Posts by John Smith 19

In principle an asteroid is easier to land on

In fact given it's surface gravity is almost zero it'd be more like a docking than a landing,

Of course the question remains, how deep is it?

Excellent work though, although it does still seem a bit circumstantial to me.

Proving that whenever you think you've reached the limit of how strange the universe is

It gets a bit stranger.

It's not quite the "On off star" of "A Deepness In The Sky" but it's quite odd.

So thumbs up for analysing the data and getting this result.

Actually the problem is there is no data relay that could hoover it up and play it back slowly

Since sending any payload to Saturn is even tougher than Jupiter the idea of "wasting" payload on an infrastructure package horrifies the scientists who drive the design process.

Oh the IoT code monkeys have struck again.

Networking mfgs.

Take heed.

If it's got a processor in it you're responsible for it being secure, or not.

Take what help you can get, stop telling people to STFU and FO.

"..without realizing that only professional crooks have the right to have fun there."

Indeed. As anyone who has read "flash boys" would know.

You know how "Tony Stark" in Iron Man is losely modelled on Elon Musk?

Ever wondered who "Obadiah Stane" was modeled on?

Good 'ol LM. Keeping the men and women of the Congress funded and lobbyists employed for at least 7 decades.

tl;dr version

"We have now established that 68 solar systems know where we live."

Why am I not surprised at this work originating from Queens, Belfast?

Joking aside it's a question anyone who recalls the "Ravenous Bugblatter beast of Trall" and SETI would ponder it. If we can see them, who can see us?

Keep in mind that transit methods are the simplest detection approach. Others track spectral shifts in solar output caused by the gravitation from the planets pulling on the sun. Obviously this would be most acute when the planets line up in certain ways, which are probably quite rare and infrequent.

So, quite useful to know if you wanted to decided which directions to scan in for say an invasion fleet.

This is actually an amazing piece of work. Privacy protection sounds first rate. But please

No apps.

Do you really need a few million of the clueless looking head down inside some of those stations?

People will think "Signage, how quaint." But changing signs could cut 2 mins off the journey time of 1 million commuters is basically 3.8 years of journey time each day. Signage also keeps the visitor looking up, not down, so they're less likely to trip over someone.

Alternatively discouraging some of those 17 odd routes should stop squeezing some of the severely congested stations during the rush hour. I wonder if tfl realized just how massive a surge some of those stations were getting who were not entering or leaving, but just passing through?

This (in principle) is a microcosm of the concept of the "smart city." Using the passengers not to track them but as probes within the system and hence identify ways to improve the system.

I applaud the results, but I doubt many other trials will be conducted so scrupulously. :-( That's the problem. But for now thumbs up.

" this does not pose a security threat"

Translations

"The developer who wrote it is now the person who reviews code to decide if they need a re-write as a security threat. He says it isn't and he wrote it."

"We are unable to locate the source code at this time for review, but we're pretty sure it's all good."

"We did a ground-up re write of Windows after all our devs had secure coding training. It is therefor logically impossible that this code have a fault."

"Since no exploit code was included with the information they provided we conclude it cannot be exploited."

Take you're pick. All of them are more honest, although like the original the response is pathetic.

Remember people "Cynicism is the easiest political view to adopt"

It demands you do nothing.

And I think we all know how good most people are at doing that.

As long as you believe you can do nothing, you will not try to do anything.

Which suits these people just find.

IOW US Readers. Contact your Senators and Congressman. Put section 702 on the extinction list. Remind them that if they have had contact, by phone, email or internet with at least one foreign entity they are probably on that database as well, and remember the NSA cannot even tell Congress how big it is.

I think the key question is how this PoS S/W got accepted for this task.

It's specialized and I'll bet not cheap so how was it purchased?

Was there a competitive tender, released through the EUJ?

Was security even an issue?

Was this the best of the offered alternatives? IOW were the competitors even more s**t?

Because if this is the bar to exceed it does not look too high to do so.

Wheather or not that makes any competitor good enough to do the job (not just better than this) is another matter.

Thank Charles Clarke and the Barcelona Bombings for the EU DR Directive

Which in fact the Spanish didn't even ask for in the first place.

I think I can see why quite a lot of the EU would be happy to see the back of the UK, and it's data fetishist Home Office cabal.

"Think tanks" always have a "house" PoV. Like many con-sultantancies.

They are not independent from the people who pay their bills. The question you always need to ask is "What is their house PoV and who funds them?"

Now a key question would be does this one allow staff to have positions that are contrary of its house PoV?

If they do, then the people who fund them should realize that can happen. Personally I think if you're pushing X agenda 99% of the time the contrary view makes you look less like a payed shill for company A, or B.

Advance notice of an official paper that a funder won't like is acceptable, provided the funder can't say "No, you won't publish this, we will shut you down if you do." That's not advance notice, or an opportunity for comment, that's censorship.

"the city administrator's interests are not necessarily the same as the citizens' interests."

And probably never will be. They want orderly, regulated behavior at all times forever. Normal humans doing this job know this is impossible, but the can bet the job will attract the more "neurodiverse" who (literally) don't get it.

The obvious question IMHO is how much of this is personally identifiable, and why do you "need " it to be so.

My instinct is a lot of the time you need flow data, but you don't actually need to be able to trace every single persons ID (and make no mistake if you're carrying a mobile phone or other wireless device you're pretty easy to tag).

But since collecting that ID data is so easy why not?

Why was ANPR rolled out in the UK?

Simple.

Because they could and no one stopped them.

So to be clear Oracle are there own Pay Day Loanshark operation?

Because that's what they look like to me.

<Salesperson> "Where's the rest of my money?"

<Accounts> "You have that backwards. The question is where is the rest of the money you owe the company?"

<Salesperson> "WTF?"

<Accounts> "That's OK, you can work the rest off over the next 6 months, although there will be interest charges if you don't keep up your repayments"

Is anyone reminded of the corporate con game run by the insurance company in "The Incredibles?"

This is no accident, someone has set this as a policy. Find them and get them on a stand and thing s will get interesting.

Oracle are a multi $Bn corporation but they should remember this

"*FLORIDA* is basically a sandbar.

So the good news is that quite a lot of people who bought houses in land will be the owners of very desirable beach front property quite soon?

I'll bet they are excited by that prospect.

"Not sure if they can find another way than to change all 750k cards to other version."

Think of it as the "CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN" scenario of countries that have electronic ID card systems.

It'll be good practice for when you have to do it again.

Who knew so many Romanians read El Reg?

Judging by the down votes.

My post had too points.

1) That for a lot of Americans people all they've heard about Romania is indeed from watching Van Helsing. I was gently poking fun at this. IRL Romania's recovering after decades of Communist rule, has relatively low living costs, under appreciated scenery and a growing economy.

But you already know this.

TBH I'd quite like to visit the place, and I don't have a repeating crossbow. :-}

2) That kind of "Double jeopardy" employment contract seems like something out of 19th Russia, where IIRC servants could be banished to Siberia, but had to pay their own train fare to get there.

Perfect for that "virtual border" the UK is meant to have with the Irish Republic after Brexit

No check points, no barriers but the system will "know" if you're on the wrong side of the border and haven't been passed.

Apart from requiring the UKG to roll out a massive IT project (based on V 0.1 technology) across NI in less than a year what could possibly go wrong?

Proceed with this nonsense at flank speed say I.

seems a bit of a stretch to me.

Presence of B <> presence of RNA

So Boron, necessary , but not sufficient to demonstrate RNA on Mars.

TBH it's a low atomic number element, so I'm not too surprised that if analyzed enough Martian regolith you'd find some there. Y'know, planets are all made of stars, and Boron is early in the fusion list?

Given there's plenty of Iron on the surface I'd say anything below Iron was an odds on bet to existing there.

Still. Handy for ticking off a list of elements you'd want if you were setting up home there. IIRC Boron is quite useful for making alloys in electric motors, generators and transformers. If you want to create a self sufficient settlement being able to make these is going to be quite important.