Posts by Nimby

Drive-thru drive-by at McDs after ice cream no-show, say cops

Re: Flaunting a replica assault weapon in the US?

The AR-15 is the "civilian" cousin to the military-grade M-16, and as such is only a semi-auto. Loved by cops, security, and hunters of the ever elusive super-deer everywhere for being bad-asterisk, dependable, and perfectly legal. The specs are open, so it's manufactured by pretty much everyone, and therefore has tons of aftermarket customization and repair parts available.

If one was pointed at me, I'd be relieved. Compared to all of the pieces of crap out there that couldn't hit a clown's bulbous red nose from an inch away, something that shoots straight is way less dangerous. Collateral damage is unlikely, and it's lousy to conceal. Plenty of time to assess the situation, warn your coworkers, duck, and call the cops. So I don't mind that one being on the streets at all. Could be much worse.

But still, (alleged) ice cream is not going to make itself if the machine is broken. And shooting the messenger is only cathartic, not constructive. Especially if he's responsible for the maintenance of the machine. If we can't learn to get along, we should at least learn to think ahead. Five weeks of government-sponsored retraining for you!

The future of Python: Concurrency devoured, Node.js next on menu

Not getting it. Maybe in 4...

I've been a software engineer for a long time. Maybe too long. Python is still one of my favorite languages. But favorite and most usable are two different things. Async and threading are two different things. Multi-threading and multi-processing are two different things. Backward compatibility and future-proofing are two different things. Linux and Windows (Python community is **** at testing on Windows, especially with MS compilers) are two different things. Server-side and GUI application are two different things.

And on and on. Python's problem is that ever since it split between 2 and 3 it is no longer about "all of the above". You no longer get everything but the kitchen sink AND the kitchen sink. Python is no longer a language where you can have your cake and eat it too. Python has become about choosing what you need and balancing the flaws of that choice against the benefits. And when you have to start doing that, it becomes easy to look at other languages that, frankly, run faster.

And the reasons are awful! The vast majority of the many divides in Python today are not even there for good technical reasons, but just bad attitude. It's that bad attitude that is damaging Python. There is no only one right way. There are many ways. There always have been. Python needs to go back to that. Together it stands. Divided...

Taken a while but finally here's the first proper smart-home gizmo

To sum up...

Using only the words from this piece of trash we can sum up nicely as:

Setting aside the issue of whether you actually need or want a smart app-controlled lightbulb, here's a light bulb from Ikea. It is still some way from perfect. As well as stunningly poor security, it still requires a special Ikea Trådfri hub. Z-Wave products and SOME Apple HomeKit functions are still not going to work with it. No one is going to want to have to buy new networking equipment, on top of a firmware update, just to install some lightbulbs. None have yet to become a proper consumer device that you can set up and rely on to simply work with whatever system you already have.

NASA delivers CREAM-y load to ISS to improve cosmic ray detection

Isn't it ironic, don't you think?

Love NASA ... but I'm getting sick of all of their stupid and senseless acronyms.

HP Inc vows: We're not walking away from Continuum

Continuum?

Continuum doesn't even make sense. What is the point of a PC that cannot run PC applications? Without x86 it's just ... Windows RT. Meh. So even if you made Continuum the absolute best that it could be, you're still just wasting time polishing a turd. Microsoft would be right to drop it. They were stupid to ever start it! Anyone committed to Continuum should be "committed".

Vodafone customers moan about sluggish data abroad

4G is EDGE, right?

As a Vodafone customer in Deutschland, in the last month my formerly reliable phone data is presently barely limping along, when it works at all. Some days it won't even do data, just voice. Other days it only connects at 2G/EDGE for data. I haven't seen a proper 3G connection in weeks. 4G data rates? As if! Whatever Vodafone is up to, they have sorely broken things recently. You know things are bad when you're resorting to picking up a prepaid SIM from a competitor for better service. I am wondering at what point crap service constitutes a breach of contract to get out of one.

Are Asimov's laws enough to stop AI stomping humanity?

Intelligent is as intelligent does.

Right now we call a highly complex program AI even though it can't "think" for itself. It isn't even aware of the concept of self. Then we basically repeat the same thing, but "train" it over "sample data" and watch it go from what we wanted into a hate-spewing bigot because real humans make for lousy examples of acceptable behavior. (Funny that!)

And that isn't even remotely approaching real "intelligence".

One of those little foibles of "intelligence" is the capacity to decide for yourself. We have the same chance of making a dog obey "sit" as we do making a real AI obey "please don't kill me!" If it does, it is by its choice, not ours. That's what intelligence is.

If we're so scared of AI, then investing in EMP and anti-electronics weaponry will go a heck of a lot further than the time wasted working on robotic "ethics" and "laws". The road to hell is paved with good intentions. I aim to misbehave.

US prosecutors demand data to unmask every visitor to anti-Trump protest website

You can have our IP Addresses when you pry them from our cold dead servers.

It's a shame that there are probably at least three Alphabet Soup agencies that already have the complete list, through (questionably) legal means. Ever since we started giving up our civil liberties for (alleged) protection from terrorists, the government has gotten away with some truly frightening things. Still, I applaud the attempt at taking a stance to actually uphold Constitutional rights, even if it is functionally meaningless.

Re: The morons in the US voted for Trump. What did you expect.

Actually, they didn't. That may be the worst part of the whole mess is that for the POPULAR vote, AKA how PEOPLE actually voted, Hillarious won. But because the USA is such a shining example of democracy, Trumped-Up won the election even though he LOST the vote of the people thanks to the antiquated and highly debatable institution known as the Electoral College. It isn't even the first time that this has ever happened, but definitely this time around has the most dire consequences.

Core-blimey! Intel's Core i9 18-core monster – the numbers

Re: Well, those are threads not physical cores.

"For processors with hyper threading, there are extra registers and execution units in the core so it can store the state of two threads and work on them both."

Are there though? Pretty sure the horrible inefficiency of logical cores I see on most systems (especially craptops) comes down to that NOT being the case. It's just trying to execute two threads in the same compute resource and, frankly, there just ain't enough to go around. It's why in my software I tend to limit execution by physical cores. Logical cores are only good for background processes and services. ;)

(Which, in today's OSes at least, is a useful thing to have. But only helps in that it frees up the junk processes to run in their own hell of ineptitude so that everything else has real compute power to run on.)

Re: Scared again?`

"Is this just to shit on AMD?"

Heh heh. Wouldn't you? Nothing to do with fear. Everything to do with needing a good laugh. A king needs a good court jester to kick every now and then.

These aren't the cores you're looking for...

Intel's i9 is a solution in search of a problem. As a gamer who builds his own boxes, unfortunately, I don't even remotely see how i9 helps gamers.

There are basically two big bottlenecks to gamers today: PCIe lanes (aka more graphics cards and m.2 SSDs please!) and memory bandwidth.

Throwing more cores at the problem is, at best, just making things worse. It lowers the top-end GHz. (To date that still matters a lot. It's why we OC. Duh!) Gamers need the opposite of the i9: less cores on a larger die with a better thermal interface and lower voltages so that they can push the need for speed with a chip that OCs well.

If Intel really wants to help gamers, they need to ditch the more cores = better concept and get back to basics: Faster is better, bandwidth is your bottleneck, and cooling is king. It's a recipe as easy as π.

Can the last person watching desktop video please turn out the light?

Not surprised. No. Not even slightly.

"Ad revenue from TV plug-in boxes has surpassed revenue from videos that play in a desktop or laptop’s web browser."

No Schlitz. Imagine that! Plopping your fat asterisk down on a couch, with a cold beer, in front of a big screen, makes for better TV viewing. And the twenty-buck-stick makes any old TV relevant again. Wow. I am stunned. Stunned! (That anyone would even contemplate being shocked by the obvious.)

"and tune in mostly during the popular, primetime TV hours"

And again, bowled over am I. What, were we supposed to be watching TV at work or something? While driving? Hoard some in the bathroom? Watch in the grocery store while picking up something for dinner maybe? Wake up in the middle of the night? Pretty sure it is was noted as being the prime time for a reason and that was why it was targeted with better programming. Being able to stream whatever, whenever, doesn't make the most optimal time to watch any less the most optimal time to watch. It just makes the content better.

Trump-backed RAISE Act decoded: Points-based immigration, green cards slashed

The Information Technology Industry Council, AKA "Isn't It Ironic".

One of the few things Steve Jobs and Bill Gates could agree on? College is for chumps. Yet look at who is complaining about not having enough "STEM-skilled Americans". The problem is that we've forgotten how we got where we are. Which is also true of our immigration system.

Once upon a time America was the dumping ground of debtor prisons and escapees from oppressive religious or political states. It was a place people could come to Start Over. And we did. We made something of ourselves because we were given the opportunity to make something of ourselves. Not with pieces of paper, but with life and reality.

Now? Bah. Good luck! No matter where you come from, American or looking to immigrate, you're just as SoL. It's a lose-lose economy bought and paid for by businesses, for businesses. Even the wild card Trumped-Up doesn't seem capable of defying it in spite of being an unpredictable Agent of Chaos.

What I don't get is why anyone even wants to live in America anymore.

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

found no evidence to suggest that activity is unfairly and intentionally targeted at women

So what does it take to have an independent third party verify whether the crazy numbers are either from a) predatory targeting of women or b) actually a realistic view of the non-paying segment?

In touching tribute to Samsung Note 7, fidget spinners burst in flames

Divine Intervention

He reached forth His Noodly Appendage, but lo, the Li-Ion was too darn hot, and so He said, "Sh--! Let someone NOT made of cookable pasta save your stupid a__ from cheap toys made in China!" And so it was that God stepped in to save them from their own ignorance instead, by making them late with His mysterious ways. (Because His other superpower, a thunderbolt from the sky, probably wouldn't have helped the situation all that much.) And from somewhere in China could be heard the combined laughter from the Trickster Gods Trading Co. Ltd. product factory chaired by Loki, Coyote, and Monkey.

Or, maybe it was just that a cheap toy made in China had a less-than-perfect battery or charger that would have resulted in a fire at some point, and a family was running late as they pretty much always do, and it was all just a combination of inevitability and pure coincidence.

Who is to say?

European Commission chucks cash at UR – the universal language of mind your own biz

This confirms that there is a clear opening in the market for a browser focused on privacy

No, this confirms that bureaucrats will throw money at anything as long as it has the right buzzwords to make them sound good for supporting. What WILL confirm if there is a clear opening in the market for Yet Another Web Browser is if anyone actually bothers to download, install it, and then a month later continue to use it.

Frankly, I wouldn't be surprised if a major browser player doesn't just bundle their browser with the plugins needed to provide the same features into their browser and then call this bundled installer package something like Firefox Secure or Solid Chrome.

And then MS will try a me-too, it will be full of holes, no one will use it even though a Windows 10 update automatically installs it against your will, and eventually they will be sued for bundling products and Europe will force them to release a non-bundled version while everyone else gets away with the exact same behavior.

Despite high-profile hires, Apple's TV plans are doomed

Tim Cook has never been very good at executing Jobs' "wait then dominate" strategy

In all fairness, neither was Steve Jobs. For every success there was a Big Ol' Pile of Fail. Take Apple TV for example. Cook just has yet to find his one success so that people remember him more fondly than reality.

Researchers solve screen glare nightmare with 'moth-eye' antireflective film

the nanostructure would cause dirt and grease from fingers to accumulate much more quickly

So it prevents ambient glare by making the entire screen unusable? Problem solved!

Cheaper solution? A can of matte black spray paint. :P

(I can see where such a technology might be useful for a lens, maybe even a TV or monitor, but not for a touch screen.)

Homeland Security: Putin’s hackers tried to crack electoral networks in 21 US states

When a system is broken, does hacking it really make any difference?

Who cares about the damage Russia may or may not have done? The real hackers were our Founding Fathers whom instituted the Electoral College, and the numbnuts who still cling to it today. It's a system intentionally designed to change people's votes "for their own good".

What happens when an "election" is NOT decided by the Popular Vote? The vote in which Hillarious won and Trumped-Up lost?

Then look at how much further the cards are stacked when by a system in which typically only two presidential candidates even have the potential to get enough votes to be elected. And then BOTH majority parties offer up candidates so incredibly unsuitable to run a country. What happens then?

We The People lose, that's what happens. Welcome to American "democracy". This election never had a chance for anyone to "win". All it offered was a variety of ways in which we could lose.

Google coughs up $5.5m to make recruiters 'screwed out of overtime pay' go away

Standard Operating Procedure

"when Ha complained about the unpaid overtime work, her bosses, permanent Google employees, fired her in retaliation."

And this would be SOP. My experience as a contractor involved a "discussion" with company middle management about one of their lower management employees who was intentionally creating a hostile workplace and being disruptive to the project. Management's response was quite short and clear. "Proof does not matter. Regardless of who is responsible or what the problem is, whenever a contractor is involved the solution is always the same: get rid of the contractor. You're easy to replace. If you have a problem with this, there is the door. Now are you certain that you wish to file this complaint against one of our employees?"

This is why companies like to hire contractors to do their work while using employees to do management, because all solutions involve "get rid of the contractor". Even when contractors do have rights, which is rare, they almost never can afford the lawyer to defend themselves. And there's always another hungry contractor ready to jump in where the last one left off.

Google plans to scrub 'inflammatory' and terror vids from youTube

all large internet companies need to at least be seen to do more

SEEN to do more. Right. Sell the sizzle, not the steak. Unfortunately, I am sure that is exactly how it will go. "Oh, look how much we are doing!"

Meanwhile, what is the point of all of these "secret" government projects to build supercomputers to monitor everything and scan for keywords blah blah blah if we start preventing malfeasance? If Bob From Accounting can't comment on Going Postal: Dos and Don'ts, then how can the "secret" government projects make their lists and check them twice? Maybe Google will need to give terrorists a backdoor so that the government still (allegedly) knows who is naughty and who is nice.

Microsoft officially hangs up on old Skype phones, users fuming

leaving some old VOIP handset users on hold

I am one such user and let us say that I am less than thrilled. I have been using Skype as my landline for years, with a dedicated phone number, because I get tired of my phone number changing every time I move. It was so convenient to plug my real landline into the same phone that ran Skype so both numbers were on one device and I my number stayed the same for all friends, family, and even business.

I am especially annoyed as while I got an email notifying me that Windows Phone would lose Skype service (as if I have a Windows phone), I never received notification that my Skype "landline" phone would stop working.

So now I wonder two things:

1. If I don't find an alternative, why would I bother continuing to pay Skype for a service I can no longer use?

2. I wonder how hard it would be to build a new Skype "landline" phone out of a Raspberry Pi + Android...

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

a white adult male with white hair who fled the scene in a white hatchback car

This description is clearly racist!

It was a beige Prius.

Who will save us from voice recog foolery from scumbags? Magnetometer!

All for it! Best security ever!

I am all for this as a solution to security. This technology will absolutely secure your voice authentication! You can now safely use voice commands with all of your electronic gizmos and doo-dads.

The gummy bears? I need them for later ... I mean I'm saving them for later.

Let me be the first to congratulate you on setting up your phone's NFC to be an electronic wallet. It was a smart move. Pulling out a real wallet these days is so dangerous. Let me shake your hand.

Absolutely 2-factor authentication works! No one can possibly clone your cell anymore. This is no longer the '90s. And isn't it great how strong the signal quality is here? So many bars.

Hey, try out these new USB headphones! Their audio quality is so much better. Only five dollars...

Farewell, slumping 40Gbps Ethernet, we hardly knew ye

40 Gbps switches are unloved both in revenue and port shipments

Or just simplify to "40 Gbps switches are unloved."

It's pretty simple: you can have cheap, or you can have fast. Why would you want something that is neither?

Congressman drafts COVFEFE Act to preserve Trump's Twitter tantrums

COVFEFE

actually makes sense from an accountability standpoint, if nothing else.

What's that noise?

Oh ... um ...

Which is exactly why this absolutely cannot be allowed! That is not the American way! Plausible deniability and golden parachutes for the One Percent! Logging Trump's public tweets would be a breach of National Security! And a violation of privacy! And technically impractical! And ...

Oh. Phew. It's gone now.

The harsh reality of Apple's augmented reality toolset ARKit: It's an incredible battery hog

Augmented Reality - It's like real reality, only sadder.

Other than a couple of cheesy games, this is a technology with no future. It's like 3DTV or Angry Birds. After you pop your cherry, the novelty wears off and you just realize how annoying it actually is. Wait, are we talking about AR or VR? Or 3D? Or indie games? Doesn't really make a difference, does it? All gimmicky crap that quickly lose their luster. All doomed.

But on the plus side, at least AR has the benefit of Darwin Awards. Trains. Buses. Cars. Gotta catch 'em all! It's about time that we finally use technology to positively advance genetics. And it drains your phone battery? Apple ARKit for the win!

Sometimes "the only winning move is not to play."

Ex-SpaceX avionics tech loses safety certificate-forging wrongful dismissal lawsuit

Two birds, one stone.

I don't see where testing documentation being forged and someone being a problem in the workplace are mutually exclusive. In fact Catbert would probably advise that the best way to get rid of a whistle-blower is to discredit him so that you can easily blame him later for the very acts he was trying to blow the whistle on.

Two birds, one stone. It doesn't get easier than that.

Sounds like Blasdell should be preparing his lawyer to defend him against SpaceX for when the alleged forged test documents are discovered to be real and they come looking to make him the scapegoat. Which if he did forge any such documents, as he alleges he was pressured to, will probably be a slam dunk for SpaceX.

Paranoid? Sometimes they really are out to get you. But then that's what you get for making yourself such an easy target.

Nuns chastise Google and Eric names Larry greatest human alive

What the **** is "pay equality"?

Everywhere that I have ever worked (with one exception) has never had any such concept as "pay equality". You negotiate your contract to hire and bleed your employer as much as you can / dare. Over the years, as necessary, you kick them in the *** for a raise. If any two employees ever had the same pay, it was purely by accident. And they would never know it, because for some reason (that I never understood) what you are paid is a closely guarded secret taken to your grave, lest Bob from Accounting find out that he's been played a sucker. Point is, pay has always been, and likely will always be, performance driven. Work hard, demand hard, and still get underpaid ... but at least less underpaid than the losers around you. Who gives a **** if you do or do not have a pair of ****? What have you done for the company lately above and beyond the same thing that everyone else does? And when was the last time that you stood up for yourself? That's all that has ever mattered. Anyone who whinges otherwise is probably expecting something for nothing. Or works for the government.

Alphabet offloads bot businesses Boston Dynamics and SCHAFT

And if so, does that apply to all robots?

You've seen the Terminator movies, right? ;)

Intel gives the world a Core i9 desktop CPU to play with

Re: But I don't want more cores!

Here here! I would also be perfectly happy with a higher GHz 4 core (8 thread) CPU with more PCIE lanes! 44 lanes? I can fill that easy. I would love to RAID5 four M.2 cards as my primary drive and RAID10 four SATA spinning rust for document/data storage. Add another SATA for a Blu-Ray player. Add two GPUs in SLI with full 16 lanes each. Of course you have all of those shiny new USB3 controllers right? Ethernet. Audio. And... Gah! Never enough lanes.

Oh, sure, there are a lot of services running in the background and blah blah blah, but most things don't really use much CPU. I have plenty of processing power for everything I do. A "standard" gaming rig is bad enough, but hard drives are depressingly slow and as soon as you try to counteract that, splat. Faceplant into the old PCIE wall.

It's been too long that I have been designing systems around how I want to suffer. For once I'd love to build a system where I can have everything that I want to work as it should have been able to. No compromises.

German robo-pastor preaches the GNU Testament

Forgive them, for they know not what they code.

I think they have the idea backward. Instead of a robo-pastor to bless randomly, they should have made robot congregants to fill the pews.

<insert joke here>

Good job, everyone. We're making AI just as tediously racist and sexist as ourselves

or to pick as many male as female resumes

Joanna Bryson represents exactly what is wrong with the world. Probability is not discrimination, it's math. Regardless of the recipe, if 100 mushrooms submit resumes, 10 are Maitake, and of those only 2 are fully qualified, then when picking the 20 most qualified resumes should only result in at most 2 Maitake being chosen. Messing with the algorithm to put all 10 Maitake into the finals even though 8 are unqualified, just to appease the mushroomist view that genus should be evenly balanced in all things, is WRONG. Any forced influence, no matter how "well-intentioned" is Bad Algorithm. (And is, by definition, mushroomism, as this is exactly a willful act of artificial bias and undue influence.) Statistics are not evil just because you don't like what they show. Instead of writing a bad algorithm to force undue influence, maybe you should look at why so few Maitake submitted a resume in the first place, and if that even represents any real problem.

Mondays suck. So why not spend yours playing with an original Mac and games in your browser

No RoboWar?

Many years ago in a land now far far away, I bid at auction and won an ancient Mac Classic, for a fiver. Just to play one game: RoboWar. (Because at that time it had not been ported to Windows yet.) It somehow seems wrong that this is missing from the list. It's like an unfrosted cake, biscuits without tea, or pizza without toppings. Oh, sure, technically it is still viable ... but really, who wants it?

Corpse of US anti-spying law unearthed, reanimated, pushed blinking into the sunlight

Location is as location does.

I'm not exactly sure what reasonable expectation to geolocation privacy I should have when I use a device which also connects to a global grid of satellites.

But then it also seems to me that if I were concerned, perhaps because I was engaging in activities where I did not wish my location data to be knowable by certain parties, then I would hopefully be smart enough to turn any such devices off (and pull the battery) and/or leave such a device someplace else whilst so engaged. Perhaps I might even indulge in the expense of a disposable replacement should there be a need for one during such activity.

Just random thoughts. I'm sure this all matters. Really.

What's the difference between you and a sea slug? When it comes to IT security, nothing

I was going to do something about this study, but...

Turns out the study is just like many I have read before. I'm sure it had a perfectly valid point in it somewhere (likely amidst a sea of crap) but it was so boring I couldn't be bothered. Blah blah blah. I just clicked it away. After all, I have important work to do writing my security software suite for BeOS...

Okay, not really. But you get the point.

The problem is not that the average user gets bored seeing the same security notice over and over and over and over and over. THE PROBLEM IS EXPECTING USERS TO BE SYSADMINS!

Seriously. Bob from accounting just got caught looking at smut on his work PC AGAIN and Lucy the office temp just began to suspect that her Praba handbag MIGHT be a cheap knockoff. Daryl ran out of gas on the way to work, again, as if the dashboard has neither a dial indicating fullness nor a big red idiot light. And Chufty the Clown's daytime ratings just went up phenomenally after her "wardrobe malfunction".

In other words, the world is full of people who are just not sysadmins. So why on Earth would anyone put the responsibility of computer security squarely in their hands? Recipe for failure much?

Japan tries to launch satellite on rocket the size of a telegraph pole

Can we have some clarification?

"set the record for the smallest rocket to carry a satellite to space"

I am assuming there would be a minimum weight requirement, as well as something like a "successful orbit of x" distance requirement for this "record"? Otherwise I'm sure any interested vulture could accomplish something that vague...

Personally, I'd be far more impressed if Japan (or anyone!) were to design a Terrestrial Electromagnetic Cubesat Coilgun. TECC is greener and more practical.

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

But ... but ... it's an APP!

Wait, so a clueless hack sits down to write a 10 line of code app, instead of representing the time and skill necessary to write a full and robust real application, and we're supposed to be surprised that some script kiddie hardcodes his full credentials into his cute widdle bittie app?

To me the surprise is that there are not more instances!

Microsoft Germany says Windows 7 already unfit for business users

Not sure which was worse, the town crier or his parrot?

"Microsoft Germany says Windows 7 already unfit for business users"

Shame Microsoft has not made anything capable of replacing it with yet. I use 8 at work and 10 at home and have to say, I prefer them in reverse order of their version number. 10 is especially bad. EVERY time there is a Windows Update, next startup the PC is unusable for 10 minutes or more! It will not even CTRL+SHFT+ESC to tell me what is sucking up the resources. I am 100% certain it is a system scan of some kind from MS. (And this with an M.2 OS drive and a 4-disk RAID5 array for storage.) And believe me, that is not the only problem, just one of many.

"At the same time, it also needs to encourage businesses to keep using PCs, a challenge given five years of sinking sales."

Personally I am thinking that if someone does not know the difference between "use of" and "needless replacement of" then that itself is a sad testament to the quality of the article. Just because a PC still runs fine does not mean that it is not used.

Revealed: How Nvidia's 'backseat driver' AI learned to read lips

Recognize this!

The important missing feature is the ability of the driver to program phrase and gesture recognition events into performing tasks and functions of their desire. I foresee my car having an awful lot of events triggering the horn. Soon *honk* will become the new universal adjective.

The facial recognition in place of a key is an interesting idea. That way you can tell your brother-in-law that he can borrow the car whenever he wants, safe in knowing that he never can. Though I do sort of wonder how someone can get into a locked car without any key if the camera faces the driver's seat. Lots of faces smashed into windows, hoping to catch the edge of the camera's field of view? Or just the good ol' fob still needed to be carried everywhere like the key that it is.

Worse, on the opposite side, facial recognition as a key could be a serious security hole. Just print off a picture of someone from their social media of choice and away you go, in their car!

What happens in Vegas doesn't stay in Vegas: Razer prototypes nicked

Razer? Meh.

Don't worry. Whatever magic sauce may or may not have been in the stolen goods is either already available by someone else who did it better or wasn't going to work without serious flaws. It's like if someone stole an Apple prototype. Who cares? Thank goodness it wasn't something important!

Random thoughts:

I wonder how small fonts are on a 4K laptop screen.

When will I get a true 4K 5in smartphone? And how many pixels will my fingertip encompass then...

Fitbit throws fit, emits writ for outfit's non-hit, rather sh*t, 'Fitbit' kit

My BitBlt isn't just a copy, it's totally the real thing!

"According to Fitbit's complaint, L2 obtained shipments of faulty Fitbit products destined for scrap and, rather than break down the products, packaged and resold them as refurbished gear."

As opposed to other companies *cough* Dell *cough* that do this completely internally.

Is it better or worse that the Refitbits were resold trash instead of cheap counterfeit BitBlts?

China to Donald Trump: Twitter diplomacy 'undesirable'

Re: Proof Positive That Twitter is for Twits.

Agreed! The only professionals that should ever use Twitter for anything other than personal use are those forced to by poor decisions made by their marketing department.

Banned! No streaming live democracy from your phones, US Congress orders reps

This law brought to you by ... the same idiots it is meant to hamper.

"use of an electronic device for still photography or for audio or visual recording or broadcasting"

1. So purely mechanical or chemical devices are still legal then?

2. So non-audio/visual recordings, such as radio wave, thermal radiation, etc. are okay?

3. What about services like interpolation, 3D modelling, etc.? (AKA, I did not "take a still photograph", I "made a cartoonized representation.")

4. Is time-shifting still a legitimate feature?

"an initial fine of $500 and could face further charges adding up to $2,500 for each violation"

5. So with a maximum fine of $3k if a group of 30 chuck in together to use one person's device, then it's like only a hundred bucks per person for one party to make fools of another party? (And less if even more people actually bother to show up?)

6. Is it legal for news agencies to pay the fines on behalf of offenders?

Regular or premium? Intel pumps out Optane memory at CES

M.2 cache?

I have to admit, I really wanted to be excited ... but the more Intel does (and does not) reveal about Xpoint, the more I think someone there really missed the boat. And the dock. And the coast.

An M.2 card that small? As just a cache? A cache to ... what? It's not like M.2 slots grow on trees. Is this new Xpoint cache to a RAID5 of plain spinning rust somehow going to be significantly better than the M.2 NAND and a RAID5 of hybrid SSHDs that I already have?

Personally, I'd rather use high density DIMMs and give up a pair of RAM slots for said cache. At least then I'm not losing PCIe lanes that my SLI graphics need. (Or am I?) Is Intel finally going to give us a proper number of PCIe lanes for today's hardware needs?

If Intel has a point to this product, I guess I am clearly not getting it.

Strong non-backdoored encryption is vital – but the Feds should totally be able to crack it, say House committees

Government is as government does.

I hate to be the voice of sanity (I really really do) but the answer is simple. Feel free to encrypt whatever you want, as much as you want, with whatever technology you like.

And the government (US at least) will do what it always does: secretly spend gigantic chunks of money to build ridiculously powerful systems and employ countless experts, on projects which do not exist. (Until someone leaks that they do.) Many algorithms have vulnerabilities that experts either know or can discover and log. And then there is brute force, which most "bad guys" won't have access to, but an over-funded secret government project can easily supply.

No data is safe from a sufficiently funded and knowledgeable "hack". It's why encryption keeps evolving. And why we keep paying higher taxes without solving problems like hunger, housing, or medical care.

Why don't people secure their IoT gadgets? 'It's not my problem'

Users = Idiots

I hate to be the bearer of more obvious news, but users are idiots and idiots should not be in charge of securing ANYTHING. (Not all users, of course. But more than enough to give the world significant problems.) I have known several people who had their car run out of gas as if there weren't a gauge AND warning light. (Good thing we don't have flying cars yet!) I even knew one woman who I heard her car coming from blocks away one day, and got her to stop. She complained the car kept wanting to stall, so she had to keep riding hard on the gas pedal. I popped the hood, checked the oil, NONE. Just whiffs of smoke. Didn't she have a temperature gauge? "Who looks at those things." Didn't a warning light go on? "Well yeah, but the car still drives just fine." (Obviously not.) When was the last time she had it in for an oil change? "That costs money, and the car runs great without it." (Really great, clearly. And the cost of a new car compared to the cost of an oil change?) I pulled a couple quarts of oil out of my trunk (because I always keep more than just a spare tire in there), got her car running without risk of engine seizure, and told her in no uncertain terms to get her oil changed at least, but better, see a mechanic. No idea if she ever did. THESE ARE USERS! Not every user is an enthusiast. Some can't even tie their shoes or count to 10. Would we even WANT these users to be responsible for the security of an army of botnettable devices? Defaults MUST be automatic. Only enthusiasts smart enough to uncheck a checkbox that they can find on their own after logging in on their own should be ALLOWED to take security into their own hands. It's a simple intelligence test that if you cannot pass, then you should NOT be allowed to interfere with the AUTOMATIC security. Because users = idiots.

US axes $722m takeover of chip biz by Chinese investors. Thanks, Obama!

God bless the USA.

"Democracy" means that when We The People choose, their popular vote loses.

"Capitalism" means that perfectly legitimate business deals are being blocked For Your Safety.

I must be looking these words up in the wrong dictionary.

I also have to agree with localzuk about the fall in sales being a little ... odd.

Microsoft boffins think VR visions will rival drugs by 2027

"Why do Microsoft keep trying so hard to separate us from our keyboards?"

Hey, give me a direct neural interface so I can think at my PC and I'll be more than happy to chuck my keyboard in the bin. The problem isn't the lack of a keyboard. The problem is replacing the keyboard with something significantly inferior.

Which is where Microsoft seems to always stumble. Such as, "Let's replace a consistent and expandable menu bar with a ribbon full of madness." Or, "Instead of opening up the mobile API to do all things that a full PC can do, let's try to restrict full PC experience to only things a mobile device can do."

As long as technology improves, it's all good. It's when technology devolves back into primordial goo that it makes you wonder who all is driving the bus and how did they get put behind the wheel.

Of course it isn't just MS. If it were, Apple, and Linux would have increased significantly in market share. Seems like every decision-maker the world over is making bad decisions lately.