Posts by cdrcat

House numbering oddities

Or why a house in Owls Green, would be numbered 2820 (too-wit too-woo).

http://paulplowman.com/stuff/uk-address-oddities/

Re: You write this as if

Currently businesses are capitalist. Individual businesses have no incentive to pay for the advantage of others: and personally I don't think we should blame the victims for making sensible business decisions.

This is a tragedy is the commons situation.

As you say, only external parties can enforce change on criminals and their victims. It doesn't help to weep because our governments and regulations are failing us.

Re: Dunning-Kruger Tee

The Dunning-Kruger paper posited two results, the second less well renowned result measured that humble people were “skilled but unaware just how skilled they are”.

You can apply the label Dunning-Kruger to yourself with pride if you humbly belong to the second group who underestimate their skills - similar to owning the word c*nt because you have an affinity for c*nts.

Re: Belt up

Or, perhaps more accurately, the hard drive continuously falls at just the right acceleration to keep up with the continuous acceleration of the ISS.

Totally due to Tesla design flaw - no surprise - as per the linked article “The problem is that the car will prioritize its liquid cooling (shared with the infotainment system) to the batteries, leaving the CPU to overheat.”

Article writer is being a complete doofus.

“Larry was running a project to replace the laptops in an entire division of 500 staff, and decided to split the deal between two PC makers.”

"This wasn't a dozen machines, or maybe a couple of dozen. This was 350 laptops in total, at $1,000 a piece – not counting peripherals, docking stations, bags, and other doodads the company ordered depending upon the department and seniority."

Re: So how was all that Spyglass Code in there then?..

GML was involved with the history of HTML[1] because it was a predecessor to SGML. However stating that the GML codebase became Mosaic or Spyglass sounds surreal. If you have alternative facts, I suggest you pass them to the appropriate history buffs to cross-check them: why post anything important here?

[1] https://www.w3.org/2012/08/history-of-the-web/origins.htm

Re: The final stage of the crypto collapse

I would paraphrase your comment as “cabal of insiders team up against retail investors” (The haves team up against the fish). That sounds like nonsense: most crypto is inherently trustless: if any individual can defect against the group (defect against your “haves”) they will, which is just sensible economics.

Disclaimer: I no didly-squat about crypto and I don’t own none

Re: So What

I am not a Google lover by any means, but Google *mostly* does a pretty good job given the ad industry.

If Android and gmail were split off, I imagine the first thing would be to upgrade install the worst possible uninstallable Apps and sell off your data to the spammiest bidder. How many times have I seen a product go to shit when it changed hands? Imagine if Microsoft owned Android?

The Chrome development team are uniquely talented - the reliability is astonishing and their speed of development is unlike any other team I know of (I don’t like all the new features but I really love others, and W3 was trying to spec some epically stupid stuff so fuck them) . Three other well paid teams are shit in comparison from my very long and painful experience. Imagine what would happen to Chrome if it was sold? It is open source - a gift to us all - so you don’t have to use Chrome.

I am most dissatisfied with Google search and YouTube - the gradual degradation with more and more adverts is killing those for me.

Re: Looks like the ISP wants 2 bites of the cherry

Some Netflix traffic goes via backbones, but most Netflix data is streamed from cached content served by appliances installed at reasonably local peering exchanges.

“Each Open Connect Appliance (OCA) stores a portion of the Netflix catalog, which in general is less than the complete content library for a given region. Popularity changes, new titles that are added to the service, re-encoded movies, and routine software enhancements are all part of the nightly updates, or fill, that each appliance must download to remain current.” — https://openconnect.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360035618071

Only the questioner can select the accepted answer

Often the person asking the question marks an answer as the accepted answer, and never goes back to correct it.

Well, that was how it worked last time I looked, although I admit that I too find it frustrating.

They could allow CC0 the same as Rack does

As per https://github.com/VCVRack/Rack/blob/v1/.github/CONTRIBUTING.md

“””

To accept a contribution, all authors of the contribution need to either

* declare the patch under the CC0 license.

* complete a copyright reassignment form.

* perform the work under a paid agreement.

“””

Aerogel doesn't have to be fragile

> It seems to me that the biggest technical achievement was keeping the areogel intact for the trip

"""not all aerogels are easy to break! Classic (or 'legacy') aerogels exhibit extremely high strength-to-weight ratios and are able (in principle) to hold thousands of times their weight in applied force, however also typically exhibit extremely low fracture toughness, that is, the ability to resist propagation of flaws in the material. As a result, it is possible for a classic aerogel block that is 96% air by volume to hold a brick thousands of times its own weight, but only if the weight is placed on the monolith gently and there are no major cracks in the aerogel.

New mechanically strong and machinable aerogels such as Airloy® strong aerogels made by Aerogel Technologies fix this problem. Airloy aerogels are hundreds of times stronger and stiffer than classic aerogels and simultaneously durable and fracture tough. Unlike legacy aerogels, Airloy aerogels can be machined (drilled, tapped, turned, milled) and bent without breaking. The strength, stiffness, thermal conductivity, and other properties of Airloy aerogels depend on the product series."""

http://www.aerogeltechnologies.com/about/faqs/

A colleague thought he was Jesus

He told me about when he was committed to a mental health unit, because he thought he was Jesus.

Inside he meets a guy who says "Hi, I'm god". My colleague response by suddenly hugging the guy and says "Dad" emotionally.

Re: Pray elaborate?

A camera “star filter lens” adds starbursts to bright point source lights.

Camera filters can add, not just filter. I am sure you can suggest a better analogue filter example where the filter adds to the image... maybe a border?

Re: Fail safe?

Buttons that don’t click when you press them are a horrendous UI failure. You see the problem with slow user interfaces - people naturally click again and the second click can be on something behind a modal - fail.

You can fade-in the button, or grey out the button while it is disabled, but those solutions also lead to unwanted side-effects.

Pop up modals and unexpected scrolling are hard problems (on Android Chrome double clicking an input box selects, but the first click pops up the keyboard and scrolls the input box away, very annoying!)

Re: Fuck javascript.

Google could uprank articles that serve pure HTML/CSS, with no JS. That would have achieved multiple goals: faster loading, less tracking, less viruses, better archiving, better accessibility. Bastards.

Re: The bigger picture..

“but it is not the MCAS. The autopilot has to be off for MCAS to kick in.”

“The pilots said that soon after engaging the autopilot on Boeing 737 Max 8 planes, the nose tilted down sharply. In both cases, they recovered quickly after disconnecting the autopilot.”

So the article is probably not MCAS related.

Re: Blowing fibre.

Air compressor fits the ABF gun better: https://hexatronic.com/products/installation-tools-and-accessories/air-blown-fiber-abf-installation-tool/

Re: Welcome to the post-sanity world

And here I was thinking a healthy society cared about protecting the poor and stupid from themselves.

Be careful in wishing the worst upon those that make mistakes lest you fail to be perfect yourself.

Re: Not me, but someone else

Don't spare a thought for such shallow idiots. Showing such people their mistakes is often futile, wasting your time and theirs.

Re: "Intel never thrilled me"

There are multiple hardware mitigations *already* in Apple processors. They are mostly aimed at preventing kernel level exploits, but it seems very likely Apple will continue putting in more security protections into the A* processors.

Intel have repeatably shown they prioritise sales performance before security, sort of like Microsoft of yore, and Intel is less likely to develop mitigations that require tight integration with the OS or deep modification of the OS.

Scroll way down to the heading “iOS kernel exploit mitigations” in this link which details some of the hardware protections: https://googleprojectzero.blogspot.com/2020/06/a-survey-of-recent-ios-kernel-exploits.html

Polish part I own; Reverse Polish notation okay to exist, opinion mine humbly.

Re: So how do "modern monitors" do it?

Say you have white (255,255,255). Now you want a red as bright as that white, maybe that should be represented as (765,0,0).

Or maybe you want to have 10 bit colours, so you can choose between (1023,1023,1023) or (255.75,255.75,255.75) as representations that allow ten bits per channel to be declared.

It’s all completely insane of course, since the page would have to say what colour space it was using, the gamma, and what representation it was using. Otherwise a browser couldn’t map the wide-gamut or 10-bit colours when someone used a normal 24 bit colour monitor.

Re: "Orange Man Bad!"

Cristobal Colon is still alive running the show from a secret bunker located under the Vatican. You’ll notice that Christopher Columbus Is an obvious anagram containing “Hitler”, which says it all. “Americans” are actually spy robots - they have to be loud to cover up the noise of their internal machinery (Machiavellian has the same root). If the mods publish this, I will be replaced with a machine intelligence: if the quality of my comments improves then it proves it (or if they get worse it’ll be because they programmed the replacement to act dumb).

Re: Better to be an outlier?

iOS and Android dwarf Windows usage in a household context. And they are critical for security in a business context (they are often literally the keys to the bank and infrastructure in small to medium businesses).

Old Android phones remain more secure from attacks via web pages, because the browser is updated regularly. Android 4.4 (released Oct 2013) is still getting Chrome updates. Most other attacks are mitigated by needing to be physically near phone, are filtered by SMS infrastructure, or can be avoided by not installing crap apps.

Anyone on iOS 12 or less is stuck on an old and insecure version of Safari - the recent flaw that gives access to cameras also gives access to stored passwords... Roll the dice on every web page visited!

I generally recommend Nokia phones with Android One (designed by HMD) because they are relatively cheap but good, they get updates, and the Android version is clean (no manufacturer shit).

125 million Indians speak English

The Oxford Indian Dictionary will replace the OED.

Soon to be heard from your local chav:

My daughter is convent-educated

My teacher is sitting on my head

My friend is eating my brain

https://www.britishcouncil.org/voices-magazine/ten-surprising-expressions-indian-english

Re: Supply Chains

Testable.

Order something that needs delivery from China, preferably that has just become stocked again.

My bet is that China is open for business at the moment - if the US had some real dirt on China they would be printing it no the presses already.

And there are multiple other Asian countries that have functioning economies - the star being Taiwan.

Re: SD Card & Headphone Jack?

Do they have dual SIM? Very useful when travelling and past models had it.

Re: Swapping whole racks out

Why would they ever have unused hardware? That would be a waste of money - hardware should be used.

“Google's Borg system is a cluster manager that runs hundreds of thousands of jobs, from many thousands of different applications, across a number of clusters each with up to tens of thousands of machines.”.

The system is set up so that hardware failures are dealt with by restarting jobs. Google have done that since they started (optimising for cheaper machines that are expected to fail, rather than expensive reliable machines).

The Internet Is Being Protected By Two Guys Named Steve

https://www.buzzfeed.com/chrisstokelwalker/the-internet-is-being-protected-by-two-guys-named-st

Sorry, buzzfeed, but great story.

Re: Penny for a cup of tea, guv?

I offered to pay bus fare for some rando beggar guy, only to be told by driver that they didn’t allow that. Not sure why, but apparently a policy.

Which defeats the purpose

One reason for DoH is to prevent MITM attacks. If the MITM can downgrade the DoH to normal DNS, then the attacker can control your DNS.