Posts by YetAnotherLocksmith 924 publicly visible posts • joined 11 Oct 2012
Ah, you mean like Alliance & Leicester had, before Santander took them over and replaced the nice state of the art machines that worked with the crap old machines that require an envelope that it fails to dispense?
I used to go to those branches specifically for those scanning machines as it made life far easier. Especially since they Will Not take a business account cheque over the counter, even if the machine is knackered! Fuckwits wrote those procedures.
Last time I debunked this one the setup was the same.
A torsion balance is very rigidly constrained sick that it had only one degree of freedom. Add to that a microwave source with a rotating cooling fan, and you will get 'lift' as there is a centripetal force interaction. You can do this by picking up a bench grinder and twisting it around.
Remove that constriction of movement and exactly nothing happens.
You can't, in a closed system, turn a torque moment into actual thrust.
Handy if you want to break in someplace without risk. Check the database, see both adults are on the other side of the city from the card transactions, and carry on.
Just don't forget about the school holidays!
Using a debit card would also ruin the whole 'signing out' anti-fraud Oyster thing that stops card cloning being much use - it knows you are on one platform so it won't authorise the same card again onto the same platform. Are people going to have to re-bonk their debit card?
A debit card could do the same, in theory, but since you could go target a shop or something to skim the cards instead... not so useful. Since Oyster is only used on the bus, train or to open the door at London Hackspace, it is far harder to skim.
Hahaha. Good one.
Wait, were you being serious? If so, consider this:
The pickpocket can be a foot away and read your card with no effort and without further action. The gear costs about £30. There won't be many physical pickpockets in the future, because why would you bother taking the actual card instead of just transferring the money?
Their DNA was taken nearly everywhere. Automatic finger pricking took samples to allow entry to buildings and police took mouth swabs just like the UK police, just with instant results.
The premise was that an individual's DNA was the prime driver for their abilities down to the lowest levels. And plenty of tweaks available too, such as the world's best pianist with 12 digits.
Good film.
Very effective to spend money to promote a free bit of software. Must be a great ROI. /sarcasm
Raising awareness of crap locks on customer doors is something I do. People think they are secure, they aren't. Am I scaremongering? No, I'm telling the truth. Just like these guys I can demonstrate the flaws and fix it. Unlike them, I'll charge for it. In fact, they must have some other service to keep them in money, otherwise they'll need a second job. Are they cross promoting? Probably. But it is a free solution to an obvious issue some may not have thought about.
One factor people seem to forget is the oxygen percentage of the atmosphere was higher. Another is that the sun was brighter. So you had both more power available from the one-source-to-rule-them-all, & more chemical energy/power available more easily.
Hence bigger creatures that are not energetically viable today.
Arnaut, we do have one. The Bill of Rights.
However, the government(s) has basically ignored it and overwritten it for so long that it is pretty much worthless.
The 'merkins have at least got that bit right - if you don't defend your rights they rapidly become nothing but forgotten words on paper.
Oh, and the US Constitution was modelled on our Bill of Rights. It's just the citizens there kept it alive.
No idea which cretin downvoted you.
Absolutely correct analysis. The only thing that would make it wrong would be charge-as-you-drive. Which might work on a track but it will be hellish in a car you are actually driving, rather than one that trundles along on auto pilot.
I think of I were forced to drive at 50mph and not even have the ability to change lanes I'd fall asleep - it is bad enough going through the average camera zones!
I thought running as a "paid more than the cost of the fuel" service was classed as "for hire or reward" & as such specifically excluded from regular insurance policies. Private 'car sharing for reward' is surely not insured then, unless the driver has a commercial cover policy?
Or are they running like a taxi (mini cab) firm but arguing the fares are pure booked through the app?
(Sorry, I live in the middle of nowhere; I've taken one taxi in the last two years. As such I'm not up on the details)
Before I fled, I worked as a 'DBA' for a Big Aerospace company and was forced to use Access for everything - the spods in IT were outsourced morons who wouldn't allow anyone to actually do anything with IT beyond what was on the desktop. So we had Access and we made it jump through all sorts of hoops. When my boss and I quit there were hundreds of them! All with hundreds of users, and because it was so rubbish at multi user, it was split up and so only a dozen users were in any instance, which another Access db later pulled in and merged, and so on.
The 'backups' were insane. They were done by another series of Access databases, so when some muppet deleted all their weeks reporting "by accident' we could still get it.
There was a Access db front end menu that looked up which version of which database that user was to be presented with when they clicked 'the' button - which was actually changed depending on where, when and who did the clicking...
This was all backed up on a 'secret' HDD that was swapped in and it of the bosses laptop, as he couldn't get permission to store so much data anywhere. (It was also on the network, but since it was a database, IT couldn't cope with backing it up! They'd back up the initial file, but anything that changed they didn't notice. And this was a major IT company! )
So anyway, when my boss quit, I wasn't long behind him. And I became a locksmith. (Still a very technical job, but far fewer computers!)
I still sometimes wonder how the muppets got on. They were the kind of users baffled by the scroll bar moving the page down...
That's a crap argument.
So you are saying the manufacturer who needs to recoup his investment on R&D for his new idea and then the huge sums charged for testing so he can legally add those stickers and other declarations of conformity should try and match the prices of the assholes who rip off their design so badly it kills people?
Do you not see how that doesn't work? & even if they did sell the fancy chargers at cost, just to keep you happy, the assholes would still be cheaper due to them not paying for half the parts that ensure safety. That's just a race to the bottom.
The message is, be a smart consumer. Buy from someone who isn't likely to be selling dangerous kit.
I've bought Chinese kit that was wired to kill. First thing I do now is take it apart and check any mains circuitry.
@AC:
If they have even crap Internet, they will get better solutions to other problems far faster than *any other single improvement would.*
No clean water? Google how to filter water through sand. No bricks? Instructables can show you how to make them from mud or sand and cow poo. Need to check the fair price for what you are growing? Bing could tell you. Heard there's a nasty epidemic killing lots of people? That's be via the Internet, hopefully, rather than some Typhoid Mary who's already been exposed.
So yes, Internet for all, for near free. Sign me up too. I'll even pay for a second channel so I can get more bandwidth and a back up to my BT line.
@bluenose: Too right! We are about to get set up with it, crap latency, insane setup cost, high cost and all, because we simply can't get a 1mb connection, despite being in the middle of England!
We literally have line of sight to several hills, which should allow a connection, but the people who do these things have, after a year, failed to get their end sorted out.
I'm currently considering taking the ADSL box up the lane and hanging my own fibre, to gain us that bit more bandwidth!
You do realise that most food intolerance is minor, right?
Peanuts are the most major (in the USA, & somewhat in the UK) but that has now been cured by actually eating peanuts. (As a therapy, don't just knock a few back)
As for the idea? I'll believe this 'super sensor' when I see it. Odds are high this is a made-up thing. If it takes 20,000 biological receptors to do the job, one silicon sensor probably won't cut the mustard.
Damn, you beat me to it!
There's a lot of ill informed "this isn't possible" comment on this thread, considering there is a home brew FM transmitter for an actual computer already, which you can do with a few lines of code and a few inches of wire - and the wire is optional!
I work with 'meter fixers' & 'engineers' all the time on gas and electric. You can tell the difference quite easily. The fitter will swap a meter pretty quickly, but refuse to do anything that isn't entirely simple. An engineer will, perhaps, sometimes, warn you it will take a while, but it will get done, & done right.
Do you not realise that your liberty is completely gone if someone else had every scrap of data about you, your family and the political elite tucked away for use on a whim?
I see you as a 'threat' so have a close look at your file. Assign a few people to have a dig. How many laws can you be arrested for breaking in a week of close surveillance? But that costs money. Easier to just query the file, and have plod take you away.
Even if squeaky clean your kid might not be. What father wouldn't consider a polite request for a set of the encryption keys for a decode if lent on with threats to their son or daughters liberty?
Failing even that, just call up the local political elite and use some of the data on them to have a nice law passed. Consider this gem: they could revoke your right to travel out the country by adding you to the football list, worth nothing more than a word and a name. Hand in your passport or else, and attend the police station during matches. Even if you didn't give a damn about football. .. Add your name to the 'No fly' list. Revoke your firearms or shotgun certificates, even your driving license, then make sure a copper is there at the right time, and sure, it might be a 'clerical error' eventually, but you'll enjoy the ride through the police station, courts and custody chain, even knowing it is a set-up. Just tweaking the results of your CRB or credit record could ruin your job or your life.
So yes, mass surveillance is a bad thing. Especially when those doing it are hidden from any oversight whatsoever.
What rubbish.
Much of this collection stuff existed before 9/11/2000 let alone the more memorable one a few years later!
They just used the event to expand their scope futher, using the foolish argument that because they missed the needle passing through the huge haystack of data they collected, what they needed was to build bigger haystacks!
This is Bollocks Telecom all over.
As someone else said, they'll spend hundreds of millions putting fibre in 3rd world countries by hook or by crook, but won't help the UK out by sorting out decent connectivity for the UK? Not even when paid millions by a government scheme that specifically requests that!
Hang on - or was the UK countryside broadband thing actually just a way to hide the money in the accounts? After all, it is quite possible no-one specified *which* countryside internet they had to speed up!
Have an Upvote.
I literally clicked the comments button to say exactly the same thing. Sure they might be lower hanging fruit, but taking them now prevents a lot of misery. Plus if flagged now they are less likely to get better able to hide themselves now, than after a few years of practise.
Yes, that psycho Sheriff should be a role model for the poor. If you can't handle the crap food he dishes out, don't do the crime, etc.
Fact is he has been taken to court for using food that is marked for animal feed. And 24 cents per meal, times 3 a day isn't far from the lower limit of the possible. Indeed it isn't that far from £1 a day.
It has been shown that giving inmates a vaguely complete meal reduces poor behaviour. Even just adding vitamins reduces bad behaviour.
So having people subsisting on £1 a day isn't really going to help society, and screwing the inmates for 15p a day on food really isn't helping anyone. Food is a negligible cost compared to everything else. Make it a proper part of the solution and everyone benefits.
It's a joke. Surely.
The .uk domain names can only be bought by the squatter already holding it for the next five years anyway, & have first refusal. So surely in 4.99 years there will be a few people buying their .uk to protect it, before protection lapses, then a few people who wanted the .co.uk will buy the .uk?
Of course, in 5 years time, who can day what the state of the nation (literally) will be?
Absolutely agree.
Even if the Danish taxpayer paid a hundred thousand to a developer for this, that's a small company (hopefully) who will stay in business for another year to grow their economy. Meanwhile they get some great PR out to the world, & the goodwill generated makes the world a generally better place.
Being able to remodel the skyline of London would be cool. Could knock down that gherkin now they've gone bust, & see if it is an improvement or not. For nearly free!
I can tell most of the people on this comment thread only comment on disc cutters rather than actually use them.
I'd be using ear protection and eye protection. The mass of the slab means clamping is not required, but I'd support the cut off part so avoid damage to the laid surface or feet underneath - toe capped boots only protect the toe!
Someone else (unlikely her due to lack of dust) did the first part of the cut, then she's holding it in the cut and not really cutting, but the disc is running, or it has been 'shopped very well.
Either way, nothing wrong with this. Wonder if this disc cutter is as good as their battery ONE+ kit, which I rate very good.
No idea why the downvotes!? What Sebby says is true - CAPTCHAs are pretty poor.
The real issue is the lack of a solution - any reasonable test can be farmed out to either Mechanical Turk-like systems or simply wrapped into a hacked (or even legit) page as a fake CAPTCHA for that site, which redirects it to the target.
"As a security professional, I can assure you that whilst I can tell you the locks and safe were good, I can make no such assurance for your Robo-Butler. Which is how it was able to pick up the 400kg safe and deliver it to the waiting robot car outside while you slept, disabling the alarms and using the front door with the codes and keys you gave it."
That last bit sounds like the 8th circle of hell. A robot to watch all you do and keep you safe and out of trouble? Sounds a bit too much like a 'slap drone'* for my liking.
I don't want a robot car that monitors and reports all I do at all times, unless it had both as good a driving record as me and can actually take responsiblity in the event of an accident, such that I don't have to. Otherwise the only point is to have a backseat driver that will allow the fines & penalties to be posted directly.
I don't want a robot nanny. Perhaps one night a week for the kids, but again, if it burns the house down, unlike the real baby sitter, who would get the blame, and, more importantly, would it react in a sane manor compared to the carefully chosen and vetted person (who I can at least converse with and determine emotional state, intelligence and so on) unlike the alien thing that an AI would be (which I assume would be programmed fully with 'Trust signals', empathy and comforting words, while only being a network outage or network intrusion away from being either inert or passively deadly, or even actively hostile.
*If you don't know the reference, it means you have never read Iain M. Banks, and as such you are dead to me.
But will that actually make any difference to your life? Going from 20Mbps to 80Mbps is like a pay rise from £165K a year to £200K - nice, but so what, really?
Going from sub-1Mbps to 3Mbps is like going from £7K a year up to £20K - suddenly you really can get more out of life.
But this is a solved problem. There are designs that let you turn them off with the beam of a torch. Simple enough.
Best solution is to buy a fire alarm that looks for actual flames in your kitchen (unless you smoke in there, or have a gas cooker hob) or just do like I have, & leave the detector on a shelf in easy reach. That also reduces the sensitivity so something has to really smoke before it goes off - visible smoke appearing - so avoiding issues with slightly charred toast.
Assuming everything is actually working properly, a regular cheap CCTV camera as fitted to most places isn't worth a damn beyond 20 metres and generally is only of use after the fact, so the employees and boys can see what happened and when, and perhaps laugh as the hated photocopier gets lugged away.
High end stuff, though? You can get multi mega pixel camera units that cleverly output multiple streams as if different cameras, with motion tracking built in so the virtual camera (s) follow everything moving in real time. And allow you to read the numberplate and even logos on shoes. And you can put them up a tall pole so well out of reach of the unprepared.
Unless someone actually opens the cat picture or other text or whatever to check, then it makes no difference if the picture works or not - it is checked by a script, so if it matches it gets killed.
Yes, computationally tricky, but far from impossible. Just look at rainbow tables. It would be possible to do that for hash values so it becomes a relatively simple look up in a big database. Every time one doesn't appear, you add it. Eventually you have a huge Database with reasonable coverage.
Might want an algorithm to generate the actual files though, else storage would rapidly become an issue!
