Posts by Disk0

Self-driving cars will be safe, we're testing them in a massive AI Sim

Re: "aircraft safety"

It doesn't hurt that there is a wee bit more room in the airspace, than on the road. Aircraft do not have to autonomously navigate traffic with the type of density seen on motorways. Also, a minor collission between two road vehicles, or even a rollover in one, is totally survivable, however most aircraft are not built to withstand a similar impact without severe consequences for all on board.

I do agree with using real world data in simluators to find causes of accidents and imrpove safety.

Sysadmin trained his offshore replacements, sat back, watched ex-employer's world burn

Re: Obvious outcomes.

I think the inability to generate common human emotions is referred to as "Sociopathy".

Imagine a patent on organizing computer files being used against online shopping sites. Oh, it's still happening

Most likely

The judiciary use a similar system to access case files. "Show me every file with (x)" is one of the most basic features of just about any computer system. I hope the court can grok this...

Yes, people see straight through male displays of bling (they're only after a fling)

1: find someone who loves to drive, is credible and doesn't mind working weird hours, who would like to run a car service.

2: invest 10.000 in a down payment on a gently used deluxe vehicle for said person to drive and for them to earn money with, on the condition they pay off the vehicle and drive you around whenever you need them to. Have 10.000 on hand for running costs and replacement parts etc.

3: Always have your own deluxe vehicle plus driver available on short order. Win at life.

Risky business: You'd better have a plan for tech to go wrong

If you use a hardware UPS, it just becomes part of the 1 in four hardware failure ratio*. That’s why you always need 5 UPS'es per socket to compensate for statistical anomalies. On the upside, you will be able to sell all that sweet sweet juice to the highest bidder whenever Bob decides it’s a good day to take the backhoe for a spin - and Bob is a known reliable perfomer given the proper number of pints.

Watchdog growls at Tesla for spilling death crash details: 'Autopilot on, hands off wheel'

Here's an idea.

1: Stop any music playing, turn on all interior and exterior lights, especially hazard lights, activate the horn and have the car pull over if the driver lets go of the steering wheel for more than, let’s say, two seconds. Also applies to cruise control - no hands? no drive, it's simple really.

Drivers will soon learn not to make themselves look like the tool they actually are.

On an unrelated note, when hitchiking on trucks back in the day, I learned some truckdrivers reverse the whole procedure: they wouldn't touch the steering wheel unless it was absolutely neccessary.

One of them just got out of the driver's seat in mid-traffic, crawled in the back cab to dig around for cigarettes, simply telling me to grab the wheel if we would start to swerve. We didn't, but it was a quite a long minute.

Meet the open sorcerers who have vowed to make Facebook history

" moving off "

I think the notion that people "Move Off" one network to fully commit to another, is rather simplistic.

Like myself, most people I know ADD networks, apps, and sites to whatever they are already using, usually because it enables them to connect to more friends, content, or opportunities.

So there is a whole screen on my phone dedicated to just that - connectivity and social apps, each with their own merit. Sure I could use another, or even several more, and if this other platform is compelling enough I will try to get my friends on board, but we will probably still keep using any current platform.

Interestingly we do not have to move all our content as if we are moving house: because it is computer data, we can just copy over what we need.

I don't get how the people presenting just about every single "new" platform do not seem to understand that we can use /Multiple/ platforms for the same or different goals.

IMO it is a big mistake to suggest to people that they will have to abandon what they already have in order to use your new, unproven platform.

Better to present your offering as an /addition/ that enables me to do other stuff, more interesting, private, slick, secure, easy or fast, or just different because I get bored and like to try something else.

Stop trying to tell us what apps/platforms/sites/protocols to use. The successful players of the past and present have become so by offering things like (e.g.) great visual presentation, better options than telco messaging, or just not having to look at Tom.

How do you make those darn code monkeys do what you want? Just give 'em a little nudge

Cattleprod theory

Is all we need down here.

BOFH: Honourable misconduct

Re: But why?

There is never a time to turn down an opportunity to engage and ensure the defeat of the enemy*. Is why.

*) identified enemies include, but are not limited to bosses, consultants, helldesk, users, legal, hr, security, the board, vendors, reps, programmers, salesdroids, visitors, software, hardware, bad kebab, empty cattleprods, other bofh's, and the landlord's uncanny precision at calculating your tab at the pub.

Another day, another meeting, another £191bn down the pan

Re: "... meetings that they weren't invited to"

And there it is: "meetings that they weren't invited to" are generally the meetings where the impossible gets promised tomorrow, any actual reality is overlooked for the sake of convenience, and technical, practical and funding issues are dealt with by handwaving and thereby delegating resonsibility for success to the lowest ranking staff.

The only meeting any of us would ever need to be in, is the 3 second meeting in which we give the finger to pipedreams, and get a cash payout of all the money we saved by not scheduling meetings.

Batteries are so heavy, said user. If I take it out, will this thing work?

Re: New???

Apply the handbrake. Highly recommended when exiting your vehicle, to prevent it from succumbing to gravity..

Should AI get to choose a topping in a two pizza team?

You lost me at

Synergies. Go wash you mouth.

Destroying the city to save the robocar

Re: Obviously the solution is....

Sold! And a pair of walking trousers with that please?

Re: Bikes are not a solution...

Quite. Here in the Netherlands we also have about 362 sunny days a year, and temperatures never drop below a comfortable 23 C. Humans were never meant to be weatherproof in the first place.

If Australian animals don't poison you or eat you, they'll BURN DOWN YOUR HOUSE

Re: Do they do it accidentally or deliberately?

I recall a story doing the rounds about birds learning to open milk bottles- in the days of glass milk bottles delivered to your doorstep.

Now we have flying raptors ( living dinosaurs...) mastering fire, and on our warming planet, probably gearing up to increase in size by an order of magnitude - large enough to make the flying lasershark nightmare an inevitable reality....

Remember the 'budget' iPhone SE? Apple plans an update – reports

Re: SE2?

It should be the iPhone IIx - pronounced "aye-faun aye aye Axe" but refer to it as the "iPhone SE Mark 2" just to confuse the hell out of us all.

The case of the disappearing insect. Boffin tells Reg: We don't know why... but we must act

Re: pest-resistant

What are those pests you speak of, if not also part of the ecosystem?

Apple Cook's half-baked defense of the Mac Mini: This kit ain't a leftover

What, no speculation...?

Rumor has it they are building the new Mini with 18-core ARM cpus, a bunch of onboard media coprocessors, network-APFS keeping track of all your files everywhere always like a personal cloud system, HomeSiri plugging into your every device and keeping track of everything that goes on in our house, car and office, it will be powered by a fuel cell that lasts 5 years, it has a built-in coffeemaker and a vape-slot.

Finally, it will be the size of an iPhone so you can just keep it in your pocket, but it has no connectors - all connections are wireless. It is cast from a single piece of Bolivian crystal glass. At the same time Apple will launch a 3-d holographic pocket projector with gesture and voice input to go with the new Mini.

Oh and the iPad pro pen doubles as a remote for it.

Argh, my loafer just fell down the rope ladder! Yes, I'm in the Microsoft treehouse

DEC did this in the 90s

so that's how cutting edge MS is these days

HPE server firmware update permanently bricks network adapters

Or just bundle the firmware with the installer like a normal person.

Amadeus booking software outages smack airports across world

Re: 'we experienced a network issue '

On to #10 it is then: "We were overconfidently changing things without proper research, test runs or rollback options because we just enjoy pressuring IT-staff into jeopardizing continuity and then blaming them for not getting the job done with only half of the resources needed. Of course we made sure no C-levels will be taking responsibility for operational integrity, that is why we blame the "network" instead of our own shortsightedness."

" Always expect outages. There are no unexpected outages, just outages you did not prepare for."

Re: 'we experienced a network issue '

On to #10 it is then: "We were overconfidently changing things without proper research, test runs or rollback options because we just enjoy pressuring IT-staff into jeopardizing continuity and then blaming them for not getting the job done with only half of the resources needed. Of course we made sure no C-levels will be taking responsibility for operational integrity, that is why we blame the "network" instead of our own shortsightedness."

Intel ME controller chip has secret kill switch

Re: The mind absolutely boggles.

'it only has to work once'

...I like that, it reflects the mindset of a spook agency trying to keep a lid on its operations. It doesn't neccesarily matter if the "killswitch/backdoor" is not configurable, or that it could be disabled by a technician - "it only has to work once", for example using software (that would only be installed on agency computers) that activates when the equipment is unplugged without an authorization code.

Nobody else would really be affected. In theory.

The terms "Liability" "Potential single point of failure" and "Critically compromised" seem more apropos...

UK.gov wants quick Brexit deal with EU over private data protections

Meanwhile

almost everybody who is not British has moved on from worrying about Brexit to figuring out how to survive World War 3.

Microsoft Surface laptop: Is this your MacBook Air replacement?

I can't wait

to make fun of people who bought one

BOFH: Oh go on. Strap me to your Hell Desk, PFY

Re: wonder if the BOFH acted prematurely

I was thinking just that - why not hold out until Shortbus Central rolls out an order for a tidy several hundred, then research if the remote option scales gracefully, meanwhile pocketing a tidy "finders fee" in the bug bounty hunt that you successfully challenged the boss and the pfy to after feeding them a good dozen pints on the company account....

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

No love

for Red Dwarf??

Tape lives! The tape archive bit bucket is becoming bottomless

T1000 still not listed

...and that is the kind of backup I really need!

How to avoid getting hoodwinked by a DevOps hustler

"ask the teams they work with if they’ve been helpful"

That isn't a thing. You demand that teams improve simply because you hired an expensive consultant, or bought an expensive software license, or moved everything to the cloud.

It is a proven fact (ask any consultant) that buzzword-related activity improves productivity, reliability, customer satisfaction and revenue! If you pay someone over the top to tell you what you should already know, you have to be consistently condescending towards your inhouse staff - you know, the people who actually keep your organisation running - who could probably have told you the same had you not pissed them off by giving the raise they were due for to some doughboy in a polyester suit whose primary raison d'être is to tell everybody They Are Doing It Wrong.

And if you want to know if putting the cart before the horse was a good idea, why not sign a contract, cross your fingers and hope for good news? You can always blame the horse for not pushing hard enough.

UK PM May's response to London terror attack: Time to 'regulate' internet companies

Ban showers, bakeries and sunglasses!

I herd terrorists might use them too.

Apple weans itself off Intel with 'more ARM chips' for future Macs

All other things being equal...

When everybody has access to the same components from Intel, AMD and NVidia, having more better chips that the competition does not have is a potential advantage.Whether you accelerate certain tasks or take over tasks from the main cpu, you're increasing raw speed of a machine beyond what the competition might offer. I can see how things like Siri, streaming, encryption, networking, push services, HomeKit and HealthKit can run on a separate processor, leaving more cycles available for user applications.

Incidentally, Apple also has experience with using separate processors for multimedia: the Quadra AV line featured a built-in DSP chip that handled digital audio and video separate from the main cpu. It gave these machines quite the edge in that area, and using ARM coprocessors could give Apple a similar edge in performance and the for mobile so important power savings - battery life is still a meaningful parameter.

8 out of 10 cats fear statistics – AI doesn't have this problem

9 out of 10 cats meow.

survey one cat, over the course of its nine lives, and once more when it gets back from the taxidermist...

Statistics killed Jesus

a person might be carrying something or someone, like when they have a child on their shoulders, or they might be carrying a protest sign, or maybe even a wooden cross, in which case someone's dogma just ran over their karma.

Apple has finally found someone to support HomeKit

Bridges are actually not so bad imo

Why /not/ have a separate control device for different categories of systems? As it is, I see separate controllers for Internet access, Wifi provisions, lighting, HVAC, TV, telephony, fire and regular alarms, cctv, door security etc. and it is not the worst way to handle separate tasks.

Network bridges have been around for a long time, and they are generally useful middle-hardware that makes it easier to maintain both sides of the bridge, without having to make sure each side is exactly compatible with the other. So yeah, by all means put different home automation systems behind separate bridge/controller devices. Easier to maintain, easier to secure, less devastating when it fails. Unless of course you like Scala and the associated risk of taking out all infrastructure when a single device goes down.

Why Firefox? Because not everybody is a web designer, silly

"...some weird browser only 15 people have ever downloaded

Thanks for the props - that's me for the past 20-odd years...experimental software is fun, and the Internet is one big experiment anyway - might as well add some quirks from my end.

Fixing your oven can cook your computer

A good reason to stick to analog kitchen gear. Or just stick your mobo on the barbie.

Re: Firewall

After my model Z gave way it took me a while to find a model with simple turning knobs and pushbuttons, and no display or otherwise useless and superfluous gadgetry. That, and the brand name starting with I and ending with IT sold me on the thing.

Amazon's AWS S3 cloud storage evaporates: Top websites, Docker stung

Fake news

now on an Amazon dashboard near you...

Alert! The dastardly Dutch are sailing a 90-ship fleet at Blighty

Re: Surrender!

Don't problems, you can keeps your island and queen too, we don't need cheddar and have plenty of fish for frying and prima patat chips already and PIckwick tea. Also you have more raintime than we, and a ongezellige attitude, so we are never really interested.

'Hey, Homeland Security. Don't you dare demand Twitter, Facebook passwords at the border'

Re: Trips

we cancelled this year's trip to the inlaws. I used to only have to worry about random people with guns, texting drivers in trucks, stray bears, dodgy infrastructure that can fall apart above or below you, and the odd overly assertive hobo demanding to be renumerated for their rendition of Kansas' Dust In The Wind.

As someone who tries not to be delusional, I can no longer in good faith trust that the authorities let both of us into the US, that we will be left alone when there, and let out when we want to.

Every policy so far has been more of a clusterfuck than any B-movie I have ever seen, overbearing, misapplied, illegal, unconstitutional but before all, directed as hateful actions towards anyone who is not brownnosing the screeching orange retard.If anything, it is becoming "Kafka: the reality show"

There is no way of knowing when exactly they are going to go full Kristallnacht, I hope they don't, but when they do, that's not the kind of vacation fun I am looking for.

Re: 2nd Amendment gives you immunity?

That's either Compton, Baltimore or anywhere in Florida

Dying for Windows 10 Creators Update? But wait, there's more!

given the moniker

it will create a lot of work for a lot of people by destroying everything same people created. Always a fresh start with Windows!

Voila! Bazinga! Amazon turns Alexa into an annoying 'cool' aunt

Can we just have a butler

At least to me that is generally the most pleasant style of providing assistance I have come across. Alternatively, a diner waitress from Kentucky will do.

Netherlands reverts to hand-counted votes to quell security fears

Sanity

this is what it looks like...

Sysadmin chatbots: We have the technology

I, for one,

Welcome our new robotic PFY's. More pints for me!

'Ancient' Mac backdoor discovered that targets medical research firms

one person's malware

is another person's remote support tool...

Embrace the world of pr0nified IT with wide open, er, arms

Rââh

Lovely. Thanks for reminding me of the genius Gotlib and the unencumbered slaying of the bourgeouis' world view that he bestowed on us so graciously and generously.

Much more Moore's Law: Wonder-stuff graphene transistor trickery

Dope

isn't it always the answer?

Programmer finds way to liberate ransomware'd Google Smart TVs

With the TV powered off,

How is anything going to happen while the TV is powered off? Stand-by is probably the mode we are looking for.

Also:

"With the TV powered off,

open a window and firmly shove the apparatus outwards to see how smart it is in dealing with gravity and impact on the pavement.

FTFY