* Posts by Eddy Ito

4662 publicly visible posts • joined 27 Apr 2007

Now that's just offal: Heap of pig guts hog road after truck spills load in Kansas City

Eddy Ito

It must have taken responders quite some time and intestinal fortitude to digest the situation.

How an ace-hole AI bot built by Facebook, CMU boffins whipped a table of human poker pros

Eddy Ito

Re: I'd like to see this on Wall Street

Not sure what you mean by "investment decisions". It might do well as a day trader but I don't see it being particularly useful for long term investors who seek a more 'set it and forget it' approach.

Train maker's coder goes loco, choo-choo-chooses to flee to China with top-secret code – allegedly

Eddy Ito

Re: "Which hasn't struck me as particularly advanced either"

You won't see it in Europe because ships are better. When given the option of transporting freight it is far more efficient to load the equivalent of over 25 miles of train on a single new panamax ship and sail it around dropping off stuff much closer to its final destination and maybe even taking on new cargo going somewhere else. Unfortunately we in the US are saddled with the Jones Act which makes rail and road the cost effective option while adding greatly to pollution and traffic.

FCC boosts broadband competition by, er, banning broadband competition in buildings

Eddy Ito

Why exactly is the federal government stepping in on the operations of apartment buildings that are privately owned?

Oh, lovely, a bipartisan election hack alert law bill for Mitch McConnell to feed into the shredder

Eddy Ito

"After we adequately harden our infrastructure, the federal government needs to have an honest conversation..."

So that would be never. Wait, I can't tell, is this supposed to be comedy?

'It’s not a surveillance program'... US govt isn't going all Beijing on us with border face-recog, official tells Congress

Eddy Ito

Re: "We don’t run the scans against any other databases."

That's why he worded it so carefully. He's CBP, they're ICE so technically, he's given himself an out should any congresscritter actually try going beyond superficial sound bites.

Backpage.com execs cling to First Amendment in court over sex trafficking case

Eddy Ito

Re: Why didn't you mention...

Between civil asset forfeiture and the dual sovereignty doctrine, the Fifth Amendment has been dead for years.

Two pentesters, one glitch: Firefox browser menaced by ancient file-snaffling bug, er, feature

Eddy Ito
Trollface

("Click here for your free iPad!")

Your link is broken.

Cop a load of this: 1TB of police body camera videos found lounging around public databases

Eddy Ito

I for one am shoc... hardly the least bit surprised. Let me guess, since former Gov. Scott signed the civil asset reform bill the cops now don't have the cash to hire a proper cloud keeper or bookkeeper for that matter. Maybe they'll get creative and find other means to pay for it.

Poetic justice: Mum funnels £100 into claw machine to win single Dumbo teddy for her kid

Eddy Ito

Re: There's a phrase invented for this woman

To be fair, he was only commenting on the silly ones. Of course if you know some very fine silly cows then - fair enough.

What would Jesus tweet? Church of England hands down commandments for Anglicans on social media

Eddy Ito
Coat

Re: I've decided to become a Christian...

Wait, so Jesus was the original hipster? I find it rather ironic that anyone could actually be the original hipster (OH?). I guess what I mean is, did they even have plaid flannel then?

I'm sorry, I need a minute to get this all straight in my head. It's like finding out Leonardo da Vinci made noodles and Dan Brown's book was actually the spaghetti code. Dear [$deity], it's Title 21 Section 139.110 all over again!

Eggheads have found a positive link between the number of racist tweets and the number of racist hate crimes in US cities

Eddy Ito

Yes, Montpelier, ID is similar at well over 95% white. Of course both are very small towns of only a few thousand people so perhaps calling them cities is a bit of a stretch.

The small size also probably relates to an absence of crime overall.

It's a fullblown Crysis: Gamers press pause on PC purchases, shipments freeze

Eddy Ito

Given their GDP per capita based on PPP it shouldn't be much of a surprise. I expect that once that doubles and they approach Portugal or the Czech Republic that things will slow down appreciably.

It's official. You can get FUCT, US Supremes tell scandalized bureaucrats in rude trademark spat

Eddy Ito

Re: The government can't ban 'FUCT'

Most of the US government doesn't even know what it's laws are. There are so many that are simply garbage and left over cruft. It's a good reason why most laws really need an expiration date. Just don't get caught selling spaghetti with a diameter that isn't within the .06" to .11" legal range because that's a violation of Title 21, Section 139.110

Bloody vultures! Cheeky Spanish paraglider firm pinched El Reg's mascot

Eddy Ito

Then there's the pesky detail that the cabin is pressurized so naturally the passengers could breathe just fine.

After years of listening, we've heard not a single peep out of any aliens, say boffins. You think you can do better? OK, here's 1PB of signals

Eddy Ito
Coat

Re: A very low priority project

Are you saying the second coming is going to have to be done by hand?

Deepfake 3.0 (beta), the bad news: This AI can turn ONE photo of you into a talking head. Good news: There is none

Eddy Ito

The grainy Einstein and Rasputin vids are obviously fakes because their heads move and distort too much. I can't imagine anyone singing with their beard tied down to a table to keep it so eerily still. The last set is better but each clip is only a few seconds and I expect the longer it is the flaws will become more obvious.

Awoogah! Awoogah! Firefox fans urged to update and patch zero-day hole exploited in the wild by miscreants

Eddy Ito

Good thing NoScript is working. Our wonderful admins have disabled auto-updates and push updates only once a month. Fortunately NoScript was back with the last monthly update as it fixed the security cert flaw.

Eddy Ito
Trollface

Re: Re NoScript

Does that mean we are the 1%?

Boffins' neural network can work out from your speech whether you'll develop psychosis

Eddy Ito

... by analyzing a patient's conversations...

Conversations with whom? I would think people change how they speak depending on the other participants, assuming there are any. For instance I find it helps to dumb it down when talking to political types but not my peers. Likewise, I would expect one to be more guarded, evasive perhaps, when talking to police than with a drinking buddy although semantic density may be low in both cases but for different reasons.

Who bought the most powerful commercial supercomputer? Come on, it's Total-ly obvious

Eddy Ito
Coat

Yes but it takes several tweaks to QEMU.

'AI is not the cause, it’s an accelerant. The pace of change is challenging' Experts give Congress deepfakes straight dope

Eddy Ito

Re: Fakes versus bias

That's just the problem. Oftentimes truth simply can't be condensed. When condensed we get things like that viral video of the catholic kid and the native american at the Lincoln memorial that gets sensationalized by most major news outlets yet isn't true.

Eddy Ito

Re: Fakes versus bias

So we all take our news with a grain of salt, which is probably a good thing.

Exactly, it's largely a matter of learning how to read Pravda or the New York Times.

Facebook won't nuke deepfakes? OK, let's tear up those precious legal protections from user-posted content, then

Eddy Ito

To sum up

Congress won't make a law abridging free speech they'll just make a law that punishes online entities who don't abridge free speech. What could go wrong?

Will they punish SNL when Larry David or Alec Baldwin parody Bernie or Trump? Does it need to pass some nebulous "convincing enough" standard or is it some divine dowsing that that only Adam Schiff can adequately do? It's all just more congressional overreach and authoritarianism.

Bear insistent on playing tonsil tennis with you? Just bite its tongue off

Eddy Ito
Coat

Re: But he didn't take the bear spray

What if it is a regular shark instead of a bat shark that you need to repel?

Eddy Ito

Bitten the bear's tongue off? I think if the bear can fit his head in its mouth then its tongue is likely the size of his hand. He may have nipped the bear's tongue and even gotten a chunk off but it's likely no bigger than a golf ball. Painful for sure but my guess is the bear still has 95% or more of its tongue. It will make licking the wound a challenge though.

These boffins' deepfake AI vids are next-gen. But don't take our word for it. Why not ask Zuck or Kim Kardashian...

Eddy Ito

Re: This is a good thing...

Nah, the only thing that's really changing is that it's easy for anyone to do instead of the professionals and the [insert gov't TLA here].

Not very bright: Apple geniuses spend two weeks, $10,000 of repairs on a MacBook Pro fault caused by one dumb bug

Eddy Ito

Re: BS

A bug or PEBCAK?

Apple iPrunes iTunes: Moldering platform's death expected to be announced at WWDC

Eddy Ito

Re: Hang on a moment

Blu-ray still doesn't sell as well as DVD but yeah, even combined there are likely more streamers.

Uncle Sam wants to read your tweets, check out your Instagram, log your email addresses before you enter the Land of the Free on a visa

Eddy Ito

US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) said it would spend $100m on a new system to monitor social media activity of visitors.

They really mean spend yet another $100 million. You know, pretty soon they'll be talking real money.

Apple kills iTunes, preps pricey Mac Pro, gives iPad its own OS – plus: That $999 monitor stand

Eddy Ito

Re: @Dave 126 ... you know someone

And is good with magnets.

Eddy Ito

Not only is it a proprietary magnetic adapter they're claiming it's basically a quick-connector; from their website:

Having the freedom to move between being on set and working in the studio can make a big difference. The magnetic connector on the Pro Stand makes it easy to attach and detach from its polar-opposite magnet on the back of Pro Display XDR.

So what they're really saying is that they expect people to cart around their ultra-portable 32" display and have purchased multiple stands or adapters. Of course that makes sense because given the price of the display it's unlikely people will be buying more than one but I'm unsure anyone is willing to take the risk carting around 16.5 pounds of monitor at over $300 per pound.

Germany mulls giving end-to-end chat app encryption das boot: Law requiring decrypted plain-text is in the works

Eddy Ito
Childcatcher

Re: Honey, we're out of

I'm on to you, it's clear you're planning on making fat bombs! No doubt the food pyramid police will be waiting at your door.

Tesla driver killed after smashing into truck had just enabled Autopilot – US crash watchdog

Eddy Ito

Re: What's the point?

My mistake, you are correct, the truck was heading east, out of the driveway. That would mean that the view of the truck would have been side on the whole time which would make it more visible.

The address, I believe, is correct as FL7 and US 441 overlay each other on that particular stretch of road, the street number of the farm is 14095, it matches figure 1 in the NTSB report linked in the article, and the farm is likely the "agricultural facility" mentioned in the report.

Perhaps the paint job of the truck or trailer contributed. I didn't see it mentioned in the report.

Eddy Ito

Re: What's the point?

Just to follow up, this would approximately be the view ahead as he took his hands off the wheel. The truck would have been turning into the second drive on the right just before the orange road work signs. It quite boggles my mind.

Eddy Ito

Re: What's the point?

Indeed, the driver only activated the autopilot 10 seconds prior to the crash and at the stated 68 mph it would put him almost exactly 300 meters away. To me the question is why was he activating autopilot with the truck clearly visible ahead and why take his hands off at 8 seconds (only 240 meters) before impact?

Wine? No, posh noshery in high spirits despite giving away £4,500 bottle of Bordeaux

Eddy Ito
Trollface

A bottle! No wonder it was so expensive. Wine is much cheaper when you by it in a box.

Put a stop to these damn robocalls! Dozens of US state attorneys general fire rocket up FCC's ass

Eddy Ito

Re: No change

The thing is they provide the data connection on mobile devices. Perhaps it should be easier to unbundle the phone service from the data service and allow people to get rid of the telemonkeys.

Until then I've taken to setting ring tones/notifications for people in my contact list turn the default notifications to off. The downside was spending the time going through each contact to identify the ~25% which hadn't already been customized.

Perhaps there's an app or setting for that and I missed it. Oh well, it's done now.

Ok Google, please ignore this free tax filing code so we can keep on screwing America

Eddy Ito

Re: Still using Google?

So taxing rich people 35% of whatever is left after allowing them to write off the interest and taxes on their $2.1M house, $150k Tesla, in addition to countless other tax dodges in addition to handing them a $7500 check for buying that Tesla is progressive?

The last I saw, Warren Buffett's effective tax rate was about 17% and by complete coincidence, so was mine even though he made millions and I didn't. It's all going to come out in the wash anyway, might as well make it flat and easy. We can dicker back and forth about the actual numbers but there's no reason the calculation needs to be more complicated.

Eddy Ito

Re: Still using Google?

There's also the option of simplifying the existing code. Something like

tax=(income-$25k)*.15

would be nice and easy and not require tax software at all instead of the current morass of twisted exemptions and loopholes designed to keep tax lawyers, accountants, and politicians well fed.

Northern Virginia cements spot as bit barn capital of the world with jigawatt capacity

Eddy Ito

Well, with all the TLAs in the neighborhood (neighborwealth, commonhood, whatevs) it's only logical that they need the capacity to store all the spy data they keep on the rest of us.

President Trump sits down with Twitter boss for crunch talks: Why am I losing followers?

Eddy Ito

Re: I have a new, great, better plan to Make something better

Given the pending legal precedent of disallowing Trump from blocking people on Twitter, I think there's a good chance Twitter would lose a lawsuit if Twitter did choose to block a candidate.

California's politicians rush to gut internet privacy law with pro-tech giant amendments

Eddy Ito

Those of us currently in Cali already know the answer to that.

Eddy Ito

Re: Sounds like classic Sacramento to me...

Sure they're largely the same but they'll oppose each other if they think they can make any advantage out of it. The trick is to convince them that there's something there.

Tesla touts totally safe, not at all worrying self-driving cars – this time using custom chips

Eddy Ito

Re: If, if, and more if's....

It's also legislative because we could take it a step further and use ships where possible. The problem in the US is the Jones Act which keeps foreign merchant1 vessels, container ships in particular, from stopping in more than one US port. That means all goods destined for the US must be disgorged in one place rather than hitting several ports before the ship heads back across the seas.

Ideally, ships would handle all coastal movement, trains carry it inward and trucks only make up the short haul local moving. There wouldn't be anywhere near as many trucks on the road which would help both traffic and smog as well as probably save a whole bunch of money. Pity it will never happen because we have to protect the jobs of truck drivers, ship builders, and merchant marines.

1 - It's the Passenger Vessel Services Act for cruise ships.

Eddy Ito

Re: This time for sure?

Also, a fair number of accidents are also caused by distractions whether that be fiddling to find a particular station on the radio, texting, or what have you. The big issue with this assistive technology is that some people are using it as an excuse to be distracted further. As a result the idiot who is flashing back and forth between distraction and road is now allowing the distraction to take up much more of their time which likely results in a much worse accident when the automation misses the mark.

Bloke faces up to 20 years in the clink after gun held to dot-com owner's head in robbery

Eddy Ito

Re: God what a twat

Why would he bother to change it? Besides, he probably goes by Ro-Lo or some such. No doubt he's attended frat parties and said: "Yo-yo! Ro-Lo in da house!"

Oh since this time it'll be the big house and the domain doitforstatepen.com is available, I'm thinking it's a golden opportunity for him even though the pics of drunken antics will likely be limited.

Aussies, Yanks may think they're big drinkers – but Brits easily booze them under the table

Eddy Ito

It's a funny way to state the Pareto principle but I suppose it works.

BBM is dead, long live BBMe: Encrypted chat plat opened up to all as consumer version burns

Eddy Ito

Really? I noticed it becoming just another spam channel as everyone I knew moved to other platforms and as a result I turned off notifications for it. They waited far too long to unbundle it and I can't imagine the remaining spammers will be willing to splash actual cash for it.

Facebook: Yeah, we hoovered up 1.5 million email address books without permission. But it was an accident!

Eddy Ito

Why does anyone trust Facebook these days? They're about as secure as a rotting corpse in the savanna. I mean if they can't even keep their own secrets (apparently pronounced ˈak-sə-dənts) how in deity's name are they going to keep anyone else's secrets?