Posts by Yet Another Anonymous coward

NASA told to get act together on commercial crew vendors as chance of US-free ISS rises

>the idea here is to pay the development costs and then prices will tumble

Because the one thing we have learned with large military contractors is that once you have paid for the development costs the unit costs tumble.

The US Army recruits WALL-E Chris H as its next-generation bomb disposal robot

Re: 7 Hours

Isn't the obvious solution to have a couple of infantry persons to carry its batteries?

You could even call them sergeants from the latin word for servant

Interpol: Strong encryption helps online predators. Build backdoors

Re: So, now it's back to Think Of The Children

>"Obviously that will never happen".

Well it didn't with in the past with denouncing someone as a communist / anti-monarchist / anarchist / heretic

Especially for interpol I imagine they could write the rules so they only need a warrant from one country.

I'm sure the USA would have no problem handing over encryption keys for an Iranian or Chinese warrant. Just like they would have no problem with chinese intelligence agency having a backdoor to the president's iPhone

HP to Xerox: Nope, your $33.5bn bid falls short of our valuation

Re: "not in the best interests of shareholders"

>Screwing the future is not in the long term interests

It is if those shareholders intend to sell as soon as the deal goes through. Or intend to buy it with debt, take millions in fees and then let it go bust.

Bloodhound gang hits 1,010kph, retreats to lab to work on smashing the land speed record

Speed record for a rocket powered train is 6400 mph so London to Edinburgh in 5mins

Of course this was unmanned so might have some union difficulties

And you might not be able to stop before Aberdeen.

But the idea of building effectively a hypersonic railgun pointed at Edinburgh and London might appeal to both parliaments

Welcome to cultured meat – not pigs reading Proust but a viable alternative to slaughter

Re: I'm going to need some long-term studies before I eat cultured meat.

You aren't going to spend money on antibiotics that you don't have to.

I would guess that sterile protein slurry growing in sterile vats is going to get a lot less antibiotics than a factory farmed chicken.

Re: I'm going to need some long-term studies before I eat cultured meat.

No BSE, no parasites, no salmonella, no antibiotics, no accidental incorporating condemned horse meat

It may be missing some trace vitamins and minerals, but I'm not eating "artificial" meat for safety might start to look a bit anti-vax

The beyond-meat (veggie burgers that bleed) aren't bad. If you're veggie they aren't as good as best veggie burgers. But if you eat meat they are at last as good as the worst fast-food burgers

With a bit more work and a bit cheaper they will easily replace meat in fast food.

They can be made months in advance, shipped from wherever in the world is cheapest, don't need refrigeration or careful handling, almost no risk of food poisoning, no religious objections.

I don't see the same advantages for vat grown "real" meat.

Vat grown fish would be incredible though. If you could make Sushi grade fish, guaranteed fresh and no worms, without destroying ocean stocks

Boffins show the 2017 Nork nuke can move, move, move any mountain (by a meter)

Re: What?

The seismic data from half a world away lets you know there was a test and some guess about how deep and how big a bang.

But knowing exactly how many m^3 of rock moved how many meters gives you much better figures

NASA boffins tackle Nazi alien in space – with the help of Native American tribal elders

>Who says? First I've heard of it. Honestly, where do you lot get your information, anyway?

The Anti-Defamation League the major US authority on hate crimes

Anti-defamation League Hate Symbols Database

(or a bunch of zionist reactionaries if you are a Labour MP)

Thor's hammer is a symbol used as a badge by a bunch of Scandinavian towns for 1000years

It is now officially racist in America because of links to far right groups

Thanks, Brexit. Tesla boss Elon Musk reveals Berlin as location for Euro Gigafactory

> reliability of marques like Mercedes and BMW has fallen through the floor

The ones made in Alabama by some non-union worker with two first names - perhaps.

My "Made in Germany" BMW is rather nicely built

Re: Please not the old Southampton chestnut...

>whilst securing FTA's with the majority of the customers of the cars we make

That might be a bit tricky

Dear Japan/USA/Korea, please take all our cars tariff free just because we aren't in the Eu anymore

Re: No, the UK was never in the running

>A UK Battery R&D facility will be ready in Coventry, early 2020

They are going to develop a battery that leaks oil ?

Section 230 supporters turn on it, its critics rely on it. Up is down, black is white in the crazy world of US law

Re: There's no law that I know of

How do you prove the truth of any forward looking statement?

"Get Brexit Done. Unleash Britain's Potential"

"Leading the Fight for Climate Action, a People's Vote, a Fair Society for All"

"It's Time for Real Change"

"Stop Brexit. Build a Brighter Future"

"Change Politics for Good"

"Time To Get On With Brexit!"

"It's Time to Choose Our Own Future

Perhaps the only one which is possibly true, Plaid Cymru's "Wales, It's Us"

You would think that knowing Belgium isn't a city and Paris isn't in Germany would be a prerequisite for being in charge of NATO's nuclear arsenal ....

Re: "The reason big banks like more financial regulations."

>No, they don't. Look at the attempts to kill the agency to protect customers created after the crisis of 2008.

Look at all the mergers and takeovers of smaller regional banks since those laws were introduced

Don't take my word for it, ask the fed Bank Consolidation and Merger Activity Following the Crisis

Remember Facebook doesn't have to check the content of each post, it just has to prove that it followed the rules in Law3.1.4.159.2654 and it's competitors didn't

Re: The law of Unintended Consequences applies....

>I know this will kill Facebook ...

It will be great for Facebook - it's the classic "bootleggers and baptists" economics. The reason big banks like more financial regulations.

A new law requires you to have a legal compliance process if you accept customer posts.

This expands to you having to have a compliance officer in each state, who is certified by that state.

For Facebook to have a few hundred extra staff to do this = pocket change

What about el'reg, reddit, your local school/sports club web forum?

The only organisation able to afford this will be Facebook, your only legal choice will be to have them host your group

Can you sue a newspaper for printing a readers letter that you believe contains a lie?

Can you sue them for only printing letters that support their point of view

Re: This seems too easy

The USA already does this to get around funding laws.

The think tank supporting a wall with Mexico, trade war with China and tax cuts for billionaires can run ads all day long - it doesn't mention any particular candidate and so isn't a political ad

Re: The buck stops where it cannot be passed along any further.

Which was the reason for the original law.

In the USA you can sue anyone however tenuous the relationship - the lawyers follow the money.

With no case law in the early days of the internet there would be lots of lawsuits going after IBM and Microsoft whenever anyone fell for an email scam.

The classic example was a parent who accidentally backed out of their driveway over their own child

With no insurance and medical bills to pay they sued - the makers of the kid's jeans for not being visible

Shock! US border cops need 'reasonable suspicion' of a crime before searching your phone, laptop

Re: No problem

My apologies, my Scottish stereotypes comes entirely chickens (albeit cunning and organised ones)

Re: Citizens vs visitors

And the chance of a foreign visitor being able to get a US court to accept the case to sue a DHS agent in the USA is the new mathematical definition of zero

Re: 14th amendment

So when this was written did "person" include slave ?

All the DHS has to do is define anyone within 100mi of the border as a non-person

Re: No problem

>Home of the Brave

Scotland?

Boeing comes clean on parachute borkage as the ISS crew is set to shrink

It's going to space, the moon is in space, so it's all the same thing

Re: "Project Orion"

>The radiation keeps them quiet eventually.

It's Florida - would anyone notice?

Re: Quality system

It's pilot error if the pilot dies, otherwise it's an unfortunate set of 1 in a million (*) freak events that could never happen again

* whicg of course occur 9 times out of 10 - (obPTrerry)

Re: Quality system

If you don't like it you are free to use any of the other NASA contractors with production facilities in all the states whose Congress person voted for this.

That's the benefit of free market capitalism

Quality system

The vehicle is designed to land safely with a failed parachute so they install a pre-failed one to meet the requirements

Aviation stuff is like that, lots of strict procedures

Well cgi has got really good since 1969

I'm still not that Gary, says US email mixup bloke who hasn't even seen Dartford Crossing

Re: Another Dartford crossing complaint...

I think I now understand why US TV contains so many advertisements for drugs

Astroboffins capture video of Mercury passing across the Sun's surface

Re: Kind of humbling

It's fairly insignificant compared to other stars

I don't know if the term dwarf is now offensive to stars so ours is possibly just mass-challenged

SpaceX flings another 60 Starlink satellites into orbit in firm's heaviest payload to date

Re: Optimism

These satelites aren't going to bother visible astronomy

Space is, as the prophet said, big.

So the solid angle blocked by one of these satelites is like a midge flying across your telescope a mile away. They are in such a low orbit they are only going to be lit up by the sun very close to sunrise/set

They are more of an annoyance to radio astronomer, blanketing the whole sky in Ku and cat pictures - but realistically doing radio astronomy from Earth in any band useful for mobile data is too late

Senior GitLab exec resigns over plan to stop hiring engineers in China and Russia

Re: Security

Didn't he have the Hungarian phrase book ?

Re: Security

Simple solution only hire rednecks.

Re: Shirley...

But trickier to ensure that only female UBER sysadmins, developers and security researchers see the ride data for a female passenger - which is the case github is concerned about

Re: "Retaliatory behavior"

By switching back to github ? Owned by that bastion of all things that are good and moral - MSFT

What's that, Skippy? A sad-faced Microsoft engineer has arrived with an axe? Skippy?

Re: Skippy-speak

Lassie can say all that with a look

Is this paragraph from Trump or an AI bot? You decide, plus buy your own AI for $399

Re: Trump vs RoboTrump

I propose a new Turing test.

If you can't tell the difference between a conversation with a moron and a computer - then the computer can be said to be stupid

UK Home Office: We will register thousands of deactivated firearms with no database

Re: "no requirement of 'registration' for deactivated firearms"

And leading to the slightly bizarre requirement to get driving licenses to prove you are legally blind (at least in Ca)

Re: "no requirement of 'registration' for deactivated firearms"

>Any metalwork teacher worth their salt could churn out sensible quantities of handguns on a small lathe or mill

Hence successive governments cracking down on O level metalwork.

Tough on industry - tough on the causes of industry

Communication, communication – and politics: Iowa saga of cuffed infosec pros reveals pentest pitfalls

Hoodie stock image drinking game

Every takes a shot

Remember the Uber self-driving car that killed a woman crossing the street? The AI had no clue about jaywalkers

Re: Surely

That angular resolution is the closest two points can be before merging (and only at the fovea)

This is not the same as an absolute angle measurement between the two eyes

Re: " I guess the problem is that the moose brain cannot comprehend ..."

>Very large and self-assured, moose are.

They weigh the best part of a ton, are 12ft tall and their only predator are Orcas (seriously - moose swim between arctic islands and are eaten by killer whales)

Frankly their attitude to a fiat 500 is entirely appropriate

Re: Surely

>The only safe course is to seriously slow down when you see a moose anywhere near the road.

Same here with deer, the problem is that their strategy to escape wolves is to suddenly switch direction across the path of the pursuer because they can turn faster.

We would have to train self-driving cars to be smarter predators than wolves - which might not have a happy ending

Cambridge boffins and Google unveil open-source OpenTitan chip – because you never know who you can trust

Re: Applications could include...

You can verify that this will run the payloads sent to it properly - without them being modified

You don't get to choose what those "updates" do to the product this is protecting

Phew! All that competition in the US mobile industry was exhausting. Thank God for the FCC, am I right?

Excellent news

Here in Canada we have 2 carriers because foreign competitors are banned (something about preserving our precious bodily fluids) and they compete so ruthlessly that they can't afford any of the luxurious deals available in the USA

Now we won't have to feel so jealous of them