Posts by Danny 2

UK COVID-19 contact-tracing app data may be kept for 'research' after crisis ends, MPs told

Smoking

I know this is off topic but I am probably the only IT smoker left in the UK and so I think my logic and experience is worth consideration.

Chinese statisticians found smokers were less likely to catch Covid and more likely to die of it. French scientists reckoned the only protective component must be nicotine so they are testing nicotine patches as a preventative measure.

I think the real protective effect is probably the smoker's cough. During a pandemic characterised by a hacking cough my normal smoker's cough keeps everyone else at a safe distance. Covid seemingly often presents a dry cough, mine is the normal phlegm one I've had for years, but nobody else knows that so people give me a wide berth. That gives me some protection from the seemingly healthy asymptomatic carriers.

300,000 British smokers have quit smoking recently which is welcome but weird - cancer, bronchitis, pleurisy and heart disease weren't as scary as Covid‽ My main worry is my normal cough would mask a dry cough. It's the first time I've found phlegm reassuring.

ETA: I've recently wore a surgical face mask for the first time, and started making them too. This terrified the public around me more than my smoker's cough! I highly recommend facemasks over smoking, partly because it hides the two teeth I've had to remove since my dentist disappeared.

Britain has no idea how close it came to ATMs flooding the streets with free money thanks to some crap code, 1970s style

Re: Not the only Burroughs ATM story

I worked at Burroughs/Unisys circa '92 and I have a dozen first hand stories This is a semi second hand one.

Somebody told me that was an entire shift that never turned up on Sundays for years, even though they were paid extra. When the shift supervisor was found out he, and his employees, were protected by their union. I'm pro-union but don't ruin that for everyone.

The management were equally to blame, real GE type dumb wits, You had to have a swipe card to get in to corridors in the factory, and most of them were closed off to technicians and engineers. So regularly young apprentices would fry the card reader system using an electrostatic 'zapper'. Just so they could talk to the female office workers.

It's why I think the US and UK are lagging compared to say Germany and the Netherlands. Management there is mostly consensual, or at least consultative. In the UK and the US it's more class war.

As Brit cyber-spies drop 'whitelist' and 'blacklist', tech boss says: If you’re thinking about getting in touch saying this is political correctness gone mad, don’t bother

Re: Master and slave?

Your point is the English language is inadvertently and almost unavoidably offensive. That is true, but you make the mistake of conflating comedians highlighting this with politicians and civil servants who should know better.

I spent a couple of years struggling to write pro-peace event memos without using highly inappropriate militaristic language. I couldn't, it's everywhere. "Winning the battle", "Fight the Good Fight", "Strike a Blow" - our language is laden with our violent past.

I paid to see "Blazing Saddles" when it was first released, can't recall who I took to the cinema. I didn't, we didn't find it that funny, but I went to Mel's earlier and later movies. Now if you want a deliberately offensive movie then you should have chosen "The Producers", far more offensive and far funnier.

"Springtime for Hitler" is still an ear-worm for me.

I was at a communist poet bud's gig two years ago, and he gave the clenched fist salute. I replied with the Roman, well Nazi, salute. I didn't mean to, I'm an anarchist and we don't ever do salutes. I apologised and said I'd just wave in future.

I, for one, welcome our new moronic overlords

I'm not blacklisted from work and benefits any more. I'm just denied. What a glorious day for democracy.

Square peg of modem won't fit into round hole of PC? I saw to it, bloke tells horrified mate

'90s contract at airports I had to replace a graphics card in Air Traffic Control Lerwick. Normally I was flown from Glasgow (Paisley) but this time the English agent booked me at Edinburgh. Which would have been great if she'd told me. I'm sitting in a car park in Paisley on a blazing hot day trying to rearrange a flight, and I finally get one from Edinburgh, but I've left a briefcase full of graphics cards under my front wheel. And I'm in a rush so I run over it. They are all - well, not smashed, let's say cracked beyond repair.

I considered resigning on the spot but I liked visiting Shetland so I took a chance and installed the least cracked board. To my surprise it worked, and kept on working for at least a year. I just put the other broken boards back in stock, most of them probably didn't work to begin with.

I can fault find to component level but that skill was made obsolete in the late eighties. By the '90s it was basically don't drive over your kit.

RetroPie 4.6 brings forth an answer to 'What do I do with this Pi 4 I bought last year?'

American Pi

In 1985 I was trained in Computer Aided Design, multilevel circuit boards on a Mentor Graphics Unix system with massive 19" screens. The upside was it came installed with Battlezone, the classic 3D wire arcade tank battle game. I also had sex for the first time that year. Sex was better but I was definitely better at Battlezone. Both experiences made me appreciate 3D over 2D and I would pay to emulate either of them. I pity today's youth who have never felt a sturdy joystick in their hand.

CFOs are crossing fingers and hoping a second wave of COVID-19 does not appear, says Gartner

No Zoomer

I refused to install Zoom on my parents devices. Am I hero? No, everyone who refused to install Zoom is a hero.

Nine million logs of Brits' road journeys spill onto the internet from password-less number-plate camera dashboard

Chewie Sweet

I was wrongly blacklisted as a peace protester in 2002. You might already know this from the fact I never shut up about it. Calimero Syndrome set in and I quickly started protesting everything reflexively.

ANPR cameras were just being rolled out on motorways, and being used against peace protesters. Every half mile on a motorway, especially on bridges, there'd be a camera mostly powered by a solar panel, linked to a power cell and communications cell. They all also had a metal plaque stating 'This is not a speed camera' presumably to protect them from vandalism.

I taught people how and why to vandalise them. Some protesters were altruistic, fighting against mass surveillance. Some of them were just thieves. There were various options.

You could just spray paint the camera or the solar panel - simple, quick and undetectable as long as you didn't park your car right in front of the camera. Or you could dismantle the components - solar panel, camera, cell, et cetera.

There were three different companies installing these at the time, different boxes, different screws and nuts. One pupil asked me how they would judge the size of a nut on the box before they returned to strip it, and I pressed a soft candy on it to get the impression. Some had rare security fixings that you had to go to RS Components to overcome.

A couple of you will think 'but will nobody think of the terrorists?' I refer you to the Glasgow Airport attack. The terrorists drove from London to Paisley after their first failed attack, and if the ANPR system worked then they'd have been intercepted. It's not to catch terrorists, it's to catch you out.

We're in a timeline where Dettol maker has to beg folks not to inject cleaning fluid into their veins. Thanks, Trump

Re: The question just has to be asked ..... Is US President #45 Madder than a Hatter*?

Erethism, also known as erethism mercurialis, mad hatter disease, or mad hatter syndrome, is a neurological disorder which affects the whole central nervous system, as well as a symptom complex, derived from mercury poisoning. Erethism is characterized by behavioral changes such as irritability, low self-confidence, depression, apathy, shyness and timidity, and in some extreme cases with prolonged exposure to mercury vapors, by delirium, personality changes and memory loss. People with erethism often have difficulty with social interactions. Associated physical problems may include a decrease in physical strength, "headaches, general pain, and tremors after exposure to metallic mercury" as well as an irregular heartbeat.

...

Historically, this was common among old England felt-hatmakers who had long-term exposure to vapors from the mercury they used to stabilize the wool in a process called felting, where hair was cut from a pelt of an animal such as a rabbit.

Fake science, heroic leader

The fake liberal media can snipe from the sidelines but Trump has all the best advice and is in a position of responsibility. People are really surprised he understands this stuff, so we should back him 101%.

He recommended hydroxychloroquine to his supporters as a cure, in the face of studies that claim it kills more patients. He applauded his supporters gathering en masse to protest the social distancing.

Recommending his supporters to inject themselves with bleach to kill the virus, well within three days that is provably scientifically and medically correct.

He should lead from the front on live TV, I'd watch that. Peroxide might even cure his orange-face.

NASA makes May 27 its US independence day from Russian rockets: America's back in the astronaut business after nearly nine years

Re: Safe travels

Different words, darling, but you got my gist - even if you didn't want to, and even if the jury refused to.

Re: Safe travels

Pioneer is derived from the latin pedo, or foot soldier. Ironic that Musk was able to smear Vernon Unsworth as a pedo and get away with it due to his defence of being filthy rich.

Facebook sort-of blocks anti-quarantine events – how many folks are actually behind these 'massive' protests online?

Re: "Give me Liberty or give me Covid-19"

Downvoted because those five guys will infect 15 folk. And so on, exponentially.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/apr/21/can-you-believe-there-is-someone-who-had-a-worse-response-to-coronavirus-than-boris-johnson

Contact-tracing or contact sport? Defections and accusations emerge among European COVID-chasing app efforts

Colourless - the virus is smaller than the wavelength of visible light. That's how children are protecting themselves by displaying colourful rainbows in windows.

This hurts a ton-80: British darts champ knocked out of home tourney by lousy internet connection

Re: here's something to do :

You have a broom cupboard in the 21st century? Get with the times man and buy your servants a vacuum cleaner.

We lost another good one: Mathematician John Conway loses Game of Life, taken by coronavirus at 82

Re: Two's company, infinity plus one is a crowd

The real reason for this response: My, how the meaning of "bullied" has depreciated since I was a kid.

Well...I perhaps wasn't clear, I really did beat him up. Not because of the googol comment, more his speculation and our older sisters breasts expanding. He was precocious in a small town. This was pre-GamerGate by a few decades.

One of his older pals stood up for him and called me a bully, leaving me in the classic bullies dilemma. I could have just beat him up too, but that would lose the argument. Instead I told him okay, no violence if the younger rapscallion stopped talking about our sisters, but if he did then I would hold him responsible and beat him up instead. So he schooled the younger child and in effect became his bully in lieu of me.

I'm not making excuses or confessing, that is just the way society was then. Teachers beat us up, parents beat us up, and most often with no reason. Punk didn't come out of a vacuum.

Two's company, infinity plus one is a crowd

I bullied a four year old when I was five. We were sitting around in a group on our street arguing about what the biggest number was. He said it was a googol, because his dad had told him that. I'd already ruled out zillions so I told him googol wasn't a real word, but I'd also ruled out trillions and said billions was just in American. I think he went into search engines...

Re: Thank you

It was a very funny mistake on such a sad article. Conway sounds like a guy who'd have laughed at it. I like a smart person who carries props. I used to pocket an unexpanded plastic bottle that more than one scientist confused with a test tube.

I knew the game of life as it came with the ZX computers, but it never came with a proper explanation so my understanding is no better than yours, and less excusable. The beauty of this place is that various folk commenting here not only studied with the bloke, they have anecdotes as eulogies. We could ask them anything, if we studied for a couple of years to learn what we should be asking.

Little known facts - the game 'Crossfire' was invented by Niels Bohr to illustrate splitting the atom. Steven Hawking invented 'Hungry Hungry Hippos' to illustrate radiation and the pull of black holes. 'Operation' was James Young Simpson showing the benefits of chloroform.

Vodafone chief speaks out after 5G conspiracy nuts torch phone mast serving Nightingale Hospital in Brum

Re: My bedding is tinfoil

The Dangers of Stamp Licking!

A Bath physician has revived the agitation against what he calls the dangerous habit of licking postage stamps. The bacteriologists tell us that the gum swarms with microbes, but then so does everything else, and those who use their finger, first putting it in their mouth, and then moistening the stamp with it, probably run as much risk as those who lick the stamp with the tongue, for which purpose it is so admirably adapted and handy.

But there is now in operation in a central London post-office a penny-in-the-slot machine, by which the handling of the stamps is avoided. You put in a penny, insert the corner of the envelope, press a lever, and withdraw the letter with the stamp affixed. If this mechanical invention proves a success, it seems likely to be generally adopted by the Post Office authorities.

Isle of Wight Observer 1 October 1910

And pity the poor people licking self-adhesive stamps.

Taiwan may turn traffic advice app into massive tracking system

Re: de-anonymisation

Hiya Ol'55,

Glad to see you hale and hearty, one more Dan / Daniel / Danny.

My first love was Susan, I took great delight in telling there were no baby Susans registered here last year, but 180 baby Daniels - we are being replinished as we die but she might be the last of the Susans.

Oh shit, I've just danonymised us.

de-anonymisation

A draft government memo explaining how the NHS contact-tracing app could stem the spread of the coronavirus said ministers might be given the ability to order “de-anonymisation” to identify people from their smartphones, the Guardian can reveal.

I apologise for posting this because most of you will already have read it. This is a health warning for the few who didn't.

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

I wouldn't even have thought to burn down a mast, I would have just pulled it down and smashed the gear. Kudos to the brains there taking out all the 5G and 4G and 3G kit. That will save our emergency services a lot of calls in these covid times.

Joke Icon.

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

Re: When people talk about the abuse of petty authority I ask

People beginning to wonder if Priti Patel ever really existed

Me, I think she is running the show from a secret government bunker. You know her birthday was the original Brexit day, 29th March?

Re: "#MeToo"

Income tax was a temporary measure to pay for the Napoleonic Wars. Yet Napoleon keeps turning up.

You can follow your religion in family units. This is going to cull the extreme religious 'bathed in the blood of Christ' nutters. You wouldn't 'peaceably assemble' at an erupting volcano.

You are correct about face masks though. Wear them and disposable gloves at Church on Sunday, and don't catch anything you can't throw back.

Re: How would the Plod deal with

Shagging is non essential activity. Personally speaking.

The generation before mine had unprotected sex without consequences. Then HIV.

The generation after mine won't even be able to hold hands or hug.

Re: Citing the Grauniad

I saw a Guardian article praising a poet I'm pals with, and there was a small mistake so I emailed him and told him he should correct it in the comments section. He replied he couldn't as he'd been banned.

Sums up the paper, happy to write an article praising a writer who they deemed unfit to comment.

I couldn't correct it because, you know, banned.

"Most people ignore most poetry because most poetry ignores most people" - Adrian Mitchell

(A Guardian article once called me an ingenious young man - two thirds wrong)

Police intimidation

The BBC ran a story yesterday about thugs threatening the police with the coronavirus, using an audio clip to illustrate this supposed intimidation.

Epic fail, as the first line is the police officer threatening that if he arrests the member of the public and they go inside then they'll catch the virus and die. The member of the public replies casually that they already have the virus.

This was meant to show intimidation of the police by the public when it only shows intimidation of the public by the police.

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

Re: If you wish to let people move freely across borders, you need a single app too

"Think what would happen if each and every US State would create its own app. Or if UK would get different apps for Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland."

The Great Depression, which will now be called the First Great Depression, showed will happen. There were border guards in California to keep the Okies out, as documented by Steinbeck. US citizens didn't have freedom of movement within the US. This is far worse than that. This is the Great Depression mixed with the 1918 Flu pandemic. Things will get bad, worse, quickly.

No words, no money

"There are no words, there is no money, that can show our appreciation for the NHS staff risking their lives for us"

No money can show appreciation? How about quadrupling all their pay as an attempt, a starter? That's maybe not adequate but it would indicate appreciation, might make their jobs easier. Rather than bailing out airlines and cruise ships.

I am learning to sew again

What are you doing that will help?

I bought a huge roll of HEPA (High-efficiency particulate air) material that I'm going to sew between two layers of cotton sheet in the template of a facemask. Which I will then distribute for free to anyone who has no better option. HEPA material is meant for vacuum cleaner bags and air conditioners but it cuts 98% of particulates, so better than the official N95 masks

The science is in - a face mask won't protect you from others much, but it will protect others from you. https://xkcd.com/2290/

It's understandable that the government doesn't have a vaccine yet, or even a test even though other nations do. It's unforgivable that they don't have even ventilators or ICU beds and staff. But PPE kit - front line workers are dying due to lack of PPE kit?

From Amanda Holden to petrol-filled water guns: It has been a weird week for 5G

Re: No smoke without a burning mast

No, I got that. I didn't realise they could just break into my house without even informing me for a problem that wasn't a problem to me.

Plus, who let the guinea pigs out - who? Who?

No smoke without a burning mast

The PM approved Huawei 5G and now he's in hospital, cos their pagodas are built out of pangolins.

My first house had a 1930s bakelite rotary phone and a three digit number, and this was the late '80s so it was valuable. One day while I was at work my guinea pigs chewed through the cord and so British Telecom 'engineers' broke into my home, stole the phone, and replaced it with a plastic push button.

US prez Trump's administration reportedly nears new rules banning 'dual-use' tech sales to China

Trump has put his foot in his mouth, then shot himself in his foot.

FPGA FLA (four letter acr.)

A field-programmable gate array was an eighties thing, my ballpark, I'm delighted that is still the same acronym.

China sent medical supplies to Cuba and the US - the US banned Cuba from getting theirs even though they have been exporting doctors to Italy.

The CIA phoned me up when I was 17 to insist I didn't sell my computer board to Hungary because it had relays on board. Yeah, switches. I told them to eff off.

Amazon says it fired a guy for breaking pandemic rules. Same guy who organized a staff protest over a lack of coronavirus protection

Catch C19

If you complain about a colleague being sacked for being ill, then you are sacked for being in contact with your colleague.

Don't mourn, organise.

Who's going to pay for Britain's Aunty Beeb to carry on? Broadband users, broadcaster suggests to government

Dick Laurent is dead

Jack Schofield, Guardian's Ask Jack tech columnist, dies at 72

https://www.theguardian.com/media/askjack/2020/apr/01/jack-schofield-guardian-ask-jack-tech-columnist-dies-at-72

My favourite Guardian writer by far. And not because he wrote about tech, because he was a gentleman.

How many days of carefree wiping do you have left before life starts to look genuinely apocalyptic? Let's find out

Snot rags

People used to wipe their noses on cloths that would then be washed. The same thing happened with shit rags.

An interesting article in The Atlantic today suggests opening windows regularly. It also says you should wear a face mask for other peoples benefit. It points out face masks are in short supply, but while a surgical mask filtered 96 percent of viral particles from the air, a tea towel blocked 83 percent. So cut up your tea towels to make your own washable face masks.

UK Information Commissioner OKs use of phone data to track coronavirus spread

Re: Not sure how it can be anonymised

You should add that "in which case you have developed a resistance to it and can no longer be a carrier" is another assumption. There is no study to prove that, two cases that seem to disprove that, and a history of other diseases like 'flus that evolve so quickly that one vaccination is no guarantee.

Never assume or you make an ass of you, me, the PM, the Health Minister, the Scottish Minister, and the idiotic adviser to the PM who drove the 'herd immunity' strategy.

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, health secretary Matt Hancock both test positive for COVID-19 coronavirus

Re: Can Parliament be replicated virtually?

Well, Johnson has replicated about eight times, allegedly, and there are six junior Rees Moggs besuited and ready for office.

Teachers are a single point of failure

Teachers who are still working should be a top priority for testing. Only the children of essential workers are still going to school, so if a teacher gets them ill then it takes out all their essential worker parents.

#Moo Too

Re: Good on BoJo and Ma'cock

You mean magnetic poles switching, not Polish nurses heading back to Poland, yeah?

Look at these, the same colours appearing twice in different ends of the rainbow. There is no hope.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-52050089

Good on BoJo and Ma'cock

I initially thought the government 'herd immunity' plan was a cynical folly, but they are really committing to it now.

Self isolation with my family has given me time to code, learn basic biology and play Monopoly, but not sleeping so it's all mixed up.

If Ro > 1, go directly to quarantine, do not pass go, do not collect £94 for 5 weeks.

Covid19 ≠ SARS-CoV-2

The former is the disease, the latter is the virus.

https://xkcd.com/2275/

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/03/3-charts-that-changed-coronavirus-policy-in-the-uk-and-us/

Scottish bairns have been painting rainbows in windows supposedly to cheer us up, but they are just depressingly bad art, often even getting the colours in the wrong order. The next generation is really letting us all down.

British Army adopts WhatsApp for formal orders as coronavirus isolation kicks in

WWZ

We need to learn from zombie apocalypse movies. World War Z, partly filmed in Glasgow, showed North Korea alone survived the zombie apocalypse because the dictator had everyone else's teeth removed.The vector of disease transmission there was biting by teeth.

The vector of disease transmission here is kids touching their faces with their hands.

So instead of killing all the kids, we just amputate their hands.

Or gloves. Gloves could work.

Tinfoil hat brigade switches brand allegiance to bog paper

Deep breath, deep clean

Ireland is closing all their pubs. The French have closed all their restaurants. The Dutch are closing all their brothels. Scots are learning how to wash our hands using soup and hot water while singing the English national anthem - but cockaleekie or cullenskink?. London undertakers have started an online emotional support group.

Wide-os are stockpiling bog paper and hand gel but the smart money is buying up quaternary ammonium and ionized hydrogen peroxide.

Former US Homeland Security Inspector General accused of stealing govt code and trying to resell it to... the US govt

When force is gone, there's always Mom. Hi Mom!

O Superman.

O judge.

O Mom and Dad.

Mom and Dad.

Hi. I'm not home right now.

But if you want to leave a message, just start talking at the sound of the tone.

Hello? This is your mother. Are you there? Are you coming home? Hello? Is anybody home?

Well, you don't know me, but I know you and I've got a message to give to you.

Here come the planes.

So you better get ready. Ready to go.

You can come as you are, but pay as you go.

Pay as you go.

And I said: OK. Who is this really?

And the voice said:

This is the hand, the hand that takes.

Here come the planes.

They're American planes. Made in America. Smoking or non-smoking?

And the voice said:

Neither snow nor rain nor gloom of night shall stay these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.

'Cause when love is gone, there's always justice, and when justice is gone, there's always force.

And when force is gone, there's always Mom.

Hi Mom!

So hold me, Mom, in your long arms.

So hold me, Mom, in your long arms.

In your automatic arms. Your electronic arms.

In your arms.

So hold me, Mom, in your long arms.

Your petrochemical arms. Your military arms.

In your electronic arms.

Take it Huawei, Pai: Senate passes bill to rip 'dodgy' kit from rural telcos

Finger up the arse assassination

Or mass murder. A friend, a microbiologist, told me the easiest method to kill a lot of people was to take a job at a restaurant and spread E Coli. Stick a finger up your butt and rub it on the food. It is that easy to kill Trump.

I am incredibly polite to food servers now. I tip heavily.

,

Pope tells his followers to log off for Lent

FTP

An Indymedia admin, who was also a police informant, posted under the name FTP. I told him that while I appreciated the File Transfer Protocol, where I lived the acronym was commonly used as anti-Catholic graffiti.

Flat Earther and wannabe astronaut killed in homemade rocket

Hiya devTrail,

Mike didn't explain in depth how he was planning to launch the craft from a balloon in the documentary, just that he planned to launch it from a balloon to get to 63 miles high. I know for a fact that could never work, at least not with his resources, but I also know the Earth isn't flat.

I tried to launch two 6' inflatable whales covered with rape alarms once as part of a war protest. They didn't fly, not with all the helium in all the balloon shops in Glasgow. That was as crazy and experimental as I ever got.

Mind you, Lawnchair Larry took off and survived so what do I know.

.