Posts by iLurker

Electro-smog, govt snooping be damned. Two thirds of folks polled worldwide would trade in their mobes for 5G kit

Marketing 101 bungle...

...advertising what's coming next will tank your sales of the current product, immediately.

World Wide Web's Sir Tim swells his let's-remake-the-internet startup with Bruce Schneier, fellow tech experts

Won’t last long - users will be faced with a choice - hand over blanket access to your data or you have no access to whatever it is you’re after.

We know who wins that argument, it’s pretty common already.

iFixit surgeons dissect Apple's pricey Mac Pro: Industry standard sockets? Repair diagrams? Who are you and what have you done to Apple?

This is far from new...

As anyone familiar with the original cheese-grater PowerMac from the early 2000’s would know, and the Blue & White PowerMac circa 1998.

We know this sounds weird but in future we could ask fiber optic cables: Did the earth move for you... literally?

The same technique has been used for some years to detect intruders in secure areas - by lacing a thin cable in a wire mesh fence - attempting to climb or cut the fence will disturb the cable and can be used to trigger CCTV or alert security personnel, etc.

50 years ago, someone decided it would be OK to fire Apollo 12 through a rain cloud. Awks, or just 'SCE to Aux'?

"... you have to give massive credit to all of them...."

And the engineers who thought of the possible failure modes, and provided a reliable backup solution.

We'll hack back at Russians, declare UK ministers in cyber-Blitz blitz

But...

... is there anything in Russia worth hacking for ?

We regret to inform you the massive asteroid NASA's all excited about probably won't hit Earth

It’s not done in 2029...

You may relax in 2029 but ... it’s not done. There’s a little piece of obscure orbital mathematics called the “mirror theorem” which means the same scenario will repeat in reverse some years beyond the 2029 approach, at that date plus some multiple of the orbital periods. And the near misses will repeat until it’s whammo !

As one who watched the impact of Shoemaker-Levy on Jupiter, there’s little doubt about there being an extinction event some time in the not so distant future.

Bun fight breaks out after devs, techie jump ship: Bakery biz Panera sues its former IT crowd

Why a patent ?

Just old-school Logistic Support Analysis as taught in the 1980’s. Admittedly they did it well.

And they received a patent for this ?!?

620 million accounts stolen from 16 hacked websites now for sale on dark web, seller boasts

Seems like the miscreants just got some free advertising, courtesy of the Reg.

Our vulture listened to four hours of obtuse net neutrality legal blah-blah so you don't have to: Here's what's happening

Perhaps one day the FCC will wake up and realise what has been the case for years - it no longer has any relevance to the internet.

Australia on the cusp of showing the world how to break encryption

Someone should remind them what happens when a government decrees - by law - that which is not possible.

Oz retro computer collection in dire straits, bulldozers on horizon

Never mind the history, in Australia there’s virtually no recognition of engineering, either...

Software changed the world, then died on the first of the month

Kiddie error

Sadly most coders have never heard of Julian day numbers, and the simple formulae to translate between them and string format ie DD/MM/YYYY (or whatever your localisation is).

Leading zeros and such should never have been an issue.

Big bimmer bummer: Bavaria's BMW buggies battered by bad bugs

Thanks...

Still don't understand why car makers ever thought keyless entry, remote wireless diagnostics and all that infotainment stuff was ever a good idea, the risks were obvious form the start.

I prefer a car with an amp and a set of nice speakers, a connection to my iPhone and bracket to hold it, and a METAL KEY over all that expensive frippery.

And I can sleep easy knowing it won't be stolen, or hijacked, nor can someone deliberately cause an accident remotely.

I'll stick to my 1991 Honda Civic, thanks.

Australian Senate passes meaningless motion that says encryption is very useful

It's an irresistible force that even lawyering can't alter, not a thing.

The use of encryption however IS indeed something lawyering can alter.

Mac fans' eyes mist over: Someone's re-created HyperCard

Supercard was ported to OSX - years ago - and is alive and well.

Vastly superior to HyperCard in every respect.

Boffins discover chemistry that could have produced building blocks of life in space

Very old news

Memory getting hazy now but the formation of organic compounds in the space environment was demonstrated to occur 40, 50 years ago - right up to the synthesis of basic proteins required for DNA.

So you accidentally told a million people they are going to die: What next? Your essential guide...

Storm in a teacup.

Reality is this EMA changes nothing - it can’t change the outcome of an attack - real or fictional - and nor will people die as a direct result of it.

What is more worrying is when people are relying on software to perform actions that - if wrong - may result in many fatalities. Starting with train control systems, and aircraft.

Almost as bad are situations where humans (such as pilots) rely on software systems to make decisions that will affect the lives of many, possibly hundreds or millions.

I’m far more worried about the integrity of the software used to inform the the head of state and military in the US, Russia and China of an attack - if any of them gives a false alarm there’s a real possibility a counter strike will be initiated that starts WW III.

Thankfully they have old-tech telephones and still know how to use them.

Don't panic... but our fragile world is drifting away from the Sun

Just as well I'd say, what with global warming thanks to us humans.

At Christmas, do you give peas a chance? Go cold turkey? What is the perfect festive feast?

Gawd... wrong hemisphere... its usually 40 degrees here.

For the extended family which is more oriental than english... Several dozen Sydney Rock oysters for starters, followed by prawns (cold), Queensland mud crabs, smoked trout, salmon teriyaki, flathead fillets in batter with dill mayonnaise, Side dishes included a light salad of garden greens and kipfer potatoes tossed in a homemade sauce of mayonnaise with a dash of wasabi, chinese flat noodle salad with cold BBQ duck, chinese broccoli with oyster sauce and steamed pork & chive dumplings for the kids.

One dish - for those who dare - was szichuan beef with ginger and black beans complete with numbing peppers and chilli that would turn most people purple in seconds.

Dessert for those still going was a traditional boiled pudding allowed to cool, sliced and these pan-fried in butter till crispy with a drizzle of custard and brandy butter.

All washed down with several bottles of a chilled vintage sparkling rose´ from a high country cold-climate vineyard near Orange NSW, chinese puer tea and a chaser of Talisker Storm.

IT resellers, this is your future: Shifting driverless cars within 5 years

There is little to no need for individuals to own an autonomous electric vehicle - these will be bought and operated as fleets - think driverless taxis, in effect.

Tesla may miss the mark - the notion that private homes need charging stations and Powerwalls may be the case now, but not when the vehicle can be autonomous. Now does it need to be a huge 5 seat family saloon to take the average Joe (or Mary) to/from work.

The only thing with being driven by a computer is how boring it will probably be. I just hope there is a choice of driving modes - I’ll take Fangio every time, over grandma.

Australia commits to establish space agency with no budget, plan, name, deadline …

Easy... this isn't about space.

It's an excuse to pour money into hi-tech boondoggles in South Australia - i.e. a pork-barrelling exercise to win some votes in marginal seats.

For those unacquainted with South Australia, it is basically an arid desert state, very isolated from the eastern states, in dire need of anything to boost its economy, and also happens to be the home of Woomera (rocket range used by the Brits 60 years ago) and the Defence Science and Technology Organisation.

The Australian federal government has a history of large boondoggles in bizarre locations that frankly don't make any rational sense in order to prop up a state economy that would otherwise have failed long ago. Sheep farming in a desert (why, you might ask, as many perished in the attempt), Woomera (abandoned decades ago), car manufacturing (sense finally prevailed at the hands of accountants), a submarine base (on the wrong side of a very large continent)

Mobe reception grief turns LTE Apple Watch 3 into – er, a dull watch

Off should mean OFF. Totally.

If Bluetooth is still on and polling for connections it's going to cause chaos in the car as we frequently want only 1 device to pair with the cars sound system - not three.

I can see us reverting to a USB cable to determine which device is - or isn't - connected to the cars system.

Australians still buy 100,000 feature phones a quarter

This market segment is not limited to drug dealers - people who work in high security environments such as defense and defense contractors - cannot take a smartphone into a restricted area. A dumb phone is generally ok (no camera, no storage, no wifi or Bluetooth, no USB or other ports, no apps).

They probably account for most of that 5%.

Forget trigonometry, 'cos Babylonians did it better 3,700 years ago – by counting in base 60!

Really Ancient News, El Reg...

The details of the tablet - and its mathematical significance - were published by Otto Neugebauer in 1945, Neugebauer being a professor of astronomy, a mathematician AND sufficiently well educated in classics as to translate it directly.

And republished https://arxiv.org/pdf/1004.0025.pdf

Tsk Tsk Reg, almost as bad as Pythagoras himself.

Australian Taxation Office named as party preventing IT contractors being paid

If the contractors have any sense - one who is properly incorporated can employ the rest and take over the business, be paid by customers and pay the other contractors. The contractors might lose a few weeks pay but that's a heck of a lot better than waiting many months - years possibly - for the court process to drag out.

Australian courts are incredibly slow to reach obvious conclusions.

eBay threatens to block Australians from using offshore sellers

The real reason most people here in Oz buy overseas...

... isn't the GST - the cost of shipping small items exceeds this.

The real problems are twofold:

1. Geoblocking by multinationals like Panasonic, Sony and many others not to mention car companies, whose local prices are often double or even triple the price of the same item elsewhere.

2. Local companies that have managed to stitch up "sole supplier" deals with foreign companies, and who likewise jack up the local prices outrageously knowing that the original manufacturer won't sell indidividual items to retail buyers. A similar trick is a minimum order quantity of tens hundreds or thousands to protect these arrangements.

Easy way round it

Just have a buyers agent purchase the goods in US or Europe and ship it here. Their business will boom thanks to our stupid government.

nbn™ gets its wish: Australian ISPs' performance to be rated

$7 million ?

A better idea would have been to give Simon Wright a modest donation and have Whirlpool do it.

Oz regulator hauls Apple to court over iBricks

Disagree - it's not "grey" at all

The issue lies with the third-party repairers - if they mak a half assed attempt to fix an iThing - and it is bricked as a result - they are the ones responsible - not Apple.

The ugly part is they try to shirk all responsibility for their bodgy repairs and try to shift the blame to Apple. And stupid customers go along with that.

Mini-VODAFAIL hits Australia

It's worse, actually...

Not to mention it failing - without fail every year - at times of peak demand such as Christmas Eve, New Year's Eve, Melbourne cup etc.

Wifes employer uses it and she hates it.

Pack your bags! NASA spots SEVEN nearby Earth-sized alien worlds

Someone will be beaming "mars attacks" and soapie TV shows to them by now. We're all doomed

Pacemaker maker St Jude faces new security flaw claims from biz short-selling its stock

Yes some people need glasshouses.

Yes they do break if you insist on throwing rocks at them.

I'm wondering how long before the idiots in the community get tired of this, and those who need pacemakers can sleep easily at night without wondering if some fool is messing with it.

What's not to love about IoT – you can spy on customers as they arrive

Sounded to me like a solution nobody wants looking for an application to solve. And yes agree with the above - since when to we throw data security out the window for the sake of merging everything to solve a problem that hasn't been identified ?

Australian national census fails in the IBM cloud

Paper forms don't have bandwidth limits, nor limits on the #connections that can be handled concurrently.

Likewise unable to log in for hours. Going to bed.

Must listen: We've found the real Bastard Operator From Hell

Sounds like Max Headroom.

Brits unveil 'revolutionary' hydrogen-powered car

On the flat is one thing but going up long hills is quite another - that thing is going to run out of puff very quickly.

Hardly novel, as anyone driving a hybrid will already be aware.

And why so ugly ? Seems uk wannabe carmakers still dream of the Reliant Robin.

Australia threatens to pull buckets of astronomy funding

Might as well kill off all funding for the whole Australian education system now and be done with it, saving the taxpayer a huge bundle. Hey we might even get a tax cut !

Australia's marriage equality vote should take place online

Re: Online voting should happen when online voting can be trusted

Polling places - and staff to run and count the poll - are still needed for the non-digerati to have their say. And the government is legally obliged to provide this opportunity.

An online poll solves nothing.

Scammers going after iOS as fake crash reports hit UK

Similar persistent popup messages have been reported by users in Oz as well. Fairly tricky to escape from.

Looks like Apple will have to deal with this one in a future update.

Female blood-suckers zero in on human prey by smelling our breath

Not convinced.

If this was true mozzies would be primary attracted to the head - or near to it. Possible perhaps if the victim is lying in bed covered in bedding.

But in Australia at least this doesn't explain why mozzies have a clear preference for exposed ankles and feet if these are available, not the face or head.

Vicious vandals violate voluminous Versailles vagina

Offensive "art" deserves an offensive response.

It's high time the Yarty-Farties learned confrontational pieces making a political statement are not art.

If you wouldn't live with it in your backyard it's not suitable in a public place, either.

Bird of HEY.... that's MY DRONE! Hawk attacks geek's quadcopter in nature v machine clash

Add sea eagles and wedge tailed eagles (at least in Oz..)

http://www.news.com.au/national/eagle-gets-within-metres-of-hang-glider-hitches-a-ride-on-top/story-e6frfkp9-1226551800288

Brit Sci-Fi author Alastair Reynolds says MS Word 'drives me to distraction'

Even with revision markups Word is notoriously unstable, likely to crash or corrupt the file irretrievably.

Never, ever rely on markups in Word - the safe way is to compare two versions, before (accept all changes) and after.

Re: Not WYSIWYG

Agreed Word is not WYSIWYG. It never can be (oh and wait till you change languages).

Use a pure text editor, as if it were a typewriter, or a nonlinear text editor.

HTML is a sexually transmitted disease, say many Americans

Hehe more like earnest twits set the survey not realising that 50% of the respondents would find the survey rather stupid and deliberately fluff the answers., just for fun. I certainly would have.

Undeterred by Snapchat's snafus, upstart Confide punts self-destruct selfies

Er... what's wrong with a good-old telephone ... while there is a record of the call being made (at the telco), the talker can (optionally) request the listener authenticate him/herself, there's no trace of the contents (the conversation) as soon as its received. The talker can also request and obtain immediate confirmation that the message has been received and understood.

And if you're worried about the record of the call, use someone else's - or a phone box.

Even better, meet in person.

Sounds like a better solution...

Samsung whips out 12.2-inch 'Professional' iPad killers

They're playing to the dummies in the market...

Ill-conceived - bigger isn't always better.

There is really no point building big tablets that approach laptop screens, when comparable laptops will slay this Samsung on every technical score (eg MacBook Air or similar ultralight notepads).

The whole point of the iPad3 and iPad Air is they are big enough and fast to do what is asked of them, and their weight gives a huge advantage over the bottom end of the laptop market (Macbook Air and similar).

OTOH going smaller doesn't achieve much as the weight of most various forms of physical protection- plus the bag you carry it in - (backshells, sleeves covers etc) approach or even exceed the weight of the device itself.

Drone owners told: stay out of bushfire skies

Re: Let's be realistic here ...

As a paraglider pilot who has had a collision with a styrofoam model aircraft in the air, the risk is real.

At the speed a paraglider file its just painful, but no lasting injury. As the speeds of real aircraft or rotating blades the damage will be catastrophic and the consequences quite serious.

Analyst says Brit rail broadband plan is TRAIN CRAZY

From firsthand experience over the summer on 3 networks... the broadband on trains is crap - anyone with a smartphone or tablet with a 3G connection already has a better connection with more bandwidth.