Posts by Scroticus Canis

Microsoft's latest Windows 10 update downs Chrome, Cortana

Windows 10 April Fools' 2018 Update.

FTFY.

Apple debugs debugger, nukes pesky vulns in iOS, WebKit, macOS

Re: "I let Fowler be my guide"

(6) DILLIGAF or is that covered by (1)?

Musk: I want to retrieve rockets with big Falcon party balloons

"100 per cent oxygen at 16 psi " would kill you fairly fast.

NASA used pure oxygen but at 21% atmospheric pressure so it was at the same partial pressure as in air, not at 107% atmospheric.

Still burns every thing at a higher rate and temperature as they found out when three astronauts were cooked in their capsule some time back. The very reason that the Russians chose to use just plain air at 1 Atm and take the weight/space penalty.

Surprise! Wireless brain implants are not secure, and can be hijacked to kill you or steal thoughts

I'm beginning to regret my neural-net net now

Hub? Hub?

Re: "The lesson here,..is that security-through-obscurity is a dangerous design choice."

Actually it should be the first step in a multi-layered approach. Always laminate the armour.

Re: "Next thing you know you'll need a dolphin to get the information out !"

I believe the mice also have a solution but you may not like it.

France building encrypted messaging app for politicians

I got a 'U'. Beat that.

I got told by the French teacher to "never never darken his classroom door step again" after forgetting to go to an exam! Do I win?

Yep, I also ended up living in Paris (long ago) and learnt French in the Tabacs and Cafes. Crap pidgin French but good enough to insult the locals :)

Facebook admits it does track non-users, for their own good

Re: Blocking FB cookies - Firefox Preferences

Privacy & Security

1 - accept third party cookies = never

2 - keep cookies = until I close FF (so they all get deleted when you close the browser*)

*for the few sites where you do want the cookies go to the site and click the circled 'i' at the left of the address in the tool bar and set accept cookies to allowed, these will then be kept until manually deleted

3 - check clear history when FF closes and check - cache, close active logins, forms & search history and off-line site data (no need to check the cookies box due to step 2)

4 - Use NoScript.

5 - there are new options which also allow you to deny location, notifications, camera, and microphone usage.

Some data like site preferences (preferred zoom, etc) does stay but can be clear at step 3.

Hope that helps.

US, UK cyber cops warn Russians are rooting around in your routers

Problem is that most home routers are supplied by the ISP and updated by the ISP.

Well I have had two firmware updates from BT* this year, last one on the 7th April, now whether that is a good thing or not I have no idea.

* presumably British Telecom and not Babushka Telecon :)

Re: Crying Wolf - @Mark 85

So that's where the the Orange Prune in the White House got the idea.

SpaceX's Falcon 9 poised to fling 350kg planet-sniffing satellite into Earth orbit

Re: Well now, - Umm, maybe stay off the purple pills.

The dried frog pills are soooo much better ....

'Dear Mr F*ckingjoking': UK PM Theresa May's mass marketing missive misses mark

The "public" or Open register is the cut down version sold to spammers.

FTFY.

Fear the Reaper: Man hospitalised after eating red hot chilli pepper

Re: "And it makes a fiery ring"

Well it does come from the Puckerbutt Pepper Co. of South Carolina. No, honestly it does; and the guy who bred it is Ed Currie!

(the icon is a reminder 'not to' without a bucket of ice cubes)

Penis pothole protester: Cambridge's 'Wanksy' art shows feted

Re: "Or a DIY enthusiast"

Given the handle it prompts the question - just how flexible are you?

Patch or ditch Adobe Flash: Exploit on sale, booby-trapped Office docs spotted in the wild

Flash is good, the BBC recommends it so it must be!

Aunty Beeb still uses this for it's on-line weather forecast video (and other stuff) and recommends you install Flash Player if it doesn't find it; tantamount to recommending downloading malware IMHO.

Killed Flash on my machine yonks ago and don't have or need M$ Orrifice in any form.

How life started on Earth: Sulfur dioxide builds up, volcanoes blow, job done – boffins

Re: Curse you, Noah Webster! - Well phuck'em!

Is all I can say to that.

Law's changed, now cough up: Uncle Sam serves Microsoft fresh warrant for Irish emails

Re: Cloud Act ? ... F*ck yee-haa ...

FTFY

No chance of flying too close to this: Icarus, the most distant star seen, is 9bn light years away

Re: Hawking's Star? - Relatively speaking... ... Oh Absolutely!

More a quantum fluctuation in the Grand Scheme of Things but what beautiful ripples he left in our understanding; they will continue to spread for a long time.

Any social media accounts to declare? US wants travelers to tell

Re: It's a good thing someone built a semaphore-to-Internet gateway then.

The clacks have gone electronic? Since when?

(where's the Wizzard Hat icon then?)

Tantalising Tabby's Star teases watchers with big dimming event

I do like how it got it's nick name

Let's hope the lady gets us some answers soon.

What the @#$%&!? Microsoft bans nudity, swearing in Skype, emails, Office 365 docs

Re: It's a feature - Scunthorpe

So you can't ask Cortana "If Typhoo put the T in Britain, who put the .... in Scunthorpe"

BOFH: Give me a lever long enough and a fool, I mean a fulcrum and ....

Re: Just don't try it for Scotland and England..

Sage advice, a heed to the nose or a punch in the face do tend to offend.

Pharma bro Martin Shkreli to miss 2024 Paris Olympics

Price Hiking of Drugs only in the US of A

It's not just this oxygen thief's fault that he could hike the drug's price; that action was enabled by the USA drugs patent system blocking the generic drug from the American market.

$750 a pill in the USA while 10¢ a pill as the top end price just about everywhere else. American democracy in action or inaction?

Brit semiconductor tech ended up in Chinese naval railgun – report

Re: "What's with the fortified islands then?"

They don't sink like aircraft carriers and don't need special aircraft for take off and landing on them.

Bitcoin heist with a twist: This time it's servers that were stolen

Re: 600 Servers = 1 truck and lots of muscle

The article said there were four raids not one. So say 150 servers each raid so not such a big truck as no packaging and also less muscle required.

I would also imagine they have trolleys and forklifts in Iceland which would have figured in my plans to do something like this; just like planning an installation in reverse.

Oh honey! Oxfordshire abuzz with reports of a MEEELLION bees stolen

Re: I also use a brand with my logo - @Johnny Canuck

What exactly have you been using in your bee hive smoker?

Hypersonic nukes! Nuclear-powered drone subs! Putin unwraps his new (propaganda) toys

In other news; 1st April moved forward by a month ....

All sounds just like willy waving to me. Did someone buy the wee man a 14" strap-on?

Chilly willies: Swedish nudie nightclub opens in -11°C to disgust of locals

Brings a whole new meaning to a stiffie.

Yep. At -11ºC three and a half inches is all you can reasonably expect.

Not much use with an eight inch slot though.

Full shift to electric vans would melt Royal Mail's London hub, MPs told

Modular reactors are the only real answer.

Wind and solar alone are never going to cut it, even for just the current supply. Until we crack fusion the only answer is to use current nuclear technology to supply needs and replace fossil fuels.

Current big reactor designs and deployment are not really desirable and still have distribution problems. Modular reactors similar to those used by the nuclear subs and warships could a viable option. Placed close to where the power is needed, at end of life the whole unit is removed and sent for decommissioning and a new unit dropped into place. Benefit of many small units is they can back each other up via the grid more effectively than just a few big ones.

Waste will still be a problem but we may have no option but to store it safely until technology catches up.

The phone OS that muggers wouldn't touch is back from the dead

Are you happy to see me ...

... or is that a Nokia in your pocket?

Tor pedo's torpedo torpedoed: FBI spyware crossed the line but was in good faith, say judges

Re: Or am I missing something?

Oh yes. They were not exposed by TOR in any way.

They were exposed by logging on to a compromised server which then fed them the exposing exploit, which in turn then gathered the information available on the pervs PC. I presume they did not change the server's IP address when it was moved to run the sting.

None of the FBI's information came from TOR except maybe the IPs of the entry and exit nodes (they are not mentioned as part of the gathered evidence) which the PC would of had anyway.

NRA gives FCC boss Ajit Pai a gun as reward for killing net neutrality. Yeah, an actual gun

Dunblane

I remember that the local fuzz ignored many reports from members of the gun club that the perpetrator was a member of that he was unstable and not fit to hold a firearms licence; this for several months prior to the incident.

The police excuse after the fact was that they couldn't review his licence as it would impact his EU granted human rights.

Even back then a firearms licence was held "at the pleasure of" the granting chief constable and could be withdrawn at any time with no reason required.

Is "Ajit" the Urdu equvalent of the Irish "Ejit"?

Just asking.

Re: very few people do bad things with cars...

Codswallop! Just check the drink driving stats or convictions for dangerous driving.

We all hate Word docs and PDFs, but have they ever led you to being hit with 32 indictments?

Pled?

OED : Pled - North American, Scottish, or dialect past participle of plead.

Might be in the OED but I agree it isn't English.

Does my boom look big in this? New universe measurements bewilder boffins

Re: Something's not right here - explain it in simple terms

For simplicity assume the Plank length is the smallest quanta of space-time.

The expansion of the universe appears to be that the quanta of space-time in areas with minimal matter/gravitation (intergalactic voids) spontaneously split into two new "lumps" of space time at a given rate or spontaneously get created (makes little odds).

After a while there is now more space between the galaxies, thus they all appear to be moving away from each other. The galaxies are not necessarily "moving" in relation to each other, it's the space (distance) between them that is growing.

Galactic clusters cover huge areas (volumes) but the common gravity between the galaxies seemingly prevents the space-time between them expanding. Our own galactic cluster is actually moving in a concerted direction measured against the rest of universe even though the individual galaxies are moving relative to each other.

Dark energy has not been observed working at smaller scales, such as within galactic clusters, galaxies, or down at the atomic level. For the much touted big rip to happen dark energy would have to increase many many fold to the point where it could overcome not just weak gravity but the binding energy of the strong force in baryons.

That's my simplistic view of how it works. Works for me :)

Re: Light - your, yore - or even you're?

Meep!

Bloke sues Microsoft: Give me $600m – or my copy of Windows 7 back

Re: Superfluous step

Some things need to be killed with fire. Just to be sure.

Stop calling, stop calling... ICO goes gaga after home improvement biz ignores warnings

Re: "There must be a law where 'incitement to break the law' is a crime?"

It's called conspiracy and used to be used quite a bit*. However it has been under scrutiny of the Law Commission for some time and appears to have fallen out of favour. Not sure if it's still on the statute books or not.

There is also a civil version 'conspiracy to commit fraud' which should be applicable now if they are still making marketing calls while the company is going insolvent.

* not always in a good way unfortunately

Facial recognition software easily IDs white men, but error rates soar for black women

"officially - they are all Caucasian"

So are those from the middle east and Indian sub-continent; well at least back when I was in uni.

UK Home Sec Amber Rudd unveils extremism blocking tool

"The purpose of these videos is to incite violence ... and attempt to spread fear in our society."

I think the most "fear" from watching one of these videos would be the plod knocking down your door.

Hardly any normal people would want to see this stuff or go looking for it; those that did see this stuff would feel disgust rather than be intimidated by it.

Re: Peppa Pig dubbed in Arabic

That can't be kosher!

Mars is red, Earth is blue. Here's a space laser story for you

"SHERLOC will be calibrated, tested, then re-tested and re-calibrated "

And hopefully decontaminated.

(sorry, had to find an excuse for the icon)

No sh*t, Sherlock! Bloke suspected of swallowing drug stash keeps colon schtum for 22 DAYS

Re: "when they get off their guns and trump hobbyhorses"

What's wrong with guns?

My question is...

... how did a shitty Essex story come to reported on from San Francisco? Is Iain Thompson a secret TOWIE fan?

Elon Musk's Tesla burns $675.3m in largest ever quarterly loss

Re: Unwarranted Trumpanzee

Uppies just for the title.

I would have given you one for the content as well if allowed.

Assange fails to make skipped bail arrest warrant vanish

Re: "not entirely clear who he's not forgiving"

Well not himself; no need as all narcissists know that it's always someone else's fault, can't be their own as they are perfect in their own eyes.

A Hughes failure: Flat Earther rocketeer can't get it up yet again

Re: "Can't he just journey to the actual edge of the earth?"

They are still looking for it! Anyway lack of proof of an edge does not prove there isn't one.

Where have I heard that before?

Bluetooth 'Panty Buster' 'smart' sex toy fails penetration test

My sex toy has a virus

Eew!

Morrisons launches bizarre Yorkshire Pudding pizza thing

@splod - your on the right track but ...

... throw out all the crap, fill base with Lincolnshire sausage meat, bake until crispy brown on top and serve with HP Sauce. A fried egg on top is optional.