* Posts by Cynic_999

2855 publicly visible posts • joined 15 Aug 2013

Nothing new since the microwave: Let's get those home tech inventors cooking

Cynic_999

Home automation

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Up0507DFeyA

Caution, contains nudity

Cynic_999

Re: Smart heating system?

My annual holiday is the perfect time for me to empty the fridge and freezer. This prevents the accumulation of all the food that has sat in the freezer for months and which will almost certainly never be eaten.

Cynic_999

Re: Smart heating system?

If I'm going to be away for a few weeks, I simply switch off the main switch before going out of the door. While that means that it would be completely impossible to access any "smart" devices in the house (if I had any), it automatically ensures that the heating will stay off, and nothing can have been left on (all my cooking is electric). It also means that none of the devices usually left switched on in "standby" as well as phone chargers etc. cannot develop a fault and burn the house down.

UK Prime Minister Johnson knows not when 400k+ deleted records from police DB will be back

Cynic_999

Just a simple typo can do this

Such as typing the word "and" instead of "or" in a logical statement.

Negative Trustpilot review of law firm Summerfield Browne cost aggrieved Briton £28k

Cynic_999

Truth is a defence

If the defendent can prove that what they said was the truth, then that is a defence to libel. Unfortunately it seems from this article that the defendent did not set out exactly what he instructed the solicitor to do, and why he believes the solicitor did not do what they were instructed to do, which makes it impossible to determine whether his review was or was not the truth.

Many people get upset with their solicitor and decide that the solicitor is incompetant (or worse) if the solicitor gives them an honest opinion based on the law rather than telling them what they want to hear. Although there are also plenty of cases where the solicitor really has given no thought to the matter nor done even the minimum research, and just taken the money while giving an inaccurate stock reply and nothing of value in return. If the facts had been set out by the defendent, the judge could have determined which situation applied in this case.

Laptops given to British schools came preloaded with remote-access worm

Cynic_999

I'm pretty sure that even if the laptops had been supplied 100% clean, the schoolkids will have caused them to be infected with plenty of malware PDQ anyway.

Cynic_999

Re: Need more info

You cannot realistically allow connections with only whitelisted IP addresses, and whitelisting port numbers is of no use if the malware server uses port 80 (as many will so as not to draw attention to themselves).

You can drive a car with your feet, you can operate a sewing machine with your feet. Same goes for computers obviously

Cynic_999

Re: "Old' and "solicitor" doesn't narrow things down...

"

.. if your machine says it sent, then it's because the receiving machine confirmed receipt ..

"

Sure, the remote machine may have received the fax correctly, but it could be sat in the machine's RAM with a "Paper Empty" message on the front panel. Whereupon the over-cautious secretary turns off the machine before fitting a new roll of paper ...

Brave bets on the decentralized web with IPFS browser support for a more peer-to-peer approach

Cynic_999

Any technology is going to be used for bad purposes, and this is no exception. It's no different to the debate over encryption - some argue that secure encryption is used by bad people so should not be permitted at all.

Back to the office with you: 'Perhaps 5 days is too much family time' – Workday CEO

Cynic_999

Re: I'd have to disagree...

A great deal depends on exactly what your job consists of. There are quite obviously a huge proportion of jobs that would be completely impossible to do from home, and I see no significant overall health advantage in office workers working from home while nobody else does.

Cynic_999

Quite apart from anything related to the behaviour of the viris or efficacy of the vaccine, things will not get back to "normal" for decades - and quite possibly things will never return to the way they were. This is due to the huge immediate and long-term economic impact caused by the effects of lockdown and travel restrictions.

This in turn will mean that completely new measures will have to be introduced in order to cope with the sudden increase in the number of unemployed (only a small proportion of which will be able to find a comparable job after the crisis), and the loss to the general economy from the number of small (and some large) buisinesses that have ceased to trade. The emergency measures presently in place cannot be kept up for anything close to the time that will be needed for businesses to re-start and jobs re-created, but will need to be replaced with a completely new system - perhaps even a complete revision to the basic foundations of the way our economic cycle works.

Police drone plunged 70ft into pond after operator mashed pop-up that was actually the emergency cut-out button

Cynic_999

In addition all full-size aircraft must be capable of flying and landing following a complete power failure.

Cynic_999

I question whether a cutout switch is needed at all - surely the normal powerdown sequence (that you use after landing) is perfectly adequate for that purpose? On quadcopters I have flown this consists of reducing the throttle to zero, followed by putting the controls in a specific position for a second or so (e.g. right stick in bottom left corner and left stick in bottom right corner). It would rarely if ever be needed during flight - the "emergency" button/switch usually has one of the following functions: "stop and hold position," "return home" or "Descend and land immediately".

Hollywood drone pilot admits he crashed gizmo into cop chopper, triggering emergency landing

Cynic_999

Lots of crimes are like that. Wander onto the wrong side of the road while texting and swerve back without incident - a fine and points at most. Do exactly the same but hit & kill a child on a cycle and you'll get a prison sentence.

Cynic_999

Re: Not really the brightest bulb, was he?

The regulation specifically states "... except when engaged in landing or take-off"

Cynic_999

Re: Not really the brightest bulb, was he?

I have a PPL(H) so have flown helicopters. The blades are reasonably strong, but a quadcopter could certainly damage a blade quite badly. A bird strike can bring down a helicopter. The blade would probably not break, but the damage would quite likely cause an aerodynamic imbalace that would literally vibrate the helicopter to pieces. A pilot I knew had a supermarket plastic carrier bag fly up and catch on a main rotor blade, and had it not happened close to the ground (he was coming in to land) so he could set it down immediately, the very severe vibrations would probably have caused a structural failure within minutes. You could hear the vibration from the opposite side of the airfield - probably a mile away!

Cynic_999

"

If he could see his drone then surely he would have been able to see a giant helicopter.

"

Undoubtedly the helicopter would have been visible, but what we humans actually perceive visually is astoundingly only about 10% due to the image entering our eyeballs, and 90% a "cleaned up" and "decluttered" image that is concocted entirely by our brain. The brain is a very powerful continuous real-time (almost) image post-processor, and we never get to see the original raw image. We can both fail to see what is visible, and also clearly see details that do not actually exist. It is entirely possible that the drone pilot was so fixated on the drone and what was taking place on the ground that the presence of the huge noisy helicopter did not register in his brain at all.

One interesting fact is that it takes a whopping 200mS for the signal produced by our retina to travel the few cm along our optic nerve & register in our brain. Our brain compensates by making a prediction of what we will see 200mS in the future, and it is that image that we "see". This enables us to do things like catch a fast ball. Thus what we think we are seeing in real-time is in fact a completely imaginary, predicted image rather than the real-time events. It also means that 200mS is the absolute minimum time needed to react to any unexpected visual event. If what really happens does not match the prediction, then when our brain get the real picture 200mS later, it retrospectively alters what we remember we saw, and we conveniently forget the erroneous image we really did "see".

The data rate of the signals in each optic nerve is about 100 Mbps.

Cynic_999

"

I have no clue what the rules are for cop choppers while actively investigating a crime. As opposed to just flying around in-between calls for assistance.

"

Not sure about USA, but in UK AFAIAA there is no difference in height limits between civilian and police aircraft. Twin engine helicopters have lower minimums than single-engine, and there are exceptions if actively engaged in rescue operations & similar. There are (sensibly) no height restrictions for aircraft engaged in landing or take-off, so it would be fine if the helicopter was engaged in ferrying people to or from the scene.

It may well be the case that the police helicopter pilot was more at fault than the drone pilot, though there is an over-riding rule that states that all pilots have a duty to avoid a collision no matter who has right of way.

150,000 lost UK police records looking more like 400,000 as Home Office continues to blame 'human error'

Cynic_999
Joke

Housekeeping error???

Probably means a cleaner plugged the vacuum cleaner into the wrong power socket.

Cynic_999

Re: The fickle finger of blame...

"

A system with zero backups? Seems highly unlikely.

"

Yesterday's article mentioned that there used to be a backup in the form of a complete mirror-server at a different location, but that was lost in a fire several years ago and so far not replaced.

In fact one or more mirror-servers would be by far the best choice of backup method in this application, because in many cases record need to be deleted in such a way that it is impossible to recover a copy of that record.

Not that it would help in a situation where the records were erroneously but legitimately deleted - because they would be deleted from all the mirror-servers as well.

Cynic_999

Re: The fickle finger of blame...

I have little doubt that Priti Patel has been hard at work and is spending many hours every day trying to decide who is the most convenient (and expendable) person to blame. Just like many of those whose records have been deleted, the question of guilt or innocence is completely irrelevant when compared with what is the most expedient.

Dratted 'housekeeping', eh? 150k+ records deleted off UK’s Police National Computer database

Cynic_999

Re: the loss relates to individuals who were arrested and then released with no further action

The process you describe applies only to reported crimes (that the police bother to investigate), which have no obvious suspect.

A great many cases *start* with the arrest of someone "suspicious", and the next step is in looking for any crimes that they may have committed. Even if it is found that no crimes had in fact been committed and the person is released with no further action, their fingerprints, DNA, mugshot and other personal details remain on the PNC database, ostensibly for 3 years if the person has no criminal record (but no guarantee that they will in fact be deleted after that time).

Cynic_999

Re: the loss relates to individuals who were arrested and then released with no further action

A record of the occurance for a limited time only maybe. But that should not include biometric data, address, phone number or date of birth.

The Novell NetWare box keeps rebooting over and over again yet no one has touched it? We're going on a stakeout

Cynic_999

Re: Fluorescents...

Far cheaper and quicker than replacing the carpets would have been to give them a suitable anti-static treatment.

Cynic_999

A better solution

Plugging the light into a different socket may have cured the symptom, but did not remove the root cause, and so the setup remained vulnerable.

The fact that a momentary mains spike reset the PC would suggest that the PC's PSU was not all that robust (the PC I am using right now can survive as much as a 500mS power outage without rebooting, though my VDU does a reboot during the same event). A better solution would therefore have been to upgrade the PSU - or perhaps run that PC from a dedicated UPS (which after all was being used as a server). Not that I am a big fan of small UPS's because they are more likely to fail than the mains supply - at least in my case. At the very least it should have been fitted with an inline mains filter and then tested to ensure that switching on the light no longer resulted in a reboot.

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey says Trump ban means the service has failed

Cynic_999

Re: Screwed the pooch and knows it

"

The difference is that Trump actually advocated the violence and praised it when it was happening.

"

Not in anything I have heard or read. It may be what some people *inferred* from his words, but he did not explicitly tell his supporters to commit illegal acts, and it is arguable whether he wanted to convey any such veiled message. I have heard far less veiled "calls to arms" from BLM supporters and those calling for the protests in Hong Kong.

Cynic_999

Re: Screwed the pooch and knows it

I do not like or endorse Trump, and say "Good riddance". However ISTM that many movements incite violence either explicitly or implicitly to at least the same extent as he did. Should social media ban people who call for BLM protests? Anti-China protests? LGBT marches? Any of which can and often have turned violent.

The problem with censorship is that it starts by assuming that a particular point of view, method or agenda is "bad" while contrary opinions are "OK". Information and hence public opinion becomes something that is controlled by the people or organisation that have the power to censor. While I can agree to censorship taking place on certain platforms (such as those aimed at children), I cannot agree to any general censorship of material that adults access except on a temporary basis for a short time.

If the Internet had been around at the time, should Twitter have banned Martin Luther King?

Attack of the cryptidiots: One wants Bitcoin-flush hard drive he threw out in 2013 back, the other lost USB stick password

Cynic_999

Re: It is not real money

"

From what I understand Bitcoin is pretty much impossible to use and get the money out into the real world.

"

Might be true if you are talking many £millions. But exchanging a few tens of thousand £ of bitcoin to fiat currency is pretty easy by opening an account with a reputable online site. And exchanging a few hundred £ is even easier - there are ATMs where you can do that to get cash notes with only a short delay for the BTC to be processed - and I even saw a bitcoin exchange booth in a small town in Nepal.

Cynic_999

Re: "Now that the $7.5m is now worth almost $300m"

You need to realise that the bitcoins are not actually kept in the "wallet". A bitcoin wallet is more analogous to the number of a numbered bank account than a wallet. If you have a numbered account but forget the account number, your money is just as lost as if you lose your bitcoin wallet (or it becomes inaccessible for some reason - e.g. forgetting a password). But just as you would be stupid to open a numbered bank account and then fail to record the number in one or more secure places, you would be stupid to create a bitcoin wallet and then fail to make adequate secure backups of both the wallet and any passwords needed to access it. If you have significant funds in bitcoin, it would also be wise to provide a way for it to be accessed by your heirs in the event of your unexpected death. It is no different to investing in diamonds, cash or gold which you then hide - but then forget where you hid it.

Cynic_999

Re: "Now that the $7.5m is now worth almost $300m"

There must be a large number of banknotes and coins that have been lost. As far as the BoE is concerned, those lost notes & coins are still in circulation. Bitcoin could deal with the situation in the same way as the BoE does - issue a completely new design of cryptocurrency that can be exchanged with Bitcoin, and then make the old design worthless after a suitable period of time.

Cynic_999

Re: "Now that the $7.5m is now worth almost $300m"

The ledger has no way of knowing whether the coins are lost or not, any more than a Swiss bank knows whether a customer has lost the number to their numbered account..

Gloucestershire IT pro faces court over £30k Amazon voucher theft allegations

Cynic_999

Re: seems to be working

The problem is that the proposed updates to the Act are unlikely to make it any more effective in prosecuting wrongdoing, but instead will allow it to be used to further erode our privacy, and to prosecute people who are doing things that are merely inconvenient to government authorities. As you correctly point out, the existing Act is perfectly adequate, and I have not heard of any example of an action that would be seriously wrong but which could not be prosecuted due to a limitation in the present computer misuse Act.

(You can't) buy one now! The flying car makes its perennial return

Cynic_999

On spinning bikes, the knob can be found sitting on the bike.

Cynic_999

Re: Rotors "powered by the wind"

The physics behind helicopter flight is non-intuitive and not easy to understand wrt either the aerodynamic concepts nor the gyroscopic considerations. In autorotation, the upward air flow through the rotor disk causes the inner section of the rotor blades to act as a windmill and provide power (torque), while the outer section acts the same as it does in powered flight and provides lift to keep the helicopter flying. The ability to act as a windmill however depends on the blades continuing to rotate fast enough so as not to be stalled over more than a small percentage of their length - if the rotor RPM falls below about 85% of it's normal speed it will no longer be able to provide enough torque no matter what the pilot does, and the RPM will continue to drop rapidly until there is insufficient centrifugal force on the rotor tips to keep the blades stiff and close to horizontal, they will fold upwards and the helicopter then adopts the same aerodynamic profile as a brick. Such a situation is not recoverable from any height.

Following an engine failure, the pilot of a helicopter must therefore react immediately and lower the collective (reduce blade pitch) so as to enter autorotation before rotor RPM decays. The slightest hesitation in doing so is almost always fatal (the smaller the helicopter, the faster must be the pilot's reaction). Having achieved auto-rotation however, the subsequent emergency landing is more likely to be survivable than a fixed-wing, because of the far lower forward speed needed at the point of landing.

Cynic_999

Re: Cruise control

The fact that autopilots for aircraft have been in routine use since before the microchip was invented, but nothing comparable is yet available for cars should indicate that your statement is incorrect. Aircraft autopilots are far easier to implement for all the reasons previously stated. The same is true of ships, which could trivially be completely automated today - certainly for the vast majority of a typical passage at least. Leaving and entering harbour and docking would probably still require human control unless ports were equipped with suitable equipment to allow those portions to be automated.

Cynic_999

Re: "The first commercial flying car in the world is now a fact,"

Agree with all except the annual licence fees. A UK PPL does not need to be renewed so there is no annual licence fee. You do however need to log a minimum number of flying hours each year, and get an annual medical certificate.

SpaceX wins UK regulator Ofcom's approval for its Starlink mobile broadband base stations

Cynic_999

Re: 42,000 satellites up there.

They are LEO, so even if they fail completely they will de-orbit and burn up within +/- 5 years.

Cynic_999

Depends how close together the community is. OK for a small village perhaps, but a farming community would be too spread out for WiFi coverage.

Cynic_999

Even if the T&Cs do not permit sharing, I don't see how it could be detected if you ignore that rule. However people stuck out in the boonies tend to live quite a distance from each other, so sharing an Internet connection might involve installing some expensive equipment (microwave links, laser links, laying fibre etc.)

Cynic_999

The usual way is that some organization provides and pays for the link, which is then distributed via local WiFi. The cost is not expensive when compared to the alternatives available in many locations.

Cynic_999

What rubbish. The satellites can be easily accounted for and when necessary filtered out - they don't obliterate anything. This is already done with the plethora of satellites already in LEO.

Trump's gone quiet, Parler nuked, Twitter protest never happened: There's an eerie calm – but at what cost?

Cynic_999

There is also the other side of the coin. The mainstream media also frequently publishes very selected and embellished "truths." I can think of many examples where the media interpretation of particular events was completely inaccurate and designed to influence opinions. Such as the time it was reported that aparticular person could not be deported under the HRA because he owned a cat. And many cases where EU regulations were grossly misinterpreted to make them appear ridiculous.

Cynic_999

Re: 1st amendment

"

Before Trump, US Presidents didn't require Twitter to run the country - believing that has changed ignores the damage done by using Twitter as a means of ruling and assumes mob rule and an occassional half-truth is the way forward.

"

But it certainly has changed. The early presidents did not need TV or radio to run the country. Or telephones for that matter.

Theranos destroyed crucial subpoenaed SQL blood test database, can't unlock backups, prosecutors say

Cynic_999

"

Isn't there a general principle - if you are asked to provide information, and you don't or can't, then the judge can legally assume that the information would hurt your case?

"

No, there is no such general principle, and nor should there be. Otherwise an adversary could simply request you to provide something they know you cannot provide in order to have a court shift to a presumption of guilt.

Cannot provide the receipt for the TV you bought 5 years ago? In that case you must have stolen it ...

Extreme Networks misses death-of-Flash deadline, suggests winding back PC clocks to keep its GUI alive

Cynic_999

Re: I'm not at all surprised

The developers have long ago retired using their one-off cash-cow application, and cannot be found to do any updates at all.

Boffins store text message inside E coli bacteria using electromagnetic signal – and you'll never guess what it says

Cynic_999

Hmmm

So the idea that the vaccinations contain something sinister that can be remotely programmed via 5G electromagnetic signals is not so far-fetched after all ...

It could also form the basis for the ultimate "test and trace" application. The virii can be encoded with a full history of where they've been (encoded in blockchain format of course).

Linux Mint sticks by Snap decision – meaning store is still disabled by default in 20.1

Cynic_999

Main downside for me

I use Mint and have done for many years (except at work where there's no choice). The main issue I have with Linux is that so few hardware vendors have adequate support for Linux (not the fault of Linux). Very occasionally I see a new bit of kit that has some unique features that I'd like to have - but it's then pot-luck as to whether I can get it to work with Linux, and if I can, whether it will have all the features available when used with Windows. I've had audio cards that work in stereo but not not multi-channel, video cards that will not support 3D, printers that Linux cannot make use of their full duplex facilities. Etc.

But it's been getting better.

Dusty passports, smart tops and tracksuit bottoms: Are virtual events better or worse than the real thing?

Cynic_999

If it was so good ..

We'd all save money by buying a few cans of beer at the supermarket and meeting up in a virtual pub at home rather than going to a physical location and paying 5 times the price for a pint. Online teaching would be as good as the classroom and there'd be no talk whatsoever of re-opening schools. And a sun-lamp and large-screen TV showing a tropical beach would be every bit as satisfying as a foreign holiday.

No, personal interaction involves so much more than audio and video. It's about fleeting person-to-person glances, body language that doesn't work on a Zoom meeting. The ability to ask a quick question while working and getting a reply that saves 15 minutes had you had to look up the answer yourself. The ability to see whether the other person is interruptable or engrossed in something. Snatches of converstation about personal things or a bit of banter that are irrelevant to work but so important in bonding co-workers to create a spirit of cooperation. The atmosphere you get in a room full of people is simply impossible to duplicate in a screen full of people engaged in video-conferencing. Maybe there are even pheremones at play when people are in proximity.

UK's AI fairy tale sets out on its yellow-brick roadmap

Cynic_999

Re: at a democratic decision

Voting does NOT amount to democracy if the people voting are given deliberately selective, misleading or incorrect information on which they base their decision. Unfortunately it would be a very rare election or referendum where the amount of false information and false promises does not swamp the amount of reliable & truthful information.

If even 50% of the promises made by the "vote leave" campaigners were likely to come true, then I would accept that the result of the referendum was the "Will of the people".

Unfortunately people who have been completely hoodwinked rarely admit even to themselves that they have been scammed, and usually insist that they made a wise decision no matter what evidence might emerge to the contrary. I'm quite sure I made the correct decision sending money to the Nigerian prince, it was just bad luck that things have been held up a while, and I'll be receiving £millions any year now.

Lenovo reveals smart specs that let you eyeball five virtual displays, with strings attached

Cynic_999

Re: Mark can't see a use case so the tech is junk?

Maybe consider an LED projector. These come in a size about the same as a phone, and are bright enough to use indoors during daylight so long as you keep the p-rojected image size reasonable.