Posts by Alistair

Pest control: Eggheads work to help RoboBees dodge that fly-swatter

Re: Wot about the mice ?

robo-bee would just re-program the mouse with a mini-taser.

Hell -- that almost sounds plausible.....

Which distant Mars-alikes could we live on? Ask these Red Planet data-sifters

Re: Earth has lost 75% of its atmosphere since the Jurassic period....

@DJO

Please ignore the Fauxhoods. It comes here every once in a while in an attempt to collect ad revenue, and perpetuate it's religion.

@Ledswinger:

I'll concur for the most part, but you've missed out on the self BBQing bovines.....

Sigh. It's not quite Star Trek's Data, but it'll do: AI helps boffins clock second Solar System

"You have small planets inside and big planets outside, but everything is scrunched in much closer.”"

I have to wonder -- this comment, or variations on it, are applied to several of the more complex systems that have been mapped. Perhaps the math could use some tweaking somewhere? bah. I'm not an astrophysicist. I just wish I was.

5 reasons why America's Ctrl-Z on net neutrality rules is a GOOD thing

Kieren having a moment.

And I think in this case it was a well deserved moment, he's been all over this case.

Net Neutrality. This short two word quip has a whole *lot* of room for interpretation. Sadly, libertarian 'no government' Ayn Rand shruggies tend to (as is *required* by libertarianism) wear fairly large blinders. They ignore history - which has made it abundantly clear that monopoly enterprises will manufacture wealth for the owning cabal, poverty for the employees, and engender illiteracy in order to ensure their existence into perpetuity. They ignore facts (we have a free market!!! there is more than one (Bell!!/ISP!!!/Train company!!!))

1) when your ISP is *the only* ISP in your area there is no competition at the carrier level -> monopoly

2) when there are more than one ISPs in an area and they either are a content producer or are owned by content producers, there is no competition at the content level -> monopoly

3) when there is no competition at some level, the idea (?ideal?) of 'free market solving the problem' is no longer possible. -> monopoly

4) when the content producers own the ISPs and have access to *all* communications then the content they will produce will be designed to perpetuate the perceptions, concepts and type of the content of the audiences communications.

What happens *rapidly* at this stage is that information delivered to these end users will become an echo chamber, and will perpetually narrow the perceptions of the end users. This is where extremism comes from, and the inability to rationally decode 'programming' (interesting that the cable companies used that term. Isn't it ironic?) that is being fed to the end users.

I am *not* an advocate of the 'wild wild west o the intarwebs' where *anything* goes - I am not for 'rules rules rules rules rules', I however *am* inclined to say that the provisioning of internet connections to end users does need some rational regulation. Including that the ISP delivering the packets must treat the connections as dumb pipes. They are, even when they are part of a content provider corporation, providing *infrastructure* to the current modern household.

The biggest issue that will now ensue in the excited snakes is that the ISPs that are part of content producer corporations (and it will be started in 3 months) will now go out of their way to *kill* torrenting, as fast and as efficiently as possible. How they do this will be variable but it will be done. There will be substantial collateral damage, and there will be much hand waving and ghostlighting on the subject, but it will happen.

Happily up here in Kanuckistan we have several giant ISPs and dozens and dozens of smaller ones, and (yay!!!) we have local loop unbundling. I may have to *pay* (in my case $4.52/mo) to unbundle and connect to a non standard ISP but it *is* a negligible charge). I know that in at least Ohio, Washington and Virginia you *cannot* unbundle cable connections, and at least in three cities that I'm aware of you only have a choice of *one* ISP, who owns your local loop, your pipe, and apparently owns the poles as well, for both cable and DSL. These circumstances are not a fee market.

The keystone argument; should the FCC be in charge of this or the FTC? -> the FCC was created in order to regulate the telephone industry, which was providing at the time an infrastructural service. It is *very* hard to see the provisioning of internet pipes as anything *other* than infrastructure. Title II -- probably needs an overhaul and may not have been the correct form, but --- oh right. There was a bit of a lag issue in the second half of that presidency wasn't there -- one party was stalling all over the place to prevent legislation being prepared......

Re: @Bob Dole ... WTF? Well put

@AC with the spoon fed dribble.

I don't need spoon feeding of dribble. The lobbyists in question work for the telecoms companies, all of the *big three(four?)* here in Canada. They all have this one neat trick for making money hand over fist (click here, now to learn it). They have absolutely zero obligation to the consumer, the only obligation is to the stock price/shareholder, and **laws and regulations**

I recall my first DARPA (9600kb/s modem) connection to a college system. And the attempts to get connected to the "interwebs" in the 90's. And the data costs. At least up here we have the equivalent of LLU, and there *ARE* competitors.

And I have some little experience with the telecoms industry.

I sincerely hope that the lawsuits against the FCC steamroller out the issue clearly. I hope that someone sues Pai himself directly into revealing where *EVERY* penny he has ever earned, invested, spent, viewed or been within 10 yards of came from.

Re: Well-thought out and well-researched article.

@AC

This will depend *heavily* on where your Oxycontin was packaged and distributed. It however will *never* use the term addictive.

Engineer named Jason told to re-write the calendar

Re: Productivity slump ahead?

@ H in:

Round here the EOY Change freeze kicked in a week ago.

Murdoch's Fox empire is set to become a literal Mickey Mouse outfit

Okay -- so -- now, The CopyRight should exist FOREVER company just bought .....

oh never mind. Likely someone has said it in one of the movies that Disney now owns and I'll end up driving rendering clusters in a basement in california for $3/hr 19hr/day 363 days a year for the rest of my life if I continue.

Disk drives spin, are you listening? In the lane, servers glistening...

@Dr Syntax:

I just came to the comments to see if anyone had finished the lyrics.....

US authorities issue strongly worded warnings about crypto-investments

Interestingly - I ended up with 24 of them in my wallet ..... whilst working on some of the code ... long enough ago that I only had 2 kids. I still have the key for the wallet....

The North remembers: York scraps Uber's licence over data breach

Re: Oi!

over here, 50 miles is "just round the corner."

I commute more than that.

Flash bang walloped: Toshiba, Western Digital sign peace treaty over memory chip fabs

Re: This makes me sad.

We have trump, putin, brexit, and social media, and you need an *excuse* for popcorn?

How fast is a piece of string? Boffin shoots ADSL signal down twine

I suppose the next question is - was the carrier in question limply or tightly strung? Was it bakers or butchers twine? Or even baling twine? Curious minds and all...

At Christmas, do you give peas a chance? Go cold turkey? What is the perfect festive feast?

holiday stuffing.

We've generally not had a quiet christmas around here. Either we've a couple branches of family in for dinner or we've had heards of friends in. Usually 12 to 20 bodies.

1) first off, coffee, tea and fresh orange juice for the 'dults in the am - I've usually a couple of loaves of (baked the evening before) stone milled bread - toast, waffles, bacon. The paper shredding has to wait till the adults are awake, and at least snacked up to mobile. Kidlets have stockings until then. Usually have 5 to 8 folks in transit, although I've taken to picking my mom up the afternoon before.

2) the great shredding - shortbread cookies, mince tarts and more coffee/tea - usually by now fortified.

3) shrimp rings with sauce, stone milled rolls, butter, butter and more butter, and a variety of smoked meats, spicy meats and kid friendly bun stuffings, cheeses (We've a fantastic cheese maker about 2 hours away, I'll get a variety)

At this point I'll already have the bird going (BTW - the default instructions I've seen for turkey are WRONG, usually resulting in hot, dry, unpalatable bird - go long low and slow, and it can be just as juicy as you could want, the key is the internal temp *not* the external temp. Meat thermometer anyone?) - stuffing I prefer to go exotic and use pumpernickel and a whole wheat for breads, fruit and nuts - the favourite around here is walnuts, almonds, dates, apricots, apple with nutmeg, cinnamon, and a mild smoked chili for a wee bit of zing.

Sweet potatoes, straight baked then mashed with maple syrup (the real stuff) a hint of cardamom and lots of pepper and you can't add too much butter, roasted potatoes (I prefer to use duck over goose fat, but whatever works, with paprika, garlic, salt, pepper, and onion) acorn squash (roasted open face with butter, mediera sugar, nutmeg, cinnamon), Broccoli, Brussels sprouts (steamed part way to cooked, then tossed into bacon fat with some garlic - let the garlic brown *first*) and if I've time and remember, green beans, get tossed in after the Brussels sprouts are done, but with thai chili.

Served with the drippings gravy, more dinner rolls, lots of wine, port or beer depending on one's taste and well, I usually go through 3 to 4 pounds of butter during Christmas dinners. Followed up with a pud, (made by a good friend, usually started in september and I have 2 coming this year) and that gets topped with brandy sauce thank you (and I've a *really* nice brandy for it this year).

All of this will have been lubricated by wine, beer, port, rum, eggnog, brandy and god knows what other forms of alcohol get hauled in by the various bodies. (Most of those that know us will drop by if they have to do the (at her moms in the morning and his moms in the evening) thing. - and several neighbours will drop in at some point, usually to inhale deeply and complain that their bird doesn't smell that good)

At some point in the evening the bones from the bird go back in the oven with any left over oils, duck or turkey, at 285 until I drag my ass out of bed on boxing day and take the tasty browned bits and start on the soup broth.

I then spend the next two weeks recovering from the cooking fest. In a food coma.

The eagle has been grounded: Dutch anti-drone squadron retired

@AC -

would that be the NKS Jimmy Whales?

Canuck privacy commissioner to dig into Uber data breach

Personally I rather think the penalties should be phrased as:

1) 100% of all bonuses, income enhancements for the responsible corporate Directors, VPs, and C suite residents, and the entirety of BOD salaries or bonuses *possibly* payable in the year in which the offence occurs, to be payed to the fining authority by the responsible executives and the BOD.

2) 25% of corporate *revenue* for the year in which the offence occurred, to be paid to the fining authority by the corporation.

phrased such as a judge would have some discretion in cases where the entity would be able to provide substantiation of their finances in great detail and have the fine reduced if it was clearly likely to cause the business to fold.

This may seem brutal, but it would provide direct focus on systems security. It would beat the crap out of small businesses, and would force large corporates to consider their actions much more carefully. Possibly making the execs aware of their role in causing these things to happen. Especially if this was universal and these globals could be hit in *numerous* jurisdictions.

Shazam! Apple chucks £300m at Brit what's-that-song app – report

Siri, unlock my phone:

Siri: Please sing the first 8 bars of the chorus of stairway to heaven to unlock your phone:

~~

Sorry, your rendition did not pass, please try again.

Someone tell Thorpe Lane in Suffolk their internet sucks – they're still loading the page

Re: Sydney ... in Australia

Those of us in Canuckistan get confused the other way round. Clarity comes from the fact that Aussies typically respond differently to french than do 'scotians.

Disclaimer: I do networking

I've a neighbour on the same set of connections, but different ISP who *cannot* stop futzing with modem settings (DSL). I've been connected to the "net" since DARPA. I keep telling him that the crap he's reading on t'interforuwebs is meant for folks in (some other country on another continent, with different standards, with different provisioning). His networking knowledge is based on (dedicated enterprise two hop network on fibre) one round of experience. His household network speeds are utter crap. I go through -- tidy things up, move his wifi to a less loaded channel (there are just *no* free channels around here) and clean up his modem settings and two weeks later he's read some stupid post from the back woods of nigeria about tweaking wifi to get 5 times the throughput and its all crap again... including trashing his neighbours wifi to boot.

I've told his offspring to beat him with a bedpost if he goes near the modems or the wifi routers.

Re: Would be interested to see...

Sir Runcible:

I load pings. And frame test by setting packet size.

linux:

ping -c 500 -i .5 -s 1200 <target>

windows:

ping -n 500 -s 1200 <target>

(sadly - can't set the packet interval on winders 7 in the default ping. There is a non standard tool that does)

I've found that latency tends to ramp up as the packet size does. *especially* on wifi, in neighbourhoods where *everyone* has wifi and microwaves, bluetooth this and that, and oddly, electric radiant patio heaters.

YouTuber cements head inside microwave oven

@ Hans1

My interpretation is :

The sum total of intelligence on the planet is a constant.

Euro Patent Office ignores ruling and refuses entry to vindicated judge

Re: New challenge

@Alister:

"They could crown him King of Jerusalem, that should go down well with all parties."

I rather suspect that DT is hoping for that title, however I suspect that he will be equally disappointed.

@Alan Brown:

You have one of my rare upvotes. I'm almost inclined to create a dozen temporary ElReg accounts to add some more upvotes.

@ BoldMan:

"Lets all play "Spot the Battistelli shill"... oh there you are, I claim my £5!!"

allow me to be a tad bolder:

"Lets all play "Spot the Battistelli shill"... oh there you are, I claim my £5!!

DXC Technologies UK boss quits

I think I see Jerry Brace's next position opening up.

The ultimate vendor lock-in: High school opens on Oracle campus

Minor correction:

How do we make sure that we still have autonomy as a school?” school co-founder Ken Montgomery told the newspaper......

Sadly, HP has autonomy. And they're headed to court I think,,,,,

Data-slurping keyboard app makes Mongo mistake with user data

I am hoping that it was

either a typo or a linguistic error that resulted in the phrase:

"This presents a real danger for cyber criminals who could commit fraud or scams....."

The terrifying bit here is that this db is associated with a keyboard app on phones, if this exists, is there another db out there from their "diagnostics" component that has pools of text that had been entered on these phones in "order to improve our application" that is similarly unprotected? I mean, "There is no sensitive data there...." --- so *cough* where is the "sensitive" data you dense as a plank moronic execubot?

O Christmas wreath, O Christmas wreath, thy potent skunk's in bunches

Put those up in this neck of the woods

.... and the teenagers *just* might leave the basements for the out of doors.....

Huawei Mate 10 Pro: The unfashionable estate car wants to go to town

Re: Price...

@ Michael H:

Three the company, or three phones?

WW2 Enigma machine to be seized from shamed pharma bro Shkreli

Re: The first and last...

@ukgnome:

"Hitler and the Wu-Tang Clan walk into a bar - Picasso gives them a sideways glance."

Hitler and the Wu-Tang Clan walk into a bar, and take a seat in a cubical - Picasso gives them a sideways glance.

FTTY

Foil snack food bags make a decent Faraday cage, judge finds

Re: Phone in microwave oven

:you're just trying to make people stick their phones in the microwave for the lulz, as a certain percentage may accidentally switch it on...."

The scary part would be the lot that would dial the phone number on the microwave buttons................

We go live to the Uber-Waymo court battle... You are not going to believe this. The judge certainly doesn't

But your honour, we're just a VC backed disruptor. It is our duty to . <throws open briefcase at Waymo's lawyers> disrupt all the conventions <throws pitcher of water at court clerk> in all our interactions! <tears off shirt and tie, jumps on desk and turns up "Patricia the stripper" on Itunes, dancing suggestively.>

/sarc

(closing statments by Ubers lawyers?)

Hey girl, what's that behind your Windows task bar? Looks like a hidden crypto-miner...

Re: Because you can't be arsed

wget? Hrumph! had to use Kermit we did!

The End of Abandondroid? Treble might rescue Google from OTA Hell

Re: Yet Again Fail

@ Mantis

"Do you also walk into a car dealerships to buy a new set of tyres?"

Personally, no I don't, but apparently here in N.A., both ford and toyota *insist* that one should only get one's tyres from them. I hear the ads on radio at *least* three times a day. And my VW dealership keeps sending me buy 3 get one free deals for tyres, where I'd be paying double for each of the three what I would pay @ costco **for precisely** the same tyre. (not that the VW dealership has been allowed to *touch* my vw since I bought it.)

Rolls-Royce, Airbus, Siemens tease electric flight engine project

Re: basically it's the plane version of a prius

there are a *lot* of watercraft going this route -- for some values of "efficient" (i.e where we have two straight props for propulsion and say four or six lateral props for positioning/manoeuvring) this is a far more efficient use of diesels. -- one needs two or three diesels turning gennny's charging batteries, the overall ship and powering the props. Most of these are cruise ships, but it is becoming common on large container craft due to sheer size. The diesels run at peak efficiency 100% of the time, and power is available on demand.

Russian regulator says да to Uber/Yandex merger

Wait.

Putin has a "Federal antimonopoly Service"?.

I was wondering how he managed that stuff.

Goober coming to the USA soon?

Don't shame idiots about their idiotically weak passwords

Re: scott

No, leopard.

Bathroom.

10 years of the Kindle and the curious incident of a dog in the day-time

Re: Glad I am not the only one

"Icon because, yes I want to retire to my bunker: wake me up on 26th December."

Sadly, the week after has become just as vile, "The stuff you didn't get that you were whining about before christmas" sales.

I'd shoot for January 12th.

BOFH: The trouble with, er, windows installs

Nice to see that the BOFH celebrates "black friday" over there. I'm wondering if the Security fellow has an aversion to touching brass firepoles outside windows.

And dammit, I know *just* what the BOFH means. Horriday change lockout on Tuesday morning.....

Stick to the script, kiddies: Some dos and don'ts for the workplace

scripts! OMG scripts!

I've built out automation processes for hosts using version control and an automation tool to ensure that the hosts were built, managed, monitored and had (a whole mess of different) applications installed on them correctly, consistently and repeatably. The backbone of this was scripting. Some in python, some in perl, some in bash, some in rshell, some in sh. I've got core application scripts in ksh that were deployed to an app over 11 years ago that are *still* in use today. I've written a *very* few powershell scripts to monitor and maintain a non windows based application on windows hosts (that I very much despise having to deploy to windows boxes, hopefully never again since MS has ssh for windows). Most of my scripts were written to do one thing and one thing only, and to bail if the environment they were pointed at did not match what they were meant to do. One of the reasons I'm still kept around is because I can go through the mental process of (from box on loading dock to plugged in, built, deployed, connected, made operational) and pick out the hundreds of steps that go into each step of that flow.

The biggest issue anyone ever runs into in scripting is *not* comprehending that things can go *wrong*. Error cases are *hard* when you haven't had time to think them through or test them out.

When it comes to ML, reports of JavaScript's death are exaggerated

Re: My God.....

@SVV

Well, what happened here officer is that the DevOps team updated the range detail finding calculator in the client with what was supposed to be a slight tweak to improve the accuracy and inadvertently switched from metric to ElRegStdUnits, but the firmware in the brake control system works in Imperial units, so the pizza delivery car miscalculated the stopping time and applied the brakes as it went through the front door.

Loake Shoes admits: We've fallen victim to cybercrims

so the IT group

Will be taken to the meeting room and taught how to do the bunny ears again?

Once more unto the breach: El Reg has a go at crisis management

header pic

Does not look like the situation is going well.

Linus Torvalds 'sorry' for swearing, blames popularity of Linux itself

Re: You expected it...

ahh -- off to start a new distro called Sauna linux.

The wayland driver will periodically fog over the display, reminding you to get up and dive in the lake.

Iranian military hacker fingered for 'Game of p0wns' HBO leak

Re: game of p0wns

You *REALLY* do not want to know about rip off series' of Game of thrones. Someone we know.....

NO. not doing this

Dammit, left my mind bleach at home, anyone have a bottle I can borrow?

Uber: Hackers stole 57m passengers, drivers' info. We also bribed the thieves $100k to STFU

Re: "The incident did not breach our corporate systems or infrastructure"

what was that thing again .... oh .gitignore

Iran the numbers – and Persian internet is the cheapest in the world

@AGD:

The price listed for Canada seems a tad *low* - if it were based on average prices. Although I'm paying a tad less than the listed average. I rather suspect that this list may have been subject to the "18 months on this bargain price" sales pitches that are used around this neck of the woods.

CEO: 'Claying the ongoing continuous chaos of info into one logical masterpiece'

Frictionless revelations in contradiction.

@ Stevie -> I hope you have a cleaning staff and left them a good tip.

@Hollerithevo -> I suspect your joss sticks have been swapped out for something a little more potent. May I have some, please?

"an autonomous machine learning data warehouse that doesn't require human beings to either manage or tune the database".

This concerns me greatly. I know what my 21 year old considers "organized". I know what my 11 year old considers "organized". I've seen what machine learning can accomplish with almost 5 years of training and close to 3Pb of source data. I have no wish to discover what this will do to data organization. I suspect I might suffer a stroke or three.

"It's a learning machine, forging the rules of its universe, claying the ongoing continuous chaos of information into one logical masterpiece."

Yaniv has a fetish, and mistyped clawing. At least I *hope* that's what this is. Otherwise I'm not too hopeful for the staff of Panoply. Unless they have killer benefits, and big red "kill it now, with fire" buttons handy.

MPs draft bill to close loopholes used by 'sharing economy' employers

Re: I run a business that competes

@ disgusted

Just like your mortgage/rent, electric, water, food, clothing are all voluntary.