Posts by Fraggle850 495 publicly visible posts • joined 25 Jul 2015
NFC - very short range but RFID is a similar technology with a longer range, however the chips/tags are passive so I suspect no need for certification? The active readers on the other hand are, I'd guess, fully certified.
The article does indeed show that contestable monopolies aren't a problem in the longer term (although the short term effect in this case does seem to have been the loss of German jobs to China, obviously a problem if you work for Siemens). Presumably an uncontestable monopoly would be a problem?
From the Paythru quote: 'Oscar AP’s approach to analytics would allow us to target our customers better and quicker'
Note use of the word 'would' - so this hasn't actually been deployed in the wild yet? Also, the Paythru mouthpiece states that they are development partners with Massive Analytics so presumably have a vested interest in garnering support for the tech in order to get it finished.
I'm with all the commentards who point out the limitations of real world data. I suspect that the machine-inference success rate will not be high enough to be a practical precog system for anything other than improved marketing in some subset of cases where the data is particularly good.
It's a marketing hype piece. Not to say it won't happen, just that the paranoia scare piece that forms the major slant of this article is wrong (for the moment at least)
I can vouch for Maverick, been using it for a few years on Android. I'm an occasional hiker, recently wanted to find a walk near where I was planning to camp. Downloaded a kml file from a walker's website - hey presto, instant track overlayed on OS.
Any viewed tiles are stored so a quick review of the area while still on wifi and maps are available offline once you are in the wilds.
Quite why the likes of National Trust can't provide their official hikes as kml is beyond me. Local Authorities even worse, pdf anyone? Grr!
Hmm...
>Me too. Thankfully that part is no longer my income :)
Ditto
> each university school publish the average salary of its graduates in the first 5 years after graduation
Yes, by course/subject too
> society lies to them all the way through school, and media & branding sell them a vision of a lifestyle they'll never have
Couldn't agree more, and learning to cope with failure is indeed a valuable life lesson but these images are promoted to impressionable minds by capitalism and reinforced by parents and other children. You can get bullied for not having Nikes (or whatever symbol of consumer triumph is du jour) How bad do you think the targeting of minors would be if there were no legislation? Junior cigarettes anyone? Untrammelled capitalism would be a nightmare. Evidence that the markets do need some social control.
> Equality of what though?
Opportunity, obviously and a reasonable safety net for those who get mangled trying to win but fail badly. Preferably with a dignified, opt-out alt lifestyle choice for those who choose not to compete.
Can't fault you trying to do the best for your kids but I'd ban inherited wealth/property full stop. Use it while you're alive or lose it. If you've brought your kids up well they'll be fine without it.
Robocop was indeed cooler but Star Trek was idealistic. And Kirk & Co usually found the peaceful solution.
Gaargh! Stop appealing to my logical side!
'Ultimately, we'll have to restrict population growth to ensure that we limit how many people fall into such category. That can be done by a variety of means such as taxing the production of children rather than incentivising it with welfare. That sounds awful to say, but being realistic we can't have an unending increase in the supply of economically useless people'
That makes unpalatable, logical sense and does chime in with my own thoughts, certainly 'if you can't pay for 'em, don't have 'em'. I'm trying to be empathetic and not give in to my baser 'I'm alright jack' instincts. There is a part of me that will always be working class and idealistic.
Having previously worked in education and seen just how grim things can be I also have to agree with you on that point. I actually thought that a lot (not all) of what Gove said made sense. I also think that there are way too many useless degrees offering false hope and debt. But don't demonise the youths, you may not understand them but they aren't all bad.
Anyway, the idealist me still likes to think that we could all share in the spoils of the new, bright future, and that such enlightenment could lead the whole of humanity to a better place (including a natural reversal of population growth). Despite my darker, more logical thinking I'll probably always come down on the side of equality and inclusion for all. Raw, naked capitalism is a harsh and greedy thing. Meritocracy? Yes, if nepotism and class isolationism are meritricious.
Choose your future society: Robocop or Star Trek
I largely agree with what you say in respect of unions and their destructive, ideologically driven agendas not being in their members best interests, indeed I've commented on that more than once on el reg (think I've even referred to it later in this thread in response to some red-tinted-glasses trotskyite apologist).
In its earliest days socialism and the labour movement did have an international vision, 'the internationale' was their anthem from the late 19th century.
I don't doubt that there may be a tendency toward future roles being professional ones but the idea that such groups don't have collective bargaining representation is ridiculous: ever heard of the BMA? The Institute of Directors? The CBI? I myself am a member of my local chamber of commerce.
Assuming that future roles are increasingly professional and that bulk roles for workers will disappear over time with increasing automation, where does that leave those who don't fit the new roles? Are we to have an ever expanding underclass doomed to a life on ever decreasing benefits?
Orwell was left wing yet saw the true nature of socialist revolution in Animal Farm. One only has to look at the shocking treatment of the Ukrainian anarchists by the red army during the revolution to see that the flaws in the socialist revolution were in place from the off.
Socialist dogma prevented the unions from truly working in the best interests of the working man in the UK and ultimately led to unopposed Thatcherism and weak-ass new labour.
Perhaps we need a globalised voice for the have nots? A new internationalism in the global labour movement with a focus on getting the best for all workers, one that doesn't place ideology over pragmatism nor parochial concerns over global ones?
Nothing to do with nostalgia, merely a sensible question as to what has changed since the 80's to promote increases in inequality. The extremist ideologies held by much of the left in the 70's prevented them from being an effective force for the workers and led to infighting and their eventual downfall but that doesn't mean that the idea of collective bargaining and coherent representation of the will of those at the bottom of the economic heap is discredited, it is merely held in abeyance.
Certainly in the case of the two wars a generation of male workers was significantly reduced in both cases, which presumably had an effect on supply and demand and therefore pay. It's a grim fact but large scale death is often good for workers wages when stability returns, I believe that the black death in 14th century England had a similar effect.
I was impressed with Chrome last week. Don't use it myself but was helping a friend in one of those occasional free tech support moments that we must do from time to time. They'd got a cheap PC off fleabay and hadn't bothered putting AV software on it. I got a 'the computer stutters playing video and tells me I need to update my drivers' call. Sure enough PC full of crapware and other associated nasties. Opening a browser (Firefox or IE) resulted in a screen full of pop-ups and all pages being redirected to shitty scam sites, making the Internet unusable. Chrome (which they also had installed) was similarly afflicted but handled it better to the point where I was able to get onto Eset's online AV tool to continue the process of cleaning up the mess.I was impressed.
Fellow commentards: please don't feel the need to tell me how I should have approached the problem, I'm aware that there are likely other ways to approach this but it's not something I do very often, just a freebie for a friend.
In the mid noughties I worked for a small technology company and shared an office with the office manager. One of her tasks was sorting travel arrangements to various, often rural locations in Ireland amongst other places. A single web designer with a fetish for mid-90's Web design must have gained a lot of independent Irish hotel contracts because there were frequent instances of sudden music emanating from her PC whenever she was looking for hotels in Ireland (only Ireland - nowhere else). Annoying at first but it did become a bit of a joke after a while.
Web designers may largely avoid such annoyances but advertisers feel you need to be assaulted by their nonsense no matter what. Given that many websites may not have full control over exactly which commercial content is served on their sites then I suspect this to be the source of much of this crap.
Here's hoping it gives a good account of itself and shows the F35 how things should be done. Be sad to see it go, such a unique and legendary combination of firepower and robustness.
Shame it's a done deal no matter what the outcome. As notowenwilson says let's hope the choppers are up to the job 'cause I doubt that the F35 will be.
Cheers for the insight. I assume there was something that made you decide to divest your bitcoin holdings?
I'm tending towards the 'pyramid scam' and/or 'ultimately doomed due to scaling issues' point of view so can't see a reason to get into it. Assuming the blockchain is duplicated in each online wallet and assuming it hits 1TB at some point then an online repository with 1000 users would require 1PB storage.
I also wonder if the '~10 minutes for a transaction to process' figure that I've seen will grow over time too?
It apparently currently stands at around 45GB and does appear to be exponential:
https://blockchain.info/charts/blocks-size?timespan=all&showDataPoints=false&daysAverageString=1&show_header=true&scale=0&address=
And it seems that there are currently 2/3 of all possible bitcoins in circulation: ~14 million out of an upper limit of ~21 million. This looks fairly linear:
https://blockchain.info/charts/total-bitcoins?timespan=all&showDataPoints=false&daysAverageString=1&show_header=true&scale=0&address=
The user numbers have also shown what looks like exponential growth too:
https://blockchain.info/charts/my-wallet-n-users?timespan=all&showDataPoints=false&daysAverageString=1&show_header=true&scale=0&address=
I know bugger all about this stuff; do all users have to have the total blockchain? Is it frequently stored locally? Are all the wallets in the cloud? Is the blockchain duplicated in each user's wallet?
Not something I've paid much attention to but curious
The space required for the blockchain will grow to the point of unwieldyness if you assume that the use of the currency becomes increasingly widespread.
E.G. Year 2025: bitcoin blockchain requires 1TB, I know storage costs shrink and pipes get fatter but I'd assume that the blockchain growth is exponential based on increasing numbers of users/miners/transactions
That might be an interesting analysis to do...
IE to prevent foreign tech disruptors from '...spoil(ing) the city and make(ing) rents unaffordable for locals...'
It is exactly this kind of market regulation that government should be at least trying to implement. They have to balance economic and social considerations. If the people of Barcelona have voted for this administration then one has to assume that the mayor is implementing this in accordance with the will of the majority. Given that locals have been protesting about unruly tourists destroying the character of parts of the city then I suspect this to be true.
You can argue all you like about undue influence from, say, hoteliers and whinge about government getting in the way of free markets but it doesn't alter the facts. Just because the American system (and the US-inspired British system to a lesser extent) doesn't care about destroying the character of their cities through 'gentrification' of traditionally working class neighbourhoods doesn't mean that the rest of the world has to do likewise (in support of this I'd refer you to the recent San Francisco protests against tech co employees taking over the best parts of that city to the detriment of the existing population).
'SMIDSY is a consequence of the driver not looking and the rider not allowing them space & time to make a mistake'
As someone who has experience of both four and two wheeled transport (motorised and self-powered) I have to say that 'mistake' is often incorrect when applied to bicycles. I've had drivers make eye contact with me as I've approached a junction and still pull out on me when on a pushbike, this was around 20 years ago (last time I used a bicycle as a means of transport). I can only imagine that things have got worse since. We seem to be increasingly living in a culture of self-absorbed kidults where it's more important to keep up with your Twitter feed than pay attention to the road around you when driving.
To be fair we also pay rather a lot in fuel tax too. Around 80p/litre and raising well north of 25 billion from a cursory Google. There is likely a significant amount of productivity associated with some of the vehicles moving on the roads network too, which shouldn't be underestimated in terms of contribution to the economy.
Central government does also disperse funds to councils for local road building and maintenance.
I don't think you should be in first with the clutch down while waiting. You should only engage first when you are going to move away. And you should never use the clutch or footbrake to hold a car in a stationary position. If you are stationary you should be in neutral with the handbrake on.
...if riding in city traffic. What happens if you have to do an emergency stop? Do you just fall over?
Fixed wheels? Whatever floats your boat but having your feet firmly fixed to the pedals? Wrong on city roads. You have to take some responsibility for your own safety.
I know what you are saying but the article specifically stated that when payment was missed an (presumably automated) email was sent to all group members.
With regards to not many people missing payments, if you automate the sign up process and have a large enough number of accounts I'd guess that missed payment fails would occur. I do admit that the likelihood of return is small and probably not worth it but there may be folks out there who'd do it for the lulz.
As alluded to in the article:
1. Set up sock puppets on numerous accounts
2. Wait for a payment default email
3. Gain control of said group by paying £15
4a. Harvest any subscription payments
4b. Hold group to ransom
The whole thing would be fairly automatable and likely to be beyond the reach of law enforcement if based in a lax jurisdiction.
It is a form of cybersquatting, you'd think they'd have better systems in place.
When something is this badly f***ed it can only be Chuck Norris. JMcA would be better suited to helping with an exit strategy for the ALM execs, get them dressed up as Guatemalan street sellers or drunk German tourists so they can relocate to the jungles of Belize.
"If I say that the aliens are talking to me in my head can I have £££?"
If you do actually have alien voices in your head then yes, you can have money (probably even in tory-run GB). You can also have the attention of the NHS and a long-term course of heavy meds for paranoid schizophrenia.
Evidence suggests that electro-sensitive types are likely suffering from a psychiatric condition and psychiatric conditions can be debilitating. As long as the French aren't saying that the condition is anything other than psychological then I fail to see the problem with giving some form of support. The danger is that plonkers will use this as justification that the condition is physical rather than mental, which the alternative translation provided by Richard 26 further down the comments suggests might be the case here.
Given that an insurance black box was recently hacked on a Corvette by text message I see no reason to believe that this technology won't prove to have similar vulnerabilities in future. In the case of the Corvette I gather that attackers were able to apply the brakes and even disable them altogether at low speed.
I can see no reason to install a new attack vector on a previously immune older vehicle.
Interesting article. I see that it claims that Google use English as an intermediate language in cases where no direct translations exist between source and target. It would be interesting to see how Google's approach compares to a traditional NLP parsed approach in terms of accuracy.
Nothing contentious in stating that:
a) Natural Language Processing is a hard problem and translating from one to another gives compound difficulty
b) Lazy design choices may lead to ridicule
Mind you, if the AIs do take over and they don't have good NLP then they'll make human grammar nazis look like liberals. Sarcasm will be the first casualty, followed by slang, metaphors and similies and we'll all start talking very slowly and very clearly, just in case the pervasive AI spy systems take something out of context and send a T1000 to purge the deviant meatbag who said it.
A reasonable point, perhaps bouncing it down the results to the third or fourth page would be better?
I suspect removing the original information is going to be much more like whack-a-mole than just getting the search engines to stop linking to it; anything juicy will tend to propagate across multiple blogs/sites.
@ corestore: Such things never boil down to simplistic, binary choices, despite what politicians might have you believe.
Taking your example of the right to bear arms and classification of weapons: at what point on the scale of possible weaponry do you draw a line and say sorry, not that one? RPGs? Shoulder-mounted SAMs? ICBMs? Suitcase dirty bombs? Weapons-grade anthrax? I'm not having a go at the fact that you can arm yourself, just highlighting the fact that there are grey areas.
Europe has enacted a right to privacy and I can see the merit of that in some cases as well as the possibility of abuse in others. The trick is in getting the balance right; I'm realisitc and don't suppose that they necessarily will but even so I think it is important to try.
The historic articles will not be removed, they just won't feature in search results. I fail to see the harm, it's not censorship - you can still go to the original documents.
The wider issue is not just about individuals with spent convictions, if I remember correctly an early European case that led to this was a Spanish campsite owner who's business was being adversely affected by search engines giving top ranking results referencing a horrific accident from the '70s when people searched for his campsite. The accident was nothing to do with him or his business.
@ Graham Jordan
I assumed 'eating a peach' was some form of euphemism and was going to follow the link to enrage myself with righteous, prurient anger at the thought of some celebutard doing something pleasurable - thanks for saving me the trouble, guess I'll have to while away my afternoon reading the Daily Mail website and frothing at the mouth over immigrants and house prices...
I don't suppose this is linked to El Reg's 9th May story: 'Spotify springs bloody leak as losses grow to $197m – report'?
They wouldn't be embarking on such a massive data grab merely to explore new ways to deliver users to the marketing industry, would they?
Not on Spotify nor on Facebook so watching from the sidelines with a smug grin.
Yes, but once the neurochemical pathways are opened to nicotine you do actually enjoy it. My understanding (and forgive me if this is wrong or out of date) is that nicotine is so addictive because of the unique way in which it stimulates multiple (three, I think?) pleasure receptors in the brain. There may be no buzz or intoxication with this particular drug but having those pleasure centres excited does give the brain a feeling of happiness, that's why quitting is such a miserable process. The actual act of smoking and the specific way that the drug is delivered become associated with this feeling of happiness, which is why I suspect vaping works so much better than any other form of NRT.
We all have differing susceptibility to addiction due to variations in our most complex of organs, some are going to get addicted more quickly and much harder than others.
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