* Posts by Thorne

1324 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Apr 2012

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Australian test finds robot essay assessors on par with human teachers

Thorne
WTF?

???

Ok I can see how it works checking spelling, gramma and punctuation but how does it work telling how well you actually answered the question?

Things like English and General Studies can have multiple correct answers depending on your point of view and how you argue your point.

It might make marking easier by picking up the little mistakes but not how well someone understands the course material.

Lights, power, action! Smartplugs with a twist

Thorne

Does anyone make smart plugs that are actually built into the powerpoint?

Indian scientists teach computers to see by watching Cricket

Thorne
Terminator

If there ever was a reason

For an AI to kill all humans it would be because we made it watch cricket over and over again.......

Copyright troll wants to ban 'copyright troll' from its copyright troll lawsuit

Thorne

More and more reasons these days to use a VPN

Obsolescence of food is complete: Soylent now comes in bottles

Thorne

Re: Sad, sad fucks

The more idiots that live on this stuff, the more bacon for everyone else.....

Thorne
Joke

Re: Sneer at this if you want...

Sorry but I have no desire to insert a powercord there......

Thorne

Re: "Unlike crispy bacon, Soylent 2.0 is available on a subscription basis"

And if you smoked said pork the problems would be solved......

Thorne

Re: Transporting water?

"I thought part of this great idea was that it was powdered, and the transportation cost would be kept down?"

It was but clearly people too lazy to cook are also too lazy to add water.......

Chechen women swindle ISIS via social media: 'We need roubles to join you xx'

Thorne

Why arrest them?

The scammers are actually doing some good for once.

New South Wales to create Ministry of Truth

Thorne

They might build something to make data useful to them but they won't use it. The truth often get in the way of their agendas.

Oz opposition spraying perfume on metadata dead cat

Thorne

Re: Underwhelming

Dog crap or another dog crap

FIFY

(Cat implies while still crap it's different crap when in reality it's just another pile of exactly the same crap)

Thorne

Re: Underwhelming

Who is the worst? Liberals for thinking up these ideas or Labor for conspiring with the Liberals to make it a reality?

I can't tell the difference between the Liberals and the ALP (Another Liberal Party)

Thorne

Re: Underwhelming

It was Labor that brought the laws in. They just want to try to look like they care but in reality, they have wanted these laws for years.

Today's smart home devices are too dumb to succeed

Thorne

Re: So. you bought

Yes but they could at least stick in a chip to store state between power cycles.

It is pretty piss poor design

Australia to tax ALL international online purchases

Thorne

Re: Was the Treasurer "for sale"?

Mining tax is a joke. When it's a Chinese owned mine selling to China, it's never going to be profitable (on the Australian tax returns anyway). Now they can bring in Chinese workers to run these mines, the country won't see a cent.

The government (and opposition) here are the biggest bunch of ass clowns in history.

Thorne
Thumb Down

Hardly Normal

"The fault lies entirely on Harvey-Fucking-Abnormals who have been screaming for years that they're losing business through tax-free online options, and who also claim every local business who isn't part of the Harvey-Fucking-Abnormal chain is also a grey importer who are also undercutting them."

Jerry was the first person to bring everything in from overseas destroying Australian manufacturing but is pissed now that he's being cut out of the loop.

Cry me a river.

Thorne

How stupid. They didn't do it before because it costs more to collect than it makes. As for helping retailers here, it won't make the slightest difference. Adding 10% to overseas purchases makes no difference when local retailers can be anything up to 1000% dearer. Anyway what legal grounds does the Australian government have for forcing foreign companies to collect tax on it's behalf?

More work. More cost, No difference. A total waste of time and money.

Pirates also buy content legally, Australian gov study finds

Thorne

Re: Set VPNs to Damp-Squib mode

Both sides of Australian politics are identical to each other. We have the Liberals and the ALP (Another Liberal Party). Tony and Bill are even starting to wear the same blue tie.....

Dead device walking: Apple iPod Touch 6th generation

Thorne
Childcatcher

Re: Tempting for devs?

It's tempting for kids also. Has all the abilities of the phone (more or less) without having to fork out for a monthly phone contract.

Robot surgeons kill 144 patients, hurt 1,391, malfunction 8,061 times

Thorne
Terminator

"Doctors can bury their mistakes - unexpected complications"

So can robots. They send a terminator back in time and..........

Thorne

Re: How does it compare to human-only surgery?

You also need to compare against robot surgery when it was human error at fault. Not all robot failures are the fault of the robot.

Google swears blind it doesn't give SEO advantage to new internet dot-words

Thorne

Re: If you can't take the word of a snake-oil salesman...

I know this one WEIRD trick to GUARENTEE first place in all search engine rankings. Just watch this video before it's BANNED.........

Happy NukeDay to you! 70 years in the shadow of the bomb post-Trinity

Thorne

They should be testing to increase the efficiency of them for the Orion Project. Odds are it's how the first interstellar flights will be powered.

Crap crypto crackdown coming as FBI boss testifies to US Congress

Thorne

The Death of American Tech Companies

Considered American tech companies sell globally, forcing them to install backdoors will force them to move outside the US or their customers will leave like rats from a sinking ship.

This is not even mentioning the effect should the NSA lose the key or even the precedence of a government forcing a company to install a backdoor for them. Just imagine America squealing if it was China demanding this?

Security gurus deliver coup de grace to US govt's encryption backdoor demands

Thorne

"The real problem is that these people do not understand that, not only is "keep[ing] people safe" not the most important consideration in a free and democratic society"

Freedom is more important than human lives. Every day soldiers get sent into battle by Western countries in the name of freedom. Using a handful of deaths by terrorist to strip away the freedoms bought and paid for with the lives of soldiers is a farce.

Thorne

Yes but it was the universal surveillance that made everybody want to hide things.

If the government didn't overreach and they still needed a warrant to tap someone's communications, people wouldn't bother with encryption for most things.

It's all the spying that created the encrypt everything society. What you sow, so shall you reap.

Robo-taxis, what are they good for? Er, the environment and traffic

Thorne

Street lamp lighters are also unemployed. Technology has replaced a lot of jobs.

Ex-Goldman Sachs programmer's code theft conviction overturned AGAIN

Thorne

Re: Clumsy effort to criminalize a contract violation

It was breach of copyright and according to the government, that's worse than murder.......

Hide the HUD, say boffins, they're bad for driver safety

Thorne

Re: Wrong question

"To be fair, they've removed many cameras."

Removed? or perhaps just moved? (to a more profitable area)

Thorne

Re: Wrong question

"No, it said good drivers don't need to *constantly* look at the speedo. 2-3 glances a minute should be enough to catch any casual/unnoticeable drift in speed"

I wish. There are areas in Australia where the speed limit changes three times within a kilometre. The speed can change on the time of day and change if there is a bus parked beside the road. The police use unmarked cars, mobile cameras and now have legalized wearing camo while hiding in bushes.

You are forever checking your speed and watching for speed sign instead of concentrating on the road. Each year they buy more and more cameras and bombard us with ads that speed cameras saves lives yet tragically each year the road toll increases.

Thorne

Re: Wrong question

You're quite correct. With the prevalence of roadside tax collectors dressed up as police officers, people need to watch their speedo constantly so which is safer? A HUD or a control panel?

We all know watching the road without distractions is the safest but it's not an option anymore when the government is addicted to the fine revenue.

Rise of the Machines: ROBOT KILLS MAN at Volkswagen plant

Thorne

I'd of hoped that the people in the factory weren't as stupid as the general public but clearly not.

What's the bet he was doing something stupid that went against every single rule he had every been taught?

Thorne

Re: Tasteless

Maybe tasteless but odds are this guy was up for a Darwin award anyway.

Supreme Court ignores Google's whinging in Java copyright suit

Thorne

Re: I wonder if the Supreme Court understood the issue?

Of course not. They're judges. They haven't visited reality in a very long time.

Oz politicians SUCK at drafting trade agreements

Thorne

Politicians might suck as making trade deals but they excel at selling out the people they are suppose to represent.......

Singapore netizens slap silks for copyright bullying

Thorne

Re: Is there a reason

"Your ISP will only see the MAC address of your router."

Exactly thus they cannot prove who did it therefore any case will fail as they cannot prove beyond a reasonable doubt

Thorne

Re: Is there a reason

"I assume you mean IP addresses"

No I mean MAC addresses. My router assigns IP addresses so I can't tell who was using the IP address at the time. I need to be given some unique identifier so the offending party can be identified.

Giving me the IP address of my router is not good enough.

Basically it boils down to them providing definitive proof of the offender which they cannot do. It's no different to getting a prank call down to a phone number but that still doesn't prove who made the call.

If it comes to court, all I need prove is reasonable doubt and I can claim my wireless access was hacked. Unless they can show the mac address, they cannot prove it was my computer and as such their case will fail. Plenty of precedence where they sued old people who didn't even know what a torrent was.

At the end of the day they will bluster a lot but they won't fight anyone that questions their methods because in court their methods might be shown to faulty which would stop them from scamming others. Short of someone admitting it, they really don't have a leg to stand on. They can only scare people with the cost of fighting them in court.

Thorne

Is there a reason

That you couldn't ask them for the mac address of the offending downloader as there is multiple people using the connection so you can forward the letter onto the correct party?

Of course if they cannot identify the offender clearly, I really don't know where that leaves their case....

Oz goes mad with the ban-hammer

Thorne

Re: What's the point?

There is no point to banning in the global marketplace.

The Australian government can ban whatever they like and anybody can bypass the ban in seconds flat thus makes the ban worthless.

Southpark had to remove the anal probing scene from their game to bypass the ban in Australia and replaced it with a picture of a crying koala. Now I can go straight onto the net via my VPN and download the banned US version.

Banning is a total waste of time.

Thorne

What's the point?

The whole point of a R18+ level is so nothing should be banned. All banning does it create a black market for the game. It's not like anyone with a VPN couldn't buy it as a digital download from overseas anyway so what's the point?

Google-owned smart-gumble-maker Nest snubs Google's smart-gumble OS Brillo

Thorne

Re: Protecting users' privacy?

Your wifi was publically broadcasting

Thorne

Re: Protecting users' privacy?

There is a difference between privacy and anonymity. Google is an advertising company and simply can't function with total privacy. They make the best search engine and do a lot of other stuff. Yes they collect a lot of personal data but people don't look at that data, only robots.

Yes they might get your thermostat data and usage patterns but what will they do with it? Only logical things I can think of is to make the thermostat more efficient, perhaps generate load demands for energy companies.

Privacy went out the window as soon as the NSA slurped everyone's phone records and metadata. Anonymity is all we have left (short of living off the grid in a cave)

Auto-playing video ads? People love auto-playing video ads – Twitter

Thorne

"What's a "vine video"?"

Tarzan porno......

Unlucky, Palmer: Facebook's going to BAN Oculus pr0n apps

Thorne

Re: Porn not family friendly?

"Isn't this how families are started?"

Only in a few. Some are likely to get you arrested

Thorne

Re: "You are much less likely to vomit over your PC with optical tracking."

"Yeah, but anyone else in the room is still likely to vomit over you!"

Well they will be when they walk in on you wearing nothing but the Oculus Rift and a smile......

Thorne

Re: Was there pr0n on

It's a stupid move. It was porn that won the war for VHS against BETA.

Porn would sell more units and more units sold means more applications.

The best way to get new technology into the market is porn

Australia gets its site filter at LAST

Thorne

Re: Abbott's either mad or very very stupid

Sexist? He's the minister for women.......

Thorne

"At last a sensible government policy"

Where?

Sorry but I can't put my faith in any policy indorsed by a fluffy bunny (Or Tony Rabbit either)

LastPass got hacked: Change your master password NOW

Thorne

I'd of said the weakness was the managers.......

Exit-tel customers can't even upgrade their plans to stay

Thorne

Don't forget mauled by drop bears.......

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