Posts by onefang

Brisbane gets a new erection, a giant woody.

Brisbane gets a new erection, a giant woody.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-08-31/skyscraper-to-plyscraper-towering-potential-of-timber-buildings/10155510

It was too good to resist writing that title.

I'm gonna need a bigger coat.

It's official: Chocolate Factory anoints Tink crypto as Google project

I'll have to have a bit of a Tinker with it.

No need to code your webpage yourself, says Microsoft – draw it and our AI will do the rest

Re: Quality output

"Easy. Just forget to take the lens cap off when you photograph the whiteboard!"

Shirley a blackboard is better for that sort of design?

Re: Quality output

"while I was in the crapper I had this genius idea for a new webshite design so I sketched it out a a piece of paper that I found there"

Was the paper used or unused?

I'm wondering how well the AI will deal with "that needs to be half a pixel bigger, and more orangy", "No not orange, more orangy!", and "It looked perfect on my monitor, you ruined it!"? Though I guess given the way this works, that last one would be "back of my half used napkin" rather than "my monitor". How many web sites will we see that include a more orangy smashed avocado stain?

Apple sees the (augmented) light, buys holo-glass tech startup

So Apple is now able to do what Magic Leap was claiming to be able to do? Combine it with Steve Jobs Reality Distortion Field, and we now have Apple Reality?

Voting machine maker claims vote machine hack-fests a 'green light' for foreign hackers

Re: Umm...

"Swords are large and can leave a mess. Why not just stick to hanging Chad instead"

I don't think there are any politicians around here called Chad.

Re: Umm...

Yeah, a sword is just a bit too unwieldy to use to make your mark on a ballot paper. Though it does leave no doubt about your voting intentions if you use it to make your mark on a politician. Which I think was one of the original design goals for swords.

Re: Most Secure Voting Machine

"The pencil (with appropriate procedures)"

I still think the pen I bring with me is even more secure.

Vodafone, TPG propose 'merger of equals'

Before I moved house last month I was with Internode for Internet. Internode don't supply service to my new address, though I still have my mobile phone with them. While I was with Internode, they got bought by IInet, though left to operate as it's own brand. Then IInet got bought by TPG, leaving both IInet and Internode operating as their own brands. So will this basically end up as Vodaphone owning TPG that owns IInet that owns Internode, and it's turtles all the way down? I guess it's better than being Dodo's all the way down.

We're all sick of Fortnite, but the flaw found in its downloader is the latest way to attack Android

Well, that escalated quickly.

Don't let Google dox me on Lumen Database, nameless man begs

Re: Bank Holiday Friday

Christmas, the following New Years Day, my birthday, my sisters birthday, her husbands birthday, and my brothers ex wife's birthday, all fall on the same day of the week, all within a couple of months. I'm too scared to ask about my brothers new wife's birthday. The rest of the family, no idea, they had to make theirs hard.

Re: Solicitors from London law firm Pinsent Masons

"it reveals just as much as what the complainant was wearing."

I was gonna comment on the descriptions of what the complainant was wearing. Why is that important? What does it reveal? Why are people so fussy about what other people wear? Oh wait, I can answer that last one, it's coz the fashion industry likes to make large profits. Clothes do not make the man, as a descendant of several generations of tailors and dressmakers I can tell you, man (or woman) makes the clothes.

I'm in the middle of three weeks of jury duty. Last week I turned up wearing no footwear, and despite the fact there was no mention anywhere of what to wear on your feet, I was turned away from performing my duty. Why is what I'm wearing on my feet important, when they only need my mind to perform my jury duty?

Anyone can wear a business suit and a fake Rolex watch, it means nothing. "Dressed in mismatched jacket and trousers" may just mean he is colour blind. "gold-coloured watch below his cuff-linked sleeve" means he begged, borrowed, stole, or actually owns a watch and cufflinks, that he decided to wear that day. Still doesn't say anything about the actual person wearing them. The worlds worst scum, and the worlds most saintly person, can both wear the same clothes. No one makes you sit a six week morals course when you buy clothes, they only care that you can pay for them.

We've found another problem with IPv6: It's sparked a punch-up between top networks

Re: "As you probably know, the internet is a network of networks. "

"It's clearly a superhighway with many smaller highways branching off it. Though nobody ever explained how the service station toilets fit into that metaphor..."

Have you not seen social media sites?

Re: El Reg & IPv6

"Too much salt is bad for you."

As I explain to people watching me put extra salt on my food, I've had two doctors tell me I don't eat enough salt.

"Unless it’s for your hash :)"

I've never tried smoking hash with extra salt though, but no doctor has ever suggested that.

"Analysis We've discovered another reason why IPv6 is, right mow, a poor substitute to IPv4:"

"Right mow"? The grass is always greener on the other IP protocol?

Re: El Reg & IPv6

"It does point out the flaws in the existing peering system, however."

They are, however, not technical flaws, just business decisions.

AI image recognition systems can be tricked by copying and pasting random objects

"I have visions of cars crashing in a similar manner to Coyote hitting a brick wall because Roadrunner has painted a tunnel entrance there."

I think you have stumbled on something there. Self driving car makers need to feed their cars with a steady diet of Looney Tunes cartoons.

Re: Pretty obvious really

"Is that a Gorilla that feeds on bananas generally, a Gorilla currently eating a banana or something else."

It might be a banana in the gorillas pocket, or he's just glad to see me.

Re: I can see the future

"new t-shirts will be produced."

"Rinse."

The update cycle will probably be short enough that you don't need to actually wash these t-shirts, just buy the new ones. So no rinsing needed.

I'll get my t-shirt with a photo of a coat on it.

If I was to see an elephant floating around my lounge room, I'd start disbelieving my eyes to.

No, eight characters, some capital letters and numbers is not a good password policy

"write them on a post it note and place it under the keyboard"

Instead of on the monitor, clever, security by obscurity.

The Register's 2018 homepage redesign: What's going on now?

Re: Waste of space.... literally

"Category and time/comment count - two lines that just aren't needed"

I kinda like those bits. Though now I'm trying out the RSS feed, that doesn't include those bits. We shall see.

Black hats are baddie hackers, white hats are goodies, grey hats will sell IP to kids in hoodies

"47 per cent of insider threats stemmed from maliciousness of one sort of another, with the remainder caused by carelessness."

Hanlon's razor has some statistical backing then, but it's close.

Judge bars distribution of 3D gun files... er, five years after they were slapped onto the web

Re: @Grikath you must be...

"Why didnt they make an engine then? A simple 2 stroke maybe."

Coz 3D printing half a weapon gets you way more free publicity than 3D printing half a lawn mower.

Re: I don't get it....

"If it wasn't a gun, but instead was 3D CAD files for the construction of a anti-personnel device, or a 'dirty' nuclear weapon would the reaction be different?"

I recall decades ago a popular Australian electronics magazine, would always publish instructions for building various electronic devices, and the local electronics shops would produce kits to match. One month they published a "How to build an atomic bomb" article, though no kits where produced. My take away from that article was that A) if you are not careful you'll die, B) the hard part was getting suitable nuclear material. No doubt many of the components for a dirty nuclear weapon could be 3D printed, but it you still wont be able to get 3D printing plastic filament to be suitably nuclear.

Anti-personnel devices are easy, 3D print something incriminating, leave it under the desk of the staff member you don't like, send email to HR telling them where to find it.

'He points out that while the gun CAD files cannot be uploaded to the internet, "they can be emailed, mailed, securely transmitted, or otherwise published within the United States."'

I give up on the world+dog actually understanding things like "upload" and "download". Emailing is just using some other Internet protocol for "uploading" the files. I was on a local TV stations catch up site the other day, looking to watch a particular episode of a particular show. For some odd reason, that particular episode wasn't available for streaming, though the episodes on either side where available. It was available for "download" though. So I "downloaded" it, then watched it. The only difference was it took up more space on my HD before I had to delete it. I could still watch it, still pause, rewind, etc. No DRM was involved. shrugs

Everybody dance now: Watch this AI code fool friends into thinking you can cut a rug like a pro

Re: Oh boy

"His ugliness was the stuff of legend. In an age of affordable beauty, there was something heraldic about his lack of it. ~ W Gibson, Neuromancer"

Which is why the women are all over me in Second Life. Anybody can be super sexy at the click of a mouse in Second Life, but I decided to be a reasonable replica of my ugly real life self. So super sexy got boring, and ugly me was considered hot.

Re: VPN

"I wonder if the fact that El Regs hyperlink is appended with a time signature that is why it's different over a VPN?"

I tried again and managed to watch the full video this time, via the VPN. I have recently moved house, in the old house I had fibre to my bedroom, now I have ADSL2+ shared with six other people over WiFi. Sometimes it sucks more than other times.

Through the first part of the video I kept thinking "that's all rather robotic, why don't they try some ballet", and in the end part, they tried some ballet. Not bad, though you can see a bit of rubber limbs syndrome, and the fuzziness others have pointed out.

The video was unavailable to me, both in Australia, and via my European VPN. Does that mean that fake dance is fake news?

/me dances away with my coat.

Heads up: Fujitsu tips its hand to reveal exascale Arm supercomputer processor – the A64FX

Re: ARM dreams of being in a laptop?

There is also this ARM based laptop - https://www.olimex.com/Products/DIY-Laptop/ runs Linux or Android.

As porn site pounds hard on piracy laws, Cox pulls out prematurely

'in this context it should only be held liable it is was being "willfully blind" to the issue.'

Was the proof reader "willfully blind" to this, or am I being "willfully blind" to what "it is was" means?

Re: Copyright Issues

"Porn certainly would not meet the definition of 'useful arts'."

Porn is useful to some people, and some of it is art. OK, not a lot of it is art, but some of it is.

Chap asks Facebook for data on his web activity, Facebook says no, now watchdog's on the case

"If I see that drone flying over my property it will not make the delivery..."

You'll pop it with extreme prejudice?

Just how rigged is America's broadband world? A deep dive into one US city reveals all

Re: How hard is it really?

"IMHO, the consumer-friendly approach is monopoly infrastructure based on defined standards. So that could be FTTH based on say, 1Gbps Ethernet or VLAN to each property. Competition would then be on services offered over that infrastructure from PoP to consumer unit.. Which would be technically simple(ish), but would also need regulation and legislative support. One can but dream though."

That's kinda what the Australian NBN, er NBN MTM, um nbn was supposed to be. At least until our Prime Minister Tony Abbot, er Malcolm Turnbull, um Scott Morrison, or whoever it is next month*, got their grubby fingers on it.

(* Was Peter Dutton PM for a few seconds, and we all blinked and missed it?)

Australia blocks Huawei, ZTE from 5G rollout

Re: 89724102172714182892114I755167034974309673434677347864...

If you have been paying attention, that really long number changes sometimes, even though the puerile Uranus jokes don't. So I don't think it ever remembers their "name". It could just be some web forum equivalent of a numbers radio station.

"the country's National Broadband Network (a fixed line network)"

Except for those parts that are fixed wireless, and the satellite bits, but really considering the dogs breakfast that has been made of the Aussie nbn, I don't think "fixed" is an appropriate word to use for any of it. So that part of the article should be corrected to read -

"the country's National Broadband Network (a broken network)"

IBM slaps patent on coffee-delivering drones that can read your MIND

Will these oh so clever drones be able to figure out that I only like my caffeine icy cold, with bubbles?

Redis has a license to kill: Open-source database maker takes some code proprietary

"which makes open-source license management software"

Is the open-source license management software open-source?

If it doesn't need to be connected, don't: Nurse prescribes meds for sickly hospital infosec

"A graph comparing Dutch and American hospital website security in 2017 ... click to enlarge"

I'm disappointed that El Reg misspelled "embiggen", and left off the full stop.

Everyone screams patch ASAP – but it takes most organizations a month to update their networks

For some complex software, it takes a long time to figure out "what did they break this time", and you can almost guarantee that something got broke. I'm looking at you OpenSim.

Network monitoring is hard... If only there was some kind of machine that could learn to do it

I'm still looking for a good solution to monitoring just two computers. Last time I looked, I had to use half a dozen different tools to do what I needed.

Security MadLibs: Your IoT electrical outlet can now pwn your smart TV

Re: I have a "Smart TV"

"TV doesn't have to have smarts, why build something in that a $30 dongle can do just as adequately and can be replaced/upgraded when the time comes rather than wiping out the whole set,"

So that when the time comes that it needs to be replaced/upgraded, they can sell you a new expensive smart TV, instead of only selling you a new cheap dongle.

Big Tech turns saboteur to cripple new California privacy law in private

Re: 'My hosts file is currently 12,492 lines long'

"Go down to your local shop, like you've always done, up until recently, and buy things in cash. It's not difficult."

It is if none of the local shops sell what you want to buy.

Use Debian? Want Intel's latest CPU patch? Small print sparks big problem

"Also, the patches are picked up during the usual monthly routine of fetching and stalling operating system software updates."

Others have pointed out the "stalling" typo, I'm taking umbrage with the "usual monthly routine" bit. Since this article is specific to Debian, I'll point out that Debian doesn't do monthly update releases. They release updates when the updates are ready. Personally I do weekly updates on my Linux based systems, though I also check daily to see if there's anything in urgent need of an update.

Re: Shrug

Alternatively - Allied Atheists Association assuredly, and alliteratively.

Apple tipped to revive forgotten Macbook Air and Mac mini – report

Many years ago I bought a Mac Mini. So that I could have a development and test system for Mac OS X, purely for cross platform compatibility (same reason I have Windows). At the time the Mac Mini was the only Apple computer you could buy that didn't include a screen & keyboard & mouse. I have a perfectly usable KVM, and bugger all extra desk space. If it ever dies, I'd want something similar for the same reasons.

Bloke hurls sueball over Google's 'is it off yet?' location data slurping

Re: Question

"And if you turn off Location Saving and tracking in your Google account there are inconvenient side effects - like any linked Google Home devices suddenly becoming completely dumb until you re-enable the 'optional' settings."

Google Daydream will stop working to, though not Google Cardboard. According to Google, location services are needed to track the Google Daydream hand controller, a device that only reports rotation, not location.

Miss America 'scholarship program' adds Microsoft Azure developer to lineup

I've always said, coding isn't a spectator sport.

The future of humanity: A Bluetooth ball hitting your face – forever

Re: moon foam

"So no actual moon, thanks for clearing that up."

That's not a moon!