* Posts by Cynic_999

2855 publicly visible posts • joined 15 Aug 2013

Google says its latest chatbot is the most human-like ever – trained on our species' best works: 341GB of social media

Cynic_999

I win

Baker Street, Waterloo, then Northern line to Mornington Crescent.

I win

In case you wanna launch your boss into the Sun, good news: Earth's largest solar telescope just checked and, yeah, it's still pretty fiery

Cynic_999

Burning question

Is there life on the Sun? We are just assuming that the coronal discharges are natural, but what if it's all deliberate? Any civilisation with that much nuclear power should be regarded as a serious threat. We should be spending £billions to prepare a defence. Give me the money and I promise to ensure that we will be safe from attack by Sun based creatures for the next 20 years.

Cache flow problems continue for Intel: Yet more data-leaking processor design blunders discovered, patches due soon

Cynic_999

Re: Chicken Little

Then show me a single exploit that will get any useful data from any of 1000 random infected PCs.

Cynic_999

Chicken Little

It's all very "Help, the sky is falling."

None of these cache issues are likely to be exploitable in the real World. Gaining access to the data in some random block of memory that you should not have access to is one thing. Gaining access to memory that you have targetted and not only know what wrote to it last and what the data represents, but that also contains information that would be useful to the malicious actor (such as an encryption key or password) is another thing entirely. The machine that the malicious code is running on will almost certainly be running an unknown mix of programs each using unknown segments of memory. It would be like putting together a page from a moving conveyor belt of document shreddings by pulling out strands at random. Theoretically possible, but not sufficiently likely to be worried about.

There are already Chinese components in your pocket – so why fret about 5G gear?

Cynic_999

Re: Trade War

Absolutely agreed. Now the US is saying that they cannot share "intelligence" with the UK authorities for fear that it will be leaked to China via the Huewei kit. What rubbish!!! No reputable intelligence agency is going to send reports over any public network in the clear no matter what kit is used in the network. Any sensitive information would undoubtedly be end-to-end encrypted, meaning that there's no problem no matter how insecure the network is.

Maryland: Make malware possession a crime! Yes, yes, researchers get a free pass

Cynic_999

Re: BOFH Says

No, it won't improve security BUT it will stop people reporting that they have been hacked. Which means that the statistics will "prove" that it reduced the number of such crimes ...

Just as we have "impoved" crime rates by disuading people from reporting crimes.

Cynic_999

Re: Have to love governments.

To be fair, such seemingly useless laws do give a "fallback" law in cases where a perpetrator has been caught, but there is insufficient evidence to prove that they actually carried out the ransomware attack. A bit like convicting a burglar for "going equipped" because you cannot prove beyond reasonable doubt that he had actually broken into any houses.

Unfortunately such "fallback" laws tend to get mis-used by police as a primary law in order to convict people who are entirely innocent of any malicious intent. Like using the knife law to convict an entirely innocent van driver who had a knife in the van to use as a tool. Or twisting loosely-worded anti-terrorist legislation to convict a cyclist for taking a short-cut over DoD owned land (which would otherwise be simple trespass which is not a criminal offence).

UK: From 5G in Tiree to the Isles of Ebony, carry me on the waves… Sail Huawei, sail Huawei, sail Huawei

Cynic_999

Re: So your business sensitive commercial data about a government contract

The fact that your data passes through Chinese equipment should not be what concerns you - data doesn't care about the nationality of the equipment.

The fact that your data passes through Menwith Hill is what *should* be a matter of concern.

Boris celebrates taking back control of Brexit Britain's immigration – with unlimited immigration program

Cynic_999

Re: Good, good.

Why did they apply for something they did not need?

Curse of Boeing continues: Now a telly satellite it built may explode, will be pushed up to 500km from geo orbit

Cynic_999

Re: Where will the bits go?

11000 km/h relative to what? Anything in geostationary orbit is travelling at 0 km/h *relative to the surface of the Earth*

Cynic_999

Re: Age

Being in geostationary orbit makes absolutely no difference so far as the behaviour of the debris is concerned (practically none of which will remain in that orbit anyway, having all been given pretty large accellerations in random directions).

The big difference is that it is a pretty crowded orbit, so there are other satellites relatively close by that could be hit by debris on its way to its new orbit.

Cynic_999

Re: There isn’t time to vent the remaining fuel

Satellites either use chemical thrusters or electric thrusters (ion or Hall effect). Russia has largely switched to using electric propulsion when possible.

Large geostationary satellites usually use Monomethylhydrazine (MMH) for the fuel and Nitrogen Textroxide (N2O4) for the oxidizer.

Compressed gas would have a very low mass-to-energy ratio (the mass being the pressure vessel it is kept in).

Mysterious face-recog AI startup Clearview sued, capabilities questioned after scraping billions of web pics

Cynic_999

Khaptain, did you forget what you read at the start of the article by the time you got to the end by any chance?

Cynic_999

Re: Well he would say that wouldn't he?

"

I’m really reluctant to say let’s stop people from using technology in a way that will reunite families when it can help them do it.

"

What he fails completely to understand is that there are some people who do not *want* to be "reunited."

It could, for example, help to reunite a woman with her homocidally abusive ex-husband who without such technology would have no idea where she moved to escape him. Or help organized gang leaders get reunited with the snitch who was given a new identity by the witness protection program.

Whether or not I want to be easily found should be up to *me*. Not Facebook.

This episode of Black Mirror sucks: London cops boast that facial-recog creepycams will be on the streets this year

Cynic_999

"

... giving coppers a bunch of mugshots or even just randomly stopping people and fingerprinting them.

"

Except fingerprint matching is only 99.9% accurate at best.

https://phys.org/news/2004-07-computerized-fingerprint-accurate-percent.html

Cynic_999

DNA database

I read some years ago that when the DNA database was run against itself (i.e. looking for matches within its own database), it was assumed that such matches were duplicates. But further investigation revealed that several such matches were of obviously different people - e.g. one of a person described as 1.7m tall and 58 years old against matching DNA from a 2m tall 25 year old (with nowhere near that time difference between when the samples were taken).

Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia accused of hacking Jeff Bezos' phone with malware-laden WhatsApp message

Cynic_999

Re: Unfounded conclusion

Saudi is not the only country that has done such things by a long chalk, and when state actors are involved "false flag" scenarios are always a possibility, as are false accusations, especially when also involving very rich individuals. You could cite many countries using evidence of "an established pattern" Including the US, which has used viruses developed by the NSA against its own citizens in the past.

I do not say that the prince definitely did not do it and I am not suggesting who else did - I am just urging caution about believing that this particular person was responsible for this particular event. There are plenty of ways that other states could have done it and implicated the prince.

Incidentally, the virus in question originated in Israel, not that anything should be implied from that.

Cynic_999

Unfounded conclusion

Why assume that the prince was responsible just because he sent the virus? If you received an infected kitten video from your mother, you would not immediately conclude that your parents were trying to hack your phone, would you?

Quite plausible IMO is that someone decided to hack the Saudi prince. Not realising that the video was a trojan horse, the prince forwarded it to his social media contacts, giving the original hacker a bonus. Not sure I understand the alleged connection between this and the Khashoggi murder either.

When a Western government and/or a whole bunch of Western media articles make the same allegation, most Western people tend to regard it as being a fact. I do not assume that the Saudi prince was responsible for the murder in Turkey, or that the Russians were responsible for the nerve agent attack in England, or even that Saddam Hussein was an evil tyrant just because "everyone says so". Look very critically at the evidence being given to support those allegations (or the absence thereof).

No backdoors needed: Apple ditched plans to fully encrypt iCloud backups after heavy pressure from FBI – claim

Cynic_999

Governments

I am in fact really glad that governments do not "get" encryption. I would far prefer that they keep calling for impossible solutions than they get someone on their side who really knows the technology and might come up with a practical law that really would damage our ability to keep our data private.

Windows 7 back in black as holdouts report wallpaper-stripping shenanigans

Cynic_999

Re: "as they switch to using their phone for everything"

Fortunately more and more CAD programs have a Linux version available. Which usually run faster.

Top Euro court advised: Cops, spies yelling 'national security' isn’t enough to force ISPs to hand over massive piles of people's private data

Cynic_999

Re: Great

"

Privacy, much like free speech, is great in principle, but applying it to the nth degree just means more bad things happen to good people.

"

Rubbish. It's the same with "freedom". We would be a lot safer if there was a dusk to dawn curfew in place and you needed a travel permit for moving anywhere except on foot.

Cynic_999

The fact that your *neighbour's* religion forces certain dress restrictions on *them* is quite simply none of *your* business, and certainly no reason to believe that *your* rights are being infringed in any way.

Not to mention that it may well be the case that your neighbour is no more upset about the religious dress restriction than you are upset about the dress restrictions that you have to endure (e.g. being forced to cover your genitalia when in public).

Cynic_999

Re: "hovering up of data"

The issue is not about data that you control access to. It is about data that is stored on systems that you do not control access to that is the problem.

I have no problem with my PC saving my private diary in a local text file, or logging every application that I have run and every video and music file I have played. The problem comes when my PC's operating system decides to upload that data to a server which complete strangers have access to with neither my knowledge nor consent.

Cynic_999

Re: "the ECJ has made clear that national security concerns do not override citizens’ data privacy"

"

The appropriate way to tell a government or politician to fuck off is in an election (as the UK recently did with Labour)

"

That's the lie we are all told.

If all the political parties have similar policies on data protection (or anything else you don't like), you can do nothing to change it in an election.

Added to which, people can be persuaded to vote for the most outrageous policies if the politicians tell lies about the scope and consequences thereof. When income tax was first introduced, the electorate was assured that it was only a temporary measure that was necessary to avoid the collapse of the UK, and it would be recinded as soon as the Napoleonic war was over, and so by and large agreed with it as being unwelcome but unfortunately a necessity.

All you can attempt to do is vote for the least worst party - which then often ends up being far worse than you thought it would be. It gives you the illusion that you have some sort of say in how you are governed. But also ensures that no government makes any plans that would be unpopular in the short term even if they would be immensely beneficial in the long term.

Cynic_999

"

For example, the EU ruling that the UK can't expel EU citizens who commit heinous crimes such as rape and child molestation.

"

Most of the things that the Daily Mail tells us the "EU says we must ..." or "The EU says we cannot ..." are either gross exaggerations or are completely untrue. "The EU says we cannot sell curved bananas" or "The EU says we cannot deport someone who has a cat" "The EU says we cannot sell anything in pounds and ounces ..." etc. etc. All lies.

Boeing aircraft sales slump to historic lows after 737 Max annus horribilis

Cynic_999

Re: Corporate culture

To be fair, the CEO did make the prediction that the new aircraft would make a killing ...

Cynic_999

Re: Fixing MCAS

Instead of additional AoA sensors (all of which tend to fail at the same time in icing conditions), they cound add an algorithm & inputs to *derive* the aircraft AoA from other data (airspeed, "g" loading, aircraft configuration & mass), and check that it matched the AoA sensor value.

Cynic_999

Re: "This is what happens when you scrimp on software dev, testing and docs"

"

... he'll probably never work again

"

I dunno. He'll probably make loads as an after-dinner speaker. "How I ruined the largest aircraft manufacturer in the World". Or, "From riches to rags in 3 years"

Bliar did.

Cynic_999

Re: Flying

I have flown periodically in commercial aircraft for over 50 years, and in my experience the comfort level has *increased* during that time. Obviously the service depends on how much you pay, same as a hotel, but even in economy class you get entertainment systems that not even the most expensive 1st class passengers had a few decades ago. Seat pitch and width in economy can be a bit tight, but not excessively so unless you are bigger than average. The cost of the flight (relative to average income) has also decreased to the stage that overseas weekend breaks are a realistic option for people other than the very wealthy. When I was a child, for a great proportion of the population a trip on an aircraft was a once-in-a-lifetime dream.

Much of the "cattle class" criticism is because the sheer volume of passengers means that you *have* to manage them collectively rather than giving individual service.

My first ever flight (UK to Africa in a 727) had no choice of entertainment - there was a fixed in-flight movie projected onto each bulkhead and you were lucky if your view of the screen was not blocked or you were so far away you needed binoculars to watch it. (You also had to select the right sound channel for the movie at your bulkhead - I believe the film was fed overhead from one projector to the next so there was several seconds time difference between the different screens).

The last flight I took was business class in a Dreamliner. Wow! After an 8 hour flight I stepped from the aircraft fully rested and feeling 100%. The seat could recline to become a fully flat bed that was wide enough to curl up on. There was a good selection of movies and music, and also WiFi. It was no less comfortable than being at home for the day - except I didn't have to make my own tea or coffee!

Cynic_999

Re: When is a Max not a Max

Changing the name does not change the product one iota, but it can change the way the product is *perceived* by a huge amount. "Riot" vs "protest". "Terrorist" vs "Freedom fighter." "Pro-abortion" vs "Pro-choice" Etc. Etc.

Cynic_999

Re: It's not just the 737...

Yup. The average military bod has a tad higher "acceptable risk" limit than the average holidaymaker.

Whirlybird-driving infosec boss fined after ranty Blackpool Airport air traffic control antics

Cynic_999

Re: Over here:

"

... not sure what you would expect to do at that point... Phone in?

"

That is indeed usually a viable option these days. Otherwise you continue to follow your flight plan (if filed), join the circuit at the airport keeping a good look-out and wait for red or green light signals from the tower, rocking your wings to acknowledge that you have seen them.

You can also alert radar to your plight beforehand by flying a right-hand triangular pattern to signify transmitter failure, and a left-hand triangle to signify total radio failure.

Cynic_999

Re: Contrary view

Many helicopters don't have enough power to maintain a high hover, especially when carrying a full load. When out of ground-effect they must maintain forward airspeed to provide additional (translational) lift. Albeit slower than most fixed-wing aircraft have to maintain.

A high hover is also not easy to maintain safely even if sufficient power is available, because if the pilot inadvertently starts to descend (difficult to notice when high), the blades will encounter their own vortex and the pilot will very rapidly lose control (vortex ring state or "settling with power" - sort of the rotary aircraft version of stalling).

Cynic_999

Re: I believe that helicopters shouldn't be able to "self clear" anyway

There is no such thing as self-clearance regarding controlled airspace in the UK. You can clear yourself to take off or land at an *uncontrolled*, private runway (there's nobody to clear you anyway!). No clearance is required for any aircraft to enter class "G" airspace.

Cynic_999

Re: I believe that helicopters shouldn't be able to "self clear" anyway

"

A helicopter can hover, FFS

"

Looks like you aren't a pilot and are repeating some inaccurate and predjudiced myths about rotary operations.

As I mentioned previously, in fact most GA helicopters have insufficient power to hover out of ground-effect unless lightly loaded, and entering a high-hover is in any case not recommended because of the risk of losing control due to vortex-ring effect (settling with power). A high hover also eats fuel like crazy. You can however easily & safely slow to about 20 kts indicated airspeed, which on many days will give you close to zero ground speed if you face into wind at altitude.

Incidentally, the control used to slow down a helicopter is the cyclic ("stick"), not the collective ("handle"). Helicopters in the UK must follow the same regulations and get the same ATC clearances as fixed-wing, except that there are a few specifically designated routes that rotary aircraft are permitted to fly but fixed-wing may not - e.g. the London low-level helicopter corridor. Also the regulation that demands that pilots always maintain a position where it would be possible to land in a clear area in the event of an engine failure allows more latitude to helicopters, which can auto-rotate into in a much smaller space than a fixed-wing needs to carry out a glide landing.

Cynic_999

Contrary view

While it sounds like he was indeed very much in the wrong, in mitigation I will point out that in many cases when you have had a late handover and so are fast approaching an ATZ (air traffic control zone) for which you need permission to enter, and you cannot get through to ATC, it can be a pretty stressful situation in congested airspace. If you don't get the required permission in time you will need to start executing 360 degree turns in order to remain outside the boundary, which other pilots in the vicinity (and indeed any radar controller managing IFR flights in the same area) will not be expecting, so you have to keep a really good lookout and hope that you spot any conflicts.

Stress can exhibit itself in several ways - and if it was true that the controller was having semi-social chats with other pilots she knew while telling this pilot to "stand by", then I can see how that would be frustrating and induce anger in a person who is feeling stressed and (dare I say it?) perhaps in a situation that was a bit over his head and so a little frightened as well - while trying not to show it to his passengers.

It doesn't excuse his rudeness, but it might go some way to understanding why it happened.

Someone needs to go back to school: Texas district fleeced for $2.3m after staff fall for devious phishing email

Cynic_999

Re: So what happens to the money?

"

Yeah, I heard that "excuse", but since you have no control over who is getting the money it is bullshit, fraudulent bullshit.

"

The person collecting the cash has to present in person a recognized, government-issued photo ID to collect the money, and the employee at the WU outlet is diligent about that and knows all the scams. Besides, nobody except the intended reciptient is likely to know the transaction ID (also needed to get the money). Plus the sender will almost certainly be in frequent communication with the person they send the money and will ensure that they got it - and if not a complaint to WU is taken very seriously.

WU got a bad reputation for being used by various scammers. But if you get scammed into sending money to someone you don't know and have never met, that's your fault, not WU. WU simply carried out your wishes just as you intended. It's the same as handing cash to a stranger with a hard-luck story who approaches you in the street. Don't blame the ATM if a builder insists on cash in advance and then does a runner.

WU will ask how you know the person you are sending money to and whether you have met in person, and will refuse the transaction if it appears dodgy. For transactions over a certain amount (a few £100), you are asked more searching questions about the purpose of the transaction and your relationship with the receiver.

Cynic_999

Re: So what happens to the money?

"

When you use Western Union or Moneygram in Europe you know it is fraudulent, I do not understand how those businesses can operate here ... I doubt there are any legitimate transations going through them, then again, I have never used the service.

"

Yeah, yeah - just like TOR is only used by criminals, right?

WU sees millions of perfectly legitimate transactions. As just one example, many people from developing countries work (legally) in Europe or other more developed countries due to the far higher wages. A great many such people use WU to send cash back to their families, for whom a bank account would be impractical or perhaps not trusted.

WU is also used by parents sending cash to offspring travelling in another country when other methods have failed or are impractical (e.g. they lost or invalidated their ATM card).

I've also once used WU to send money to myself when I was on holiday and all the local ATMs ran out of money during a festival. The banks were closed, but there was a WU outlet that was open, and I could make an online money transfer with WU using my debit card details. The country in question had very few places that accepted cards - almost all restaurants and shops etc. took cash only, so I really needed to have paper money.

There are many Westerners who have met & befriended families while holidaying in poor countries and who send regular amounts for family support - again as no member of the family has a bank account, companies like WU are the only way to get cash to them.

Y2K quick-fix crick? 1920s come roaring back after mystery blip at UK's vehicle licensing agency

Cynic_999

Re: 2038

Erm ... if you treat it as an unsigned integer, then it cannot *have* a value of -1. Maybe treat either zero or 4294967295 as a special case (0xFFFFFFFF)

Microsoft wields ML to catch child predators, city drops 7-year facial-recognition experiment after no arrests...

Cynic_999

Including moral values

Had the facial recognition AI be programmed with American moral values, it would only have flagged criminals who are rich enough to spend loadsamoney on expensive lawyers. Otherwise where's the profit in bringing them to justice?

It's your walkie-talkie Teams mate, over. 'You don't have to say Over, over'. Copy that. Stop making the static noise, over and out

Cynic_999

So what's the difference ...

I can already have imo, whatsapp, skype and a few other apps on my phone that allow both audio and audio/video conversations via WiFi or cellular data. Fully duplex.

So what exactly is Microsoft adding to products that have been available for free for many years?

National Lottery Sentry MBA hacker given nine months in jail after swiping just £5

Cynic_999

Re: Might be worth investing £5

"

... entrapment kicks in when the LEOs are encouraging the perpetrator to do the deed

"

Something many people do not understand. Leaving out "bait" is not entrapment. Leaving "bait" and then hinting to someone specific that they should take it, is.

Cynic_999

Re: Whatever next?

"

I believe that's commonly known as "work".

"

Which is not something that is in practise available to everyone equally.

Cynic_999

Re: This seems out of proportion to the offense

There are many people who endorse the "justice" systems practised by many countries whereby when a criminal is convicted, the entire family is punished for the crime. In the UK we do not intend to do that, but it is very often the result. Quite often the punishment effectively meted out to the family is worse than that suffered by the criminal.

Cynic_999

Re: This seems out of proportion to the offense

"

... cost a charitable organisation £230K to respond to the attacks

"

I don't agree. If you have not had a lock on your front door for years, and one day a burglar enters and steals £13, are you justified in saying that the burglary cost you the price of fitting a new lock and burglar alarm in addition to the £13?

Flying taxis? That'll be AFTER you've launched light sabres and anti-gravity skateboards

Cynic_999

Re: Sigh!

"

... and as long as I call it a "flying taxi" my total lack of any license or airspace permission is no probs.

"

Yes, because you will be a passenger, not a driver. Your total lack of license does not stop you whizzing between terminals on a fully automated train at Gatwick.

Cynic_999

Re: London...

"

A foggy day in London Town...

Good luck with collision avoidance

"

Any fully automatic system (which I think mass flying cars would need to have), would be controlled via continuous radio communications giving present position, flightpath and intention. They would not be relying on anything visual.

Cynic_999

Re: @ Warm Braw

"

Then why aren't they in charge already?

"

Because it is very, very difficult to make an autopilot that can deal with land travel. Fully automatic air, rail and sea travel is at least an order of magnitude easier to achieve.

Cynic_999

Re: @ Warm Braw

"

The fuel issue of flying cars is easy to solve, R.T.G.'s. Make them hot-swappable, like battery packs, and the flyers could be made from oversized quadcoptery drone thingys.

"

Which physics will limit to a flying time measured in minutes. By the time you factor in the time to reach a battery-swap station and then park, the range left available to carry a passenger is down to a few km at best.

Cynic_999

Re: @ Warm Braw

The vehicle would drop off the passenger and then fly empty to a parking space outside the city. Existing city roads would be devoid of land traffic and so serve as drop-off places along their entire lengths - gradually being replaced by rooftop drop-off points