Posts by I ain't Spartacus

Re: They're all crap

I was given an Amazon Echo Dot, for Christmas. It can't play music (unlike its big brother), although you can connect it to some sound systems and use it to run them by voice.

It can do quick Google searches and bring you back results from Wiki - though I've never bothered trying. It can add stuff to your Amazon basket, and by default is set to one-click ordering (even though my Amazon account isn't).

You can set timers on it, though it's not that much harder to pull my phone out of my pocket and do the same, or set the oven timer. Basically I use the phone for accuracy when boiling eggs.

I tried to get it to wake me up with an alarm and some internet radio - but it won't. You say "Echo wake me up at 7am with..." and it's already answered saying OK - without telling you what it's going to wake you up with. Plus that would require having it in your bedroom. Listening to you...

I don't have IoT lights or anything to control.

It can apparently now call people, which might make sense when we all have SIP apps that work properly.

I only do the timer once or twice a week when cooking (so next to the oven anyway) and my existing stereo can't be linked to it. The wake-up function is shit because all it does is beep, I can have Googe searches read back to me but if it's important I'll need to read the results (else how do I trust it's picked the right one) and if it's not important then it can wait.

So what's it for?

The big one has speakers. and is designed to tie you into Amazon music, so that makes perfect sense. If you're happy with the sound quality it's probably quite a good idea. Not sure about the little ones though. Mine's back in the box.

Re: Erm...

It is a popular beat combo m'lud.

Oh sorry m'lud, my junior counsel informs me that it is in fact a virtual "Speaker's Corner" on the information superhighway where the world's drunks and lunatics gather to shout abuse at each other and howl at the moon.

Their pens seem perfectly fine...

Re: Cryptocurrencies are interesting...

You don't understand futures markets if you don't think anything is traded.

The reason you can buy air fares a year in advance, when the carriers don't know the cost of fuel, is that they buy futures contracts. This is the same reason that all the farmers don't go bust when there's a bumper harvest, as many sell on the futures market to give a steady profit, rather than take the risk.

It's also how food companies can sign year long fixed price contracts with the supermarkets - as they've also bought futures contracts. Although you'd never catch me signing a supply contract for one of the major supermarkets, as they some of the worst companies to do business with I can think of.

Re: Is there a pattern here?

Bitcoin isn't a very good idea. Or at least it's a very bad implementation. The banking industry and central banks all seem to be studying the idea of distributed transaction ledgers at the moment.

If you want to use Bitcoin for tiny transactions, or see it as some sort of massively risky investment scheme, then go right ahead. But as a vehicle for your life savings, it's a terrible idea.

The downside of regulations is you get taxed, you can't do criminal stuff, and the government gets to stick its nose into your business and lumber you with red tape and the like. The upside of regulations is that you get some legal protection if a bank screws up and goes bust, unlike the people who had cash in with Mt Gox (or the many other exchanges that have gone pop overnight).

Re: Banning it so it must be popular

Oliver Jones,

Currency controls are a standard tool of governments/central banks if they wish to control their exchange rates. The UK had them up until at least the late 70s.

One reason China has banned Bitcoin is that they still run currency controls. In their case they're no longer manipulating the exchange rate downwards to help exports, as they did for the decade before the recession. They're now worried about capital flight, as lots of Party people try and get assets abroad (presumably because they didn't gain them terribly honestly).

Russia also has a problem with capital flight, because nobody trusts the regime not to suddenly turn on them and nick their assets or companies. So a bit of property abroad is very useful.

China has less of a problem, because foreign companies are willing to invest there, but investing in Russia is a total lottery (see TNK-BNP / Hermitage Capital), so their economy suffers hugely from a lack of investment as the oligarchs and foreign companies alike don't trust the legal system.

Re: Progress

With augmented reality glasses, you could enter your animals of interest

And see what? A sexier sheep? Muffin' the mule is illegal in all decent jurisdictions you know...

On which subject, there was a program on BBC4 on Sunday, called 'Addicted to Sheep'. I wasn't sure whether it was a hard-hitting documentary on farming, or aimed at a more specialist market.

WhatsApp won't work without full access to your addressbook. As I recally Facebook promised not to copy all that data when they bought it, but admitted later that they had anyway. Then changed their "privacy policy"* to admit they were doing it.

I do have a Facebook account for family stuff, on a throwaway email address. But they've been able to link me to friends because my friends and family have my real email address on their phones - and anyone who uses a Facebook app on their phones has "given FB permission" to hoover up their address book and do data analysis on it. And they've been able to correctly correlate my real email address from friends/family I've voluntarily linked myself with to ones that aren't mutual friends with any of them, but have my real email address on their phone.

The only way to protect yourself from that level of sinister data collection online would be to have a throwaway email address for every separate friend/family member, or at least friendship group. Even if I didn't have an FB account they'd still have access to photos of me taken by friends/family, the locations those were taken at and my email address.

*_{Facebook and Google having privacy policies is a bit like Charles Manson having not-murdering policies...}

Re: FB strips data so photos effectivlely C M. Zuckerberg for the next 70 years. Accident?

Which is why all sorts of surprising bits of Android won't work if you have background location services turned off. Or at least that used to be the case, back when I had an Android phone. It was clear that Google want to track your location so they can sell you location related ads, but also so they can do real-time traffic status for sat-nav and keep building their database of all the WiFi hotspots on the planet for aGPS.

Heaven knows what else they do with that stuff - and of course because Google write the OS (and their Play Services is increasingly a giant digital-blob) you've no idea whether it's even possible to fully turn this stuff off anymore.

Re: Outlaw the use of "up to" - it is lying about the truth

There's a shampoo ad on telly at the moment that claims their anti-dandruff hair-gloop will leave you "up to 100% flake-free!"

Which also means that you could make the exact same claim for sandpaper...

Re: Watevvvaaaa...

Fluffers aren't obsolete. London Underground still employ loads of them!

Re: Demolition Man

And it predicted the end of toilet paper.

Although I've cut myself on the sharp edges of those bloody seashells so often that I'm going back to paper again...

Re: Mad Max

Mad Max isn't SciFi is it? I thought it was just a documentary about Australia?

Re: Lack of cynicism?

DougS,

Have an upvote. Although as a proper cynic I should ask what your real motive was for posting that...

What people need is a healthy skepticism. But also a sense of proportion. And some empathy.

You need to distrust authority, but also realise that a lot of people in positions of authority aren't evil masterminds out to screw the world, they're just as overworked/under-informed/confused as many other people, but with more power. And of course different opinions and sources of information.

If you spend your whole life on the internet having fun and using it as an amazingly useful tool for work, you're going to have one opinion of it. If you spend your whole day reading reams of security reports from MI5 about possible terrorist plots they've spotted - and how much of them is being conducted online - your view of the internet is going to be somewhat coloured by that.

Neither party is wrong - because the internet is an amazingly useful tool. And some of the people who use it, will do so for evil purposes. So what you then need is a sense of proportion to try and work out what balance of policy to strike - and also a sense of proportion to realise that everyone else will come up with a different balance to you. And this doesn't make them all evil control-freaks, or libertarian idiots, it just means thye disagreed with you.

Then maybe we can have a debate about the politics without screeching at everyone who disagrees with us at the tops of our voices, and try and reach some conclusions. And save the screeching for when we think people are being really dishonest.

it's like Trump. If you've spent your whole political career shouting that all Republicans are horrible - then why should anyone particularly listen to you when you say the same about Trump? When it really matters.

So I want skepticism tempered by empathy, a sense of proportion and people to dial down the hyperbole. I'm not asking for much...

Re: Counterproductive..

Alternatively, even some LW radios (+headphones to avoid the giveway sound) might do the job.

Good idea that man! Get them all listening to Test Match Special. The civilising power of cricket.

It's a shame that Henry Blofeld has retired, as I'm sure he's the perfect man to talk anyone round after a lifetime of a dictatorship's brain-washing.

Although, as they don't have access to the internet (or even Wisden), we could just play them old recordings. So they could hear Johnners and Arlott. Admittedly there'd be some Fred Trueman to add a bit of dour Yorkshire misery, but you can't have everything.

It's the rule now. I just don't watch trailers. Way too many of them are packed with either plot-spoilers or ruin the best gags by showing the punchline.

Although some do have good info. They'll say, "an Adam Sandler movie" and then I'll know not to watch the film. Or I think I saw one on telly the other day that starts with "Reese Witherspoon back to her romcom best"...

"Counterpoint the surrealism of the underlying metaphor", death's too good for them...

Re: planet is surrounded by spy satellites

Bahboh,

OK. Quickly searched for your example of Meteosat.

It's a weather satellite, not a spy sat, so wasn't designed for looking for small things on the surface, so much as weather patterns.

According to the info here:

The Meteosat-8 satellite belongs to the second generation of Meteosats and is much more capable than the first generation Meteosat-7 — delivering imagery from 12 instead of 3 spectral channels, with higher spatial resolution and with an increased frequency, every 15 instead of every 30 minutes. Of the 12 spectral channels, 11 provide measurements with a resolution of 3 km at the subsatellite point. The twelfth, so-called HRV (High Resolution Visible) channel of SEVIRI (Spinning Enhanced Visible and Infrared Imager), provides measurements with a resolution of 1 km

So the High Resolution camera has a resolution of 1km, and records an image every 15 minutes. You might be able to see the flying saucer from Independence Day, but you've got bugger-all chance of seeing any planes.

Re: planet is surrounded by spy satellites

The planet is surrounded by spy satellites, pointing their cameras at interesting places. Not the very, very empty Southern Indian Ocean. Which is empty.

Did I mention there's bugger-all there?

Yeah, but we want to find them. Not to cause them to hide and refuse to answer our signals.

Or worse, declare war on us.

Re: The stuff of life found everywhere

Except, strangely, 1600 Pennsylvania Ave....

Nope. It's life Jim, but not as we know it.

Thinks... Does pond slime come in orange as well as green...