* Posts by Danny 2

2212 publicly visible posts • joined 6 Jul 2009

Hackers hack Hackney: Local government cries 'cyberattack' while UK infosec officials rush to figure out what happened

Danny 2

Derivation of 'Hack' in place names

haca (Old English) A hook.

pers.n. (Old English) pers.n. Personal name

ēg (Anglian) An island. In ancient settlement-names, most frequently refers to dry ground surrounded by marsh. Also used of islands in modern sense. In late OE names: well-watered land.

A hook seems appropriate if it was a spear-phishing attack.

[I can't find the derivation of the word 'derivation'. Like the old Steven Wright joke, "What's another word for thesaurus?"]

Beware, drone fliers, of Scotland's black-headed gulls. For they will tear your craft from Mother Nature's skies

Danny 2

Re: I can't wait until a vulture takes out a drone.

‘Mama’ drone used to deliver food to rare vulture

You’ve probably heard about cases where certain bird species will perceive a drone as a threat and attack it, right? Well in this case, a drone has been put to use to deliver food to a rare vulture chick in Israel. In fact, this drone has to replace one of the vulture’s parents – earning it the nickname of “Mama” drone.

Danny 2

Chipzkrieg

Never take chips to Linlithgow Loch because the gulls have allied with the swans. The gulls will swarm dive bomb you (Ju87 Stukas) while simultaneously the swans run at you with wings extended (Panzer tanks). I suspect the ducks may be informers too. They do communicate - if one bird spots chips then they alert the other species to the target.

OTOH, if you are stuck with a tourist you don't like then buy them a bag of chips and walk them around the palace, at a slight distance.

A decades-old lesson on not inserting Excel where it doesn't belong

Danny 2

Re: @Eclectic Man

Hiya @Eclectic Man,

A pal just described Attenborough as a Pollyanna (overly optimistic). I'm not sure, I think it is just he was trying to inspire our love of animals and now he's lost faith in us.

I hope you stay well too, it's always a pleasure reading you here.

I was playing five a side football at a new job, and quickly ended up bent double, purple faced and wheezing. Two guys came over to ask if I was okay, and I said, "Don't worry, I'm an asthmatic and a smoker."

"Aye, so are we."

Danny 2

Ironically Duncan, you probably don't want to include your Facebook Click ID on a tech forum. Maybe delete that post and try again?

Danny 2

@Eclectic Man

"(60, asthmatic, so high risk, I'm not paranoid, honestly.)"

You're so old you probably remember when David Attenborough documentaries were uplifting rather than clinically depressing.

I fully agree with your comment. Apparently all my local Edinburgh pubs are now closed, which was a bit of a shock as nobody told me they'd been opened.

What's that, Lt Lassie? Three terrorists have fallen down a well? Strap on these AR goggles and we'll find 'em

Danny 2

BBC Dog Tales and Cat Tales

I just watched the first iPlayer episode on dogs. The FIDO group (I kid you not) are fitting dogs with wearable tech. One wee dug could lick a switch on it's back and a recorded message would say, "Please come and help, my owner is in trouble". A cross between Lassie and Futurama. Another had two chew toys attached, so the dog could choose different actions. A third had been trained to press 911 on a touch screen.

Danny 2

Re: A dog sight is worse than a human

"In five years will these things still have tech support?"

Is that five dog years or five human years?

Danny 2

Covid sniff

I'm a cat person but I was very impressed that dogs have been trained to sniff out Covid 19. Along with many other diseases such as cancer etc.

Cats can sense those diseases too, they just won't alert you. They already have an internal visual overlay that identify birds, mice, fish, cat treats, cat food, and future cat food - your dead face.

A 73bn-kg, skyscraper-size chocolate creme egg spinning fast enough to eventually explode – it's asteroid Bennu

Danny 2

73bn-kg

I don't understand without the standard simplified analogy. Is that higher or lower than the weight of Wales?

Crown Prosecution Service solicitor accused of targeting judge ex-wife's lover through work computer systems

Danny 2

Socrates' Celibacy

(Bear in mind this is my interpretation of something Plato claimed about Socrates. I can't be bothered to source and correct it but you could if you wanted to)

Socrates approached a much older man and said he must be happy that he no longer had libido so he could focus on his intellect. The old man disagreed.

In my own life I've seen two septuagenarian uncles bicker to their deaths over a fifty something female mental health patient.

I said to my mum, "I thought it would get better as we aged", "No, it just gets worse".

I've been celibate for many years, by choice, voluntarily celibate unlike those young hate filled 'incel' killers. I slept with almost everyone I wanted I wanted to sleep with, and turned more down than I accepted. I wouldn't give a .....

Former antivirus baron John McAfee collared, faces extradition to America on tax evasion, securities allegations

Danny 2

Re: $750

bombastic bob downvoted the first amendment? I am shocked, and much amused.

A little light relief after the Vice Presidential 'debate'. "Please Mr Vice President, please".

Next time give the moderator a gun. At least a paintball gun or a BB gun.

A fly landed on Mike Pence's weird hairdo. The idiom is you catch more flies with honey than vinegar, but in truth most flies prefer bullshit, and this proves it.

Danny 2

Re: $750

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Disgraced cop, 55, spared prison term after admitting he abused police systems to snoop on his girlfriend's ex

Danny 2

Temptation is tempting

My nephew did the same thing. He got stabbed in his stomach and then sacked. I've been on the pointy end of police abuse of their databases. Not a bleeding edge end, but nasty. I agree fully with all the previous comments. This is a nice, reassuringly rational forum.

Excel Hell: It's not just blame for pandemic pandemonium being spread between the sheets

Danny 2

CND

I volunteered as computer support at CND in 2003. They at least has an actual database, but it wasn't reconciled and it wasn't legal. I did my best to fix that.

The idea that in a pandemic the NHS is relying on outdated spreadsheets in 2020, I am honestly crying. WTF?

Danny 2

Re: Rhetorical question.

Would it be possible to redeem Tetris? It does what it does, and it doesn't do this. A bad craftsman blames his tools.

What a Hancock-up: Excel spreadsheet blunder blamed after England under-reports 16,000 COVID-19 cases

Danny 2

Death by PowerPoint

...is now mass death by Excel.

An accountant at one place I worked rigged up a pretty decent Fantasy Football league on Excel, which seemed to me to be what Excel was made for. Next there'll be a Serco contract to convert all the Government notepad documents into wordpad documents.

How's this for open government? Amsterdam, Helsinki put their AI system designs on public display

Danny 2

The top two cities I've passed through

Parking in Amsterdam was so difficult and expensive that I gave away my car and bought stolen bikes. I was so fit that the locals didn't realise each commute was a race (that I always won).

Today my legs are so sore no matter how I lie on the couch that I may ask the NHS to remove them, I have no use for them now except to get to the car. Vestigial limbs.

I brought my Dutch fiancee to Scotland and she said, "Oh, it's just like Holland was twenty years ago". She didn't mean it as an insult, she was just being Dutch. I replied, "Maybe, but we have hills, mountains and trees".

The perils of building a career on YouTube: Guitar teacher's channel nearly deleted after music publisher complains

Danny 2

Re: Melancholia

Thanks for the advice, I did not know that. If you want to pay now for that I'll pay you back then. "I'll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today."

Truth is I'm not bovered, I don't expect to reach pension age. If I do then I'll invent something clever, like TikTok for pensioners.

Danny 2

Melancholia

I made a computer board in my teenage years, quite a good computer board that ended up in CERN and NASA, and my first employer patented it, part of my terms of employment. I get a £100 pa pension when I'm 65, which hopefully will buy a birthday beer since I won't qualify for a state pension. My sympathy for "creative" types is limited. You went into music to get shagged, and doubtless it worked. Cry me a river. The best I ever got was a girl saying, "So, basically you just make things go faster?"

"Yes, but I also help people get made redundant due to automation!"

'Cheer up, it's not the end of the world!' -my brilliant film review of Lars Von Triers "Melancholia" where the world ends. Spoiler alert, but not much of a spoiler, a planet crashes into Earth. You can't expect Bruce Willis to do much about that, he's an asteroids man at best. Kirsten Dunst gets her top off, so that's something.

TL/DR - screw copyright, share.

Danny 2

Stolen music

I passed a musician a compilation CD, and apologised that it was mostly copyright theft.

He said, "Don't worry son, I've stolen every lick I've every played".

Think tank warns any further delay to 5G rollout will cost the UK multiple billions – but hey, at least Huawei is out

Danny 2

More ironic than Alanis Morissette ever was

My rich pal in his big house has terrible access to both phone and internet bandwidth, yet my poor neighbours can't afford to pay for the great coverage they can have.

I still don't think the tax payer should splurge on rural access, if the rich want better coverage then they can move back to the cities. Or pay for their own optical cable.

Key-cutting machine borked sideways after visit from the BSOD fairy locks things down

Danny 2

Re: I wonder...

There's one in my local supermarket and I've been pondering it.

I've two £1 keys to my flat door, but the door to the tenement costs £15 and you need permission to cut one (they are engraved 'Security Key'). I'd like to give it a go but I don't want locked out during lockdown.

Bill Gates lays out a three-point plan to rid the world of COVID-19 – and anti-vaxxer cranks aren't gonna like it

Danny 2

Re: How do you warn the police without being arrested?

Ta. They haven't started manufacture yet so I'll take a day to have a haircut, shave and make myself look - well less like me, more like normal folk. And I'll stick a nicotine patch on in case I'm in the cells 'til Monday.

Danny 2

How do you warn the police without being arrested?

There is a factory near me due to produce millions of covid vaccines. It's utterly insecure - I know, I used to break into military bases. It needs German German Shepherds (ours are too domesticated), higher, sharper fences and preferably a constant police presence. So far it only has CCTV.

We've all witnessed the utter nutters burning phone masts because 5G. Well the anti-vaxxers are way crazier than them. They will definitely target this facility, and they will likely succeed. But I broke into military bases so the police are hostile to me.

Fuck it, I'm going to have to go into the cop shop and risk it.

It's Google's hardware launch day, and what do we get? A few Pixel phones, Nest kit, and another Chromecast

Danny 2

Two backside cameras? Who has two backsides? Well, I suppose Selena Gomez and Mark Ronson.

I'm amused folk are complaining about phoning HMRC, I guess I'm the only person who's spent 6 hours listening to 30 second loops of Vivaldi on the Job Centre line.

British Army develops AI shotgun drone with machine vision for indoor use

Danny 2

Re: A Big Spring?

"I used to fix tanks for a living"

I used to fix PCs that you could play tank games on. Guess which one of us can get laid using those boasts. Well, you don't need to guess.

Danny 2

World beating app

At last, finally a way to kill off those pesky students locked into Halls of Residence.

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

Danny 2

Re: December 24

To hug and to kiss and to call it George.

The 1980s were awful, nasty, and I would sell my soul to get back then.

Danny 2

I miss my Atari. Cohen and Ceelow.

Ah, they'll never, never reach the moon

At least the one that we are after

It's out there on the broken sea

And it carries no survivors.

Yeah I'm sorry, I can't afford a Ferrari,

But that don't mean I can't get you there.

I guess he's an Xbox and I'm more Atari,

About the way you play your game ain't fair.

NHS COVID-19 app's first weekend: With fundamental testing flaw ironed out, bugs remaining are relatively trivial

Danny 2

Re: email address stolen by nhs.test.and.trace.covid19.app

I'm repeating myself, but I put in a Data Protection request for my health records. My health centre mailed all my records to my neighbour.

I complained to my health centre and they said not to worry because it's illegal to open anyone else's mail. Aye fucking right. I eventually got to read my medical history, a few days after my neighbour did.

My point being health professionals are not experts in data protection. Those NHS Trusts are way too trusting.

Danny 2

Re: The real problem

Which 33 year old? And do you have any of their blood left?

Danny 2

Re: Protect the NHS

Maybe aye, maybe no, but any Edinburgh Evening News columnist has no more credibility than the West Lothian Couriers' Sammy the Squirrel wedding and birth announcer. Provide actual stats.

Do you know how lacking in credibility the Edinburgh Evening News is? I've not been banned there. It's the poor man's The Scotsman, which if you aren't Scottish you may mistake for a national newspaper - it's just not, you can't even source it in Broxburn. It's the Scottish equivalent of the Torygraph. But worse.

Listen, I'm not having a go at you. I agree the Scottish Government mucked up hospital discharges to care homes, shamefully, due to lack of testing. It's why I'm trying my best to keep my relatives out of care homes.

I'm not a supporter of the Scottish Government but even my English pals and relatives acknowledge they have have done a better job on the pandemic.

Danny 2

Re: prof Devi Sridhar

"just a bit distractingly attractive"

You are a male geek - every woman is distractingly attractive! Go to a porn site, do your thang, then come back and read her words.

I'm not sure if the pandemic is worse for terrified pensioners or horny teenagers.

Danny 2

Re: Police told not to download Covid app

Bear in mind I didn't even get a biology O Grade, I'm just guessing from what I've been reading from far smarter people.

Yes, you can get it twice, and probably more.

No, you'll stop shedding the virus shortly after your immune system beats it.

Don't bet your life on my guesses, but that is what I understand from the published science. Nobody else had replied and I defer to anyone else who does.

Danny 2

Re: Protect the NHS

"Scotland is part of the UK"

Yeah but health is devolved so we've followed two different strategies (well, four different strategies). Scotland was proactive in leading on stuff like face masks back when Boris was refusing to wear one and boasting about shaking the hands of Covid hospital patients - the week before he caught it.

Our lockdown measures have been quicker and harsher, and still are. I'm an anarchist, I get the freedom argument, but I'm deliriously happy that all my poxy relatives can't legally visit my parents today.

The Scottish Government do deserve criticism for this, they've only been a wee bit better than the (let's face it) English Government, but they have always led the English Government by at least a week. And a week counts big time in pandemics.

Sturgeon, she's always been on message with her daily briefings. Boris barely talks to the public but today had to apologise for "misspeaking" about his half hearted Northern English lockdown. He's a bungler, and a bumbler, and a fumbler.

Scots are noticing the difference even if you aren't.

Oh, and I cast doubt on your care home stats since you didn't cite them. I say that from the littlest care home in Scotland.

Danny 2

Protect the NHS

We are in the second wave in the UK. The third wave in winter will be deadliest, because flu indoors. I'm genuinely surprised how stupid/selfish some posters here are. Help the aged - once we were just like you!

Look, I'd be perfectly happy for you to all meet up for a big QAnon orgy, as long as you sign away your rights to NHS treatment after. Maybe go private?

I'm proud that Scotland has led better than the UK, but I'm shamed that the UK is even worse than Trump's America. That's a sorry state of the union.

Danny 2

Re: Still confused as to how this app makes the slighest bit of difference..

Hiya AC,

Up front I admit a lot of the science was new to me in February, but I did my best to read up.

I've been on lockdown with my octogenarian parents since - what year is it now?

I totally get the restrictions are a complete pain in the arse for people who are at lesser risk, like you, but they are pretty vital for the last two people I love so I'd ask you to comply a wee bit longer.

We have a wonderful US professor in Edinburgh, Devi Sridhar, whose advice and intellect has been a shield this year. She is regularly interviewed by numerous media, don't hold it against her that this one is on The Guardian.

For those who are younger, it is tempting to just want to have Covid-19 and get it over with. But Sars-Cov-2 is a nasty virus that you do not want to get. There have been a number of cases of reinfection with the second infection sometimes being asymptomatic or mild, or, in at least one case, being much more serious and requiring hospitalisation. Just because you have it once does not guarantee you immunity for life.

Danny 2

Re: Source as requested.

> (sadly, we can't legislate against stupid)

Well, we could, and perhaps even should, but first we'd have to elect a s̶m̶a̶r̶t̶e̶r̶ less stupid legislature.

Danny 2

Re: Police told not to download Covid app

It's not their work smartphones, it's their personal smartphones that they carry.

Genuine question, do British cops even get issued work smartphones? I know most of them don't even get £15 dashcams for their cars.

Either way I'm with Doctor Syntax on this, it'll be to prevent cops taking two weeks off. He's a doctor, he knows this stuff.

Exercise-tracking app Strava to give away data sweated out after four billion runs, rides and rambles

Danny 2

Troll kill

There was (is?) a horrible troll who used to plague Scottish newspaper websites, threatening folk. Really nasty, like way worse than me at my worst. Claimed to be a proud Scot living in Edinburgh, but he'd left internet breadcrumbs.

I got hold of his fitness tracker logs, an eighty year old saddo living in Woking who'd walk maybe half a mile a week.

I mocked him online once, but just once. As Billy Connolly said, "More to be pitied than scolded".

First rule of the internet - play nice or be careful. There is always someone smarter over your shoulder.

FYI: Mind how you go. We're more or less oblivious to 75% of junk in geosynchronous orbits around Earth

Danny 2

Re: Year 50,534, onboard interstellar ship Faaaaark

Technically we threw our shit everywhere, kind of like angry chimps.

If you read that New Yorker article one of the most beautiful sights in space is the golden snowflakes of frozen urine from previous missions.

Danny 2

Re: One wonders what the future of satellites and space explorations is going to be...

I fully agree with your gist ("Not in my Low Earth Orbit!) but it's actually the biggest objects that are the greatest risk and the priority to clean up - just because their collisions make much more debris.

Danny 2

Re: Shoot the litter

The ISS launched a "Borg cube" built by Surrey Space Centre equipped with a titanium harpoon, a laser ranger and a Kevlar net.

Disappointingly they named it RemoveDEBRIS.

Danny 2

Kessler syndrome

There is a very well written portrait of Donald Kessler in The New Yorker just now. Unfortunately they've stuffed it into a terrible web design.

[Off topic but the New York Times currently has the best designed web article just now, a portrait of Albrecht Dürer, the inventor of the selfie]

Danny 2

Re: Pikies in Spaaaace

I'm not going to downvote you but/because you probably don't know that pikie is a racial slur. You wouldn't use any other racial slur in a post, I know because I read your posts here.

I clicked on this to make a joke about dangerous dumping near me but that's always respectable white people dumping white goods. I know because I caught them using a drone, footage of which I passed to the council. The council said it was illegal for me to use a drone within 50m of a person, but the dumpers weren't there when it started!

Windows to become emulation layer atop Linux kernel, predicts Eric Raymond

Danny 2

Bullet through the internet

I emailed Eric Stupid Raymond a couple of decades ago about gun control, just a bland, friendly email. He threatened to shoot me through the internet. He is still yet to develop Bullet over IP.

This guy puts the cray in crazy. He shouldn't be given airtime. Richard Stallman, that's yer guy.

NHS COVID-19 launch: Risk-scoring algorithm criticised, the downloads, plus public told to 'upgrade their phones'

Danny 2

University prisons

That was quite a smart strategy, opening up the universities and then locking the students in. That'll teach'em!

Danny 2

Re: At this time, what's the point?

"why it is so much worse in the north"

Financial inequality always plays a part. My London niece caught it at Liverpool Uni, and her rich dad paid £120 for her to be tested privately. The people who gave her it still haven't been tested.

First they came for chess, then Go... and now, oh for crying out loud, AI systems can beat us at curling

Danny 2

Re: I'm impressed

My first salary bought games I couldn't afford as a child. Crossfire and Rebound - not as easy as they look. My second salary went on tools for electronics - not as easy as it looks.

Drinking whisky is as easy at it looks, but that's about all. In fact even that takes practice and training.

Keep on with the curling and one day you'll reach a bonspiel.