Re: Is this an outbreak of common sense?
Thanks for that, grumpyoldbloke. If they're being dicks, then I think they should definitely get honorary NZ citizenship.
Posts by Frumious Bandersnatch
2662 publicly visible posts • joined 8 Nov 2007
Page:
Australia reviews defence export controls, perhaps easing cryptography research
Give a boffin a Xeon and a big GPU, get a new big prime number
Tuesday 5th September 2017 13:06 GMT
> then you just collect a sufficiently large set of primes, multiply them all together and subtract 1 - bingo.
I thought about this yesterday and realised that it didn't work. Consider the product of the first n primes less one. You're basically using a prime sieve, but trying to generate new primes from it rather than doing primality testing.
For a sieve to work on a number n, you have to have a table of all possible prime factors up to sqrt(n). However, the list of primes and products grow at different rates, so you're going to come across a product whose square root is greater than the largest prime in your list, breaking the ability of the sieve to test whether the number is a prime or not.
This happens quite quickly since 2 * 3 * 5 - 1 is 29, and sqrt(29) > 5. Then comes 2 * 3 * 5 * 7 -1 = 209, which is composite with factors 11 and 19, thus kicking the whole idea in the head.
Linus Torvalds passed a kidney stone and then squeezed out Linux 4.13
Monday 4th September 2017 14:50 GMT
Re: Maladie cher maladie
I'll see your Rolling Stones and raise you a Bill S Burroughs... "The Junky's Christmas"
The boy looked at him, his eyes blank with pain. Finally he got one word: "Kidneys."
" Kidney stones?" Danny smiled. " I don’t mean it’s funny, kid. It’s just … I’ve faked it so many times. Never saw the real thing before.
Well, whad'ya know? 'No evidence' that Obama wiretapped Trump Tower
Monday 4th September 2017 14:22 GMT
Re: So much for that Russian collusion story...
If there weren't any wiretaps, the whole thing goes down the drain.
All it says is that a tap on the Trump end wasn't legally requested. It doesn't mean that there weren't any on the other ends. I suspect that that's why Trump got his knickers in a twist: he feared that his team was caught on tape because some of his unsavoury contacts were being legitimately "tapped". That's the simplest explanation for why his son (son in law?) approached the Russian government to set up a secret diplomatic channel.
Yeah, as you say, "so much for that Russian collusion story".
Monday 4th September 2017 14:15 GMT
Re: @AC Funny... but no.
Define what you think the DoJ means when they say 'wire tap'.
The headline writer gets to use vague language like "wiretap". According to the article body, the request didn't use that word. Or at least not the part that was quoted, which asked about any orders for "an intercept of telecommunications or ...".
Does it mean that they didn't eavesdrop on calls without placing bugs on the phone?
That would seem to fall under what they asked for: was there an order for "an intercept of telecommunications". Doesn't matter if they placed a bug in or near the phone or got the phone company to patch in for them.
Crypto-busters reverse nearly 320 million hashed passwords
Deputy AG Rosenstein calls for law to require encryption backdoors
Stephen King's scary movie reboot provokes tears from 'legit clowns'
Boffin rediscovers 1960s attempt to write fiction with computers
Uncle Sam outlines evidence against British security whiz Hutchins
Can North Korean nukes hit US mainland? Maybe. But EMP blast threat is 'highly credible'
Tuesday 22nd August 2017 23:56 GMT
New Scientist covered some of this a few years back
An additional problem becomes that you need fuel to keep factories up and running (to make new parts) and fuel transportation and delivery (think petrol stations, among others) requires electricity. No grid means no fuel, at least at the start. Expect that martial law would have to be introduced, with strict fuel rationing until repairs to the electricity grid could be carried out, which, as the article states, won't be overnight. Of course, you've probably also got to power water pumping stations and the like.
In a society like the US with so many inequalities, it's hard to see how calmness could prevail. It's not like POTUS can just go on TV and convince people it'll be OK, especially if he's the one that egged on the attack.
Read IBM CEO Ginni Rometty's letter to staff: Why I walked from Trump's strategy forum
Saturday 19th August 2017 01:20 GMT
Re: @F Bandersnatch yeah, but ...
Not me. I am attempting to do the opposite of making people forget about this. Judging by the number of downvotes I received and the great preference people had for my first first post over my second, I can only conclude that people (a) don't appreciate irony (especially the recursive variety), or (b) much prefer to interpret my first post as literally suggesting that Trump isn't fascist enough over the sanitised version that presents a post-Fascist apology for my original statement.
OK, I guess that confusion surrounding irony (or meta-irony) angers people. No argument there.
For the record: Nazis are limp-dicked lizards that use the "supremacy" myth to cover up their basic inhumanity.
Russia's answer to Buckminster Fuller has a buttload of CGI and he's not afraid to use it
Comp sci world shock: Bonn boffin proposes P≠NP proof, preps for prestige, plump prize
Thursday 17th August 2017 14:40 GMT
Re: Isn't this related to chaos theory ?
Not really. I believe that's it's related to the "no free lunch" theorem, or at least something like it can apply. Your standard fractal generator (eg, Fractint) has various optimisations for calculating the "limit cycle" and deciding whether a point leads to "capture" by the attractor, or how long it will take. All nice for making pretty pictures, but if you want to, say, model the weather, you need to iterate to find the final state of the model. The "sensitive dependence on initial condition" part of "chaos theory" does indeed rule out there being a quick solution without having to calculate all the intermediate steps. Same with blockchains or the Byzantine Generals problem: the person provides a proof of work that they have actually done the calculations.
Defra recruiting 1,400 policy wonks to pick up the pieces after Brexit
PayPal, accused of facilitating neo-Nazi rally, promises to deny hate groups service
Cloudflare: We dumped Daily Stormer not because they're Nazis but because they said we love Nazis
Chap behind Godwin's law suspends his own rule for Charlottesville fascists: 'By all means, compare them to Nazis'
Tuesday 15th August 2017 02:27 GMT
Re: The thin line between right and wrong
There is no scientific definition of a race. The closest word is "landrace", which is nothing at all like what ignorant people like to label as "race".
I am fully aware of what a species is. In that context, I find it ironic that you talk about "talking at cross purposes".
Look up the whole Linnnaean (or other) taxonomic system. There are zero mentions of "race".
Tuesday 15th August 2017 00:15 GMT
Re: The thin line between right and wrong
Just to clarify that a bit more, I subscribe to Buckminster Fuller's view that a "racist" is "someone who believes in race." There is only one race, here, and we're all part of it. For that reason, I also reject the idea of forming organisations to advocate for one's race. It's a misguided concept.
Monday 14th August 2017 23:56 GMT
Re: The thin line between right and wrong
The part below. It probably slipped under your radar because apart from that it seemed to be a rational post.
Forming organisations to represent and advocate the interests of one's religion / race / identity group is common and acceptable. White people must have the same right to form such such groups as anyone else, particularly where they are becoming an underclass
The false equivalency is between organisations like the NAACP and Black Lives Matter, and, well, fascists. Note that last bit: "particularly [when white people] are becoming an underclass".
Monday 14th August 2017 21:21 GMT
Re: The Law is an Ass
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/godwins-law-mike-godwin-internet-hitler-charlottesville-virginia-donald-trump-a7892171.html
You said: "it's really just an attempt to stifle criticism"
Mike said: "To be clear: I don’t personally believe all rational discourse has ended when Nazis or the Holocaust are invoked," he wrote. "But I’m pleased that people still use Godwin’s Law to force one another to argue more thoughtfully.
Assange offers job to sacked Google diversity manifestbro
WannaCry-killer Marcus Hutchins denies Feds' malware claims
Chess champ Kasparov, for one, welcomes our new robot overlords
Astroboffins discover that half of the Milky Way's matter comes from other galaxies
Thursday 27th July 2017 03:03 GMT
so ... many ... folk ... memories
Obviously, we are stardust. We are golden.
> We could consider ourselves space travelers
or a "starman, waiting in the sky"
> we could consider ourselves space travelers
Well, a spaceman did come travelling
> "a computer model of supernovae explosions,"
Your Galactic tendency to conjugate adjectives is showing
> kicked out by a powerful wind
Now you're just taking the piss
Kid found a way to travel for free in Budapest. He filed a bug report. And was promptly arrested
Debian patches plenty in new version 9.1
Crazy bug of the week: Gnome Files' .MSI parser runs evil VBScripts
Juicero does to its staff what your hands can do to its overpriced juice sacks
Truck spills slimy load all over Oregon road – drivers slip in eel slick
Friday 14th July 2017 20:59 GMT
Re: Beware susi eel
> Eel used in sushi is cooked.
As are (almost?) all freshwater fish, though for a different reason: freshwater parasites find us acceptable hosts, too. Don't know why salmon is an exception. Maybe it doesn't spend long enough in fresh water, or maybe just because precautions are taken (flash freezing for 48hrs or whatever; there's no such thing as sushi/sashimi-grade raw fish, just proper processing, btw).
Biting the hand that feeds IT
