* Posts by Mike 16

1439 publicly visible posts • joined 17 Jun 2009

Police warn of bad Apples that fell off the back of a truck after highway robbery

Mike 16

Ah, Memories

Back when UseNet (well, many a comp.* group) was awaiting news that the first Pentiums (Pentia?) had shipped. Came the message (roughly):

Depends how you define "Shipped". The first load of packaged parts was hijacked on its way from the assembly plant to the airport.

(Yes, I could be mistaken about the exact hotly-anticipated new x86 processor. Corrections welcomed)

Internet Archive to preserve Flash content for posterity with Ruffle emulator

Mike 16

TUTOR?

I have to wonder whether the content ported from TUTOR (Plato system authoring tool) to Flash some years ago will make the second leap.

Ordnance Survey recruits AR developer to build 'geolocated quests' to help get Brit couch potatoes exercising outdoors

Mike 16

Re: Make Pokemon-Historical

You could visit the Nashville Parthenon:

https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-full-scale-replica-parthenon-nashville-tennessee

Or maybe the Memphis Pyramid, although it may involve some sort of curse...

Los Angeles police ban facial recognition software and launch review after officers accused of unauthorized use

Mike 16

Re: Damned if you do, damned if you don't ...

Dummy Account?

What happens when a serial killer (or registered member of the opposition party) uses the portrait of the same non-existent person for _their_ dummy account?

Watchdog signals Boeing 737 Max jets can return to US skies following software upgrade, pilot training

Mike 16

Re: Natural Selection?

So, you would apply the same logic to those who were foolish enough to be on the ground in the vicinity of the crashing plane?

Do you suggest everybody move out of any country that Ryanair (et el.) fly to/from?

Hard to believe but Congress just approved an IoT security law and it doesn't totally suck

Mike 16

Updates?

"... how and when devices are updated to deal with emerging security holes. "

I'm more concerned about the standards governing how and when devices are updated to _insert_ security holes.

Plus the charming belief that some of these agencies will disclose the security holes they use.

As for UL stickers, I can imagine that the folks currently producing counterfeit UL stickers are preparing to add counterfeit "Secure IoT" stickers to their offerings.

And as usual, when the federal government moves to cover some problem that states have already started on, it is very rare that the purpose is anything other than to preempt and nullify that state legislation. Thus are the issues mentioned above enabled.

Trump fires cybersecurity boss Chris Krebs for doing his job: Securing the election and telling the truth about it

Mike 16

Re: It is unclear what President Trump hopes to achieve

As usual: Follow The Money.

If he concedes, the various nuisance lawsuits are unlikely to be viewed with favor. No Lawsuits, no fundraising for the lawsuits. IIRC, much of the money raised to pursue the lawsuits is actually going to repay his campaign expenses. That income stream would stop, and he might have to repay his various creditors with his own money, if he has any.

It occurs to me that this gives his creditors a good reason to bang the drum (or rattle the can) as well.

BTW the "We build the wall" scammers who were recently caught apparently had a similar moral compass:

https://nypost.com/2020/11/07/indicted-we-build-the-wall-founder-raising-money-for-legal-fees/

(Note to non-US folks, the New Your Post "has a different viewpoint" than the New York Times or Washington Post. FYI)

Israeli spyware maker NSO channels Hollywood spy thrillers in appeal for legal immunity in WhatsApp battle

Mike 16

Once the rockets go up...

Y'all can finish that.

(Yeah, I'm pretty sure NSO can count down in Chinese. Business is Business)

Reports of one's death have been greatly exaggerated: French radio station splurges obituary bank over interwebs

Mike 16

Re: Heir to the Throne

"About 240 years" ?

Maybe after 1870 (150 years), but IIRC there were a few monarchs between The Terror and the end of the 2nd Empire..

Baby Yoda stowed away on Crew Dragon, boards International Space Station

Mike 16

Re: $2700 per kilo?

Laugh while you can. Monkey Boy!

Several years back (I had hair!), I met an engineer (moonlighting as a "conceptual artist") who had done fairly detailed preliminary designs to use a de-comissioned solar power setup in the desert (lots of steerable mirrors to concentrate sunlight on a tower-mounted boiler) and a servoed mirror to draw simple shapes on the moon, and had a potential customer.

That customer bailed out after being reminded that they did a lot of manufacturing in places where desecrating the moon might affect relations with the host countries.

This was related to me after I mentioned "pong on the moon", a little stunt involving a 2.5 second delay (about 150 samples, but I think we cheated with 128) in the control inputs to an "homage" to the classic game. No Lunar features were harmed in this production, but it was darn hard to play.

Micropayments company Coil distributes new privacy policy with email that puts users' addresses in the ‘To:’ field

Mike 16

Ah, Memories

While working at a game developer that had signed up to make games for a much-anticipated console, I got an email from the console maker, "To:" a hundred or so people, all of whom had been sternly cautioned to not divulge that we would be producing content for their new console.

Not a lot of surprises as we verified who were our competition, but a bit of "Sauce for the Goose". We could have been terminated from the program for leaking that info, but them? Meh.

Worn-out NAND flash blamed for Tesla vehicle gremlins, such as rearview cam failures and silenced audio alerts

Mike 16

Re: We'll get used to it

@AC -- a component failure, not so much a design failure.

The design failure is running a toxic waste channel through a recreational area.

OK, actually putting safety-critical functions in the "infotainment" system. This was a WTF moment when another manufacturer did it a decade or more ago. There is no excuse to repeat that mistake today.

KDE maintainers speak on why it is worth looking beyond GNOME

Mike 16

All the fish

OT, apologies, but that line: "Does it catch many fish?" triggered an old memory. A friend (no, really) worked for National Semiconductor (or Nominal Semi-destructor as some called it), and they had a contest for "Best application note" for the then-new SC/MP (aka SCAMP) microprocessor

The name stood for "Simple Cost-effective Micro (Multi?) processor".

If it was "multi", that's because the CPU was so "vertically" microcoded that the memory bus was idle much of the time. One suggestion was an "organ" with twelve SCAMPs, one per top-octave note, sharing one memory.

My favorite of the "did not make it to publication" set was the idea of using the SC/MP in its 40-pin DIP as a fishing lure.

Mike 16

Re: Once bitten

I tend to agree about the various Linux desktops and the "vanity churn" I have come to expect (less now that my only significant use of Linux is CLI), but I am curious whether you apply the "Guarantee that it won't turn to shit" requirement to anything else.

MacOS/iOS, Windows, even the GUI on various DVRs (and automobiles) have in the last several years all had their "turn to shit" moments.

Why single out Linux Desktops?

Solving a big, yellow IT problem: If it's not wearing hi-vis, I don't trust it

Mike 16

Re: Was it Diggerland?

"Allowed Outings"?

Just say you were testing your eyesight. I hear that works.

HP: That print-free-for-life deal we promised you? Well, now it's pay-per-month to continue using your printer ink

Mike 16

Re: How the mighty has fallen

I have to wonder if the Hewlett and Packard families could bring a suit for defamation against the pack of weasels currently using their name. Alternative collective nouns at

https://www.animalsandenglish.com/collective-nouns-etc22.html

I'm particularly fond of "confusion", "gang" and "sneak"

A side-trip during that search led me to read that a group of ferrets is called a "Business" or Busyness",

so maybe HP could attempt a totemic species upgrade.

San Francisco approves 'CEO tax', hopes to extract up to $140m a year from corps with wide exec-staff salary gap

Mike 16

Re: It's My Toy

Golf is a powerful incentive for many of the powerful. I recall reading some time ago that part of the siting decision for Strategic Air Command bases in the U.S. was the availability of a local high-end golf course.

The General liked to golf.

Mike 16

Re: does this include things such as bonuses and perks

No idea what the current situation is (retired, living on pension), but back in the 1960s working for the campus food service, my "food allowance" (daily subsidy for lunch in the cafeteria) was taxable.

If one is taxing the food of minimum-wage workers, surely the stock options and junkets for execs would get similar treatment, right? (/sarcasm)

One of the world's most prominent distributed ledger projects has been pushed back by a year

Mike 16

Obscurity and gauntlets

I am curious what OS the Itaniums (Itania?) are running. My only encounter with the chip was a 6U server from Bull, running Suse Linux, IIRC, but didn't (doesn't) HP have OpenVMS running on it? So in addition to having Itanium chops, the ideal candidate would have VMS experience.

(Not applying for the job. The only reason I was messing with that box was to test some rather bespoke hardware against it for one customer)

Trump's official campaign website vandalized by hackers who 'had enough of the President's fake news'

Mike 16

Re: Fake News!

Surely you do not suggest that a stable genius would use the same password on both his website and his twitter account?

How the tables have turned: Bloke says he trained facial recognition algorithm to identify police officers

Mike 16

Re: AI face recognition of cops

IIRC, one of the most head-slapping decisions was when some state wanted to outlaw the ability to block outgoing callerID, with an exception for undercover officers.

"So, I see your calls to me come up a Unknown Caller..."

I believe that cooler heads prevailed before that was approved, but remember, kids

When Privacy is Outlawed, only Outlaws will have Privacy.

RIAA DMCAs GitHub into nuking popular YouTube video download tool, says it's used to slurp music

Mike 16

Live Music Ancillary Rights?

@AC : I'm assuming that the music publishers will also claim ancillary rights on those live performances (Can't have the artists making enough off tee-shirt sales to buy themselves out of the indentured servitude of contracts).

And of course exclusive rights on band-branded Molly at the raves.

Mike 16

The day the music died

AFAICT, that would have been (a few years) before I was born, based on the evidence of a combo radio/turntable/wire-recorder I saw at a flea-market. Besides being able to "rip" vinyl (well maybe shellac) discs, it could also "steal" radio programs selected on the built-in timer. Exactly the sort of thing that the music industry keeps saying will be the death of music. This being slightly before I was born, and me still alive, maybe music has a few years left.

Meanwhile, YouTube seems to be quite efficient at turning over ad revenue on videos of musicians playing their own compositions to anybody who claims to "own the copyright" (brown envelopes may be involved)

Does anybody older than me recall if the death of music was also prophesied when photography (and photolithography) met sheet music?

After Dutch bloke claims he hacked Trump's Twitter by guessing password, web biz says there's 'no evidence'

Mike 16

Something conclusive?

@AC: Had the "Hacker" posted "something conclusive", he would be in some black site now, or at the very least had an extradition request made against him. As it is, he'll "only" have a rough time traveling to the U.S. (as if a 197 IQ super-hacker would be that stupid).

Thought the FBI were the only ones able to unlock encrypted phones? Pretty much every US cop can get the job done

Mike 16

Re: Strategic Bomber Force

Way too late with that suggestion.

(although the planes were apparently small two-seaters back in the 1920s)

https://tulsaworld.com/news/local/racemassacre/tulsa-race-massacre-role-of-airplanes-spotted-during-height-of-violence-questioned/article_eadb74be-b869-5b91-838a-bbeb4c7da388.html

State of Iowa told no, you can’t use $21m coronavirus federal aid to help fund your $52m Workday roll-out

Mike 16

Re: Ohio

I think you bought a few wrong vowels. Ohio is not the same state as Iowa, despite having a Republican governor (they are not rare).

Of course, diverting funds is a popular sport in the U.S. (How many pork-barrel tanks were not built, to better fund the pork-barrel wall?)

GSM gateways: Parliament obviously cocked up, so let minister issue 'ignore the law' decree, UK.gov barrister urges court

Mike 16

Staic Analysis

On what basis do you believe that those currently making the law (and a tidy living from bribes) would ever allow any such thing? In the U.S., changes to proposed laws can apparently be made by a "staffer", after debate has closed, and the resulting law passed with no review.

https://www.salon.com/2000/06/14/love_7/ (Courtney Love does the Math)

Mike 16

Re: Using higher standards

If the UK follows the US playbook, you will be allowed to use higher standards, but will not be allowed to use that as a sales point, nor to point out that the lower-priced competitor meets only the lower standards.

And of course mentioning the issue, even in the course of talking about your own personal opinion, you may get SLAPPed with a "Veggie Libel" equivalent suit. (This launched the career of Dr. Phil, so make your own evaluation)

Hey Reg readers, Happy Spreadsheet day! Because there ain't no party like an Excel party

Mike 16

Spreadsheet day

Shouldn't that be 2/29/1900 (or 29/2/1900)? Back when MSFT apparently believed 1900 was a leap year.

(The Mac used a 1904 epoch to avoid that issue, but apparently Excel countered that move with the auto-epoch-switch that made transferring sheets between Mac and Windows so memorable.)

Nicely bookended by the update (late November, 1999, IIRC) to make Windows believe 2000 was a leap year.

Credit where it is due, both those bugs were almost certainly discovered/reported by folks using spreadsheets to calculate future value of various financial instruments. Rather than the truly useful applications like the sheet to translate to Pig Latin.

It's that time of the year when Apple convinces you last year's iPhones weren't quite magical enough, so buy this new 5G iPhone 12 instead

Mike 16

Re: iPhone 12 you say

What makes you think an iPhone 12 will still work in five years? That "50% faster" thing almost certainly means that iOS will be a total pig on it in 3-5 years, as iOS devs chase the iPhone 15 (It's got Electrolytes!), and support will be phased out by year 6.

Yahoo! Groups! to! shut! down! completely! on! December! 15!... Tens! mourn!

Mike 16

steady decline

When you make it impossible to add content, and delete the existing content, it makes users unsure of their future with your platform.

So, hardly a surprise.

California outlaws wording, webpage buttons designed to hoodwink people into handing over their personal data

Mike 16

Re: Steps to opt in?

So, none, then, since default opt-out is apparently not on the table.

Excel is for amateurs. To properly screw things up, those same amateurs need a copy of Access

Mike 16

Re: Using a computer where pen and paper would have sufficed!

(Shivers) My first "real" job was with a telecom equipment company (since acquired at least three times and probably deceased) at which _exactly_ this happened. Slightly before I arrived, the process to turn a list of orders to the factory into checking parts inventory and if needed ordering parts was entirely done on IBM "Tab" equipment that Herman Hollerith would have understood. This was replaced by shiny new System 3 computer and (allegedly) appropriate software. Which of course never worked. Had we been a bakery, we could have the "pulled" 2 dozen eggs but no flour to "build" an order for one cake.

It got so bad that the factory and engineering contrived a parallel system that allowed things to actually be built. Some of the documents were not literally "pen and paper", but "pencil on mylar".

Same the basic idea.

BTW: this was also the place where, when I asked the main operator why smoking was allowed in the machine room, they pulled a disk-pack off the shelf and blew smoke into it, saying "Don't hurt them none".

Britain should have binned Huawei 5G kit years ago to cuddle up with Trump, says Parliamentary committee

Mike 16

Re: Tinfoil hat

Don't forget the H-field. You'll also need a mu-metal helmet.

Infosec researchers pwned Comcast's voice-activated remote control so it could snoop on household chit-chat

Mike 16

Have to press a button

Well, that's what they _say_, but then, that's what they would say.

Do you feel _lucky_?

IBM unleashes AI on two space problems: How to map all the junk in Earth's orbit, and how to put more up there

Mike 16

Only 120GB or RAM and 16 cores?

That's gonna struggle to run MacOS Kahoʻolawe (11.1)

How's this for overachieving? Man accused of running software outfit as a Ponzi scheme while on parole from previous fraud

Mike 16

Not that new

I recall a story in a science fiction magazine (probably Analog) circa mid 1970s, where the con-artists set up what appeared to be auto-front-running, show the marks an impressive server room (not belonging to them) located in the building housing a major communications interconnect point.

The beauty of schemes like this is that when you hire someone to help you cheat, you are reluctant to admit it.

Like a drug dealer reporting theft of "product" to the police.

Open-source devs drown in DigitalOcean's latest tsunami of pull-request spam that is Hacktoberfest

Mike 16

Re: Marketing

Why? It's part of the "full employment for folks naturally inclined to be con-artists, but who are afraid they won't be able to get their favored mineral water in prison, so have cultivated an acute sense of the line between "deceptive but legal" and "fraud." Line width down to 3 nanometers, AFAICT.

Atari threatens to hit fourth VCS shipping deadline, provides pictures of boxes as proof of product delivery

Mike 16

Current owners?

Still? That's got to be some sort of record for "Holding rights to Atari name and logo without producing squat". At least way ahead of JTS, Hasbro, and maybe one more before this bunch.

Mike 16

Pointless?

Perhaps you were under the impression that this was a scrappy and creative bunch getting ready to open on Broadway with a Hamilton-beater.

Cast your thoughts more in the direction of "Springtime for [redacted lest moderators ban me]".

As for empty boxes, I recall in the 1970s a semiconductor company shipping empty (ceramic) packages in places of Chips, on a contract with harsh penalties for delayed delivery but none for QA rejects.

At least they weren't shipping (briefly) working chips with corrosive contaminants that ate the bond wires after a month or so powered on. If you transpose that tale to the current subject, I hope the eager recipients have a venomous snake handler handy for the unboxing.

Bad boys bad boys, what you gonna do? Los Angeles Police Department found fibbing about facial recognition use

Mike 16

Youtube AI

Can we hoped that these things have improved over the years, so we don't have deal with things like the pig-farm site that was blocked (several years ago, but who _really_ wants to argue the "Software only ever improves" side of that debate) because "a lot of pink" _obviously_ can only be nude people, ergo Porn!

(Or was that really an excuse to delete a PETA page?)

Not content with distorting actual reality, Facebook now wants to build a digital layer for the world

Mike 16

Re: Where is the plane of Focus in AR?

I recall in the past (late 80s? who can remember) seeing a demo by some (IIRC) Canadian researchers of a screen overlay that altered the focus for each (small) region of a screen. The user/customer/victim's eyes would compensate by altering their lens until the object of interest was in focus (and much of the rest of the screen out of focus), providing another cue to "3D" viewing. The goal was to have a convincing 3D appearance with only one screen o render. Well, two, the "video" and the "focus adjustment, to lower resolution.

I am far from enough of a boffin to judge ho wwell this would have worked, as it was not a strong effect for me, but there was some effect, and it was not physically painful the way "we know all eyes are spaced exactly the same" typical 2-screen images.

Note that they were touting this for "not all that interactive" stuff like movies and typical Laser-Disk games, so could be pre-rendered.

Not the case for something seeking to auto-slander everyone in sight without massive amounts of layer-sheer.

Is Little Timmy still enthralled by his Leapfrog tablet? Maybe check he hasn't sideloaded an unrestricted OS onto it

Mike 16

kid's toy turned into a proper tablet computer

My experience with iOS seems to be moving the opposite direction.

What a time to be alive: Floating Apple store bobs up in Singapore

Mike 16

Re: "Floating"? Really?

I immediately went to "The location of the store changes day to day, or more frequently, and only a select few are told where it is at any given time. Usually associated with games of chance. The one in our town was sometimes in the back room of a Car Audio shop (4-track and 8-Track players, and some new-fangled cassette players).

Competitive techies almost bring distributed disaster upon themselves – and they didn't even find any aliens

Mike 16

Harwell?

Was the WITCH on line?

Digital pregnancy testing sticks turn out to have very analogue internals when it comes to getting results

Mike 16

Liverwurst, Limburger, and Onion.

Indeed. A sandwich shop near IBM's Rochester MN offices has exactly that as a sandwich choice, under the title "OldTimer" (or some such. Long enough ago I don't know if IBM still has that location)

My snarky young IBM guides suggested it to me. What could they have meant?

Microsoft: We're getting rid of Flash by the end of the year - except you can still use it

Mike 16

Dilution?

Are you suggesting that homeopathy doesn't work? Even for software copied off eldritch scrolls and translated in pieces by multiple people in a humor-free environment?

Oh dear, I seem to have lost the thread there. Exposure to Flash, or even discussions of it, can do that.

Homeland Security demands a 911 for reporting security holes in federal networks: 'Vulns in internet systems cause real-world impacts'

Mike 16

Following form?

I suspect this will end up like the system at [REDACTED], a major network equipment manufacturer, back when I worked there. Any question was answered with "It's on [internal website of all company info]". But of course it wasn't. And the "report problems" link was a mailto: to a no longer existing email address (if that address ever existed). Then the telephone number listed for similar problems/errors rang on the desk of someone who was more than adequately aware of the fact that they were _not_ the responsible party, and had no idea who that might be.

(And of course given recent news, any report that treads on any toes will be filed in the room with the "Beware of the Leopard" sign.)

US election 2020: The disinfo operations have evolved, but so have state governments

Mike 16

AI-driven digital technocratic overlords

Right up to the point where someone has a few too many on a Friday night and commits some "code cleanup" to a widely used library. Then the world goes all Colossus/Guardian on us, and the cockroaches are left to do the re-write.

US Air Force shows off latest all-electric flying car, says it 'might seem straight out of a Hollywood movie'

Mike 16

Re: I person miltary helicopter you say?

Or, if you relax the "must have spinning blades" part, the Magnetic Air Car from 1966

https://www.dicktracymuseum.com/new-page

(You will need to scroll down)