Posts by Cynic_999

.. ..-. / -.-- --- ..- / -.-. .- -. / .-. . .- -.. / - .... .. ... then a US Navy fondleslab just put you out of a job

Re: Indeed

Exactly - and there are people serving in the artillery who cannot even change a horse-shoe ...

Cops harpoon two dark net whales in megabust: AlphaBay and Hansa

Nothing new

Obviously a Tor site can be taken over by police after the administrators or hosting server is found (often by non-Internet related clues), and it's difficult for any customer to retain anonymity if they need to provide a delivery address for physical goods. These things have always been obvious.

Tracing the customers of intangible goods presents a bigger (but not impossible) challenge for police. Tor has never claimed to be a sure-fire way to be anonymous. Like most security methods, it needs to be used in combination with several other measures.

Breathless F-35 pilots to get oxygen boost via algorithm tweak

Re: SPO2 meters are under $20 now - why isn't the aircraft recording/monitoring the pilot's vitals?

I thought the exact same thing. A simple optical blood O2 sensor built into the flying helmet or gloves that brings up a cockpit alarm if blood O2 saturation falls below a certain level. As you say, the cost would be insignificant.

Then it doesn't matter whether the pilot has been trained to self-detect the onset of hypoxia (which is not and cannot be reliable due to its very nature).

Seems such an obvious and simple solution - so what am I missing?

UK government's war on e-cigs is over

Re: Jesus, NO!

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Optical are not 'cheaper'. They're perfect for their job. If they trigger on people who vape, then they should probably quit vaping?

"

And if you have a detector that triggers when you make toast, do you also believe that the most reasonable solution is to stop eating toast?

Re: Just wait

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Sure as anything in twenty or thirty years we'l discover that sucking vape juice into your lungs over the long term gives you some kind of nasty disease.

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Sure. Also mobile phone radiation, Wi-Fi, bluetooth. Such new-fangled things are UNNATURAL and will cause us to DIE a horrible death. Best go live on an uninhabited island far away from civilisation.

Re: Oh god no resturant will be safe again

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Just told my employer/HR that if they allow vaping in the building they can have my resignation.

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Really? Probably for the best in that case. Will you also resign if they allow coffee or hot food in the workplace, both of which have a FAR stronger scent than my e-cig (which nobody is able to smell at all)

Re: Ex-smoker, vaper here

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In planes? Interesting - the last few flights I've been on have specifically said that vaping is not allowed in the cabin.

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Yes, they do. So it is extremely telling that I could vape away over a 9 hour flight with *nobody noticing*

Re: No vaping in the workplace please

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Some of the vape clouds make me (a non smoker, non vaper) cough / struggle to breathe when I inhale them

"

Unless you are around a person who is using a large e-cig that creates a huge billow, I strongly suspect that the effect is psychological. I recently sat on an aircraft for a 9 hour flight, surreptitiously puffing away on my e-cig, and the other passengers sat around me did not even notice I was using an e-cig. I do however use unflavoured e-juice in such places, which has no discernable scent whatsoever, and I exhale through clothing or a pillow/blanket which absorbs the vapour so it is never visible.

Re: Jesus, NO!

You'll breath far more harmful substances by attending a barbeque. Do you want those banned as well?

Re: Jesus, NO!

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If passive smoking can harm people, how is vaping not going to do?

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Um - because it is not smoke and does not contain any carcinogens or tars etc?

You may as well be arguing that is passive smoking can harm people (and I am far from convinced that it can), then how is passive drinking not going to do so (breathing in all those alcohol fumes).

Re: Jesus, NO!

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That plus I have witnessed several incidents where vapers who thought they were being sneaky and sly have set off fire alarms.

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That is total rubbish. I can blow vape directly into my smoke detector and it will not go off. Because it is *NOT SMOKE*

Or perhaps you have an unusual smoke detector that goes off from the steam when you boil a kettle?

Re: Jesus, NO!

Rubbish. With most e-cigs you would not smell a thing - or at most a slight and pleasant aroma similar to someone walking past with a cup of coffee. It is also possible to use an e-cig with zero visible vapour emissions, which is how I vape if there are irrational anti-vape people around.

Luxembourg passes first EU space mining law. One can possess the Spice

But ..

The Earth is just another planet orbiting in space. So this law surely applies equally to mining operations here?

UK.gov snaps on rubber gloves, prepares for mandatory porn checks

Not a problem for kids ...

There are plenty of paedophiles willing to stream porn over Skype in return for the kid keeping his webcam on. Win-win.

Re: Fantastic use of Godwins law

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heh, I'm looking forward to my lad being old enough to match wits with me and try and get past whatever filters/proxies/policies or the like I set up for the household network and computers.

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What filters are you going to use to stop him bluetoothing porn from the other kids at school? And what harm do you believe it will cause?

But if you DO succeed, he will be more likely to enlist the aid of a suitable peer(s) and simply create his own porn. He might even make a bit of money from it ...

Nearly three-quarters of convicted TV Licence non-payers are women

Do the asking not the answering

I have had a visit once. I do not require a TV licence because I only view non-BBC Internet content. Instead of answering the impertinent questions, I asked the guy whether he had a fishing licence. When he said he did not, I asked him to prove that he didn't need one. He said there was no obligation for him to do so, whereupon I said, "Exactly," and closed the door in his face.

Subscription service

The BBC had a golden opportunity to change to a subscription service at the time it went digital. It could easily have specified that digital TV's and STBs had to be capable of accepting decryption cards.

It did not do so - probably because it knows full well that it would get far less by charging only those people who watch its content than it gets by charging people top watch other products.

A bit like having to pay Tesco an annual fee when you shop at Asda.

The bloke behind Star Fox is building a blockchain based casino. No, really

Seems like the digital equivalent of buying casino chips and gambling with those instead of cash. I also fail to see how it will affect the ability of employees or the online casino from cheating.

The chance of winning anything in a casino depends to a very large degree on the fact that the order of the cards, roll of the dice, spin of the wheel etc. are all random. You can have high confidence in that randomness when you can see the mechanism that is determining the outcome, but I have to take on trust that a digital simulation is producing random results - and the person I am trusting is the person who has everything to gain by making it NON-random.

French general accused of nicking fast jet for weekend trips to the Sun

It could have been a lot worse

The French should be very happy that they have military brass who are content with spending a few £1000 of public money on some minor jaunts. Had he not been so easily diverted, he could instead have been spunking £billions on buying new aircraft that needed to be replaced before they were delivered.

HMS Windows XP: Britain's newest warship running Swiss Cheese OS

Latest != Best

When your life depends on the correct operation of a computer system, would you rather rely on a system that has been tested to buggery while running the same code for the past 10 years, or on a system that is getting several untested updates every 4 weeks?

Google hit with record antitrust fine of €2.4bn by Europe

"

Also there is nothing positive about advertising - it is a parasitic disease.

"

I disagree. While 99.9% of the advertising I see is of no interest to me whatsoever, I have learned of many great products that I had not known existed in the remaining 0.1%. So long as they are not too intrusive, adverts cause me no harm at all.

If you were to invent a really great device that many people would benefit from, just how would you make people aware of it without some form of advertising?

Re: European competition

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Too bad there's no way to get any users to actually visit the site.

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Well, you could always *advertise* the site.

But of course - you think advertising is evil and would therefore never use it ...

Tremble in fear, America, as Daesh-bags scrawl cyber-graffiti on .gov webpages no one visits

Re: Or...

In my days as a telephone guy, a colleague used to dial a trunk prefix on a line from his local unmanned electromechanical sub-exchange, and then rapidly dial "1" many times. In the sub-exchange, the mechanical trunk dial repeater would get incoming digits faster than it was sending them until its simple mechanical "memory" (A disk with holes and pins) was full. It then brought up an alarm and my colleague would get a call-out on his pager. He would then stop dialling, the repeater would catch up and clear the alarm, he logged the fault as fixed and got a nice bit of overtime pay without leaving the pub.

WikiLeaks doc dump reveals CIA tools for infecting air-gapped PCs

Re: Nope...

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I work in a school. The USB ports are safe because they all have chewing gum in them.

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Besides which there is no room for a virus - the HDD is filled with porn.

Autorun?

Does anyone set up their PC to autorun these days? Let alone those who are security conscious enough to keep a machine airgapped.

TalkTalk customers complain of being unable to load Amazon website

Yes, probably GCHQ. I found some ICBM's at a really good price on Amazon, but was put off by the delivery time from China. They probably contain dodgy LiPo's as well.

US Air Force resumes F-35A flights despite not knowing why pilot oxygen systems failed

Easy solution

The airforce could save on the installation of oxygen systems by training Sherpas to be pilots.

Microsoft HoloLens apps to be piloted with 'Hogwarts for the MoD' chapesses, chaps

Sounds suspiciously like porn to me ...

"

... displays a simulated human body that students could walk around and interact with ...

"

BOFH: Halon is not a rad new vape flavour

Re: CRTs

Actually, unlike EM radiation, electron beams are stopped pretty effectively just by air. There's a reason why the entire CRT has to be evacuated. You should be more worried about standing in front of your microwave oven while it's operating. (i.e. not much at all).

That minutes-long power glitch? It's going to cost British Airways £80m, IAG investors told

Why fly B.A.?

If you are going to get crap service anyway, you may as well get cheap crap service instead of expensive crap service.

French firm notches up 50km unmanned drone inspection flight

An excellent use of a UAV

I would assume that apart from checking that foliage is not getting too close and for physical damage, it also uses thermal imaging to check for high-resistance joints etc. A great deal of money is spent by utility companies on regular inspections of cables and pipelines by helicopter, so this method should save a fair bit as well.

Discredit a journo? Easy, that'll be $55k. Fix an election? Oh, I can do that for just $400k

aka "propaganda"

The big change that has happened (and it makes a huge difference), is that it is no longer only governments and large media corporations that can mount an effective propaganda campaign.

The flip side is that governments are no longer able to suppress the truth either. Together with the fact that so many people are now carrying devices capable of recording video, governments and their enforcers are finding it increasingly difficult to pull the wool over our eyes, while private individuals are finding it easier to do so.

Voyager 1 passes another milestone: It's now 138AU from home

Insufficient planning

It seems extremely short-sighted of NASA to have not made any provision for in-flight refuelling.

Currys PC World given a spanking for misleading laptop savings ads

Re: PC World still exists?

I always get the oxygen-free cables with Teflon insulation. The bits slide through more rapidly and arrive free of rust. This allows the TV to work without a TV licence (a fact that I have conclusively proven).

German police nick alleged admin of dark web gun sales site

Re: False connection

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Did you fail to spot that the article is talking about Germany, not the US of A?

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No, but you obviously failed to spot that the point which I was making is that the supplier of an item is not usually held responsible for what the purchaser does with the item. The country is irrelevant to that point.

We did not blame the car rental company for the recent terrorist murders in the UK.

False connection

Mentioning the fact that one of the guns sold was used for murder is making a completely false association between the murder and illegal darknet sites.

Many of the far worse mass murderers in the USA used weapons bought from Walmart or similar. We don't see Walmart being held responsible - because they are not.

A person who decides to commit murder will find a way to get hold of a weapon.

I fought Ohm's Law and the law won: Drone crash takes out power to Silicon Valley homes

What was the make of the drone?

I want to avoid buying a product that obviously failed ESD tests.

Capita call centre chap wins landmark sex discrimination lawsuit

Dear Capita ...

According to our database, you may be operating a sexual discrimination policy without a valid licence ...

We're not saying we're living in a simulation but someone's simulated the universe in a computer

The expansion of the Universe is NOT accelerating

It is the passage of time that is decelerating. Or at least it is not possible to tell the difference ...

When can real-world laws invade augmented reality fantasies? A trial in Milwaukee will decide

Difficult one

I can see both sides to this. On the one hand such games do indeed attract more people to a park than the park may be able to handle without additional facilities. But on the other hand that is not much different to what happens when a TV documentary or popular YouTube video features a particular venue, and we would not ask the maker of a documentary that shows XYZ park in a very good light to provide additional facilities to cope with the extra people it will inevitably attract.

Senator blows a fuse as US spies continue lying over spying program

Re: Bah!

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Eventually the damn database will be so big it will cease to be of any real use since the signal to noise ratio will be miniscule.

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It already is. How often do we hear that the latest terrorist to have carried out an attack was already known to the authorities? The fact is that there are so many people who are "known to the authorities" that it is impossible to monitor them all or know which ones are the real threats and which are the innocents scooped up in a dragnet that is far to big and non-selective to be of any use.

If you are looking for a needle in a haystack, it is not all that useful to dump the entire haystack onto your desk and say, "It's in there".

The internet may well be the root cause of today's problems… but not in the way you think

Re: The problem isn't ideologies spreading on the Internet

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You're confusing money with the stuff it represents.

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No, it is you who is confusing money with currency. Currency can be printed. Money cannot.

The total amount of currency in circulated *must* equal the total amount of money a country has. If more currency is printed, or if the country's money is sold off, it therefore follows that the value of each unit of that currency diminishes. Which is essentially what we call "inflation".

It was a huge mistake to abandon the gold standard.

Re: Christian Berger: The problem isn't ideologies spreading on the Internet

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Just a quick question, if companies don't pay tax, what is corporation tax?

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You need to ask yourself where the company gets the money to pay corporation tax, and who would get the benefit if the company were not paying tax. Because that's who is really paying the tax. A company does not make money out of thin air!

If by some magic it would be possible to abolish corporation tax and not recover it from elsewhere, the result would be cheaper goods and/or higher salaries.

Ex-Waymo engineer pleads the 5th in ongoing Uber law fight

Re: Pleading the 5th does seem odd nowadays

No, it is not to prevent torture, it is to prevent you being charged with a crime for refusing to assist with your own prosecution. One of the foundations of our justice system is that everyone must be presumed innocent unless *proven* to be guilty. The burden of such proof lies with the state, and (with recent exceptions) there is no obligation to assist the prosecution.

One of the first things anyone who is arrested on suspicion of a crime is told is, "You do not have to say anything ..." A person who is being questioned as a witness OTOH does not usually have that right, because it is assumed that they are not at risk of prosecution. If however they realise that answering the question may place them at such a risk, they can gain that right. Otherwise the police could easily get around the "right to silence" by simply not arresting the suspect but instead forcing them to answer questions as a witness.

Consider the case where you are stopped while driving at 50MPH in a 40MPH zone. The nice police officer asks, "How fast were you driving, sir?" If you reply, "No comment," then absent any concrete evidence of wrongdoing you will be allowed on your way. Without having the right to not to say anything that might incriminate you, you could be prosecuted for refusing to answer.

In the UK, that right has already been removed in a number of situations. You can, for example, be prosecuted as the registered keeper of a vehicle if you refuse to name the driver of that vehicle if it was caught committing certain offences - even if the driver was yourself. You can also be prosecuted for refusing to tell the police how they can decrypt any encrypted data you have.

BA IT systems failure: Uninterruptible Power Supply was interrupted

No such thing as "uninterruptable"

I once worked at the main telephone exchange of the capital of a particular country. The power could not fail - they had a huge room of lead acid batteries constantly float-charging to supply the 50V power (@ circa 4000 amps) to the electromagnetic exchange. Any one of the 3 container-sized power supplies feeding the batteries could handle the full load, and those were fed from two different sections of the national grid. Two enormous diesel generators (primary and backup) each in a separate room would take over in the unlikely event that both grids went down.

A bush fire 100 miles away weakened a few 400kV pylons which collapsed and took out one arm of the grid. The additional load on the other arm promptly tripped it offline.

The primary diesel generator started up automatically within seconds but soon made horrible noises and stopped due to the fact that the maintenance guys had drained the oil the previous week as routine maintenance, then realised they had no oil in stock so it had been left dry while they ordered some (but had been put back online so the boss wouldn't notice).

The manager quickly went to the secondary generator and started it manually, but while it roared into life it generated no power at all. The batteries could power the exchange for about 30 minutes and time was running out fast. A loose terminal on the excitation winding of the secondary generator was found 5 minutes before we were about to undertake a complete shutdown as the battery voltage was falling to below 45V, and a hasty repair was made. Just as power was about to be switched to the now functional generator, the grid came back on, making it unnecessary.

A very close call - bringing up an electromagnetic exchange is not straightforward. You cannot simply power it all up in one go, as almost all the solenoids would energise at power-up and overload the whole system. Hundreds of fuses must first be removed, thousands of electromechanical switches manually moved to their home positions, and then the fuses replaced in a particular sequence.

A lesson in Sod's law.

Gay Dutch vultures become dads

Re: @Michael - Great story

You can perpetuate a species with only a small proportion of its members carrying out the reproductive task. This enables the rest to more effectively carry out the many other jobs that are important for the survival of the species. Bees do OK despite less than 0.1% of a colony being involved in reproduction.

Crapness of WannaCrypt coding offers hope for ransomware victims

Re: Key recovery

Having the plaintext version of the ciphertext file does not make it significantly easier to find the encryption key of most modern encryption algorithms. In fact it is one of the main goals of an encryption method that an adversary will not be able to reconstruct the key and be able to decode all messages after he has managed to get hold of a few decoded messages.

El Reg straps on the Huawei Watch 2

Re: Another useless gadget

I wish we could buy mobile phones with a "phone mode".

Drones over London caused aviation chaos, pilots' reports reveal

"Fouling the prop on a single engine light aircraft would cause a major problem"

The prop of a light aircraft will take your arm off at idle. It is hardly going to be "fouled" by a plastic bag or child's balloon.

A helicopter OTOH could have a problem because e.g. a plastic refuse bag can cause sufficient imbalance if wrapped around a blade to need to land PDQ.

Re: Hmmm...

So put the cameras inside the cockpit. After all, if the pilot saw the object, it must have been visible through the window ... HD cameras that record to SD card have been available for years, and are small enough that they would not interfere with anything.