* Posts by Eddy Ito

4662 publicly visible posts • joined 27 Apr 2007

Build your own NASA space rover: Here are the DIY JPL blueprints

Eddy Ito

Re: Boo

Indeed, it's a 14.8 V dive light battery

Eddy Ito

Re: Boo

It really needs a pressurized tank with skunk scent and an array of nozzles set about the perimeter triggered by proximity sensors to prevent anything from sneaking up from behind.

Oh, and either a Stirling engine or a flame licker just because they're neat.

Basic bigot bait: Build big black broad bots – non-white, female 'droids get all the abuse

Eddy Ito

Re: The non-Hispanic whites

Because governments in the US (state & federal) are concerned about the purity of "white folk" which technically and oddly, as I understand it, includes folk from Portugal and Brazil but not Spain and Argentina. In practice it's a basically a Brownness Scale (B.S.) to determine if you're special in some way. Note that there's almost always another box marked "Hispanic (any race)" to double down on the B.S. in an attempt to be more exclusive inclusive.

I used to try ticking a box that I hadn't ticked before but as I rapidly approach the age of dirt I think I've already ticked them all at one point or another so for the last census I wrote in Inuit+Zulu. Let's be honest, they don't really care and they aren't about to call you on it. "Honest, it's what my parents, Akluitok and Anele, told me!"

Eddy Ito

Re: A next step?

Having watched all three robot videos, I'm going to call the paper a joke.

In the interest of saving the rest some time here's my summary of the vids:

Bina48: It appears that poor Bina has had a stroke and has a lazy eye. If you're going to present a bot in a video at least present one that isn't obviously broken and ditch the annoying typed questions.

Nadine: I have to say Nadine is only present for about 30 seconds or less than half the video and it's a bit disjointed but then it's by RT so...

Yangyang: Welcome to a trade show in China! The video is completely in Chinese so presumably aimed at a Chinese speaking audience yet they ignored non-English comments.

Facebook deletes 17 accounts, dusts off hands, beams: We've saved the 2018 elections

Eddy Ito

Not surprising when you consider their stock price just took a 20% hit to the short and curlys and seeing how Twitty's share price got smacked after they kicked off a few names. There was no way FB wanted to double up by saying yeah, we just decimated our perceived product base. They might come back in a few months or a year or price boost of >15% and say, "see what good do-bees we are, we fixed the intarwebs!" but it isn't going to happen too soon.

Politicians fume after Amazon's face-recog AI fingers dozens of them as suspected crooks

Eddy Ito

Re: New training rule needed

It also seems to pick out facial hair nicely. Only about 6% of congress has facial hair yet there are clearly 8 in this group who certainly have facial hair and it looks like several others could easily have some stubble that may fool the digital filters.

Eddy Ito

In other news

TSA's mother TLA, the DHS, has asked Amazon how quickly they could roll out this technology at every airport in the US. The rationale is that this would do preliminary screening of travelers as they arrive at the curb in order to select individuals for extended groping enhanced screening as they pass through security on their way to their flight.

ReactOS 0.4.9 release metes out stability and self-hosting, still looks like a '90s fever dream

Eddy Ito

... clinging resolutely to your installation CDs of yesteryear.

I wouldn't say clinging but recently, in searching through a box of old computer miscellany for some odd or end, I did run across install cds for OS/2 3.0, NT4, and Win98SE. Not what I was looking for so I just put them back and moved on to the next box.

It's 2018 so, of course, climate.news is sold to climate change deniers

Eddy Ito

Re: WTF!!

Otherwise every glass of water on the planet would contain a homeopathic remedy for every ailment known to medicine, at really powerfully diluted concentrations, for free.

Unless that glass was filled from a tap in my previous apartment. The water from which smelled more heavily of chlorine than did the swimming pool.

Eddy Ito
Meh

Comes as no surprise

not.news

/\.news$/ REJECT

or as appropriate.

Eddy Ito

Re: FFS

PhD meaning Piled high & Deep I presume.

Fix this faxing hell! NHS told to stop hanging onto archaic tech

Eddy Ito
Trollface

Re: User story

Are you saying they should use a digital format such as TIFF?

Oh goodness no! I was hoping for something far more advanced, like WMF or BMP.

Eddy Ito

Re: User story

And that's the main problem with FAX, it's the all too often needed analog line. A modern equivalent would allow one to hit a FAX app on your mobile, take a picture of the document you want, and send it to the person in your contact list. How they choose to receive such communications is of no concern to you whether it be on their mobile, desktop, or some digital FAX-like machine. FAX machines either need to catch up and go digital or be shoved aside.

US military manuals hawked on dark web after files left rattling in insecure FTP server

Eddy Ito
Stop

Please tell me they at least changed the default password on the Reaper drones.

Big contenders in the broadband chart this week, but who will be #1? Well, not Britain

Eddy Ito

Yes, you wouldn't count people without broadband since it's an average of broadband speeds not average internet speed per capita or some such. The problem is in using the average which can skew greatly from reality.

Consider a sample of 10 speeds, 4 at 1 Mbps, 3 at 2 Mbps, 2 at 3 Mbps, and 1 at 1 Gbps. The average is 101.6 Mbps which is a poor metric of what people should expect, where the median is 2 Mbps which is much closer to a realistic expectation.

Eddy Ito

This sounds like one of the typical situations where average has very little bearing on reality since most people are quite possibly below average. What's the median speed?

While we're at it, can we chop up the larger countries into smaller regions since I'd wager that speeds in San Fran or Arlington, VA are probably somewhat higher than those in Winnett, MT or Angle Inlet, MN?

Did you know? The word 'Taiwan' would crash iOS thanks to a buggy filter for the Chinese govt

Eddy Ito

How are the heads of the Foxconn plants in China supposed to phone home to Taiwan?

Oh wait, I suppose the regular POTS line still works.

Sueball claims Apple broke hacking laws with iOS batt throttling code

Eddy Ito

Re: Consumer protection

Meh, class actions have always been little more than a way to enrich a few lawyers who claim to be suing on behalf of everyone while knowing full well that everyone will still be just as screwed as they were before and stripped of any hope for real recompense. It's a bit like California's Prop 65 law only not as bad since at least the lawyers in a class action actually have to find at least one person who was harmed in some way where Prop 65 suits don't - see Lawyers v. Coffee.

If Apple were smart they should try to get all these class actions into a single suit since they all represent the same class. It would have the added benefit of cutting into the pockets of all the various lawyers since they would each get a smaller cut and it's likely that a single payout would be smaller than the sum of several payouts should they lose.

The strange tale of an energy biz that suddenly became a blockchain upstart – and $1.4m now forfeited in sold shares

Eddy Ito

Re: "an unnamed Hong Kong resident"

Delaware is where many companies reside simply because it offers a better business climate than most other states as some are downright byzantine and that's especially true for publicly traded companies. If I remember the statistic correctly it's something like half of publicly traded U.S. companies are registered in Delaware so it's likely easier to find people to handle the paperwork.

Feds charge Man after FCC boss Ajit Pai's kids get death threat over net neutrality axe vote

Eddy Ito
WTF?

Re: What an idiot

In general people don't think well once they've worked themselves into a froth. Case in point, read this horrible verdict against free speech. I'd wager the angry person who used colorful language directed toward an asshole1 never thought much about the possible outcomes before calling the asshole1 an asshole1.

WTF indeed.

1. I make no claims as to whether he is actually an asshole or not; I am merely expressing my opinion that he is an asshole without intending to cause offense.

Eddy Ito

It's not that officials are "special" or "demi-gods" it's because they're in a position to set policy. Making threats of violence to that official or their family in order to coerce or extort a policy position is little different from using indiscriminate violence or the threats of same to influence policy. Please note that the latter tactic, typically known as terrorism, is also a felony.

Google weeps as its home state of California passes its own GDPR

Eddy Ito

Re: Easy Enough

Sadly Exactis wasn't so much a breach but, as I understand it, more matter of leaving the database accessible to all and sundry on one of their servers. To me a breach is more when one gets past defenses but it assumes that one at least puts the lid on the garbage bin and it doesn't look like Exactis did even that.

Koh YEAH! Apple, Samsung finally settle iPhone patent crusade

Eddy Ito

Re: But, but.....

Nappies? Come now, their kids are probably working on their third phablet.

Firefox hooks up with HaveIBeenPwned for account pwnage probe

Eddy Ito
Facepalm

And with the finding that Exactis left their database open online with 320 million exposed my guess is that soon everyone not already pwned in the US is now on the list. Hmmm, seems their website is down at the moment. I wonder why.

Creep travels half the world to harass online teen gamer… and gets shot by her mom – cops

Eddy Ito

Re: I thought of the child(ren)

@Pen-y-gors

How do you know she was two feet away? Being two feet away would be a stupid thing because you could easily be hit by door fragments should he bust it open and be within ready reach of the attacker. Natural instinct would be to get as far away as possible and assume a non exposed position so it's more likely that the shots came from across the room. Also as the door was glass and at the back of the house, probably of the sliding variety which is quite common leading to a deck, so she could easily have see him quite clearly. Moreover, given the area is highly wooded it's unlikely a stray level shot from a .22 pistol would make it through the brush.

Lastly, shooting a warning shot at an upward angle is perhaps the worst possible advice since it means that if the bullet isn't stopped by the door, again glass which she apparently shot through, it now has an upward trajectory which only increases the distance the bullet has the potential to reach as it could potentially clear the near line of trees and decreases your knowledge about where it may wind up. Of course with Goochland having a population density of 77 people per square mile it's probably of little concern even if they live only a few minutes from "down town".

Eddy Ito
Trollface

Re: "Flew halfway around the world" = "Auckland to Sydney"?

Now hang on here! The article doesn't specify which way the plane went. Sure, we assume he went the short way but he could have flown much farther than "half way around the world". The wonderful thing about great circles is that one can choose to go the short way but one can also choose to go the long way. Why the flight from Sidney to LA then on to DC traveling westerly would only be about 3000 miles short of twice around the world.

On Kaspersky’s 'transparency tour' the truth was clear as mud

Eddy Ito

Re: Seriously?

I haven't seen anyone "back the Russian government" but the simple fact is that it doesn't make sense for Kaspersky to do what he is being blindly accused of. First it doesn't make sense to even ask for a back door simply because it's likely to be found; this is why the FBI asking for back doors in encryption is so bad. It's much easier to simply walk round a few times until you find the back door. Second, Kaspersky is already doing a great job by the Russian government simply by making a good product and that applies doubly as it often finds little tricks devised by the NSA and friends. Finally, about the only thing he could possibly do is intentionally hobble his own software so it doesn't identify the little tricks devised by the GRU but that would simply lead to the CIA/MI6 copying the style of the GRU so the neither's bag of tricks is detected and that would defeat the purpose. To sum up, at best it's a very short term gain to cheat but a very long term loss and with no evidence either way I have no problem running Kaspersky AV on my machines.

Eddy Ito

It's an odd question since I think any government would murder my family and myself without hesitation if they thought it would benefit them. It's likely that the only reason they haven't is because the cost:benefit ratio doesn't work in their favor. Likewise I don't see any cost:benefit working against Kaspersky.

In huge privacy win, US Supreme Court rules warrant needed to slurp folks' location data

Eddy Ito

Re: something missed...

I have to agree I'm becoming a fan of Gorsuch with nearly every decision. In the long run, I'm beginning to think we in the U.S got lucky with all the shenanigans involving former prosecutor Garland and wound up dodging a bullet.

Eddy Ito

Re: Orin Kerr is posting on the subject.

I have to admit this one took me slightly off guard. I had figured Alito, as a former AG, was a given pro-cop and maybe Thomas as a former assistant AG but Kennedy was a surprise. Gorsuch, I think, dissented only because he had a good feel for the rest of the court and knew he could afford to dissent in the way he did.

US Supreme Court blocks internet's escape from state sales taxes

Eddy Ito

I can hear Bezos laughing from here. It's now that much harder and more expensive for small bootstrapped start-ups to compete.

Of course the easy workaround is to provide a link to Fedex, UPS, etc. and have the customer arrange their own delivery. That way the sale is local so the seller only has to deal with one tax rate and if the warehouse is in one of the five states without a sales tax it's avoided completely.

Big Cable unplugs Cali's draft net neutrality protections yet AGAIN

Eddy Ito

Gut and amend

I for one am shocked! Shocked they took so long that is. "Gut and amend" it's the Cali way.

Tesla fingers former Gigafactory hand as alleged blueprint-leaking sabotage mastermind

Eddy Ito

Yep, it's a civil action not a criminal action so the police aren't involved.

Microsoft shoves US govt IT contract where ICE throws kids: Out of sight in a chain-link cage

Eddy Ito

Re: do you believe this to be true?

It must be true since as of 2016 there were 273,539 children taken into foster care with 437,465 resident as of 30 September 2016 and 250,248 exiting. Only about 1/3 were in foster homes with relatives.

It is so bad in some places that some are calling for an end of CPS.

Granted sometimes they just throw a parent in jail for letting a kid play or walk to the park alone or even for oversleeping.

Eddy Ito

Meanwhile all over the country folks are having their children kidnapped by state agencies because those agencies believe that children allowed to walk a few blocks home from school by themselves constitutes neglect and deserves removing the children to foster care. Oddly life as a child when I was young was far better in terms of learning responsibility and being granted independence even though all the evidence points to it having been much less safe back then. Then again there wasn't someone screaming "stranger danger" every half hour like a cuckoo clock.

Oh, this makes sense now because it's exactly the same thing. Who could be a bigger stranger than a person from somewhere else? Tariffs and immigrants is just stranger danger writ large.

Fraudster admits she was OPM dealer: Leaked US govt staff files used to bag cash, car loans

Eddy Ito

Re: One upside of the OPM network breech

You got one of those letters too! When the envelope said I had already been approved I thought it was just another credit card. Hmm, I get several of those every week, maybe I should check them out more closely and see what they pay. Shouldn't be anything wrong with a little side hustle, right?

That was quick: Seattle rushes to kill tax that would mildly inconvenience Amazon

Eddy Ito

Re: Some figures

The figure you want is 40,000 people. At $5.29 a head per week that's $211,600 every week or a cool $11M each year. Kinda makes that whole $25k look more like pocket lint than anything.

Eddy Ito

Re: If there's a housing crisis...

There is also the burden of red tape. It's difficult to adjust to housing demand when it takes more than a quarter of a year to get an answer for a permit. Plus if it isn't perfect it's to the back of the queue to resubmit and that's provided everything in Seattle is above board and not like some towns in NJ.

Keep your hands on the f*cking wheel! New Tesla update like being taught to drive by your dad

Eddy Ito

Re: Auto-crash-pilot

I'm not sure its even that far. At 30mph every modern (this millennium) saloon car will stop in its own length when doing an emergency stop, provided tyres, brakes, and shocks are working. I could see 40 requiring an extra car length, maybe 2, but an extra 3 car lengths sounds too far to me.

I was basing it on simple math given the 40 mph and 2 seconds to stop while assuming constant deceleration. Simply put x = v0*t + 0.5*a*t^2 where v0 = 40 mph (58.67 ft/s), a = -20 mph/s (-29.33 ft/s^2), and t = 2 s which gives 58.67 and I rounded to 60 feet. Sure, I get the braking king is somewhere around 90 feet for a 60-0 stop (that's over 1.3 g deceleration) but those tests are typically done in near ideal conditions and also measure from the instant the brake is hit which takes the wetware out of the equation. I would expect a typical modern car to manage about 1 g deceleration which works out to about 120 feet from 60, 53 feet from 40, and 30 feet from 30 but as you say there are many other factors which impact that and I'm sure Tesla's recommended 45 psi tire inflation pressure is good for range but probably not ideal for stopping.

Eddy Ito

Re: Auto-crash-pilot

It's less than 2s to impact from the stationary car coming into view by my stopwatch, and the nominal stopping time from 40mph with ABS is 2.0 seconds, so do the math; it's pretty much a guaranteed crash situation.

Actually stopping from 40 in 2 seconds only uses about 60 feet or roughly four car lengths which looks to be about what the Tesla has. My guess is that they staged it so that the Tesla would have just enough distance to stop if it starts immediately and in that respect it is right on the edge of being set up to fail.

Eddy Ito

Re: Auto-crash-pilot

After you realised that the car wasn't going to do anything.

What kind of prat waits for the car to decide? This is exactly the kind of complacency that is the problem.

Trump's ZTE deal challenged by Senate

Eddy Ito

The threat is they dared defy Uncle Sam's sanctions so now Uncle has a hair across his arse and is out looking for blood. As for their phones & other kit being secure, they're probably just as secure as every other phone being made in China, which is just about every other phone.

Sorry Uncle, your crying wolf yet again isn't going to persuade me. Doubly so since you're likely a far greater threat to my security than any foreign government will ever be.

British egg producers saddened by Google salad emoji update

Eddy Ito

Re: Pointless emojis

Emojis are worse than Chinese. At least Chinese simplifies things a bit since there are no conjugations of verbs or the silliness of attributing gender to inanimate objects. Emojis don't simplify anything and go out of the way to be obscure.

Emoji salad, how fitting.

Finally, San Francisco cleans up the crap from its streets – yes, all those fscking scooters

Eddy Ito
Trollface

Re: Old money vs new

Technically, the easternmost point in North America is Semisopochnoi Island which is part of Alaska.

You know what your problem is, Apple? Complacency

Eddy Ito

Re: Quality, not features

You're mistaking their meaning of quality. When they say they are focusing on quality what they mean is they are trying not to let quality slip further while they strip down their costs. If that means getting rid of 50 cent ports that you may find useful then so be it. There's no money in designing spaces for ports to go or making data fields customizable. It's pretty clear their mantra is one size fits Apple and it's your hard luck if it doesn't fit you.

'Autopilot' Tesla crashed into our parked patrol car, say SoCal cops

Eddy Ito

Re: Hmm

I don't see where a center divider would have changed anything. It's pretty clear from the damage and the black streaks coming from the tires that it was a small overlap impact which resulted in the Tesla being spun sideways and the cop car was pushed up on the sidewalk.

In this instance I'd say that if autopilot was engaged it likely got confused by the road markings which has just added a split for the right turn lane. I could see where the computer would be confused as to which lane to choose and if it chooses a bit too soon there wouldn't be enough clearance for the parked cars and a nickel says the driver was probably looking at their phone thinking autopilot has it under control.

US Senator Ron Wyden to Pentagon: Encrypt your websites

Eddy Ito

Re: Here's an Idea

How quickly they forget. Junger v. Daley, Bernstein v. United States, the PGP book, etc.

Boffins: Michael Jackson's tilt was a criminally smooth trick

Eddy Ito

Surely this can't be true? Assuming a similar skeleton and the same percentage of fat then organ weight will be constant and so any additional weight will be muscle and so they must be "stronger" (depending on how you want to define strength).

The problem with muscle is that it gets stronger in proportion to the cross sectional area but the weight goes with the volume. Also a stronger musculature will necessarily require a stronger skeletal frame to withstand the increased stress which also adds weight so a slight person will have both lighter muscles and a lighter skeleton. As to their organ weight, it too will be different because both their caloric and pulmonary requirements to sustain their frame and musculature will differ substantially as well as their overall blood volume. So even if we assume their activity levels and fat percentages are even the balance equation changes simply so the person with more muscle doesn't break their own bones. It's why Superman is the man of steel, he kinda has to be.

I give you the ridiculous comparison: ants (~10 mm long) can lift 20-30 times their own weight but it's only because they are tiny. A man sized ant wouldn't survive because it wouldn't be able breathe adequately much less lift it's own weight. In the same way a human (say 1.75 m, 75 kg) who can lift their own weight shrunk to ant size would be able to lift 175 times their weight but would be blind in a sense as they would only see wavelengths near the X-ray band. Sorry for ruining all those '50s & '60s B movies.

In short, yes, more muscle equals more strength but the associated support infrastructure that goes with it also necessarily changes.

Eddy Ito

But everyone has abs. Not wanting to show off, I keep my six pack well hidden behind a quarter keg.

Super Cali goes ballistic: mugshot site atrocious

Eddy Ito
WTF?

Re: America-Fuck-Yeah

Because in China where people are always guilty it's so much better or are you just confused between capitalism and crime? Seriously, non-sequitur much?