Posts by onefang

It's World (Terrible) Password (Advice) Day!

Re: What's the point?

"The compiler has been taking hits off the bong again."

That explains a lot about LSL. (Linden Scripting Language, the scripting language in Second Life, for those that don't know.)

"something that kinda-sorta works almost acceptably but will never get actually good"

You just described most of the stuff in the world, most of which we are stuck with.

Re: a lot of systems don't like character such as ø

"I remember the day when you only had one computer per household, "

I remember a day when there where three computers for all the schools in the state. We had to share them. Luckily there where only two people in my school that knew what to do with a computer, me and my mate.

I have the greatest system for creating memorable passwords...

... not a chance I'll tell anyone though, that's half of why it's so great.

password managers

The article should have mentioned the differences between online and offline password managers, and their pros / cons.

Re: Biometric?

Biometrics is a user name, not a password.

Re: Rule number 6

I don't make her do that, she came up with the idea all by herself. Coz she's lousy at remembering passwords, a password manager is too hard for her, and me being a sysadmin at times, I'm used to looking after other peoples passwords, so what's a few more? So, when she remembers, she tells me her passwords and I store them in my password manager. It's the times she forgets that are a pain, then neither of us knows them.

The steaks have never been higher: Swiss Lidl is selling local cannabis

"Or or some wrinkely old ballsack looking dude will come along, and take over the entire known Galaxy, while sending his 'Agents' out to put down some Sect of Space Priests. Who will have all been, but forgotten about in around Twenty Years time. Before some millennial comes 'round and destroys your new shiny, shiny."

I'll have what he's having.

Reg man straps on Facebook's new VR goggles, feels sullied by the experience

Re: Useable content?

"@onefang: Pray do tell more!"

Well, since you asked...

I had long been involved in Second Life / OpenSim. The Second Life viewer was open sourced long ago, and as is typical with crap code, lots of people forked it. The Second Life server was never open sourced, so some people wrote a clean room implementation of the server called OpenSim, which is open source. Almost as crap, and people have forked it. Some company hired me to work on their custom viewer. Some other company hired me as their long term viewer developer, and I also helped run their OpenSim based grid.

With that experience under my belt, yet another company eventually hired me to add Oculus Rift support to their custom OpenSim viewer. This was before Oculus Rift was released to consumers, so I bought a Rift DK2 and ported the Rift code from the CtlAltStudio viewer to this companies custom viewer, which I recall was largely based on the Imprudence viewer. I understand at a trade show Angela Merkel submitted to the experience of my VR code and didn't throw up.

Someone wrote a viewer for Android, which I believe now supports Google Cardboard or Daydream, I've not tried it.

Finally we get to the interesting bit. The local city councilor, being the only person I had ever voted for that actually won, got into a discussion with me at a protest he had organised. I mentioned the above things to him, or some of them. He often uses Google Street View to show people various things around his ward, especially planned changes. He was interested in taking this to the third dimension, and adding his own stuff. So I dragged my Oculus Rift development system to his office, gave them a demo, and we made plans. I was part way through a from the ground up rewrite of Imprudence viewer and OpenSim, since the original code bases are pure unadulterated crap, but that project was no where near ready for this job. He would have preferred a web based option, but there was no mature open source solution for that. So we could wait a few years for the code to be ready, or go with stuff that works now. Who knows, in a few years time he may no longer be a city councilor, so we went with the later option.

So the plan was to use various bits of data, including OpenStreetMaps, to build an OpenSim based grid that replicates the city ward he is responsible for, and to script various bits of the city so that clicking on them switches between existing city and planned city. Either running a viewer on his laptop, or an Oculus Rift, or the Android viewer on a phone, to show the things he was using Street View for. Also letting people have guest accounts, so they can wander around on their own.

I wrote a Lua script to collect elevation data from here, overhead photos from there, building data from elsewhere, and build a small database of data and textures, to be read by a C# OpenSim module & LSL script I wrote that created that section of our city in his grid. Second Life / OpenSim avatars are generally giants, so I scaled things down to be life sized, and even spent a lot of time walking around the virtual / real city with stop watch / tape measure in hand, to keep it real. Basically you stand in an empty grid, enter longitude / latitude for the part of the world you are interested in, watch as the world grows around you, then go for a wander.

The big problem was the building data. OpenStreetMaps has protocols for including building shapes in it's database, but since it crowd sources its data, we had to rely on the crowd to source the data. No one had added any building data to our part of the world. The councilor wasn't able to find a city council source of that info that I could use. So I have created an OpenSim grid that replicated our local council ward, with accurate elevations, reasonably detailed photos of the ground and building roofs, but no actual buildings. sigh

I should dump this project in my GitHub account some day, and find a part of the world with building data so I can finish it. Alas the councilor is stuck with Google Street View for now.

Ya had to ask, didn't ya.

Re: Corporate tool?

You are only half right. Sure the Vive and the Rift have somewhat low resolution, but for example a Moto Z in a Daydream has significantly higher resolution. Other companies are working on even higher resolutions, with kit coming Real Soon Now. So getting things up to scratch for virtual monitors isn't that far away, and doesn't need that big a graphics rig.

I recall there's even software for doing this already.

Re: Battlezone

Sitting in an office chair and swiveling is too much fucking effort?

Re: Useable content?

"I would love a VR version of Google Street View with intuitive controls."

Googles Street View app works fine in Google Daydream.

I've been working on rendering OpenStreetMap in an OpenSim based virtual world, and also on adding VR abilities to an OpenSim viewer. You feed in latitude and longitude, it renders that part of the world. Wouldn't be hard to feed it your current GPS coordinates.

Erm, sideloading movies? There's plenty of apps for Daydream and Cardboard that will play movies that are on your phone. No need for "sideloading". Daydream compatible phones even come with YouTube VR, and as was mentioned, Netflix VR.

Cambridge Analytica dismantled for good? Nope: It just changed its name to Emerdata

Re: Suggestion for a new name

"Which reminds me the Quack has given me a tube to fill with a crap sample. The handle provided is ridiculously short."

Which reminds me, the government wants me to give them shit. Now that I'm over fifty, they send me one of those sample collecting kits every five years. Undecided whether to address it to Parliament House Canberra, or to my local members home.

Re: Kudos El Reg

The Australian ABC also missed the name change and only reported it as a close down.

Re: Scum...

"I've seen companies use this strategy before, when I worked in Financial Services, this was common when a company's name became synonymous with bad practice and they come under threat of investigation or law suite."

When a company changes it's name, it's safe to assume they are doing it to get away from the horrible stench they created around their old name.

No top-ups, please, I'm a millennial: Lightweight yoof shunning booze like never before

Re: They'll grow up

"Before I got a car, commuting 5 miles on public transport was an hour each way (this is where I got my transport costs from). "

I was avoiding all the housing talk, but this caught my eye.

There was a place I used to work at where catching the bus there took an hour, coz I had to catch a bus into the city, then one out again, no direct bus. It also took me an hour to walk there. I kinda like walking. So unless the weather was crazy, I'd always walk. Much cheaper, and good for me.

North will remain North for now, say geo-magnetic boffins

Re: So what happens if...

"...the overdue magnetic flip, the overdue yosemite super volcano and my overdue library book all happen at the same time?"

The good news is you get to keep the book.

"Wearing a coat when the mercury in the thermometer hasn't even frozen solid?"

Here in the Great Southern Land, I wear a coat when the temperature gets below 25 C.

I'll get my coat, it's 2 AM, and 25 C right now, not getting any warmer until after sunrise.

What could Facebook possibly do next to reassure privacy fears? Yup – make a dating app

Re: Google next?

"he will boast about the 12 billion users FB now has... just, about 90% will be men. The others, female bots"

No, that'll be 60% men, 20% scammers of indeterminate gender, 10% bots, and 10% very busy women.

Re: Horrifying

"Given some of the friend recommendations I get on FB, this is a terrible idea"

I dunno, I've managed to train FB to mostly give me good looking women as friend recommendations.

Facebook has a higher standard of transparency, he claimed, than TV or print publications.

Well, FB's really transparent about its users data at least.

How fast is a piece of string? Boffin shoots ADSL signal down twine

"Sadly, continued testing was difficult because the office air conditioning kept drying out the string."

Heat shrink tubing should fix that.

I wonder if the same experiment would work over wet noodles? Obviously adding salt to taste.

Grab your lamp, you've pulled: Brits punt life-saving gravity-powered light

"Must be from Australia, everything can kill you in Australia."

Not everything, the Australian scorpions can't kill you. Seems their poison is too piss weak. Everything else, yep.

BOFH: Guys? Guys? We need blockchain... can you install blockchain?

Re: I need one!

"Lots of rocks are made of silicon right? So can I call this surplus Pentium 4 (2.8GHZ Northwood!) that's sat on my desk a pet rock? It's about as useful."

Only if you feed it regularly, and have it desexed. A Pentium is for life, not just for Christmas.

Sysadmin unplugged wrong server, ran away, hoped nobody noticed

Re: breeding ballpoint pens

"That could explain the rise of plastic particles in the oceans."

And where squids get their ink.

Re: breeding ballpoint pens

I'm sure clothes hangers fit in there somewhere.

I'll get my coat, it's the one sitting in a crumpled heap on the floor for some odd reason. I'm sure I hung it up properly before.

Re: its like the leads at the back of my desk at work.

"If physicists weren't too busy messing around with trivia such as dark matter, string theory and quantum entanglement they'd be getting to the bottom of this."

But string theory and quantum entanglement are precisely why cables get mysteriously entangled. Dark matter probably is involved to, it's usually dark for long periods of time where the cables are.

"Austrailia, Japan, Canada, most of Europe are all 3rd world countries?"

Dunno about Japan, Canada, or Europe, but Australia has 3rd world quality Internet.

Want to make a super-earth? Bring on the frikking lasers

"All well and good, but where do the sharks fit into the picture?"

The sharks fit in to the picture as very quickly cooked fish fingers.

Double double, soil and trouble, fire burn and heat shield bubble: NASA cracks rover, has dirty talk with ESA

"Just get Matt Damon to patch up the cracked heat shield with some duct tape. Boom, done!"

Yes there will be a boom, and yes you will be done.

Programmers! Close the StackOverflow tabs. This AI robot will write your source code for you

Re: For an AI project, this is a spectacuarly unintelligent approach

"I think it's funny to create an AI that writes boilerplate for you. We used to have junior developers to do that, but I guess that's progress. :/"

Waaaay back in the mid '70s, at my very first paying job, when I was a junior developer still in high school (the job was during the school holidays), I wrote a script that did my job of writing boilerplate code, then spent most of the rest of the time working on my own projects. This was in Cobol, it's good to see that the new Cobol is following in its footsteps, even if it's a bit slow to catch up.

'Alexa, listen in on my every word and send it all to a shady developer'

Re: Does anybody else notice...

Talking to myself is often the only way to get intelligent conversation.

Facebook confesses: Buckle up, there's plenty more privacy lapses where that came from

Re: I never realised I could have had a scoop

"What next? Facebook exec. fall for 419 scams, phising emails, or forward junk emails to 1000's of people because for every one, Bill Gates will donate a kidney?"

That's a lot of kidneys, Bill must be using other peoples kidneys.

Re: Facebook still has info on us

"If you search for me on Google then nothing comes up and I want to keep it that way."

I just typed "Anonymous Coward" into Google and got 1,260,000 hits. That's way more than for my alias, and way more for my real name. I'd hardly call that "nothing".

Oddly, the top hit on my real name, and the number four hit, where obituaries for two people that share my uncommon name. The images that turned up included photos of a dozen strangers in suits, and my cartoon that I often use for an avatar. I don't own a suit.

Facebook has to own up to their bad stuff now, coz it'll cost the shareholders some money this quarter, but It'll be back to business as usual once the profit hit is over.

Leave it to Beaver: Unity is long gone and you're on your GNOME

Re: GUI is minor

Text based horrors like XML are designed to make life easier for the programmer trying to debug stuff, but bloats things out massively for the 99.9999% of the time that programmers are not trying to debug stuff. These horrors should all die in a fire, a really big one.

It's not you, it's Big G: Sneaky spammers slip strangers spoofed spam, swamp Gmail sent files

This is the same bug that Google has called a feature since day one, I filed a bug report about that many years ago, as did others, but Google claimed it's a feature, wont fix.

In my case things that I send to a mailing list, got classified as sent email by Gmail on the way out, which is fair enough, but also get classified as sent email on the way in. So I don't get to see my own emails in mailing lists. I have to subscribe two gmail addresses to each mailing list, one write only, one read only. Or just move all my old mailing lists off gmail, something I really should pull my finger out and get finished.

Tantalising Tabby's Star teases watchers with big dimming event

Re: Here's hoping

"Not sure what Trump will do when faced with an entire alien invasion fleet but it would be a very short battle. I suppose he could always offer to surrender."

After offering them a cup of covfefe.

OK, this time it's for real: The last available IPv4 address block has gone

Re: NAT Me

"Sways to the rhythm with right fish clenched in air."

You definitely don't want to be clenching the wrong fish.

Re: "Nobody uses it..."

"I use it!

My home network, my ISP connection and the server where all my web sites live (and the sites I host for others) are all dual stack. It wasn't THAT hard."

I'm almost the same. My home and server both are dual stack. My home network tries to be, but I think there's a bug in my old router that stops IPv6 working fully. Can't be arsed to fix that just yet, but it's on my TODO.

Motorola Z² Force: This one's for the butterfingered Android lovers

Re: Dammit

"have a look at the Z2 play. Its the same phone with some lesser specs, with a much smaller price tag. you can find it for around £300 or less and is totally compatible with the same range of mods."

The entire Z series is compatible with the Moto Mods.

Re: Just ask them about the OS updates. Go on I dare you

'And "Your device's software is up to date" - really, so where's my effing Oreo then?'

Dunno where yours is, mines on my Moto Z. Maybe you dropped it back'o'da'couch? Dog ate it?

Re: Mods?

The specs for the Moto Z mod system are open, there are third party mods. I have the development mod. I'm trying to talk a client into doing something with it. There are also more mods available from Motorola than mentioned in the article.

"Yeah yeah yeah, features, yeah, camera yeah. Security UPDATES?????"

My Moto Z, which is an older model, was getting security updates once a month, until the rather lengthy wait for Oreo. It got Oreo this month, I'll see if it returns to monthly updates. Considering it had Marshmellow on it when I bought it, that's three major updates it has had, and several minor ones.

Re: I tried using mods with the LG G5

"1) With a mod on, it's too bulky/heavy to put in a pocket"

Considering it starts off being very thin, I find it fits in my pocket fine with a mod on, even in the same pocket as my dumb phone.

"2) You can't put a case on the phone when it has a mod attached"

Mines been dropped several times. The mod tends to come off and the edge bumpers protect the phone. So far no damage, not even a scratch. Still wont bounce it across a table.

Re: Lost

"Motorola’s Z2 Force isn’t the newest kid on the block. But it still remains the only “shatterproof” phone on the market"

I tend to find dumbphones are pretty shatter proof, at least the good ones. Dumb phones I have bounced across a table to demonstrate how tough they are, then show my smart phone in it's protective cocoon, and not bounce it across a table.

Re: Battery life for an "outdoors" phone

"I have the original Moto Z Force (1.5 years old) and I don't think I've ever seen the battery under 30% after two days of operation even now. I totally forgot about the mods it can use lol."

I have the Moto Z, and easily get a couple of days out of it. YMMV obviously.

"I'm just really happy it's getting the Oreo 8.0 update soon ;)"

I got Oreo OTA already a week or two ago. Real Soon Now for you I guess.

Cisco, Microsoft and 32 big vendor pals join ‘Accord’ to improve security by doing … security stuff

Re: Never going to happen

"Profit for the 1% takes priority over everything else, so screw the public."

You are wrong. It's not mere profit, it's ever increasing profit.

Google to add extra Gmail security … by building a walled garden

Re: 'Dunno about the others, I don't use them.'

"You use F-droid regularly and its totally clear of Malware?"

Yes.