* Posts by Voland's right hand

5759 publicly visible posts • joined 18 Aug 2011

Thermostat biz Nest warms to home security, touts cam with cloud storage subscription

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Re: No visor? Birdshit and rain just trickle down over the lens?

You forgot glare from the sun or streetlights at night.

Bare lens in a rounded housing without a visor in an outdoor camera. Yeah, right.

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I get the same using a razzie for 1/3 of the price

Razzie running motion + one of ELP camera modules does the same job. For about 50£ which nowdays is very close to 60$. Writing the python scripts to move pics off to the NAS in a reliable manner took about an hour (covering all possible faults and use cases).

Paying 200 bucks for this and giving the images to Google to monetize? Bugger this with a chainsaw sidewize.

Brit Science Minister to probe Brexit bias against UK-based scientists

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Re: It's the law, isn't it

Slightly more complicated.

It is like you and your wife jointly owning a company and your customer performing due diligence on it before signing a 5 year contract for delivery of services.

I cannot really blame them for having doubts if you have declared in the press that you are about to start divorce proceedings and intend to dissolve the company. They have to be retarded to look at signing a contract with it.

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Re: Boo fucking hoo

Totally irrelevant, as any argument against discrimination has validity only until article 50 is invoked.

After article 50 is invoked, it is no longer discrimination, it is financial prudence and any complaints can, should and shall go into the rounded filing folder.

Pokemon Go oh no no no, we're not reading your email, says gamemaker

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Re: Pig in a Pokémon

Not only.

In concentration camps too.

I do not know who designed the game to have a PokeStop in every single Holocaust memorial and museum in Eu and USA as well as Aushwitz and Treblinka. However, if the idea to find that person and introduce him first hand to why these places need to be respected is extremely tempting.

Revolutionary Brit-made SABRE hybrid rocket engine to burn in 2020

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More Eu funding to be renegotiated

Right, so where does the funding for this come from after article 50?

Brit space agency test 'shop

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Re: Top news!

Agree - while it lasts. This will be one more (and unfortunately fairly low priority) item to negotiate on the way out after slamming the No 50 door.

Tesla whacks guardrail in Montana, driver blames autopilot

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The Tesla autopilot system doesn't use radar so this is going to happen.

And what makes you think that a radar will see a wooden stake?

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Re: Fermat's Last Theorem

It will be slightly more difficult on two accounts.

One is: "It is significantly harder than envisaged"

Two is:"The Fermat's last theorem commission".

I will skip one and concentrate on two. When my dad used to be on the PhD thesis review commissions, they had a special "Last Fermat Theorem" reviewer set - specifically for any "Last Theorem" submissions. That set consisted of the worst and meanest basterds in the department and destroyed the submitter at short order. It was 30 years ago at a point where the math community considered any attempt to prove the last Theorem to be a joke and took the piss accordingly.

So, coming back to the driverless AI car. It is indeed the last Fermat theorem - in order for it to be officially certified it will be subjected to a set of tests which no human learner driver will pass. Not now not ever. In fact, it will get an examiner which will fail any human driver. Repeatedly - like the 200 morbidly obese monster I got for my first driving test. The instructor after that told me: "Sorry dude, your chances of passing with this one were about zero. She fails all young males out of principle".

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Re: Idiots!

I have a car with adaptive cruise control

Did your car manufacturer advertise the car as "drives itself" and "has an autopilot"? Do not think so.

Falling PC tide strands Seagate's disk drive boats. Will WDC follow?

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Welcome to a mature market

5 years ago we changed drives because they were full.

Today we change drives because they break.

So any purchases are replacement only and (to make matter worse), replacement after the actual need has been well established so not bought with a lot of capacity to spare. On top of that a lot of the biggest capacity eaters - personal photos, videos, etc go straight to F***Book and do not linger around in 4-5 copies on the user's drives.

Facebook deleted my post and made me confirm pics of my kids weren't sexually explicit

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Re: Enough

Curious why the need to specify race when describing a thug?

Dunno, probably racial stereotyping. Here is an example of a black thug and peaceful, non-aggressive police which are just doing their day to day business in the USA. Not that other countries are different: swedish black thug accosting law abiding non-racist peaceful white demonstrators.

That is what happens when Big Johns post before they forget to take their white hood off.

Yeah, I know - I should have put the sarcasm tags

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Re: Enough

That "shooting victim" was a well-known black thug with a long rap sheet

Citation needed.

who fit the description of a local armed robber to a tee

Citation needed

EU cybersecurity directive will reach Britain, come what May

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Re: A good thing

Go and tell that to the demented lot who is only interested in staying in power courtesy of racist nana's vote.

They quite happily will burn anything and everything to be elected for next term. That includes digital services (which make nana unhappy as it is used to distribute filthy pictures), financial services (which make nana unhappy as it is used to make money by filthy foreigners), "insert your name here" services (which make nana unhappy just because it is not good old industry like British Leyland).

Theresa or Teresa May? Twitter confuses nude model and new PM

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Re: My mistake

Where is the air valve?

Whatever that is which is on that picture cannot be naturally supported without a lot of air under pressure :)

Cycling paramedics in epic rush to save patient who ate stale sandwich

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Re: Excellent job folks

They do not - their job is to stabilize the patient until a proper transportation method arrives. Same as those Landy, Ford Mondeo or Honda CRV ambulances NHS started using lately.

While they cannot transport the patient they can get to it much faster that the 4 ton re-purposed sandwich van.

Bicycle (or one of the small cars) can still carry CPR kit, key medications, oxygen, etc. Enough for a good paramedic to keep you alive until the cavalry relieves him.

Yeah, I know, it is supposed to be a joke :) However, as someone who has been "serviced" by one of these flying stabilization teams on the M25 kerb, when you are on the receiving end you do not quite appreciate the humor.

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Re: Range of use

It is not question of cheap

Try sending an ambulance to downtown London, Cambridge, Oxford or Bristol in mid-summer.

By the time it gets to the casualty said casualty is likely to be merrily kicking the bucket.

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Do you have a life threatening condition?

Now, let's assume for a second that you have allergy to gluten, peanuts, nuts, shellfish or something else of the sort. Let us for sake of argument assume that you have it at a level where if you do not get professional medical treatment you will be dead in 10 minutes. That can happen from allergy to any one of these (even gluten - a few rye crumbs or someone spraying the roast with beer while cooking can make you violently sick, more can kill you).

You eat something, you start feeling iffy. You have _NO_ clue whatsoever if it will be so bad in 10 minutes that you will be in a comatose state. You call 112. By the time they get to you, you realize that it is a false alert.

So, 500£? I would not be so sure. Fining people who deliberately waste emergency services time - yes. This is an offense, can be proved in court, put the evidence in front of a magistrate and nail 'em. Charging a deposit just to deploy an ambulance, police car or a fire engine - that is wrong.

Bomb-disposal robot violently disposes of Dallas cop-killer gunman

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Re: We're all second guessing...

If there's open windows,

Car park - all open. So the only way to knock him out without a fight was to simply drive one of those armoured personnel carriers police has bought with Bush and Obama's grants up to him at point blank range and point the 50 cal at his head and ask him nicely to surrender.

Not particularly difficult, kit was available (Dallas police is a recipient and has them), they deliberately decided to execute him instead of putting him in a situation where he had no choice but to surrender.

Rolls-Royce reckons robot cargo ships are the future of the seas

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Re: Is it worth it ?

One of the purposes of a crew is to deal with damage control and repairs to keep the ship afloat if need be.

The cost of removing the crew does not justify the added expense of insuring against mishaps and transporting "rescue services" to the middle of the Pacific Ocean to throw a couple of buckets of cement on a leaking pipe.

You can’t sit there, my IoT desk tells me

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Re: I know that feeling well...

I have bolted 8" extensions on the legs of my current desk. My keyboard is about an inch above my elbows and any sort of carpal tunnel pain has gone.

And this is exactly why I nowdays build my home office desks out of kitchen units. They are built to work while standing which makes them by default 5-7cms taller than a normal desk sans legs, add legs to taste for optimal height.

New DNA 'hard drive' could keep files intact for millions of years

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Re: Sci Fi becomes reality

Philip K Dick's "The Preserving Machine"

No, not P K Dick, it was some space-opera genre series, just cannot recall who wrote it.

It struck me at the time that the idea is quite smart. While writing and reading may be a bit on the slow side, the information density is ridiculous and all the error-correction and repair mechanics already exist in nature.

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Sci Fi becomes reality

I forgot which SciFi author came up with this idea 20+ years ago. DNA as non-volatile computer memory. It was one of the greats. Not Bova, not Brin. Damn... can't recall it, but the idea is not new.

EU votes for Privacy Shield

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It will be declared illegal at short order

It will be declared in violation of the ECHR and various Eu regs on short order. Popcorn please.

Wannabe Prime Minister Andrea Leadsom thinks all websites should be rated – just like movies

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Re: What a choice

UK out of the EU that a minority

Like it or not, according to the rules of the referendum, they are a majority.

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What a choice

Choice of:

A) Swallowed Stalin without even burping

B) "Interesting CV", half of the positions occupied are in brother in-law companies, positively clueless and with a fundamentalist religious slant.

When the candidates were announced I could not believe it, but I was rooting for Josephina Vissarionovich. Sure, we all know that the next PM (and probably the one after) is a dead man walking as (s)he will be burned by the radioactive fallout of the Eu negotiations, but none the less...

Ad agency swipes 'unnamed bloggers' for calling out its cynically fake 'save a refugee' app

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Re: Hey, I found something in that image...

The relevant Navy (do the US have a Med fleet?).

They do. 6th fleet. Though as presently it is French who are in command of that NATO fleet group, the USA ships will have to wait its turn until the Rafales have returned to Charles De Gaulle. Pity Iowa is finally retired - it spent a lot of its pre-retirement years as a part of 6th.

That is if Russians and Varyag have not jumped the queue first.

Dying satellite sends boffins one last surprise before disappearing

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Re: That'll pay for it

what's the point of a £10k saving

You are mistaking savings and punishment.

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Re: More space junk?

Not really, it was not that high orbit so residual atmosphere drag will get them down pretty soon.

A statement from Steven P Bong concerning alleged CV inaccuracies

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Re: Is that supposed to be a joke?

Are they applying for conservative leadership? If everyone of us knows 2 persons that are in the race, the number of candidates will probably exceed the current UK population.

DevOps: The spotty faced yoof waiting to blossom

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Slow News Day

Slow News Day? Put another Double Glazing, Laser Eye Surgery, Solar Panels or DevOps infomercial

Bloke 'lobbed molotov cocktails' at Street View car because Google was 'watching him'

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Re: Looks like...

Squirt Gun and a failed Molotov.

Muppet. Product of modern education which censors both Chemistry and History.

He did not even know how to do a Molotov properly. A well done Molotov if it breaks stays there and burns in place - it does not just flow over the target without causing any major damage.

Now, how to achieve that is another matter. The methodology has changed over the years with the originals using a different one from the one used in WW2 by the resistances around Europe fighting against Germans and changed once more after as a result of observing what US did in Vietnam.

All of those are described in a good History (and Chemistry) books. The uncensored ones (rather difficult to find them in the UK due to thought crime restrictions).

Sociology student gets a First for dissertation on Kardashians

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Re: Earth Shattering Stuff...

Oh it is. The movement of aircraft carrier displacement lard arse and its accompanying cellulite can shatter earth you know.

Is the world ready for a bare-metal OS/2 rebirth?

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Re: Wish I'd had the cash for that.

Hehe... 80G IDE was not that much of a "superdrive" at the time.

I had a 80GB monstrous double height MFM seagate which blew two power supplies before I found a surplus server one somewhere. That was attached to a 25MHz Harris 286 clone. I ended up writing my own drivers for the part of the disk beyond cylinder 1024 because the retarded disk manager Seagate shipped was hopeless. They were only 3+ times faster than DOS on the first half of the drive despite using BIOS access (not even going for direct controller access). I remember I had a blazing row with my dad after I handed it down to his secretary: "You cut corners here, confess where" - "I swear I did not".

I handed it down exactly so I can swap it for a U5 and a 40G IDE which ran OS2 with flying colors faster than any 486 on the market (it behaved way better than Linux on that CPU at the time). The BIOS and drive on that had LBA so size was not an issue (at least for OS2).

'Double speak' squawk users as Silent Circle kills warrant canary

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Squeak

"I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of canaries suddenly cried out in terror, and were suddenly silenced. I fear something terrible has happened."

Get ready for mandatory porn site age checks, Brits. You read that right

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Re: Conspiracy theory?

One of the (un)holy grails is to ban VPN usage by any non-business. I.e. the public.

Yep. Which is exactly why I am finally caving in and registering a LTD this month. I would like to see her exulted highness try to enforce a VPN ban on companies for business use.

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A the wench. Are you a gerontophiliac or something?

Ah, I get it, you are mistaking her for her namesake. Though I do not think that you may stand a chance to get any glimpse of Teresa (without h) May if Theresa May gets her way.

Outed China ad firm infects 10m Androids, makes $300k a month

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Re: Steel Cojones?

Or a certain level of involvement. At least in China.

Post Brexit EU will spend 'stability and peace' budget funding Chinese war drones

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A day of reckoning will come, and that will involve either the break up of the EU, or the Germans accepting that they'll have to pay off a good chunk of southern Europe's debts

Not necessarily, not necessarily. There is option 3 - Southern Europe to live within its means for a while. It is not pretty, but it is possible:

Southern Europe debt stats vs Bulgaria and UK

Eastern Europe vs UK debt stats

When I look at that graph, that is clearly on UK near future menu as well. Brexit will take care of that by the look of it.

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My reading is: "Those nasty Eu bastards, they did not buy overpriced and underpowered BAE crap".

Huawei: Our fake phone camera pic shame

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too young, too coked, too technologically imparied (or a combination of all three

Neither. Most likely the daughter of the party secretary in the marketing department. Nepotism combined with communepotism. You cannot beat that as far as the stupidity of the results it provides.

5 years, 2,300 data breaches. What'll police do with our Internet Connection Records?

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Re: Theresa May is Watching You

You are not addressing her correctly. It should be:

The High Chancelloress Teresa May.

Time to put Chaikovsky's 1812 Overture on the stereo once more.

Linux letting go: 32-bit builds on the way out

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Re: Thinks Bubble

Debian also continues to its 32-bit support an example being 8.4 was...

The decision is not with Debian. The 32 bit support will be drastically reduced in the next GCC. Only 32-bit Athlon, P3 and P4 will be supported. Anything before that bites the bullet. I have several perfectly functional fanless Via and Crusoe systems which will need to be finally retired and replaced by Razzies as a result of this cut-off.

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Re: Netbooks

Thin clients too. They last ages (compared to your average PC). I still have a perfectly alive, kicking and usable/useful old HP unit running a 800MHz Crusoe. At the same time we have reached the point where it will not even be supported by GCC in next Debian release.

Israel's security minister suckers Zucker for Facebook'ed killings

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Facebook is intended to be that monster

"Social" brings out the worst and the most "antisocial" in a part of the human population. Quite a few people will manifest the worst parts of the human nature solely because others are watching. Doubly so because of the medium provides some degree of separation and anonymity.

Rather unsurprisingly political organizations which need that antisocial part of humanity thrive in the resulting stinky bog. Social stinky bog.

Judge gives Zuck a US$6 million Brazilian

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"encryption that we can't break"

The part of "should not have designed it in a way which prevents lawful intercept".

If you are offering a product to customers which allows them to set up communications themselves you are under no obligation to do so.

If, however, you are running a service facilitating the communications for said customers you have some form of lawful intercept obligation in nearly all jurisdictions. Otherwise you are on the wrong side of the law in half of the world.

The sole reason why we are in a position where a service with end-to-end encryption has been provided worldwide is the artificial separation of telecoms and information service providers by the FCC in the USA. USA has allowed the latter to skip a lot of requirements including legal intercept. It is now trying to fight back and get them back via the most ridiculous possibly route of yet another new law. There is no need for yet another new law - just reclassify Apple, Facebook, etc as communications providers under existing legislation (CALEA, etc).

In any case, other jurisdictions do not necessarily have the same distinction and enforce it in the same manner. So if Brazilian law says "must allow legal intercept", sorry the law is an ass, WhatsApp has to find a way to comply.

Prominent Brit law firm instructed to block Brexit Article 50 trigger

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Re: Bollocks

That program missed the key detail.

That the ratification of the Lisbon treaty in UK law should have specifically granted the power to the prime minister to suspend and revoke the 1972 law and any law that amends it. The executive branch in UK (and most countries actually) law NEVER EVER gets implicit powers to revoke laws. Any such power has to be explicitly named and explicitly enumerated, period.

The parliament _DID_ _NOT_ give the prime minister that power when ratifying the Lisbon Treaty. He has the power to serve the notice, but he does not have any of the powers required to prepare that notice so it is legally binding.

So frankly, a well supported legal challenge will very quickly find to that result. The fact that two of the prime contenders for the crown of the Tory party have spent a significant time in the the last two governments massively pissing off the members of the legal profession by trampling the law any way they can has nothing to do with that... Or may be not...

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Re: From another angle...

It can be in two countries in the world which have no written constitution:

1. United Kingdom

2. Saudi Arabia

In these counties, anything and everything as far as the rule of the game can be changed mid-game by the "house". The sole difference is that in the first case it is changed by the MPs, while in the second the ruling member of the Saud dynasty. They can however change and rig the dice any way they like and plebs like you and me should just shut the f*** up.

Further to this, by default a referendum as a concept in the UK has no legal power whatsoever, unless legal power has been specifically delegated to it by the act which sets up the referendum. Surprise, surprise, the act setting up the "Referendum of Infamy" did not do that.