* Posts by Brian 18

19 publicly visible posts • joined 8 Jan 2010

Self-driving cars will be safe, we're testing them in a massive AI Sim

Brian 18

Re: L5

"From a public safety point of view, this makes no sense. It doesn't have to be completely error-free, it just has to be better than people."

From a legal perspective, automated cars have to be significantly better than people. Otherwise the liability costs will kill these cars faster than anything else.

You wanna be an alpha... tester of The Register's redesign? Step this way

Brian 18

Re: Prefer the current design

Forgot something. There is a lot of WHITE and I am light sensitive thanks to an eye problem. For a short time, it is not an issue. After a while Bright WHITE causes me headaches. Try an off white color. There are plenty of shades that are close enough to white that most people cannot tell the difference and yet are far enough from white to really reduce eye strain.

To anyone out there that wants to remind me most paper is white, try holding a sheet of white copier paper up to your monitor showing a white background. Unless you buy extremely bleached high gloss paper, you should see a distinct difference.

Brian 18

Prefer the current design

but the new one is not that bad.

The top stories are was a little confusing at first, the center is dominated by an image with the headline to the left. There is no vertical separator between that image and other (unrelated) headlines to the right. I know it gives a "cleaner" look, but for some reason my brain tried to figure out which of the right side headlines belonged to the image. Probably the whitespace caused by a left justified headline with one line significantly longer than the others.

I actually prefer less fluffy pictures and more information.

Twitter cries for help to solve existential crisis of whether it's Good

Brian 18

"It's also not censorship for Twitter, a private company, to decide what it wants on its web pages and online services."

It is still censorship, just not government censorship. The definition from Webster does not specifically limit censorship to governments. The first paragraph from the ACLU makes it clear that censorship can be performed by governments or "private pressure groups". From the Global Internet Liberty Campaign "Not all censorship is equal, nor does all arise from government or external force. People self-censor all the time". The wired article has 6 tales of censorship, most with no government actions at all.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/censorship

https://www.aclu.org/other/what-censorship

http://gilc.org/speech/osistudy/censorship/

https://www.wired.com/story/free-speech-issue-censorship/

Voice assistants are always listening. So why won't they call police if they hear a crime?

Brian 18

Re: Liability?

Or as others have mentioned, $VENDOR implements this and people have SWAT show up for watching a horror movie or crime drama.

A print button? Mmkay. Let's explore WHY you need me to add that

Brian 18

Re: ArrZarr: Use python

Use Python, the library is built-in.

https://docs.python.org/2/library/csv.html

https://docs.python.org/3/library/csv.html

Worried about election hacking? There's a technology fix – Helios

Brian 18

Re: @Voland "Because you can"

"In New Brunswick, Canada you are given a paper ballot inside a cardboard shield with the top of the ballot slightly protruding from the shield, you pull out the ballot, mark your choices, put the ballot back in the shield, take it to a vote counting machine slide the protruding end of the ballot into the voting machine which then reads your votes and stores the ballot."

We do the same here in Michigan. I've been voting in Michigan since the 1996 election and an optically scanned ballot is what I've always used here.

How the Facebook money funnel is shaping British elections

Brian 18
FAIL

Re: If you use facebook...

"you're too stupid to vote. Any idea how we can enforce this?"

Run fake election voting as a facebook opinion poll*. Anyone that "votes" there instead of actually voting self selects out of the election. From what little I know about facebook, it should be quick and trivial to set up. It won't get all facebook users, just the dumb ones.

As for the article topic. I hope Brittan gets this under control soon. If you want to see your future with virtually unregulated political advertising, just look at the U.S. elections**.

* I am not a facebook user, I found out about opinion polls from a quick search of "voting in facebook".

** I am a U.S. citizen that is disgusted by attack ads and blatant falsehoods in TV political advertising here.

Google wants to track your phone and credit card through meatspace

Brian 18

Re: We're already being asked for email addresses at the till

none@your.biz

A valid enough looking address that conveys exactly how I feel about the question.

Smart bombs, smart bullets – now guided smart artillery shells, thanks to DARPA dosh

Brian 18
Stop

Re: The USA way of doing things

If you want to show an example of excessive complexity in the face of practicality the U.S. government has given plenty of actual examples. Try using one of them and stop spreading the completely FALSE myth of the multi million dollar NASA pen.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fact-or-fiction-nasa-spen/

Both Astronauts and Cosmonauts used pencils originally. Since the 1960's both have used the space pen which was privately developed by the manufacturer for about $1million without NASA involvement.

Arch Linux: In a world of polish, DIY never felt so good

Brian 18

Former Gentoo user.

Several years ago I used Gentoo as my home distro. You not only had to select the packages you installed but wait for them to compile before you could use them. I learned a LOT about the internals of Linux. It was a good learning experience in the internals of Linux and all of the components needed to make it usable.

These days, I just want the system to work so I switched to Debian a few years ago.

Google asks Unicode to look over 13 new emoji showing professional women

Brian 18

Re: Lee D

Unfortunately they do have better things to do but would rather waste time on emoji. I read an article about a linguist that was getting fed up with the emoji focus especially at the expense of research into ancient languages.

I can't find the original, but here is a link to a similar but less serious article.

http://trueviralnews.com/?p=94865

Note: I've got nothing against a basic set of emoji to convey common concepts like happiness, sadness, humor, etc. I just think the situation has gotten completely ridiculous.

Glum, depressed ... and addicted to Facebook, Twitter? There's a link, say medical eggheads

Brian 18

Re: Get a Life!

We should hire car companies to do this research not scientists.

Toyota commented on this back in 2011. They even got the relative happiness of the actually social parents and the social media daughter right!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUGmcb3mhLM

iPAD-FONDLING fanboi sparks SECURITY ALERT at Sydney airport

Brian 18

Re: I would prefer convenience at the cost of a few deaths

"Of all the changes since 9/11, the only one that will actually prevent 9/11 style attacks is reinforcement of cockpit doors."

You forgot one other change. Before 2001-09-11, hijakers took over planes primarily to hold people for ransom. Most passengers would be released with little harm. In this condition, not resisting gave the best chance of survival. The hijackers of that day changed the condition. I suspect most passengers today facing the same situation would actively fight back. I also suspect the hijackers would be dead before they could get into the cockpit, even without the reinforced door.

HUMAN RACE PERIL: Not nukes, it'll be AI that kills us off, warns Musk

Brian 18

Re: I don't buy it

Yes, I've seen the Terminator movies. I loved the end of the third one when SkyNet developed suicidal depression and tried to kill itself. AI so advanced that it even replicated heman mental disorders.

The dialog at the end of the movie clearly said that version of SkyNet had no central computer to shut down. It existed as a virus on the computers in office buildings, homes, dorm rooms, etc. connected through cyberspace. Exactly the same places the nuclear weapons it launched would wipe out.

Glassholes beware: This guy's got your number

Brian 18

Re: We'll get used to it. Resistance is futile, as ever.

"I have to wonder if Google had decided to not include a camera would there be so much anti-glass?"

From me, yes. While I admit I find the camera creepy, it is not the most dangerous part of GG. I have seen way too many idiot drivers* using lap tops on the passenger seat, texting, web browsing on their cell phones. These idiots represent one significant advantage to me over GG. I can see that they are not paying attention driving and give them plenty of room. That way when these accidents looking for a place to happen finally find it, I don't get injured. With GG, you can't tell.

* Not sure I can really call them drivers because they certainly didn't pay much (if any) attention to driving.

John McAfee declares war on Android

Brian 18

'It would be something like "GUI-toolkit" commands via TLS over Websocket or something.'

Already exists.

http://www.gtk-server.org/intro.html

Patent attack on Google open codec faces 'antitrust probe'

Brian 18
FAIL

Both sides being corrupt makes it alright.

So Obama's corruption is acceptable because his predecessor was also corrupt. This is the kind of rationalization I would expect from a young child. If you are a US citizen and wonder why the government is so fouled up, look in a mirror and the answer will be starring back at you.

As to the original commenter: It is good to be friends with those currently in power, regardless of their names, political affiliations, etc. Examples of this kind of favouritism can be found throughout history.

Ghost of Gates' tablet haunts Microsoft's future

Brian 18
Stop

Please not that tired myth again

I have one of the pens in question. It was not developed by the US government or at their request. NASA originally used pencils and continued to use them even after this fabled pen was created.

The space pen was developed by Fisher, a US manufacturer of writing implements. Fisher developed the pen with private funds and actually sells them at a high but reasonable price. I own one of these pens and I have to say it writes beautifully.

http://www.thespacereview.com/article/613/1

PS. I am not now nor have I ever been employed by Fisher or NASA.