Posts by David 132

Robo-supercar hype biz Faraday Future has invented something – a new word for 'disrupt'

Re: The perfect word already exists

Actually, I think that a better word in the context of electric vehicles would be "degauss".

"We're going to totally degauss the market!"

Re: Will it.....

Disrupt what my current vehicle does: Go over 350 miles on a single tank of gas (petrol). I can drive nonstop for over 5 hours (at speed!) in my big ugly SUV, going from the Pasadena, CA area to the San Francisco bay area (look on a map, ZIP code 91017 to 94040) with a single tank of fuel.

While those are good points, there are several electric vehicles on the market today that come close on each of those - or at least, "close enough".

Many people won't care if the range is "only" 200 miles rather than 350.

They won't care if they can't drive at 70mph for 5 hours non-stop - 3 hours (or less) would be "good enough", and anyway, how often on today's congested roads do you get the chance to drive at full chat for long periods?

The kicker that you omitted: refuel / recharge time. Your SUV can do all of the above, and then when its fuel tank is empty, it's maybe 5-10 minutes at most to fully refuel it. At any one of tens of thousands of gas stations nationwide.

In contrast, the most advanced EV charging system that I'm aware of right now is Tesla's Supercharger network. They take approx. 75 minutes to deliver a full charge; even an 80% "usable" charge takes 40 minutes. And there's only about 750 Supercharger locations world-wide. (h/t Wikipedia)

I suggest that every other aspect of EVs - range, appearance, cost, performance - is now a solved problem, or at least (that phrase again...) "close enough" for mass appeal. It's the speed of charging that is the issue now. There's some pretty fundamental physics problems that limit how quickly you can dump energy into a chemical power cell.

On the positive side, before everyone thinks I'm anti-EV... speed of recharging is only a concern if you're doing long-distance road trips. For Joe Average who commutes 50-100 miles a day, it's not a problem; plug in overnight.

While writing this I found myself taking a step back and realizing how far we've come in just a handful of years - it really wasn't long ago that electric cars were a laughing stock... "milk floats", "golf buggies", and so on. And now we're arguing about recharge time. Progress!

Florida Man sues Verizon for $72m – for letting him commit identity theft

Florida Man, the world's oddest superhero

For those who haven't seen it, this is a goldmine of comedy and general W-T-F-ness:

Florida Man on Reddit

Internet of Sh*t has an early 2017 winner – a 'smart' Wi-Fi hairbrush

Re: Bog off

I flew through Tokyo last year, and whilst in the lounge I decided to use the restroom.

The toilets, of course, were "smart". And, unknown to me until I sat down, heated.

Now - it's possible that to the Japanese mind, a heated seat is a nice touch of luxury...

To me, however, a warm loo seat in a public restroom means only one thing: "uurgh, someone's only just departed from this one, oh god better sanitise it, and bleach my buttocks for good measure".

Most unsettling.

Re: I have actually thought of an IoT that might be useful

...and I forgot to add, you have to spend more on the marketing and branding than on the actual product or development.

Give it a cutting-edge name (e.g. "cookr" or "hottr" - don't be gauche and opt for something like "iStove", this isn't 2006 for goodness sakes) and you're halfway done.

Re: I have actually thought of an IoT that might be useful

How about a cooker that detects a ring/oven has been on with no pan on/in it for x minutes and turns it off.

Even simpler, and no net connection required.

Get with the times, Grandad, this is 2017 not 1997!!

The ONLY CORRECT way to do what you suggest would be:

- tie the cooker to the cloud, so you can check licensing validity every time someone wants to use it,

- make it so that if there's no internet connectivity, the cooker stops working

- mandatory account creation, and the signup process has to gather essential data like: user's date of birth, taxpayer ID number, blood type

- (oh, and require use of a credit card when signing up - even if it's "free" - gotta cover your bases if your shareholders decide, 6 months down the line, that the service needs to be monetised)

- control the cooker using a shiny iPhone app thrown together in 5 minutes by an intern, that communicates with the cooker via your AWS cloud server using cleartext HTML.

- Remember to NEVER release updates or security fixes for it, because you're too busy working on the next gen product.

- get bored of the whole thing 1 year after you launch it and terminate service, effective immediately. (Give users 1 week to get their food out of their cookers if you're feeling generous.)

- Remember to design it so that the cooker becomes completely non-functional without the cloud service.

And of course, it has to be priced at 50% above the top of the market, because it's NOT "a braindead cooker that is effectively rented, not bought, and has a short 12-month useable life" - it's "a premium product that leverages the latest technology to achieve synergy with your digital lifestyle".

Bonus points if you manufacture it in China for pennies.

Security disaster

I bet it requires root access.

And probably full perm-issions, too.

Dotdot. Who's there? Yet another IoT app layer

First thing that comes to mind is that old XKCD cartoon...

Problem: There are 27 competing standards.

"Hey, we should create a new unifying standard that meets everyone's needs!"

Problem: There are 28 competing standards.

Those online ads driving you bonkers are virtually 'worthless for brands'

Re: I know they're not getting rich from me..

@Unicornpiss they should have a series on the idiots that create this level of advertisement. They can call it "Mindless Wankers Not Fit to Live Among Us" (Title needs some work)

Well, yes, if only because you'd instantly be sued into oblivion by the makers of [Celebrity] Big Brother, The Apprentice, Benefits Street etc. for causing confusion and/or overlap with their shows.

Re: El Reg's ads

FYI - the iCab browser (well, front-end to Webkit, but you know what I mean) has adblocking capabilities on iPhone.

Re: you'd think...

After 30 years use the downstairs bog seat broke. Bought a replacement from Amazon who for the next 9 months or so thought I ought be interested in buying more of them.

Could've been worse. You know they have a delivery subscription option now?

You'd be knee-deep in khazi seats before you could say "cancel CANCEL unsubscribe ^C ^X quit exit Alexa how do I stop these toilet seats appearing every day"

Re: Optional

Thank you for the phrase "condom escapees". Might possibly supplant "cockwomble" as my preferred term of derision.

Re: you'd think...

As for elderly regs ads

Autocorrect/predictive keyboards are a bugger, aren't they, when you try to post to El Reg?

Re: Puzzled

You ask why the ad-flingers persist. Tempting though it is to simply say "it's because they're morons", I think the truth is a little more nuanced.

You say: "why do you persist in showing me adverts that annoy me?".

They say: "Ah, but at a subliminal level you remember the adverts, and that will influence your purchasing decisions!"

You say: "But if it's influencing me at all, it's doing so negatively"

They say: "No no, the mind doesn't work like that, you remember Brand X, but you forget that you remember Brand X because it infuriated you with an obnoxious full-screen auto-playing video ad"

You say: "Bollocks. I'm a human, not a goldfish. I remember - and have blacklisted - the pub where the staff were too busy chatting to bother to take my lunch order until it was after last orders anyway, and that was FIVE WHOLE YEARS AGO*, and I sure as hell do the same to brands online that get in my face and annoy me"

They say: "Errr... whatever. Here! Have some adverts!!!11!!!"

Short version: It's because they're morons.

*(shout-out to the Carpenters Arms in Fulbrook, by the way... I bear grudges for a long time)

Busted Oracle finance cloud leaves Rutgers Uni unable to foot bills

Re: A glorious opportunity for fraud here

It was ducks, not geese ;-)

Really? I remember it being Canada Geese, but it was over 20 years ago so I'm probably mistaken. Add geriatric anatidaeslexia to my list of foibles.

And what about Derwent and Goodricke? Depending on your vintage, "old Derwent snug" was very nice. Alcuin as a 50's cocktail bar was awesome.

I'd forgotten about those. Good call.

On a side note, I went back to the campus about 3 years ago, and discovered that the place had been extensively redeveloped. So "dark grey concrete monstrosities" is perhaps a little unfair.

Re: A glorious opportunity for fraud here

For you Brits, New Brunswick is a series of dark grey concrete monstrosities at the edge of a polluted slick of a river populated by dimwitted frat boys. A bit like Hull, but without the charm.

Sounds like it should be twinned with the University of York - substitute "geese pond" for river and the similarity's uncanny.

Beer icon in memory of happy times spent in Vanbrugh/Alcuin/Langwith bars.

Re: Oracle plus Cloud?!

Gee, I wonder why Oracle don't use "Unbreakable" as their slogan any more.

Well, other than in reference to their customers' resolve to keep shoveling money at them regardless of number of screwups, I guess...

Yorkshire council hit with prolonged web outage

Re: On Ilkley Moor...

A failure by Firefox then. MacOS Sierra + Chrome shows it perfectly fine.

Confusingly, it also displayed perfectly fine here - latest Firefox, but on OSX 10.9.5.

One of those spooky confluence-of-factors bugs that only manifests on a particular combination of OS & software, at a particular phase of the moon, when the computer is oriented just-so relative to Magnetic North...?

Re: Where's th' bin?

"No mate. Where's ya WHEELIE bin?"

"I really bin down the pub. Honest!"

Re: You're right about the bins.

Of course, in a civilized country, "not knowing which day the bins will be collected" wouldn't be a problem - put your bin out, bring it in whenever it's been emptied, be that next day or a week later.

In modern Britain, however, "putting your bin out more than 2 hours in advance of collection / leaving it out for more than 30 seconds after it's been emptied" is a Capital crime just about on a par with murder, arson, or wrongthink.

Oh, and Happy New Year, everyone!

Not OK Google: Tree-loving family turns down Page and pals' $7m

Re: "what would you do with $7m?"

Or for the lulz, donate it jointly to the KKK and the NAACP, with the stipulation that: they only get it if they unite in a spirit of harmony & brotherly love.

It's bad form to respond to my own comment, I know, but I am kicking myself for not adding:

"... to release a Christmas single, perhaps a cover version of 'Ebony and Ivory'"

What a lovely mental image that is!

"what would you do with $7m?"

Oh, I'd buy 700 million penny chews, and die of hyperglycaemia shortly thereafter whilst indulging my inner 6-year-old.

Or for the lulz, donate it jointly to the KKK and the NAACP, with the stipulation that: they only get it if they unite in a spirit of harmony & brotherly love.

What a silly question. A better one would be, "what wouldn't I do with $7m".

Kids, look at the Deep Learnings! (We’re just going to slurp your data)

Excellent quote.

"What Evernote has done is reveal the arrogance and moral bankruptcy of a Silicon Valley, a culture that neither respects humans, nor the things we create. It's all “data” for their machines, and they're driven by a higher purpose: intelligent machines."

Bingo. A thousand upvotes for this.

Except I'd venture that to be more accurate, you should replace "intelligent machines" with "greater profits".

This is why I have a deep-seated aversion to the cloud, and am hollowly, bitterly resentful of the way the IT industry has gone in the last handful of years - whereas before, the ethos was "let's get cool technology into peoples' hands to empower them", now it's "let's bribe people with trinkets so we can harvest as much as possible of their data and milk them for recurring revenue".

I'm not so deluded as to think that profit was not a motive in the past - that's how people eat and support themselves, and I don't think profit is intrinsically bad - but what we're seeing is this shift from "get rich by giving people control" to "get rich by taking as much control as possible away from people".

Just my opinion. I'd be interested to hear differing views.

The icon is me - bitter, twisted and cranky, yelling at the kids to get their Agile DevOps Cloud SaaS stuff off my lawn.

TalkTalk hacker gets iPhone taken away by Norwich Youth Court

Re: iPhone...DENIED

This happened in Norfolk. Nothing good comes out of that County.

I believe there's a medical acronym that local doctors put on patients' case notes - NFN, meaning "Normal, for Norfolk".

Still, Sussex is stranger, as anyone who's read "Cold Comfort Farm" will attest. I saw something nasty in the woodshed, Robert Poste's child!

The Dread Server BlackBerry Enterprise is no more

Re: "so. 'Ethics training', yes, but allegedly they had to put everyone through that "

The Ethics paper for AAT membership lasts 2 hours.

I finished it in 15 minutes.

Pshaw! For my employer-mandated ethics training, I bribed an illegal immigrant to take it on my behalf. Even got extra credit.

Canada asks citizens: How would you like us to spy on you?

Re: the smell of consultation in the morning

Ahem. That problem's already been solved.

https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3514.txt

Re: very simplistic idea of freedom...

Don't for get the Angles, Saxons and Danes. The Romans went home. Britain for Celts!

Yeah.

ROMANES EUNT DOMUS!

Hackers actively stealing Wi-Fi keys from vulnerable routers

Re: HOW??!?

You're overestimating TalkTalk's desire to help their customers.

Note that for those who can't get to the help site, TT have of course, what do you take them for? provided an alternative source of support - it's in a locked filing cabinet, in a disused lavatory, in the basement, behind a sign saying "beware of the leopard"...

Plastic fiver: 28 years' work, saves acres of cotton... may have killed less than ONE cow*

Re: And yet...

I have trouble picturing a badger vacuum. Is that a really small vacuum cleaner

You mean, in a "101 Uses For A Dead Badger" sense?

Thank you for the Friday afternoon chuckle.

(sidenote: in a spirit of whimsy, I did an image search for "badger vacuum". My surprise at the fact that google was ready to auto-complete it as soon as I typed "badger v_" turned to realization that it's the name of a real company, who apparently do excavation hydrovac services for the pipeline industry. The More You Know...)

Congrats America, you can now safely slag off who you like online

Re: Great article A+ would read again

@Arthur the cat: This SMBC strip comes to mind. (SFW but the site might be considered N- by some filters)

Great article A+ would read again

Bytes arrived promptly and as described. 5/5

SHIFT + F10, Linux gets you Windows 10's cleartext BitLocker key

Re: No surprise

@Anonymous Boring Coward: ignore JJ Carter, he's just a troll, desperately seeking attention. Don't feed him.

Chap creates Slack client for Commodore 64

Re: “artisanal, locally sourced, homemade cable”

Yes, but is it vegan?

And I bet the polymer sheathing of the cable includes tallow too.

Doctor AI will see you now: US military vets will be diagnosed by deep-learning bots

Oblig XKCD

IBM Watson Medical Algorithm

Google's Chromecast Audio busted BT home routers – now it has a fix

Re: getting the update

Maybe a CD stuck to the cover of the next issue of The Register?

Psh, get outta here n00b, it needs to be a minimum of 4 pages of printed BASIC listing, needing to be typed in by hand, with no checksums. No school like the old school.

Ah, who are we kidding, we both know it's IoT so it'll be delivered by The Cloud (do it locally across the LAN? how old-fashioned and LUDDITE) and require at least one account signup, three items of personal data including your DOB and blood-type, and a live internet connection with 47 ports forwarded. And then next week they'll push out another update without asking, that will add toast-making capability to your Chromecast and mandatory Facebook / Twitter integration (while disabling the audio casting functionality because "our strategic priorities have re-aligned" or somesuch).

So who's to blame?

Ok, Google have made a patch available, but how come a client device like the Chromecast could cause the BT routers to reboot&reset in the first place?

Methinks the BT router is the real weak link here.

Though I admit that waiting for BT to issue a patch would be extremely futile, so it's just as well that Google have a workaround.

Loyalty card? Really? Why data-slurping store cards need a reboot

Re: Nope

I had half a TV once. I'm not saying it wasn't cheap but it was a bit shit all told

Was it the selection of programs?

- The One Ronnie

- Not The 4:30 News

- The 0.5 Show

And as for the film choices... The Magnificent 3.5 was a bit weak, and the less said about The Hateful Four, the better...

Airbus flies new plane for the first time

so why can't they just add an emergency override for the pilots, enter a code of some kind

Good idea!

[UP][UP][DOWN][DOWN][LEFT][RIGHT][LEFT][RIGHT][B][A]

Hospital info thief malware puts itself into a coma to avoid IT bods

Hospitals had better start using packet sniffing to uncover this sort of thing.

Or examine the logs.

Office Depot halts PC Health Checks amid bogus infection claims

Re: Shocked I tell you!

Actually, I am surprised...

There's such a thing as "American trading standards laws"???

Launch set for GOES-R satellite capable of 30-second weather updates

So if it launches

...we can call it GOES-R the Goes-Air-ian?

(I apologize for the very, very weak Ghostbusters-related pun. Seriously, I wish them luck for Saturday.)

Gone in 70 seconds: Holding Enter key can smash through defense

Re: Gone in 10 seconds...

As seen on TV - shell command DECRYPT ALL FILES works without asking for the password.

But that only works if you have your terminal font size set to at least two-inch high characters, and if you have the NMap sourcecode scrolling by in another window.

I can talk about Linux till I'm a little hoarse, does that count?

'Pavement power' - The bad idea that never seems to die

Thank you...

...for pointing out the vapidity of this idea.

To me, "energy-harvesting pavement" is the real-world equivalent of The Simpsons' Monorail, and it looks like Vegas is the latest (sadly, not the last) place to get taken in by its huckster salesmen.

Top of the bots: This AI isn't a cold, cruel killing machine – it's a pop music hit machine

Re: Problem with AI tunes.

Upvoted - not least for the FMEB reference.

Meh. Old news.

This was already done - with chart-topping success - sometime in the early 80s, using a Harrington 1200 music composing computer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqkUISJej2o

Panicked WH Smith kills website to stop sales of how-to terrorism manuals

Re: Good job... or not...

Signs point to it, as do portents.

Do you really think this is the time to worry about the state of your camping equipment?

(h/t Pratchett)

Re: Sites?

BAN CHEMISTRY! THINK OF THE CHILDREN!

I'm reminded of a spoof I read about recently (too lazy to google the source, so apologies if I mis-quote it).

The basic premise was that at the rate we're going, children's chemistry sets in the near future wil consist solely of experiments like:

Experiment A: "Dilute a small quantity of aqueous H2O by adding liquid Dihydrogen Monoxide. Observe that a quantiy of water has been produced."

...and even that would probably be banned eventually, because words like "Monoxide" sound SCARY and DANGEROUS.

El Paso city bungs $3.2m to email crooks pretending to be bosses

Re: .

Thank you all for the kind upvotes.

At least the editors didn't chime in along the lines of "that mail wouldn't fool us, it can't possibly be from Iain, it's too well-written in its first draft" :)

Teen in the dock on terror apologist charge for naming Wi-Fi network 'Daesh 21'

Re: Weird

@Adam JC You should set it to GCHQ_Monitoring_Hub_117

That way, it would suggest there are at the very least another 116

Ahem...

German Tank Problem