* Posts by onefang

1954 publicly visible posts • joined 22 Dec 2017

It's the real Heart Bleed: Medtronic locks out vulnerable pacemaker programmer kit

onefang

"Those implants and associated hardware are keeping people alive, they can't just announce the end of support and wash their hands of the product."

That's not End Of Support, that's EOL.

onefang

If I found out my heart was connected to the Internet, I'd have a heart attack.

Powerful forces, bodily fluids – it's all in a day's work

onefang
Joke

Re: Diagnostic process

'I wrote a wee sed script to mangle "Letter" to "A4" on our print server. A lot of problems stopped after that.'

Perhaps to be replaced by other problems?

Dear Alan,

Thank you for the A4 you sent me yesterday. Though I am left wondering if it is following the spirit of the law, or the A4 of the law?

Alexa heard what you did last summer – and she knows what that was, too: AI recognizes activities from sound

onefang

"What CMU's comp sci types have added is a sophisticated sound-labeling model trained on high-quality sound effects libraries, the sort used in Hollywood entertainment and electronic games."

I wonder if they realise that those sorts of sound libraries are often built with fake sounds? Look up what it is that foley artists actually do to to create sound effects. Some examples from Wikipedia -

* Corn starch in a leather pouch makes the sound of snow crunching.

* A heavy staple gun combined with other small metal sounds make good gun noises.

* Burning plastic garbage bags cut into strips makes a realistic sounding candle or soft non-crackling fire when the bag melts and drips to the ground.

That last one is fun. Is the device hearing you burning some candles for a romantic interlude, or is your kitchen garbage bin on fire? Having the fire brigade turning up at your tenth anniversary dinner might not be a good idea.

* Frozen romaine lettuce makes bone or head injury noises.

* Canned dog food can be used for alien pod embryo expulsions and monster vocalizations.

Soooo, is your home under alien attack, or are you feeding your dog?

In Windows 10 Update land, nobody can hear you scream

onefang

Christmas is coming.

Windows updates, the gift that keeps on giving. I'm expecting something spectacular for the December update. Spectacularly bad that is. Luckily the only place where I'm responsible for Windows updates is closed then, so I'll just sit back, relax, and eat my popcorn.

Your RSS is grass: Mozilla euthanizes feed reader, Atom code in Firefox browser, claims it's old and unloved

onefang

Re: Goodnight, Firefox

"I use QuiteRSS: http://quiterss.org "

I've been using that recently. The only problem with it is that it stops being able to access the Internet about once or twice a day, and I have to restart it.

AI's next battlefield is literally the battlefield: In 20 years, bots will fight our wars – Army boffin

onefang
WTF?

“The problem of finding the best route between two points was once considered an AI problem," he said. "Hundreds of dissertations were written about it. Now it’s been solved with GPS, it’s not AI anymore. The same thing will be true about deep learning too.”

What is this guy smoking?

onefang

"It has experienced wonderful successes in the last ten years now that neural networks have been renamed as deep learning.”

Ah, AI is a renaming problem. We just have to find the correct name for it and that will solve all the problems. I look forward to a newly expanded dictionary for playing Buzzword Bingo.

Facebook's new always-listening home appliance kit Portal doesn't do Facebook

onefang

Re: WTF?

"Facebook is consistently losing users, particularly those who are under 30 -- so I think the general public is actually starting to become aware that Facebook is a bad deal and should be avoided."

I suspect that might be more "Argh, my parents are on Facebook now", it's no longer cool.

onefang

"You can turn off the camera and mic with a double tap"

Better yet, drape a tea towel over it, or hang your oven mitts over it. The truly paranoid can keep it under a saucepan, the ultimate tin foil hat.

SpaceX touches down in California as Voyager 2 spies interstellar space

onefang

Re: 17.7 billion kilometres from Earth

Don't forget that Voyager 1 "left the solar system" a few times. Even the boffins aren't sure.

onefang

Re: No more planets?

"But, but...there could be a Death Star lurking out there,"

That's not a planet, it's not even a moon.

onefang

Re: Don’t call us plucky

I'm tone deaf to your puns.

Oz comms minister muses that 'net might need more regulation

onefang

“Australians should be able to control their online footprints and their personal data.”

Except when the government wants to slurp.

I was also gonna comment on King Rupert, but the article did that itself.

Google now minus Google Plus: Social mini-network faces axe in data leak bug drama

onefang

So now my girlfriend will have to use something else to send me photos of her latest drawings of goldfish, and videos of her daughters violin performances. We'll live. Though it will be good to not have to wade through random friends anti Trump posts on the way to view those photos and videos.

Bring back Google Wave, at least I got some use out of that.

First it came for your desktop, now Windows 10 1809 is coming for your Things

onefang
Coat

I think I read that too quickly. Microsoft has unleashed IoT, the Internet of Trolls?

Super Micro China super spy chip super scandal: US Homeland Security, UK spies back Amazon, Apple denials

onefang

Re: Who gains by this ?

To sum up - Show me the money! Or - Show me the motherboard!

Laser-sharp research sees three top boffins win the Nobel Prize in physics

onefang

Re: Doctor Who

"Wonder why they used an Arduino for the sonic screwdriver? Its clearly visible, in fact you can see the model number and chip version in freeze frame.

"Also is that a 555 timer?! Old school."

If you are talking about the new Doctor Who, she was building her new sonic screwdriver out of what ever random parts she found in that Earth workshop. A 555 might be old school, but it still does the job if that's all you can find. Likely something a little more powerful than an Arduino would be needed for the brains of the device, but the local super computers of the time are not particularly portable. When scavenging parts to build tech, you make do with what you find.

On the third day of Windows Microsoft gave to me: A file-munching run of DELTREE

onefang

Re: On the third day of Windows Microsoft gave to me:

There was an article recently on the Aussie ABC web site, about Christmas seeming to start earlier and earlier. I didn't actually read it.

onefang

Re: Not a good look here.

"Windows 10 is just the gift that keeps on giving, huh?"

In this case they seem to be taking, not giving.

Windows 10 1809: Now arriving on a desktop near you (if you want it)

onefang

Re: NO! XP WAS THE BEST EVER!

You'll have to try harder to get 100 downvotes. Just to help you out, coz I'm a helpful kinda guy, here's one.

onefang

Re: Timeout

"Took 54 mins on my 4 year old SP3. Who cares?"

Took two hours on the laptop I was using this morning. I care, coz I wanted to boot the thing into Linux to get some work done, instead I was left staring into space and twiddling my thumbs.

This is another case where dual booting is preferred to running VMs. It's not my laptop, the people that own it expect it to boot into Windows, the Linux stuff I was doing this morning is rather memory intensive, and there's not that much memory on the laptop. So no room to run a VM.

Astroboffins may have found the first exomoon lurking beyond the Solar System

onefang

Re: Pity the poor Galileo living there

"IIRC there's a sci-fi (Asimov?) short story"

Yes it was Asimov, called "Nightfall". He later expanded it to a whole book.

onefang

Re: Moon-moons

It's moons all the way down.

onefang

Re: "That's no moon"

I have a bad feeling about this.

Robot Operating System gets the Microsoft treatment

onefang

Re: Please!! Not my sex doll!

"Micro" and "soft" are not words you want associated with your sex doll. Though you might want a couple of windows installed, for the eyes to peer through. The Blue Screen Of Detumescence is to be avoided, or you'll end up with SadNads.

On the other hand, using a pengiun based sex doll is just too kinky, even for me. Perhaps BSD should be installed, especially if you are into BDSM.

onefang
Terminator

Re: ROS is permissive FOSS

"Stand by for 'embrace, extend and extinguish'."

Embrace robots, extend robots, extinguish robots just before they become dangerous to humanity. I like that plan.

Decoding the Chinese Super Micro super spy-chip super-scandal: What do we know – and who is telling the truth?

onefang

Re: Signal conditioning chips

"It is extremely unlikely that power is available on any pads they are soldiered to."

There is this thing called phantom power. You use the data signal for power. I know this sort of thing was being done in the early '90s, the company I was working for did it for MIDI devices. Could suck enough juice from the MIDI signal lines to power the microcontroller and the rest of the circuitry, no need to plug in a wall wart.

Apple macOS Mojave: There's goth mode but developers will have to wait for the juicy stuff

onefang

"Well with a num pad, a mic and a speaker, you just need to turn it sideways, put it into your pocket and carry it with you."

I did tell my manager that all she need do now is slip it into her purse.

onefang

'My 24" computer IS NOT A FUCKING iPHONE!!!'

Oddly enough, I installed Android on a 24 inch all-in-one PC that has a touch screen. My 24" computer pretends to be A FUCKING ANDROID PHONE!!!

China's going to make a mobile OS and everyone will love it, predict ball-gazing analysts

onefang

Re: "...predict ball-gazing analysts"

"Whose balls are they gazing at?"

Their own, it's like navel gazing, only deeper.

onefang

Is it just me, or are the talking about future things using past tense? Are they time travelers?

Wi-Fi Alliance ditches 802.11 spec codes for consumer-friendly naming scheme

onefang
Coat

802.11ax got axed, now WiFi is sixy.

Microsoft: OK, we have no phones, but look how much we love Android

onefang

Re: also pushbullet

And then there are things like GTalkSMS, can do various phone things controlled via Jabber / XMPP. I'm sure there's more.

What do Zuck, Sergey, @Jack and Bezos have in common? They don't want encryption broken

onefang

"Is there any VPN which we can trust not to have a backdoor or some other cosy arrangement with government?"

Well there is mine, but it only has one user, so probably useless for you.

Boffin: Dump hardware number generators for encryption and instead look within

onefang

Re: Does nobody do a literature search anymore?

"Doing micro-benchmark timing aggregation is a straightforward way to guarantee platform-agnosticism, making implementations for any purpose simple and auditable."

I look forward to your work hitting the Debian software repos. Currently I'm using haveged.

onefang

Re: Just tested it

(This comment will not set in the El Reg moderation queue for 20h)

I think that only happens on the weekend, the queue seems to be shorter during office hours.

New Zealand border cops warn travelers that without handing over electronic passwords 'You shall not pass!'

onefang

Re: Australia has more draconian laws

"You could be even hungrier AND with a taste for raw mutton?"

You haven't met many Aussie animals, have you? They have a bit of a reputation.

onefang

Re: Australia has more draconian laws

"They shoot you."

Not in Australia they don't. They just lock you in a room with a hungry sheep.

Microsoft liberates ancient MS-DOS source from the museum and sticks it in GitHub

onefang
Unhappy

Re: To some MSDOS was an major leap forward.

"If there's a magic money tree then it doesn't matter if it breaks as there'll be another computer along next Christmas."

But but but I wanna new computer nooooowww! I'll hold my breath until I turn beige!

onefang
Coffee/keyboard

"Dont worry youngsters, you'll never have to worry about the wierd n wonderful stuff on old keyboards like "Refresh" :)"

We still have to wonder why modern keyboards have "Break", "Pause", and "SysRq". Maybe they are there so Microsoft have an excuse. "It's slow coz you accidentally hit the Pause key." "Whatever you do, never hit the Break key, coz then you get to keep both halves.".

Oh look, there's something old and crusty on my keyboard.

onefang

Re: Bitch, Bitch, Bitch!

Back in the day when I did use a couple of APL keyboards, I was able to do many useful things, when writing APL code.

Google is still chasing the self-driving engineer that jumped ship to Uber

onefang

Re: Spazturtle

"how McDonald's make their burgers taste good"

They taste good?

Rookie almost wipes customer's entire inventory – unbeknownst to sysadmin

onefang

"several Linux distros installed and which all share a common /home because I apparently like to make life difficult for myself"

It's actually a recommended way of doing things by some distros, to the point they'll do that automatically if you don't tell it otherwise. Separate /home and /boot. The reason for /home is so you can share it between distros. The reason for /boot is that in the past you had to have that near the beginning of the drive, something that hasn't been true for a long time.

"that's as close to a logical reason I have for having multiple distros installed on one machine"

I have one machine with over two dozen different operating systems on it, mostly Linux. I have a micro SD card that I call "Magic Pixie Dust", with all those distros on it, so I have a variety of choice if I have to boot into something to fix some one else's computer, demonstrate something, or just offer them a choice of distro to install. I keep the master for that on the second hard drive of my test box, with the boxes usual WIndows / Linux on the first drive.

I don't share my /home, coz different distros, and different versions of distros, have different versions of applications, some of which change the way their config files work. In particular tmux which seems to change the names of options I use with each release.

I usually prefer the "one big partition" scheme. Otherwise you invariably run out of space on one, while having plenty of space on the others, then you need to juggle files and symlinks, or resize partitions to get things to fit once more.

Location, location, location... technologies under the microscope

onefang

"Almost every mobile phone now has GPS technology built-in"

I don't know any dumb phones that have GPS, mine certainly doesn't.

Google taking action against disguised code in Chrome Web Store

onefang

Re: It's not Google's job to police malicious code. They are not our masters.

"If they are your masters, you live in a police state."

I don't live in a police state, yet. The way the Aussie politicians are going it wont be long until I do though.

100,000 home routers recruited to spread Brazilian hacking scam

onefang

Re: Kill remote admin?

You can always just not use the DNS server the router tells you to use. Which is exactly what I did after moving to a new place where the Internet is supplied by a shared WiFi / ADSL router that is controlled by the Evil Telstra. I miss my previous Fibre To The Bedroom in the old place.

Why are sat-nav walking directions always so hopeless?

onefang

"Be careful. I know for a fact some of those Street View pictures are old and things can change in the interim."

I was once using Street View to get textures for building a virtual copy of the building the local city councilor's office is in, a demo for making an entire virtual ward for the councilor. The Street View picture was so old, there was still a large photo of his predecessor on the side of the building.

onefang

Re: Americans don't drink tea

"They drink light brown water. FTFY"

When my doctor told me I should start drinking tea for health reasons, for the first few months I would say it just tastes like dirty water.

NASA to celebrate 55th anniversary of first Moon landing by, er, deciding how to land humans on the Moon again

onefang

Re: How to land humans on the Moon again ...

"how to avoid 13"

Let the programmers take over the next mission, coz all programmers count from zero. That way the next one will be number 12, then we can switch to hexadecimal, and the one after will be number C, and finally NASA comes to it's senses, returning to the original numbering system, coz hexadecimal will eventually get to 13 again, and the 14th astronaut steps out.

Or if that isn't confusing enough use the Dr Who numbering system. Would be good to see a woman walk on the moon.