Posts by Stan 2

Cash, fear and uncertainty: The Holy Trinity of Bitcoin and blockchain

Blockchain is still doing the hype cycle but it's old news at this stage, many open source projects based on Bitcoin have separated out the blockchain to function as the security backbone and built out from it with more suitable platforms for the features they want to implement. Dash (dash.org) is one I'm involved with and that uses a second tier to handle more advanced features such as instant and anonymous transactions, greater capacity, no download needed, etc, etc. There are hundreds of similar projects working on a multitude of different advances but caution is needed, many of those projects are nothing more than get rich quick schemes looking for victims but there are plenty of gems of innovation amongst them.

The 'vampire squid' wants a bankers' blockchain

Re: Questions?

Likely, I'm guessing it'll be more an "embrace, extend, destroy" attempt or at the very least a "we're hip, we're groovy" attempt to get in on the act before moving all their activities to a "new and improved" system. Trust is the main thing, the dinosaurs could throw their massive funds into creating some truly wonderful and innovative system that makes current cryptocurrencies look archaic but trust is cold hard currency, open source's balance is firmly in the black and growing daily while the banks are deep in the red and falling fast. Whatever they come up with might become the darling of every parasitic entity on Wall Street but they'll have to force feed it to the real world at great cost while open source takes it and improves it for nothing. Sure, they certainly have the funds to keep that up for a long time, can print more if needed and maybe write it off at the taxpayers expense but can they print trust?

Ahoy, scalliwags! FBI claims another haul of Silk Road booty - $26m of it

Crying conspiracy nut doesn't count as proof the FBI had any involvement in either this or the silk road closure. How hard can it be to verify a story that was all over the headlines? Proof or it didn't happen.

EDIT: The article has been edited to include information on the arrest, I'm still sceptical about many points in this case but respect the registers integrity.

Is this backed by an FBI press release? The Silk Road closure story only has 2 news sources that refer to each other behind it, the FBI never published any statements or documentation on the case or on this one. This reddit thread has more:

http://www.reddit.com/r/SilkroadUNcensored/comments/1p0ogt/

Spam and the Byzantine Empire: How Bitcoin tech REALLY works

@Sunshine -> Money

Many of the ideal locations for solar/wind/wave/etc. power are too remote to get power out of efficiently. While we still use non-renewable energy for power generation then bitcoin mining at those locations and using the funds to offset the non-renewable costs would be far more efficient. 100 miles of 1 gigawatt cabling could be replaced by a USB key.

This energy usage argument comes up a lot but the bitcoin network is already more powerful than the worlds top 500 supercomputers combined yet it uses only a few percent of the power used by the worlds ATM machines thanks to dedicated hardware.

Bitcoin prices spike on Euro woes

Told ya so

Moors law has its limitations:

http://i.imgur.com/VjtG3.jpg

Experts argue over whether shallow DNS gene pool hurts web infrastructure

Namecoin

Best Buy, Target, Walmart, others to take on Google Wallet

Wonder who will win this fight. How many of them can any of them offer free payments of any size, bullet proof security, no risk of payment cancelation and no central servers or regulating authority? Bitcoin is making a major anouncement in September.

Bitcoinica sued for $460,000 by 'out-of-pocket' punters

Lol :) Msut try and save a link to these comments so In 7 years I can link it with this article:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/1995/02/26/the-internet-bah.html

Your supposed to be security pros yet you dont know a secure system looks like and how much that is worth? El-reg has really gone down hill.

Car-stopping electropulse cannon to demo 'next month'

thermionic emission....

...valves. Most of the worlds major armies have had all their radar and coms equipment backed up with valve equipment ever since they banged some atoms together in the US and made a bloody great bang. Are they going to start doing the same with engine management systems?

Euro astro biz: It's time for solar panels in Spaaace

Atmospheric impact

Thought about using laser beams to zap down energy some time ago, makes sense but there is no telling what kind of impact it would have as it passes through the atmosphere and would you trust environmental analyst's to come up with a reliable answer these days? Would mean limitless free power but we have plenty of options for that already, just no way of making limitless amounts of money from them. Would also give the owners the option of zapping stuff with laser beams from space....

Intel linked with HPC boost buy

Missing to obvious

FPGA's are a pig to program. Their great, they really are, and I'm sure they have a great future but I don't think the next release of gcc will offer much support for them.

PsiXpda pocket computer

Exposed screen

Looked like I had at last found a replacement for my zaurus but they leave the bloody screen exposed. BTW, check out the Eking S515, about the same price so no big deal. Exposed screen, no built in GPS, fairly crap battery life, windows tax. Nope, wont be getting one.

China's doomed attempt to hold the world to ransom

Nice one

Great article.

Security experts dissect Google China attack

Am I missing something?

Where does china come into it? The attack's came from servers based in the US, no? Ok, folks that could be considered an enemy of the peoples republic of China where targeted but that doesn't mean China is behind them. Whats the clue, the PDF's where badly translated?

Could just have easily been from, to pick a name out of the hat, the US. They have been baking up plenty of FUD over China, even spent shitloads on a study of where all the networked badness was coming from to prove commies and ex commies where craping on our systems. Shame the results showed the vast majority of net nasties came from the US.

Knuckle rap for riot shield sledging coppers

Hats of to them

Should be promoted, not put down for this. British police often act more like machines than people, nice to see they are human for a change.

Motorola's latest Android 'andset demo'd

wtf?

Just in case fold out phone designs that leave the screen exposed to in pocket items such as keys and coins isn't stupid enough, motorola now gives us the chance to scratch the shit out of the keyboard too. Lucky us. Ye gods, thing have done nothing but go down hill since nokia communicator's.

Google open-source boss comes clean on Android

@Package Manager

I'm very surprised there is no package manager in use too, apt (advanced packaging tool) seems to be the thing that impresses users new to ubuntu most, although the cut down version of dpkg (what apt is based on), ipkg, never worked well for me.

Could be google are trying to leave every aspect of the OS as open as possible to see what the users decide is best for them, it should be fairly simple to port dpkg, rpm or even portage (the more popular package managers on linux) to android or use a (heavens forbid) install shield type system. Depends on whether users want a central software repository for everything or are happier finding apps all over the net and installing them. Heaven help us if they choose the second as android will probably go down in history as the most insecure OS ever.

As for apps getting broken between v1 and v2, tough shit, it's in development and such an early release (even if its version 1) should be regarded as a beta and should remain a beta until users have been at it long enough to break practically everything. I have been advising everyone I know to wait another 6 months if they want to do more than just try it.

Nearly forgot about the fragmentation comment. An upgrade from version 2 to version 2.1 is fragmentation? WTF? Should the lusers go back to windows version 1 as everything else is fragmentation?

Thai firm flies in early-80s style keyboard PC

yeehaw

Great stuff, build it and they will come.

Either comadore or spectrum should be dug up to get behind this thing, booting up a c64 replica with the most popular games locked and loaded and ready to go (plenty of emulators) or select other options to fire up the desktop, browser etc would be way cool.

Either ways, bring it out just the way it is for the price stated and I'll join the line to hand over my hard-earned for one.

ESRB unloads US game ratings iPhone app

OMG

A genuine example of common sense from a state agency that actually sounds like it does exactly what a good number of folks would like to see in a simple and easy to use way. And it just happened without million's wasted on self hyped independent researchers spending 10 years to say the f'ing obvious. What is the world coming to? Shocked and stunned here.

EA exec punts 96,000rpm e-car engine

@100113.1537

4 25KW motors would give you the same kind of speed as a 120KW car, about 20% of crank output is lost in the drive train. OK, 120something but I cant be bothered to do the sums and 20% is very approximate :) The whole "25KW" thing is a bit misleading as DC motors are almost always used and their power output is based on duty cycle, a motor that could give a constant 25KW (again, misleading. The duty cycle is based on torque and kind of independent to speed) could give you well over 100KW for short bursts, you may well get over 160mph for a short period but would only be able to hold 100mph for long periods. The sustained speed would more likely be limited by what the generator can produce.

All this is going to be a real pain in the ass with hybrids and electric vehicles, manufacturers will be making all kinds of claims of '140mph runabout scutbox' and '120mpg' when the reality is 'an optimistic 140mph for 0.2 seconds, 55mph continuous' (can be much higher but then the motors start getting very expensive. Check sportsbike alternators) and '120mpg in urban conditions, never exceeding 15mph. 60mpg cruising' (regenerative braking, very little loss due to wind resistance). Good figures in their own right but definitely 'small print' and nothing to say they have to print it, let alone us read it.

Urban conditions are where the juicy numbers live, until power units come along (this engine being a good start) that give a lot better than the crappy 30ish% efficiency of current infernal combustion units then cruising figures will be slightly worse than conventional drive trains due to the extra weight of batteries.

cheers

finally

At last someone has had the sense to use a power plant intended to run a generator, not some antiquated lump intended to work over a wide speed range, ie. jack of all trades, master of none. Once this gets a good looking at the hybrid car will be feasible, as it is hybrid designs are just an extra piece of inefficiency in an already inefficient design,

Number6, have a look at turbines built from turbo's. You've probably already seen them but it's what I was planing to use if I ever get around to trying it, god help the alternator bearings though :)

Why is USB 3 so slow?

bloody stupid article

I'm using raid to get about 250MB/S, most disks do about 125MB/S. Sorry for repeating what plenty of others have said already but the article just doesn't make how these tests where done clear. Either solid state storage or direct from memory reads/writes would have given the bus a chance to do its stuff and, I'm sure, would have given much better results despite the theoretical figures being pie in the sky.

Also, any chance of a 'return to comments' link after going through the thumbs up/down rigmarole?

cheers

Apple preempts Win 7 with fresh iMacs, Macbooks

@Robinson

"So let me get this straight. With 5% of the market, Apple is "preempting" Microsoft? Apple are a bit player in the PC market, period. 95% of people don't give a flying **** what Apple do!"

Did we just warp back to 2005? Apple has a little under 10% of the market share the last time I checked (linux a bit under 2% for what it's worth) and MS about 87%. Not a huge difference but enough for software companies to sit up and take notice. Like it or not, MS's rein of terror is over, Caesar has left the building and the foundations are crumbling.

gona get me one o' them rodents

Shiny new toys for mokalattechino drinking ponces but nice stuff all the same.

Got a mac keyboard nearly a year ago, one of the shiny aluminium ones (no mokalattechino here btw, gentoo and tea you could stand a spoon in) and it's the dogs bollocks, well worth 40 notes.

Will be getting one of the rodent's when they appear on the shelf (won't the linux drivers for that be great fun...), a touch interface sounds like more of the mutt's nad's.

If putting up with the ponces means more tasty kit and a respectable OS getting more of the market then I'm all for it.

Fujitsu battles WMDs with online survey

Can we have...

...a dishcloth waring tux with an AK47?

Microsoft tells US retailers Linux is rubbish

Who want's 'em?

In all honesty, what kind of a fskced group of people is going to want to have anything to do with the kind of gobshites who are going to believe this?

We know the kind of idiots PCworld .etc employ, we know the kind of idiots that are also users and we don't want them clogging up the forums asking where the "any" key is.

Ryanair faces ban on luggage charge auto-opt-in

Wait a mo

Is this what things are coming too? If folks are too careless to check the charges when they are set out clearly ,as they are in ryanairs site, then they deserve to get ripped off.

This nanny state bullshit is getting out of hand, folks are getting so used to having their hands held for them at every turn that they can't see it for themselves when their getting really screwed for day to day stuff, we all know what profit margins are.

Morrissey tells netdepressives to boycott his re-releases

Great justification

Not buying any Morrissey as a means of sticking it to the man? Great. Beats not buying any 'cos he's crap.

Apple nabs 90% of all 'premium PC' dollars

@Christian Berger

Yup, 1500 quids worth of hardware here, the equivalent dell/HP box would be over 2000. But running gentoo, to get something with the same kind of performance it would be more like 3 grand and still wouldn't match the performance of software compiled to match the hardware.On top of that I get to run a damn sight more games using wine than 64bit windows can run stably, plus they get to use all 4 cores :)

Still, nice to see the smart money is going to the lesser of two evils. Who said mac's are glorified PDA's? Your getting your acronyms mixed up, it's BSD. BSD != PDA*1e10