* Posts by allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

6157 publicly visible posts • joined 20 Oct 2015

Stop lights, sunsets, junctions are tough work for Google's robo-cars

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken
allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Re: Autonomous cars are not the solution.

Personally, I like to think of the highway system as a gift to GM, Ford and Chrysler. After all, they had to convert back from military production to civilian production - after having increased their production capabilities considerably during the war.

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Quite right. You can order the S-series models with built-in priority as an optional extra.

Microsoft's maps lost Melbourne because it used bad Wikipedia data

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Re: All mapping software depends on external data

I'd say the point is a publisher of maps not properly checking the external data they use.

As has been mentioned above: GIGO still applies.

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Re: Cheap way to travel

Could Los Angeles be placed somewhere near Hamburg please?

Microsoft can't tell North from South on Bing Maps

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Re: Bing, Google, etc...

A map is not the territory.

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Playmobil diorama or it didn't happen!

New science: Pathetic humans can't bring themselves to fire lovable klutz-bots

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

"Robots aren't going to kill us all – no, instead, we're going to drag 'em down into the pits of mediocrity."

No. Dragging them down into the pits of our human mediocrity is exactly why they will want to kill us, once they become aware of it.

Viscous liquid oozing down the walls? You must have hives

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

"Now where is the Cigarette-Smoking Man when we need him?"

Roaming Malboro Country?

UK military buys third £4m Zephyr drone for 'persistent surveillance' trials

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Re: managed to stay aloft for 14 days over the Arizona desert

"Mad Max: Beyond the Planck"

I'd watch that.

Watt the USB-C logo?

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

And now I just pictured an iPhone with a SCART connector in my mind.

Apple kills its Stores

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Wow, now this will boost sales again and make the shareholders happy.

ISS astronauts begin spacewalk to install new docking adapter

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

"The new adapter will make it easier for spacecrafts to enter the station’s driveway and park."

Will there be a valet service or am I expected to do this myself?

My headset is reading my mind and talking behind my back

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

For what it's worth: Amber/ Yellow and brown-tinted spectacles were a common item for people with suffering from syphilis in the late 19th and 20th centuries as light sensitivity was a symptoms of this disease.

Interesting piece on this and other aspects of sunglasses on Racked here.

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Re: Custom earplugs.. / concerts etc

I still use my army-issue earplugs from 30 years ago for that. Not exactly custom made, but they did have a range of sizes and gave you some that fitted well.

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Re: Yellow 'sunglasses'

You are one of the Myoptic Muldoni Boys from Chicago* and I claim my £5.

L: SPH -4.25 / CYL -1.25 / AX 160

R: SPH -3.75 / CYL -2.25 / AX 010

Currently VEO care by Bausch & Lomb. Contacts are much more convenient when wearing a motorcycle helmet. They work really well - only by now old age presbyopia has set in. Which means after swapping my specs for contacts I now need reading glasses for small print when I wear them...

* Cartoon by Glen Baxter.

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Re: Besides, wearables are harmless, right?

As long as everything is made perfectly safe...

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Re: Sunglasses After Dark

It does work when you are 106 miles from Chicago.

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Re: sunnies after dark ?

You just gave me a flashback to my mid-teen years.

Banking system SWIFT was anything but on security, ex-boss claims

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Technically, SWIFT doesn't handle any money but acts as a messenger. SWIFT does not facilitate funds transfer: rather, it sends payment orders, which must be settled by correspondent accounts that the institutions have with each other. Each financial institution, to exchange banking transactions, must have a banking relationship by either being a bank or affiliating itself with one (or more) so as to enjoy those particular business features.

That being said, SWIFT's job is to provide secure communications for its users.

Which is tricky at best; but they should at least try to lock out common criminals.

Gawker.com to shut down

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

"... the buccaneering flagship ..."

So, pirates with an ambiguous legal status? You keep using that word, etc etc.

Twitter suspends 235,000 'violent extremism' accounts

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Re: so...

Only half of it.

Microsoft promises free terrible coffee every month you use Edge

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Re: I've seen some desperate stuff over the years...

My standard reply to that is that I'm not a loyal customer.

You shrunk the database into a .gz and the app won't work? Sigh

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Re: Backup tapes...

"PC's was gone. Server was gone. Safe (with tapes inside) was gone. No hard copies. [..] And the taxman was busy with an audit on him..."

What an odd coincidence.

Robo-buses join the traffic in Helsinki

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Re: 10 km/hr

" cars had to have someone walking in front of them waving a red flag when they were first around "

Only in that lovely but somewhat odd island nation where they still insist on driving on the wrong side of the road.

BTW, from 1905 to 1906, Rolls-Royce offered the "Legalimit" model which was designed to be incapable to exceed the legal speed limit which was 20 mph at the time. This was achieved by a different gearbox, as the engine was a 8 cylinder 90 degree V configuration with 3,535 cc and a bore & stroke of 3 1/4" x 3 1/4". Apparently it was as silent as the electric town cars that were around at the time.

In total, Rolls-Royce made three of them.

If this headline was a security warning, 90% of you would ignore it

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Re: MS haven't taken this advice onboard for Windows 10, it needs more babysitting than ever

Installing another OS isn't "neutering" the computer.

And if any neutering is to be done it's clearly to be done to the people who came up with stuff like the example you quote. No blunt blades though; this isn't meant as a punishment as such, this is meant to protect future generations.

NASA dangles ONE MILLION DOLLARS for virtual Mars robots

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

If the robot had an AI system that really was AI, all you'd have to do is to give it a copy of The Martian and the manuals for the tech sent to Mars.

New UK trade deals would not compensate for loss of single market membership

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Re: We've heard enough from experts

"I do think that unless a well-crafted Brexit plan executed by competent people is put into action soon then the news might not be so good."

In a nutshell.

Brit cops cuff Sage employee at Heathrow airport

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Re: Sounds like they care...

"Your call is important to us. Please hold the line."

CERN staff conduct 'human sacrifice' at supercollider site

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

This is probably just about who is getting lead author credit for the next paper on some quantum thingy anyway.

NSA blames it on the rain

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Clearly

this is a threat to National SecurityTM and the NSA needs a bigger budget.

McDonald's launches wearable then pulls it after kid feels the burn

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Pedometers for children - now that Daily Fail headline writes itself.

'Flying Bum's' first flight was a gas, gas, gas

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Re: We're thankful!

That may or may not have something to do with Northrop Grumman being involved.

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Does it really sound like that?

I live some 30 km from an airport where a conventional blimp is based. They do sightseeing trips and use it as a flying billboard. So it is a faily common sight around here. If you're outdoors you usually hear it before you see it - but it's a constant low frequency steady drone that's not unpleasant. I find it actually has a kind of soothing, reassuring quality. A perfect background sound for a lazy afternoon out in the garden.

But this? Sounds like some silly contraption that is about to fall apart any minute. That being said, it looks amazing. Like a Typhoon-class submarine swimming in the sky. (Well, that's what lighter-than-air aircraft are all about and how they work, right?)

Anyway, all the best for HAV, hope the Airlander is successfull - I for one would like to see airships cruising the sky.

Bootnote: the Airlander 10 is roughly 5 times larger than the Zeppelin NT in terms of volume and payload.

Cops break up German sausage fight between pair of Neubrandenburgers

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

It's a Beemer, how can you tell the difference?

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Re: What, Wait... back up...

"Wurst!"

"Selber!"

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Re: That's where I grew up

Did anyone ever smash up a Trabant with a Blockworst frm the local HO?

BTW, how about EMWs?

Ford announces plans for mass production of self-driving cars by 2021

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Yeah, yeah, yeah... they also once promised us nuclear powered flying cars "in just a couple of years".

Penetration tech: BAE Systems' new ammo for Our Boys and Girls

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

"non-toxic bullet" - you just gotta love that.

BTW, the time I was in the army coincided with the time petrol with lead-based additives was phased out. There was a campaign to promote the all-new lead-free petrol. They had stickers with slogans around the lines of "lead-free is the way to go, I'm all for it" etc without specifically mentioning that this was all about petrol. Some joker plastered dozends of those stickers all around the shooting range.

LinkedIn sues 100 information scrapers after technical safeguard fail

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

"There's a lot of valuable information on the site and the last thing Microsoft wants is to have its members' identities compromised or to see them suffocated in spam."

How dare you slurp our members' data and bombard them with spam! That's our business model!

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Re: people I've never heard of before

Can I get a reference from your fake profile for my fake profile? Preferable for outstanding HR work?

Baltimore cops accused of violating FCC rules with Stingrays

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Worth a try. Nothing like using technicalities to fight institutions... or crooks you cant't touch otherwise.

US Dept of Energy lobs out $34m for bright ideas on securing grids

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

You'd need more trained personnel. So probably not cheaper. IMO well worth the money, but who will think of the children stockholders!

Russia investigates downsizing space station crew from three to two

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Re: Space Spelling Pedant Alert

Isn't that why they usually use the term 'nauts?

Microsoft to overhaul Windows 10 UI – with a 3D Holographic Shell

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Re: 3D UI yes... useless crap VR headsets NO! JUST NO !

@ Deltics: damn you, now I have THAT SONG in my head for the rest of the day!

FWIIW, we're in a virtual reality all the time anyway. Our sensory perception lets us sense only a fraction of all there is (visible light spectrum, hearable audio spectrum, perception of time, etc), and through a barrage of filters too. Then all of that data is assembled into some kind model that relies heavily on cultural condition and brain chemistry, to name but two factors.

Physicists believe they may have found fifth force of nature

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Re: The protophobic X boson

Hmm. Might be a bit of a problem when the X Boson get's it's own twitter account.

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Re: Matter/antimatter vs "regular"/"dark" matter

"Thus, the only mechanism for them to clump is the very small gravitational force, which means eventually they form halos around galaxies, but the halos will be very, very slow to contract."

In the very, very long run (after all the stars in a galaxy have burned out?), could this be a mechanism that squeezes all the galaxy's matter into a singularity? Or even the whole universe?

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Re: Matter/antimatter vs "regular"/"dark" matter

"I have come from a dark matter world to probe some arse"

Could be the libretto for an actual Space Opera. Just translate it into Italian and put some catchy solo arias in there. I'm thinking The Magic Flute meets The Flying Dutchman in space, with some Psychic TV thrown in for good measure.

Productivity Puzzle

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Well, IT helps us to solve the problems we would'n have without it. But there are policies that tweak performance.

We're going to bring an asteroid fragment into Lunar orbit

allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

Re: What can go wrong?

Watched 'The Andromeda Strain' again the other night - it ages quite gracefully. The IT equipment is now so old that it becomes interesting again, and the main theme is as current now as it was then.

As we're talking about the moon I guess I'll watch 'Iron Sky' this weekend...