Posts by Yet Another Anonymous coward

UK's London Gatwick Airport boasts of driverless vehicle trial

Re: Eliminate any pedestrian humans

We already eliminate any pedestrian humans from the taxiways by having big jet engines to Hoover them up

Brit police forces spend peanuts on cybercrime training

Re: Altruism only goes so far

But if you are a BOFH who joins the police you get to do all those BOFH 'unfortunate accidents' legally

Uber breaks self-driving car record: First robo-ride to kill a pedestrian

Re: Pedantic

but the braking distance of a car is not reduced at all by having motors, as the limit is already defined by the tyre/road interaction

Is that necessarily true ? Why do supercars have huge actively cooled carbon fibre discs?

I was thinking that if a Tesla can do 0-60 in <3s with the torque of the motors then assuming the battery can absorb electricity at the same rate it should be able to actively brake at the same rate ( a little better since aerodynamics are working for you)

Re: bike or not

The USA typically has about 2x higher auto fatality rate compared to other developed countries - mostly because of low seatbelt use (although it is improving)

The rate for pedestrian injuries is lower - mostly because there are fewer pedestrians/cyclists in US cities and more commute miles are driven on freeways with no pedestrians.

Re: The 'killer' question

It is one of genuine objections to autonomous vehicles in a European city (rather than LA or Arizona).

If the car has to brake everytime a child wanders near the kerb edge of the pavement, or if a delivery vehicle is illegally parked and it refuses to cross a solid white line to get round them - then the whole of London is going to be gridlocked by autonomous vehicles obeying the rules.

So you're okay with self-drivers killing children who run into the street after a ball?

I'm saying it may not be possible.

You are supposed to not drive into an obstruction in the road - so is it your fault if a bridge falls in front of your car when you are doing 60mph?

Re: YAAC offered, "UK official stopping distance at 30mph is 23m"

I'm just saying that there is a practical limit to the "driver should always be able to stop".

If with perfect reflexes +perfect brakes I can stop from 30mph in 6 car lengths, then the kid is safe if they step out 6 cars ahead of me but not 4. So speed limit in school zones is 20mph = 4 car lengths. But what if they step out 2 cars ahead of me? Should I have been going 10mph? What about 1 car length?

You soon end up in Xeno's commute where I get asymptotically slower as I approach the front bumper of a parked car

Re: playing devils advocate here...

And the oil companies, don't forget the oil companies

it's the driver's responsibility to not drive into pedestrians

But sometimes it's not the drivers fault.

UK official stopping distance at 30mph is 23m, if a small child runs out into the road 1m in front of my car then it may be my responsibility to avoid them but the laws of physics disagree.

Ironically we may end up with new stopping distance rules that ONLY robot cars can comply with - eg. thinking time is now <1ms and stopping distance requires 4wheel drive DC motors + ABS.

I assume "outside of the crosswalk" meant the women wasn't at the pedestrian crossing.

If a pedestrian runs out into the road not at an intersection then it may not be the driver's fault.

Re: Clear cut...

It's Uber so presumably claim the women threw herself at the driver and was asking for it.

1 in 5 Michigan state staffers fail phishing test but that's OK apparently

Re: A colleague (no it wasn't me!)

If it was me I wouldn't even open email and would demand that all future work requests are delivered in person by a company director accompanied by corporate legal council.

I need ensure that all instructions by somebody who appears to be my supervisor (pending DNA tests) are approved by shareholders

US cops go all Minority Report: Google told to cough up info on anyone near a crime scene

Re: Not one to take the G-Men's side very often, but within tight limits...

I think that there should be forced transparency,

Then there would simply be a special national security exemption on all searches for terrorists / journalists / protesters / people who don't pick up dog mess

Private Internet Access VPN opens code-y sarong, starting with Chrome extension

Re: My understanding is that PIA uses OpenVPN and adds a bit onto it

our 5-eyes and RU friends are particularly interested in traffic that goes through various tunnels

That's the wonderful irony of allowing ISPs to sell your information.

It used to only be pirates, paranoids and peruses of particularly pernicious pron that used VPNs - now everybody does. It's hard work spying on people when everyone looks like a suspect

Why not openVPN?

I pay for PIA but use their openVPN servers.

Mainly because their windows client used to start a pair of Ruby interpreters that ran at 100% CPU and killed the battery life on my laptop.

Technically is there any reason to use their own propriety system rather than their openVPN service?

ps. I only need "stop my ISP marketing my browsing" level of security, I do my breaking into the Kremlin from work

Whois? More like WHOWAS: Domain database on verge of collapse over EU privacy

Re: What's the Problem?

Or Europe could just get hold of one of those hacks of American's data and publish the name, home address, phone number, SSN and credit card details for everyone outside Europe.

If keeping your personal data secure is so bad

Techies building UK web smut age check tools: You'll get a spec next week

Re: Dead Zombies pre Watershed Ads

Wouldn't a dead zombie just be a dead person ?

Re: ID codes and hashes

Only wrongdoers need fear correct identification.

So only issue ID cards to wrongdoers

Re: ID codes and hashes

The ID code could even go on a little card that we could carry around and the Police and council dog wardens could inspect

Over 18?

Isn't the minimum age for settling down, getting married and having kids 16 in the UK?

Do you have to then wait 2 years for a quick one off the wrist while she is out ?

Boeing ships its 10,000th 737

Re: Selling engines at loss...

IIRC RR no longer sell engines for large passenger jets, they charge per flight hour / mile

One of the advantages of the 737 was that it had its own on-board stairs so could serve small airports without any infrastructure - that meant a shorter undercarriage

Re: Trigger's Broom

Essentially none.

The reason for keeping the 737 tag is partly brand awareness but also it's easier to make a change to the same airframe and submit a "note to file" than to get approval for a new model. You only have to test/prove the new change, not revisit existing features that are already approved

Eventually there are no original parts but you still filling incremental changes to the FAA.

I couldn't give a Greek clock about your IoT fertility tracker

You know, Samantha puts in a lot of hard work on this round and she gets a bit fed up with silly comments about the way she 'checks the teams' 7 inchers' or 'pulls out my reproduction equipment and twists my knob'. Samantha tells me she tries to take no notice of these pathetic, purile critics, but it isn't always easy to ignore her knockers.

Office junior had one job: Tearing perforated bits off tractor-feed dot matrix printer paper

Re: Lost count...

I raise you the oil industry

HQ in Aberdeen, I live in Vancouver.

Since I'm in Canada can I pop over to Halifax NS to look at a problem on a boat?

Trump’s immigration policies costing US tech jobs says LogMeIn CEO

You get off the plane. If you are told to stand in a line, you stand in a line.

True if you are going to Florida for 2 weeks - less true on a business trip.

As a Brit on a visa waiver you can go to America to:

1, Install or maintain imported equipment - but not assemble it

2, Observe and advise a US employee - but not supervise them

3, Conduct training - but not receive training.

4, Attend a conference or trade show, but not any educational sessions

And these are the official rules to the "are you coming here to work" question.

Not including the "you look a bit muslim" factor

US immigration/import checks operate by the book.

No they don't - they operate by the whim of the minimum wage / minimum education person in the booth.

Even the law says things like "if in their opinion..."

I have been refused entry because they thought the green carbon copy of the visa should be in the passport not the pink one. And I'm white, English and a professor.

It makes it increasingly difficult to do business in the US, if any foreign employees (especially any that don't look like typical country and western audience) have to worry that they wont be let back in after a holiday or business trip.

Of course this doesn't affect the slave labour Tata H1Bs who don't get to take holidays or business trips -

UK.gov to plough £67m into gigabit broadband for all and sundry

Is there an economist in the house?

What happens in a monopoly market if the government hands out £3k vouchers for new customers?

a, £3k was all BT needed to finally decide the internet was here to stay

b, Business that would be the next Facebook if only they had £3k are now created

c, BT increases their installation charge by £3k

d, BT increases their installation charge by £4k

Google to 'forget me' man: Have you forgotten what you said earlier?

What about people

Who visited Barnsley and paid for a crop top?

Surely they have a right to be forgotten ?

Kepler krunch koming: Super space 'scope's fuel tank almost empty

Re: I don't understand

So you can close the project accounting

YouTube plan to use Wikipedia against crackpots hits snag

Craigslist?

Not clear quite how craigslist parasites on the back of the unpaid web labour of others - rather the contrary

UK.gov urged to ensure punters can 'still roam like at home' after Brexit

Re: Next election

Sinn Fein / SNP / Plaid Cymru coalition

Re: Ha

does not require Canada to bend over and take whatever the EU feels like giving at the time

No but it does require that all my systems are CEmarked, meet Eu labeling, recycling and origin requirements. I have to have a notified body in the Eu and meet exactly the same requirements as a manufacturer in the Eu.

I can't chose to "diverge" from those rules. In fact I world prefer that people converged. At the moment the USA and Eu have different sub parts of IEC60601 which is costing me a headache in buying components.

Ex-GCHQ boss: All the ways to go after Russia. Why pick cyberwar?

Tougher sanctions

Cut off their supply of Dutchy Original shortbread biscuits - that'll teach em

Stephen Hawking dies, aged 76

As an ape I resent that remark

NASA on SpaceX's 2015 big boom: Bargain bin steel liberated your pressure vessel

Re: Pink Slips all round...

not using aerospace grade materials in a frigging rocket???

Usually just means exactly the same part with extra paperwork.

The Shuttle's SRBs and their o-rings were 'aerospace grade'

London Mayor calls for social networks and sharing economy to stop harming society

Re: Money quote

Spot on

Tell that to the city first and then come after the drone makers once you have sorted out the banks

EU lawmakers seek coordinated hand-wringing over AI ethics

Re: A starting point...

1 An A.I. system must be subject to the full gamut of laws that apply to its human operator

That's the issue.

This isn't about AI weapons a'la skynet.

This is about a completely black box CDNN being fed business data back to 1871 and deciding that only hiring white candidates with double barrelled names who went to Oxbridge is the best fit to the data.

Or it noticing that there were no performing loans to women for the first 75% of the data set so it makes sense to refuse all women's mortgage applications

At the moment claiming "the computer says no" proves that you weren't discriminating

Europe is living in the past (by nearly six minutes) thanks to Serbia and Kosovo

Re: 240/230/220V

Kosovo would love to be in the EU. The UK wants to get out. We could just do a swap...

Or you could just rename it United Kosovo, turn up at the meetings and hope nobody noticed?

Re: Some might call that "taking back control"

Obviously it will be necessary to build a wall around Europe to keep them in their place

And buy fuel in liters but quote consumption in MPG

Less than half of paying ransomware targets get their files back

Re: I actually am surprised

The "study" was by an anti-virus software vendor.

Treat it like a study by the police showing that $anything$ leads to violence

Got some broken tech? Super Cali's trinket fix-it law brought into focus

Re: Not just phones and tractors

If you were Breville what level of qualification would you require for somebody fixing a kettle so that their heirs wouldn't sue you?

I have an experimental physics PhD and built detectors for CERN - but I'm not allowed to replace an electrical outlet.

Re: Knock Knock Knock

Hi, we're from Apple. Here's a suitcase full of money, please kill that bill.

Why? Apple can offer to repair the phone for a fee they like at one of their stores

While blocking imports of all phones that don't have any instate approved repair facilities and parts suppliers as required by the bill

Re: Hoorah !

Unless it mandates a repairable design then it's all for naught.

So socketted DIP chips for your next phone.

Hansa down, this is cool: How Dutch cops snatched the wheel of dark web charabanc

Re: Agent Provocateur

From the look of things, plenty of crimes were committed on the Hansa site before cops got involved

Except we don't know that now - the cops had control of the site's database.