Posts by frank ly

Emergency Planning

"It doesn't bark, and it doesn't bite, it doesn't need feeding ..."

But can you eat it if you get trapped in a snow drift on a cold winter night?

Obvious response:

How the heck can that be patented?? It's an obvious idea (been expressed before in many sci-fi works) and is an obvious extension of existing 'software' modification techniques.

Aha!

"Small shops can pass the regulations through self-assessment,..."

I've been using cash in small shops and petrol stations for years.

Data Security

Given the prevalence of these types of 'hack', why aren't personal details stored in encrypted form as a matter of course?

Reality

"... a Liberal MP's ill-judged and since-deleted Tweet humorously threatening a trawl of a gallery hack's metadata."

That is what politicians (and others) see as the real value of storing metatdata. It's a tool/weapon to be used against your 'enemies'.

If 'they' want to ban it ...

... then I want to read/watch it or eat/drink it.

Three points

1: "And organic stuff is made from grains: possibly the chaff from wheat or corn."

Was the wheat/corn grown on a certified organic farm?

2: The idea of mixing oxidising chemicals with carbohydrates is a good one, if you want a strong exothermic reaction.

3: For something as important as this, they didn't have a proper specification of materials? It just said "mix it with some cat-litter." ?

He needs an accountant

"I just can't account for the hostility that's been directed at our state,"

It's a simple audit trail.

f.uk.me

Did the United Kingdom or Montenegro or both of them object to that one?

Oh, the details

Using a mobile phone, he 'posted' a website that mirrored another one? I'd like to know more details about what he actually did but I suspect that we'll never know.

Amazing?

What I find interesting, and amazing, is that the act of detection of the photon (which has had its polarisation shifted by interaction with the atoms) seems to affect the entangled state of the atoms. Did I get that right?

I'm still wondering how you can use that as a clock.

Before anybody starts

There were three website links in the article, so it does have IT content.

I'm old enough to remember ....

.... large advertising posters that said "Nothing sucks like an Electrolux". Oh, how we quietly smiled.

If most people made an effort,

they'd find it difficult to do something as bad as all that.

Surprising

"Perhaps surprisingly, research output in computer sciences didn't improve with HPC ownership,..."

If I had use of the world's fastest racing car, would it make me a better driver or car mechanic?

You can log out any time you like ....

.... but _we will_ never leave.

(I failed at any attempt to extend the lyrics. Sorry.)

100 seats?

Looks at the stairs and handrails, looks at the sphere. Is it bigger on the inside?

Really?

"... one ISP put the cost of maintaining a block at £3,600 a year per site, ..."

I find that hard to believe if it's "per website blocked". Once you've set up the blocking mechanism, you only need technical admin effort to add new ones or remove 'cleared' ones as needed, surely?

Just wondering

"... the two properties form the “mutually unbiased bases” ..."

Do they mean 'mutually orthogonal', or is 'unbiased' a different characteristic?

Ah, I remember ...

... developing slide film in the bathroom, after fiddling under the duvet, with a bucket of warm water as a temperature control bath and a small bucket of very hot water for topping it up. It's very easy if you keep to a procedure and I had good results from the first attempt. I thought they were good anyway.

I used to take stereoscopic picture pairs and viewed them in two small hand-held viewers fixed side by side with a piece of foam rubber betwen them to enable fine adjustment.

I've thought about trying that with my digital camera using two pictures side by side on the screen and using the cross-eyed technique but never got around to it. Has anyone done that?

Sounds like 'fun'

"... when the power was re-established, a lot of hard drives died. "

Had they died because of the previous sudden loss of power while they were doing something? Were they all old? etc.

More stuff happens?

Doesn't the shock wave also compress existing dust clouds, causing them to coalesce and produce new stellar systems? It's a hotbed of creation out there.

Many years ago ...

... (late 70's) I worked at the Central Research Labs of EMI Ltd, a quite old building. A kestrel (or two) had found their way into some crumbling brickwork on the corner of the bulding and were seen regularly going in and out. That corner housed a small old storeroom which contained an archive of highly classified documents. It was assumed that they had shredded some documents to make their nest.

Nobody with the required clearance was willing to go in and look, so it was decided to leave them alone until the nesting season was well over.

Oh no

"When you wake up, ... you feel like you are driving a new car."

I hate getting used to driving a new car. I'd hate it even more if it was pretending to be my 'old' car.

Advance warning?

I thought that SSDs were overprovisioned and automatically swapped out bad blocks to maintain their stated capacity. If so, isn't there a low level check that can be done to see if an SSD drive is 'on the edge' or approaching it?

Catalyst

"... the electrode is much cheaper than electrolysers that use precious metals ..."

Given that a catalyst is not changed by the reaction it catalyses, is the extra initial cost of precious metals really all that important in the long run of operation?