* Posts by Adam 1

2545 publicly visible posts • joined 7 May 2012

Boffins build bendy screen using LEDs just THREE atoms thick

Adam 1

> just three atoms tall, technically making them 2D rather than 3D objects

No. It makes them very short 3D objects unless they are either no atoms wide or no atoms deep.

China to blow away smog with DRONES

Adam 1

I, for one, welcome our unmanned flying chemical blasting overlords.

Passenger jet grounded by two-hour insect attack

Adam 1

Re: Balancing Imbalance

Keep your perspective. Some of the sheep are quite placid.

Bitcoin or bust: MtGox files for bankruptcy protection

Adam 1

Re: Other sites race to be first with dry headlines

Plus, el reg provides forums where other bitcoin exchange operators can check whether they are doing it right. All part of the service here.

Adam 1

Re: 1000,000 of their own

Ten hundred thousand.

Chicago man lobs class-action sueball at MtGox

Adam 1

>accusing it of "intentional and systematic misuse and misappropriation of its users' property."

Surely intention is nearly impossible to prove in this case. Hopeless incompetency for sure. Negligence. Failing a duty of care. Failing to report such events to authorities (let's forget the question of which one for the moment). Lack of auditing. There would be all sorts of open and shut cases yet the plaintiff seems to be making it very hard on himself to score a victory.

IANAL etc...

Boeing going ... GONE: Black phone will SELF-DESTRUCT in 30 secs

Adam 1

That should not be necessary. Boeing has proven experience in the required battery powered self destruction mechanisms that underpin such technologies.

MtGox boss vows to keep going despite $429m Bitcoin 'theft'

Adam 1

Re: All

429 million BTC

That's over 9000!!

Prez Obama cyber-guru: Think your data is safe in an EU cloud? The NSA will raid your servers

Adam 1

Re: @Eguro

Cool. Bonus vote

http://www.truecrypt.org/docs/keyfiles

Adam 1

Re: Like most crime you can't stop a *really* determined criminal.

>But you can make them think it's too much trouble and go after easier prey

As the joke/adage/saying goes in at least one variant.

Don't try to outrun the lion/bear/[any Australian animal except some of the sheep]. Try to outrun the guy behind you.

Adam 1

Re: @Eguro

Truecrypt already does this.

http://www.truecrkeyfiles/docs/keyfiles

Adam 1

>"If you think passing a law making data localization a requirement in the EU or Brazil [...] stops the NSA from getting into those databases, think again."

That is excellent. hosting in the EU or Brazil is not going to make the job of our beloved acronyms any different so they are offering no opinion about where we host. Got it!

Cheap'n'cheerful Chinese mobesters ZTE launch Firefox phones

Adam 1

Re: Telefonica’s strategy

> rather than as a flamboyant extension of our personality?

You misspelt penis.

Apple Safari, Mail and more hit by SSL spying bug on OS X, fix 'soon'

Adam 1

Re: Test-Driven Development

But Shirley you could use mocks to fake that response code? You wouldn't have to write the whole exploit, just a test that used a mock returning a valid certificate and an assertion on the error code or expected exception or however they flag it.

Update your iThings NOW: Apple splats scary SSL snooping bug in iOS

Adam 1

Re: This wasn't an SSL weakness as such

Copy paste should be picked up by CI or nightly builds.

Adam 1

>How many SSL weaknesses are there...?

How many implementations of SSL are there?

Harvard student thrown off 14,000-core super ... for mining Dogecoin

Adam 1

When you aren't paying for the 14000 Xeon cores nor the electricity to keep them powered, the economies are different...

Toshiba Encore: The Windows 8.1 tablet that might catch on

Adam 1

Re: A word of advice to tablet makers

>Local storage, how very noughties

You maybe right in a few years, but right now 4G data plans just don't cut it for synching video.

US Senate bill would mandate 'kill switch' on all smartphones

Adam 1

Re: $30 billion eh?

^ do you do copyright math too?

Adam 1

Re: What good does bricking a stolen phone do?

Unless the bricked phone also somehow permanently damages its battery and screen the bricked phone will just be ripped apart and sold as parts.

I'm all for providing users with methods to brick their own devices but this bill doesn't seem to have really thought through the problem.

Toshiba opens curtains, reveals air-cushioned 5-terabyte terror

Adam 1

Re: My instant erase procedure

1. Thermite

Wireless power groups join forces: One spec to rule them all

Adam 1

Obligatory

https://xkcd.com/927/

Netflix speed index shows further decline in Verizon quality

Adam 1
Stop

Re: Overly aggressive throttling?

> Network ain't gonna resize itself just when you pay.

Then perhaps it is best to not sell based on the maximum possible speed you might get in the middle of the night for 90 seconds and rather sell based on the range of speeds you can expect?

The problem these companies have (and I have no experience with Verizon but I doubt they are any better or worse than most) is that through the sales cycle they are quite happy for you to believe you will get 24Mb/s on your ADSL2 connection when they can't even saturate a link which is only running at 33% of that speed during peak times.

If you want to offer a 10Mb service, then you need to provision to deliver 10Mb. If you only provision for 4Mb on account that historical trends show that you can get away with it, then you better be good at JIT provisioning.

Adam 1

Re: Confirms my experience with Comcast choking Netflix (I never get >1Mb/sec any more).

But some data are more equal than others.

Gamers in a flap as Vietnamese dev pulls Flappy Bird

Adam 1

Re: He coded it in a couple of days.

It was finished in about 30 mins. The rest of the time was waiting for the android emulator to finish loading.

Woz he talking about? Apple co-founder wants iPhones to run Android

Adam 1

Re: I have a dream...

I have a dream that one day phone manufacturers will stop ruining perfectly good phones by not including sd card slots.

Adam 1

Re: Ha!

> QuickTime anyone?

I would rather real player

Adam 1

>"Linux shares much the same traits." -- You spelled Windows wrong.

You spelt spelt wrong. ;p

Baby's got the bends: LG's D958 G Flex Android smartie

Adam 1

Re: pointless

I agree. I am hoping that someone designs some sort of roll up screen that can be a 4-5 inch phone but extend into a small tablet by pulling one of the sides out

Inside Microsoft's Autopilot: Nadella's secret cloud weapon

Adam 1

Re: Seriously?

No! I won't have that! It was a PowerShell script

Android console on the way? Amazon slurps gamehaus Double Helix

Adam 1

Nintendo may have missed a trick here. Consoles are effectively sold on the printer- ink / disposable razor business model. They lose money upfront and become profitable by taking a large licencing fee on each game and peripheral.

If Amazon play their cards right they could create a gaming ecosystem and using some sort of loss leader device and then get out of hardware side once a few other manufacturers are on board, or even do what Google do with nexus and keep the volumes low enough to not hurt profits and annoy partners but high enough to be able to set a benchmark.

Casual gaming has never been a bigger market but it is mostly now done with iPhones/pads and their android equivalents rather than Wii/ gameboy/ds or whatever they get named these days.

US feds want cars conversing by 2017

Adam 1

Re: V2V vs. on-board sensors

It's also possible to "hack" the brake lights so they don't come on when you slow down. You have to weigh up the probabilities against the consequences and decide whether the safety features made possible by short range v2v conversations which may be beneficial where something happens out of line of sight (like just beyond the crest of a hill or a blind corner)

Adam 1

Re: Privacy? Easy.

IMHO, the responses to my comment have been a reaction to the collection of data. That is a fair enough reaction to have, but I don't think it addresses the challenge I put out there.

The argument that an ID is unnecessary is wrong. I am not saying that a persistent ID is mandatory, nor that that ID needs to be linked in any way to your identity, but if your car one moment receives a message that an oncoming car has veered into your lane, loses that signal as you go down a hill and then you get another message saying an oncoming car is not in your lane, is it the same car? Being able to trace and then forget other cars for the "session" is important even if the ID number is randomly generated at each engine startup.

These "listening posts" as argued are no more invasive than a suggestion that the state could put out cameras with numberplate recognition software that works out the vehicles speed (either by radar or by listening to these "anonymous" messages and then taking a picture). Both need to be regulated to ensure a good balance between privacy and safety.

I am simply pointing out that from a privacy perspective, your car is already traceable with a camera and the CPU power of a Pi using off the shelf software. How do you think Google maps blurs the plates if it can't locate them with very simplistic pattern recognition?

Adam 1

Re: Privacy? Easy.

Or a 64 bit ID should be enough for a few million years of all cars switching IDs every second.

It is already mandated by law that all cars have number plates which can be used to track you. There are brake lights that show your intent to slow down. There are indicators on all non Audi cars that are legally mandated to indicate intended direction changes.

There is no premise of privacy with the sort of data needed by this system. As long as it goes peer to peer in a short range rather than over some cloud, what is the complaint?

Apple and Samsung STILL in bitchfight over banning ancient mobes

Adam 1

Re: I wish ...

> They may be one of the few I can make work by swiping my penis on it, however

Seems like perfectly "fit for purpose". It does an excellent job of identifying dicks....

HELLO LENOVO. Do you really, really want to make smartphones?

Adam 1

Differentiate by CPU, memory, screen specs, battery life, camera and flash, waterproofing, sound quality, storage, SD, removable battery, quality, warranty, wireless charging, NFC, bluetooth features, biometrics, build materials, distribution channels, or do something really different like dual boot to sailfish or tizen or something, physical size or form factor or colour. All if all else fails then sell yours for less.

The current state of things is akin to each car maker deciding to ignore the steering wheel and pedals and invent their own.

Adam 1

Re: Stock Android

And if any manufacturer is listening, just grab a nexus and add a micro SD and removable battery. Leave the android as stock. We really don't care if it is a bees dick thicker than the latest Jesusphone.

Bye-Zynga: online games maker laying off 314 staff

Adam 1

While you are at it, why not lay off some of the security tokens your apps seem to demand these days. Words with friends is just frightening in what it now asks for.

Boffins build electronic tongue that can distinguish between BEERS

Adam 1
Go

Could be useful

Once they miniaturise it, they could make it into a dipping stick that sets off an alarm if you're about to drink a Fosters.

Ditch IE7 and we'll give you a FREE COMPUTER, says incautious US firm

Adam 1

Re: I ditched IE in 2000.

> Which browser wasn't ugly in 2000?

I don't remember, with all the < blink> around whoever stopped to consider such questions?

Adam 1

Re: Rare pragmatic response

There is nonetheless a big difference between it being unfeasible to spend 50% longer to get it to work on internet explorer for the benefit of 1% of users and suggesting that it would be cheaper to buy them all new PCs.

Microsoft to Australian government: our kit has no back doors

Adam 1

If the situation ever arose that NSA provided an order to place a backdoor, would you be obliged to report to a senate committee similar to this that no such backdoor exists?

Facebook app now reads your smartphone's text messages? THE TRUTH

Adam 1

Please Google let us selectively deny tokens that an app requests.

The app developer should have the ability to state whether a given token is mandatory or optional and a few lines to describe why they want it.

As for optional tokens, there are two ways this can be easily handled. The app developer could either receive a runtime exception when they make a call to a method where the token was denied or they could elect to receive fake data for things like contact lists, GPS coordinates or SMS messages. Then even lazy developers could mark most tokens optional without needing to make code changes.

German frau reports for liver transplant clutching bottle of vodka

Adam 1

Some nice suggestions although maybe a bit harsh on the poor frau. Perhaps the Vodka was necessary under Betäubungsmittelverschreibungsverordnung?

Adam 1

> German frau reports for liver transplant clutching bottle of vodka

I am sure that there would exist a word in German to describe exactly that situation.

Sweet work, fellas: Boffins build high-density battery powered by sugar

Adam 1

Re: So...

Coffee is definitely improved with some water included.

Adam 1
Joke

On the downside

... the batteries tend to lose a fair chunk of charge during your morning coffee.

We see ya, Ouya, you tasty Android games console gear

Adam 1

Sounds interesting. You really have to wonder why Nintendo haven't taken a trick from that book, combining the android gaming ecosystem with their own.