* Posts by Haku

1902 publicly visible posts • joined 13 Apr 2007

Prosecute driverless car devs for software snafus, say Brit cyclists

Haku

Re: Cycle lanes/paths

Designated cycle lanes on roads that weren't originally built to accomodate another lane - as in they simply painted a white line for the 'path' on the existing road - can actually be more dangerous to cyclists, because vehicle drivers will drive right up to the painted line which will put them closer to the cyclists, whereas without such painted pathways the road lanes are wider and the drivers are more likely to give more space when passing.

http://road.cc/content/news/7921-cycle-lanes-make-roads-more-dangerous-says-study

How about that time Russian military used a video game pic as proof of US aiding ISIS?

Haku

Re: Jesus Toast

But toast isn't fake, I ate some this morning.

Didn't I?

Haku
Coat

Not Xenon 2 - Electric Boogaloo?

MPs slam HMRC's 'deeply worrying' lack of post-Brexit customs system

Haku

It's almost like those morons in charge who campaigned to leave thought that Article 50 contained a complete & comprehensive guide on leaving the EU...

Audio spy Alexa now has a little pal called Dox

Haku

Aye, this isn't like a potential surveillance device was surreptitiously put into your home through the back door, it came in through the front door, and people willing purchased them!

Shiver me timbers! 67cm Playmobil pirate ship sets sail for Caribbean

Haku

They could use this picture I made for a flag: haku.co.uk/pics/ElRegMasthead.jpg

Which they kindly posted on their main site: www.theregister.co.uk/2017/02/08/reg_readers_david_hockney_mockney_masthead/

will.i.am's tech tat biz is going enterprise, snags $117m from Salesforce

Haku

will.i.am still managing to sell tat to the masses?

well.i.never

Cisco's John Chambers: Robot farmers will feed bloated cricket thoraxes to our children

Haku

Robot farming?

*has visions of BigDogs herding sheep in the countryside*

BT hikes prices for third time in 18 months

Haku

Does that mean those of us who are paying for Infinity 2 are subsidising those who are paying less for Infinity 1 but getting Infinity 2 speeds?

Bloody Telecom strikes again.

That awkward moment when AWS charges you BEELLIONS for Lightsail

Haku

I did wonder how Amazon are avoiding paying tax

They're getting their hostages victims customers to pay it all for them.

In lump sums this time by the looks of things...

Guy Glitchy: Villagers torch Openreach effigy

Haku
Coat

Re: Tradition

FTTH?

Because this is about rural broadband I guess that means Fiber To The Herd.

Donald, YOU'RE FIRED: Rogue Twitter worker quits, deletes President Trump's account

Haku
Holmes

No shit, Sherlock.

I take it you don't understand the concept of jokes?

Haku

It's a shame the backups weren't erased.

Only good guys would use an automated GPU-powered password-cracker ... right?

Haku

A password cracker which only lets you see the results ....with a password?

Genius :)

Camera company, huh? Snap's nerd goggles look destined for landfill

Haku

"some of the most plugged in and digitally aware people on earth"

AKA a generation that doesn't know what the word "analogue" means without having to ask their smartphone.

DJI Aeroscope won't stop drone-diddlers flying round airports

Haku

Re: This problem is what shotguns are for...

@W4YBO, 44mph top speed is relatively slow, the quadcopters in the guns vs drones video top out ut at 60mph. The fastest quadcopter is officially recorded at 163.5mph in July this year and I wouldn't be surprised if 200mph+ is recorded next year.

On the subject of tech getting smaller & more powerful, I recently ordered a miniature video camera for a quadcopter that's 18*18*8mm, weighs 4.5 grams and records decent quality widescreen 720p footage onto a micro SD card, for less than £12 including postage...

The miniaturisation of drone related tech is just going to make it harder and harder for companies/authorities to detect & stop them mid flight.

Haku

Re: This problem is what shotguns are for...

It's certainly not a new idea, I remember an episode of Tarrant on TV 20 years ago where he showed some footage of a bunch of Americans having fun with machine guns out in the desert, shooting countless rounds into the middle of nowhere. The last part of the video was of them at night, one person launched an RC plane with LEDs down the wings and explosives on board for everyone to aim at, it did look pretty spectacular with all the traser rounds, and they're still doing it - youtube.com/watch?v=RR5BtXP0s0o

But with moden day RC tech, last year this was uploaded to YouTube, Guns vs racing drones at a shooting range - youtube.com/watch?v=xq0oCM37oZA

The law enforcement guys don't know the size & speed of the racing quads they'd be shooting at so start bragging how easy it'll be to shoot them down, until they actually see their size & speed.

Multirotor technology is still progressing very fast in comparison to the speed at which laws are passed, and the technology is getting smaller and more powerful; currently I'm having lots of fun flying a micro brushless quadcopter with wireless camera that measures 13*13*6cm, weighs 91 grams with the battery and I've clocked it at 44mph, such quads barely existed a year ago and now there's many to pick from.

Man: Just 18 Bitcoin babies and my home is yours

Haku

BTC value - wait what?

Sometimes I'll comment on Bitcoin stories usually joking I'm rich because I have 0.02 BTC, but I just checked the current exchange rate and Google tells me...

"0.02 Bitcoins = 89.6491 British pounds"

God damn!

Perhaps it's time I investigated that wallet.dat file I've been keeping for years out of curiosity, backed up in a few places just in case.

BT agrees to cream off less profit from landline-only customers

Haku

Re: Cheaper to have a landline ....

" One upside is we have a landline number to give anyone who insists on it. But it will be their loss - there's nothing plugged in. Which conveniently means we don't get any begging calls from VM trying to sucker us back into a contract."

You have the perfect opportunity to do some sales company trolling, try to spread the number you don't use around to sales companies and setup an answering machine that answers the call with something like

"Hello? oh wait, hold on I just dropped my glasses. [long pause] Nope, still can't see them, just a moment. [an even longer pause with the feint sounds of things banging and crashing and profusive swearing] Sorry, can you call back later? I've got to attend to this wound on my leg [open ended long pause]"

Knock, knock? Oh, no one there? No problem, Amazon will let itself in via your IoT smart lock

Haku

Re: Actually...

Good idea. I suggest an extra element; a PIR sensor that turns on a small LCD screen showing the realtime camera feed and a sign below it saying "Smile for the CCTV".

Haku

Re: Dear Amazon

Exactly.

First they want unfettered access to our browsing history through cookies, now they want unfettered access to our homes.

Haku
Facepalm

Re: Upset now

I was going to say that!

Haku

Re: What could possibly go wrong?

Or an enclosed porch so you have two lockable front doors.

Don't forget the obligatory CCTV.

Fines for crossing roads while TXTing enacted in Honolulu

Haku
FAIL

Aren't they basically outlawing natural selection / survival of the fittest?

I wonder what Darwin would say about that.

Credit insurance tightens for geek shack Maplin Electronics

Haku

Maplin is the new Tandy.

And we all know what happened to that chain.

'Screaming' man fined $149 for singing 'Everybody Dance Now'

Haku

I have a list of more people that should be fined for merely opening their mouth.

But it would probably break the limit on amount of characters allowed in the comment entry box.

Malware hidden in vid app is so nasty, victims should wipe their Macs

Haku

Re: A complete wipe?

"Once the system has been compromised, what script are you going to run that guarantees to restore the system state correctly? How can you trust anything that the OS tells you, once you've been infected?"

If we were to treat the US government as an operating system, would I be right in diagnosing it's been rooted with a nasty malware infection?

Haku

Re: Macs and PCs aren't so very different

Yes they are, one has an army of fanatics that will defend their choice of platform against their rival to the bitter end, and the other has a larger army of fanatics that will defend their choice of platform against their rival to the bitter end.

We talk to Tron artist Syd Mead: On the other side of the screen, it all looks so easy

Haku

Re: Mr Weinstein

Isn't that the theory you only tell your relatives?

Haku

If you love Tron, perhaps it's best you don't watch this cartoon:

Savior of the Earth (1983) aka Korean Tron

Trailer - youtube.com/watch?v=ME5l6UOxask

Full film - youtube.com/watch?v=kuSor3NRdLs

Backstory - youtube.com/watch?v=VMlpEPKZn_U

Didn't install a safety-critical driverless car patch? Bye, insurance!

Haku

What if your car no longer receives updates because its too old or the company went bust?

Will you be forced to buy a new car just to get insurance?

No, the FCC can't shut down TV stations just because Donald Trump is mad at the news

Haku

Re: A question of etiquette

Apparently the rule has been officially excused!

"A leading psychiatry group has told its members they should not feel bound by a longstanding rule against commenting publicly on the mental state of public figures — even the president." - https://www.statnews.com/2017/07/25/psychiatry-goldwater-rule-trump/

Haku

Re: Hyperbole

"finally a leader who represents the people"

I take it that by "the people" you mean "less than half the voters"?

Haku

Re: The film "Idiocracy"

Yeah they elected their very own Camacho.

Hopefully this means next president will be the most average person ever tested.

Anyway, must dash, there's a new episode of Ow My Balls about to start.

Release the KRACKen patches: The good, the bad, and the ugly on this WPA2 Wi-Fi drama

Haku

"There is no, to the best of our knowledge, working exploit code available yet "

aka "It has been reported that a hole has appeared in the side of a high street bank yesterday. Police are looking into it."

Drone smacks commercial passenger plane in Canada

Haku

Re: Owner identification

Exactly, introductions of new laws will not stop idiots being idiots or bad people doing bad things.

Haku

Re: How is it different

"Act of terrorism?

Possibly."

Have you heard of Occam's razor?

I love disruptive computer jargon. It's so very William Burroughs

Haku

I'm enjoying reading the comments.

Should I read the article now?

Footie ballsup: Petition kicks off to fix 'geometrically impossible' street signs

Haku

Re: Metric please

Can we have the Celcius vs Fahrenheit argument next please?

I always enjoy watching people get hot headed over that one so I can tell them to chill out.

Haku
Coat

Re: Oi, mate!!! ...

"What's that?"

"It's a designated section of land, usually either a man made narrow walkway or a way beaten, formed, or trodden by the feet of persons or animals due to the location/terrain.

But that's not important right now."

Haku
Coat

Re: Flat Earth Society

Flat Balls are more popular than you might think, I've seen plenty of people with Flat Balls, throwing them to each other at parks & fields...

Haku
Facepalm

1st world problems.

You want to talk about 'impossible' street signs? How about the slippery road one showing tyre tracks that cross over, indicating the vehicle spun 180 degrees, but there's only two tracks.

Video games used to be an escape. Now not even they are safe from ads

Haku

"You're not going to watch video on that tijny phone screen are you?"

Have you heard of Miracast?

Haku

Re: This is nothing...

I used to play a MMORPG on my first tablet, so much so that if you look at the light reflecting off the screen at the right angle you can see the smooth patches where I've worn away the screen protector.

I did once spend real money to open crates and lucked out with a top level weapon, then farmed more & sold items in the in-game market place to spend millions of 'gold' to get the same top level armour.

Then one day I fired it up only to be presented with a screen telling me I'd been permanently banned on all devices I'd used to play the game. The reason? They mistakenly thought I had tried to sell my account for real money, something I'd never do given the amount of time I'd spent playing it and still wanted to. So after getting nowhere with their 'support' email service I tried asking what the hell is going on on their forums but received an instant ban there too.

Never going to pay real money for in-game purchases ever again, thanks to those arseholes at Spacetime Studios.

Blade Runner 2049: Back to the Future – the movies that showed us what's to come

Haku

Re: Total Recall, Red Planet, The Martian, Mission to Mars, The Last Days on Mars, Escape from Mars

Marvin? Is that you?

Haku

Re: Johnny Mnemonic...

That's just a step away from Tron, download yourself into a computer and live forever, but the downside might be someone hijacks the computer you're in and forces you to mine bitcoin...

Haku

Re: Spaceballs

Thumbs up because of one specific line in that film:

Out of order? Fuck! Even in the future nothing works!

Haku

Re: V for Vendetta, 1984 etc.

I've seen various basic tests of how much people are willing to give up for the sake of a bit of money, and you're right it's scary how much greed can override rationality in almost everyone, and how large corporations are exploiting this.

The perfect example is free search engines and free social media websites - if you're not the customer you're the product.

Haku

Total Recall, Red Planet, The Martian, Mission to Mars, The Last Days on Mars, Escape from Mars

Can you see where I'm going with this?

Someone's going to be the first human to die on that planet, and it might happen within our present lifetime.

Haku

Re: The 6th Day...

No, nacho flavoured bananas!