* Posts by Potemkine!

3261 publicly visible posts • joined 9 Jun 2017

NASA's InSight lander expected to survive most of summer before choking to death on Martian dust

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Re: Learning point.

Take a microfiber cleaning cloth, and use the robot arm to clean the solar panel.The weight a such a cloth is quite low, around 2g for a piece with a surface of 100 cm²

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Next time

what about pumping the tiny atmosphere from Mars and use it to disperse the dust, like with a blow gun?

Bitcoin doomed as a payment system and its novelty will fade, says Federal Reserve Board of Governors member

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Re: It's the usefulness

It's the usefulness, not the novelty, that makes bitcoin successful.

As paying ransom from desperate companies which have been crypto-locked?

UK enters negotiations on a digital trade agreement with Singapore

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Trollface

The UK is the first European country

Since when is UK European??

The world has a plastics shortage, and PC makers may be responding with a little greenwashing

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The new mantra is 'plastic = bad'

And I strongly disagree with it. As long as the kinds of plastic used can be recycled or a biodegradable, I see no problem with those plastics.

As often, oversimplifying the problem has one goal: making buy us new things to replace the old ones. And now it is to 'save the planet' (as if the planet could disappear in a near future), when the real question is about human kind survival.

I saw for instance people replacing plastic cups with cups made in bamboo, because 'bamboo is natural' (as arsenic or curare by the way, but it's another topic). Sounds nice, isn't it? Slight problem: when bamboo cups contain hot liquids, they release formaldehyde which can be a health hazard. Ok, the less humans the less pollution, but it should be good to tell that to people honestly, shouldn't it?

Hubble’s cosmic science is mind-blowing, but its soul celebrates something surprising about us

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1 Hubble, 18 KH-11. We see where the priorities are.

AWS launches BugBust contest: Help fix a $100m problem for a $12 tshirt

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Enjoy!

There's a promotion for a bucket of vaseline on Amazon.

Happy with your existing Windows 10 setup? Good, because Windows 11 could turn its nose up at your CPU

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It becomes a tradition at MS: make a shitty OS prone to failure every two.

Green MSP calls on Scottish government to stop spending £4.7m a year with AWS after Amazon 'dumping' allegations

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Ah, the Greens: always the wrong answer to the wrong problem.

‘What are the odds someone will find and exploit this?’ Nice one — you just released an insecure app

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how do we cure application vulnerability epidemic

Replace all devices by paper + pen... and I'm not sure that will be sufficient.

The most we can do is limiting vulnerabilities to the most. But eradicating all of them? Even the Matrix is reloaded from time to time.

Who would cross the Bridge of Death? Answer me these questions three! Oh and you'll need two-factor authentication

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Re: Fuck CAPTCHA's.

Or PR. Works also for Insurance companies Banks, Mechanics...

Before this post, I didn't realise there were so many people screwing all day long!

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Some of the covers are brilliant. I love Lithium the Green Day. Not so much for NOFX, bpm is too slow, the outstanding bass line from Fat Mike is missing... But for most of the other ones, it's splendid!

Oh, by the way, a note for Mr. Dabbs: please continue your brilliant posts on LinkedIn. It's the major reason why I check this site from time to time.

British minister claims technology makes maritime cannibalism obsolete

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WTF

Are drugs available for free there or is this just senility?

USA bars imports of Chinese polysilicon due to human rights violations

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+1

Even if it's a political move, it's a good start anyway.

Let's do the same in Europe.

What you need to know about Microsoft Windows 11: It will run Android apps

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Re: Android?

Absolutely! I'm not sure it's a great idea to embark a new ecosystem which is famous to be a security nightmare.

Mars race: China dreams of nuclear rockets, manned bases, and space elevators

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Here's the plan

The last step is to send to Mars all dissenters.

Lego bricks, upcycled iPhone lenses used in new low-cost, high-res microscope

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Brilliant

That may give some ideas to Lego: produce this as a kit

Russia spoofed AIS data to fake British warship's course days before Crimea guns showdown

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Re: Just a FYI

whereas the majority of Crimean residents consider themselves Russian

This is mostly because Russia deported massively Tatars from Crimea. Nowadays we call that an ethnic cleansing:

"Crimean Tatars constituted the majority of Crimea's population from the time of ethnogenesis until the mid-19th century, and the largest ethnic population until the end of the 19th century.Almost immediately after the retaking of Crimea from Axis forces, in May 1944, the USSR State Defense Committee ordered the deportation of all of the Crimean Tatars from Crimea, including the families of Crimean Tatars serving in the Soviet Army."

Also, 75,000 Crimea Tatars died during the 1920s by hunger because of collectivization, when their crops were taken from them and send elsewhere in Russia.

Crimea was "Russified", the dirty way.

If the US invades Cuba, puts every Cuban in a boat, with only Americans citizens in Guantanamo staying, would it be legitimate to accept a pro-US self-determination referendum after that?

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Re: Diplomacy

From the link:

"We can appeal to common sense, demand respect for international law, and if that doesn't work, we can bomb

Yeah, because invading a neighbouring country and annexing a part of its territory is respecting international law.... Russia's position is farcical.

The West should official consider Russia as a hostile Nation, even if it helps the Russian nationalist playbook, "the nice us vs the evil others".

Doggy DNA database adopted by Gloucestershire cops to bring crims to heel

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Re: Aren't Pet Microchips enough?

remove it

I thought it was quite impossible to do :~

reprogram it

How do you reprogram a RFID tag? I would be curious to know.

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Aren't Pet Microchips enough?

Or where do I opt out to have my dogs' DNA not sold to anyone?

Spacey McSpaceface: Artemis takes shape ahead of '2021' launch – but first you need to name the crash-test dummy

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Brad Roberts.

Jeff Bezos.

Jas Mann.

UK urged to choo-choo-choose hydrogen-powered trains in pursuit of carbon-neutral economic growth

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It's not a particularly efficient solution vs, say, lithium-ion batteries being swapped at stations with 80-90% efficiency.

Lithium batteries are hard to recycle, they are not efficient when it's getting cold, and lithium extraction isn't really a clean process

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Re: Huh

- Price

- Technical feasibility

- Electricity loss because of Joule effect.

Hydrogen-powered trains may in the end require a much lighter infrastructure.

In South Korea the new normal future of work is ... a 52-hour work week! (Down from 68)

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To look after all the oldies.

Wasn't coronavirus designed for that?

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I've never really understood what the difference is between 1 person working 80 hours a week and 2 people working 40 hours a week (assuming pay reflects the number of hours worked).

Reality is quite different: the point is having 1 person working 80 hours a week paid the same as 1 working 40 hours a week.

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What a shame! Why not ban child labor while we're at it?

Korea’s birth rate fell 0.84 expected babies per woman in 2020

That's a very good thing! If all countries could do the same, that would help a lot. We are way too many on Earth. Save the planet, don't do babies!

Fashion titan French Connection says 'FCUK' as REvil-linked ransomware makes off with data

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Re: Stolen company secrets such as...

... t-shirts made in some sweat-shop in Bangladesh

Euro court rules YouTube not automatically liable for users illegally uploading copyright-protected material

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What if it was only possible that rights over a song could be owned by the author and the composer, and not being transferable in any way?

John McAfee dead: Antivirus tycoon killed himself in prison after court OK'd extradition, says lawyer

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Re: As opposed to what, exactly?

I suppose there a prison system somewhere on this planet you would want to spend time in

Yes, in Norway

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Pint

Death of a Salesman

A weird personage, whose adventures and craziness made him attaching... as long as you weren't his neighbour.

Amazing. Staff count up just 2% and Microsoft adds more than £1bn to its UK financials

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Do you want an Eiffel tower? I've got one to sell.

Yeah, and companies don't do creative accounting to reduce gross profit to the max to get a profit before tax as low as possible. And Charges to reduce profit from a high turnover are always real and justified.

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Gross profit also crested the £1bn mark (up from £876.8m in 2019), which translated to £212.9m profit before tax

That's creative accounting, isn't it?

an impressive increase in turnover £2.8bn in 2019 to £4.032bn in 2020 (...) The company also paid a bit more tax, sending £43.5m the way of Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs (HMRC), compared to £34.6m the previous yea

Turnover: +44% - Taxes: +25%

Very creative indeed.

US Navy starts an earthquake to see how its newest carrier withstands combat conditions

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China won't fight US carriers with carriers. They've got DF-21D and DF-26for that.

If you want to refer to history, the Chinese Army was way worse equipped than the US Army during the Korean war. It nonetheless succeeded to keep North Korea 'alive'. Equipment is not enough to ensure winning a war.

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Aircraft carriers are exactly what the USN needs, for the actions it actually gets involved in.

One or two pairs of them, yes, but not eleven. It's a huge waste of resources.

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Except that missile defences have been vastly improved since the days of the Falklands

There is _no_ defence against hypersonic missiles.

King, who represents the state where half the Navy’s destroyers are produced, also said he’s concerned about the long-term viability of aircraft carriers in a world with hypersonic missiles.

“I think it does raise a question of the role of the aircraft carrier if we cannot figure a way to counter this capability,” he said. “I don’t want indefensible, $12 billion sitting ducks out there. I’m not prepared to say the carrier is obsolete, but I say that this weapon undermines the viability of the carrier.”

the US developed the Aegis system

We have yet to see if it would be efficient in a real war. The USS Stark was equipped with a Phalanx CIWS, but was nonetheless hit by two missiles, who were undetected.

Argentinian Airforce were mostly using gravity bombs

Exactly what I said: Argentina had a third-world army. In that case aircraft carriers can be useful, but you just a couple of them, not tens, especially if the cost of one is $12 billion!

Against a modern army, carriers are just expensive targets.

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That's what I said, aircraft carriers are useful only against third world armies.

In the Falkland war, 40 years ago, UK was fighting against an under-equipped army. Argentina had only six Exocet missiles, with 5 intended to be launched from an aircraft. With those six missiles, they were able to sunk a guided missile destroyer and badly damage a container ship and another destroyer. UK was very lucky no carrier was hit.

Would Argentina have 60 Exocet missiles instead of 6, the British fleet would have been annihilated.

In a major war, a carrier would not face one of two missiles, but dozens. Look at the Millenium Challenge 2002, it's quite easy to overwhelm defence capacities.

For air refuelling, you don't necessarily require a carrier, if you have some airbases available strategically around the World.

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Aircrafts carriers are sitting ducks waiting to be sunk. A pair of it may be useful to exert attacks against a third world country, but in a full scale war against a powerful enemy they will end as artificial reefs for fishes in a few hours.

Building 10 of those is a huge waste of money that could be better spent to try to help mankind rather than destroying it.

See this article for more explanation: This Is How the Carriers Will Die

Look also at this

Nominet is back to 'the same old sh*t' says Public Benefit campaign chief as EGM actions grind to halt

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Re: Look to the French...

Sadly not a good example. In reality it just changed the class of parasites by a new one.

In the end, revolutions are just about changing the people taking profit of the system.

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Where's my popcorn?

I guess that Mr Blackadder is not really surprised that the ones who have the power (and make a lot of money) aren't willing to change things.

I love the bootnote. It's more explicit than one million words to describe how Nominet really runs.

Sure looks like someone's pirating the REvil ransomware, tweaking the binary in a hex editor for their own crimes

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Virus variant

A ransomware group would have been hacked? But who can you trust these days?

It's about time to be much more agressive against those scumbags and all the ones facilitating their jobs: lazy registrars, C&C servers hosts who don't care as long as they're paid, and the whole cryptocurrencies ecosystem.

Dozens of Iranian media websites devoured by the Great Satan, apparently

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It was said that the sites were commandeered for spreading misinformation and propaganda.

So what about Freedom of speech? I thought it was one of the most cherished things in the US?

The move is idiotic. It gives the US a bad press and make lran looking like a poor victim.

UK health secretary Matt Hancock follows delay to GP data grab with campaign called 'Data saves lives'

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Childcatcher

FUD

If you don't share your data with, well we prefer not to mention, plenty of children will die! Do it or you are a insensitive monster.

Monitoring is simple enough – green means everything's fine. But getting to that point can be a whole other ball game

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Green means everything's fine

Use of color affects the accessibility of your software to the widest possible audience. Users with blindness or low vision may not be able to see the colors well, if at all. Approximately 8 percent of adult males have some form of color confusion (often incorrectly referred to as "color blindness"), of which red-green color confusion is the most common.

source: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/uxguide/vis-color

GUI 101: Never rely on color only to display an information.

US Air Force announces plan to assassinate molluscs with hypersonic missile

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Come to think about it they don't have a face

They have no face; no place for ears

And no clam eyes to cry clam tears

EU court rules in Telenet copyright case: ISPs can be forced to hand over some customer data use details

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Re: Leases

In some countries there are laws against that. They have to keep records for a certain duration or face punishment.

APNIC left a dump from its Whois SQL database in a public Google Cloud bucket

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Putting confidential things in the cloud is the first step to a security failure.

South Korea’s nuclear research agency breached by North Korea-affiliated cyberattackers, says malware analyst group

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Re: Still a work in early progress in need of greater fundamental fettling

Traduttore, traditore.