* Posts by John Bryan

9 publicly visible posts • joined 6 Aug 2013

Tesla devotee tests Cybertruck safety with his own finger – and fails

John Bryan
Holmes

SAFE fore non-idiots, how the sensor works

The 'Bonnet'/'Frunk' mechanism is a progressive strength operation that starts very sensitive to obstructions. If it detects an obstruction and reopens, if you the human say "actually I really want it closed anyway" by pressing "close" again, then on each retry it will use more and more force. Once successfully closed (with or without deliberately sliced fingers) the bonnet will again be highly sensitive to obstructions.

So please do not blame the Cybertruck for allowing the human operator to (repeatedly) tell it to disable safety features.

Tesla's Autopilot is losing out to Ford, GM in self-driving tech

John Bryan

"Consumer Reports" i= "Advertiser Propaganda"

"Advertiser Reports" is infamous for its surveys, rankings and reporting being biased towards OEMs that advertise with them and against OEMs that do not advertise with them. At times they have had to twist themselves in knots, and throw any credibility in the bin, to create rankings that do not show Tesla as the most popular or most effective EV.

I am not saying all fact here are automatically false, even a broken clock is correct twice a day, but they should never be taken as a credible source on any subject. They definitely have no interest in serving the "Consumer".

John Bryan

Re: "fake" video

The "faked" video was an upfront simulation of autopilot/FSD would be able to do in the future. It is no more fake than a financial forecast is fake financial results or a car show concept car is a "fake".

Pretend starship captain to take trip in real space capsule

John Bryan

My, he needs a shave!

Please tell me Register that the picture choice was a deliberate jibe, or that the entity responsible is being made to do the walk of shame for sacrilegious conflation of SciFi universes.

8-)

What do we want? A proper review of IR35! When do we want it? Last year! Bunch of IT contractors protest outside UK Parliament

John Bryan

Where this 20% comes from

It is nothing to do with corporation tax, which is something a independent contractor typically has to pay the same way as their customers. Having a fake employer (umbrella company) between you and your customer is a cost. There are charges from the pay-roll processing, lawyer and tax advisors they need, web portal, back office infrastructure, office employees and, of course, their profit margin. An umbrella company is not run out of the goodness of their hearts.

That is where the (up to) 20% comes from.

(An ex consultant/contractor after a recession put a hold on contracts for roll-out projects)

NASA spanks $34bn on a disposable rocket – likely to top $50bn by 2024 moon landing

John Bryan
Flame

Audit farce

Whilst contained harsh words for NASA, these seemed to be merely to justify the report's existence.

No request to seriously review the relevance of SLS in light of modern cheaper reusable commercial suppliers.

No questioning of why the current NASA Moon plans are overly complex and costly and yet do not meet the goal of actually going to the Moon in any meaningful way.

Though a lot of the blame is Congress members boon-dock requirements. Can't have affordable solutions as that means contractors in their own states might not get a juicy slice of the pie.

NASA and Congress should just kill off SLS and go for the obvious cheaper and quicker options.

Python joins movement to dump 'offensive' master, slave terms

John Bryan
Big Brother

It is Orwellian

I unbellyfeel this.

But could consider 'plusgood' and 'doubleplusgood' as neither are ungood.

Newspeak derived from George Orwell's "Nineteen Eighty-Four"

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspeak

Elon Musk wants SpaceX to launch spy sats – and will sue US gov to do so

John Bryan
Stop

Re: Shock news - Lawyers win

At the moment that is not the point.

The point is that other suppliers are not being allowed to bid. Therefore they can not even reach the stage of being ruled out due to other factors such as known reliability over cost.

They don't recognise us as HUMAN: Disability groups want CAPTCHAs killed

John Bryan

Trying to sum up... and suggestion

Much of the below has been said here and there but a few points to start:-

1: The root cause is NOT Captcha, it is the nature of humanity that is the problem. If we were not a species of "nest foulers", defecating on the very things that we try to construct for ourselves, then in most cases we would not need any such protection as Captcha tries to provide. Nobody wants Captcha to need to exist.

2: Captcha is not necessarily unfit, as a general concept, it is the implementation that has short-comings. Most of the alternatives suggested have been Captchas in concept, just with different tests.

3: Email verification is NOT an adequate solution by itself, for many reasons mentioned already. It is an excellent 2nd or 3rd line of defence during initial registration.

4: Whilst some sites can be overly paranoid with putting a visitor through repeated Captchas there are good reasons for Captchas after logon E.g. defending against visitors that unknowingly having bots (viruses) that use un-closed sessions when there has been no user activity for a while. Also defends against cheap human labour registering and/or logging in and then running an automated system.

5: There is no single solution that will suit all, as the various suggestions have shown. All of them will fail if a visitor is not 80%+ able at least one of sight, sound, mental abilities, memory, dexterity etc.

On a sites I maintain, using off-the-free-shelf plug-ins, they usually ask random Captcha test type from a range of installed ones including some along the lines already mentioned and usually requiring a small degree of human logic (depending on the nature of the expected site visitor). That is not perfect but does address some of the perhaps less thought through objections.

SUGGESTION

Taking that Captcha, or an equivalent gate-keeper needs to exist. And that the gate-keeper needs to cope with the abilities and limitations of any visitor...

- When a user registers they select the types of Captcha tests they wish to avoid e.g. (_) Visual, (_) Colour, (_) Audio, (_) Literary, (_) Mathematical, (_) Intellectual

- Captcha mechanism to operate from a pool tests that are classified by the above styles so that excluded types are not displayed for that user. If you are impaired in sight or vision then you will be given tests that avoid your specific limitation(s).

- As new or updated tests are released in to that pool the site will make uses of them i.e. the site, and visitor's profile, are NOT configured to use any specific Captcha test.

- In addition general quality of Captcha tests need improving, use of standards, review process etc. for new added tests.

This would need to be a free community system available as plug-ins for all major website systems such as Joomla, Drupal etc.