_over_dvr/

'Hypersensitive' Wi-Fi hater loses case against fiendish DEVICES

Re: Inquiring minds...

Lazy research ahead:

According to Wikipedia, there have been at least <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_hypersensitivity#Studies">31 experiments</a>; a systematic review concluded:

"The symptoms described by 'electromagnetic hypersensitivity' sufferers can be severe and are sometimes disabling. However, it has proved difficult to show under blind conditions that exposure to electromagnetic fields can trigger these symptoms. This suggests that 'electromagnetic hypersensitivity' is unrelated to the presence of electromagnetic fields, although more research into this phenomenon is required."

Experts troll 'biggest security mag in the world' with DICKish submission

But bogomips and flip-flop gates are real things

BogoMIPS are Linus Torvald's fairly vague speed measure used in the Linux kernel for when time-based delays are too long.

And Flip-flop Gates: http://computer.howstuffworks.com/boolean4.htm.

The time line is definitely one of the best, although I was really tickled by "NMAP requires root access in order to allow B-trees" for some reason.

Neal Stephenson on swordplay, space and depressing SF

If anyone's wondering if that's the Joe Cornish from The Adam and Joe Show:

It is.

UN deploys ITU to seek FRAND patent peace treaty

Re: Ploughshare?

Reminds me of the US plan to use nukes for construction: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Plowshare

New electronic labels squeal to spare you from food poisoning

If you can

I'm anosmic; if there's no-one around the only way I have to test milk is to taste it.

I, for one, welcome our new cyber-packaged underlings.

Android Firefox: Screaming, awesome, you'll go blind etc

@AC 101

Are you talking about Firefox or Chrome?

SpaceX does what it HASN'T done before: Dragon in close ISS flyby

@literally

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Stuck in a dull conference? You need Verity's survival guide

Re: BTDTBTTS

I didn't, but hitting this page comments and searching for BTDTGTTS didn't help either

Syndicate

Sod the reboot

I clicked into this thinking it was from the Antique Code Show series.

How about it?

Newfangled graphics engine for browsers fosters data theft

A. Barth?

Great name!

Beeb measures Blighty in doormats

UK billion = 10**9 for almost 40 years

The BBC article points out that the UK definition of billion has matched the US one since 1974.

I too prefer a billion to be defined as a million to the power of two, but do keep up

Star Wars: The Complete Saga Blu-ray disc set

"I could care less"

Pet peeve noted

Most coders have sleep problems, need 'hygiene and care'

"hygiene" != "sleep hygiene"

'putting their mental health and "hygiene" at risk' should be 'putting their mental health and sleep hygiene at risk.'

This report is not claiming that us coders are smelly (in this study, at least); it's saying that we have bad habits like using computers before bed and having erratic bed times.

WD adds e-ink screens to external HDDs

Strange it's taken this long...

I had a Lexar usb stick with an e-ink capacity status display years ago

Oldsters: If you think you'll lose your memory, you will

@Martin Lyne

"Reverse-placebo effect"

Nocebo effect, surely?

TfL considers life without Oyster

@ A J Stiles

Paying to pee isn't a new idea - why do you think it's called "spending a penny"?

Postman Pat goes postal

Postman Pat HQ just looks like a toy

So this is starting just in time for Christmas lists?

Attention developers: Your SESSIONIDs are showing

re: tie to IP

But be aware of proxying ISPs like AOL that will make a user use several IPs, giving false positives in your logs, and users getting chucked out.