Posts by Phil O'Sophical

UK is 'not a surveillance state' insists minister defending police face recog tech

Then see what happens to footfall.

Probably nothing much. Most ordinary folks don't care, any more than they care about letting Facebook sell their personal details.

Re: Yes it effing is!

Hard to have any say in politics when there's no option but to choose the colour of tie the shit in power wears.

You could always stand for election yourself. No tie required.

May Day! PM sacks UK Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson for Huawei 5G green-light 'leak'

Re: ByElection

As Brexit has proved, in this country, we are fucking stupid.

Defining someone as stupid simply because they disagree with your view? Not the most logical of arguments

We have a reading age of less than nine according to OECD https://www.oecd.org/skills/piaac/Country%20note%20-%20United%20Kingdom.pdf

I'm curious how you get "reading age of less than nine" from that PDF. It seems to show that the UK is pretty much in the middle when it comes to literacy & numeracy in the EU, better than some like France, and non-EU places like the US, but worse than S. Korea or the Scandinavians, which won't come as a surprise to anyone. Disappointing to see the poor numeracy levels in may places, but it seems unfashionable these days to teach mental arithmetic in schools "why bother, everyone has a calculator" is the prevailing attitude.

Our education system literally is going backwards https://literacytrust.org.uk/information/what-is-literacy/

Yes, Tony Blair's policies have a lot to answer for. Not that his kids will suffer, of course, since he sent them to a private school.

NASA fingers the cause of two bungled satellite launches, $700m in losses, years of science crashing and burning...

Especially when "NASA", in this case, means "taxpayers".

What a meth: Elderly Melbourne couple sign for 20kg shipment of drugs, say cops

Re: Insurance value 5k max

I wouldn't bet on it:

Drug dealer arrested after calling police to report stolen cocaine

after all, if they were smarter they might not have to turn to crime...

Oh dear. Secret Huawei enterprise router snoop 'backdoor' was Telnet service, sighs Vodafone

Re: Sniffable

Have you ever seen that used in real life?

Nope.

A quick Google search suggests its only supported out of the box between Windows OS's which must make it close to non-existent given how common managing Windows boxen with telnet is.

My current Debian Linux box supports it, at least according to the telnet manpage.

Agreed, though, it's unlikely to be in widespread use, especially since it uses preshared keys rather than any public key approach.

Re: Sniffable

At least Telnet is plain text and unencrypted.

Not necessarily, see RFC2946.

FYI: Someone left 24GB of personal info on 80m US households exposed to the public internet

It's a question of priorities

Who do you think manages the cloud if it's not IT folk?

In-house IT folk have the security of your organization to maintain.

Cloud IT folk have the the security of their cloud service to maintain.

Not the same priorities at all.

And in current affairs... Apple recalls three-prong AC adapters after some shocking behavior

Re: And it has happened even before 2016...

adaptors have to conform to the relevant standards for electrical accessories plugged into the household mains - basically BS1363

There's a big difference between conforming to BS1363, with a kitemark to prove it, and just "built to BS1363" which I've seen on many cheap plugs and is, of course, meaningless. I wonder if there's a kitemark on the Apple adapters?

Northern Virginia cements spot as bit barn capital of the world with jigawatt capacity

Re: where are the windmills

Virginia as a whole gets 40% of its power from four aging nuclear plants.

What sort of backup supply is there for this 1GW of datacentres handling 70% of the worlds internet traffic, then?

Clouds seem useful, but they do tend to blow away in a good puff of wind.

Thank you, your DNA data will help secure your… oh dear, we've lost that too

Night porters

The real advantage of the old-fashioned night porter was that, after letting you & your colleagues in and turning on the lights in the lounge, he would bring you drinks & coffees from the long-closed bar. If you tipped him enough he'd even sometimes forget to add them to anyone's bill.

Is that a stiffy disk in your drive... or something else entirely?

You have to hand it to her, a second mistake like that certainly ticks the boxes, assuming it wasn't just a wind-up.

No stormy weather on Microsoft's horizon – as quarterly commercial cloud cash balloons 41%

picking the right secular trends

I always thought cloud was more of a religious thing.

FYI: Get ready for face scans on leaving the US because 1.2% of visitors overstayed their visas

Re: Blame Canada

it seems to be depressing that the anti-Brexit argument basically amounts to giving PIRA a veto over any democractic decision

Yes, not doing something just in case it might result in violence from paramilitaries is a classic example of "giving in to terrorists", which people in NI have spent 30+ years refusing to do. Varadkar should be ashamed of himself for those comments.

let's hope UKIP don't decide to sert up a paramilitary wing.

Unlikely, one advantage of the single-issue parties like UKIP is that the UK has had an anti-EU option that doesn't involve far right/left violent extremism. It's been spared the move to the extremes that other EU countries are suffering. I wouldn't be so sanguine about the likes of BNP or Britain First, though.

Re: Blame Canada

Can't you just walk across the border?

With a US or Canadian passport, yes. The only person I know who tried it (in a car, travelling with an American friend) saw her friend waved through, but she had to spend an hour in Canadian immigration waiting to be interviewed, and then thoroughly questioned as to the reason for her trip. The fact that it all happened directly under a large photograph of the Queen was even more irritating!

Re: Blame Canada

Have you ever tried to go from the US to Canada by road, as a non-US citizen? It ain't easy.

Tesla touts totally safe, not at all worrying self-driving cars – this time using custom chips

Re: If, if, and more if's....

Long haul trucking is one. Get on the expressway. Stay in your lane. Don't run into things. Don't pass anything that isn't stationary or moving VERY slowly.

Sounds like a train, which would be a much better way to move containerized goods long haul, with the trucks reserved just for the endpoint collection/distribution.

Unfortunately the problem there isn't technical, it's truck drivers & their unions.

Bloke faces up to 20 years in the clink after gun held to dot-com owner's head in robbery

Re: God what a twat

He deserves to get locked up for being called "Rossi Lorathio Adams II" anyway.

Presumably that one is down to his parents.

Fed up with 72-hour, six-day working weeks, IT workers emit cries for help via GitHub repo

Re: Ahead of their time

I'm sure if 996 works in China the free market can make it work here too.

Been there, done that. It was called the "Industrial Revolution". Worked at the time, but isn't really sustainable.

Here's what Lynch, Hussain and HPE are saying about Autonomy pre-buyout due diligence

Auditors?

KPMG and HP's in-house due diligence teams didn't flag up anything about hardware sales, they must have been misled.

Well d'Oh! Isn't that why you employ professional auditors, to look at the facts and work out if you're being misled? By admitting they were misled, aren't KPMG just admitting that they're incompetent?

Dyin'... for some li-ion, from Taiwan? Electronics powerhouse spewing out data centre cells

Why not primary cells?

Telcos have been using racks with primary cells as per-shelf backup for a long time. If this is just for medium-term power-outage protection, primary cells can have higher energy density and they have very low self-discharge rates. They just need to be changed out every few years, and can be fairly easily recycled, with no need to provide recharging infrastructure. Is that a viable option here?

Overzealous n00b takes out point-of-sale terminals across the UK on a Saturday afternoon

Re: Scary people in IT

somehow scheduled some work using CET and not UK time

Perhaps one of those people who thinks that GMT just means "UK time", and is unaware that Daylight Saving time means that the UK is on GMT+1 in the summer? I get USAnians like that who schedule meetings for "3pm GMT", then show up at 3pm BST and complain that no-one else is there.

Re: Scary people in IT

As my grandfather was fond of saying "The man who never made a mistake never made anything."

Phew... Oi, was that you, Curiosity? Euro Mars sat inhaled mega methane blast, boffins baffled

The chances against anything manlike on Mars are a million to one

"That night, too, there was another jetting out of gas from the distant planet. I saw it ... That night another invisible missile started on its way to the earth from Mars, just a second or so under twenty-four hours after the first one."

We don't know whether 737 Max MCAS update is coming or Boeing: Anti-stall safety fix delayed

Even with an alleged fix I can't see too many people wanting to fly in one for at least a year or two, until it's proved itself again. In that case, why would any airline try to bring them back into service? To fly them empty?

Mozilla tries to do Java as it should have been – with a WASI spec for all devices, computers, operating systems

Re: a write-once, run anywhere binary

What's a write-once run anywhere binary got to do with Java?

"write once, run anywhere" was Java's slogan in the early days. Soon changed to "write once, debug everywhere".

a write-once, run anywhere binary

Whatever happened to UCSD p-code?

Return of the Glassholes? Relax: Huawei's 'smart specs' aren't Google Glass 2.0

Re: Wearing them wrong

Do they include a radar detector to stop you walking into things indoors?

They're Smart glasses, so presumably they have a head-up display which will show "You are in a small room at the end of a corridor. There is a wall in front of you." in such circumstances.

VP Mike Pence: I want Americans back on the Moon by 2024 (or before the Chinese get there)

At least JFK thought to add that bit about "and returning them safely to earth" which is notably missing from Pence's announcement.

NASA's first all-woman spacewalk outside ISS cancelled – due to lack of spacesuits that fit

Re: In Case of Emergency?

I thought there were enough space suits (that fit?) for every member on board at any given time.

I'd guess that there's a difference between a suit that will keep you alive, and one that allows hours of strenuous EVA without injury (or chafing!)

Re: "Does this space suit make my ass look big?"

So, how do you measure up? Think you're the right stuff?

Looks a bit tight to me.

Ethiopian Airlines boss confirms suspect flight software was in use as Boeing 737 Max crashed

it wasn't mentioned in the basic 737 Max pilot's manuals.

Good documentation costs money, standard practice these days was probably just to tell the designer to write a blog entry about it.

Aussie engineer accuses 'serial farter' supervisor of bullying, seeks $1.8m redress

Re: To jump to a philosophical issue

Spread it on toast?

I believe you may be confusing it with Marmite. Easy mistake.

Appropriate byline

Mr. Currie.

NexDock 2: Electric Boogaloo. Crowdfunded laptop shell sequel touts less plastic, more pixels

Re: Server room tool

Just needs a catchy name. Maybe "Visual Display Unit" ?

Russian sailors maroon themselves in Bristol Channel after drunken dinghy ride goes awry

A story which allowed one of yesterday's papers (The Torygraph, I think) to run a headline of "What shall we do with the drunken sailors?".

Chap joins elite support team, solves what no one else can. Is he invited back? Is he f**k

Re: I'm lazy. Really fucking lazy!

if I have to do 100 hour week solving a problem that is wasting 10 hours of my life every week I will do it because I know it will save me 400+hrs in the next year

As always, there's an XKCD for it: https://xkcd.com/1319/

Brit Parliament online orifice overwhelmed by Brexit bashers

Re: Hang on

but the votes would still have passed if they had required a 2/3rds majority.

Really?

The EU was created by the Treaty of Maastricht

France voted for Maastricht in 1992 by only 51%

Denmark voted against it in 192, 48% then in favour in 1993 by 57%

Finland voted to join in 1994 by 57%

Sweden in 1994 by 52.3%

Norway voted not to join in 1994 by 52.2%

None of the few countries that were allowed a vote on the treaties of Nice or Amsterdam reached 2/3

If all EEC/EU-related votes had required even a 2/3 majority of those who voted (never mind 2/3 of the electorate) Europe would look very different today. We'd have a smaller EEC, and no EU.

Re: So lots of votes doesn't necessarily mean you'll get what you want. A lesson for us all there.

Fucking hell, can she be any more sanctimonious?

She's a politician, does that answer the question?

Re: Hang on

The way to deal with that is what should have been the original arrangement: a change of status quo needs a substantial majority, such as 2/3.

Very true, but that wasn't applied to any of the votes to join or create the EU so it would be a little one-sided to only apply it now to the vote to leave.

Are you suggesting that brits currently abroad shouldn't be allowed to vote?

One of Cameron's broken election promises was to remove the 15-year limit.

EU ≠ EEC

since 'the will of the people' back in the 70s was to remain in the EU

Not, it was to remain the Common Market (an economic grouping). The EU (a political grouping) wasn't created until the Treaty of Maastricht was signed in 1992. Maastricht was only passed by 51% in France, and failed with 49% in Denmark, who had to be made to vote again to get it right, certainly not a decisive result.

I would have voted to remain in the Common Market, but not to remain in the EU.

why we're asking the public to vote on an issue they don't understand at all

So, should we just stop having elections & go back to an absolute Monarchy, then?

the number is too close to call it a mandate to change such a lifetime affecting International relationship.

Which is also true of every vote taken when the EU was created in the first place. If there had been a 60% or 70% threshold there wouldn't be an EU to leave.

Ransomware drops the Lillehammer on Norsk Hydro: Aluminium giant forced into manual mode after systems scrambled

Re: insecure by design

we had real time control systems in the late 90s running on Norsk data mini computers

Under Sintran? (shudder)

From MySpace to MyFreeDiskSpace: 12 years of music – 50m songs – blackholed amid mystery server move

Re: I wonder

They'd use an AI to rebuild your past profile based on your present profile. Similar to Hollywood movie scripts

We're sorry, but your data was deleted during an upgrade. Our AI has re-imagined your profile, and the new, improved and colorized, data has been re-shared with all your friends. There is no charge for this service.

I wonder

Will we ever see a time when Facebook loses everything, and people take a year to notice? Or is that just wishful thinking?

Brit prisoners to be kept on the straight and narrow with JavaScript and CSS

If there's no internet access in prison

How will they do javascript without stackexchange.com?

UK joins growing list of territories to ban Boeing 737 Max flights as firm says patch incoming

Re: The reason that the Max series need MCAS

If one is faulty how can the software detect which one?

Does it have to? If it gets substantially different values from them it just has to light up a big alarm light and disable MCAS. It certainly shouldn't pick one sensor & trust it.

Radio gaga: Techies fear EU directive to stop RF device tinkering will do more harm than good

Re: Gonna ask what may be a stoopid question here...

I'd have just returned it giving manufacturer defect as the reason with a photo of the mess on the oscilloscope as proof.

I considered it, but it was already built-in to the equipment & my project was later than I wanted, so I decided to see if there was an easy fix first. Also, there would be no guarantee that any alternative replacement would be better.