* Posts by Eddy Ito

4662 publicly visible posts • joined 27 Apr 2007

Home Depot: 56 million bank cards pwned by malware in our tills

Eddy Ito

There needs to be a fine of something like 10% of market cap for shit like this. In this instance that breaks down to only about $220 per card. Oh, that's on top of paying for all the resulting fraudulent charges. It sounds harsh but it's the only way these folks are going to take security seriously.

Nearly there! LOHAN Kickstarter pot o'gold breaks £29,000

Eddy Ito

Ahh but what to make for a stretch goal...

How about a 10 gallon batch of custom ale to fill those glorious tankards? It'll need a suitable name but is it a regular name or an acronym? Vulture's Velvet comes to mind but I'm thinking an acronym would be more suiting.

Edge Research Lab to tackle chilly LOHAN's final test flight

Eddy Ito

By my way of thinking it's going to be an interesting race to see how much it cools off as it ascends and how much it heats. As the pressure drops on ascent so too will the majority of the cooling ability but there is that little bright spot in the sky radiating large amounts of heat and it's pretty hard just to keep up with it. Part of the problem is that the internals may be poorly thermally coupled to the fuselage so while the skin gets warm the innards may stay quite chilled.

It might be worth sending up a small test cylinder about the size of the relevant portion of the fuselage painted in LOHAN's colors to get some thermal data ahead of time if you've got a flight planned or someone is willing to let you hitch a ride. Heck, thinking about it now I'm worried about the plastic deforming and jamming up the controls.

SCREW YOU, Russia! NASA lobs $6.8bn at Boeing AND SpaceX to run space station taxis

Eddy Ito

Re: "if disaster strikes"

Excellent clarification especially the berthed v docked bit. Thanks.

Eddy Ito

"if disaster strikes"

I would think that disaster would entail something like being knocked out of standard orbit and having no thrusters. Emergencies, glitches, hazards and incidents are one thing; disaster is pretty much when you swing your head down, grab your ankles, follow through and kiss your arse goodbye and in which case 210 days is a bit much but may allow you, hopefully, to turn said situation into merely a dire emergency. That said, they did get Apollo 13 back.

4K-ing excellent TV is on its way ... in its own sweet time, natch

Eddy Ito

Re: Chicken and Egg

I live on a rock in the middle of the Pacific, 2500 miles from the nearest Frys (and therefore civilisation) where bread is $5 a loaf and I pay half that for a connection that can stream 4k. When people start distorting the truth because it suits their rant then yes it makes me look to other motives

I'm happy for you but I live 30 or so miles from the movie studios in LA and the fastest service I can get is 3 mbps down at any price. According to Netflix I'm good for SD but nothing more. Strictly speaking only internet service is about $40 per month; they advertise internet access at a lower price but that is on top of the other crap in the bundle that I don't use so I'm not eligible for the "lower" price. I've tried the upgrade to the fastest speed offered, up to 15 mbps, and in reality it isn't substantially faster on any benchmark or test I've performed so there is absolutely no reason to spend the money. I've also tried the only other "broadband" ISP in the neighborhood and the line quality was so bad VOIP simply wouldn't work and speeds were about half what I currently get for roughly the same price. Frankly, I had faster service when I lived in the woods over 100 miles from Boston for the same money.

Your claim that the truth is being distorted doesn't hold up as you freely admit you're pretty much on your own little island so unless you walk the proverbial mile it's nothing more than an assumption. Also he didn't say incentives didn't exist, quite the opposite in fact as he said the technical demos were "incredibly good". It was just that as a practical matter, that was insufficient incentive given his current library of videos. As for motives, the only place I've been to that is as you describe is a place called Minato. There are a few companies there, perhaps you work for one of them.

Cracked it - Vulture 2 power podule fires servos for 4 HOURS

Eddy Ito

Sounds like an excellent idea for another Kickstarter project in the film/video -> documentary category! Perhaps it would be prudent to wait until after the flight but be sure to get a lot of tabernamque footage for the end of the flick..

OECD lashes out at tax avoiding globocorps' location-flipping antics

Eddy Ito

Re: hmm

Countries would probably be much better off simplifying their tax codes so they aren't giving advantage to certain companies and driving others to look for loopholes in other jurisdictions. It would also make it very plain to see when someone was trying to cheat. Top it off with a lower tax rate and revenues may even go up since companies may determine that the savings of the tax trick tango isn't justified by the expense.

As it stands if a US based multinational wants to build a new factory in the US the best thing for them to do is buy a cheap foreign outfit, perform an inversion and become a foreign company. In that way they can invest the money held overseas in the factory and save the 35% tax that would be incurred by bringing the money "back" into the US as a US company. Of course Obama would call them unpatriotic if they did that.

As bankruptcy looms for RadioShack, we ask its chief financial officer... oh. He's quit

Eddy Ito

Maybe Amazon will buy them and use the stores as a buy online - local pick-up kiosk or as a hive for all the delivery drones.

Eddy Ito

Re: Another one bites the dust...

Yep, their biggest problem for me was the fact that the electronics parts bins either didn't have what I wanted or weren't maintained in any semblance of order. Nobody wants to pull out a drawer labeled "transistors & relays" and find it's full of leds and photodiodes. Sure there might be one transistor mixed in with some 33k Ohm resistors somewhere but who wants to swirl and poke their way through every drawer when exactly the right part is just a click away online?

It's a pity though, I was recently in the local RadioShack picking up an SD card which I had forgotten to order with a Raspberry Pi and wouldn't you know they actually had Raspberry Pis and BeagleBone Blacks on the shelf. Oh well it's probably too late now. I think they could have hung on longer if they had gone the maker route earlier and maybe offered 3D printing services along with Pis and such.

'Windows 9' LEAK: Microsoft's playing catchup with Linux

Eddy Ito

Re: A little help required from somebody with a better memory ...

OS/2 did have it integrated around the mid '90s. There was also a GPL replacement for WPS that provided virtual desktops along with some other niceties.

As pointed out above lots of others had similar setups going back two or more decades. It's nice to see Microsoft join the club but it does make me wonder why both MS and Apple didn't have this at the turn of the century as it could easily have been baked right into the initial versions of XP and OS X.

MIT boffins cry havoc and let slip the ROBOT CHEETAHS of Whoa

Eddy Ito

Re: Flexible spine

That's what bugged the hell out of me during the video! The motion isn't natural at all and certainly isn't cheetah like. It's a combination of force and the real cats flexibility that greatly assists in achieving its long, as in 4+ body lengths, stride. I also recall reading somewhere that the tail also acts as a counterbalance during high speed maneuvers which allow the hairpin turns to be taken at speed. It seems clear that it needs an additional two parts gumby, one in the spine and another in the tail.

Be your own Big Brother: Monitoring your manor, the easy way

Eddy Ito

Re: Security?

There are reasonable limits to preparedness in the way of expense. While someone may unplug the router it would be really amateur and the average thief isn't going to bother. If it's a really well prepared thief there is nothing to say they won't cut the network wires outside before they enter the house. One that has it all thought out will even bring their own wireless jammer for the highly prepared person who is using a cell phone as an emergency backup. What it is that you're talking about a static target that has no real way to defend itself and remain within the generally accepted legal limits.

The whole point is to maximize the risk of finding out what the reward is. Of course nobody puts plastic flatware in an expensive safe so the level of security itself is an indicator of the potential reward. In the end it is the thief who decides what the opportunity cost is.

Apple Pay is a tidy payday for Apple with 0.15% cut, sources say

Eddy Ito

Re: what's the date today?

It's a differentiator for now. I haven't been able to find the T&Cs for Apple Pay. If it's their standard boiler plate we can assume they reserve the right to change whatever they like whenever they like so while they may roll it out as we won't track anything there is nothing to stop them from starting at any point in the future.

DUCKCROCZILLA 'alien' dinosaur could emerge from THE SEA

Eddy Ito
Facepalm

Re: So, I guess you could say that...

Oh no, we've reached the age of phabletosaurus!

Eddy Ito

Re: Backstroke?

Actually that's a good observation. Given the keel is essentially the backbone of a ship it wouldn't be surprising to find that the spines were functionally a stiffening member to keep the spine rigid vertically while allowing easy lateral motion where a boat is rigid in both directions.

From the skeleton there doesn't appear to be much along the lines of a sternum so I imagine it would be quite weak and flexible without the spines/sail. The fact that the spines start at the shoulders and largely disappear just beyond the pelvis is perhaps an indication that this is one of evolutions tries at vertically stiffening a rather massive body while leaving the head and tail with considerable motion in either plane. I would think ligaments at the ends of the spines would be in tension when in the water to prevent bowing down like an 'n' and cartilage between the spines under compression for use on land. Of course this assumes the center of buoyancy/mass was centrally located but the rather limited leverage on the neck bones indicates the head and neck weren't terribly massive in comparison and the apparent leverage afforded the musculature of the tail is perhaps more equally divided horizontally and vertically to both bear the weight and laterally undulate for added propulsion. It may have disappeared because a more duck like sternum (keel bone) provided stiffness and a convenient attachment for rather substantial flight muscles proved more fit for purpose.

Eddy Ito

Re: So which half is the "duck", exactly?

Nostrils halfway up the skull1, green head, white collar and patches of blue on the wing forelimb?

1. From the uchicago.edu link, this article wrongly states they were at the back of the skull.

Eddy Ito

As for the spines on its back that give the dinosaur its name, the team thinks they were more for show than anything else. The lack of blood vessels indicates that it wasn't used to regulate body temperature or store fat.

Perhaps it could have made a nice sail with the tail or limbs acting as rudders for a more leisurely drifting face down hunt allowing it to both reserve its energy and quietly get close for a swift strike once it came upon prey. I figure it had to use some sort of stealth as I don't see a lot of fish hanging around long with one of these things paddling up from a distance.

Oh, what's with all the dino stuff lately? Is September bone boffins' month to flood the press with announcements or is it just a co-inky dink?

Sellouts! Fans snap up iPhone 6 Plus pre-orders to avoid store queues

Eddy Ito

Sold out!

Q: How many?

A: All of them.

Q: No you know, quantity, in real numbers to keep it simple.

A: We're only allowed to give out the algorithm: All*[cos(a) + i*sin(b)]. Does that help?

SanDisk's record-busting 512GB SD CARD will fit perfectly in your empty wallet

Eddy Ito

Re: "and will still work after being run over by a five-ton truck."

Things they never say - what pressure are the tires are inflated to? A typical "monster" truck weighs 5-6 tons but the tires are typically only 15 psi and for water fording events they drop it to 5 psi. Total force on an SD card at the higher pressure would be about 19 pounds so it's less than the ~27 pound average for a 2 year old by a substantial margin.

It's official: LOHAN's arboreal avoidance algorithm is PANTS

Eddy Ito

Re: I've just had a thought

Exactly, on this side-o-d-water pants are trousers and include the heavy duty canvas/denim variety for brashly busting brush so it's an apt name. Male undergarments here are briefs or boxers unless you've got a thang for thongs. For those going commando I recommend button fly over a zipper for obvious reasons.

spɹɐʍʞɔɐB writing is spammers' new mail filter avoidance trick

Eddy Ito

Not just the b, all the letters are normal (left to right) it's just the spelling that is reversed. In any event any spam that comes through with any quantity of abnormal text of whatever type is getting binned. How hard can it be to throw a spell checker into the filter bin? There must be something that catches misspellings like v1agra, etc. as I haven't seen one of those in quite a while. I don't remember what client I was using way back in the day but one of the filters was font color1 so a reasonable dictionary filter should catch a good deal of this and most 419 scams as well.

1. Which worked nearly perfectly until certain family members who shall go unnamed decided that all the new html/rich text effects were too cool to not use and I had to do tricks to filter based on the amount of colorful text. Eventually known family email address had to be whitelisted but they got an autoreply of alternating #ffe080 and #c0e080 text on a #8fff00 background. Most stopped shortly after that but one thought it was fun. </facepalm>

Google swallows SMARTSPOON manufacturer Lift Labs

Eddy Ito

Re: Internet of toilets

What else, I can't imagine anyone but the boss being interested in the total dwell time from sit to shi stand.

Apple Watch will CONQUER smartwatch world – analysts

Eddy Ito

No need to guess Dr. Mouse, if you check the bottom of this page you'll see it reads:

"Features are subject to change and may not be available in all regions or all languages. Requires iPhone 5 or later."

Apple's big bang: iPhone 6, ANOTHER iPhone 6 Plus and WATCH OUT

Eddy Ito

Re: Not convinced by the crown thing

It does seem a bit of an afterthought. Sort of an "oh shit" moment when they realized the touch screen was a tad small. To me it seems the elegant solution totally passed them by because, as Carl W mentioned above, they made the silly thing square. My dive watch has a rotating bezel which they could easily have implemented with a touch sensor around a circular face. It would have been instantly familiar to anyone who has used the click wheel on an iPod and been unobtrusive unlike the largish knob they currently have. What, they couldn't do two sizes with a round dial?

Since we're on the design topic, how the hell does this watch band work? It looks a bear to put on.

Eddy Ito

So the watch is going to be like the iPod sneaker dongle only with a screen, on your wrist, a shorter battery life and most likely a bit warmer. Does anyone else take their watch off when they exercise because it's uncomfortable and might be damaged or is that just me?

Microsoft unloads monster-sized can of bug spray on Internet Explorer, again

Eddy Ito

Given last month's snafu, how long do we give it before applying the patches? After all, the only thing worse than applying a bunch of patcupdates is undoing it because a font falls in love with the BSOD.

TV techies proudly display their MIGHTY BENDERS in Berlin

Eddy Ito

Re: Am I missing the point here?

A 55" telly at a dozen feet is about the same size as a Galaxy S5 viewed at 13.3 inches, an iPhone 5S at 10.5 inches or an HTC One (M8) at 13 inches.

Of course that means at that at 12 feet even the lowly 1080p 55" telly has a "retina" display so I'm not really getting the point of these 4 & 5K resolutions these guys are selling. Consider that the aforementioned 55" telly viewed from 144 inches has roughly 105 pixels per degree of arc. For the sake of completion, at the distances above the respective phones are 105, 62.5 and 104.7 pixels per degree.

Equating that 105 pixels per degree angular resolution to the 105" 5K set gives a viewing distance of only 80 inches. If we buy into the premise that the "average" human eye doesn't resolve pixels at a higher density than that it means the extra resolution is wasted beyond 80 inches. Of course 80 inches is likely a silly distance to view a 105" screen as it would appear to be roughly the same size as the iPhone screen held a mere 3 inches from your face - which isn't to say one could focus on the iPhone at that distance, I know I couldn't.

Elon Musk says Tesla's stock price is too high ... welp, NOT ANY MORE

Eddy Ito

Re: Tesla - a government funded subsidy machine

In the meantime governments from individual states to the fed are scrambling to cover the costs of road maintenance as fuel tax revenues drop from electric, hybrid and simply higher efficiency automobiles. That's the problem with subsidies, it doesn't become obvious until it's obviously not working. It doesn't matter if it's roads, butter or sugar, subsidies are the wrong answer to any problem.

Eddy Ito

Re: @ goldcd Or anybody you're about to hand over stock options to

It's a risky comment for Musk to make. I would think the SEC should be paying more attention to things like this since it could easily be seen as stock price manipulation.

FCC boss Wheeler: Lack of broadband choice is screwing Americans

Eddy Ito

Re: Monopoly

2Mbit > 20 Mbit enables HD skype

I'll point out that my connection is "up to" 7Mbit but the absolute fastest I've ever seen is 3.5Mbit down and ~250kbit up and typical speeds are 2.8M/190k. There isn't HD anything going both ways. Given the city I live has a population density of only 17,000 per square mile so it isn't really big city dense and the infrastructure has only been patched, not updated, in the last 50 years so it isn't much of a surprise. I'd be quite happy with the service I had in a much more rural area (pop. density <100/sq. mi.) as it was consistently 4Mbit up/down so it was actually useful but it seems the advent of the media consumption devices has tilted the bias to down only and up only used for simple requests rather than moving real data.

Intel goes high-fashion with wearable supermodel

Eddy Ito

... to craft a gadget that won't assaulted or banned from restaurants...

Can someone please translate the second paragraph?

Apple Fanbois (and girls) already lining up for NEW iPHONE

Eddy Ito

Re: Why?

The fact that there exists a company in NYC which provides a line waiting service for anything from iPhones to cronuts tells you something about how special NYC really is.

NATO nations 'will respond to a Cyber attack on one as though it were on all'

Eddy Ito

Re: But it's my neighbors what's done it!

I just can't help but imagine that some 12yo is going to start WWIII for shits and giggles.

Especially when it turns out the kid was sponsored by the likes of the CIA in a black op that went as plannedwrong

Britain's housing crisis: What are we going to do about it?

Eddy Ito

Does London not have a property tax? Not that long ago there were a bunch of overseas investors buying up anything in the LA basin and many paying cash over the asking price today the prices are coming back down and more is becoming available because the investors found that paying property taxes at a rate of 1.5-2% on an empty house was a pretty bad investment on top of the 6-10% closing costs but then prices aren't rising 20% annually either. In comparison there are many housing units sitting empty in China and the owners are happy to hold them since it isn't costing them anything to do so.

Eddy Ito

It's a catch 22 in that the landlords have effectively been given monopoly power by the lack of building permits that nobody wants because they won't be able to recoup the investment in a new rent controlled building. At this point the bubble is apparently stable, for now.

BOFH: The current value of our IT ASSets? Minus eleventy-seven...

Eddy Ito

Re: Sharon T. Pokeworthy...

Most days I tell them to call 202.456.1414 and ask for Mike Oxmall.

Women-only town seeks men

Eddy Ito

Just when you think you know El Reg. They give you a headline like that and it isn't about an understaffed server farm in Rio without air conditioning.

Microsoft boots 1,500 dodgy apps from the Windows Store

Eddy Ito

Re: um

Isn't the statistic something like a new app receives most of its reviews within the first two or three weeks? If that's the case it makes sense to give an app a trial window and if it doesn't reach $THRESHOLD in that time then it gets pulled. A quick search seems to indicate that about 60% of all apps are zombies anyway with many having never been downloaded regardless of which app store you look at. Certainly after a year if it hasn't been downloaded once it isn't likely to take off anytime soon. It's probably a pity as there is likely some wheat among all that chaff.

Super Cali signs a kill-switch, campaigners say it's atrocious

Eddy Ito

There go the tinfoil hats then, I guess.

If growing wheat isn't beyond government control, what makes you think your tinfoil hat hasn't been foiled long before you put it on?

Eddy Ito

Then why aren't they doing it already with the iPhones that have Activation Lock?

How do we know the smart thieves aren't already doing this? How long before the smart thieves read this article? I think some already have.

Eddy Ito

It doesn't have to be authorities who go bricking your phone. Given the amount of malicious intent in some people it would be easy to imagine a person gaming the system to brick the phone belonging to their intended victim to ensure the opportunity to call for help was removed. There has to be some check on this system to ensure only the owner can brick the device or allow emergency calls even when "bricked" by disabling the SIM slot. I imagine a few fuses on the SIM data lines could be blown with a simple switch which would brick it quite nicely while still allowing calls to emergency services.

Real thieves can always carry a Faraday bag they can pick up at Amazon to drop the nicked mobile in and sell it off at their leisure in Tibet. Of course that will just mean that California will pass a law banning the possession of Faraday bags by civilians which will soon lead to bans on metal foil and ultimately the closest someone will be legally able to get will be 00 steel wool pads that are no more than 1/4 inch thick but I digress.

China building SUPERSONIC SUBMARINE that travels in a BUBBLE

Eddy Ito

Bovine

feces!

Hard money says they are talking "supersonic" relative to sonic velocities within the produced cavity not sonic water velocities. The whole point of making it cavitate is to provide a region of reduced friction which also conveniently supplies a region of reduced sonic velocity. Technically it may be supersonic in the cavity, but in water... not so much, hence I pitch a gigantic cow patty into the mix.

Anyone want to work out the power equation for supersonic velocities underwater? Nah, me either.

Experimental hypersonic SUPERMISSILE destroyed 4 SECONDS after US launched it

Eddy Ito

Re: Pasteurized before you see it

Actually, if it was going 3600 mph it would have been four miles away. Must have been a hell of a bang to cause damage to the launch facility.

Wearables market set to EXPLODE... Wait, is that a STRAP-ON chair?

Eddy Ito

Re: Noonee 'chair'

I guess kicking back and putting your feet up is out of the question.

Eddy Ito

Re: The wrist computer market has grown by almost 700 per cent this year

If it keeps growing at this rate, we'll have them beat in about an hour.

China hopes home-grown OS will oust Microsoft

Eddy Ito

Re: Doom to failure

Perhaps they could base it on ReactOS.

Eddy Ito

Re: New user interface ...

I was thinking something more along the lines of

东与西 $

Which in Hong Kong would naturally be

東與西 $

Best shot: Coffee - how do you brew?

Eddy Ito

Re: Instant vs Brewed

When I tried to interrupt her and ask for boiling water, she looked both frightened and uncomprehending (latter could have been because I spoke a completely foreign language of course).

Boiling water would likely get her fired as a dozen legal beagles would be nipping at heels of the proprietor if a single customer would be exposed to so much as one drop of water slightly warmer than tepid.

Foreign language, did you happen to be speaking English?

AMD unveils 'single purpose' graphics card for PC gamers and NO ONE else

Eddy Ito

Re: Sorry, what's it thirty years of?

Well since the ATI launch was August 1985 maybe it's that they have completed 29 years and are now in their 30th year. It's also possible they figure nobody would actually care enough to count. I know I wouldn't have thought anything of it if you hadn't pointed it out.