Posts by Eddy Ito

Watch out, everyone, here come the Coronavirus Cops, enjoying their little slice of power way too much

Re: petty power

Is that where politicians gather in the park wearing nothing but a trench coat and collectively expose themselves to anyone who dares come near? Haven't we suffered enough?

COVID-19 is pretty nasty but maybe this is taking social distancing too far? Universe may not be expanding equally in all directions

It's worse than that, we're exactly in the middle of that universe. If you could look forward and see the edge of the universe it would be ~13.8 billion light years away and if you turn around 180 degrees and could see the edge of the universe in that direction it would also be ~13.8 billion light years away. The same would be true if you look up, down, left, or right the edges of the universe would all be ~13.8 billion light years distant. Naturally, the same would be true regardless of where in the universe the observer is. Just proof that we're all in that same Barbie boat together.

Europe calls for single app to track coronavirus. Meanwhile America pretends it isn’t trying to build one at all

Re: A deal

One big question is how many lives are being saved simply because there are so many fewer folk on the roads. I'm fairly certain there will also be a considerable reduction in influenza and possibly other deaths. Unfortunately there is a likelihood that domestic violence deaths will rise. In the long run, if so many employers discover that working from home is anywhere near as productive as being in the office and continue to allow working from home after the current situation has passed, assuming it does, then there is a real opportunity for this whole mess to have a positive impact going forward.

Consumer reviewer Which? finds CAN bus ports on Ford and VW, starts yelling 'Security! We have a problem...'

Re: Driver awareness

IIRC the recommended pressure was low to begin with in order to ensure a softer ride and dropping only a few psi to the rollover danger level didn't take long.

That said, I rather like the TPMS sensors on my newer car although they may be better as thermometers than pressure gauges.

Signal sends smoke, er, signal: If Congress cripples anonymous speech with EARN IT Act, we'll shut US ops

Re: follow the money ... chat app WhatsApp

Skype is owned by Microsoft. Apparently it supports end to end encryption

Those furious gun-toting Aussies were just a glitch. Let's try US drone deliveries, says Wing

I assume it will have a downward facing camera so when you approach the lowered tether be sure to have the very large umbrella open as you fasten it to the tether.

World's oldest human was a 122-year-old French smoker after all

Re: This just in... New Study Of Aging Finds Old People Are Liars

Maybe they're really saying that we're all only as old as we feel. I know there are times when I feel a decade older than I am. Perhaps I should just update the car's head unit to one that doesn't have a cassette player.

It's 2019, and Windows PCs can be pwned via a shortcut file, a webpage, an evil RDP server...

"This is a fine time to remind you that Windows 7 is less than six months from end of support, which means you won’t be getting updates for bugs like this one next February,"

So, anyone got advice on virtualizing Win 7 on my remaining Windows ThinkPad?

Uncle Sam is asking Americans if they could refrain from slapping guns on their drones

Re: Where in "keep and bear arms" does it say anything about them not being attached to an aircraft?

The thing is you can legally transport arms in the trunk of your car, back seat, checked in luggage on an airplane where you clearly aren't touching it or even allowed to touch it like on an airplane. Then there is the patchwork of state laws regarding carrying vs bearing vs whoknowswhatelse as some states even allow towns to make their own rules creating a morass of legal foibles which are in theory dampened greatly by 18 U.S. Code § 926A but in practice is often legally expensive if local authorities have a hair across their butt.

Re: But...but

The Compact Clause disagrees with you as it seems to specifically prohibit States from forming their own "National Guards".

No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, lay any Duty of Tonnage, keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power, or engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay.

Emphasis added to point out the relevant bit.

F-35 'incomparable' to Harrier jump jet, top test pilot tells El Reg

Re: Hearts & minds propaganda, courtesy of MoD

The thing with drones is that you really need a flock of drones. A single drone is too easy to down but 100+ drones like a flock of starlings with stored google maps is another matter.

You monsters: Screen time murders your kid's imaginary friend – until they reach school age

Re: Yay!

I wouldn't go that far. That's largely a parental dogma indoctrination thing. My guess it's the just practice talking to the space people that only small children and dogs can see. The disturbing part may be they have online acquaintances that are real people, probably cops trying to see if they're pedophiles or pedophiles themselves. Sure, there's the blind squirrel who finds a nut every now and again and it could be another child but it's unlikely.

Oh shit! They could be watching reruns of Barney!

Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen's personal MiG-29 fighter jet goes under the hammer

Now you too can have a Soviet plaything

Unless it's under $20 and comes with free parking then no, no I can't.

If you could forget the $125 from Equifax and just take the free credit monitoring, that would be great – FTC

This time by the very US government agency that is supposed to be overseeing all this.

Are you new? It's a U.S. gubbermint agency, this is par for the course. Fear not, I hear they'll bring in TSA to fondle any complaints.

Watch as 10 cops with guns and military camo storm suspected Capital One hacker's house…

Re: Insanity

Par for the course. They've been using this method for such high crimes as unpaid gas bills since 2014. At least the taxpayers eventually get stung for the heinous acts of their bad cops.

Re: Insanity

They'd still have to go in at some point to collect her things and assuming they had some reason to suspect Mr. Quan might be in violation of the law, and don't they always, it wouldn't change much.

Re: A little sensationalism?

Since this type of response is becoming the norm I think the cops and the courts have already justified it nearly all cases. And they've got "qualified immunity" a.k.a. "ignorance is an excuse" defense to back it up.

Alibaba sketches world's 'fastest' 'open-source' RISC-V processor yet: 16 cores, 64-bit, 2.5GHz, 12nm, out-of-order exec

Re: "Farmers can grow their own crops without somebody"

And don't run afoul of government edicts.

If they don't receive enough in tips to bring them to at least the standard minimum wage the employer is required to pay them the difference. Simply put if they make no tips they are still working for the same minimum wage as everyone else. Of course there are several states which don't allow tip credits and have the same minimum wage for all and service typically suffers. For good service personnel working in the right places six figure incomes are within reach.

Spri-Mobile? T-Print? Time to think of a nickname: The Sprint/T-Mobile US merger is go

It would be interesting to know what "certain spectrum assets to Dish" means exactly.

He's coming home, he's coming... Hutchins' coming home: British Wannacry killer held in US on malware dev rap set free by judge

Best news I've seen this week and certainly worthy of raising a pint.

Fantastic Mr Fox? Not when he sh*ts on your lawn, kids' trampoline and your soul

Re: Vist a local Zoo

Carnivore dung is typically a very poor fertilizer. If it was fox dung wouldn't be so objectionable.

Re: Need to really P!$$ them off so they go elsewhere

That could get amusing. Just add a second one, camouflaged naturally, that gets moved every now and again to keep the kids guessing. Maybe go whole hog and set one up on either side in flanking positions of the "out of range" area and all triggered from the same motion sensor to douse their onlooking peers.

Re: Need to really P!$$ them off so they go elsewhere

A bait catapult, how wonderfully medieval although bait ballista is more alliterative.

Seriously though all the cool kids today drop the bait from a drone.

The silicon market is in such a dark place, Texas Instruments' revenue decline was rewarded

I've noticed that happen quite often. I chalk it up to how the market perceives the estimates. If investors thought the estimate was low there's a good chance the value will drop regardless of whether the company misses or beats. Likewise if they thought the estimate was high the company could get rewarded for missing. In this case it seems investor opinion was that the estimate was a pipe dream and they were totally floored by the beat.

They beat the estimates so it seems natural that they were rewarded, today. Fear not, there's always time for punishment tomorrow.

Low Barr: Don't give me that crap about security, just put the backdoors in the encryption, roars US Attorney General

Sorry, rereading that it feels a bit hostile which is not what I intended. Well, not hostile to Pirate Dave anyway.

Yeah, I took that as just more of the same state power expansionist bovine excreta that I know for a fact he doesn't believe. I'm all for him putting his money where his mouth is so when is he going to start pushing for legislation mandating the release of police body cam footage? I'm guessing he'd start trying to justify that certain "zones of privacy" are more private than others.

The key point is that the individual’s right to privacy and the [police's] right of access are two sides of the same coin

I'm sorry, where is there a police "right of access" written anywhere? There is something about searching and seizing after due process but "access" isn't written anywhere. If police have a warrant and search one of my documents and find they can't read it after nary a glance, there is no obligation on me to translate it for them.

Here we go: Uncle Sam launches antitrust probe into *cough* Facebook, Google *cough* Amazon *splutter* Twitter...

Re: What's the purpose of the googles?

Some pension funds and day traders would likely take a hit.

Re: antifa being the first example to trip off my mind

They just redefine the symbols of oppression. To be perfectly fair, I think antifa is just another militant gang in the same vein as MS13, Pirus, etc. Their main goal is control and rule their turf which they do through violence and fear. Really, they don't come off as particularly political at all and if you put any political aspect on their behavior then that only elevates them to being a terrorist organization more closely related to the KKK albeit with a different sociopolitical spin.

Re: Too Easy

One could say he's "reaching across the aisle" since Bernie, Warren, and a slew of other blue team members have called for exactly this type of probe. Sure, they all have their own motive but they'll all cash in on the press and say - something stupid.

You'll never guess what US mad lads Throwflame have strapped to a drone (clue: it does exactly what it says on the tin)

Ok, let's just look at the "gun" part of it at the 1:02 mark. There's a bit of barrel, a rail / hand guard attached to the copter and a magic tube coming out the back. There is no place for cases to feed or eject, no bolt, no firing mechanism just the magic corrugated sleeve. In short, his gun is missing most of the bits that would make it a gun.

Re: Recoil

That would work but accuracy would - let's say "suffer".

Re: Rocket launcher

Bazookas are rocket launchers and very similar to recoilless rifles. Not something you'll find ammo for at the local gun shop. Also not something light enough to be picked up by most cheap drones.

Edited to add that if one wants to do serious damage there are far cheaper options that are just as anonymous. Tim McVeigh was an idiot and could have done far better at concealing his identity.

Please tell me you didn't fall for the fake video.

Nah, surviving recoil would be a real problem. They might do BB guns though.

Hasn't ISIS already been using drones as flying IEDs? Since there's not much stopping anyone from attaching a pipe bomb to a drone, your concern over this seems a little late.

We don't mean to poo-poo this, but... The Internet of S**t has literally arrived thanks to Pampers smart diapers

Re: Why stop there?

Oh no, people's phone ringing in the next cube is bad enough already, I really don't need to hear the 'anal leakage' alarms.

Dear [deity] can tampons, pads and jocks be far behind?

Soon Google will have more bit barns in Texas than you can shake a stick at: Second facility planned for Ellis County

It makes Amazon HQ2 sense. It's always about incentives and tax breaks for the company. Maybe they'll power it with cow farts.

Awkward! Bernie tells Bezos-sponsored event he'd break up Amazon and other tech titans

Re: Dance with who brung ya

The problem is only Machiavellian megalomaniacs run for president, or even congress for that matter.

Humans may be able to live on Mars within halls of aerogel – a wonder material that can trap heat and block radiation

Re: There's another problem they didn't talk about

On the upside with all that perchlorate lying about it looks like explosives will be easy to make. Of course that isn't necessarily a good thing I suppose.

Facebook's Libra is a terrorist's best friend, thunders US Treasury: Crypto-coins dubbed 'national security risk'

So we've got crypto-currency and "dark web" like private groups all rolled into one place. I somewhat shocked that politicians haven't already started spinning the "make new laws!" handle in a frenzy of OMG hand wringing.

US border cops' secret racist Facebook group a total disgrace, says patrol chief. She should know, she was a member

Ignoring the hypocrite in the story, I say we start a pool. How about the date some congresscritter juxtaposes "private groups" on FB and the "dark web" with all the associated money laundering, human trafficking, gun and drug smuggling, etc. As an adder we can include the legislation they'll introduce to combat this problem and its overly-contrived name like the FACEBOOK Act - Freedom Against Cloaked Evil By Opening Online Klatches. Who's in?

Good luck deleting someone's private info from a trained neural network – it's likely to bork the whole thing

Re: An interesting problem.

Which brings up an interesting question. How difficult would it be for someone to poison the training data set? I can see lots of state actors interested in essentially playing Jedi mind tricks on such AI systems. Quite literally "these are not the drones you're looking for" type of thing.

Train maker's coder goes loco, choo-choo-chooses to flee to China with top-secret code – allegedly

Re: "Which hasn't struck me as particularly advanced either"

I'd wager that historically it's impacted rail a great deal. As mentioned elsewhere in the thread, rail is faster but ships/barges are cheaper. My guess is that North-South running rail lines largely supported passenger traffic but East-West was where rail easily out-competed canal projects for moving cargo as East-West canals would have had to deal with elevations over the Appalachians which would make the roughly 600 feet of the Erie Canal look trivial in comparison.

Re: "Which hasn't struck me as particularly advanced either"

It causes problems by raising the cost of everything because there are so few vessels that are US built, owned, flagged, and crewed so it becomes cheaper to use trains and trucks which use far more fuel, create far more pollution, and cause more traffic issues either by being on the road in the case of trucks or stopping traffic at crossings while 2 miles of train passes. Additionally the trucks also put more wear and tear on the roadways. All problems caused by the Jones Act.

Also, how is tracking cargo that comes off a US built, owned, flagged, and crewed ship differ from those that don't meet all of those qualifications?

Edited to add that dumping the Jones Act would also substantially lower the cost of living in Hawaii and Puerto Rico since everything is almost always shipped to the continent then back out on those few US ships.

Re: "Which hasn't struck me as particularly advanced either"

Yep, like everything. Pick two:

Fast, good, cheap. Although it might be fast, large quantity, cheap in this particular case.

Re: "Which hasn't struck me as particularly advanced either"

Which nicely explains why China started their rail based Silk Road project a couple years back. Now if there was only an honest explanation for the Jones Act.

Re: "Which hasn't struck me as particularly advanced either"

I was specifically referring to long distance transport like Hamburg to Barcelona. Large cargo ships are simply more efficient for long routes but obviously it falters when moving goods inland simply due to the needed size of the waterway to make it economical. Trains catch up rapidly as the size of the cargo ship goes down.

In the US we effectively ship most everything over land even though it shouldn't be the most economical method. As it is a ship will dock in LA and disgorge its entire cargo and bits intended for NY or San Fran will go by truck or train. If a ship could dock in LA and subsequently dock in San Fran or Houston and go on to NY, Boston, etc. it would be more efficient but that is effectively disallowed by the Jones Act. That is also why US trains can run ~3.5 km in length where it's unlikely you'll find a train much over 1.5 km in Europe.