* Posts by hellsatan

20 publicly visible posts • joined 8 Aug 2016

Remember that Sonos speaker you bought a few years back that works perfectly? It's about to be screwed for... reasons

hellsatan

Have i missed something?

You are partly correct, individual speakers etc will continue to work, however newer devices will inevitably receive software updates that prevent them working with older kit.

...So if you've got a lovely shiny setup costing a few grand all around your house and you find yourself needing to replace a single speaker... the new one won't talk to the rest of the system and you'll basically be arm twisted into replacing the whole lot.

Unlocking news: We decrypt those cryptic headlines about Scottish cops bypassing smartphone encryption

hellsatan

The FEDs want remote access...

All very well skimming through a seized device, but the plod really want to just remote in to any old smartphone and browse all the pics of your cat without anybody asking awkward questions... hence the demands for backdoors.

BBC tells Conservative Party to remove edited Facebook ad featuring its reporters

hellsatan

Running the same biased or inaccurate story as every other major news outlet is not an indicator of impartiality, it's merely that they are biased in much the same way as every other major news outlet

Where there's a will, there's Huawei: US govt already eases trade ban with 90-day reprieve

hellsatan

Re: Not smart

Indeed, and Mr Trumpy has literally just fired off a banger proclaiming to the entire world that American technology and services cannot be relied upon, as they can be instantly pulled at the whim of a madman.

I'm visualising executives universally facepalming in every major US tech biz

OK, deep breath, relax... Let's have a sober look at these 'ere annoying AMD chip security flaws

hellsatan

Re: Odiferous Rodent

I would tend to agree, the whole website is slickly put together with fancy logos, catchy brand damaging names for bugs 'Ryzenfall' etc. Talk of 'risk to life' and other sensationalist nonsense.

No doubt in my mind its a thoroughly unsubtle Intel smear campaign regardless of whether the bugs are all legit.

Funny how this sort of thing pops up when another company dares to challenge the mighty intel and its bottom line

Microsoft ends notifications for Win-Phone 7.5 and 8.0

hellsatan

Re: I like Apple things

I don't like Apple things, but i remain quite fond of windows phone, and a place in my heart will always be reserved for my old Lumia 1020 which i regrettably sold a few years back

Daily Stormer binned by yet another registrar, due to business risks

hellsatan

Re: It beings.

'This is a terrifying development that domain registrars are acting as censor, and stating that certain types of content can not even have a domain.'

This has nothing to do with censorship.

If two persons from NAMBLA or some such were talking loudly in your local walmart about some of their more unsavoury proclivities you would be more than happy if Walmart asked them to leave. Is that censorship? Hell no, they can talk about what they want but equally a business can ask anybody to leave.

If a business wants to disassociate itself with ANY customer it is perfectly entitled to for any reason it chooses, unless it breaches certain specific laws (here in the UK would be homophobia/racism etc).

Associating itself with TDS WILL damage the reputation of any web service provider, and its an entirely legitimate business argument for refusing to provide that service...

Crap gift card security helps crims spend your birthday pressie cash

hellsatan

I remember a lovely scam from my days at argos, 2 guys come in the store, with duplicates of an as yet not activated gift card. One walks to the till and asks to load it up with £500, the other walks over to Jewellery and purchases a gold chain with the newly activated gift card. First guy is fumbling around looking for his wallet for some time, then declares he left it in the car... Both guys walk out, clerk cancels transaction and the till tries to deactivate the gift card but its too late.

Only worked on Argos gift cards at the time however, since the rest only activated after (sometimes long after) the transaction was completed. Suspect they got around to fixing it by now though

Just how screwed is IT at the Home Office?

hellsatan

Why so? Doesn't every citizen of the EU have citizenship of at least one EU member state / nation?

Quite possibly not... I could be mistaken here but if you are born in the UK (since approx 1982) you do not have automatic British nationality unless your parents do. We may well have many people here who have never left the country since their birth, who do not possess British nationality.

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

hellsatan

Re: Lets find something to be offended about

Well erm no. The story indicates that AI systems are more likely to associate certain ethnicities (for example) with negative words, and white ethnicities with positive words. Thats not leaping to some politically correct conclusion, it is literally that the datasets being drawn on by the AI are leading the AI to the conclusion that women are bad at math, and black people are criminals.

There is no particular imperative stated here to 'cleanse' the datasets, but it is certainly healthy to know the limitations of the information you are supplying to systems which you hope to improve/subvert/control the lives of the typical meatbag.

Uber wasn't to blame for robo-ride crash – or was it? Witness said car tried to 'beat the lights'

hellsatan

Re: Two sets of traffic lights are needed

When all cars are fitted with a device that broadcasts locally 'here i am, this is how fast i am, this is what direction i am going in, my driver has just put the on the indicators/brakes/stomped the accelerator', something i expect to be relatively cheap, and could be used as a driver assist for ALL cars... That is the point i would expect autonomous cars to never be at fault in a RTA. When all autonomous cars feed each other this data, and they are predominant on the road, they'll be driving 2 feet apart and you wont need traffic lights...

After London attack, UK gov lays into Facebook, Google for not killing extremist terror pages

hellsatan

Re: But but but....

What on Earth is a 'terror manual on how to use a car for mass murder'?:

1: Get car.

2: Run people over.

Crap i've just written a terror manual. Daily Mail best not hear about this :/

'Clearance sale' shows Apple's iPad is over. It's done

hellsatan

Re: Education PC seller says Apple is no good in that market

Aye, i know at least one secondary school where Ipads are actually mandatory, with various finance options offered by the school. Bit crazy in my book but i'm sure somebody got a generous backhander to secure that deal

Tech moguls dominate Oxfam's rich people Hateful 8

hellsatan

If this was how we pay our taxes, then despite paying more tax than the rest, the 10th man would be stashing money overseas already and should likely pay many times more tax than he actually does.

Further to that you don't mention that the 10th man recently put the 9th under pressure to fire the first 4 men and replace them with machines, and to renegotiate the contracts of the 5th and 6th men so as not to pay them a pension and remove their health cover.

Perhaps if the 10th man actually payed his employees a decent wage, he wouldn't have to pay such a high level of tax in the first place.

The assumption that the wealthy are deserving of their wealth is a giant mistake, and it encourages the notion that the poor are deserving of their pittance..

Robo-supercar hype biz Faraday Future has invented something – a new word for 'disrupt'

hellsatan

Re: Will it.....

The speed of charging issue has a potentially simple fix.

If all electric cars are produced with a 'standard' battery of equal size/shape, and internally mounted in a quick release mechanism then it will be possible to refit petrol (gas) stations with underground charging racks packed with pre-charged batteries that will take a matter of seconds to swap out.

Futhermore since batteries are the most expensive part of an electric vehicle (for now), recharging and rental of battery units could be supplied as a service through petrol filling stations.

Just a thought ofc

Self-driving cars doomed to be bullied by pedestrians

hellsatan

Presumably when autonomous cars hit a saturation point on our roads they will be sufficiently well connected to communicate their direction/velocity and immediate obstacles to all other nearby autonomous vehicles (and sending red flags to each other about non-connected vehicles piloted by meatbags). A little intelligent communication and all the traffic on a road will be able to pre-emptively make space for a vehicle to swerve to avoid errant pedestrians. That way the cars don't actually need to slow down, they can just perform a high speed ballet, working together to keep traffic flowing freely.

I am possessed by hopeless optimism here.

Four reasons Pixel turns flagship Android mobe makers into roadkill

hellsatan

Be interesting to see how how well the Turing phone does when they manage to wrestle a few extra features into Sailfish OS... Looks promising but its being developed on a shoestring. Pretty close to full android app support too

Brit ISP TalkTalk scraps line rental charges

hellsatan

Re: FFS not scrapped

wholesale line rental is only about a tenner methinks..

Notting Hill Carnival spycams: Met Police rolls out real-time live face-spotting tech

hellsatan

Re: V

I guarantee they made FOI requests for all those things, and (in good faith ofc) forgot to publish the information which failed to support their worldview

BBC detector vans are back to spy on your home Wi-Fi – if you can believe it

hellsatan

point laser at window, detect vibrations, convert to audio, et voila you can hear somebody watching tv in their house even through double or triple glazing. Pretty sure its not an overwhelming technical challenge these days to know if that programme was hosted on IPlayer servers, you could in fact inaudibly add a sonic watermark if you so wished...