Posts by tojb

Microsoft did Nazi that coming: Teen girl chatbot turns into Hitler-loving sex troll in hours

Re: I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that.

Theres a graph, looks legit... but they can't be that dumb right?

Why should you care about Google's AI winning a board game?

Re: Poker

Bridge is an active and interesting AI topic, because it relies on having a theory of what your partner is going to do, intuition about the temperament and intentions of others is a tough one to crack.

How to build a plane that never needs to land

Re: Much more useful when batteries improve

Pretty much all new houses where I live are built to the vaguely nordic "passivhaus" standard of energy use, i.e. near-zero for heating and water (zero may be impossible to achieve if north-facing in a valley bottom). Solar panels are a financially attractive add-on for those who can make the investment, thanks to generous subsidies (paid through other suckers' electricity bills, which are ludicrous).

The clever bit about the passivhaus stuff is controlled ventilation, with heat exchangers at the inflow and outflow. That and a very airtight building with very thick walls and windows pretty much solves your heating problem. Power diverted to the fans is minimal compared to what you save.

Imagination Tech's chief Hossein Yassaie quits, shares slide

value of chief execs much exaggerated

Hossein is a lovely bloke, but it is the corps of battle-hardened programmers and engineers (many at the Watford HQ have been there since they left Acorn back in the eighties) which makes the company valuable.

The last time Earth was this hot hippos lived in Britain (that’s 130,000 years ago)

Milankovitch cycles, interesting

Thumbs up as I was prompted to read about gradual changes to Earth's orbital parameters (~20k years to notice anything), which I had previously been unaware of.

Caused by interactions of the earth-moon system with larger but distant bodies such as jupiter. Orbit is not circular or even reliable eliiptical but actually very bonkers and semi-chaotic spirograph.

All of which is at best tangential to the contemporary climate-change debate.

Five key findings from 15 years of the International Space Station

other cooler stuff than these five

This list is a bit buzzfeedy in that content has been sacrificed for comprehensibility. Other very interesting zero-gee science has been done, I could mention germination of plant seeds as one thing, or critical fluctuations around phase transitions as another: its tough to test a lot of physics theories in gravity, because the theories leave it out....

Google says its quantum computer is 100 million times faster than PC

actual benchmarking says "meh"

http://arxiv.org/abs/1504.07991

Tail of the time-to-solution distribution is considerable fatter with quantum annealers for some reason versus classical simulated annealing. Its a promising approach, worth being aware of but not yet worth shelling out for on its own merits.

Kids' tech skills go backwards thanks to tablets and smartmobes

Those tasks are *bullshit*

Use social media to promote a rock band??? That's digital literacy???????

How about setting up a PA system, configuring filters for reverb etc? That would at least be interesting.

Scrape the internet for mentions of the band and plot a histogram of hits by last-modified-date?

This test is an insult to the kids and to humanity. I would fail it in protest if I ever saw such a stupid thing.

Conficker is back – and it's infecting police body cams

Re: don't blame the camera OS for serving up an MSC

Sounds like its a windows-based worm, nothing to do with the camera firmware: when you plug the device in it serves up a mass-storage-class to allow transfer of files, that is the only reasonable thing to do. If the computer you plugged it into (at some point in the setup or testing process, presumably) is infected and chooses to save an infected file, then the device becomes a passive carrier of the worm.

It is even possible that the cameras became infected at the same time as their OS and app were installed: how can you blame the firmware in this case?

Yay, more 'STEM' grads! You're using your maths degree to do ... what?

geometry is everything, everything is geometry

I mean seriously.... how can you think about anything without a space to visualise it in? The simplest meaningful space is R2, enter Euclid. When smart people learn Euclidean geometry they feel like they were born knowing it, because it is implicit in soooo many other aspects of our culture and reasoning. That is the only imaginable reason not to teach it, and it is a poor one.

Emacs gets new maintainer as Richard Stallman signs off

overdue for el-reg integration

M-X pull-next-article elreg

M-X spaff-comment elreg

M-X doctor

Another go with MIPS IoT: Imagination unveils new Creator board

Re: Not an easy sell @tojb

>>I'm not quite sure you get the IoT

Quite right, I have no clue what conceivable benefit swarm-networking desklamps and tins of beans is supposed to provide. Hopefully I'll understand it when I see it.

I have to agree with you on all points, except:

1) OK, a more powerful ereader is a tablet, maybe specced a bit above the kindle fire but below a surface 2.

2) So throw in gesture and speech recognition, that can burn a bit more.

6) My R-Pi (OK I only have the first one) is painfully slow when I run full-fat linux on it with a proper sized TV screen. More beef than that, with a better GPU and some built-in codecs and radio support would be a good thing to have. Whether it comes in at a competitive pricepoint to similar-powered x86 stuff, we can find out.

Re: Not an easy sell

Hmm: tablet-like graphics + radio etc. About the spec of an ipad a few years ago.... so....

1) e-reader?

2) touchscreen-controlled domestic appliances? Currently to do anything much with my washing machine beyond turning it off or on, I have to pair it with my phone. That is actually pretty annoying. Can see similar reasoning for house thermostats.

3) Houses with complicated, integrated, energy systems? Solar panels+batteries+wood-pellet-boiler+e-vehicle charging.... all need an interface, nice if they have some sort of networking, although fixed kit should imho have fixed wiring.

4) Chromebook-type-things? Doesn't quite have the beef for modern internet, HD ads, multiple youtube videos etc. Thats a nope on number 4 from me.

5) In-car entertainment player/controller? I notice the ENSIGMA name on the block diagram, this part of IMG works with digital radio & video.

6) Home media server? Should be a good fit actually, no need to shove in a wifi dongle as for R-Pi.

no, actually it does appear to do graphics

TFA mentions a powerVR SGX 540 on board, which supports OpenGL ES 2.0. Normal sort of graphics level for a tablet or phone.

Elderly? Disabled? You clearly need a .38" Palm Pistol

suicide special

Am I the only one thinking that the main use for this is when you only want to kill one person, and he ain't gonna try getting out of the way?

El Reg keeps pushing Apple's buttons – its new Magic Keyboard

No hash key... wtf. If you open a terminal, you get bash. Ergo bash is the main scripting language.

If you are retarded you share your opinions on twitter, ergo twitter is the main web platform.

No hash key.

Asus ZenPad 10 Z300C: Cheap tab, dock combo you can turn up to 11

don't buy Xperia Z4 Tablet.

I got an xperia Z, had a horrible time getting it unlocked so as to be able to upgrade the OS. Many goats blown by this slab.

Tesla X unfolds its Falcon wings, stumbles belatedly into the light

Re: Door mirrors...

>>Big advantage on no wing mirrors is reduced noise in the back,

How does losing the mirrors make my kids behave? I doubt that you have discovered the holy grail of family driving, but if you have sir please share.

How much of one year's Californian energy use would wipe out the drought?

Re: Not going to happen

Big problem with current society is that the explanations for many serious problems just go over the heads of the people making the decisions. Plenty of MPs lack a grade-C maths O level, certainly the people who vote for them do.

Undemocratic decision makers such as civil service bods, Quangos, eurocrats may be our only hope. And that is not much of a hope, as many of these are much the same types as the MPs but not sufficiently likeable to be elected.

OLPC heir reveals modular laptop design

Re: This shit again?

On the face of it yes, an off-the-shelf for-kids android slab such as leafpad should cover the "educational slabtop" market, however it is not the same thing at all.

People who have never used a computer are impressed to see their two-year-old granddaughter playing lego cities or similar on a parent's tablet, but that is a far cry from doing science projects on a machine which is not only a fully functional computer but is *intended* to be used as one, rather than say as a pocket-sized shop window.

Re: Oddly I've alway s thought it's the *processor* that should be upgradeable.

Simple, just unplug your screen, battery, camera (and whatever else, details are sketchy in the article) then order in the new plastic box (dirt cheap in itself) containing the upgraded mobo.

Universal Credit white elephant needs 'urgent breakthrough' says MP

To be fair

I just checked IDS's bio (on his own site) and he was at Sandhurst in 1975 so you can almost forgive the other tory brass for thinking he might be capable of taking on a tricky job.

Since then he has worked for GEC marconi (remember that shining example of corporate responsibility?), a property holding company and the tory party (he was leader for a while). I can't think of a CV that could raise many more red flags, why on earth was this man given a cabinet job?

And that is from his own website. When you check wikipedia it appears that he left school at fourteen and has no O-levels or degree, despite having spent a year farting about at a uni in Italy.

'Private' biz Xiaomi sets up Communist Party exec committee

Re: This is why we should be worried

And because everything is centrally controlled in China, there's no worry of an economic collapse.

And because everything is centrally controlled in China, the inevitable economic collapse will be still more devastatingly systemic.

Smart meters set to cost Blighty as much as replacing Trident

Re: Ditch meters and buy six subs.

Seconded. Where are the nuclear-powered flying battlestations? Probably in violation of some namby-pamby treaty. Such a dreadnought would have all sorts of peace dividends (portable sunshade for heatwaves, portable power station to relieve brownouts) as well as scaring the bejesus out of the whole world. Its political correctness gone mad.

Why is that idiot Osbo continuing with austerity when we know it doesn't work?

Re: all you lefties and champagne socialists should...

Its cos of globalisation, esp papers owned by Murdoch and the power that they showed when Kinnock threatened to require UK ownership of the press. RM has US citizenship precisely to avoid the same rule over there. It was the sun wot "won" it.

Bots posting?

Looking at the some of the comments (the ones with 20+ downvotes) I'm pretty convinced that someone is employing bots, or some kind of mechanical turks, to spew right-wing hate based on keywords in articles. I wonder if the reg hacks can trace IPs or something to check this?

WOODEN computer chips reveal humanity's cyber elf future

If you like cellulose chips then you'll love cellulose LCDs

http://www.nature.com/am/journal/v6/n1/full/am201369a.html

Top Spanish minister shows citizens are thick as tortillas de ballenas

Reg commentards not as clever as they think they are

The Sun and Earth orbit the barycentre of the solar system. The the position of this centre of mass does not, as some have asserted, depend on your frame of reference. It happens to be inside the sun, or nearly so, for most of the time.

Rotating reference frames are *not* equivalent to each other, if you change between rotating frames you must add in coriolis or centrifugal forces to compensate. There is a unique centre of mass of the solar system and it is well-defined.

So how should we tax these BASTARD COMPANIES, then?

Re: Fair Tax? +1 for the long firm

Very mellow historical novel of the sixties introduced me to the concept. Jake Arnott I think it was. Funny to think that some people still alive today were around back then.

Scummy transients FOUND ON MARS by NASA rover

Mars9?

Where are the other 8?

Idiot thieves walk free after stolen iPad uploads pics of them with loot

Strike 1 of three?

I'm not up to date with American law&order stuff, but I seem to remember that they had a policy of two slaps on the wrist followed by a long custodial sentence for the third offence. Possibly neither of these toolbags has been caught before, probably they will joining the legion of incarcerated morons next time or the time after that.

700,000 beautiful women do the bidding of one Twitter-scamming man

diet pills

Reminds me of a thing called herbalife which works in the same way, but uses social engineering to bind actual humans to the "mockingbird" and "parrot" roles.

I think I need a healthy drink rich in vitamins and carbs.

AMD, ARM, Imagination, Samsung alliance publish official shared GPU-CPU blueprints

Re: Memory maps for all the things

"Hopefully the security issues were dealt with"

Haha you're thinking of things like rowhammer, which work by exploiting the occasional failures if non-EC2 memory, such as used by RAM in laptops .... and especially also by RAM in in GPUs.

GPU code is performance-oriented, because most putative security holes would be contained to the GPU so far I doubt that there has been much effort in finding and closing them.

Looking forward to the torrent of exploits when this stuff comes to consumerland

Amazon's tax deal in Luxembourg BROKE the LAW, says EU

Luxembourg will *have* to recover the money?

Bofferdings all round if it works out that the law obliges them to collect 10 years of back-taxes while at the same time closing down the chance of similar deals somewhere else, thus obliging Amazon etc to stay put and carry on paying tax at some new slightly higher rate.

What will happen to the oil price? Look to the PC for clues

All computing is not yet small or cheap

Ask someone who works at google or cern how great it is that they can do all the computing they need on their mobile. Haha.

For some time there has been a steady flow of capability downwards in scale from the continent-class research facilities to the desktop to the portable, but I'm not sure that most of the worlds computing (if you measure it by watts or by the value of the results) isn't still on the mainframe, and perhaps will always be.

Goes like the blazes: Amazon Fire HDX 8.9 late 2014 edition

Re: HOW ****ING MUCH?

otterbox mate.

Brits to teach Norks hacks about 'multimedia websites'. 5% of DPRK is in for a TREAT

There is probably no "freedom through cultural exchange" happening here. NK is an outsourcing destination for IT and other stuff, has been for a long time.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/198555/the_worlds_most_unusual_outsourcing_destination.html

Oddly, a lot of hand-drawn french animation is produced over there. Capitalism does not make you free.

Beyond the genome: YOU'VE BEEN DECODED, again

Re: more interesting possibilites here than mentioned in the article

Beer because Sacc. Cerevisiae is mostly the same as you and I, proteomically speaking.

more interesting possibilites here than mentioned in the article

Identifying proteins that are co-expressed in a given cell type, or stage in the cell cycle, or set of stimuli can help to piece together the network of interactions that ultimately make things go. There are many many proteins (and sundry oddments) in the cell whose place in the scheme of things remains highly unclear.

The next big thing in medical science: POO TRANSPLANTS

Re: Gut feeling

Gut to brain transfer of some kind of pathogen via neurons (often very long for single cells) has been put forward as part of the etiology of Parkinson's. I didn't realise that there was any specially strong gut-brain connection relative to lungs-brain or whatever, do you have some links or pointers so that I can follow it up?

Seagate connects Hadoop and Lustre in an open sourcery ceremony

Lustre? meh

Never much liked lustre, maybe it doesn't suit my workloads, or my hardware, or wasn't installed properly. The bumf says that it stripes writes (thence reads) over many disks thus eliminating the bottleneck from only reading X bits per second from a single disk.

Doesn't fix latency limitations of the drives, and of course adds comms overhead to spread the info around. In theory this should still be good for megamega big files but in practice I and the other admins and developers on our system never got much joy from it.

German telco watchdog bitten by hound with bigger teeth

good argument for the EU

driving down roaming charges and unhelpful structuring of telecoms charges is one thing that has gone right

Murder suspect charged after pics of strangle victim posted on 4chan

that is the beard of a vain fool

Now my beard, my beard is the beard of a wise man.

Luxembourg: Engine-room of the tax-break economy

Time for reform

With increased globalisation it is becoming more important to make sure that companies serve the economies of the countries that they operate in.

FATTIES: Boffins say their miracle sunshine skin cream 'prevents obesity'

Turns out [a/the] reason diet drinks make you fat is that the sweeteners throw a spanner in your gut ecology. Eg nature article here:

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v514/n7521/full/nature13793.html

Really very conclusive study imho, also scary in that the effects were quite long term.

RUMPY PUMPY: Bone says humans BONED Neanderthals 50,000 years B.C.

With blonde hair and hem-hem generous figure then you are ahead of the game, brow-ridge shmrow-ridge.

Want a more fuel efficient car? Then redesign it – here's how

Re: Mr ChriZ Advanced Motoring

Surprising number of people have zero or poor 3D vision. It is quite OK to get/keep a driving licence with one eye, so being merely crosseyed or having a neurological impairment to depth perception goes by the board.

'George Orwell was an optimist. Show me a search history, I'll show you a perv or a crook'

corollary

The corollary to this rule (lets call it the Richelieu principle) is that people are way too uptight about a whole load of stuff. If everyone does something which could see them in the dock, then maybe we should take a collective chill pill?