* Posts by TRT

9611 publicly visible posts • joined 11 Sep 2009

Grand App Auto: Tesla smartphone hack can track, locate, unlock, and start cars

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Re: Depends if the app used built-in iOS security features

These guys make RASP software for Android. They're experts in Android security. They found an App where the consequences of not taking a feature of Android into account are pretty rough. iOS has a different approach to common storage access. Tesla's approach to storing oAuth tokens and stuff stinks, yes, but on the iOS app they can get away with it. The article doesn't mention that Tesla's iOS app is not sensitive to this attack vector, and it brushes over the fact that ANY app can be subject to attack with varying degrees of damage.

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You don't mention...

that the attack relies on features of Android. The iPhone app would have to be insecure by a completely different method.

CERT tells Microsoft to keep EMET alive because it's better than Win 10's own security

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Facepalm

Re: They should...

EMET IC. Get it?

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They should...

bake it into hardware and put it in every Windows 10 machine. Unless they do already, I feel a little bit of sick come into my mouth every time I have to attend a machine with a problem and see the Windows 10 startup - it must have an EMETIC already in there.

Reg man 0: Japanese electronic toilet 1

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Funnily when it was first installed...

they did hang a multi-lingual user manual on a piece of string just next to the toilet. I wondered what became of it?

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Re: Toilet dreams

Mispronunciation. It's actually "Christ! I'll pee less" Park.

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Re: You're doing it wrong

It's a well paid job. Everyone I met was flush.

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There are special toilets...

in hospitals. With little shelves in them to catch various items. Like poo in need of inspection, or babies in the maternity block.

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Internet connected toilets

They are connected to the cloud. The protocol is IP V.carefully.

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Re: Here I encountered the first of many problems. The labels were entirely in Japanese.

What you need is a touch sensitive OLED display bar that can change the labels to suit any language. And Bluetooth. Gotta have Bluetooth.

Kids' Hour of Code turns into a giant corporate infomercial for kids

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Re: Child labor?

Krillitane oil.

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Coding?

Meh. Just teach people that

1) the way to line stuff up with the right hand margin in Word is to use a right-justify tab character and not hold down the space bar until it looks about right,

2) the way to move an orphaned section heading to a new page is to use paragraph formatting rules and not to keep hitting the return key until it jumps

3) you can control hyphenation with methods other than the space bar,

and the future will be a lot brighter.

Helping autonomous vehicles and humans share the road

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Re: amniotic

I was setting you up to reply "a box van" or something clever and amusing.

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Re: amniotic

What kind of a van are you even driving?

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I found that the Moral Maze...

That MIT test thing... Well, I found I was coming up with stuff not in the description, like elderly woman will not be able to get out of the way if I beep my horn like a crazy, but the jogger might well be able to see and judge what my actions are and therefore stands a better chance of survival.

Customer data security is our highest priori- ha ha ha whatever, suckers

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Re: UFO

And don't forget Mary Straker, aka Mary Rutland, played by Suzanne Neve, who was also the wife in Mosquito Squadron opposite David McCallum, that fine actor and 70s sci-fi stalwart "The Invisible Man". Suzanne Neve only does sobbing, angry, aggrieved wife roles, it seems.

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Re: The seventies version of the future was so much cooler ...

Check this out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k520GiR362U

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Re: You can watch it here.

It's OK, I have the DVD box set, the LaserDisc edition, the new Blu-Ray box set and the ViewMaster reels. Plus I live in the county where most of it was filmed. I just like complaining.

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Holy KACK!

I had my console window open whilst loading this page. It turned pink. 42 errors on one page. Maybe the ultimate question is "What it the maximum permissible number of error messages on a page before someone gets off their bum and sorts out protocol mismatch?"

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Re: "actually make customer data protection a specific duty for directors."

You mean it isn't?

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Re: Inflation

I'm waiting for not just any old security breach, I'm waiting for a M&S security breach.

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Aw poo.

The UFO video isn't playing for me.

Anyway, if you're going to have SHADO IT, you are going to need SHADO Security. Which, if you recall, is where, in the event of a security breach or even a potential security breach, anyone not in the direct employ of the company is either killed or memory wiped.

KCL staff offered emotional support, clergy chat to help get over data loss

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Re: I'm sort of concerned...

I believe the branch of McDonalds hosted in the corner of one of the Student Union buildings has now moved away.

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Re: Unless, of course...there's...

Have you heard about the suicidal pizza? Tried to top itself.

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Unless, of course...there's...

a law requiring public buildings over a certain height to incorporate certain features?

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Re: Always back up your data!

I think we just saw death of the first born.

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God's plan...

offered at Bronze, Silver or Gold levels, giving 10Tb, 100Tb and Unlimited storage respectively in His cloud facility?

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I'm sort of concerned...

that if that's the level of pastoral care being offered... what the fuck kind of data have been lost?! I mean, are we talking about somebody's life work, worth millions in research grants?

Brit smart streetlight bods Telensa named 'global market leader'

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Re: Is there a reason why...

For pedestrians a low height pool of light at a lower intensity for two lights ahead and two lights behind, just illuminating the pavement, would suffice.

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Re: For walkers too

Ah, the clash of Architecture and Morality. Orchestral Movements in the Dark.

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Re: speeding fines

You'd just reach an argument where a variable limit is then based on some person's opinion of the maximum speed for the conditions prevailing, programmed into a smart road system, and Jeremy Clarkson would be complainanaining that "the brakes on his Ferrari Testosteronezo R7 are far superior to those on an Austin Allegro and that, therefore, his 85mph is perfectly acceptable on that road". And that's just the start of it.

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Re: @m0rt

Ah, you see we are approaching this from different directions. It's a bit like the ITIL thing on another thread... you're focussed on what light reflects off what bits of the environment and where about those bits of environment are relative to the lamp. I'm focussed on (an I believe the article's author is also referring to) the HUMAN aspect of lighting. I'm not saying that I couldn't see my friend standing 3 metres inside the park because the new LED lamp wasn't shining on her, I'm saying that I couldn't see my friend standing 3 metres inside the park because all the blue light between myself and her had screwed up my scotopic vision and buggered the dynamic range of my eyes so that the tiny amounts of light scattering and bouncing around the environment and reflecting back off her are pretty much wasted when they get into my retina.

The practical upshot of all of this is that it's all well and good saying "Well, for these 4km of M-class road between points A and B we meet x, y and z standard of illumination", when Joe Bloggs is driving along in his car from A to B but then leaves the M road and proceeds along another road from point B to point C which meets some other version of lighting standard x, some 300m later, where he turns off into an unlit unclassified road (which doesn't meet any illumination standard) heading towards point D and his bed and flattens Jane Doe because he didn't see her under the half-moonlight because his vision hadn't yet adapted back to a scotopic or mesopic range. The answer is not to then light all roads to standard x, y and z, but to go back and revisit what the effect is of standard x, y and z when humans move from one condition to another. If there's a fault, it lies in the standards and those who apply them unswervingly forgetting that there may be confounding factors at work.

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Re: @m0rt

Sorry? A >£15,000 Spectrascan PR650 spectroradiometer with an integrating cosine receiver dome is NOT a test at all?

I'm afraid I got interrupted whilst I was typing that earlier reply. I have done several things.

One was to take spectral and illumination readings using the PR650, which showed there was a sufficiently high level of light around the 450nm mark to bleach rods completely. This compares to the ~590nm of the low-pressure sodium lights that were previously fitted, though I didn't cart over £15k worth of equipment 20 miles on the train to make readings of street lamps at the time the LPS lamps were still operating - it didn't seem worth it. At 590nm, the absorption of photons by human rhodopsin is practically nil.

I brought the expensive gear out after I made a first set of measurements where I got someone to walk into the park outside the flat holding the end of a groundsman's measuring tape until I could no longer make out their outline against the grass whilst viewing them from the path on the far side of the road. I then did the same in a different park about a mile away where the streetlights were still the low pressure sodium type. Under the LED light, it was two metres, under LPS lighting, it was forty metres. Not a controlled experiment, I know, but what the heck.

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@m0rt

Quite right. As a visual physiologist, I am somewhat interested in this issue of street lighting. I personally find the new LED lamps to be a very poor replacement for sodium-vapour lamp night-time lighting.

1) The multiple sources create peculiar multi-edged shadows which trigger the high-spatial frequency motion pathways into firing erroneously, thus creating a feeling of uneasiness.

2) The high content of short wavelength light bleaches the rods, which can take between 4 minutes and 4 hours to recover. It is this effect which causes the shadows to look deeper than they are.

I've taken my measuring gear out on the main road near us. Under the old lighting, you could see many metres into the dark parkland to the side of the road, with the new lighting, it's under 2 metres. Shocking.

Is it not posible to design these heads so that they operate in a meso-scopic range, where you can have both colour renditioning AND low-level sensitivity?

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Is there a reason why...

LEDs in smart lamp heads cannot have a bank of narrow wavelength emitters mimicking the old sodium lamps?

Interestingly one published survey where old sodium lights were replaced with new, 6000°K, LED lights gave the following result:

40% reported that the new lights were better, 44% reported that the new lights were neither better nor worse, and 16% reported that the new lights were worse.

Our local council cited the report in defence of spending £m with one of the councillor's cousin's company, stating that more than twice as many people found LED lighting to be an improvement than those who had a problem with it, and therefore majority rule, it was a good investment even without considering the long length of time the electricity savings would take to repay the outlay.

A neighbouring council cited exactly the same report when asked why they hadn't take the initiative that our council had, claiming that the majority of people found LED lights made no difference to them, and that therefore they couldn't justify the capital expense required currently for the energy saving offered which was cost neutral at around the 20 year mark, but that they would reconsider if costs fell or if other factors arose which required wide scale lighting renewal outside of the normal cycle.

Another neighbouring council, again in response to a question about not taking the initiative to update lighting, used the same report to say that 60% of people found that LED lights made either no difference or were worse than the existing lighting, and therefore it would never be an initiative they would take unless forced by legislation, as well as the council being suspicious over the actual savings estimated.

TL;DR version, opinion is divided on the matter.

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Re: speeding fines

However continuous background monitoring of vehicle speed, class, frequency etc is an invaluable source of data for road planning and safety partnerships.

Post-outage King's College London orders staff to never make their own backups

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Re: That's kind of the way research universities operate...

Ha! That did say unswervable strategy, but auto corrupt fixed it for me. I kind of like either version.

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Re: That's kind of the way research universities operate...

That's exactly my point. You can't please all of the people all of the time, so you tell them what you DO do, and then they can shop off your list, and you, unfortunately, have to support them and the shit they buy with their own money instead of trying to tell them how to do their research so it fits in with your CIO's unlovable strategy.

For your example, you say "We have a choice of a number of small server rooms on the different campuses, and a large data centre in a swamp in Slough; you can rent rack space at £100 per U per year in Slough, or £150 in the middle of London (it's more expensive there you see). We provide a 100Gb datalink back to a vLAN of your choice ... etc etc. "

But surely it's the CIO's JOB to know what researchers get up to and what strategies to employ to meet them, and what's realistic to provide and what's so niche they're going to be on their own? Isn't it?

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Re: Let them use 7-Zip

I still have a Smiths Corona daisywheel somewhere. Typed up many an essay on that beast, and a few dissertations too.

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Re: Let them use 7-Zip

I did the pre-medical illiteracy course too.

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Re: Auto encrypt devices

Depends on the circumstances of when you might need to restore it. If it relies on, say, certificates which have been destroyed, invalidated, lost etc. or passwords that have been forgotten or were only known to Dave in IT who has now left, then it's worse than useless.

NASA discovers mysterious super-fast electrons whizzing above Earth

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Hm.

Pretty pictures, though.

Low-end notebook, rocking horse shit or hen's teeth

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Funny that...

we've not heard, this year, about scarcity in the component channels as a result of natural disasters, floods, storms, earthquakes etc.

Has the production facility become more resilient or moved somewhere less prone to flooding etc? Are we not seeing the natural disasters hitting production facilities? Has production become more distributed?

NHS IT bod sends test email to 850k users – and then responses are sent 'reply all'

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It's a good job that they hit return and send too soon...

I have a copy of the full email here, it reads:

Subject: Testicle removal surgery.

Body: Dear sir / madam,

I'm pleased to inform you that the surgery to remove your left testicle [delete as appropriate] has been scheduled for 23rd December 2016 at 1pm. Please indicate by reply that this date is suitable for you. You must arrive at Southampton General [delete as appropriate] at least 4 hours before the appointed time, and you are reminded not to eat [delete as appropriate] in the 12 hours preceding the appointment and not to drink [delete as appropriate] for four (4) hours preceding the appointment.

Yours,

Mr Ivor Nicktoor Bolokov, Senior Surgical Consultant.

Mac administrators brace for big changes to Apple-powered fleets

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That't true. The Xserve was a superb but of kit once they had the dual redundant PSUs etc.

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How will this affect...

the implementation of UNIX tools? It's so nice to be able to have a machine that will be a MacOS X machine, or a Windows machine or a UNIX machine depending on what you need that day, or what software you need to emulate the methods used in someone else's research.

Robot solves Rubik's Cubes in 637 milliseconds

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Re: As for that time...

The video that needs flash?

IPv4 is OVER. Really. So quit relying on it in new protocols, sheesh

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Re: Where I am working right now

"Deal with it." The mantra of the Daily Mail commentard. Along with putting "Fact." at the end of every opinion.

DNS worked out great, didn't it? I'm being unfair. In principal, a great idea, in practice, poorly implemented with all the hijackings and poisonings.

Anyway, I like dotted quads. They're kind of friendly, and the dots are there to separate number groups, which are always there. I like Mac addresses too. They're logical and they have separators between numbers which are always there. They exist at a different level to IP addresses - this is OK in my world-view - it's how it should work. They use different delimiters - this is helpful in immediately recognising what kind of a number you are looking at. And then there's all the "Unicast-prefix-based multicast address format" and "Solicited-node multicast address format".

I'm not opposed to IPv6, don't get me wrong. I recognise IPv4 depletion is a serious issue. But I think they tried to do too much with it, muddied the waters, and made it unfriendly.

Trump's plan: Tariffs on electronics, ban on skilled tech migrants, turn off the internet

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I've always said...

that a powerful trump = brown trousers.