Posts by Stoneshop

Re: Wow, a company that listened to its customers?

Windows 10 with Lenovo bloatware and spyware...

The hardware and the form factor* is what you buy a particular laptop for.

* would prefer an X variant, TYVM.

Burroughs Steely Dan

What does it mean that my first association with the name "Burroughs" is the computer manufacturer, not the writer?

Re: IoT - where the S really is for Security

if your locks are basically controlled by an untrusted 3rd party (the lock supplier who holds the central account)

"The crashed locks – which connect to your home Wi-Fi for remote control and monitoring as well as firmware updates – are now going to be out of action for at least a week."

Doesn't read as 'a third party controlling the lock', unless pushing (b0rked) firmware updates counts as such too.

Re: Lcal locksmith

If a conventional lock is fitted once the repaired original is in place the conventional lock can be removed and the physical key for that ceases to be of concern to the owner.

You get a new one sent out to you, with a different key. Once that one is fitted, the keys for the original lock, and any copies thereof, cease to be of concern to the owner.

I haven't used AirBNB myself, but someone who has told me they did receive a physical key (of a type that you'd need an owner certificate for to show a locksmith if you wanted a copy made, so at least a bit of a hurdle regarding copying) that would open the front door and their apartment, with a deposit as collateral. I don't see why that wouldn't work for those two weeks until you received the replacement.

Not watertight, but then neither would an IoT lock.

Re: Quality

Not sure what's illegal though,

If the rental agreement has clauses against subletting it would definitely be.

There have been several cases of people getting kicked out of their rented housing because they rented out rooms, or even their entire apartment, via AirBNB.

Lcal locksmith

No. If it really cared it wouldn't leave the lock unusable for days or even weeks. It would have paid for a local locksmith to provide a same-day service to replace each customer's lock with some temporary arrangement and then replace that it in due course with the official replacement - if the customer still wanted the official replacement.

I doubt a local locksmith would have a unit similar to the ones knackered by the update, and a temporary replacement would therefore likely be just some common conventional lock. The lock is still functioning as a conventional lock anyway, and given that the company is willing to send out a replacement first, you're not gaining anything by having a locksmith putting a temporary lock in. With only a short window where you have your AirBNB guests holding a physical key (the replacement lock will have a different one), I don't see that as a huge problem, and if you, as an AirBNB host, see that differently, then by all means arrange for that yourself

Re: Assuming it was armed...

A mahoosive fly swat?

Well, as it was a Parrot you could lure it with a nice piece of cuttlefish, then you put four million volts through it.

Re: Assuming it was armed...

is the heat emission of a battery-powered motor or even a small internal-combustion engine really hign enough to get a lock?

I don't know what a Stinger's fitted with and what its detection algorithm is, but IR cameras can easily discern a human body against cooler backgrounds. Electrical motors, never mind combustion engines, will be noticeably warmer.

Re: "to defend against this"

It's an aircraft carrier, perhaps the military need to start training seagulls...

Albatrosses (Albatri?).

(they're bloody seabird flavour)

Not dead yet

Vintage Computer Collector: 'Ere, he says he's not dead.

Random Reg Commentard: Yes he is.

ZX Spectrum: I'm not.

Vintage Computer Collector:: He isn't.

Random Reg Commentard Well, he will be soon, he's very ill.

ZX Spectrum: I'm getting better.

Random Reg Commentard No you're not, you'll be stone dead in a moment.

Re: What can be learned of the crash at this late stage?

Fires are funny things. Imagine one burning through cabling in the fuselage. As individual cables melt through in different locations the pilots progressively lose the ability to control the plane because the cabling from cockpit to avionics is gone...

More fire. Decision: "Let's go up high and try to starve fire of oxygen and heat." *

Does not compute. You lose control, and still decide to use whatever control is left to increase the distance between you and terra firma. Plus, they were at FL350 already; going higher still would have done very little w.r.t. starving the fire. And Li-ion fires (thermal runaway actually) are driven primarily by the energy stored in the cell, not by combustible material plus oxygen. Also, I doubt that gambling with 200+ people's lives that way is the normal modus operandi for an airline flight crew. You have a fire and notice loss of control,, you try to get the plane down somewhere as fast and as safe as possible.

Now remove the links to the avionics including to the engine computers, inside the engines. They obey the last instruction given - maintain the power setting. The aircraft flies blindly on until fuel exhaustion. Meanwhile the fire also burns to exhaustion and stops.

Aircraft that lose all command of flight control surfaces don't stay airborne very long, and definitely not for over seven hours: any disturbance can't be corrected and will result in the craft changing attitude. And once roll or pitch exceed certain levels, the plane is done for.

Rremember United Airlines flight 93 during 9/11 ? I hypothesise pilot mischief would have resulted in a bashed in cockpit door during the hours preceeding the final ocean impact.

Sorry, what? With the hijackers in control, they would have crashed the plane into whatever their target was. If they hadn't been able to enter the cockpit, the pilots would have diverted to the nearest airfield, or even any reasonably flat field that looked to offer sufficient survivability if the hijackers were close to breaching the door (at that point people on board were already aware of the WTC crashes).. And if the passengers had managed to overpower the hijackers and regain control but with the pilots incapacitated, they wouldn't have flown far out to sea. I doubt that none of them would be unable to sufficiently control the plane to put it down in a field if not on an actual airfield.

Re: What can be learned of the crash at this late stage?

the fact we've not seen much debris indicates that the plane likely landed mostly intact and then likely sunk intact.

Maybe, but AF447 hit the sea surface with a comparatively moderate speed of less than 150 kts (a bit over 100 vertical and about 60 horizontal), and several larger pieces broke off and kept floating.

With MH370, there are roughly two options for the end of the flight: uncommanded, with fuel starvation at altitude, hits sea surface at a considerably higher speed than AF447, plane breaks up with numerous pieces staying afloat (including seat cushions and such), or someone is still in control, getting the plane to go as low and slow as possible before hitting the sea surface (either with or without the engines still running), but 'as slow as possible' would still mean about 150 kts, a little over its stall speed. It's hard to imagine its impact being less severe than AF447, and the resultant debris quite likely being similar. So in both cases there will have been a fair amount of debris. That few parts were found nonetheless is probably due to the wide area over which they were dispersed during the time it took floating from the crash site to where they were found, and a lot of those locations not particularly brimming with people, if they're even accessible at all.

Re: What can be learned of the crash at this late stage?

perhaps caused by a cargo fire, which seems the most likely scenario to me.

Um. How would a cargo fire make the plane go off course, mere minutes after the last and entirely unremarkable contact, then fly on for several hours with more course changes (and non-erratic legs between them) during the time it was still tracked by radar?

Re: I'd like to see for myself

Stage 4: Release the tiger.

RSPCA on line four for you.

A sixteen-ton weight will work just as well.

Re: The real blame goes to..

... none of this ... ... none of this ...

That's an extremely optimistic view.

Even OpenBSD, with its focus on security first, second and third, tends to have an occasional bug to fix.