Posts by ChubbyBehemoth

FBI slams secret Nunes memo alleging Feds spied on Team Trump for political reasons

Alternate States

Obviously the political fight is going into overdrive with the GOP for the past half year instigating a smear campaign against the institutes they so generously larded with surveillance powers in the past few years. Though to any non-US citizen it is obvious that the US has become dysfunctional in any of the institutes of government the GOP has a majority in and the current idiot in chief has managed to destroy whatever goodwill the previous one had managed to rebuild, they seem to be unable to get out of their little information bubbles either focused on Fox or MSNBC (I consider those to be about equally astray from reality). Now as far as I can see, the one thing that can come out of this whole mess is that the outcome of it all is that the whole WH is infested with Ruski moles and useful idots. If anything it might convince right wing Yanks that Russia isn't communist any more, but a good fascistic cleptocratic ally for the future. Meanwhile the evangelicals can hope to finally see the apocalypse happen in their time and have one of the crackpots be right for a change. And if not, the left wing radicals may try a desperate attempt to stop it all and get rid of both Pence (who I deem scarier even than the D) and Trump, leaving general Kelly as the next in line. Hmm,.. it sounds almost attractive.

Make America Greatly Amusing!

May the excessive force be with you: Chap cuffed after Star Trek v Star Wars row turns bloody

Trick

The Next Generation? WTF!!! That's not Star Trek!

Oh,.. you can leave it blank...

Microsoft, IBM, Intel refuse to hand over family jewels to China

Re: How about domestic software?

An example? Sure...

2008 the entire sourceforge domain was blocked for the reason of a single project voicing having a problem with Chinese policy in Tibet. These days, Google.com is blocked including all fora regarding coding, its coding projects, etc. Youtube is blocked, including the explaining video's on many topics, anything social is blocked, Dropbox is blocked and all other variants, Github is severely throttled, many projects on it are just not available due to selective blocking. Basically anything with a commercial domestic competitive software variant can expect to end up on a blacklist and just not getting routed as DNS is missing. Know your uncle Wu for that. Either this is on ISP level or through the GCF. There are many levels of uncle Wu to give fat red envelopes to.

Anything routing to servers in Europe is massively hindered by the GCF and the NSA adding a bulky 900 ms each to the connection (something for the WTO maybe) checking all passing data on an otherwise 1.2 sec connection pushing many servers beyond the standard 3 sec timeout range because of the added latency. As a result much of Europe services are unreachable. Google API's are blocked, so registering through any service using Google Captcha is impossible. The positive side is that that also goes for tracking. Doing searches for the wrong topic will render spoof attacks on unrelated sites through DNS poisoning and adding some MITM. I believe the Reg had some articles on that, but I can't be bothered to link them.

VPN is severely hampered, only available option that is stable is SSH, which is blocked by most ISP's for domestic connections at least. Obviously there needed to be on available to web admins working from home, but it took me some time to find the only one that allows SSH connections. It still sucks as there are not that many exchange points for the 700 million people on-line that are due to these many factors kept in the country.

Apart from the cultural bias about working for free and the excessive working hours, there are plenty of other reasons why there is such a low input from China on Open Source projects. Even a project like Inkscape is nearly unreachable for Chinese devs with a more modern outlook on things. You can download it, but the dev fora are standardly unavailable and need a lot of effort for a single dev to link up to, as the CVS sites are blocked. It took me 3 days with help from the Inkscape team to get connected and able to report bugs. I can imagine that many Chinese devs who are more linguistically challenged will not bother.

Open source software was largely unknown until Android, but the whole concept is still pretty alien to the population at large. A lack of access to news sources on the topic certainly plays a part in it. In general the domestic software consists of freeware with aggressive ads popping up even while you do not use the software through added services, flogging you anything, screening your input and selling data to 3rd parties. Most local browsers will happily send you their ads rather than the orginal ones and ISP's will reroute your DNS request to some vague online shop rather than what you were actually looking for. Again, especially Open Source projects get the latter treatment a lot.

Are those enough examples for you?

How about domestic software?

The PRC has no problem with malware, snoopware, crippleware and outright viruses produced domestically is my experience. I would say that once it tackles all the commercial crap created there, they can make demands on others. Until then they can just reverse engineer stuff like always. Nor do any of the companies involved need to worry too much as China can ill afford to ban them. Wintel is standard in China and open source has been censured by uncle Wu for as long as I have been here. Banning Wintel would lead to a major economic disruption and that is something the country just cannot afford.

China cites Trump to justify ‘fake news’ media clampdown. Surprised?

Ignorance is Strenght

The point of fake news is not that it is there. It has always been there since the invention of writing. The problem is that sadly ignorant people can't discern real from fake. Or even if they can they will probably prefer the fake as it is more in accordance to their views. Only once a single source would dare to post different points of view and allow for a discussion on it you might get a well informed point of view. I however have to come across the first newspaper that would link to the ISIS websites to have their point of view and adds a link to Breitbart to show two extremes while discussing the merits of the actions of the parties involved. Both views are quite repulsive and use ill logic, but only using the sources you may be able to point out such deficiencies. It is this part of journalism that has not been all that developed over the years in using new technology.

US citizens crash Canadian immigration site after Trump victory

Trumpia!

Formerly known as the USA. Used to be a shining example for many disenfranchised people striving to have a better life until the world conglomerate ordered an pre-emptive strike to contain the lobotomising virus that seemed to have taken hold of the general populous. The ensuing nuclear winter and fallout were deemed preferable to four years (or possibly more) of tweets from the orange menace that emanated this threat.

McDonald's sues Italian city for $20m after being burger-blocked

How about a nice spot in the sewers?

Surely that is about the only place where one should place MD's products. You don even need to consume it for the right taste and consistency. Though one might argue that even those are part of protected heritage and as such off limits for the blasphemers that dare call it food.

FBI drops bombshell, and investigation: Clinton still in the clear

2016 The year of idiocracy

I can only hope that sanity prevails and the US elects the dishonest candidate over the raving loon who likes dictators and questions why have the bombs and not use them, shouldn't we give them to others as well. That should settle any question you might have had regardless of political colour.

There are two other sad nitwits as well you might contemplate, but they seem to have been informed by their own social media to disregard everything that goes beyond their incredible small world view.

This year whatever happens next will go down as the year that idiocracy really started to get a hold of world politics. The whole concept of giving representative power to mull things over and come up with a decent compromise to get to a solution that nobody really likes, thus showing it is the right solution, has come under increased pressure from the peer groups staring at the genitals of their own tribes only and by lack of information fearing the possibly bigger ones outside their groups. "Is your girlfriends name Wendy?" "No man,... Welcome to Jamaica and have a nice day."

Rather than being a force for good communication, social media seems to have enforced the tendency to go tribal and only talk to people that agree with you, while shouting into the void of others and not taking note of what they shout back at you. Probably because you already blocked their messages.

So here we have it,.. the peer groups creating content relating to their own limited views do such in such massive quantities that time to handle anything beyond that and replying to the next batch of emojie in kind is lacking to obtain an informed position on anything beyond that. Add to that the behaviour of advertisers who reinforce that and we can understand how we got into this unholy mess.

So the question is. How to open up these peer groups to a wider world view and break through the social hermit tendencies as displayed in the political narrative of western democracy?

Job ad asks for 'detrimental' sysadmin

Gezocht Wanbeheerder

That was an ad in a Dutch newspaper I had a good laugh about.

It literally means "Wanted, mismanager", though they were probably looking for a WAN administrator. For a while I actually was thinking of applying for the job and deliver on the requirement ;-)

Edinburgh University to flog its supercomputer for £0.0369 per core hour

Ehm,.. how about memory and storage?

Or is this something that could be used as a very cheap web server using only one core and few MB of persistent data?

One-way Martian ticket: Pick passengers for Musk's first Mars pioneer squad

Not enough space for all even if freeze dried!!!

Considering the increasing list of people to send off to Mars, the grim truth is obvious. They couldn't even put them on the ship even in powdered form. Nay,.. the only way to get rid of all those pesky buggers is to sign on for the trip and hope for the best of it. Considering the mass insanity that seems to plague this world, Brexit, Trump for president with a chance to actually win it, pope in Azerbaijan, Microsoft doing Linux support.

I'll take the 6000 chest X-rays! I'll be your fertilizer, soylent-green or whatever! Just get me off this rock!!!

Forget Khan and Klingons, Star Trek's greatest trick was simply surviving

Certainly classifies as Sci Fi

Despite the fact that the science is not too strong, the amount of futuristic objects, the idea that people of different races and cultures would be together in teams including aliens, the motion through space to explore other worlds and a federation of planets rather than just one aggressive coloniser. Yeah, for a 1960's TV show that was science fiction for sure and many of its concepts are still kept alive.

It is highly optimistic science for sure, with FTL and teleportation, but even now people have not quite given up on that idea despite the rather dismal prospect of both. A communication devise that you would flip open to use was something introduced in the early 90's and I can easily download an app that turns my mobile into a ST scanner including the bleeps. Space Opera in my view is Sci Fi as well. Not hard Sci Fi, but to discard any FTL toting Sci Fi as utter nonsense and focus on the detective or other story that makes it interesting doesn't cut it out of Sci Fi to me.

The mere prospect of, hoping for and dreaming of a future where such things are possible and the idea that we are going to survive our self destructive instincts into a better future is probably what makes Sci Fi as strong genre.

Happy anniversary ST. Live long and prosper. And four pints for the Vulcan!

GE runs off $1.4bn, hands it to two 3D printing firms

That is quite a financial impulse

If they invested 1.5 B $ since 2010 and just this year kick another 1.4 B $ into the technology it shows that it is becoming more mature and is expected to replace quite a part of the current methods.

Metal parts that are more durable and probably more reliable than those produced with previous methods. Maybe even take less energy to produce, don't require as much floor space, are less prone to injure employees, take less material and are thus lighter. Hmm,.. sounds to me there is a definite change this actually is replacing technology after all.

A smith banging a piece of iron can produce a sword in a few weeks, a printer may be able to make a Damasked sword of superior quality in a day or so once the technology is developed. And tomorrow it prints super light horseshoes and a bike frame, single piece gyroscopes or whatever is your fancy.

It only takes other data to change your production and you don't have to wait until you have made new moulds or shapes and replaced all those old often quite heavy ones with the new heavy tools. And if you really need it, you can probably scale up the printer as to at some point print the whole friggin tank close to the battlefield, using engineers that can repair printers and computers rather than highly skilled and experienced metallurgist. And the machines don't tire, nor probably do they wear down as fast as the ones currently used.

Much hyped, yes. But certainly at a point in its evolution where it is starting to be actually economic to replace certain parts of production in the coming 5 years. And an industry that many feel they can't be left out in the IP department. It clearly is now at a stage that the research into other materials than plastics, concrete and chocolate is starting to pay off. And there is very little limit to the materials you might be able to print once the scale down is met. Who knows, maybe even to molecular level once compute power is sufficient.

Sex is bad for older men, and even worse when it's good

Re: Next Weeks Headline

Not in absolute time, but certainly the time saved by not crashing PC's should enable them to spend their time more efficiently, thus saving a lot of time otherwise spent OT. They certainly experience lower stress levels, unless forced to do maintenance as well on a Windows or MacOS machine park. Nothing as frustrating as having to help those sods in full knowledge how much easier your life could be.

Japan's Brexit warning casts shadow over Softbank ARM promises

Diplomatic goodbye

The mere fact that the letter is given at the G20 means that many of the companies that signed up to it already are preparing their own Brexit. I doubt that any of them are going to sit and wait for the current govt to make up their minds. If they had downplayed the migration issue being the culprit for Brexit they might have had more leeway in negotiations, but as May has made that a main issue in negotiations joining the EEA has become a major problem.

Dropping into the WTO agreements from the current position is something any manufacturer will want to avoid. Financial services will also think twice if London is all that pleasant without passporting and standard WTO rules. Leaving the EU can take as long as 6 to 20 years and then you still don't know what the new situation will be. Business hates uncertainty and many will take seek certainty abroad and take the write-off as a tax rebate. The local mothball industry will probably flourish for the upcoming few years though.

It is pretty horrid to see the disaster unfold in slow motion. Where's a whiskey icon when you need one..

When Irish eyes are filing: Ireland to appeal Europe's $15bn Apple tax claw-back

Re: EU power grab?

Yup, further federalisation is more feasible without the pesky Brits that would stall any progress in the matter. Which would also solve the Euro problems that basically derive from the fact there is not a unified taxation. More power to the Brussels bureaucrats to fight the nationalist populist movements and geriatric fear tinkers that are stifling progress and humanism all over the continent. A unified Europe ruled by technocrats that base their rule on the declaration of the rights of man. With a parliament that actually can create legislation.

Joy...

Okay,.. not bloody likely, but one can dream ;-)

Is it time to unplug frail OpenOffice's life support? Apache Project asked to mull it over

Once upon a time...

I started using Open Office instead of MSWord. Lo and behold, one could create a 100 page document larded with illustrations without it crashing every 2 minutes, corrupting the whole document on crash safe..

I showed it to my colleagues and managed to convince them to use it. Within a week the whole department was producing more science than ever before. It saved quite a bit in license fees as well, so even the accountant was happy.

Later it became clear that the document format hadn't changed and made older docs unreadable so we never experienced the frantic rewrites and conversions other departments experienced. We preached our gospel and even the ardent unbeliever could not deny our obvious advantage. Scientific proof was rendered. The gospel spread.

Never looked back at the crappy world of windows and its many plagues. Great thanks to the unsung hero's of OOo, but I admit being one of the first to ditch it for LO as they had all those nifty new functions in it like SVG support and a more progressive community. And we shared a hatred of Oracle and its ilk, the beast and its minions. That certainly added to the scales.

Granted, there are more crash points available, but that is mainly in imported cruft from MS formats that are probably designed to that purpose. Native format use is rock steady and has never made me experience a crash ever. Oh,. And it creates an ISO standard that is actually generated by the application, unlike MSO. So much nicer for your archives if you can read them 20 years on.

And the docs lived happily ever after...

Crashing PC sales don't stop HP Inc releasing two new ones

Just add some flowers..

I guess they finally gave thought to what to do with the thing after it breaks down. Pity the max specs don't go that far past my now 6 year old workstation apart from the CPU. Would be nice if they added a monitor that follows the same design with a curve in it. Something that might fit on top of the cookie jar or stand alone. Add a nice warped keyboard to it and then it would become a whole new experience. Something that might fit the design bureau and replace those squarish Mac at last.

Alas,.. it comes with another X. And not the one I'd like.

Labour's Jeremy Corbyn wants high speed broadband for all. Wow, original idea there

Just nationalise BT again,.. see it's easy ;-)

If I'm not mistaken that is how this whole thing fits into JC's world view. Utilities, communication, public transport should be state owned monopolies that can be guided into spreading cost across all for the benefit of the weaker in our society. Without the pressure of the market and pesky EU bureaucrats to thwart your socialist ideals you really have the chance to turn the UK into the socialist paradise it should be. Add a bit of economic turmoil wrought by the Tories and the ensuing Tory infighting an animosity and you have the recipe for electoral success when the Brexit voters find out that instead of minute Britain, they are to get more free trade deals, holidays to Blackpool instead of Terrormolinos, have had to revert to porridge oats for similar reasons and not in the mood to reward either UKIP or the Tories for their role in the whole event rather than seeking the fault by them selves. Screw the British Empire, let's try the workers revolution as a somewhat more modern form of showing discontent.

Well,.. he can dream can't he...

A USB stick as a file server? We've done it!

Stick + Battery Loader

So if you plug it into an external battery pack you can probably get a few more hours with this product? Hmm,..

WikiLeaks uploads 300+ pieces of malware among email dumps

Ah, that's how the leak started!

Should be interesting to figure out where and what party was responsible.

"Okay! Who clicked the boobs bait?"

Microsoft promises free terrible coffee every month you use Edge

Edge on Mobile?

Huh?

Google's brand new OS could replace Android

Re: Open Sourced or Binary Blob?

No Linux kernel is fine,.. Android isn't.

Re: Open Sourced or Binary Blob?

Should be enough to feed video streams. Use composite video grids as well, rendering part of the screen rather than the whole thing per device.

Open Sourced or Binary Blob?

Can't get much info on it being in China, but I wonder how much of it will be proprietary. Running on both ARM and x86 architecture makes it an interesting product. Let's hope it can handle a bit more processing than the current Android crippleware. Would be interesting to see if it can build a little grid and share computing power over a network. Need more power to play VR games? Add another CPU unit. Would do wonders for sales levels of smartphones and low flops units.

Vivaldi's tweaky grinders fire out another release: Add themes, security

Where's the email client... Oh well,.. stick to Opera 12 then.

Windows 10 Anniversary Update is borking boxen everywhere

Re: Schrödinger's Laptop

No sillies,.. you have to put the computer in a cardboard box and as long as you don't open the box and take a peek, you don know whether it is still working or not. As soon as you take a peek (i.e. turn it on and wait for boot) you know for sure it is bricked. Until that moment you may have an inkling of hope MS Marketing has calculated the correct outcome although any independent scientific research has already proven beyond reasonable doubt that their methods suck.

Email proves UK boffins axed from EU research in Brexit aftermath

Yes,.. pay your own bills!

Now in the aftermath of Brexit it becomes clear that project fear was if anything a highly optimistic view of what would be happening, I see some deluded comments about stopping payments to the EU and paying your own bills.

Yes,.. indeed. For instance for the amount of bureaucratic nonsense that had been delegated to the EU, which enable the UK to shrink its home bred bureaucrats down to pre war levels (not including the empire residents). Those that are remaining can now reluctantly start rewriting some 12K+ laws that used to be arranged as EU rules. There will be a great demand for new civil servants the upcoming years. I guess the 350 million a week will pale in comparison with the cost of increasing their numbers. Budget neutrality will be a dream from the past.

It can negotiate new trade agreements with it's current 12 trade experts (EU having 600 for comparison) and those are highly paid technical expert comparable to nuclear scientist who are going to have the ultimate shit job for years prying apart nucleus with their bare hands. Maybe a lordship as a bonus? Tax free for eternity? Okay,.. not enough eh? How about prima nocta!

That EU institutes are not going to compete for funds with a member that is about to leave and thus will not be eligible any more for those funds is an obvious thing. And this is just the scientific world we're talking about. The whole chain of demand and supply has been disrupted.

Parts of the UK voted to cut off the legs they were standing on for mainly petty reasons that were hardly related to the EU, but more a reflection of their own unwillingness to do the shitty jobs of weeding herbs and moving muck anywhere but their own little gardens.

And you can blame your entire political class (left and right) for not being able to point out the obvious benefits of the EU and what made those extra payments more than balance for the reduction of bureaucrats needed in the UK itself. The only good thing coming from the Brexit will be for the rest of Europe where the voices for leaving based on populist delusions are now silenced by the example the UK makes. Oh,.. so that's what they meant with the leave result being not so positive?

So yeah,.. maybe it is time to start campaigning for a "We're sadder and wiser now so let's stay after all" and hang Murdoch and his cronies by the bollocks. The referendum is legally non binding so there is some hope still to have an on second thought event happening. The pound being sub par with the Euro and Greece looking healthy in comparison might even make that a bit more palatable as well.

And if not, you can always sell the whole of Britain to the Chinese that will turn it into some f*ked up holiday park and will teach you how to skip ahead in the line at every occasion. They have plenty of experience in investing large sums in third world countries and ensuing looting the place, so why not the UK.

Don't want to vote for Clinton or Trump? How about this woman who says Wi-Fi melts kids' brains?

Would you really want to take the chance?

Of Trump being president?

Whatever your political affiliations are, I would think that having HC for president as the best chance of preventing an absolute turd for brain lunatic like Trump would be the best of the bad options. And no, I don like her that much either, but she seems largely rational even if technically challenged. Johnson+Weld,.. Stein,.. well,.. to be honest there is something really wrong with the US that of all the politicians it is impossible to find some better qualified presidential candidates than the whole lot of em. I guess if anyone needed to find proof against the notion of intelligent design, you'd only have to take a look at the deplorable state of what is happening there. Or would it be a ploy of (supreme uber being of choice) to enact Armageddon, wipe the slate and try again with something more social like small insects?

If I weren't so afraid of lots of nukes at the whim of the next president, I would be having a great time looking at the circus of the US election. But it is just too bloody serious to really enjoy. Do they add acid to the water or have they all been sniffing too much glue? Maybe there is something about radio signals being bad for your brain after all. Damn! Stein may be on to something!

Seagate's south UK factory hasn't a future but HDDs do (it hopes)

Redundancies

For sure the added cost of producing anything in the UK and then exporting it to a world market can't have been beneficial for keeping the factory open. I think your peasants have made a cunning move voting for a Brexit as food imports will be too dear for the majority. Though without the nifty subsidies that were splashed around the whole EU including the UK, food production may becoming a bit more expensive as well. What seems to have been lost in the discussion is the fact that the EU first and foremost is a trade organisation. Not only setting standards on banana's and the amount of fish to catch but basically anything you've grown accustomed to the past 50 years. It for sure will have a beneficial effect on immigration levels though if the UK becomes less attractive with unemployment levels equal to Spain. So,.. hooray... it works!

I wonder though in how far the delay tactics being implemented by your elected representatives is a ploy to convince those people that voted for a leave it may not have been the greatest thing for the UK to happen after all. With that becoming more obvious with the slew of price hikes, having a new referendum may be an option after all. Not that I see it make the UK regain much of what it will have lost in the mean time, but it might become a net beneficiary for a while to patch it up a bit.

Let's just hope that the housing market that so many have spend their fortunes on doesn't completely collapse now the Chinese are avoiding the market. For the coming 5 years or so, the alleged negligible effects of the standing result will fester on whatever happens next. At least your political elite can't blame Brussels for all that's not well any more. Every cloud has a silver lining,.. right?

For the delusional idea that factory work will return to the UK to meet local demand,.. you do realise that you have to shed about 70% of your current living standards to make that happen, do you? To get to par with Vietnam and Pakistan? I certainly hope it will not be that grim. However, if a loon like Trump gets the vote of the gun toting zealot barbarians on the other side of the pond, we may well expect such things to happen. There is no limit to the stupidity of man, so who knows.

An anniversary to remember: The world's only air-to-air nuke was fired on 19 July, 1957

Re: Threads

Thanks for mentioning it, never heard of it before. I downloaded a copy and it is a great way to explain what the fears were in the early 80's. I must say though that this is still a fairly optimistic picture considering that there actually are people and some form of governing bodies 13 years after the event. No fertiliser, but still some bullets left may show priorities, but you think something crude and cost efficient would be more standard in a society with plenty of scrap metal. The daftness of any plans for the aftermath is nicely pointed out though. I once saw one and was pretty appalled by the madness of assumptions. Duck and cover...

There's still plenty of the stuff around to destroy the world several times, but we just aren't that aware of it any more. Wonder how long it's going to last sometimes.

Africa's MeerKAT looks at the sky, surprises boffins with 1,300 galaxies

Photons? Dark Energy?

I thought struck me when reading the comment about all the photons on trajectory. If a region with 70 galaxies turns out to have 1200 extra and all this energy is on it's way, how much energy have we been missing here? And as a result how much mass?

Coup-Tube: Turkey blocks social networks amid military takeover

Not good for Turkey nor the rest of the world

It is curious to see that the first reaction of the Erdogan regime was to sack the judges. Oh,.. and declare war on the US sort of, but I guess you've missed that part. In all it seems this will lead to a clean-up of Turkeys society with Erdogan and his ilk getting rid of all perceived opposition. The people involved in this attempt must have been pretty desperate already to try this, now their fears will be complete. The nation build by Ataturk has died yesterday, basically by suicide.

I wonder in how far this was a cunning plot to get rid of the remaining opposition really.

Smartphones aren't tiny PCs, but that's how we use them in the West

Forward or backward?

Using QR codes here in China is a good alternative for bankcards. Everyone has a phone, including the shopkeepers, so that has a high acceptance. It can also be used for transactions from person to person, by scanning their QR code, checking the amount and agreeing. In an economy that used to rely/ is relying on cash in large amounts, the acceptance of these payments systems is quite a breakthrough.

Considering that some years ago there was a report on finding 800 million RMB of graft in 100 bills stored in a villa cash here has a definite function. The fact that any payment system took off comes a bit as a surprise. But you can pay the taxi driver and restaurant with it, it can be easily incorporated with the winXP run system and everybody is happy for not having to run around with cash. The security around it certainly beats credit cards and transactions can be done with little hassle.

Add to this the fact that you can use the QR code to bypass the trouble of having to browse through a lot of options how to write a word in one of the 43.000 characters, having to remember nicely mnenonic web site addresses like SXQ143.cn or something similar and the success of the QR code here becomes a lot clearer. Easy access and ease of transaction are the keys here.

Bomb-disposal robot violently disposes of Dallas cop-killer gunman

Additional options

Obviously the only thing they thought about was to incapacitate the shooter with the safest means they had. But would it really be too much to ask for other means than lethal force? Something like a large air bag would probably do the trick of knocking someone out. Could still be lethal, but at least there is some chance of getting the person to court and sentenced like a civilised nation would prefer.

Oh right,.. and then you get to kill them anyway as you happen to have death penalties yonder, so why bother the whole due process. I feel sad for the officers that got gunned down by this madman, but one can ask oneself what purpose do assault rifles have in your society. Fight the man? Without discrimination? Blow some hapless wanderer from your porch?

Do you have any idea how insane the whole concept is to someone who regards guns to be in the sole possession of wannabe criminals? Guys with guns,... homicidal maniacs and shoot out victims in the bud. If you see one, stay well clear and distrust their motives whatever their dress code. For some that means to be better safe than sorry. All lives matter you fools.

New DNA 'hard drive' could keep files intact for millions of years

What do you mean? You were out of sugar?

Hmm,.. seems a great way to add some petabytes to your coffee...

Maybe China's on to something: Clickbait articles now need to be 'verified' by officials

Facts with Chinese Characteristics

I wonder if these stories will need to be based on scientific fact with an independent peer review or just by the ministry of truth. In the latter case you can still ask your uncle Wu how many red envelopes he would like to see.

Linux letting go: 32-bit builds on the way out

Not surprising

No doubt you can still download an old distro that does support your legacy 32bit. But no, no security updates and bug fixes. For the geek crowd that does need a 32bit distro, no doubt there will be the option to just compile your own based on the old stuff. I have an old IBM x41 T, that doesn't get upgraded much. It works as intended and has little exposure. At some point the hardware will fail due to use, probably way before 2023. If so, I will probably bury my favourite pet.

And yes, commercially 32bit x86 is quite dead already. Get over your loss..

China cybersec legislation inches towards law

Re: Government "supervision"

Having first hand experience with it, I can tell you it sucks a lot more when 30% or more of the internet is blocked for no apparent reason, a firewall adds 300 ms latency to every package sent, the lack of exchange routers causes an average 25% package loss at prime time for anything outside of China, your DNS request are being rerouted to DDOS unpopular sites and you get to see places where the sun don't shine when you spread rumours that happen to be firmly rooted in fact, but are embarrassing to someone’s uncle Wu or their relatives. Add to that the fact that everything Google is blocked including Captcha API's and it's many tech fora, you cannot get connected to any APP store outside of China but a few (F-Droid being one of the few, but now I mention it, it may get blocked as well by the one of the 90k people looking over my shoulder).

China is a nice country to live in many aspects but the censorship of a weak government that has a minimum of credibility, in part because of its paranoid reaction to anything unfavourable or even mildly critical, is one of the main reasons why this place will stay behind in its development and knowledge level.

PM resigns as Britain votes to leave EU

Good news for the British workers!

The way the pound sterling is going they can expect to vastly increase their wages as requested. Sad thing is that since they don produce much of anything on the island, they'll all have to live off tourism and have to pay their days wages polishing shoes and dragging some fat ass Kraut around the pristine country side in a rickshaw for a single spud they can share with their lovable offspring.

Hooray for the new Dickens stories that will no doubt spring from the pen of some creative who manages to sell his books. Ehm,.. if they manage to get copyright treaties that is. Will take some decades to negotiate on that I guess. But at least they can expect to have to negotiate only with the EU and the rest of the world including IP friendly entities like China.

Let's see how much of a deterrent the enfolding situation of the UK economy can be made to keep the rest of the pack together. Oh right,.. your local politicians forgot to explain that the EU is a trade pact rather than anything else. I guess that will be made very clear shortly by others.

"Bruderlein, Bruderlein,.. Wass? Willts Du nich mein Bruder sein? Dann släg Ich dir dein Schedel ein!", Was a border crossing song in May 1940. Now for sure other means will be used to get that point across this time, but I am afraid it will hurt just about as much.

I am saddened by the utter lack of competence on the side of the remain camp to create a clear message and the turmoil EU bigots have managed to cause on a world scale. And clearly the hurting won't be over yet as this result will fester on the whole continent for a long time just while the last crisis was more or less contained.

But for sure, this is a great day for China and other emerging markets to find one strong competitor severely weakened and one (still member for the time being) state voting itself into oblivion. With the populist shrinkheads and their limited thoughtframes making a strong case for xenophobic tendencies in Europe, I expect some more turmoil to ensue as well.

But chaps,

" Always look at the bright side of life..."

Three non-obvious reasons to Vote Leave on the 23rd

Ehm,.. Britain had those visa free arrangements with the EU countries, but no doubt those arrangement got superceded by the newer arrangements through the EU. Hence you can expect it to take a while to reinstate those old arrangements.

And on accord of your safe Africa topic, what makes you think that a Brexit would change that? The EU has its protections , largely for local political reasons and I cannot see anything much changing there unless the whole EU implodes. Considering the to be expected economic mayhem that a Brexit is supposed to experience, I would expect if any the rest of the EU to insert more protectionism as one of the bigger players against that has left the building.

But true, there certainly is a positive side to Brexit for the rest of the EU if the obstructionist that would find any excuse to reject further integration are out. That said, it will be a sad day if the UK leaves. You're funny if a bit silly people.

Brexit: More cash for mobile operators or consumers? Pick one

Roaming? Roaming where?

What? You think we're going to ever let you off your island if you opt out? Why would we want those impoverished inbreeds to foul our parks and beaches? Inflate our real estate prices with those geriatrics that toss their fish and chips all over the place? Increase the waiting list of our hospitals because they can't handle a decent spliff and think they're dying? Add marmite to everything edible? No way! Plug the chunnel! Sink the ferries!

You won't need any roaming any more. Tss...

Microsoft won't back down from Windows 10 nagware 'trick'

Class action law suit for all the lost man hours due to unwanted upgrade

Seems to me that having a class action law suit forcing Microsoft to pay for the amount of lost man hours due to this unwanted upgrade should be worth the investment of time and money from some law firm. How many did you say? 10 Million? 50 Million? It takes about a day to download this crap and reinstall the previous version. 3 days to reinstall all the software and get things set up the old way? Nah,.. not everyone uses diskimages. Hmm... 50 Million x 4 days at 500 US$ average per day. That would be about 100 Billion US$.

Oh and double that just in order to not do it again. Ever. Well,.. sorry we couldn't find a jury that wasn't flaming with rage nor any judge that felt like stopping this nonsense for the rest of eternity. We expect you to pay by Tuesday or send in the repo men to take the batteries from your artificial hearts.

Google to kill passwords on Android, replace 'em with 'trust scores'

Great for accident situations!

There you are, finally got your smarter than good for you phone out of your pocket with your non-broken arm and the things doesn't recognise your slur, bloated face and bloodshot eyes. However, you can still play candy crush while bleeding to death,.. hooray!

Watchdog snaps: Privatise the Land Registry? What a terrible idea!

Oh Joy!

Tally-ho chaps, even Belgium starts to look like a well run state in comparison..

After Brexit, could you move the island a bit to the South West? A few hundred miles or so. The whole EU may be a bit of a mess currently, but really.. there are limits.

The PC is dead. Gartner wishes you luck, vendors

As long as you didn't have to stare at a shitty small screen like the mobile has in general I wouldn't care about the PC. However, as long as no-one creates a set of modular machines that I can grid for extra processing power when I need it to drive some compute intensive task, gives me the option to use a decent keyboard and screen, I don see my DIM machine leave my desktop any time soon. In fact it direly needs an upgrade on many levels except for the software. Linux certainly covers all my needs and to my experience does a far better job at it these days than any commercial OS I ever used. The case for Open Source and Open Standards is pretty much set for me.

If any manufacturer would ever start building hardware that you can easily extend and upgrade without the hassle of having to pull out wires and unscrew things while at the same time keeping the old stuff useful for cannibals like me, they'd have a winner in at least the self builder market. It would also allow an easier entry for the IoT if all those gadgets could do a tad more than just make coffee, but would add something more to the mix than just pointing out the thing is empty and needs a refill.

The same bloody thing has happened with the smart phone. A machine more powerful than my old Pentium machines ever where and it is limited to do just a few things, is a bitch to upgrade and if you try and run a more useful OS on it runs out of power rather fast. So it will probably need some docking station for power if you want to grid it, but that could make a rather nice new type of rack mount.

And no, I don believe in cloud computing that I see pretty much as the new thin client model with better connections that will still fail regularly leaving you with a blank screen. Nor is large part of the world ready for anything like it. The mobile drive has shown that people want their compute power close to them and easily portable with some measure of possession of their data. Is it really that hard to get a grip on that concept?

Stop resetting your passwords, says UK govt's spy network

Ehm,.. do windows logins still have the backwards compatibility with NT hashes?

Haven't taken a look at those for quite a while, but it used to be that only the first 7 characters of a Win system password got hashed and the rest was just irrelevant. As the first 7 characters were often car brands, names (wife, child, dog), etc. it used to be fairly simple work to brute force those. Pretty sure it never changed for XP systems and those are still backwards supported by more modern setups.

If so, long passwords seem to be quite irrelevant to me.

Siemens Healthcare struck by rebranding madness

Heal tin s'here?

I guess that's a way to describe your rather expensive kit.

"Where's the heal tin?"

"Heal tin s'here..."

Auto erotic: Self-driving cars will let occupants bonk on the go

Suspension error!!!

I wonder if the designers of these cars will take the rhythmic fluctuations of mass within the car into account. And wouldn't there be at least one who has already got the vision of a bangvan with extensions and a whole slew of adaptable extra's in mind. Auto cleaning gets a whole new meaning...

However, if my surroundings are anything to go by with, it will probably be another type of entertainment system that will be the standard. VR sets with car crashes and stuff like that a la deathrace 2000. Enabling you to virtually drive your car over all the pedestrians and puppies. In a tank,... while slugging through the traffic at a automated pace.

Read America's insane draft crypto-borking law that no one's willing to admit they wrote

Maybe this document got delayed in the mail?

April,.. first?

I wonder if the same people have ideas on changing the postal laws as well. If not it spells good times for the paper industry in the US as all communication has to revert back to mail for any level of security. Hmm,.. how about using clay? Durable and fireproof.

Would the law also apply to software created prior to the law? If not the US will just be stagnant from the time it passes, but if so, how are they going to make companies comply? They have all moved to Iceland for some reason. Nuke em? Maybe with Trump or Cruz in power a lot more of these bipartisan products will pass legislation. Certainly explains why nothing much happens on the hill if this is any indication of the current level of legislators in the States. Those poor sods...