Posts by Deltics

Git sprints carefully towards SHA-1 deprecation

Re: @Deltics

You cannot just take any arbitrary data processing algorithm and call it a "hash".

Neither Zip nor 7z is a hash algorithm. Apart from the lack of fixed size in the output, neither actually even guarantees an output that is smaller than the input (not that this is a pre-requisite for a hash).

You would have to pick a ridiculously large size for the pseudo-hash value to which to pad/pack all your zip outputs, but unless you chose a truly ridiculous hash size there would always be some input which could not compress into that size.

"it's no longer possible to prove that (for example) a hashed document is unique"

It has *never* been possible to prove that. Quite the opposite. It is a mathematical certainty that a hash function that reduces an arbitrary sized input to a fixed size smaller than the input itself will have collisions.

National Insurance tax U-turn: Philip Hammond nixes NIC uptick

Re: "When did that ever stop a government?"

Gross disparity ?

The self-employed do not enjoy the same entitlements as the employed, so why should they be expected to make the same contributions ? To think of just one example very directly relevant to NI contributions, the self-employed are not entitled to paid sick leave.

Think about that the next time you decide you just can't be bothered going to work and ring in "sick" and see no difference in your pay packet.

Dungeons & Dragons finally going digital

Point of Order

I didn't see any repetition of an "Any Device" point. I saw a point that repeated the "any device" claim in the, separate, statement. Furthermore, I don't see how "any device" translates into "web app", whether any point is repeated or not.

I can't access web apps on my FitBit Aria.

For example.

Look! Up in the sky! Is it a drone? Is it a car? It's both, crossed with Uber

Drone coming down from the sky to pick up humans.... ?

I can't help but wonder if who-ever came up with this idea has recently discovered the iconic Williams Defender ...

Pence v Clinton: Both used private email for work, one hacked, one accused of hypocrisy

Re: Espionage Act

It contributed significantly to her losing the election and putting Trump in the Whitehouse.

No harm you say ? O.o

Re: @macjules A suprise?

The stink made was about laws being broken. The crimes involved a personal email server, not the legal albeit curious use of a personal email ACCOUNT.

One might expect The Reg to know the difference between a SERVER and an ACCOUNT, No ?

Clinton used a personal email SERVER and is known to have used it for government business and is known to have DELETED thousands of records that she was required by law to retain.

Pence used a personal email ACCOUNT and any question as to whether he used that account for government business is even able to be raised only because records were kept, as required.

Hypocrisy ?

Yes. On the part of the Clinton apologists who protested that there was no issue since the fair lady could do no wrong when patently she had and are now baying for the blood of someone who equally patently has done something that is nothing even close to comparable, even if there is any questionable dimension to it at all.

81's 99 in 17: Still a lotta love for the TI‑99/4A – TI's forgotten classic

I had me one of those

A lot of my extended family worked at TI in Bedford (UK) and when they EOL'd the '99 staff were able to pick one up for chump change, so we got one through an uncle still working there. This was my upgrade from a ZX81.

An amazing bit of kit really, for the time and thanks to it's market failure a lot of add-ons could be picked up for pocket money. Cartridges were great for a quick bit of gaming at a time when for someone with a Speccy or a 64, you had to factor in the loading time, from tape. The '99 could load from tape as well, and some games still required that (Scott Adam's Adventures being a prime example). But those cartridges were great, and could add capabilities to the base machine to enable more advanced games (I seem to remember Parsec did something like that).

I also had a lot of fun with the speech synthesizer add-on module and a graphics tablet (!!) whilst the Extended BASIC cartridge provided a decent place to learn programming, compared to the rather idiosyncratic BASIC that was on-board otherwise.

e.g. Extended BASIC gave us advanced features such as sprites and .... PRINT AT.. Without that, printing strings to the screen was a rather tortuous affair involving GOSUB routines and FOR NEXT loops calling HCHAR() (don't ask).

And then there were the UDG's (User Defined Graphics for people who didn't grow up in the 80's - you might also need to look up "sprite" :) ). I learned hex as a result of memorising the bit patterns associated with the strings necessary to define 8x8 UDG blocks, e.g. your classic solid 8x8 circle/disc: 3C7EFFFFFFFF7E3C

Eventually I upgraded to an Amiga A500. :)

Aaaah, happy days.

Git fscked by SHA-1 collision? Not so fast, says Linus Torvalds

For crying out loud...

Google talk in dark, foreboding terms about changing a rental agreement to hoodwink some poor unsuspecting tenant into paying a higher rent than they think they signed up for and "proving" it with the SHA-1

But in their "proof" of the attack all they did was change the color of a frickkin' graphic and people lapped it up and jumped all over the SHA-1 is broken bandwagon.

And since SHA-1 has been suspect for years, anyone trying to use it to sucker a mark into paying a higher rent will (or should) find themselves being asked why they are relying on a demonstrably broken digital "signature" ?

And that's even assuming that it is possible to "attack" a document in this way, rather than just fiddling with the colors.

BlackBerry's comeback: El Reg gets its claws on the QWERTY KEYone

Photo's seem at odds with the observations

Either the camera was being particularly unkind or those close ups don't actually give the impression of the build quality alluded to in the commentary/review/article.

Quite the opposite in fact. It's looked like a plastic toy/knock off. Or is it just me ?

Toxic Uber sued after driver allegedly tried to rape passenger in car

Re: Not an Uber fan, but

Actually, I think it IS likely to be a problem if not unique to Uber then certainly worse.

In many parts of the world, licensed taxis now routinely have cameras installed for the protection of the drivers. But of course this also protects the passengers and means that any allegations of assault (and any attempt at such an assault) would be more than just a he-said/she-said situation which might be argued to be a vexatious allegation made by a difficult/disgruntled customer.

Then there's the threat that any such behaviour by a taxi driver will lead not just to possible criminal prosecution but that even the allegation of such a thing could lead to the loss of their livelihood, losing their license to carry and their ability to get it back.

Uber drivers don't have to worry about niceties such as being licensed to carry passengers, at all.

'First ever' SHA-1 hash collision calculated. All it took were five clever brains... and 6,610 years of processor time

No hash function makes finding collisions computationally /impossible/, the best you can hope for is /practically useless/.

As in, too impractical to be of any utility to a miscreant.

As others have said, the point is not the ability to contrive a collision but to establish a means to change a document or file in a way that has any practical result (changing the terms of a contract, introducing functional malware or a backdoor) without changing the byte count in the file (nobody relies on JUST the has, I hope) and still contrive to create a collision.

AND the result of the change also has to remain undetectable when subject to an eyeball test. i.e. It's no good being able to change the terms of a contract if to achieve that whilst preserving the file size and the hash you have also introduced what is obvious junk content as well.

Changing the background color of a PDF ? I'm not sure what the possible malicious application of that could be. This doesn't prove that an effective attack is possible, only that a pointless attack is. Surely ?

I can drive my car into a concrete wall at 100mph and effectively demonstrate that the collision protection offered by my vehicle is inadequate to protect the occupants in the event of such a collision. But that doesn't mean that the collision protection in the vehicle is inadequate.

Let's replace Ethernet with infrared light bouncing off mirrors!

Re: The good, the bad AND the evil...

Lasers man. Frikkin' lasers.

All we need now is some ill-tempered sea bass.

PS4 Pro woes: Random display blackouts caught on camera

Re: Never had a single problem. PS4 Pro working perfectly here.

Video evidence ? Pah. This dude has alternative facts on his side.

Trump lieutenants 'use private email' for govt work... but who'd make a big deal out of that?

Re: The return of the high horse

The problem (for your diatribe) being that *at this stage* there is nothing but a speculated possibility of hypocrisy. The actual facts at this stage - as reported - are that some low/mid ranking officials who have legitimate prima face need to conduct party business are using email accounts provided by their party. But we don't know what those emails relate to so they a) could represent improper use of private emails for government business or b) entirely appropriate emails for the conduct of party or personal business.

Once you have *actual* hypocrisy to complain about, let's talk.

As for the conflation of religion with the right wing, frankly, most people I know who pray to unprovable deities are quite definitely on the left of the political spectrum. Which isn't to say that right wing extremist don't also claim to believe in those same deities, only that they don't hold the monopoly on that particular delusion.

Um, I kept *everything* back, merely pointing out that at this time there is no evidence of any "wrong doing", just evidence of people using certain email addresses with no information about *what* they are using them for. Hence, no possible suggestion of impropriety let along law breaking.

The people who should be holding back are those waving the pitchforks already and baying for the blood of alleged hypocrites.

"It's not known whether the top lieutenants are using the accounts to discuss White House business outside official channels"

In other words at this point as far as anyone appears to know, this isn't hypocrisy but simply some people - not holders of cabinet posts or even close - using personal email accounts for emails which as far as anyone is prepared to say at the very least *could* be personal in nature or at least not related to government business.

Am I wrong ?

TV anchor says live on-air 'Alexa, order me a dollhouse' – guess what happens next

Not an ill considered TV Spot

It's an ill-considered technology deployed into people's homes after getting the consumer to sign away any expectation that the product will not cause them problems due to it being an ill considered technology.

Boffins link ALIEN STRUCTURE ON VENUS to Solar System's biggest ever grav wave

Re: Click baity headline is click bait

"Isn't it ironic" is a question and is not semantically equivalent to the statement "All that follows is (or is not) ironic".

If all that follows is clearly not ironic then the question itself *could* be intended to be ironic, with the implication that the positor of the question is well aware of the lack of irony and is precipitating in the respondent the notion that the non-ironic observations may be ironic when they are not.

Or the positor is just using "ironic" poetically or even perhaps ignorantly.

Pays your money. Takes your choice.

Either way, it's a catchy little ditty.

Devs reverse-engineer 16,000 Android apps, find secrets and keys to AWS accounts

Google Sign-In example

You have an app which has an application id (known to the Google API's). Associated with that application id is an API-key. Also, for an Android app, the application id is configured with the package name of the application and also the fingerprint of the certificate used to sign the application.

When your application accesses the Google API's to use Google Sign-In the API verifies that the requesting app has the right package name and was signed with the appropriate certificate. Your use of the API is only vulnerable if your signing certificate has been compromised.

This provides the level of trust required to allow sign-in from that application without requiring any secrets in the application.

If your application then uses back-end services of other API's you can use the Google Sign-In API to obtain a (single use) id token. Since your sign-in is trusted then this id token can be trusted. To access the back-end API's then that back-end typically then provides some way to exchange a google sign-in id token for a token to access the API itself. This process is server-to-server so any secrets involved are more easily protected (unless your servers are themselves hacked).

API Security is Hard

Having developed apps against these API's I can tell you that securing your app and the API it is accessing is hard. For three reasons:

1) It's just hard. No way around it. At some point there has to be some element of trust involved and the problem is how to protect that trusted element sufficiently. It can be done but ultimately the app is at the mercy of the API. If an API requires some secret to be "protected" by an app but then leaves it entirely in the hands of the app as to how to ensure that protection then all bets are off.

2) It's made harder. Even the API's that get it right seem to delight in making it harder than it needs to be to get the app implementation right. Documentation is either vague, incomplete or in some cases just downright wrong or the back-end a constantly shifting target with a plethora of once accurate documentation and a devil of a job figuring out which applies now, particularly if the latest docs only build on previous versions and assume a depth of knowledge gained working with previous iterations that someone coming to the API afresh is not equipped with.

3) When a developer finally stumbles across the right incantation to get things working they have often been through so many iterations of poking and pushing at things to try and cajole the API into working that they've actually lost track of what they actually did to make it finally work so any "assistance" they then offer is itself often incomplete or confused.

Very often these API's have two modes of access, one for applications which cannot (read: should not) contain any secrets due to being exposed in the wild. That is, desktop applications, mobile device applications, client-side web apps. But then they have a - usually - more straightforward mechanism intended for apps that are intrinsically more secure, such as server-side apps which can "safely" contain secrets.

These secrets based mechanisms are usually better documented, easier to understand and more straightforward to implement. So I guess some developers just give up and embrace the path of least resistance, re-assuring themselves that their app isn't one that is worth hacking so their inappropriately used "secrets" will be safe.

Father of Android II: A Hardware Comeback

Re: connector

I'm not aware of any mobile/phone device in which the internal storage is user-replaceable.

Some devices offer expandable, additional storage. But if the primary, internal storage is borked then the device is toast but you will have remedy under warranty/consumer guarantees which in enlightened jurisdictions (e.g. here in NZ) will not be limited to any arbitrary time frame, but will cover the "reasonable life" of the device.

i.e. if a mobile phone is reasonably expected to last 5 years then if the internal storage is borked within 5 years (assuming the device has not been abused/mistreated etc) then you are entitled to a replacement.

Re: connector

I don't know what everyone else does, but any photo I take on my phone is already on my Mac by the time I get home. In my DropBox. :)

Uber's self-driving cars can't handle bike lanes, forcing drivers to kill autonomous mode

When is someone going to hold Uber to account

On this specific matter, a meat bag driving a car in this way would presumably get a ticket so as long as the Uber vehicles are subject to the same law and the tickets are sent to Uber (either directly or via the meat bag driving the self-driving car) then I don't see the problem.

Or will Uber simply then deny that they are subject to THAT law as well ?

I cannot even being to put into words the contempt in which I hold this outfit. It is only slightly less than the contempt for the authorities constantly moaning that Uber refuses to be subject to the law of whichever land they are operating but then not doing anything and everything in their legal power to bring them to book.

Microsoft offers UK cloud customers private pipes

We already were... Having gone back to paying to use somebody else's computer in a data center.

The only question is how long it will take for this cycle to complete and for some bean counter somewhere to announce the revelation that there are huge cost and efficiency savings (and reliability and control gains) to be had by de-centralising.

Rinse and repeat.

Bloke sold cash register code to restaurants that deliberately hid sales from taxmen

Re: the various tax boards WILL check up...

Price Elasticity is to Economics as Newtons Laws are to physics.

A mathematical theory which holds under certain conditions but which by no means are a Universal truth extant beyond those conditions.

Re: You can't do that ...

No more likely than His Holiness Obama being thrown in jail for exchanging emails via an illegal email server.

That right there is the only reason the FBI decided there was no case to answer on that score: If Hil's had to answer for it then so would everybody who had knowingly permitted and participated in that answerable activity.

Watergate still stings, and the idea of throwing a president under the bus for merely breaking the law is beyond the pale for the worlds leading "democracy". Of course, if there's a whiff of juicy sex scandal... bring it on! That sh*t sells copy like you wouldn't believe!

Local TV presenter shouted 'f*cking hell' to open news bulletin

Re: Done on purpose

This may work when recording a scripted segment, but in any show involving (supposedly) unscripted interactions (interviews, "live" exchanges, conversations etc) there is this little thing called a "bleeper".

RIP HPE's The Machine product, 2014-2016: We hardly knew ye

Am I the only one...

...finding my nostalgia centre being unexpectedly stimulated by those pictures of boards festooned with high-density, high chip-count daughter boards.... ?

Takes me right back to 1990's PC's. Ironically. :)

The future often starts as a toy, so don't shun toy VR this Christmas

A smartphone can do/be all those things. But not as well as the things themselves. The only advantage that a smartphone has is that it is a barely adequate replacement for lots of things at once.

The one possible exception where it can actually improve on the original thing itself is the "road atlas", as long as you don't mind viewing your maps through a (relatively) tiny window onto the wider cartographical world and actually enjoy all that pinching and swiping just to figure out where you are and how it relates to things (that may or may not be) nearby.

Why were maps always produced on large sheets of paper instead of decks of postcards ?

I think perhaps there is a reason. ;)

But you had better had remembered/thought to download all the data you needed into your device before heading out into the great unconnected wilderness, otherwise all you have is a hand-held device that is not so much "magic wand" as "useless hunk of technology".

Of course, not quite useless. The one HUGE advantage it has is that if you get lost you can play Angry Birds while waiting to be found/rescued. The best you can hope for with a real road atlas is to develop your origami skills.

Oh, or find your own way home of course. :)

Shhh! Shazam is always listening – even when it's been switched 'off'

Re: How else are the US corporations and spooks supposed to harvest all your most personal info...

I'd say the exact opposite. They are very highly skilled and very highly trained.

It's the difference between being skilled in communication and understanding the people you are communicating with and their needs/expectations.

Chirp! Let's hear it for data over audio

Re: WiFi pairing

Too directional and requires a clear line of sight.

Google DeepMind 'learns' the London Underground map to find best route

So given a pointless challenge...

Why make the exercise more difficult than it needed to be ?

As the article says, this is a simple graph navigation problem. It's a problem that has been solved already. Google Navigation (and heck, AutoRoute before it!) can find you the shortest and/or fastest route in a far more complex graph - national roading and public transport networks.

I understand the point of research and finding solutions to new problems, but this wasn't a new problem, it was an old problem dressed up in new clothes. Instead of "training" the system with knowledge of a known thing - the graph - let's artificially PRETEND it's an unknown thing. Why ? What is the use case for this problem ? Where/what are the graph networks where the graph is not known ?

What, in short, of any use, does this exercise establish ?

Apple’s macOS Sierra update really puts the fan into 'fanboi'

Re: You're Wrong Sir.

You must be sooooper important AND soooooper forgetful if you had to set yourself a reminder for yourself to be reminded of once you got where you were going at the time.

What's more distracting ? Fooling around on a keyboard/screen to enter a request or arguing with a "voice assistant" when it doesn't understand what you are trying to tell it and getting annoyed that the stupid thing can't get it right ? Trick question: They are both distracting, though perhaps in different ways.

If it's important enough, then it's worth a few minutes to pull over and get it done safely (AND legally) without ANY distraction. If it's not important enough to pull over then you are only indulging in making yourself feel important by putting other people's lives at risk by getting into a discussion with an electronic device. It's only legal because the legislation is drafted with a stupidly specific focus on a particular form of distraction. It sure isn't any more safe.

And don't tell me that voice interaction is no different than a conversation with a passenger. The difference is this ...

When talking to a passenger if you feel you need to momentarily give more attention to the road (where it belongs) you can say "Hold on..." and the PERSON you are talking to will know exactly what you mean and why. Even if they aren't in the car with you, someone on a phone call will know you are driving and understand the context. Siri et al will think you are issuing them an instruction or adding some text to the reminder/message/email you are in the middle of composing. And if you don't stick to the script that Siri is expecting (despite the marketing bullsh*t these things are NOT "intelligent") then it will potentially do something you don't want, so right in the middle of when you are needing to give more attention to the road, you are getting into a right 2 and 8 with an ignorant and now intrusive "assistant".

So kindly do everyone else on the road a favour and stop using these things.

Atari's Bushnell gets into VR

Um, that's an Amiga

It matters. Surely we can't already have forgotten the great Atari/Amiga rivalry ? :)

Mastercard rolls out pay-by-selfie across Europe

I'll just leave this here

Identity <> Authorization (or if you prefer: Identity != Authorization)

‘Inflexion point’ BlackBerry washes hands of hardware biz

Re: my son had a new iPhone 7 delivered today

In 20+ years of mobile phone, PDA and smartphone ownership (many, many devices used as every day workhorses, most of them pre-dating "Gorilla Glass") I have never once suffered a cracked screen on a single device.

They don't crack spontaneously ya know and adding a case is not synonymous with - nor a substitute for - actually "taking care" of a device.

Daddy, what's 'P2P file sharing'?

I look forward to the day where I continue to be paid for work I already did long after I have moved on and am doing something else.

Oh, but wait... employer pension schemes have been decimated and all but destroyed. So I guess it's only "creatives" that get to look forward to such things. Which is only fair I guess. It's not like the rest of us are contributing anything substantive to the economy, eh ?

It's OK to fine someone for repeating a historical fact, says Russian Supreme Court

Re: But not as bizarre as ...

As much as I may sympathise with those who fall victim to the UK courts, if you would prefer Russian "justice" or "democracy" then you are of course free to emigrate and subject yourselves to Putin's rule, if you think you would prefer that to HM EIIR's.

Robot cars probably won't happen, sniffs US transport chief

Re: I'm not sure I understand

No, it's that if a human driving a vehicle mows down 15 people then that human will find themselves in a court where a jury of their peers will examine the specific circumstances and capabilities of that human, taking all factors into account and reaching a decision as to whether the action was justified - or at least excusable. And if not, then that human has consequences to face. Otherwise, the family (or families) of any victims at least may be satisfied that justice has been applied (it is not uncommon for families in such cases to feel compassion and sympathy along with their grief).

But if a vehicle control system makes that decision then it is a simple question of whether the vehicle followed it's programming or there was a defect in that programming.

If the program is shown to have a defect then the manufacturer is liable not just to the families involved but will likely face instant bankruptcy as their product becomes poison. Or at least face a massive recall exercise.

If the vehicles is demonstrated to not have a "defect" in the programming. That is, that the program specification was followed precisely, then in any event, that programming is responsible for having chosen the deaths of 15 people over the 1 life of the passenger (or, the death of the 1 person over the 15). The argument then will be that the decision tree formulated years in advance and in splendid isolation from the circumstances on the day in question, was not sufficiently adaptable to those circumstances and was thus inherently and dangerously flawed.

So even if there was no defect, the program was defective.

There will be either the families of the 15 people or the 1 person lining up to claim massive damages as a result of the decision or error that concluded that the life of their loved one was the one - on balance - worth sacrificing.

Aha - comes the cry from the permanently not-pessimistic - but what if the program can be demonstrated not to have performed any such "weighing of the balance" at all !!?! Eh? Ha! Then the program can't be blamed for making a decision that it didn't actually take.

OK - so there was no "decision" to mow down 15 people, they were simply not a factor in the vehicles action to save the occupant. In which case the open and shut argument is simply that such a system is not safe to permit on the roads where such decisions are necessarily required.

It's not that either outcome is "OK".

It's that the legal questions arising from the one where a vehicle is "responsible" are just too complex and intractable and once this is realised, the car companies will quickly back pedal from the idea, except as a development vehicle [sic] for technologies to provide driver assistance (as opposed to replacing the driver entirely).

It;'s not pessimism, it's informed consideration

In common with all these confident predictions of the inevitability of autonomous vehicles, thinking it's just a question of safety fails to fully consider the ramifications and changes involved in the technology.

For example, you say that once the increased safety is established, the insurance companies will be "happy to insure them".

Insure **who** ?

At the moment, "car insurance" is actually "driver insurance". Some drivers are clearly safer than others. If you have an Advanced Drivers Test under your belt you can sometimes get a premium discount, and of course No Claims Discount also supposedly reflects a demonstrable "safety" record (actually, insurance liability record which isn't necessarily the same thing).

But in an autonomous vehicle with no driver at the controls, who exactly is the insurance company "happy to insure" ?

It cannot be you. As merely a passenger you are not a factor in any liability any more than your passengers are currently when you are driving under the cover of your insurance (unless it can be established that the passenger was actively interfering with your control of the vehicle).

Is it the specific installation of the car control and management software in your specific vehicle ? Good luck with that. Since that specific installation is identical to every other installation of that same control and management software you are looking at a ready-made class action pointing to the car manufacturer being liable (and/or the company that developed the software, if it wasn't the car manufacturer themselves).

But *is* the manufacturer of the car liable ? They only built the thing, they didn't sell it to you. That was the dealer, actively marketing and selling a machine where the control systems that determine it's danger to the public are an intrinsic part of the product. In contrast, currently, they can sell a car to any meatbag they like, but the law then determines who is legally permitted to operate that machine on the road, via driver licensing etc.

Or is it you, having chosen to purchase such a vehicle and abdicate control - does that very decision render you solely liable for the consequences of that decision ? Any lawyer worth their salt will easily have any such claim dismissed (you only allowed to abdicate control because it was established sufficiently that this was the "safer" decision and had you known that it was not you would not have agreed to abdicate that control - i.e. the responsibility falls back again on the technology or the industry).

The insurance companies would like to keep things pointing at the occupant of the vehicle, because if it falls back on the dealers or the manufacturers then at a stroke the entire market for driver insurance disappears and is subsumed into the public liability cover of those businesses.

I'm pretty sure the insurance companies would NOT be happy about that.

It is a much, MUCH more complex problem than simply establishing that driverless cars are "safer" than meatbag controlled cars. Those self same meatbags are what make identifying liability relatively simple and THAT is the real challenge of these things, not the technology.

Microsoft to overhaul Windows 10 UI – with a 3D Holographic Shell

Re: 3D UI yes... useless crap VR headsets NO! JUST NO !

August 7th 1945: This nuclear bomb stuff has good momentum due to Hiroshima.

1995: This Los Del Rio outfit have good momentum due to Macarena.

Virtual Reality is not new and in the 30 years that it has been around it has never achieved anything other than niche applications.

When it comes to Augmented Reality, first of all there is no such thing. To augment something is to make that thing greater in size. When you augment your income you have more income. When you augment a military force, you add more military force. Augmented Reality doesn't make REALITY any bigger or add any additional reality. The virtual [sic] additions are not real.

Augmented Perception would be nearer the mark.

But whatever you want to call it, it is a specific (i.e. niche) application of what we already had - Virtual Reality. How so ? Simple: Where "VR" creates and renders an ENTIRE world model, "SCAR" (So Called AR) takes a pre-existing model of reality (either fixed or based on observed/sensed reality) and then adds and super-imposes new virtual extensions to that model.

In 30 years VR only ever found niche applications and I will confidently predict that AR will similarly only find even smaller niche applications (which doesn't mean that those niche applications won't be massively commercially successful).

Video games are arguably the most successful application of VR.

Just about every video game under the sun is a "virtual reality". Just because a 3D stereoscopic render and/or headset isn't involved doesn't change the fact that there is a complete virtual reality modelled and rendered within which the player "exists" for the purposes of the gameplay.

There may be a huge market for AR games. But this doesn't necessarily herald a new dawn of AR in every aspect of our lives.

Smart TVs, satellites, and billboards all hacked in Ukrainian war

The real crime here is the extent to which the world has collectively moved on from what's going on in Ukraine and if it is mentioned at all it is as a past event.

Uber: Why we use MySQL

Was I the only one that was confused by the "Shemales layer" ?

(A more careful re-reading of the parenthetical cleared up my confusion. Eventually)

Microsoft adds useful feature to PowerPoint. Seriously

Re: Still

100 words per slide ?

I recently gave a 4 minute presentation on Eschatological Pantheistic Multiple-Ego Solipsism (not even kidding). Across 15 slides I used a grand total of 18 words in the ENTIRE presentation.

4 for the title (revealed on slide #3 after 2 teaser images).

4 more for the plain language translation of the title ("The World As Myth").

9 for a quote from Bohemian Rhapsody on the penultimate slide.

1 for the final word in the preso ("Yes").

The tool you need to limit the words used in a presentation is to not have a tool operating the keyboard+mouse when assembling the content.

Shock: Apple patents the phone book

Re: Ammunition

Who would have thought that patent lawyers would recommend filing a new patent. If I read your post correctly you paid those lawyers for their advice and presumably their time in putting together and filing your patent extension. Other lawyers were then paid to challenge the patent yours extended.

The net result was that the original patent and - by extension [sic] - yours became worthless.

But the lawyers still got paid, amiright ?

Netflix scores new Trek tellie

It only boggles minds that can't be bothered to do even the most basic research into the long standing issue of territorial licensing/distribution agreements which have been with us since LONG before streaming services exposed more consumers to the latest reasons to complain about the matter.

This is also the reason that the Amazon store in country "A" won't ship every item in their inventory to every country. There are some goods which the distribution agreement with their suppliers prohibit them from shipping overseas. If Amazon/Netflix/et al broke the terms of those agreements then the rights holders making money from the distribution/licensing agreements would take their business elsewhere.

The agreements are what limit the consumers access to the goods and services. Abiding by and enforcing the terms of those agreements is what enables the stores/service providers to continue to supply those goods and services.

That's why.

VMware's past holds the key to the future of Microsoft's Azure Stack

"Insisting that EVO:RAIL meant the acquisition of new vSphere licences therefore made no sense."

It made sense to VMWare, trying to sell more vSphere licenses. It also made sense to VMWare customers who realised that their supplier was using the age old selling playbook where-in it is written that it is easier to find ways to get more money out of an existing customer than it is to find entirely new customers.

Making sense wasn't the problem.

Not liking it was the problem. :)

Empty your free 30GB OneDrive space today – before Microsoft deletes your files for you

Problems with OneDrive run much deeper than the bait and switch marketing

Windows 10 seems particularly badly affected:

http://www.deltics.co.nz/blog/posts/2449

(Full disclosure: That's a post on my own blog, but easier to link to it than to re-produce the details here).

Bottom line: Windows 10 + OneDrive = recipe for deleted files, no matter how much storage you are officially signed up for/entitled to.