Posts by I am David Jones

Splunk to junk masters and slaves once a committee figures out replacements

Ok....but whitespace?

The word has no positive or negative connotations (that I know of), it is purely descriptive.

Erasing the word “white” from our vocabulary would seem to be a step too far...

Cloudflare outage caused by techie pulling out the wrong cables

Imprecise?

Is it just me or is the instruction “remove all the equipment in one of our cabinets” not imprecise, but just plain wrong?

Alleged Vault 7 leaker trial finale: Want to know the CIA's password for its top-secret hacking tools? 123ABCdef

Re: Cell phones in prison

How to smuggle phones? Look up boss* phone on Amazon. Think lipstick-sized, to be used with a Bluetooth headset.

*body orifice scanning system

Your mobile network broke the law by selling location data and may be fined millions... or maybe not, shrugs FCC

Hmmm

But, notably, the promise is not binding and can be lifted at any time.

So not a promise then.

Remember when Europe’s entire Galileo satellite system fell over last summer? No you don’t. The official stats reveal it never happened

Re: And the Brexit Positioning System?

Hmm, to signal a joke or not... I dithered and had to make do with this bodge :)

And the Brexit Positioning System?

With a view to surpassing Gallileo’s amateurish attempts, I hear they will initially aim for a minimum of 80% downtime, increasing over time to 95% and then up to the fabled 99%.

There's Huawei too many vulns in Chinese giant's firmware: Bug hunters slam pisspoor code

What a crock of sh*t

No hard and fast comparison with other manufacturers, and analysing a whole back catalogue of devices. Don’t really need to read further to form my opinion on this “research”.

Such results would be entirely consistent with a company that had developed world-class security standards over the last few years, for example.

Swedish prosecutors request Assange detention: First step to European arrest warrant

Easy. Which country are we trying to get a big trade deal with?

Freed whistleblower Chelsea Manning back in jail for refusing to testify before secret grand jury

Re: One crime.

After 18 months she can go straight to a debtors’ prison with those levels of fines ... :(

That's Numberwang! Google Cloud staffer breaks record for most accurate Pi calculation

Re: "...staffer breaks record for most *precise* Pi calculation"

Yes but given that pi has been calculated (and not measured) and is presumably correct, then an increase in precision goes hand-in-hand with an increase in accuracy.

ICO, forgive me – it has been three weeks since I discovered my breach

Dodgy stats

“nearly half of all breaches (87) were reported to the ICO on a Thursday or Friday.”

Interesting fact: nearly half of all working days are a Thursday or Friday.

Go big (with our bandwidth) or go home, Verizon: Texas mulls outlawing 911 throttling after Cali wildfire fiasco

On the face of it, this just looks like the emergency services didn’t read the T&Cs. Even most muppet consumers know to check the fair use policy for “unlimited” contracts. Or they didn’t anticipate such high usage. Either way, it’s hard to pin the blame on Verizon.

I’m not defending the throttling of unlimited plans, but it is hardly new or exceptional.

Come mobile users, gather round and learn how to add up

2+2=4?

What’s wrong with:

2+2=5 (for very large values of 2)

London's Gatwick airport suspends all flights after 'multiple' reports of drones

Re: Do you actually need a drone to cause this sort of chaos?

Don’t fight the urge, it’s Christmas after all.

Just make sure you watch nr 1 first :)

Should a robo-car run over a kid or a grandad? Healthy or ill person? Let's get millions of folks to decide for AI...

Dignity of life

The German constitutional court found that any weighing up of value of human life is illegal as it offends the dignity of the people concerned. I can buy into that, who can judge whether person A is “better” or “more valuable” than person B? Applies only to people of course, animals should lose every time imho.

For a self-driving car, I would take this as prohibiting any deliberate action that would lead to someone getting hit who otherwise would not have been hit. I.e. mitigate the collision you are heading for rather than causing a different collision.

However, the consequence of this principle would be, for example, not shooting down a hijacked plane containing one or more innocent passengers, even if the plane is heading for a crowded stadium. They made a TV courtroom drama based on this scenario.

Britain mulls 'complete shutdown' of 4G net for emergency services

Your maths is *a bit* screwed, a factor of 10 out. 99.9% uptime is just over 0.35 days per year downtime (~9 hours).

Folks are shocked – shocked – that CIA-backed Amazon is selling face-recog tech to US snoops, cops

Re: Yet "Amazon Go", their retail store prototype, is 100% fake

That Golem article does not back up your comments at all.

The shopper got his invoice “on the way back from the shop”, and it says nothing about security personnel or manually analysing video feeds.

If you’re interested, a related patent application from Amazon is WO2014209724.

Google adds planets and moons to Maps, but puts bits in the wrong places

So what *is* the right way up for a moon or planet?

Twitter: Why we silenced Rose McGowan after she slammed alleged sex pest Harvey Weinstein

We have contacted the actress

Thank-you for not reaching out!

Behold iOS 11, an entirely new computer platform from Apple

When is a toggle switch not a toggle switch?

When it is on an iPhone. Bluetooth and Wifi toggles in the control centre no longer turn off the respective radios, they merely disconnect. You have to go into settings to properly turn them off. I don't like this.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208086

Tinder bans under-18s: Moral panic averted

Re: Why is 18 improbably old?

"The most suited couple I know have a 15 year age difference. Neither is "abusing" the other. You think this relationship should be banned, and the wonderful family they have created should never have existed?"

Banned? Of course not. Merely postponed... ;)

Archaeologists find oldest ever ground-edge stone axe

Re: Hold on a gosh darned minute...

@Alister: 2667BC was actually 4672 years ago. If you cant manage humour then try accuracy :)

Edit: Not that this level of precision is at all meaningful in this context.

Junk patent ditched in EAST TEXAS

Re: A river of tears

Most European patents are subject to public scrutiny before issue. The application gets published after 18 months and then anybody can write to the office providing relevant prior art and/or arguing why the invention is not patentable.

A lot of US patent applications are also published prior to issue, and the public have the same right to comment on pending applications.

It seems to be a very rarely used option though.

Salon Privé: The UK's billionaire-friendly answer to Pebble Beach

can't be bothered to send you an email but...

mW ≠ MW!

(but I still want one)

Lottery chief resigns as winning combo numbers appear on screen BEFORE being drawn

From the video it looked like the 27 was drawn and the number 21 flashed up on the screen. That could be down to a simple misreading of the 7 as a 1. That the 21 was drawn next could then have been down to unfortunate coincidence.

Car? Check. Driver? Nope. OK, let's go, says British govt

Re: There is no "software" that can comprehend .......

There is no human that can comprehend all the scenarios that crop up when driving! And humans have slower reactions...

Wanna buy a dot-word? If you want a .pizza the action, now's a chance

.immo

.immo probably stands for "immobilien", German for property.

I don't get the long ones though, everyone has been shortening their URLs and then someone comes along with .photography ???

Randall Munroe: The root nerd talks to The Register

Love the guy's work. Not sure I could pick a favourite comic but the 1337 series (starts with http://xkcd.com/341) always makes me chuckle. And little Bobby Tables, of course.

LOHAN bloodhound unleashes solar-powered minitracker

So, can this transponder be switched off by the Playmonaut?

Amazon CIA cloud row: US judge slaps down IBM as 'manipulative', inferior

What planet am I on?

One where a losing bidder's mistake ("misunderstanding the requirements") can lead to the whole tendering process being called into question?

One where bidders deliver "guaranteed minimum prices"?

OK, I have never been anywhere near any tendering processes, big or small, but WTF???

Engineer Doe thought people's private info 'might be useful'

Re: Moore's Law - it's not a law, damnit!

Well you'd better get onto Wikipedia and come up with a new name. Good luck with finding a consensus!

While you're at it, have a go at Murphy's Law, and the Law of Unintended Consequences.

Asinine indeed...