* Posts by Paul Crawford

5636 publicly visible posts • joined 15 Mar 2007

A proposal to beat below-the-belt selfies: Crowdsourced machine learning using victims' image stashes

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So last millennium...

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The reality, even a double Polaroid:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ofl_UP3apM

Online retailers delaying sales of Raspberry Pi 4 model until 2023, thanks to a few good chips getting scarce

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I was seeing expected delivery in Jan for some Pi 3 models, but maybe that will evaporate in the new year :(

Gnu Nano releases version 6.0 of text editor, can now hide UI frippery

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As long as there's a UI to faff about with nothing ever finished is quite broken enough and dumbed-down yet.

Fixed if you you.

Sun sets on superjumbo: Last Airbus A380 rolls off the production line

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I remember enjoying EDI when it was the smaller cousin, few queues, OK cafes air-side, plans usually on-time or sometimes you arrived early and it was cleared for landing no problem.

Last decade or so the increase in numbers, the forced march long route through duty-free, and added security theatre, made the whole thing suck big-time. Quite pleased to hardly fly any more!

Apollo 17 samples yield fresh insights 49 years after mission left the Moon

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Devil

Even less if you are Satan

Humanity has officially touched the Sun (or, at least, one of its probes has)

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Alien

Re: "our Sun is the only one known to harbor life"

Only inconvenient if you forgot to lube the probe!

Is VPOTUS Bluetooth-phobic or sensible? The answer's pretty clear

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Telecommand is not usually encrypted, but it is normally authenticated. If the command receiver does not get any usable messages for a certain period it (should) assume that the key might have been corrupted so it can revert to unauthenticated commands (i.e. ignore the digital signature).

While that might seem open to abuse, it would be unusual for a working system not to get regular commands even if they are just to dump status, etc. Also it takes a good bit of hardware to have a go at such a link, more so if deep space!

Google advises Android users to be careful of Microsoft Teams if they want to call 911

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Re: Teams is nearly the worst product Microsoft have ever released...

I made the mistake of trying to install the Teams app on Linux once. Utter shit-show of a product and you have to have a MS account just to get on to other people's invites.

Now just use Chromium 'web' mode, still shit but less messing with my computer. MS are so utterly incompetent they can't even support a non-Chrome browser.

Playing jigsaw on my roof: They can ID you from your hygiene habits

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Re: ID from spa-aaaace

Mostly those high-res images Google, etc, publishes are from aircraft surveys. It is possible the spy sats offer something similar, but not for the general public to view.

OK, boomer? Gen-X-ers, elder millennials most likely to name their cars, says DVLA

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My parents had an old 1300cc Ford Cortina and we called it by its colour "Saluki Bronze"

Was a dreadful thing, would hardly start and seriously struggled with even 10% hills.

Actual metal being welded in support of the UK's first orbital 'launch platform'

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Re: One small step

I suspect that the cost of recovering the energy wound be FAR higher than the value of the energy itself.

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Or can it offer something else that a group small-sat or rideshare can't provide from SpaceX?

Yes, it can send small groups of satellite in to other orbits faster/cheaper than booking the whole Space-X payload. I think one of Skyrora's selling points is the upper stage can be shut-down and re-ignited several times, allowing you to deploy payloads in different (so some degree) orbits from the same basic launch.

Whether that turns out to be enough of a USP to make the business work remains for the market to decide.

The Omicron dilemma: Google goes first on delaying office work

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Re: The losing battle

Working from home, and all other lock-down measures were never about STOPPING the virus.

All they do is bring the infection rate down to a point where (a) you can possibly manage hospital admissions and (b) buy time to develop vaccines to reduce the number/impact of infections and/or drug treatments to mitigate the worst impact of the disease.

They are far from ideal due to the other economic and metal health impact they have, but to ignore them and 'go Brazilian' on COVID is not really such a good option either.

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Re: Safely reopen?

The number of deaths "due to Covid" by which we can only realistically count those with no underlying health conditions** in the first lockdown was around 4400

Try telling that to friends and families of the 170k-ish dead in the UK, on indeed those still suffering from "long COVID".

Yes, many were elderly and had health conditions but avoiding dying before it is absolutely necessary is kind of a human goal.

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Re: Safely reopen?

The problem is people.

They do not respond to logic and statistics as the "rational actors" that many models would like to assume. Not only is there fear of new risks versus old, but also there is the issue of employer's liability.

Utility biz Delta-Montrose Electric Association loses billing capability and two decades of records after cyber attack

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Re: we lost the majority of our historical data for the last 20-25 years.

No but incompetence and bad luck have resulted in cupboards of useless plastic...

New UK product security law won't be undercut by rogue traders upping and vanishing, government boasts

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Re: rogue traders will find it harder to sell substandard products

Make the store front liable?

Going to be tricky but eBay and Amazon might clean up their act if they have to fund the fix/replacement for anything they handled.

Overseas supplier? Make Visa/Mastercard pick up the tab if the store front does not pay. Very quickly they will stop selling to the UK which would be a victory of sorts, given how crap most IoT stuff is in the first place. At least less landfill for future generations.

Can Rust save the planet? Why, and why not

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Re: The language is not that important

it's odd that Assembler did not appear in the efficiency list, it's actually way more efficient than any language if the writer does a good job

With super-scalar processors where your pipeline delay/blocking depends on other stuff that is running it is REALLY hard to beat any decent optimising compiler for speed. Where assembly is justified (to me at least) is when you have to access very CPU-specific features, but that is really unusual out side of writing for an OS, or embedded microcontroller. Even then, you are probably better to wrap it in a simple function to call from your choice of C/C++/Rust/etc used for the main code.

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Re: The language is not that important

FORTRAN also supports the very wired concept of multiple entry points to a given sub-routine. Most other languages only support multiple exit points (e.g. 'return' in C).

Converting such a routing in to C is far from simple and elegant, though you could have several dummy functions that call the main one with a goto jump value. Oh, I feel dirty just thinking about it!

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Re: I wish this madness would just stop

'C' is the universal assembler, it lets you do all of the low level things you need to do in an OS, etc, including foot-shooting without having to learn assembly for a given CPU. There are many ways to make safer-C, such as enabling and responding to compiler errors, using static tools such as Coverity, and dynamic tools such as Valgrind to check things are going well in your memory-use department.

But the world runs on cheap, and good programmers are not so cheap and take longer to build, test, document, and retest their code. How many companies actually give a fsck about that?

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Re: Cool!

Steady, next you will be claiming it is a Python in your pocket.

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It is quite fascinating to see rankings of different languages by the 3 key metrics shown, even though we know that different applications have aspects that favour one or another.

Still, as a part-time C & python programmer I will probably stick with them as they cover most of what I need and life is getting short for learning a new and unusual language that really only promises a bit more security for my C side. And there is always apparmour as a bit of a backup.

Visiting a booby-trapped webpage could give attackers code execution privileges on HP network printers

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Printers, pre-dating IoT for lax security by many years!

When civilisation ends, a Xenix box will be running a long-forgotten job somewhere

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Re: The secret to a long life

Linux box that gets stuck on boot-up with "a start job is running ... no limit"

Welcome to systemd, breaking things in obscure ways since the start.

China plans to swipe a bunch of data soon so quantum computers can decrypt it later

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Gimp

Re: Quantum computing and decryption

Booz Allen Hamilton are slathering on the snake oil

That is a mental image I could do without!

It's 2021 and someone's written a new Windows 3.x mouse driver. Why now?

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We had DOS software I wrote around 1992 still in use controlling hardware, but now using dosemu on Linux as that also allows you to permit direct hardware I/O if you want.

Many years ago we also submitted a patch for dosemu so it could be configured to mirror the host Linux time, which is then nice and accurate due to NTP. DOS is still ~55ms steps, but good to see it is always within 60ms of true time.

BOFH: What if International Bad Actors designed the vaccine to make us watch more Steven Seagal movies?

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Re: circular history

Many seem to struggle to reach one

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Re: Unfortunately...

Ah, the Shipman defence

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What, how dare you bring up the picobots!

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Re: It's not the nanobots

You sound a bit xeonphobic...

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Re: It's not just the doctors ...

I knew there was something suspicious about the Mormons!

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Why do you think teledildonics was invented?

More amperes!

Reviving a classic: ThinkPad modder rattles tin to fund new motherboard for 2008's T60 and T61 series of laptops

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Good show! Nice to see someone doing something that draws attention to the poor quality and disposable mindset of recent years.

Academics tell Brit MPs to check the software used when considering reproducibility in science and tech research

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For generally available software then yes, the version numbers should be included just in case.

Must it be open source? No, but it needs to be reproducible so your data run on my machine using XYZ's software gives the same result. And the method(s) used also possible with something that is open-source in broadest sense (i.e. can be inspected, need not be GPL or any other specific license).

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The above would rule out GNU radio being used...

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Documented software and a scripted demonstration that it builds/runs on a clean OS system should be published with any peer-reviewed paper?

Would send shock waves through the industry but might just force some sound practice and the ability to analyse the process.

Alleged Brit SIM-swapper will kill himself if extradited to US for trial, London court told

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Re: No excuse

Fair enough.

But is it fair and understood by the accused that the UK has a very one-sided extradition deal with the USA for crimes committed by them here? And that the USA legal system is very much less fair if you are not very, very wealthy?

Rust dust-up as entire moderation team resigns. Why? They won't really say

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Re: The Rust Foundation statement

Typical management / PR-speak that says nothing.

Just because you can do it doesn't mean you should: Install Linux on NTFS – on the same partition as Windows

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Re: Boot … reboot … dual boot …. FFS what year is this?

VMs are your friend.

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Re: the irony is

I don't know if it is "based on" directly or just the main guy (Dave Cutler) was involved in VMS and generally anti-UNIX in outlook.

ACLs have many good uses, but the downfall for Windows was the effort/knowledge to use them well, so for years the default was bent-over and lubed-up following from DOS' lack of any real permissions, whereas Linux started life as a multi-user system so the bit-map permissions were the norm and sufficient for many cases.

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I suspect if you are forbidden from formatting your work PC's disk, they probably won't give you the privileges to change the boot loader either.

New study demonstrates iodine as satellite propellant... in space

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Re: Nice

That sort of thought has been considered before. I suggest a read of:

https://library.sciencemadness.org/library/books/ignition.pdf

He covers how at one point dimethyl mercury was considered, that is something you really don't want to deal with. Not ever. Really, not EVER. A world leading specialist in the toxic nature of heavy metals was killed by what seems like a trivial accident:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Wetterhahn

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Re: On the one hand : Science !

Why not ThrustMe?

Far more appropriate for an engine. Or doing the time-warp dance...

Brits complained a bit less about connectivity when they were allowed to go outside and see people in the flesh

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Re: Oh...

It would be interesting to see the split of VM customer complaints by the infrastructure, VM's cable versus Openreach lines.

I'm on VM cable and <touch wood> it has been stable and reliable for almost two decades (blueyonder when I signed up), with only occasional issues and they are usually fixed in a few hours (couple of days the time to modem died).

Just to add, I put my VM 'router' in to modem mode and have my own OpenWRT router using another DNS, might be a factor as well!

BOFH: You drive me crazy... and I can't help myself

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Re: Carpet

You are assuming a lot here about how observant Shannon is and/or how much internal systems monitoring they actually use.

UK aims for 'openness and fairness' in its AI Strategy – unless we're talking about favoured contractors

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Re: Hypocrisy rules ok, uk

Like hiding in a fridge to avoid questions he could not answer without revealing is shallowness and incompetence?

Zuck didn't invent the metaverse, but he's started a fight to control it

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Gimp

But do we get flying dildo like Second Life?

As System76 starts work on its own Linux desktop world, GNOME guy opens blog, engages flame mode

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Would this be the same GNOME team that made the desktop dependant on systemd?

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Re: The Linux community...

You mean like "work mates" in many businesses?