Posts by Richard 31

Roomba maker iRobot gets cleaned out in Chapter 11

Cleaning

They were screwed ever since that photo of irobot employee manually cleaning the store came out.

Sainsbury's eyes up shoplifters with live facial recognition

Hmm

Well, the Oldfield park one is my nearest Sainsburys local, wandering around the other day all the staff had those personal chest recorders on. Definitely not in favour of this nonsense, and of course it will be used against staff too, maybe not today, but soon.

But almost can't blame Sainsburys when the police response to shoplifting is 'meh' it's not a surprise they are taking things into thier own hands.

Giving Windows total recall of everything a user does is a privacy minefield

As this seems to be a screen grab of everything and only in private browser sessions seem to be excluded, what about the other million apps you can run on your computer?

Definitely no corporate secrets, passwords, plans, patent records etc etc that would be exposed.

I would bet this "feature" is going to be attacked by nation States ASAP.

Also also, how long before they start 'offering' to backup Recall in the cloud, or governments try to require you to have scanning for csam or anything else that they think can use to push mass surveillance onto thier citizens with?

IBM Japan and NTT think they can make datacenter aircon adjust to different workloads

Laws of thermodynamics

You can treat basically all electrical devices as close to 100% efficient heaters. All the energy has to go somewhere. Whether it's a gpu or cpus it's all ends up as heat in the end. A tiny amount will leave in the network cables, but still ends up as heat in the next device.

AC works by transferring the heat to a medium, pumping it elsewhere and releasing it. Convientiently it can move more units of heat than it consumed.

I had always just assumed that ac dynamically scaled with the workload. There have been temp probes in every dc I hadn't been in. Why was thier not done from the start?

Want a Cybertruck? You're stuck with it for a year, says Tesla

Shares

This does scalping. We have seen it happen on the Ps5, and on basically every popular music show ticket.

I think it should be applied to shares. Killing high frequency trading would be so very useful.

SSD missing from SAP datacenter turns up on eBay, sparking security investigation

I used to know a guy that would run a scam thusly:

1) pop out a drive on a raid array

2) reseat it

3) wait for the compaq (yes this was ages ago) engineer to turn up, replace the drive and leave the old one in the rack because of the disk retention policy.

4) swipe the 'faulty' drive

No idea if they got flogged on fleabay though

Microsoft pushes users to the Edge in Outlook, Teams

Are they trying to force people into alternative OSes? It's the only outcome from this underhanded bullshit.

When will MS figure out that they lost the browser war with IE6. Embrace Extend Extinguish may have killed Netscape and won the battle. But they have lost this war.

Apple bags patent for folding phone that closes as it's dropped

My oppo phone has its camera and torch on a pizza wedge that pops out the top. It auto retracts if the phone is dropped. It's actually the easiest way to switch off the torch if the screen has timed out...

If you're serious about browser privacy, you should probably pass on Edge or Yandex, claims Dublin professor

Re: Actual data transmissions.

I don't consider going to pornhub.... i always go to pornhub... :)

Actual data transmissions.

Does it matter how many requests are actually made?

What really matters is how much information the third party collects at the end of the day. It doesn't matter if they send 1 or 100 requests if they send the information about the url or whatever.

More requests may well influence your behaviour though.

Apple drops a bomb on long-life HTTPS certificates: Safari to snub new security certs valid for more than 13 months

Internal

If you have an internal PKI you probably have control over the full creation of the certs. Just set them all to have a start date of 31 Aug 2020 or whenever and extend the end whenever. Or just make them expire in 2099 or whenever.

Ouch, Apple! Plenty of iPhones stuck in tech channel. How many? That's a 'wild card'

I would assume that Apple don't really care, and that part of the strategy has been just to see just how high they can set prices before profits are hit. I am quite sure it can stand the "hit" of not making as many billions of profit on this set of phones, and just set them more sensibly next time.

Which scientist should be on the new £50 note? El Reg weighs in – and you should vote, too

Re: Eh? Come again?

That but also the Acoustics, Aerodynamics and Zymology scientists can all cram it too.

Software changed the world, then died on the first of the month

Does this imply that they manged to get a spec, build, test, go through UAT etc all from 10-31st of one month?

Almost willing to call bullshit on that basis alone.

BOFH: But I did log in to the portal, Dave

Re: I've been there

When you can only give one upvote to a post.

I would love it if HP would just delete the entirety of their site and replaced it with the usual brochureware site for the products and a link to a drivers page, where, get this you can enter the serial number and it actually has the drivers for the device you entered. Surely not too hard.

Instead we have this piece of tortuously slow site that runs like a monkey with a leaky sack of jizz which makes me want to kill everyone who was involved in writing it. No jury would every convict either.

All flasher Tintri makes play for the cash-strapped: Buy 'em drive by drive

20/20

Amused they they would call thier tech conf "Tintri Tech 20/20"

20/20 vision being the average persons vision, not high visual acuity. An average product for the middle of the market at best. Pity they price themselves like they are a premium storage vendor.

Netflix mulls using AI to craft personalized movie trailers for viewers

Silence

My favourite trailer is one with no sound and no pictures that never plays. I wonder if the AI can work that one out for me?

I would prefer they spent their time on an interface that allowed you to see all the content.

HP denies rumours Elite x3 is for the axe, admits coveting neighbour's OS

So that's the language they use when the whole thing is on fire and they are trying to shut the whole thing down as fast as possible.

Shame, i rather liked Windows Mobile. Pity they had to mess everyone around so much with it.

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

Re: In a fight over...

Anyway we all know George La Forge was the best Babylon 5 character, and in his wise words: "Use the Force Harry"

Microsoft slaps Apple Gatekeeper-like controls on Windows 10: Install only apps from store

Yes

We have all access to the Store blocked in the office.

Although we don't we could restrict people to just the software allowed by SCCM too.

Sexbots could ‘over-exert’ their human lovers, academic warns

If you have bought a sex-bot, you probably don't have a real person to screw anyway.

Anyone seem my order?

What's that, Adobe? A Photoshop for faking voices?

Richard Burton

Who care about fry, when you can have everything read out by Richard Burtons baritone voice?

Is that you, HAL? AI can now see secrets through lipreading – kinda

Orville will be safe...

Or at least the twonk he sits on.

What should the Red Arrows' new aircraft be?

Lightnings!

Time for the old EE Lightnings to return as a display force.

FBI wants to unlock another jihadist’s iPhone

Killswitch?

I wonder how long it will be before we have some sort of secondary kill switch...

You get 10 guesses at the password or no valid code entered within $time_period = deleted keys.

These diabetes pumps obey unencrypted radio commands – which is, frankly, f*%king stupid

The letter also recommends turning on the Vibrating Alert feature, because it could be useful to be told when insulin is about to be administered, and to set a limit on insulin doses over a given period of time.</quote>

Surely our hacker could just disable them again using the same unencrypted commands to switch the alerts off again?

But with this and the 10 zillion other IoT devices out there, isn't it time an idiot proof chip or framework is produced to allow people to do secure comms on small devices easily?

Tesla autopilot driver 'was speeding' moments before death – prelim report

Only because there was noone in it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnI-LiKCtuE

8 mins in for the verdict.

Bars

At 74 MPH it seems that more likely that Mansfield bars on the sides on the trailer would have just ensured he died there rather than a few feet down the road.

First successful Hyperloop test module hits 100mph in four seconds

Re: Snake Oil

The vacuuming process for any pod need not take much time at all. No need for it to ever leave the tube.

Consider if it works more like the London Underground on the stations where they have barriers and doors to stop people falling or jumping onto the track. ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-Pec4GvDwQ ) for example

The pods door aligns with a platforn door, the platform extends a boom onto the pod and the door can open into normal atmosphere. It could easily be the similar to the ingress exits used for jumbos at airports.

Slow the acceleration and it would be easy enough to have straight regular tube seating.

No need to evacuate the whole system for maintenance either. Each section just needs a doors that can seal off a section. Would be simple enough to add sensors to automatically shut doors and stop trains at the next emergency exit door.

Vacuum implosions

Can't help thinking this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zz95_VvTxZM

would happen once some git inevitably crashes into the loop.

Google's driverless car: It'll just block our roads. It's the worst

Rob me now!

How about just walking infront of one of these things, waiting for the emergency stop and then robbing the hell out of whoever.

Urinating teen polluted 57 Olympic-sized swimming pools - cops

swimming pools

If you have ever swam in a swimming pool, public or otherwise you have swam in piss. So who cares?

Quite a few people will have peed in that, making the contentration well about 1 in 57 pools.

Apple, Beats and fools with money who trust celeb endorsements

Pono Player

Who the hell would by a Toblerone shaped music player?

KRAKOOM! iPad Air explose in fireball, terrified fanbois flee Apple store

Re: Ford Orion

I am inclined to agree

The only part of my Orion that ever worked was the Fuel Computer. Every other piece of electronics in that mobile pile of rust didn't work properly. Fuel leaks. Windows wouldn't wind. Interior and exterior lighting seemed to be some sort of optional extra. Never noticed the body roll at the time. But that could have been because my shocks were made from solid lumps of steel.

BETHLEHEM-grade SUPERNOVA possible 'within 50 years'

Already happened!

Given the size of the Milky Way and the likely distance of any star that will go supernova, it is more probable that the star has already gone supernova, but the light from it won't arrive until sometime in the next 50 years.

Storage rage: Like getting a nice steak and being told to only eat 80% of it

Disks in arrays

It always gets my back up that they will make a backplane and make it capable of holding say 12 disks. Then tell you the optimum is to leave 2 or 3 slots free as this makes it faster and more efficient etc etc.

Can anyone tell me why the hell if they are making a backplane that can hold 12 disks they don't optimise it for that? Even if this means developing for 15 disks and then never utilising it because the last 3 slots will never physically exist.

GRR etc!

How Alan Turing wanted to base EDSAC's memory on BOOZE

Re: Credibility

So lets call it a Semi Organic Ethanol DiHydrogen Monoxide delay line and move on. :)

Apple's screw-up leaves tethered iPhones easily crackable

Hash DB

With only 18420000 possible password in the default dictionary, you would think that you could just compile a DB of all the hashes and refer to that. It wouldn't even be all that huge.

Police 'stumped' by car thefts using electronic skeleton key

Re: Sonic Screwdriver

Deadlocking won't work if you have a device that can transmit the correct Open Sesame command to the car.

Is the next-gen console war already One?

Always on, and ending

What always concerns me about this always on bollocks is not necessasarily the being online part.

What happens when they decide supporting the console once it is no longer economically viable? You can bet they will drop the Xbox One the second that is true.

Some of us like playing ancient games, i still occasionally dig out old stuff for a quick blast about. I don't want to be dicking about with any fake auth servers or anything like that.

FLABBER-JASTED: It's 'jif', NOT '.gif', says man who should know

Cleaning products

gif-jif-cif

Does this mean that over time its name will change to CIF to be in line with European cleaning products?

Are you in charge of a lot of biz computers? Got Java on them?

Backwards compatibiliy

A lot of the reason machines and servers end up with old versions of Java is the lack of proper backwards compatibility. All to often there are programs that will only work with a particular version of one particular JVM. As someone who has to deal with this, i do get rather frustrated with Java. My arse is more backwards compatible than this.

Keyboard, you're not my type

Microswitches

You cannot beat a proper microswitch keyboard. It is worth all the comments from people about how loud you are typing to actually be able to tell when you are pressing the keys properly. And they seem to last forever, My Dell keyboard has been going strong for at least 12 years, which is odd because the company i work for never had any Dell servers or desktops. I will be keeping it when i move to another computer. I expect i will have to buy an adapter for it as noone seems to make new computers with PS/2 connectors anymore.

Elon Musk: 'Fudged' NYT article cost Tesla $100m

Power Station Efficiency

Will people stop saying that coal/gas power stations are 40-60% efficient? The closest % efficient they are to is 1% and only if you round up.

They are not! Remember E = MC^2

1KG of fuel should provide 89875517873 MJ of energy not the measly 46MJ that you get from it is you happen to set it on fire.

The only remotely efficient power stations are Nuclear. :)

Canadian man: I solved WWII WAR HERO pigeon code!

Re: Ludicrous

Its not PABLIZ either, if you look at the pic on the BBC page it's clearly PABUZ . The groups of letters are always groups of 5 not groups of 5 and occasionally 6.

The message was written by a man who wrote his U's in a blocky form. Look at other parts of the message.

Also AOAKN occurs twice in the message. Why would anyone send the same thing twice in a message?

Behold ATLAS, the fastest computer of 50 years ago

Re: Compute time was billed at around £750-800 per hour

I like to note that people here have probably used more processing power than the Atlas was capable of over its lifetime to argue the toss over an irrelevant piece of grammar.

Welcome to the internet. :)

Apache man disables Internet Explorer 10 privacy setting

waah waah waah..

.. i'm a big girls blouse is what i heard from the Apache guy here.

He has found an angle to have a go at MS and big up his own software. Are we surprised?

Bored now.

Watch out, PC disk drive floggers: Cloud will rust up those spinners

Doubt it....

If you are going to be using "the cloud" as storage, the disk makers are still going to be selling plenty of drives. To the cloud providers.

I am more or less assuming that disk usage in the cloud will even out between being able to store more than one users data on one disk, and the need for RAID and data duplication to keep everyones data.

Also i am not sure we are going to see any significant alterations in network speeds at the user level, plus with the general unreliability of the wireless networks.