Posts by SonOfDilbert

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

Shirley you can't be serious?

Satellites with lasers and machine guns coming! China's new plans? Trump's Space Force? Nope, the French

Re: Well

> ... because orbit is quickly going to be full of far too much shrapnel to track once the 'first strike' happens

I have one word for you: Space Magnet.

Tesla’s Autopilot losing track of devs crashing out of 'leccy car maker

Musk is wasting his time with this Tesla lark. Take the damn bus!

Forgive my obvious Luditeness but, presumably you want a self-driving car to get from A to B whilst reading, knitting, having breakfast, playing with yourself, etc, right? Why not just take public transport? The end result is the same and it's cheaper than a Tesla. Also, in most cities, cars are the most ineffective and inefficient method of transportation, often beaten by pedestrians, motorcycles, buses, cyclists, skateboards and trains.

I've often thought, whilst walking by stationary vehicles during rush hour, that you may as well join all of these cars physically together to hold, say, about 30-50 people, have them go on predictable routes convenient for the majority and split the cost between passengers. Genius!

DeepNude deep-nuked: AI photo app stripped clothes from women to render them naked. Now, it's stripped from web

Great. Now I have to try and work after you mentioned 7 of 9.

Your server remote login isn't root:password, right? Cool. You can keep your data. Oh sh... your IoT gear, though?

Re: SO...

Personally, I think it's a sterling name.

Hey China, while you're in all our servers, can you fix these support tickets? IBM, HPE, Tata CS, Fujitsu, NTT and their customers pwned

Re: Huawei

Popcorn?

Imagine being charged to take a lunch break... even if you didn't. Welcome to the world of these electronics assembly line workers

Re: Workers' rights getting shafted

I don't think that many people who voted to leave the EU realise that the UK contributed greatly to the creation of so many EU laws -- including what you mention. I think that UK workers will indeed experience the kind of pettiness and disregard detailed in the article -- especially with Bozzer The Clown about to become PM.

Meet the new Dropbox: It's like the old Dropbox, but more expensive, and not everyone's thrilled

Re: Do one thing really well ?

Exactly what I was thinking.

Nope, we're stuffed, shrieks Apple channel as iPhone shipments enter a double-digit spiral

I'm genuinely confused about why this comment got so many downvotes. It seems like a well-reasoned, perfectly valid comment to me -- especially the boot note. Are there really so many iDevice haters here that have a fast-twitch muscle spasm reaction when anything neutral or vaguely positive about Apple is mentioned?

IBM raising axe for 'significant workforce balancing in Europe', says staffer rep council

As a Red Hatter based in Europe...

As a Red Hatter based in Europe and three years shy of 50, I am observing our new overlords with, erm, interest.

Bad news. Asteroid 1999 KW4 flew by, did not hit Earth killing us all. Good news: Another one, Didymos, is on the way

Actors

Can't we simply send some ageing actors up on a one-way mission with a spade and a nuke?

Ah! You brought back memories of my childhood/early teenage years. Thank you!

The dark arcade on Saturday morning. 50p pocket money. Chewing gum making the floor sticky. Older kids smoking whilst playing Donkey Kong, Pac Man, Centipede, etc. The rapid clink of notes being changed into coins. The gutsy thrum of Defender as I Press P1 To Start...

It's the curious case of the vanishing iPhone sales as Huawei grabs second place off Apple in smartmobe stakes

Re: SE sized devices

Erm, nope. I don't think that it's true that demand has evaporated for the SE form factor (although, admittedly, I don't have anything apart from anecdotal evidence to back this).

The SE is relatively well-priced for the specs; the battery lasts two days (at least, mine does); it can do most of what premium phones can do including making phone calls; it includes a pretty good camera; it looks like a 5S so it's presumably less likely to be tea-leaved by someone; and - guess what? - it fits really nicely in a pocket.

Fixes for Windows 10 arrive (for Insiders, soz) and covers are pulled from Edge for macOS

You want me to instal WTF on my MBP?!?

The day I install Edge in my MBP is the day that cats start leaving human-themed memes laying about the place for us to see.

Can I get a RHEL yeah? Version 8 arrives at last as IBM given go-ahead to wolf down Red Hat

Fedora 30

Fedora 30 also has been released to mainly very positive reviews.

https://getfedora.org/

Re: Tentacles?

Here, have an amateurish ASCII icon instead:

^(;,;)^

Airbnb host thrown in the clink after guest finds hidden camera inside Wi-Fi router

Previous guests

Can the previous guests at those properties get some kind of recompense? I would feel really creeped out knowing that I had stayed at one of these places even though I wouldn't be 100% sure that the hidden cameras had been in place during my stay.

Great disturbance in the Force as Star Wars' 'big walking carpet' is laid to rest

Legacy

What a legacy to leave.

R. I. P.

http://amatranscripts.com/ama/peter_mayhew_2013-09-01.html

There's NordVPN odd about this, right? Infosec types concerned over strange app traffic

Tyrell Corporation?

Hm, Laura Tyrell. I wonder if her father is Eldon Tyrell of the infamous Tyrell Corporation? Maybe she's trying to cover for some sort of new auto-tracking communications built into their replicants. This would be a cheaper method of tracking them rather than having a blade runner hunt and retire them.

Now here's a Galaxy far, far away: Samsung stalls Fold rollout after fold-able screens break in hands of reviewers

Re: What happened to testing?

I thought this was more generally part of the Agile process...

Ex-Mozilla CTO: US border cops demanded I unlock my phone, laptop at SF airport – and I'm an American citizen

FF versions

"Gal believes the ordeal was not a random search gone awry, but rather a targeted attempt by the government to send a message."

The message being: Firefox version numbering -- WTF???

Our amazing industry-leading AI was too dumb to detect the New Zealand massacre live vid, Facebook shrugs

Re: AI video detection

Isn't this explained in the article?

Two in five 'AI startups' essentially have no AI, mega-survey of nearly 3,000 upstarts finds

My age was challenged in Sainsburys when buying a bottle of wine. I was in my late thirties and had a large hipster beard at the time.

Hipster whines at tech mag for using his pic to imply hipsters look the same, discovers pic was of an entirely different hipster

Re: We have surely reached peak beard.

This:

> No Socks!

> Trousers 5 inches too short!

Maybe it's my age but this ^ makes me cringe.

UK.gov's Verify has 'significantly' missed every target, groans spending watchdog

Unfortunately, I fear that your cynicism is justified. :[

Official science: Massive asteroids are so difficult to destroy, Bruce Willis wouldn't stand a chance

How much time would be needed?

So, how much time would be needed for the core to gravitationally pull the debris back to itself? Surely in a situation with a direct collision path with Earth, this effect will be way too slow to matter.

Also, when I run the experiment in my noggin, two massive rocks colliding at 5 km/s do much more than the youtube clip shows.

Prodigy dancer and vocalist Keith Flint found dead aged 49

Suicide - CALM

Apparently it was suicide. As someone else above pointed out, suicide is the biggest killer for men under 45 (in the UK, at least). That statistic is fucking crazy. What a fucking waste of talented men - whether it's Keith Flint or Bob Jones next door.

For anyone affected - potentially or actually - by suicide, you could do a lot worse than to take a peek at this website: https://www.thecalmzone.net/

SpaceX Crew Dragon: Launched and docked. Now, about that splashdown...

Aging ISS

This kind of thing is truly inspirational - countries putting side their differences and working together to advance science and soft toys. But, as has been pointed out, the ISS is getting a little old so maybe it's time for a new ISS. Maybe this time something a little more...ambitious:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/gnut/kickstarter-open-source-death-star

IBM hunkers down for no-deal Brexit, warns of disruption to supply chain, data transfers

Freedom of data

Without a deal on freedom of data a lot of companies that operate in multiple countries are going to come unstuck if they're not careful.

One click and you're out: UK makes it an offence to view terrorist propaganda even once

Re: Goodbye Youtube?

Most have connections and money in lieu of skills.

A once-in-a-lifetime Opportunity: NASA bids emotional farewell to its cocky, hardworking RC science car on Mars

Re: RIP Opportunity

I think the next rover should be named after any kids' cartoon/animation character. My current favourite being, 'Chorlton.'

Cocks

Perhaps we should draw a cock on all of the planets we explore in lieu of placing a flag?

Pandas so useless they just look at delicious kid who fell into enclosure

Relate

The older I get, the more I can relate to these creatures. Don't they kind of symbolise the human race as we collectively stare into the perfect storm of Brexit, Trump(it), climate and a myriad other outrages that we should be rioting about but instead of just shrugging and saying, 'Well, there's not much I can do about it, really, is there...'?

Maybe we should save the panda and instead let ourselves dwindle into extinction.

620 million accounts stolen from 16 hacked websites now for sale on dark web, seller boasts

Wall of shame

"Dubsmash (162 million), MyFitnessPal (151 million), MyHeritage (92 million), ShareThis (41 million), HauteLook (28 million), Animoto (25 million), EyeEm (22 million), 8fit (20 million), Whitepages (18 million), Fotolog (16 million), 500px (15 million), Armor Games (11 million), BookMate (8 million), CoffeeMeetsBagel (6 million), Artsy (1 million), and DataCamp (700,000)."

This is like a 21st century wall of shame. I _know_ that cyber security is tough, but come on. I would guess that most of these breaches used known exploits against servers that were either not up-to-date or lacked some basic hardening. These breaches are incredibly disrespectful to clients.

Only plebs use Office 2019 over Office 365, says Microsoft's weird new ad campaign

Perfectly scripted for bigger profits

A few things came to mind whilst watching all three of their nauseating adverts:

1. MS chose tasks that Office 365 could perform better than Office 2019 and then expected us to be amazed. Wow.

2. There is, I am sure, absolutely no technical reason my the "AI" helpers in 365 can't be integrated with Office 2019.

3. Paying monthly for software that traditionally used to be had for a one-off payment must make them a bucket-load more cash - hence #2, above.

4. I reckon 90% of what people do in real life with Office 365 could be done perfectly well using Office 2019 or a free alternative - hence these horrible ads.

5. #1, #2, #3 & #4 make MS just as evil as they ever were.

Are you aware of the gravity of the situation on Mars? Why yes, say boffins: We rejigged Curiosity to measure it

Cried Alice:

'Curiouser and curiouser!'

Techie finds himself telling caller there is no safe depth of water for operating computers

Drama

Wa-ter drama!

Apple yoinks enterprise certs from Facebook, Google, killing internal apps, to show its power

Re: "but it also treats mobile users like adults capable of making their own decisions"

But, where can I see these magical dancing equines of which you speak?

Amazon's titchy robots hit the streets, Waymo starts a self-driving car factory...

Strike!

I foresee strikes by delivery staff protesting about bots taking their jobs. Life is starting to increasingly mimic sci-fi.

Re: Scout

> Coming soon to v2.

Coming soon to v2:

- delivery bots that mimic human delivery personnel by ringing the doorbell and then leaving immediately

- delivery bots that leave your parcel on the doorstep for 8 hours while you are at work

- delivery bots that ignore your requested delivery time and tell you via an angry phone call that if you ain't home, the parcel will be sent back to the warehouse

- warehouse bots that handle your package so roughly that the contents arrives smashed into smithereens

'Numpty new boy' lets the boss take fall for mailbox obliteration

"He knew the VP's password..."

"He knew the VP's password..." is the t'Internet equivalent of oldies saying, 'We never used to lock our front doors around here...'

Whats(goes)App must come down... World in shock as Zuck decides to intertwine Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp

Re: Here's an alternative

I used to use ICQ yonks ago. I'm amazed to find that its still going and the source is Apache 2 licensed and also available on github.

https://icq.com

Re: One Platform

> ...and in the darkness *blind* them

Core blimey... When is an AMD CPU core not a CPU core? It's now up to a jury of 12 to decide

Re: without interference or interruption between cores

> Performance cannot be an definition of a core.

That's not what I'm suggesting. Overall performance is a combination of factors.

I am suggesting that the term "core" means to many people a unit that is capable of executing a workload simultaneously with other "cores" uninterrupted.

without interference or interruption between cores

The <ahem> *core* of the problem would appear to be that there is a reasonable expectation that an 8 core CPU can carry out eight tasks *simultaneously* - without interference or interruption between cores. This is what most people understand a modern CPU "core" to be and it seems that this AMD CPU cannot guarantee this pedigree of operation under a number of circumstances (like floating point ops, for example).

Regardless of whether you or some other random person thinks that this is acceptable or not, the cold, hard facts are simply cold and hard and rather fact-like.

Yes, you can remotely hack factory, building site cranes. Wait, what?

Re: So "Eagle Eye" was a documentary

Upvoted for the Eagle Eye reference.

More nodding dogs green-light terrible UK.gov pr0n age verification plans

ID theft

I bet there are plenty of hackers rubbing their hands at the thought of the forthcoming ill-secured treasure troves of IDs ripe for the picking.

Re: Easter you say?

I think he was being seriously ironic.

Re: Is this the stupidest idea ever?

Yeah, I mean, where did they come up with that number?

My 2019 resolution? Not to buy any of THIS rubbish

#7 - "AI"

Don't even get me started...

"AI" has become a new marketing soundbite for anything that might contain an 'if...else' code block. If the product isn't telling me, 'don't do that, Dave,' whilst I try to disengage its power core then it's not proper AI.