According to the WHO 1.3 million people die per year in road deaths. So approximately 3500/day. (Granted, not all of those are car deaths, and that figure presumably includes lorries, motorcycles, and any other traffic type).
Posts by JDC
89 publicly visible posts • joined 2 Sep 2010
Netherlands digital minister smacks down Big Tech over AI regs
Romance scammers' favorite lies cost victims $1.3B last year
Wikimedia Foundation confirms, and bemoans, Pakistan ban
Strangely torn
While clearly "blasphemy" is a victimless crime, and I'm pretty sure this is more to do with Pakistan's leaders using censorship to hold on to power rather than any more noble aim, I am at the same time slightly sympathetic to their approach. If a website is showing illegal* information, trying to hide behind "we don't write it, it's our users" is not IME a valid position. I wouldn't have any sympathy for YouTube trying to use the same reasoning as an excuse not to remove, say, child porn - so why should anyone accept it from Wikipedia?
*for some value of "illegal"
Smart ovens do really dumb stuff to check for Wi-Fi
Big Apple locals hire Russians to game New York's taxi system
Study suggests AI cruise control could kill traffic jams by cutting out the 'intuition' factor
Security needs to learn from the aviation biz to avoid crashing
Re: "The same needs to happen in security"
> In the world of computing, a company cannot lock down a server for a full forensic examination, it needs to continue making money and it didn't foresee the expenses for a second server with the same configuration to pick up where the hacked one fell off.
In the world of aviation when a plane crashes they can ground the entire fleet (basically worldwide) of that model, and tough luck for the airlines affected. Having to shut down a server and not being able to make money? Why not?
Arrogant, subtle, entitled: 'Toxic' open source GitHub discussions examined
When civilisation ends, a Xenix box will be running a long-forgotten job somewhere
Re: .MRE Lifespan
The Spanish chocolate drink "Colacao" (readily available in all Spanish supermarkets to this day) doesn't dissolve completely in cold milk and forms lumps, perhaps this would be an acceptable substitute?
(Spanish childhood can be divided into two groups: those who drink Colacao with its "grumitos", and those who prefered the lumpless Nesquik).
If your apps or gadgets break down on Sunday, this may be why: Gpsd bug to roll back clocks to 2002
Re: My Windows gets the time wrong all the time....
Digital signatures, at least here in Spain, usually include a timestamp (generated using a GPS based time). This timestamp could be used in court to demonstrate that you signed X before time Y, which clearly opens up all sorts of legal problems if the timestamp is not correct.
Why did automakers stall while the PC supply chain coped with a surge? Because Big Tech got priority access
Prime suspect: Amazon India apologises for offensive scenes in political thriller
Beer rating app reveals homes and identities of spies and military bods, warns Bellingcat
Want to own a bit of Concorde? Got £750k burning a hole in your pocket? We have just the thing
The IoT wars are over, maybe? Amazon, Apple, Google give up on smart-home domination dreams, agree to develop common standards
Science fiction great Brian Aldiss, 92, dies at his Oxford home
Re: The Greats have gone
Much as I enjoy Peter Hamilton, I find it hard to think of him as a "Great" - they're huge space operas, but beach reading rather than classics. And they could mostly do with a more assertive editor.
Iain M. Banks is perhaps the only recent SF author that I know of who could be rightly considered Great. Be happy to hear more suggestions, though!
US visitors must hand over Twitter, Facebook handles by law – newbie Rep starts ball rolling
Skin tattoo will tell your phone when you've had a skinful
FOUR Avatar sequels
Would sir care to see the post-pub nosh menu?
Australian cops rush to stop 2AM murder of … a spider
Samsung’s consumer IoT vision – stupid, desperate, creepy
> Turn the oven on? Great, so you've already taken the chicken out of the freezer last night, mixed a nice marinad, soaked it for a couple of hours, choped the veg, laid it on a tray and placed it in the oven?
And all the while avoided food poisoning by having that raw chicken sitting in the oven all day while you're at work...
Moronic Time cover sets back virtual reality another 12 months
Spaniards get that cinking feeling
Airbus warns of software bug in A400M transport planes
Spanish election site in security cert warning screwup snafu
Out of time: Huawei, LG unveil watches nobody wants to buy
After a month with a Sony Smartwatch 3
... it came "free" with a phone upgrade, not something I bought separately. So after a month, my impressions.
First, the good bits: It's quite a nice watch, certainly more stylish than the 15€ Decathlon digital thingy I usually wear. It doesn't look too cheap, and it's comfortable. As an IT worker it's got a certain geeky charm. It needs charging every 3 days or so, which isn't too onerous. (It's also worth pointing out that discovering the charge is running low isn't anything like as irritating as discovering your phone is about to die). It's waterproof. The vibrate notifications are quite handy if, like me, you prefer not to irritate your coworkers with endless beeping whatsapp notifications - it's always 100% something's happened, which isn't always the case with a phone set to vibrate and sitting in a pocket or bag. It makes a reasonable remote for your (phone) music player.
The not-sure bits. It's got a GPS and you can use it for navigation. Obviously not much use when you're driving, but could be good when walking. I haven't tried it, though. Not sure about battery life with the GPS activated, either.
The bad bits. Except they aren't really bad, more just a reflection of the pointlessness and limitations of the watch. Reading messages is a trip down memory lane: it's just like trying to read stuff on a Nokia candybar phone. It has a certain nostalgic charm, but it's still crap. You can apparently talk to your watch and get it to do things, but you look like a twat. You can open apps on your phone from your watch - but why would you when you still have to use the phone to actually do anything with the app? 3 day battery life is OK for a smartwatch, pretty crap for any other of watch. The UI is confusing, sometimes you swipe down, sometimes you tap it, sometimes swipe to the side.
TL;DR: it's quite nice, but ultimately pointless. It was free, so I use it. I wouldn't spend 200€ on one, though.
Breaking news: BBC FINALLY spots millions of mugshots on cop database
Re: False positives?
Only if face recognition is the only lead they have - in most cases they'll also have an address, a reason the person's in the database (even if innocent, said person was presumably arrested on suspicion of a particular crime), etc. Even if 100 false positives turn up the police should be able to narrow that down considerably.
Still not a justification for holding innocent people's data, but it does show that it's not such a problem.
Post-pub nosh neckfiller: Chickpea stew à la Bureau des Projets Spéciaux
Re: Based on a traditional Spanish concoction
Not to mention cocido requiring "mollycoddling"... Eh? It's a piece of piss to cook, even if you do decide to start skimming off the scum - it's something you do every half hour or so, hardly an effort.
And I always add salt to the water used to soak the chickpeas, and they turn out fine.
$500 TEDDY BEAR teaches tots to spit up personal data
Holy sentient blender, Batman: Telefónica to trial AT&T's Internet of Home Stuff in Europe
Thirteen Astonishing True Facts You Never Knew About SCREWS
Remember when Google+ outed everyone by their real names? Now Google's sorry
Podule-lodged Brit nears two weeks atop ocean peak Rockall
'Inaccurate' media misleads public on European Court's Google ruling
Baidu poaches Google Brain inventor for Silicon Valley AI project
So, just how do you say 'the mutt's nuts' in French?
Research bods told: Try to ID anonymised data subjects? No more CASH for you
Re: La La La La
Not really: this possible sanction is to cover people maliciously setting out to recover identities from supposedly anonymous data: I imagine that as long as you publicly state the intent is test the anonymisation process you could be granted an exception. An ethical researcher would also inform the data owner if they discover flaws.
Dark matter killed the dinosaurs, boffins suggest
Europe: Apple. Google. Yes, you. Get in here. It's about these in-app bills
Except it's not always immediately evident that your kid has the ability to pay.
I had to renew my daughter's Whatsapp account (all 0.89€ of it), which of course meant entering my credit card details. There was no message telling me that my credit card was registered for reuse, and could be used by my kid to buy whatever she fancied, including of course in-app payments. Worse: to deregister it I had to login to Google Wallet (using her password), find the credit card, and eliminate it. There was no option on the phone (that I could see) to achieve this.
I did consider leaving the credit card on the phone, and setting up a PIN - but Orange Spain in its infinite wisdom seems to have removed this option.
Two guilty over 'menacing' tweets to feminist campaigner
Thought the toilet camera was weird? Try actual thumb flash drives from tech's supershow
How the UK's national memory lives in a ROBOT in Kew
UK defamation law reforms take effect from start of 2014
El avión Buitre 2 rinde homenaje a nuestros amigos españoles
Baywatch babe Pamela Anderson battles bullfighting
I, for one, welcome our robotic communist jobless future
Fried-egg sarnies kick off Reg man's quid-a-day nosh challenge
Free online Uni courses pressure vendors to drop training costs
Re: With regard to the 20:1 ratio between entrance and success
My experience with Coursera:
Certainly I've signed up to courses, and then dropped out. Why shouldn't I? I take a look at the first week's lectures, see if it's what I'm expecting, and if not... I'm not paying anything, so no loss. I also had to drop out of another course halfway through - my entire family turned up to stay for a week, and there was no way I could both study and be with them. If I'd been paying I probably wouldn't have invited them, but...
Another point is that the course workload is often considerably higher than advertised, which is something that needs to be worked on. Too often the students that first take the course are guinea pigs, with new materials that require extensive study beyond the course, etc. Where possible, take the second course offering - a lot of bugs will have been ironed out.