Re: Tiger vs T-34 tank / Space Pen vs pencil / engineering schools of thought
snopes.com/business/genius/spacepen.asp
Posts by Solmyr ibn Wali Barad
1143 publicly visible posts • joined 26 Feb 2013
Whoosh! China shows off J-20 'stealth' fighters and jet drones
Why Apple's adaptive Touch Bar will flop
What should the Red Arrows' new aircraft be?
Thursday 3rd November 2016 19:06 GMT
Re: As Veritech Alphas are probably not available....
"If you're in a dogfight in modern air warfare you've already lost. The approach should be:
Get missile lock from miles and miles away. Fire. Confirm kill. Head back to base."
Yeah. Very nice and modern. I'm sure it's a complete coincidence that air war in Vietnam was supposed to be fought exactly like this. It was such a certainty that USAF/USN did not have cannons on most of their planes and did not train their pilots for dogfighting. Only minor problem was that their not so modern adversaries had not kept up with the times...
Maybe this 'missile doctrine' would work better in the next major conflict. Lots of new toys and all that. Forgive me if I'm not so keen to see it tested in practice.
Stiff upper lips and sun glasses: the Chancellor bets on Brexit feeling
Ransomware victims screwed
Three-commas Thiel expresses love for himself, Trump and downtrodden millionaires
Tuesday 1st November 2016 07:37 GMT
Re: Why he's doing it? A hard question
Could be voices. Could be just that lovely & wonderful narcissistic personality.
There's one characteristic thing about narcissists. They contradict themselves very frequently, sometimes at every other phrase. When challenged about it, they'll be very quick to shift blame onto others - for misinterpreting them, taking their words out of context, being just malicious towards their holy self.
Narcissistic psychopaths can perform their charades with a straight face, because they truly feel righteous. They rarely doubt, if ever. They rarely lie, and if they do, it's obviously your fault. They are not wrong about things, you are just too stupid to understand.
Charming folks and purveyors of Truth. Woe on anyone who dares to doubt that.
Samsung are amateurs – NASA shows how you really do a battery fire
Sunday 30th October 2016 17:47 GMT
Re: Only 96 batteries
Mileage comparison is rather irrelevant here. For Li-Ion cells, stored electrical energy != combustion energy.
But yes, equivalence to 2 gallons of fuel sounds about right. 18650 cells have around 1 MJ/kg of combustion energy depending on their state of charge. Larger cells can have up to 2 MJ/kg. Tesla battery pack is about 500 kg. Some of that weight is from cases and wiring harnesses, so 300-400 MJ of combustion energy should be in the right ballpark.
Hell desk thought PC fire report was a first-day-on-the-job prank
Saturday 29th October 2016 18:23 GMT
Re: Volts jolt mAs' kill
That's true, but 230 volts falling on the 1M resistance of a wrist strap yields 230 microamps. Even skin damage does not make that life-threatening.
"One of the "rules of thumb" that the Navy teaches is the 1-10-100 rule of current. This rule states that 1mA of current through the human body can be felt, 10mA of current is sufficient to make muscles contract to the point where you cannot let go of a power source, and 100mA is sufficient to stop the heart."
www.darwinawards.com/darwin/darwin1999-50.html
Cynical Apple gouges UK with 20 per cent price hike
Saturday 29th October 2016 16:31 GMT
Re: All according to plan
"West/reunified Germany had an immensely strong currency in the Deutschmark and had no shortage of jobs and manufacturing"
They had an economic stagnation in late 90's and early 2000's with unemployment hitting 9%, even 17% in eastern parts. Wasn't all that rosy back then. But they handled it well and managed to do some serious reforms. These measures got the economy moving again, albeit lagging behind the boom in other countries, and in a pretty good shape for weathering the 2008-2009 crisis.
Similar timings can be observed for Poland - they struggled through 90's and early 2000's, missed out on some benefits of the bubble, but were relatively less harmed when the big wave hit.
MedSec's St Jude pacemaker hacks confirmed by pen-tester
Wednesday 26th October 2016 06:45 GMT
"It's not huge"
Yeah, I was kidding about that. Just needed an excuse to use word "honking" in the sentence. So sue me.
As for the Merlin - there are plenty of things that have to be reworked. It certainly seems to be a bit more chatty than advertised. Implant is not completely read-only, it does react to some external transmissions and can be fooled into making some predefined actions at inconvenient moments.
Nevertheless, not much reason to panic & perform choreography numbers à la headless chicken on fire.
Not to mention that stock manipulations are still evil.
Tuesday 25th October 2016 19:04 GMT
Nothing about magnets in the report. But they could achieve few things via pwned Merlin@home base station - drain the implants battery with frequent polling requests and fool the implant to change its operating modes. Including going into the cardiac arrest mode that'll administer some juicy electric shocks.
It's not really a re-programming at will, like claimed in some articles, but does have some possibilities to cause harm.
Highly recommended reading.
Tuesday 25th October 2016 11:01 GMT
Indeed. If the vulnerability report omits a honking big magnet needed to pull it off, then the report is mostly moot. That is, there are things that have to be fixed eventually, but scare campaigns and blackmail are in no way justified.
If there are other ways to access the implant at a distance, then yes, their claims would be valid.
OK, time to fetch that PDF.
App proves Rowhammer can be exploited to root Android phones – and there's little Google can do to fully kill it
Monday 24th October 2016 23:07 GMT
Re: ECC is not a defense
"but ECC won't prevent rowhammer"
Yes it does. Because you have no control over ECC checksum bits during the hammering. Neither for the word being written nor the targetted word.
If you manage to hammer one bit (without ruining the checksum), then this bit gets quietly corrected on the next read or write. If you change multiple bits, then you cannot set a valid checksum for the new data word, and next R/W operation gives an uncorrectable ECC error - followed by a hard reboot.
Therefore I seriously doubt that someone can demonstrate successful attacks against ECC memory that is implemented by the book and doesn't have any corners cut.
Pacemaker maker St Jude faces new security flaw claims from biz short-selling its stock
Como–D'oh! Infosec duo exploits OCR flaw to nab a website's HTTPS cert
What will happen when I'm too old to push? (buttons, that is)
Tesla's big news today:
sudo killall -9 Autopilot
HPE tops in tape. Yes, tape is still a thing
British jobs for British people: UK tech rejects PM May’s nativist hiring agenda
Saturday 15th October 2016 11:19 GMT
Re: Stalin's speeches
That's right. Stalin made a huge lot of noise against "rootless cosmopolitans". It became a highly derogatory term and an excuse for further repressions. But Stalin's anti-cosmopolitan push happened slightly after WWII, not during the great purge.
I do remember Hitler ranting about "cosmopolitans" in Mein Kampf, albeit not as extensively as Stalin did in his speeches and books. But I'm reluctant to read through that drivel again to refresh the memory.
Anyhow. As Voyna i Mor pointed out right in this thread - fights against cosmopolitanism were invariably part of anti-Semitic campaigns. Both Hitler and Stalin seemed to associate cosmopolitans with Jews, and it's far from the only thing these distinguished gentlemen had in common.
3D printers might sell. Really
So. What's North Korea really like?
Pound falling, Marmite off the shelves – what the UK needs right now is ... an AI ethics board
US govt straight up accuses Russia of hacking prez election
Saturday 8th October 2016 21:05 GMT
Re: The proof is in the reciprocity of Russian foreign policy
Blaming others for one's own deeds isn't necessarily a reciprocity.
-----
Ivan Andreyevich Krylov - The Wolf and the Lamb.
Always are the weak at fault before the strong.
In history we hear a host of examples,
But history we are not writing:
Here is how they tell of it in Fables.
A Lamb, one sweltering day, came by a stream to drink.
An lo, calamity had to befall him
In that a hungry Wolf was scouring about nearby.
He sees the Lamb and rushes to his prey;
But, to give the deed the look and sense of law,
He yells, “How dare you, you rogue, immerse your filthy mug
In my pure drinking water,
and cloud it with silt and sand?
For such impertinence
I will indeed remove your head!” –
“His Highness Wolf permitting,
I will dare submit that I am drinking
About a hundred paces downstream;
His wrath is all for naught:
I cannot possibly pollute his draft of water.” –
“And thus I lie?!
You wretch! Such rudeness is unheard of in this world!
And I remember, too, a couple of summers back,
You, in this very spot, insulted me!”
“For goodness’ sake, I am not a year old yet,”
Pleads the Lamb. “It was your brother, then.”
“I have no brothers.” “Then some other relative,
Or someone of your ilk.
You all, your dogs, and all your shepherds,
You wish me ill
And hurt me any time and any way you are able.
But I will make you pay for all their sins!”
“Oh, but how am I at fault?” – “Shut up! Enough!
I’ve no time to sort through your transgressions!
You are at fault that I am famished,”
He said – and dragged the Lamb into the woods.
Invasion of the virus-addled lightbulbs (and other banana stories)
UK will build new nuclear bomb subs, says Defence Secretary
Tuesday 4th October 2016 22:39 GMT
Re: Yes, truly a pity
"I seem to remember that Putin said in an interview that he decided on the invasion of Crimea only the day before"
Final decision may have happened on the last moment. But troop deployments to Black Sea region started two months before. Elite troops from Kaliningrad and Pskov were first to relocate.
Which does not necessarily indicate an intent to invade - it may have been a form of contingency planning, guarding against possible insurgencies. But still.
Lenovo exec: Nope, not building Windows Phones
Microsoft disbands Band band – and there'll be no version 3
User couldn't open documents or turn on PC, still asked for reference as IT expert
Brexit at the next junction: Verity's guide to key post-vote skills
R2D2 delivery robots to scurry through the streets of San Francisco
Days are numbered for the Czech Republic
Sunday 25th September 2016 12:37 GMT
Re: "officials note crossly that CR has already been snapped up by Costa Rica."
I, for one, would not mind giving a tribute to ČZ motorcycles. Happy memories.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Česká_zbrojovka_Strakonice
Maybe renaming the whole country after them would be a bit excessive, but certainly not the worst idea around.
WTF ... makes mobile phone batteries explode?
HP Inc's rinky-dink ink stink: Unofficial cartridges, official refills spurned by printer DRM
Tuesday 20th September 2016 21:42 GMT
Re: Workaround?
May work for older types. Business Inkjet 2300 did not have internal clock, it received the date from host PC. Setting OS clock back allowed to use cartridges that were past their expiration date.
2300 also had a sweet firmware bug that ruined perfectly good cartridges by setting false 'ink low' flags into their chips. Not reversable of course. 2300's larger cousin 2500C used signals from mechanically flimsy pressure sensors as an excuse to set 'ink low' flag.
Eh, nothing new under the sun.
FBI overpaid $999,900 to crack San Bernardino iPhone 5c password
Tuesday 20th September 2016 18:49 GMT
Re: Dear commentards
"I recall a vast number of comments being down voted vigorously and repeatedly for saying this was possible and being ridiculed"
Does not ring true. This particular "this" was rarely discussed. Mostly in elaborate comments with only few votes.
But there were numerous comments along the lines "just solder memory chips off and read their contents" - which deserved every ridicule they got.
Skype shuts down London office, hangs up on hundreds of devs
Brave telco giants kill threat of decent internet service in rural North Carolina
Brexit will happen. The EU GDPR will happen. You can't avoid either
Saturday 17th September 2016 18:06 GMT
Re: Civil War
"Given the complete loss of all and any sense of humour and inability to recognise sarcasm when it comes to anything around the referendum"
This is indeed a great loss. Quite possibly the worst harm caused by all that Brexit brouhaha.
As one fellow commenter half-jokingly quipped: British sense of humour is about the only thing why Brits are really needed in the EU.
Yes, mentality is pretty darn important. With that in peril everything else is in peril. Economic matters can be resolved eventually, given enough time and effort, maybe with a need to suffer few years of hardship along the way. Trust, however, is very hard to regain. And a society so bitterly divided may take a whole generation to heal.
On the other hand it's not uniquely British problem. Great divisions over small(ish) issues seem to become normal all over the world. Like it was an alien mindbug or something like that. About the only thing a sane person can do is to be cautious and not go along with mindlessly screaming hordes. Oh, and keep the sense of humour intact.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
