Posts by Silverburn

530K people's info feared stolen from cloud PC gaming biz Shadow

Thankfully, Shadow have taken so long getting an operational service thats fit for purpose, my now-stolen credit card details expired and my membership cancelled a year ago.

Resilience is overrated when it's not advertised

A man after my own heart.

"Brad's first tactic was to stay in bed for a bit – he wasn't allowed to remote into these servers and hoped the problem would go away by itself."

This hits closer to home than I would like to admit.

Google: Turn off Wi-Fi calling, VoLTE to protect your Android from Samsung hijack bugs

May as well just turn off the entire device at this point. Jeez.

Microsoft begs you not to ditch Edge on Google's own Chrome download page

Willy waving

Other than willy waving, what actual benefit is there for companies to have majority browser share in 2023?

This won't hurt a bit: Amazon now a US healthcare provider

Dystopia

Oh this isnt dystopian in anyway... no sirree, nothing to see here...

Vodafone tests waters with 5G Raspberry Pi base station

Run my private 5G network on technology which has been at "hens teeth" rarity for almost 2 years now? Yeah, solid plan.

Raspberry Pi Foundation launches $12 USB Debug Probe

Concentrating on the important stuff

Maybe try solving your supply chain issues first, and service the going-on-2-years pent-up demand for Pi4s and CM4s?

As Apple sales slide, Tim Cook says fanbois will tolerate higher iPhone prices

As an apple Fanboi, I can categorically tell Mr Cook that youve successfully convinced me not to upgrade any of my gear any time soon.

Don’t expect a Raspberry Pi 5 in 2023, says Raspboss Eben Upton

Supply chain stress?

Forget about Pi5... just ship 8gb CM4s sometime this century first!

Microsoft shows off Windows updates at Build dev event

Ads

Every year, I am reminded more and more how Microsoft is going completely in the wrong direction, the more I crave the days of Windows 7 and 2000 server and the how more appealing linux is becoming.

US declares emergency after ransomware shuts oil pipeline that pumps 100 million gallons a day

PR cringe

Wow, an ransomware crew with a PR department trying to sound like a legit company, instead the sleazy bunch of ****bags they are. What a time to be alive.

Fire up that Macintosh II: Retro techhead gives the web a Netscape 1.1 makeover

Can and does work

Running 9.2.1 and Classilla on a Tangerine clamshell and this is a godsend. Was running 10.4.11, but its just too much for the old clamshells.

If your preferred media consumption is reading instead of youtube or Farcebook, this works really well. Faster than I expected too.

If you want the full 2021 web experience, you can create a VNC session to a Raspberry Pi 4 and run that fullscreen. It works, but youre limited by what VNC can do. You can even run airport on the clamshell, if the Pi4 hosts an AP with MAC address whitelisting.

Trump administration says Russia behind SolarWinds hack. Trump himself begs to differ

Re: HOWTO: hack their voting machines

No. Just.... no. Trump is 60 for 1 right now, and there´s still not a shred of evidence presented.

Feel free to post your own evidence, Mr "audit/security/fraud".

Apple appears to be charging Brits £309 to replace AirPods Max batteries, while Americans need only stump up $79

Re: Apple! Earphones to make your eyes water

Let me Wispa this one to you...

....you're both a bit Nutty.

Japan sticks the landing: Asteroid sample recovered from Hayabusa2 probe

Sample contamination?

I should read up on how the sample integrity is maintained. From the cold of space through a very hot re-entry, will the sample not be cooked/contaminated?

Good timing...

... I watched the Andromeda strain last night.

Now I know what happens next.

European Space Agency will launch giant claw that drags space junk to its doom

The swiss

Not content with keeping their country spotless, they're cleaning up space now too.

Hard to believe but Congress just approved an IoT security law and it doesn't totally suck

Re: Better than nothing

"But without enforcement mechanisms it won't do much."

It's the perfect congressional bill then!

Utter lack of knowledge

Proof - if any were needed - that Congress has literally no clue about tech. They probably have no idea what they signed. The Democrats had no idea what IoT or any of the buzzwords are in their bill (which was probably written by a lobbyist), but because the Republicans don't have a clue either and none of their trigger words (immigrants, guns, abortion, global warming etc) were in the bill, it passed.

NSA: We've learned our lesson after foreign spies used one of our crypto backdoors – but we can't say how exactly

Re: This "backdoors" discussion misses an important point......

Unless they have your cipher, of course. How many svchost.exe's do you have running perchance? ;-)

Re: How do you avoid US spy gear, it is everywhere.

Unless you've been permanently unplugged from power outlet and the network since the early 80's, I'm calling BS on that.

Huawei

Classic US.

Shit on foreign entities (Hauwei) for *allegedly* leaving snooping doors open.

Complete radio silence when domestic entities get caught doing the same thing.

Ed Snowden doesn’t need to worry about being turfed out of Russia any more

Appealing options

Go to America, spent rest of life getting passed around like currency in slam.

Or...

Stay in Russia, and one day slip in your bathroom and down 5 storeys to the street below, once your usefulness has run its course.

Those are not appealing options.

Fancy a steaming portion of Kentucky Fried Bork? A fingerlickin' flub that's pure poultry in motion

Boneless banquet

There's something about "Boneless Banquet" which feels deeply suspicious and a little be sinister.

Huawei's financials take a beating as President Trump's sanctions come home to roost

Wait until you learn what the US does under the guise of "state sponsored actor".

2020 hasn't been all bad – a new Raspberry Pi Compute Module is here

Re: Still needs cooling

To be fair, even a modest heatsink does wonders to improve the Pi4 thermals. I run a passive cooling case (the case acts as the heat sink), and even running a overclocked CPU at 100% for over two hours never saw it reach throttle temps. Under less aggressive workloads, it barely breaks 50'c.

The heatsinks for the modules on the new Turing V2 look perfectly sufficient for sustained workloads (assuming even a very modest airflow; the power supply fan might even be enough).

Turing board v2

The turing mini ITX board was a great concept for dense clustering; 7 pi3's in a mini ITX worked well (if somewhat lacking in actual horsepower). It will be interesting to see how they accommodate this new form factor.

Edit: Looks like we know. https://turingpi.com/

I would like to have seen stackable connectors, to allow a properly dense cluster to be built with these.

Let’s check in with that 30,000-job $10bn Trump-Foxconn Wisconsin plant. Wow, way worse than we'd imagined

Re: Too funny.

Did you idiots not learn anything from Benghazi? Pizzagate? Obamagate?

You guys will believe literally anything, as long as it's anti-democrat or anti-centrist. You're getting played like suckers. Again.

Third time's still the charm: AMD touts Zen-3-based Ryzen 5000 line, says it will 'deliver absolute leadership in x86'

Agnostic in compute surplus

As an agnostic gamer, it's increasingly coming down to things like stability, price, supply availability, support and ease of install.

I feel we have more compute than we need right now, regardless of vendor. Hell, most 2020 games will still chug along nicely on a 4.2ghz 6600K, with decent enough RAM and GPU.

How do you solve 'disruption' at the UK border after Brexit? Let's call Peter Thiel! AI biz Palantir – you're hired

Deploying AI will be the first piece of intelligence actually applied to Brexit.

Call us immediately if your child uses Kali Linux, squawks West Mids Police

Pineapple

Note to self: Install Pineapple.

Thanks rozzers!

Stop using that MacBook Pro RIGHT NOW, says Uncle Sam: Loyalists suffer burns, smoke inhalation and worse – those crappy keyboards

Can confirm Apple BS.

Not for batteries, but for Touch Bar.

Touch Bar died on my company MacBook pro, so cruised into apple with my AppleCare. Was told, yes we need to replace the Touch Bar.

And the trackpad.

And the keyboard.

And the speakers.

And the top panel.

Horrendous design decisions aside, they did say I could use the laptop until the parts came in, drop off the laptop for three-four hours, and come collect it again. And they'd do everything under warranty. Fair enough.

Come the day to drop off the laptop, hand it over and they cheerily sign off with "...and it'll be ready in 10 days".

Excuse me? 10 days? You said four hours!

"Nah, this needs to be sent away."

But you said the parts were coming in???

So yeah. Fuck you Apple. Get your shit together.

Blatant plug: Check out Louis Rossman on youtube. He has some very interesting observations on Apples famous "design" skills.

Dad who shot 'snooping vid drone' out of the sky is cleared of charges

Key word here was "on" your turf. That's trespass. "over" your turf is not trespass, as it's technically FAA controlled airspace.

Some clarifications

1) The airspace above his property is not his. It "belongs" to the FAA, and as such, does not count at trespass. If it did, BA would be invading my property about 300 times a day. The judge was technically in error to claim trespass.

2) Pilot has telemetry and witnesses showing he was not 10ft from the daughter. Nearer 200ft. At what height does privacy become a reasonable expectation? Why was the telemetry not considered in the case?

3) Shotguns at 200ft...It's a phantom, and farting on it the wrong way will inflict a fatal wound. A single pellet would have been enough if it jammed a motor or broke a prop.

4) Spying with a wide angle lens? Now that's funny...

5) Taking off and landing from your property means you can plausibly cross over neighbours property. See also: Heathrow. Can I shoot down anything now?

The fun begins if this phantom has been registered. It then officially becomes an aircraft for the FAA and NTSB. And guess what? shooting down "aircraft" is a federal offence and would have warranted a closed scene investigation by the NTSB (pretty comical). Try shooting down a news helicopter (complete with it's stabilised, massive zoom red epic camera) as it flies overhead and see if the judge thinks your privacy was still worth it.

Drones to bring DEBT FROM ABOVE in Switzerland

Re: Weather 'tis nobler

Well, not quite. Here in Switzerland the civilised part of the ranges are in very hospitable climates during the summer months. Very much so, as the tourist industry relies on it.

Re: They have it covered from the other angle too

The only reason Swisspost open your mail for you, is the "customs inspections". Aka - daylight robbery fees.

Tech specs

Assuming they're using multrotors, the specs will look very similar to the system I'm testing:

- 6kg payload

- 3-4km range

- 15 mins flight time

- multiple levels of redundancy

The drone is the easy part though. The hard part will be Swiss FOCA regulations which forbid - even for the army - BLoS. If you can't fly BLos, there's no real point using the drone.

Fearful of the drone-filled skies? Get some protection

Re: People who fly drones

In Switzerland, they do.

Re: This isn't PROtection... it's just DEtection...

Because it takes almost next to nothing to make a drone fall out the sky. And fall they do - there's no such thing as a glide slope for multi rotors.

Did NASA probe detect a KILLER GAMMA-RAY burst in Andromeda?

The Culture...

...just kicked someone's ass.

Drone 'hacked' to take out triathlete

Re: But what about the control frequency?

Actually, my Spektrum DX8 mortally wounded a TBS Discovery last month, by decided than all channels should be 1000pwm until I rebooted it.

However, I did follow all the common sense precautions, which meant the only thing even remotely troubled or injured by this was my wallet.

Re: fixed frequencies...I doubt this will happen. Even though it should.

Re: I've said it before and I'll say it again

Your views are equally echoed in the field as well btw, with a universal "This'll ruin it for the rest of us" theme. None of us want this.

The real operators know that flying over crowds is the number one no-no. Many will turn down work as a consequence. Unfortunately, not all operators turn the work down...

Pre-flight checks etc are all common sense when you're rig costs nearly $15,000 (even before you add the RED epic). Venue checks as well.

Your suggestion about weight and size limits is plausible, but there is much to argue here. What weight is safe? <1kg? 2kg? 4k? These are all being discussed by the various aviation authorities. But the big question is:

When does a "hobby toy" become a "commercial drone"? A DJI Phantom can be both. And this is the problem.

Handsome young autopilot reports for spaceplane duty

Re: old school

On 5.8ghz, you'll be lucky to get 3-4km even with clear LoS, even with a 13dbi at the rx end. Yes, you'd get 20mile range if you're 5km up due to lack of atmosphere, but while one end of the link is at sea level, your range is very small on 5.8.

Better with a 900mhz or 1.2/1.3ghz rig, but the antenna shape will destroy all advances made by the clever airframe design.

Investors on Microsoft: What, Ballmer, leaving? Hand me my wallet

Enterprises going to the cloud?

Not all of them btw.

The ones with any sense (or deal with client data or client funds) are steering well clear.

Vulture 2 spaceplane STRIPPED to the bone

Re: Beautiful, certainly, but what about flight stability?

When mounting the ArduPilot, remember the vibration damping. Anything +/-5 on the Z axis will throw off the Baro and gyro accuracy. And mount the compass as far away from any electronics as possible.

http://www.diydrones.com is a good source of anti vibe techniques - four corners of MoonGel or Zeal is the most effective "singlle solution, direct mount" approach. To improve your gryo accuracy (which I suspect will be important given the proposed speeds), I'd recommend the zeal route.

AIR TIME! Our expert cosies up with the new top-end iPad

Re: Bah!

"Backside Illumination"

Because some el reg Apple articles sound like the sun shines out of Apple's...

It's the software, stupid: Samsung Galaxy Gear smartwatch bags big apps

What's a watch?

Not worn one in 30 years. Don't miss it. Won't miss these either.

New iPhones: C certainly DOESN'T stand for 'Cheap'

Leaky Apple

Is it just me, or does the tyranical approach to product secrecy of Jobs seem better than this "lets leak stuff constantly for months pre-launch as a form of hype" current approach?

The products might be hit and miss, but at least Jobs knew to put on a show. At the moment everyone is a bit *meh*.

Re: Downside to fingerprint.

Apple's fingerless gloves will cost more...

FFS

Ok, I'll admit to be being a fan of some (not all) Apple products, but I'm becoming less and less so, given the frankly drug-addled design decisions it's been making recently.

Gold and Silver options? 64bit processing? Fisher price UI? *this* is what Apple identified that it's customers want??? What f*ing market research were they doing??? Christ, take one look at your competitors Apple, and you can see what the market wants...

For the first time in ages, I will not be upgrading my iphone. Time to look for something a bit classier, with a bigger screen, more useful gadgets and more storage.