* Posts by allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

6157 publicly visible posts • joined 20 Oct 2015

UberPOP is Finnished in Helsinki until 2018

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Re: Similar to Germany

It also means that if you are a passenger and the driver causes an accident in which you are injured, you've got a problem. And years of arguing with various insurance companies ahead of you.

Someone's phishing US nuke power stations. So far, no kaboom

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Re: watering hole attacks?

"If you're a spy agency interested in high value targets across a whole range of industries, then Facebook and Twitter aren't the places to hang out, as there's too little focus, too much dross. But here, well......"

Well, now I feel flattered and am on the verge of coyly blushing.

On the couch with an AI robo-doc asking me personal questions

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

"He is not suffering from any mental illness."

He works in tech journalism, training and digital publishing.

Now, I think it's time for another visit at The Home for Deranged Scientists.

Boffins with frickin' laser beams chase universe's mysterious trihydrogen

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

What happens to the single electron(s)?

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

"... but does give you the problem of where to find a neutral electron."

Switzerland?

TfL, WTH is my bus? London, UK, looks up from its mobile

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

No worries.

After Brexit, Mrs May will make sure that the buses will always run on time.

Meanwhile, here's a little ditty to cheer you up: The Jazz Butcher - Grooving In The Bus Lane

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Re: WTF is my bus?

"Au contraire, [the app] has tremendous benefit. As the first poster here said, its a pacifier. It gives people something to do while their bus is not arriving. This results in happier customers and fewer complaints without actually improving the service."

It also keeps the people busy and focused on their phones, thus eliminating all the tedious chatting, relaxing and making friends that people were previously forced to do while waiting for buses.

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Re: WTF is my bus?

Back in 1988 my fiancée's sister went for a job interview in a small village somewhere around the southern end of the West Midlands. [...] "Excuse me, when's the next bus?" [...] "Next Tuesday".

Let me guess - she stayed in that village, married a local and lived happily ever after?

'Vicious' neutron star caught collecting dustbunnies

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Re: Three degrees

"Have you lot done nothing but lie and cover up since I left? No wonder the Empire is sinking with all hands."

There's a leak in the boiler room.

Britain's warhead-watcher to simulate Trident nukes with Atos supercomputer

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Re: do we really need to simulate this?

"If we had a really big computer and knowledge of the current state of the world we could simulate all the sociology and economics you could possibly want."

Well, for all we know, somebody might be doing just that right now, and we're part of that simulation.

(You know, I could probably even live with that it it was true; as long as I can file bug reports.)

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Re: do we really need to simulate this?

I suppose one of the applications will be to simulate how warheads degraded through ageing will perform. The deployment scenarios - and I do hope they are filed in binders like General Turgidson's "World Targets in Megadeaths" - are bound to be based on a more or less reliable yield per warhead. At one point you'll have to update either the warhead or the contingency plan.

Boffins' five eyes surprise: Bees correct colour for ambient light

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken
allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

"Guess bees have different needs..."

They work in teams; at least one of them holds a little calibrated colour chart...

Come to think of it, could a bee use another bee's coat as a reference chart for colour and contrast?

New work: Algorithms to give self-driving cars 'impulsive' human 'ethics'

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Re: Ethical decisions

Let's not kid ourselves here.

Chances are that the "algorithm" that decides who should be saved and who is expendable will be based on which of the person(s) involved is a premium account holder and which isn't.

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Re: Algorithms to give self-driving cars 'impulsive' human 'ethics'

So, an "AI" driver capable of road rage, then?

MH370 researchers refine their prediction of the place nobody looked

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Re: Go find it

Yes. Even ruling out possibilities without finding the actual cause1) would be worth it, it will help making planes and the procedures to operate them better and safer.

Also, lots of new data for marine research and more accurate maps of the ocean floor.

Very little chance of quelling the idiot conspiracy theories2), though.3)

1) My guess is that it's either something utterly trivial that usually isn't a problem or something really weird and far-fetched that nobody hasn't even considered yet. But that's just an thoroughly unsubstantiated gut feeling.

2) "The tank containing the secret chemtrail chemicals leaked and the fumes instantaneously dissolved the brain of every person on board!"4)

3) "It's a cover-up! And everybody is in on it!"5)

4) Actual quote from coworker on MH-370.

5) Actual quote from same coworker on "faked" moon landings.

Extreme trainspotting on Britain's highest (and windiest) railway

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Always work with Doppelmayr, single Mayr just doesn't cut it.

Seriously, these guys are the gold standard when it comes to stuff like that. I guess if you'd really want to, they'd build you that rocket-powered cable car mentioned above.

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Re: More please

"Great but I didn't see how much it weighs or how much power it used [...]"

Article says: "A pair of 500kW motors (housed in the top station) drive the 15-tonne carriages that are held aloft by 93 support columns. A diesel generator provides back-up in the case of a power failure and the railway can comfortably function on a single motor should one fail."

Bonkers call to boycott Raspberry Pi Foundation over 'gay agenda'

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Re: The Bible

"Well, based on that story, all life except that which was on the ark got destroyed."

Except all the creatures that live in (or mostly on) water anyway... And the flood was meant to wipe out all the baddies. Which leads to the conclusion that ducks are evil. Watch them. Watch them closely.

"Therefore the entirety of humanity is derived from Noah and his wife... that's a whole lot of incest!"

Adam & Eve 2.0

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Re: "People like this shouldn't be allowed nice things."

"He who is without sin among you, let him be the first to throw a stone at her."

*someone in the crowd hurls a stone*

"Mom! I'm trying to make a point here!"

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Re: "pushing LGBTQI"

I go both ways - QWERTY and QWERTZ, depending on the occasion.

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Re: Rainbow

"... when hung from the lampposts of San Francisco the pole would block the middle colour, so they deleted one to leave an even number so none of the colours (each representing a value or meaning) would be obscured."

Wouldn't that imply that one "value or meaning" was ditched for the sake of appearances? (And if that really was the case, which one?) Why not add another colour representing another value or meaning? There are plenty of both.

Besides, the "problem" would be strictly one-sided, so to speak... and fixing it by removing one stripe would result in the the pole blocking 1/2 of two colours each.

Strong whiff of "meaningful explanation added to coincidence after the fact".

No, I guess someone just found another supplier of flags that were more attractively priced, but had six colours.

One thought equivalent to less than a single proton in mass

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Re: Confused units

"[...] Katie Hopkins columns are so insubstantial they actually have no mass at all. [...] as her columns convey precisely zero information.[1]

[1] Although they may leak information about herself.

I'm not a physicist, but this kinda sounds a bit like a reverse black hole.

Maybe we could call this phenomenom "Hopkins radiation"?

Male escort says he gave up IT to do something more meaningful

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken
Pint

Re: I can understand him...

"I will open my own business designing and selling motorcycle safety accessories, [...] "

1. Any details? (I'm definitely part of your potential consumer base.)

2. Good luck!

NASA: Bring on the asteroid, so we can chuck a fridge at it

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Re: I do not remember that from any of the 3 Indiana Jones films

There are only three Indiana Jones movies. Period.

Fresh cotton underpants fix series of mysterious mainframe crashes

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Re: Don't give me no static ...

"Note also that opening envelopes with self-adhesive flap generates static -- try opening one in the dark"

Nope. Nothing to do with static - that's Triboluminescence.

Anyone who has ever worked in a darkroom has seen this, for instance when peeling off sticky tape when opening a pack of pgotograpgic paper. BTW, unpeeling a roll of sticky tape in a vacuum will generate X-rays.

Did you know? Today is International Asteroid Day! Wouldn't it be amazing if one were to...

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Re: Meteor

... and a layer of shoes?

Talk about cutting-edge technology! Boffins fire world's sharpest laser

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Re: No coherence! Please try harder.

One of the lecturers at uni told us to picture a laser beam as "a million identical red VW beetles driving at exactly the same speed and at exactly the same distance from each other through a staight tunnel".

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

"So you'd be able to spin a CD on the moon and read it with a pickup on Earth providing the spot size was also constrained."

This just triggered an intense "WOW" moment just now.

In touching tribute to Samsung Note 7, fidget spinners burst in flames

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

You call that a fidget spinner?

THIS is a fidget spinner. (Probably doesn't habe Bluetooth, though.)

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Re: Once again, TBBT foretells the furture

Life imitating art - in my experience that is usually a 50/50 chance that it'll all end in tears.

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Re: There's an opportunity here

"Standard metal GI Ammo Can with a cutout between the lid and the container would do the job quite nicely."

Excellent idea; I must still have a dozen or so in the garage anyway.

(Don't ask.)

It's the iPhone's 10th b'day or, as El Reg calls it, 'BILL RAY DAY'

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Re: Gartner's gain is our loss. I miss Bill's contributions

"I would hope that the people involved in city infrastructure would be suitably qualified and knowledgeable in matters pertaining to their remit and not give one shit or cent to Gartner for their 'insight'."

In my experience, the people involved in city infrastructure are suitable qualified and know what's what. As long as we are talking about the guys that do the actual work. They don't buy reports like this; a) because they don't really need them and b) they wouldn't get approval for the expenditure anyway.

However, the level that makes the big decisions and approves budgets etc. will buy reports like this - and read about half of the executive summary and comprehend a quarter of it at best. Which will unfailingly be about something that has little to do with the needs and capabilities of the actual city infrastructure in question.

Tick-tick... boom: Germany gives social media giants 24 hours to tear down hate speech

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Re: And is there an actual definition of hate speech attached to this bill?

"Restricting speech because the speaker has the wrong opinion on something clearly goes way beyond restricting direct incitements to violence or such."

I don't think flat out denying that the Holocaust ever happened qualyfies as "having the wrong opinion".

Dead serious: How to haunt people after you've gone... using your smartphone

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Re: Like those Chryogenic companies

"Do the current billionaires who elect to be frozen also set up a trust fund for when they are defrosted?"

I'm pretty sure they do. It would be a logical thing to do, and after all, we're talking "crazy - but not stupid" here.

Set up a couple of shell corporations and trusts spread around various tax havens in a way that they are well funded and safe against widows, ex-wifes, heirs, the IRS, what have you, and also in a way that they can only be liquidated by you personally.

Make sure that all that money isn't just stashed away in order to provide you with an adequate lifestyle when they peel you out of the aluminium foil1), but that some part goes 1) into cryogenic research to make sure that they can revive you and 2) secure the storage facility so that there will be something to revive.

1) If Woody Allen's Sleeper is anything to go by.

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

"Maybe I should crowdfund a startup project under the name WiKantSpel. The blurb: "You have the kash, I have the cnow-how"."

I'm in.

BTW, this reminds me of a cartoon I saw in Punch in the 1990ies (?); it shows a man walking down a high street past a row of shops with names like Kwiq Kleen for the launderette etc, and one of the shops is a Seks Shop.

Encrypted chat app Telegram warned by Russian regulator: 'comply or goodbye'

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Re: "he said Roskomnadzor had demanded Telegram give keys to decrypt "

"Stupid is a universal feature of government. That's why I prefer mine small."

In a democracy, the people are the government. They elect an administration to run things. I absolutely agree that any administration should be as small and efficient as possible, and preferrably should employ experts in the various fields.

Don't call the clowns we* have now "the government", that's 1) promoting them far above their station, 2) giving them unhealthy ideas, 3) part of the problems we face.

* And I mean that in a global sense; no need to single out any one specific country.

Sony open-sources NNabla neural network learnings

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Re: Eh?

"How do you get NNabla from Neural Network Libraries?"

They used AI.

UK's Ministry of Fun considers what to tell social media firms about online bullying

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Re: NO!

I'd say that 30 internet years are roundabout like 150 IRL years.

Also, trolling existed long before the internet.

India's Martian MOM clocks up 1,000 days circling the red planet

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Re: India has a space program...

- "UK has a space program..."

- "It does???? Are you sure?"

I have it on good authority that the UK has a space programme.

Blunder down under: self-driving Aussie cars still being thwarted by kangaroos

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Septic 'merkins...

... would be a good name for a punk band.

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

You'd think that a Volvo could learn how to deal with Elk, but then again Volvo hasn't been Swedish for almost two decades now.

AWS Summit London queues caused by security, not snafu

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

"Ultimate Britishness experience – wet, grey skies and a huge wait just to be disappointed"

Always play to your strengths.

US trade watchdog boss goes all Kendrick Lamar on self-driving cars

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Sure, let's de-regulate and have the market sort it out. That never fails. Because any corporation's prime directive is the good of the consumer.

Kaspersky Lab US staff grilled by Feds in nighttime swoop

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

"Who, in a right state of mind, would buy McAfee, given their founders apparent mental state?"

1. "The company was founded in 1987 as McAfee Associates, named for its founder John McAfee, who resigned from the company in 1994." Source: Bernabeo, Paul (2008). Inventors and Inventions, Volume 4. Marshall Cavendish. p. 1033. ISBN 0761477675.

2. "Paranoid bastard" is actually not a bad mindset for working in computer security.

I haven't used McAfee software in maybe 15 years because IMO it's a POS.

The 'DUP' joins El Reg’s illustrious online standards converter

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Re: Sofa?

"So, it will cost one DUP for 5 years of coalition [...] "

Assuming the coalition will last the full five years. Which remains to be seen.

Blighty's first aircraft carrier in six years is set to take to the seas

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Re: Russian?? Surely you mean Chinese

They might share the data in exchange for something interesting, but they will want it for their collection, just in case.

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Re: Well, its good to see the QE going out to sea.

"So, why China is building and deploying its own carriers?"

1. There are lots of countries in the region who don't have the assets to take on a carrier group.

2. To keep the admirals happy. No, really. The PLA is a key factor in both military and economic matters, and therefore a key factor in politics.

3. Because they can. Yes, it's a bit of a pissing contest. But it's also a statement of political will and economical power.

AES-256 keys sniffed in seconds using €200 of kit a few inches away

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Re: Meanwhile...

False flag, probably - my sources tell me that the guys you're thinking of are mostly using a P.O. box in Weehawken, NJ for that sort of thing.

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Re: I'm not even surprised.

"Seriously? That sounds like the something out of Mission Impossible."

Yes, I was wondering about that, too.

However, I must confess that I really like the term "protective detonation".