Posts by annodomini2

UK Minister of Fun Matt Hancock opens London infosec upstart creche

Re: Minister of Fun!?

What next, a Ministry of Love?

That's the Home Office.

UK taxman has amassed voice profiles of 5.1 million taxpayers

Re: I'm one of those 5M

"but more probably they pay accountants to look after their tax to make sure they don't pay any more than needed as little as they can get away with."

Corrected it for you.

Why the 'feudal' tech monopolies run rings around competition watchdogs

I'll just leave this here...

"The aim of business is not to provide the best service, but the ONLY service!"

Brit reseller Aria PC's appeal against HMRC VAT fraud finding gets under way

Re: I bought a monitor off them in 2006...

I knew Aria when it was 2 guys in a small section of an industrial estate in Manchester.

Haven't dealt with them for a number of years after we had some issues with returns.

Universal Credit has never delivered bang for buck, but now there's no turning back – watchdog

Ahh but..

They are not using it, ergo they are not Unemployed.

No money going out and an unemployment statistics win.

Re: hmm

The fundamental problem with UBI is it cannot work in a Capitalist Economy, the market will render the payments inert.

As everybody gets something, those working have more cash and so spending goes up, demand goes up and prices go up.

Relative value of your payments goes down until they are irrelevant, just like with JSA and the state pension.

Re: The government position:

Then again, we voted for them.

The positive of Democracy is everyone gets a vote, the negative is that is also the problem.

Da rude sand storm seizes the Opportunity, threatens to KO rover

Re: God speed little robot

I always wondered why they didn't fit these rovers with a self-cleaning system? a windscreen wiper or some kind of air duster would surely be doable?

Weight, cost, complexity.

Kepler finds three Earth-sized exoplanets, but they're too hot to handle

Re: And still no messages from the stars....

"If there's a long enough pause between the civilizations, the earlier one becomes the fossil fuels for the next. The rest of the fossils might be a clue to the future archaeologists that something went horribly wrong last go around, perhaps they should be more careful this time?"

Maybe that's what happened to the Dinosaurs? And we are just too arrogant to admit it?

Astroboffins trace mysterious noise from hard rock in space

Re: Arthur C Clarkes "2061"

White Dwarf cores are supposedly mostly diamond.

Done and dusted? Vast storm gobbles NASA's long-lived Mars robot

Curiosity is about 8200km away from Opportunity. Given it's taken Curiosity 6 yrs to travel ~9km, it would take ~546yrs to reach Opportunity.

SpaceX flings SES-12 satellite into orbit, but would-be lunar tourists should probably unpack

Re: Would-be lunar tourists should probably unpack

"BFR is due for 2019"

Grasshopper style tests only, no orbit.

Russian battery ambitions see a 10x increase in power from smaller, denser nukes

Re: Usefull?

It's non-linear due to the half life.

NASA spots asteroid on crash course with Earth – with just hours to go

Re: Passing the Buck

By deflecting the Asteroids we would be leaving all those lovely resources up there for future generations.

Big bimmer bummer: Bavaria's BMW buggies battered by bad bugs

Curious...

However, we found that most of the ECUs still respond to the diagnostic messages even at normal driving speed (confirmed on BMW i3), which could cause serious security issues already. It will become much worse if attackers invoke some special UDS routines (e.g. reset ECU, etc..).

Curious If they would actually respond to ECU reset with vehicle speed above 0, most don't.

Yes some read systems still work with the vehicle moving, your OBD reader performing "real time readout" e.g. Torque. Uses these for operation and they are used during development or diagnostics of issues.

But safety critical features are typically protected.

I'm not saying they shouldn't be better protected, but this screams journalistic exaggeration to me.

I got 257 problems, and they're all open source: Report shines light on Wild West of software

Re: "every closed source software vendor has their own license usually with onerous restrictions"

"With closed source only the vendor can make changes to the code."

Depends on the supplier and the license.

NASA will send tiny helicopter to Mars

Re: And of course the sky crane they used for landing

No it hovers to lower the vehicle onto the surface.

Then flys off some distance before crashing.

NASA boss insists US returning to the Moon after Peanuts to show for past four decades

Re: NASA returning to the Moon? Again?

Cats might work, they are typically lighter and tend to land on their feet.

Don't take so well to issued orders though.

UK.gov expects auto auto software updates won't involve users

Irrational...

Forced updates are irrational for all the above reasons:

1. Crash/bluescreen.

2. Incomplete/Incompatible updates.

As they want to prevent potentially dangerous software from being active on the road, which is a valid request.

Require that particular operation/feature to not be available until the update is applied, rather than forcing the update.

Google's socially awkward geeks craft socially awkward AI bot that calls people for you

Could be useful for...

When you get [insert giant tech company name] support callers.

Train it to waste as much of their time as possible.

Broadcom's Arm server chip lives – as Cavium's two-socket ThunderX2

Re: Is it just me?

ARM started in PC's.

NASA demos little nuclear power plant to help find little green men

Re: Why don't they just use..

Plenty of radiation on Mars, don't need a nuke for that.

Re: Why don't they just use..

Duh, from all the glowing monkeys! ;)

Bill Gates declined offer to serve as Donald Trump's science advisor

...He's also a hugely successful businessman, which seems to earn him Trump's respect...

Yes Gates is very financially successful, more so than Trump.

I think this is more to do with having 'control' over someone with a higher net worth, than actually the right person for the job.

You'd be surprised how much the 'upper echelons' of society can be childish and petty .

Double double, soil and trouble, fire burn and heat shield bubble: NASA cracks rover, has dirty talk with ESA

Re: time to revisit miniature pumpe propulsion?

This what you are thinking of?

Reciprocating Pump Systems for Space Propulsion

Re: No news here ...

Or the manufacturer wanted to charge for a new one and knew it's test limits and put it slightly over to ensure a sale.

Re: Why aren't we digging deep for signs of life?

Given they think complex life may have occurred earlier on Earth, it's not impossible.

It's not rocket science! Actually it is, and it's been a busy frickin week

Re: Is it rocket science?

In the '50s and '60s it really was rocket science, now it's rocket engineering as the base principals are well understood.

I spy with my little eye ... a quantum drum with TRILLIONS of atoms

Re: The real question

Talkie toaster says:

"A-ha! you're a waffle man!"

SpaceX finally Falcon flings NASA's TESS into orbit

Skylon

The other potential option being Skylon, i.e. no stages at all, so you recover the whole vehicle.

Re: Always get nurvous

Unlikely as ESA are funding the launch.

BFR

That's the aim with BFR.

But to give you an idea of the cost of recovering the 2nd stage, current estimates put BFR Reusable payload at 150t to LEO, Expendable is 300t+.

More than 1/2 the payload capability is lost for reusability of the rocket.

Given about 1/3 is lost for stage 1, based on F9.

The current F9 GTO reusable payload is about 5.5t, if they were to reuse the 2nd stage that may drop to 4t or less.

But this obviously depends on the target orbit of the payload.

Community Fibre wins £18m from UK.gov infrastructure fund

Complimentary Discworld reference

"The aim of business is not to provide the best service, but the ONLY service!"

'Your computer has a virus' cold call con artists on the rise – Microsoft

Re: Re "putting the phone down is almost always the right thing to do."

Also have a recording of dial up tones on hand.

Pretend people are at the door.

Making a cup of tea.

Computer is slow

Then have a secondary Linux machine on a 3G modem (can't be too fast) rigged up with a screen to look like your favourite five eyes supporter (e.g. GCHQ, NSA, CIA, FBI etc) with network logging, (their IP address is always good, with automated extrapolation of their location on your favourite mapping software).

Tech bribes: What's the WORST one you've ever been offered?

Re: Think yourselvess lucky

Or the odd horse head...

OMG! OIG to audit SLS: NASA probed over big rocket project's big budgets, big delays

Curious...

Are the legacy Ares 1 and Ares 5 dev costs being piled into these development costs?

I'm not saying NASA are innocent in this, but there's typically a lot of messing from the Elected representatives.

Car-crash television: 'Excuse me ma'am, do you speak English?' 'Yes I do,' replies AMD's CEO

Re: The modern F1 car is basically a wheeled computer,

Which is also against the rules... basically to prevent this kind of thing.

European Space Agency squirts a code update at Mars Express orbiter

Re: Deep space comms

"Should be easy to run fiber - no roads to dig up and you don't need your own ducts"

Unfortunately the fibre would need to pass through the Sun on occasion, so the tunnelling job would probably be the most difficult ever attempted.

The new Black: Western Dig doubles capacity on slimmed-down flasher

Great... NOT

New Drive, better performance. Great.

Same name, how does anyone differentiate between new and old stock. Morons.

What the @#$%&!? Microsoft bans nudity, swearing in Skype, emails, Office 365 docs

Re: That's Yorkshire fucked then

And what of the people who live in Twatt?

There's a village called 'Fuck' in Germany.

UK.gov: Here's £8.8m to plough into hydrogen-powered car tech

Re: ' Current industrial production of hydrogen gas'

A group have come up with a catalyst that converts Formic Acid into Hydrogen + CO2 + water.

In theory the CO2 could be scrubbed, but the benefit is that you can get ~590L of Hydrogen from 1L of Formic Acid.

It has low toxicity and low flammability at room temps and is easily transported.

Still doesn't answer where the formic acid is coming from, but it looks promising.

NASA fungus problem puts theory of 'Martian mushrooms' on toast

Re: They came from outer space

Plenty of water ice on Mars, just need to defrost it.

Please, Hammond ... don't hurt 'em: 'Suggestions' time for UK digi tax clampdown

Re: Not such a good idea

Unfortunately that requires logic and common sense, all of which are typically lacking in pretty much all bureaucracies, local and national governments.

Are you Falcon sure, Elon? Musk vows Big Rocket will go up 2019

The Energia could deliver 100,000 kg to LEO whereas the BFR is planned to be able to deliver 150,000 kg to the same orbit. The BFR will be a bit bigger.

BFR 150,000 kg re-usable, 300,000kg expendable, possibly more.

It's considerably bigger.

Auto manufacturers are asleep at the wheel when it comes to security

Re: I don't think Cirlig understands how cars work...

There are safety mechanisms in place to prevent that, but if someone's reprogrammed ECU's all bets are off.

For all we know, aliens could be as careless with space junk as us

Re: Collecting the reasons this could fail

Detecting Exo-moons is currently a problem, so detecting small bits of debris is going to be an even bigger challenge.

Pasties in SPAAAAACE: Cornwall hopes for slice of £50m spaceport cash

Re: Brexit fixes the UK spaceport problem

"52° North makes access to geostationary orbits difficult, but as we are leaving Europe, the UK can be moved somewhere more equatorial. The government will expect clever people to work out how to actually move the UK with no budget perhaps based on sending the UK over the internet without encryption."

Nah nothing so complicated, they'll just redefine the equator.

Good luck saying 'Sorry I'm late, I had to update my car's firmware'

Re: OTA Updates for Cars

I imagine the power steering in a tesla is a lot more powerful and harder to manually steer against than in a normal car due to the autodrive function so while some 200lb male might not have a problem fighting it a 100lb woman may well do.

Nope, 90% of cars less than 10yo are EPS (Electric Power Steering), vs Hydraulic or Electrically Powered Hydraulic Steering.

IF an EPS system is determined to go a specific direction or position it will go there, no human is strong enough to resist, if you try it will most likely break your arms before it moves!

To give you an idea, an early prototype of a 1st generation EPS was tested for a major automaker, there was a bug in the firmware which caused it to go full left (this is during development and not my code btw), it proceeded to go full left and when it hit the rack end stop, generated sufficient torque to rip the EPS unit out of the bulkhead and continued to spin until it snapped it's power cables.

Autodrive has nothing to do with the power of the system, but the reliability, with self drive basically this thing cannot fail. It needs a sequence of backup modes in the event of failures (there are of course limits).

Up to 25% of new builds still can't get superfast broadband – study

Re: Fibber

I'd get around 9mbps single and 15mbps double. ~2mbps ADSL2+

Google Flutter hits beta: Another go at cross-platform mobile dev

Re: "I've never understood the desire to stick to a single language"

What's new, this has been going on since the creation of programming languages.