Posts by Brian 3

Gas giant 11 times the mass of Jupiter discovered in b Centauri binary system

I think with 500 floodlights to light the place it'd be a doddle to find the christmas bulb quickly? Much harder to find it in the dark, plus how will you see which way round to put the fresh unit?

What a bunch of bricks: Crooks knock hole in toyshop wall, flee with €35k Lego haul

35000E in sets, that's 350 x 100E sets, just how big is the store to have that many sets in stock?? The picture suggests they weren't cleaned out by any means

US lawmakers give Amazon until November to prove it didn't lie to Congress

the policy prohibit the use of anonymized data, but not de-anonymized data.. so they are totaly legit! they do this in canada too

They need to be held responsible for "irregularities" regardless of whether they knew or not, they still profited from it.

Boeing 737 Max chief technical pilot charged with deceiving US aviation regulators over MCAS

Re: REasoning past B....

I'd just like to point out that bringing your own bomb in NO way lessens the chances? This is why psychiatry is such quackery.

Court of Appeal says AI software cannot be listed as patent inventor

how dare she

how dare she say only a person can have rights when clearly corporations have more rights than people!

Apple settles antitrust case with developers, but it's far from an Epic resolution to App Store monopoly concerns

Apple are paying pennies on the dollar and admitting no wrong, what a great deal for them

BOFH: Here in my car I feel safest of all. I can listen to you ... It keeps me stable for days

Re: Unlike the £1 coin...

actually one average adult can get that 20 quid note - just bounce the car on it's suspension and it will hop right up, use your shoe to tug it out as the pressure lifts. I do it with hoses and extension cords all the time, works well with most smallish cheap models

Thanks, boss. The accidental creation of a lights-out data centre – what a fun surprise

I saw someone do this with a fire suppression system in a restraunt kitchen once - right after he finished cleaning the whole place. He pulls the knob off - nothing - then proudly goes to show how the chain it's connected to needs a bit more pulling - DING DING DING - cue the glycol nozzles!!

Snakes on a Plane meets The Simpsons as airline creates ‘whacker’ to scare reptiles away from parked A380s

The real story here is Qantas calling their mechanics engineers - this will come back to bite them in the ass at performance review time when all the mechanics demand engineer pay!

Titanium carbide nanotech approach hints at hydrogen storage breakthrough

Re: It's not just the storage

Unpressurized flammable liquids do not become bombs when punctured or impacted. They are also not embrittlement time bombs waiting to go off - and a high pressure rupture would likely result in an explosion 9/10 times because hydrogen is so easy to light off. Modern steel and plastic tanks take a huge amount of abuse and don't require scheduled hydrotests that the tank would have to be completely removed from the vehicle to perform.

Downvote: why do artists deserve or need a posh paris/cornwall office rather than working from what is no doubt referred to as their "home studio" ? You are clearly from the Art Dept!

Intel accused by distributor of breaking promises, shipping subpar enterprise-friendly Falcon 8+ drones

"Available through our distributors"

Yeah, that Stampede place still has loads of 'em!

China's Chang'e 5 probe lands Moon rocks in Inner Mongolia

Re: Wait

THAT'S NO MOON!

Oculus owners told not only to get Facebook accounts, purchases will be wiped if they ever leave social network

Just further proof we Citizens should have struck first against the Corporates, before it was too late!

Disgraced cop, 55, spared prison term after admitting he abused police systems to snoop on his girlfriend's ex

Not proportionate at all!

The police have an obligation not to do these things - the punishment in this case should be the same as what a civilian who hacked into the system and did the same would face. 20 years? 30? A civilian certainly would not get mere community service. This is an outrage. Government employees and police should be faced with MUCH more severe penalties rather than the obligatory scot-free package. In the first place, part of the supposed qualification involves specifically knowing these things must not be done.

Uber allowed to continue operating in English capital after winning appeal against Transport for London

Re: I wonder whether this has anything to do ...

If only there were some way to make the judge honestly represent his reasons and not give utter bollocks in his summary? I've read a lot of these that can't pass my 8 year old's BS test.

Astroboffins reckon evidence of Martian life has probably been destroyed where liquid acid flowed on the Red Planet

He is completely full of it! Just because the acidic fluid was carbonic acid, it's no longer acidic? Who is this jumping clown?

And it's off! NASA launches nuke-powered, laser-shooting, tank Perseverance to Mars to search for signs of life

What is lightweight teflon? I'm only familiar with the ordinary kind which is considerably dense for a polymer.

MIT apologizes, permanently pulls offline huge dataset that taught AI systems to use racist, misogynistic slurs

This is what powers the analytics the police are using for image recognition?

Tesla sued over Tokyo biker's death in 'dozing driver' Autopilot crash

and it's totally their fault that this group of idiots illegally stopped on the inside lane of a motorway too!

Five-a-day energy drink habit turned chap's eyes yellow, urine dark, caused anorexia

It's the chemicals!!! It's always the chemicals, you can't trust anything that clumps together like that! I've never felt better since I started the Dark Matter Diet 2 years ago! I lost all my weight!

Boffins one step closer to solving nanoscale computer challenge

No, surely if there is to be a new spec, it must have rounded corners, no?

Confused as to WTF is happening with Apple, the FBI and a killer's iPhone? Let's fix that

I think the here is that they have a court order to tell them to make software and what they should have is a contract. The court order can be used to make someone surrender or destroy atoms but I've never heard of one to make something. That amounts to slavery.

Work on world's largest star-gazing 'scope stopped after religious protests

Re: Until I Read...

Not only that, but the US government has a long standing and absolute policy on not giving in to terrorism. So now the only possibility is to build at least two such telescopes, right?

Pimp your TV: Goggle box gadgets and gizmos

Some of these devices cost more than my van did, with a govt safety on it. Those speakers at the beginning seem like especially poor value.

And +1 on the slow TV gripe. On my generic DLED TV I have plenty of time to imagine some 80's transforming robot separation and recombination sequence going on inside.

Nano – meet her: AMD's Radeon R9 4K graphics card for non-totally bonkers gamers, people

$$

The price is all wrong here - it's obviously not that great of a cooler and it's an underclocked Fury chip. It should be cheaper as with any lesser product. It's not like it's smaller because of anything but the size of the cooler and reduced power requirements really. I mean, come on. Enough BS. Specialty form factor? How about Reduced Net Cost?

Epson: Cheap printers, expensive ink? Let's turn that upside down

The big point IMO is that the cost per page is so insignificant that there would no longer be an economic reason not to print color...

LOGITECH - TECH = 'LOGI' ... that's non-Logitech tech, is it?

Logitech also make some really good value speakers too.. I replaced a big setup with the z540 4.1 years ago, because it was good enough. Not as good as my huge old loudspeakers and big sealed sub but very close and don't take up half a room. The only problem they had was with the volume pot getting crackly but as we all know it just needs a little contact cleaner to fix that.

Space station cabbage: To boldly grow where no veg has grown before

Re: nearly 4000lbs...

Just ignorant probably... it's not so hard to remember that it's 2.2 pounds to the kilo.

Courtney Love in the crossfire! Paris turns ugly over Uber

Next up: meth dealers in Paris file a complaint with the EU that french authorities are blocking their right to do business...

ISIS command post obliterated after 'moron' jihadi snaps a selfie, says US Air Force

Billions of dollars to the NSA to archive and scan a large part of the internets, and this was found by some dudes surfing?

Virgin Galactic will get into space 'within 18 months to two years'

I expect that, by the time Virgin Galactic get a paying customer in space, it will already be cheaper to go up in Dragon.

US Air Force reveals what's inside its top-secret space plane, this time

I do believe the USAF is adopting a wait and see approach here.. Wait and see if those russian engines explode, so put a cheap/disposable payload on board.

You can't put a price on LOVE, says Apple after court's Samsung payout slash

But I thought that once this was over, then they could challenge the validity of the patents?

Tesla's battery put in the shade by current and cheaper kit

Am I the only one who has wondered if these things aren't hugely overprovisioned with cells so that a "full discharge" is in fact, more like a 70% discharge?

Strange radio telescope signals came from microwave ovens

My panasonic inverter microwave does indeed kill the wifi in the house.

Powering the Internet of Stuff – by sucking electricity from TREES

I for one...

...welcome our new Thing overlords!

NASA revisits Europa with modern image-processing software

For those who missed the live 'cast of the image processing..

ENHANCE!!!

ENHANCE!!!

ENHAAAAAANCE!!!

...There you go.

Remember that tale of a fired accountant who blamed Comcast? It's kinda true, says telco

He'll have violated the policy which says you can't threaten clients. Moral of the story is, don't threaten to call the cavalry, just quietly do so. Also, most call centers record ALL calls. The US helpdesk I worked at recorded every call and saved them indefinitely.

Calls MAY be recorded for training purposes. - Means they are always being recorded, but not always used for training! Consent is assumed because you are still on the line. Lots of call centers are set up to give every call enough hold time to get the statement, regardless of call volume. Why risk the staffer forgetting?

Malarial vaccine firm seeks crowdfunding for robo-saliva surgeon

Forget the invisibility cloak: Boffins invent INVISIBILITY FISHNETS

I for one...

..welcome our new invisible replicator overlords!

Samsung slams Apple patent jury, wants new trial in US

Clearly judge Koh's intention was to send this thing up for appeals as quickly as possible, it would have ended up there anyways. Why bother with a good clean trial when it's all for nothing anyways.

Symantec crowdsources buzzword bingo to name product

Damn! I was all set to offer you guys my Global Intelligent Integrated Automated Critical Business IT Recovery solution at a substantial discount. Almost had the right product..

Samsung to probe claims of underage workers, abuse at supplier

"Samsung to probe underage workers, abuse at supplier" - There, fixed it!

LOHAN to brew thermite for hot ignition action

You need to take into consideration the launch attitude of your test rig is inverted - if you ignite some thermite in there, the molten steel end result will fall down onto the fuel grain.. This will not happen in actual flight use! You may want to build a frame of some sort to do a final test in flight orientation.

I'd suggest a flash powder based igniter - but there are some things you need to know. Under no circumstances use a chlorate based composition - ammonium chlorate could form at the interface between the grain and the igniter comp, an extremely unstable substance. I'd suggest a 60/40 (by weight) potassium perchlorate and magnesium/aluminum alloy 200-325 mesh, bound with nitrocellulose("NC") and a solvent. A suitable alternative to NC is the easily-obtained ping pong ball. What you would do is make a slurry of this stuff, and paint a bit on the end of the fuel grain. Bound like this, it will burn rather slowly and extremely hot. You wouldn't want to coat the entire exposed fuel grain, the idea is to produce a good sized high temperature flame envelope to ignite the still exposed fuel grain, rather than the fuel grain directly underneath the comp. You'd also want to use the slurry to glue the igniter on to ensure ignition, or coat the igniter in the slurry.

An alternative comp would be potassium perchlorate and aluminum 325 mesh (70/30 respectively). I suggest flake aluminum for this but spherical would work as well.

Post-pub nosh deathmatch: Haggis pakora v huevos rancheros

Re: Huevos Rancheros... Wha??

+1 - The taste of huevoes rancheros made with good green chile will haunt you for the rest of your life...

and tomatoes have no place in chili, FFS.

Boffins fear killer gamma death blasts from space

Not nitrous oxide, nitric oxide!

It wouldn't make nitrous oxide(N2O), it would make nitric oxide (NO2) which is a deadly red gas which when mixed with water forms nitric acid (HNO3).

Canada prostitution laws pulverised: politicians apoplectic

Prostitution is already legal in canada -unless you talk about it!

"Have you ever noticed that many fictional prostitution stories are about a "happy hooker", but most news stories about prostitution involve gangs, enforced-poverty, slavery, under-age sex, abuse, drug-taking or people-trafficing? I wonder which reflects reality the most accurately? Does anyone think this would change by legalising a bit of it?"

Did anyone else notice you have apparently read "many" prostitution fanfics?

Most news stories about drugs and cannabis in canada involve mention of gangs violence etc, but the fact is if it were legal the gangs wouldn't have that profit center to work. The sellers would be entitled to the protection of the law.

Let's take a hypothetical situation. Take your profession, whatever the hell it is. Now we say it's illegal. If someone comes to shake you down, make you his bitch, what can you do about it? You can't go to the cops, because they'll just toss you in, going after the other guy would be dangerous and they don't have to hunt you down.