* Posts by Stoneshop

5951 publicly visible posts • joined 8 Oct 2009

A challenger appears: Taiwanese devs' answer to Gemini PDA wraps a Raspberry Pi in a tablet

Stoneshop

Re: Pi3 and heat

The Pi doesn't have a low power mode and the Pi 3 appears to draw 260mA when idle (and 20-30mA when halted unless the power is physically disconnected)

This guy basically added a power/shutdown switch, with which you lose the instant-on of real tablets but given that it's a DIY project I could live with such a limitation.

Stoneshop

Aye. A pi3 with 2 or even 4 gig RAM would be ideal, IMO (haven't bothered to look whether the 3 actually supports more)

Stoneshop
Boffin

Re: weird units

Phones, tablets and powerbanks list them as mAh because 1000mAh sounds so much larger than 1Ah.

Expressing battery capacity for some device in amp-hours is rather silly though when they don't spec the battery output voltage. A 10Ah motorcycle battery is storing 120Wh, 432kJ, where a 10000mAh powerbank merely manages 37Wh, 133.2kJ

The proper capacity unit would be hamsterfortnight at the standard LiPo voltage:

$ units

Currency exchange rates from www.timegenie.com on 2016-06-21

2815 units, 92 prefixes, 86 nonlinear units

You have: 4.8 * 3.7 watt * hour

You want: hamster * fortnight

* 2.8014286

/ 0.35696073

Stoneshop
Headmaster

Re: Interesting

Yes.

My MacBook Woe: I got up close and personal with city's snatch'n'dash crooks (aka some bastard stole my laptop)

Stoneshop

Re: The secret to security is to make your neighbour a more attractive target

At least I managed to only surrepticiously grab into the door pockets the first few times changing gear :).

Being used to LHD it took a few days before my mirror reflexes became left+up, right+down.

Stoneshop
Headmaster

niece tech book

Has she written one or do you need one to make sense of her?

Stoneshop

Re: The secret to security is to make your neighbour a more attractive target

Vauxhall is the oldest car maker in England, founded in 1857.

My first car was a Vauxhall Viva. One of the last real Vauxhalls; soon after they became just RHD Opels with a different name badge.

Stoneshop
Trollface

First time at the pub, someone nicks it

And it wasn't someone who felt sorry for you having been badgered into using a non-tatty bag?

Lenovo ThinkPad X390: A trusty workhorse that means business but it's not without a few flaws

Stoneshop
FAIL

Re: 17.6 hours

set the disk to sleep after one minute

It's SSD. They already consume fsck-all when just idle.

It will never be safe to turn off your computer: Prankster harnesses the power of Windows 95 to torment fellow students

Stoneshop
Trollface

Re: sad mac

Next level evil, replace the "it's now safe to turn off" screen with a screenshot of

a Mac desktop.

Security? We've heard of it! But why be a party pooper when there's printing to be done

Stoneshop

At one time Microsoft did care about password security.

Error Message: Your Password Must Be at Least 18770 Characters and Cannot Repeat Any of Your Previous 30689 Passwords

Overstock's share price has plummeted. Is it Trump's trade war? Bad results? Nope, its CEO has gone bonkers...

Stoneshop
Facepalm

Do people who are clearly off their rocker generally behave sensibly in not following the example of other people who are slearly off their rocker?

WTF is Boeing on? Not just customer databases lying around on the web. 787 jetliner code, too, security bugs and all

Stoneshop
Mushroom

Re: Board of directors

@FAA: Please have Boeing board of directors (especially CEO) fly only on 737 Max planes

during its recertification tests.

FTFY

BOFH: Oh, go on, let's flush all that legacy tech down the toilet

Stoneshop
Holmes

GDPR compliance

As brownware is the ultimate in biometrics, one may want to have a word with their sewage processing company.

Stoneshop
Facepalm

Re: Tracking...

The logs _are_ the transactions.

Fed-up graphic design outfit dangles cash to anyone who can free infosec of hoodie pics

Stoneshop

Re: A more realistic image...

She has a cat. Maybe the downvote was by a member of the Anti Cat Defamation League.

Stoneshop
Coat

Re: Some research is indicated

Probably because I'm gong to be hacking[0] until sundown, or thereabouts.

Heh. The IRC channel for our hackerspace is occasionally visited by scriptkiddies who want to improve their L33t H4xz0r 5k1LLz.

They usually get told to avail themselves of a F1n3 H4xx0ring T00l first, like a Gränsfors or Hultafors, or maybe the more widely available Fiskars X27 and X45. Then the personal protection, because who wants to get hurt themselves when h4ckxz0ring? And the choice of the best target.

Ones that manage to hang on until that point may find themselves advised to upgrade to a Stihl or Husqvarna after the first few successful jobs.

The KWF Schnittschutzjacke, thanks.

Watch as 10 cops with guns and military camo storm suspected Capital One hacker's house…

Stoneshop
FAIL

Re: A little sensationalism?

Previous arrest for possessing an automatic weapon does not imply any rifles in the house were "assault rifles".

"as well as a wide range of related equipment including bumpstocks"

Question for you: what's the effective result of combining a half-auto rifle with a bump stock?

Stoneshop
Facepalm

Re: A little sensationalism?

the police in this country will come heavily armed like military to any hacker arrest,

... because as we all know hackers are ARMED (with knowledge, that is).

He's coming for your floppy: Linus Torvalds is killing off support for legacy disk drive tech

Stoneshop

Re: You can do alot with a floppy...

Of course, the driver might be larger than the drive it is to support, which is normal these days.

We have harddisks in our museum where if you take a picture of them using your average phone, the image would be too large to store on them.

Stoneshop

Re: Not the USB kind

I also have found some PC DOS format 5.25" disks and 3.5" disks I need to check. I found a few 5.25" drives.

We need to _write_ 5.25" disks. Also in the myriad CP/M formats, and other non-PC formats. And 8" disks.

USB drives don't cut it by a long shot.

Dutch cheesed off at Microsoft, call for Rexit from Office Online, Mobile apps over Redmond data slurping

Stoneshop
Big Brother

Re: Hark! Is that the sound of a heel being dragged?

I'm sure the necessary code changes could be done in an afternoon,

#DEFINE BUILD_WITHOUT_SPYING

Summer vacations put an end to rampant desktop crimewave

Stoneshop
Boffin

Re: Just an observation

ensure that the main suspects of said thefts see you prominently chewing the ends of your writing implements.

I've found that chewing the end of Bic Crystal pens would lead to an increased use of toilet paper.

Stoneshop
Coat

Re: Quality evaluation of pen is not hard.

So we can add 'Anonymous Coward' to the list on penismissing.com

Stoneshop
Boffin

Re: Just an observation

I have used a cartridge pen (a Rotring ArtPen EF, too. It's lovely to write with) for the last 20 years and not one person has ever asked to borrow it nor has it ever gone walkies.

A similar method applied to not having your calculator nicked: RPN.

Stoneshop
Holmes

Re: The best way to stock up

just got another one from the stationary office.

That's how it should be, yes, but the trend over the past two decades was to move them about, then joining them into a single open-plan area where the people moved about and your thinking ability went out the window.

Sleeping Tesla driver wonders why his car ploughed into 11 traffic cones on a motorway

Stoneshop

Re: Tesla provides

Obviously, to be fair and permit innocent plastic barrels (radar transparent? really?) a fighting chance, those barrels also need to be AI equipped.

No, just concrete-equipped.

Even every tenth being so would do the job.

Stoneshop
Devil

Re: God loves idiots or He/She wouldn't have made so many of them.

Most of the other religious gods are just purely hateful, vindictive, and generally nasty

s/other //

Didn't read the Old Testament, did you?

City-obliterating asteroid screamed past Earth the other night – and boffins only clocked it just 26 hours beforehand

Stoneshop
Trollface

"If it had hit Columbus, Ohio, then there would be Columbus, Ohio, no more.

How about Washington DC then?

Airbus A350 software bug forces airlines to turn planes off and on every 149 hours

Stoneshop
Holmes

Re: Why is there a choice?

I wouldn't be happy to be on an aircraft with no power either. They tend to fall out of the sky that way.

a) For them to fall out of the sky they have to be in it. Sitting on the apron or on a taxiway there's not really a big opportunity for that.

b) Sully, the Gimli Glider crew and the BA flight 9 crew, among others, may feel the urge to disagree.

Stoneshop
Devil

We're doing agile software development here.

Which is not that different from "It compiles, ship it", only with shorter release intervals

Stoneshop
Facepalm

Re: Why is there a choice?

“There will be a short delay to boarding as the technician carries out some maintenance. We appreciate your understanding and hope to continue boarding as quickly as possible”

Wait 20 minutes…

"The technician has found he doesn't have the right adapter cable. One will be sent from Toulouse at the earliest opportunity. We're sorry for the further delay."

Boeing's 737 Max woes trigger BEEELLIONS in losses – and that's just for the latest quarter

Stoneshop

Re: They won't fly again

tell that to the thousands of comets that never flew after teething issues,

Err, look at the production numbers of jet airplanes since the Comet came on the market.

The Caravelle (1955-1972) sold 202, the Boeing 707 (1957-1991) reached 858, and the DC8 (1958-1972) sold 556. After these, numbers sold started increasing.

So one might be tempted to say that the market for jet airliners wasn't exactly huge for at least the first ten to fifteen years since Comet, and stating that De Havilland would have sold thousands had they not had two of them rip open during flight[0] sounds to me to be somewhat optimistic. And the largest part of Comet sales was post 1952 anyway, so airlines weren't exactly shunning them.

[0] not even directly attributable to their mode of propulsion, although that allowed flying higher, putting more stress on the fuselage skin. The Lockheed Constellation (and the Boeing 307, but only 10 of those were built) had been using pressurised cabins for a couple of years already without problems.

Stoneshop

Re: Will the 737 MAX ever be safe?

All that would have to be rethought if the height characteristics of the aircraft changed.

Or they couldn't use the MAX to service those airports, having to revert to other 737 models and other aircraft types for those routes.

Would there really be that many airports where a less low aircraft, comparable to a 737MAX in capacity and efficiency, could not (easily) be handled?

Stoneshop
Boffin

Re: Will the 737 MAX ever be safe?

because the wheels are clearly coming off the 737 model nowadays.

Quite

Stoneshop

Re: Will the 737 MAX ever be safe?

If you're budgeting for maintenance of a 737 fleet (let's pick Ryanair as a real-world example), do you spend the extra on bigger lifts because they'll also accommodate the Airbus planes that you don't have and nobody is looking at purchasing? Of course not.

Smaller airlines (not RyanAir and the like, and SouthWest who fly 737's exclusively for compatibility reasons) tend to not have their own ground and maintenance crews, especially not ground crews at all airports they service. That's usually done by some service company, who probably deal with multiple aircraft types anyway.

Brussels changes its mind AGAIN on .EU domains: Euro citizens in post-Brexit Britain can keep them after all

Stoneshop
Pirate

Re: Brexit

"We're fucked, and it will only get worse until we run out of politicians."

Gallows are multiple use, as are guillotines, so those won't be a limiting factor. Bullets aren't, but I expect there to be plentiful stock.

Stoneshop
Holmes

Re: Brexit

Do someting and at least only approximately half the country will be moaning rather than all of it.

No, the other half will be moaning that it hasn't been done right/was found to have unforeseen consequences/etc.

Stoneshop
Go

Re: Domains based on citizenship?

I'll bet the only reason people want to use .eu domains is because the .com they wanted was taken.

No, the .eu TLD offers more options for wordplay than .com does.

Parbl.eu.

Stoneshop

Re: Scammers

Given the absurd ease with which email sender data can be spoofed, will they care?

Email, yes, but scammers who want to appear more credible (i.e. not the niece of the brother-in-law of the air traffic controller who received the mayday call from the pilot of the airplane that crashed with this stupendously rich ex-president on board, who you communicate with only via email and maybe skype) would want to set up an authentic-looking website with the proper TLD.

Stoneshop
Holmes

every UK politician is terrified of changing their minds

so to get ahead of that they've decided to go full mindless.

Too hot to handle? Raspberry Pi 4 fans left wondering if kit should come with a heatsink

Stoneshop

Re: RE. Meltdown?

I did wonder whether a distributed maglev (tm) fan might work, with pyrolytic graphite around the outer edge to add positional feedback.

Back in the day of early Athlons I had a couple of CPU coolers that basically had the motor's magnets in a ring on the circumference of the fan and the drive coils stationary around them. This allowed, according to the marketing blurb, to have just a small bearing at the center of the fan and the fan blades to extend inwards much further than with a hub motor, allowing airflow directly to the heatsink core sitting over the actual CPU chip. Never mind that the airflow near the fan center would be quite minimal anyway and hence add next to nothing to the overall cooling, but the fans were pretty quiet for the time.

Unfortunately the designers didn't sufficiently account for the radial forces acting on the magnets; the fans all died due to them becoming unstuck

Stoneshop

Re: 3D printed heat sinks

A 3D printed heatsink can be useful as a cast, though (either as a positive to mold a negative from, or to use directly in lost-plastic casting.)

Quite. PLA works extremely well for lost-form casting as it tends to leave no residue at all (it evaporates).

Stoneshop
Boffin

Re: 80% hotter?

Remorqueur (however that's spelled)

Réaumur.

Revealed: Milky Way's shocking cannibalistic dark past – it gobbled a whole dwarf eons ago

Stoneshop
Devil

The Milky Way’s next merger event is expected to be with Andromeda,

"the collision isn’t expected for another 4.5 billion years. "

Oh good. That means Leo Apotheker won't be around anymore, I expect, to not look at Andromeda's books in preparation for the merger.

'Cockwomble' is off the menu: Uncle Bulgaria issues edict against using name in vain

Stoneshop

Re: I see Hopkins is still churning out hateful bile

It's high time for her major intestine to leap up and throttle her brain.

Stoneshop
Go

Is there, in fact, any "good" television?

Monty Python's Flying Circus, and Wallace and Gromit

Literally braking news: Two people hurt as not one but two self-driving space-age buses go awry

Stoneshop
FAIL

Re: If they'd recorded what the sensor sensed they would KNOW what caused the emergency stop.

There's a link in my reply. I suggest you open it.

Stoneshop
Boffin

If they'd recorded what the sensor sensed they would KNOW what caused the emergency stop.

Err, no.

The sensor sends a stream of data to some preprocessor, which turns that data into "object(s) occupying $sectors of FOV of sensor" and the stream into "object(s) closing in/moving across/moving away at $angularvelocity". Combining this with data from other sensors can turn this into "object of $size at $distance is moving towards/across/away from this vehicle at $speed" and from there the decision will be made to care or not. If you want to record what the sensors 'see' you have to record a video stream (with roughly the same FOV as its associated sensor) in parallel with the sensor data, so that an adequately trained neural net can decide whether that sensor and its processing algorithms correctly caused the action it took.

Stoneshop
Devil

Re: 9mph!!!

Unless, of course, the Americans of the area are incapable of walking at a walking pace. Or walking at all.

In the US, walking (outside city centers where sidewalks do exist) is essentially signing your own death warrant as you have to intrude on the Domain of the Automobile for most if not all of your journey. And if you happen to survive that you run the risk of being shot for displaying Furrin Habits.