Posts by Pen-y-gors

IBM accidentally invents new class of polymers

Go boffins!

Don't you just love serendipity?

(excuse me while I go and take my penicillin)

Google Maps adds all UK public transport timetables

Presumably useful for some people

But having said that, traveline-cymru.info seems to include all the public transport timetables already. It works out your journey and even includes the 2 minutes to walk from the bus stop to the train station. It also includes google maps, train fares, option to buy ticket etc.

I think they should sue Google!

Boffins teach robo-arm to catch flying beer bottle

Bullets?

Grenades are easy - but can it snatch a speeding bullet out of the air?

Scientists warn of FOUR-FOOT sea level rise from GLACIER melt

Re: Note to self

...checks map...present house is 23ft above mean sea level and 3 miles from shoreline. This could be tricky...well, only if I plan to live to 200 (which I do)

BEAK DRONE: 1080p HD Wi-Fi quad-copter by Parrot takes to skies

12 minute battery?

Surely they can do better than that? Otherwise it seems like it could be a lot of fun. Can it be adapted to carry and release a rotten egg when passing over [insert-name-of-unpleasant-party] politicians?

We're from the same dust cloud, bro: Boffins find Sun's long-lost sibling

Bad news...

Does this mean there could be other planets out there where Country and Western music has evolved?

'Bladdered' Utah couple cuffed in church lawn sex outrage

Re: IT angle?

They now have a record on a computer database?

Solaris deposed as US drone-ware, replaced by Linux administration

Publishing the code?

Isn't it a requirement of using Linux that the code modifications must be published? So we'll have the US Merchants of Death (tm) developing code which Al Quaeda can use in their drones. Neat.

Cold War spy aircraft CRASHED Los Angeles' air traffic control

Vintage planes

If the USAF can still fly U-2s when they're nearly 60 years old, why can't the RAF still fly Vulcans and Harriers? They're wonderful machines, and still potentially very useful.

Tesco to tout its own smartphone – now THAT'S an unexpected item in the bagging area

Can it be cleaned up?

Will users be able to uninstall all the Tesco apps and tracking crap without rooting the whole phone?

Fix capitalism with floating cities on Venus says Charles Stross

possible B Ark?

nuff said

And! For! Yahoo!'s next! trick! ... Making! two! new! TV! comedies!

I should stay in more.

I've never heard of any of the programmes mentioned by these 'acclaimed directors'. Are they some sort of 'youth' thing?

Ah well, I must be getting old.

Cuffing darknet-dwelling cyberscum is tricky. We'll 'disrupt' crims instead, warns top cop

Edward Snowden?

"But [NSA whistleblower Edward] Snowden has made it more difficult for law enforcement to hunt down the wolves"

Or rather, law enforcement has made it more difficult for law enforcement. If they had limited their work to recording the activities of known or suspected criminals (with a court order) instead of a blanket dragnet recording the minutest activity of millions of law-abiding people around the world, then perhaps there would be less of a rush to keep private activities private.

They have only themselves to blame.

Top tip, power users – upgrading Ubuntu may knacker your Linux PC

'Twas ever thus

Was happily using Ubuntu 11.04. Decided to upgrade to 11.10 which promptly went berserk as it couldn't handle the integrated graphics on my old Shuttle box. Major hassle getting it back to 11.04. When I can afford a new box then I may have another go with a serious Linux distro.

Elon Musk wants SpaceX to launch spy sats – and will sue US gov to do so

I think he may have a point...

See title

Facebook preps ad network to TARGET YOU WHERE YOU LIVE

What's the point of that?

Surely no sensible person puts their real location on FB or allows it to access GPS?

Or maybe the ads are targetted at non-sensible persons?

LulzSec's Sabu hacked foreign gov sites while under FBI control – NYT

Re: So what?

It's not just morally wrong - I dunno about "the law" in the USA, but in the UK there is a crime of incitement. You can't suggest to people that they should go and lynch the local pediatrician, and niether can you incite people to hack into computers.

Despite your fancy-schmancy security tech, passwords still weakest link in IT defences

What's the alternative?

Passwords have issues, but what do we replace them with? Most of the options seem to rely on having unique ID that identifies you as an individual, not as 'someone authorised to access this account'. And I don't want that. And when you have a unique ID used across sites (who in their right mind uses a Facebook ID to sign in to other site?) then when it gets cracked it gets cracked big-time.

Even without serious hacking (and I think aol has been hit recently - I'm getting a spate of malware links from hacked aol contact lists lately) - there is always the problem of shoulder surfing or man-in-the-middle at insecure internet cafes.

I must admit that google 2-factor seems pretty effective though...

Slip your finger in this ring and unlock your backdoor, phone, etc

Re: But it's still pointless.

Barcodes are always convenient - saw a bod in the chippie last night with one tattooed on the back of his neck! Didn't have a scanner on me to check out who he was.

Muggers?

So muggers now nick your phone AND chop off your finger to get the key. Neat.

Is tech the preserve of the young able-bodied? Let's talk over a fine dinner and claret

Strewth!

That's what happens when smart-arse visual designers are let loose on the web - form triumphs over functionality. This one sounds like a candidate for websitesthatsuck.com

Rounded corners? Pah! Amazon's '3D phone has eye-tracking tech'

Re: Rotatable?

Horrible to use sounds like an understatement - I suspect it would feel as if your brain was leaking out of your ears.

BSkyB, CityFibre, TalkTalk pull clear of bigwig BT's bundles – plan to set fibre to York

Interesting

...and when do they plan to offer gigabit FTTP to homes in Llanfair-ym-Mechain, Widecombe-in-the-Moor and Drumnadrochit?

What's that? When hell freezes over?

So you invent a wireless network using LEDs, what do you do next? Add solar panels. Boom

Another plus point

...no leakage and so better security. So long as you've got line of sight (not too tricky to arrange) you can use it to connect multiple devices within a room, but with no danger of your LiFi being slurped by a passing Googlemobile or general ne'er-do-well.

Revoke, reissue, invalidate: Stat! Security bods scramble to plug up Heartbleed

Has it been exploited?

Just ask NSA/GCHQ...

Broadband Secretary of SHEEP sensationally quits Cabinet

poacher/gamekeeper

It strikes me that letting a committee of MPs decide whether another MP is bent is a bit like a burglar having a jury of twelve good burglars and true at their trial.

Time for a truly independent system.

French firms: You want us to compile DATABASES... of our SECRET information?

What's the problem?

An A4 file containing all the relevant information is technically a database. It's harder to hack than magnetic media and it's more durable. Make it accessible in a locked room, with secure access to authorised people et voila, Robert est votre oncle.

'Hello, is that the space station? NASA here. Can you put us through to Moscow?'

Good news for SpaceX

I think they may find that there's some extra cash to get them to speed things up a tad so they can do manned flights sooner rather than later.

Lego is the TOOL OF SATAN, thunders Polish priest

He has a point - sort of...

One of the joys of Lego in the early days was that it encouraged imagination. Using basic building blocks you could create anything. Then they started bringing out special pieces and sets and it became just another one-use toy, or at best a jigsaw - build whatever is on the box. These figures are the same - kids don't really need a Lord Vampyre figure - if they want to pretend they're fighting the dark lord from their spaceship then they should be able to take a nice friendly smiling 'Mr Bun the Baker' (or whatever) figure and PRETEND he's a mega-vampyre.

All these specialist bits are just a way to extract more money out of kids and their parents.

Obviously Playmobil doesn't count...

Hey, Michael Lewis: Stop DEMONISING Wall Street’s SUPERHUMAN high-speed trading

Re: Why do we have stock markets?

The key word is 'long term' - if I or my pension fund is investing to give me a return of several percent p.a. for the next decade, then 0.5% at the beginning really should be pretty invisible (or 0.2% or whatever, just not 0.005%) - and if it's going to hurt 'the market' that much then allow investors to claim it against tax when they sell after 5 years

It wouldn't actually seriously raise the cost of investment to companies - it's the investor who is paying. And I would think many companies would welcome a bit of long term stability in their investor portfolio. Even if they do somehow end up picking up the tab, then if a 0.5% extra at the outset is all that stands between them and ruin then they're already a pretty bad bet for investment.

Why do we have stock markets?

It's simple - to allow companies to raise the money to expand their business, for the benefit of all concerned, and for investors to invest their money in worthwhile businesses, to generate long-term returns. Anything else, such as the casino of HFT is generally against the principles of the stock market. Businesses should be able to have investors who want long term stable growth for the company, and who take an interest in the work of the company, not investors who know no more about the business than the stock exchange ticker name.

Two simple solutions, which wouldn't harm businesses and long-term investors, but would largely kill off the parasites:

1) The transaction tax - 0.5% should be invisible to a long-term investor

2) Returning to the use of papaer share certificates and share registers - no-one is the legal owner of stock until they hold the paper certificate and it is registered with the company; no-one can sell stock unless they are in physical possession of the certificates.

Google asks April Fools: Want a job? Be our 'Pokemon Master'

Another google April fool

This morning some silly thing appeared when I went into Google Mail offering me the option of having 'Shelfies' (Shared Selfies) as my theme - which would change every hour!

How I laughed...

MPs attack BT's 'monopolistic' grip on gov-subsidised £1.2bn rural broadband rollout

Re: Could competition have worked?

Virgin? What have they got to do with rural broadband? Look at a map of their coverage -

http://maps.thinkbroadband.com/?utm_source=mainsite&utm_medium=banner&utm_campaign=maps&utm_content=header#!lat=54.43621959127021&lng=-2.74108774609374&zoom=6&type=terrain&cable-coverage

It's hilarious. The day that I see Virgin laying fibre along the country lanes of East Anglia, Yorkshire, Cornwall and Ceredigion, is the day I might take them seriously. They're only interested in cheap and cheerful high-density housing.

In terms of rural services, there really is no competition and there probably shouldn't be. What's the sense of five companies laying pipes/cable/fibre whatever into a rural area with a population of a few hundred? Better to have a monopoly with controls to ensure they a) provide a fair service and b) don't rip off the customers.

ISPs CAN be ordered to police pirates by blocking sites, says ECJ

Read it carefully...

It does seem a bit silly, but the article suggests that they can only be required to block specific pirated content, NOT an entire website. Call-me-Dave please take note.

Rule of law: Turkish court nixes government Twitter ban ... for now

It's all rather illogical

I thought Turkey was keen to join the EU? Blocking free communication is not the way to go about it.

Oh hang on, wait a minute - isn't that what Call-me-Dave is doing? Is this a backdoor way to get the UK thrown out of the EU? (And then the Scots can have the UK seat)

Facebook Oculus VR buyout: IT WANTS your EYEBALLS

Sold their souls?

If I had a product that was still in development and Zuck offered me $2 BEEEEELLION for it, I think I might say yes. And if it was Beelzebub offering the dosh I'd settle for $1billion.

I really can't blame them. This is like winning the lottery twice weekly for the next couple of years!

Forget sledgehammers – crooks can CRACK ATMs with a TEXT

Neat!

There are some clever people out there...lucky for us they've decided to go into crime rather than getting jobs at GCHQ or the NSA.

Middle England's allotments become metric battlefield

Re: Enter the metric pole?

Very sensible.

Metric is easy to do calculations in.

Imperial tends to correspond well to the size of everyday natural objects.

So metric feet, metric ton, metric pound, metric pole, metric firkin, metric mile all seem to be a sensible and practical compromise.

I remember being in a French market and people were asking for a livre of whatevers, and they've been metric for a couple of centuries.

Blighty goes retro with 12-sided pound coin

MMXIV

MMXIV seems to fit nicely on one edge - but are they going to have to make the coins bigger when we get to MMXXXVIII?

iPhone 6 FEELS your heat, wetness... and it'll TELL Apple – report

Re: Tinfoil hat

don't worry - the crazies in US law enforcement are the only people on the planet who still think 'Lie Detectors' actually work! If they want a useful and effective attachment they should include a tea-leaf reader.

Brit 'naut Major Tim could carry YOUR name into SPAAAAACCEEE

Already entered...

with 'Bugger Bognor' - being in the ISS has to be better than anywhere on the ground, particularly Bognor. And of course it has historical importance as the originator of the quote was related to most of the crowned heads of Europe.

Tony Benn, daddy of Brit IT biz ICL and pro-tech politician, dies at 88

And another triumph:

the creator of Britain's first armed police force (Civil Nuclear Constabulary), which he allegedly used for strike-breaking

Bill Gates-backed SOLAR POO RAYGUN COMMODE unveiled

One slight niggle

Excellent idea, and some good lateral thinking, but this whole appropriate/alternative technology often works best when it can be fixed by a village blacksmith/odd-job-man - how common are African odd-job-men who can hadle fibre optics?

And one question - I assume the wee is filtered out into a tank for direct use on the fields, otherwise it'll take a lot of sunlight to boil it all dry.

BuzzGasm: 9 Incredible Things You Never Knew About PLIERS!

I must admit...

I'd never even heard of Buzzzfeed until I read the comments on this article. After a quick glance I hope I never hear of it again.

I must stay in more.

UK.gov to train up 11-year-old cyberwarriors

Won't someone think of the children?

See title

Apple to grieving sons: NO, you cannot have access to your dead mum's iPad

And the lesson we learn is...

if an iPad owner dies, don't tell Apple, just forge a letter from the deceased requesting that they send unlock codes to Mr XXX.

Or in fact why wait for the owner to die? Just send a forged letter anyway.

Psssst. Don't tell the Bride, but BBC Three is about to be jilted

Re: The DG speaks

To be fair, the BBC seem to produce a hell of a lot more quality material (even ignoring BBC3) for £3.6bn than say, Sky do with a turnover of £7.2bn

NASA robot plans mid-2020s trip: Europa. Wet, radioactive life forms (hopefully). Bliss

Seems amazingly cheap

At that sort of price they could probably get it funded on Kickstarter.

CIA snoops snooped on Senate to spy spy torture report – report

Time to start again?

There are times when a system is so badly screwed up that you have to give up trying to patch it and just have to shut it down and design something new that works.

The USian 'security' services seem to have reached that point. The NSA, CIA etc are so totally corrupt and broken that they need to be immediately wound up and a new, properly controlled and appropriate security service built up from scratch, with no staff transferred from the old ones (who can be shipped to Gitmo for a few years). Yes it will hurt in the short term, but it's the only long term solution.

Re: Tail wagging the dog.

"These people need to be whipped back into line and told in no uncertain terms that they are the servants and not the masters."

Fixed that for you