I don't believe in firearms for the general public, but that huntsman would have me reaching for a shotgun. Maybe something like a shotgun with beanbag rounds, but with bigger rounds...
I may have just re-invented the canon...
898 publicly visible posts • joined 6 Jun 2007
don't need to launch anything, other than 50 - 100 drones controlled remotely, or pre-programmed,
This is a very good point. Compared to the price of a missile, a couple of dozen drones with big batteries, programmed to take off at 30 minute intervals from locations within a mile of the airfield. You could bugger up any airport for days.
What's the best power/weight ratio for something like that anyway? For a one off disruption that doesn't need to worry about recharging. Is it still liOn?
This is what confuses me - you'd have thought that a combination of standard issue eyeballs and various tech at an airport (plus any gadgetry that has been brought in over the last 24h) would be able to spot where it was coming down. Even if the operator is moving around, it's got to be fairly easy to track.
Failing that, stick a helicopter up next to it and make the operator abandon it or show their location.
Well if it is Franco-German controlled, it's because...
No, it's Franco German controlled because it always has been and they understand how it works. The Germans implement the rules they want and the French ignore the rules they don't want. Everyone else gets towed along. That's not a "woe is UK" - it's the same for everyone. To be honest, I'm surprised we were ever allowed to join the then EEC because France was always against our membership.
What advertising?
On the front screen it loves showing you photos of pretty places around the world with strangely clickbait-y texts that reveal where it is or what it's called. But it also occasionally decides to tout apps or services that it thinks you might like. Off the top of my head, the Microsoft store and some photo sharing thing were its last suggestions.
I (kinda) see a point in making ever faster wheel driven cars
This. A thousand times, this. The aerodynamics involved in 1000mph is mind bending, but that's about it. Getting an internal combustion engine up to 450mph through powered wheels is (IMO) a massively more impressive feat. The wheels, the drive, the rubber, the challenge of actually getting enough air into the engine? That's much cooler than a jet or rocket on wheels.
The original concept of AI i.e a robot brain as or of greater intelligence than person is still a long way off. However in certain limited applications we already have AI. The google search engine for example
about 15 years ago I did a degree level course about AI. There were only really two things I remember about it:
* Strong AI is about ten years away
* Strong AI will never happen, because whenever you get close to it, people will dismiss it as algorithms and brute force, not intelligence.
Anything much short of Star Trek's Data isn't Strong AI (IMO). Google self driving cars are very clever, but they aren't AI. It'll weave its way through time square, but stick it in the middle of a cattle ranch or on the moon and it won't know what the hell to do, even though it's still basically the same job.
There's nothing special about Lincolnshire. It's basically your good old fashioned ram-raiding.
Round my parts they prefer Landies and JCBs to smash the wall or the front door, then a Subaru to scarper with it. Earlier in the year they hit three local Aldi's on three consecutive nights...
The other one I've heard is basically filling the machine with gas, although I don't recall if that's to use the gas pressure directly or to ignite it and blast the things open.
And they are probably NOT running Windows XP. Instead they are likely to be running Windows XP Embedded or Windows Embedded Standard 2009, which is still under extended support, and both of which have much less attack area than vanilla XP.
Came here to say the exact same thing. I'd expect that kind of cockup from the Daily Mail not El Reg...
Dear Amazon, Twitter, Facebook, and Google.
If encryption in Australia is broken, it is your moral duty to block all traffic coming from Australian IP addresses. The data can't be trusted. You can't trust that it's correct coming in, and you can't trust that any response you give won't be compromised.
Same goes for any international financial service - block all Australian traffic.
It's one thing standing there with your hand in the air. It's another thing to actually stand by it. Do it.
I understand why the treasury gets involved if data leaks, banks look dodgy, or they shutdown key infrastructure, but what business is it of theirs if the online banking app goes down for a few hours? The money was still there and accessible, just not through one particular channel.
I get why *we* are annoyed by it, but I don't see what the hell it has to do with the treasury...
That ligature font looked really nice at first. Then I saw their code samples and I realised just how awful an idea it was. I'd quite like to be able to *see* === not have to guess it from it's relative width...
I have to admit that I've been tempted by ligatures on the web. Mainly because I quite like the idea of using the word "menu" but have it ligature to the hamburger icon. Strikes me as a nice accessibility wossit.
I told them they could either take it back & give me my refund, or I could place it on the hood of my sighted helper's car & plow it through their front doors in a shower of broken bodies, shattered glass, & chunks of brick. They opted to give me my refund.
Nicely done. I have a strange respect for people who know the right thing to say at the right time, and not 30 minutes later fuming in a local coffee shop.
You don't need a license for a TV.
You need a license to receive TV signals at the time of broadcast. That covers TVs (all channels, possibly including satellite, not just BBC content), computers, and recording devices.
It caused an interesting edge case where it was illegal to watch iPlayer live, but not five minutes after the broadcast ended. They've now closed this loophole and you need a license for all iPlayer content, regardless of when (or if) it was broadcast. That's why you need a login for iPlayer nowadays. (That statement has been downvoted in the past, but contacts in Capita & BBC have assured me it was the driving force behind BBCID).
You don't need a license to have a TV for gaming, computer use, watching purchased prerecord (films, tv, etc), or streaming services like Netflix. Pretty certain you can watch the iPlayer equivalents from ITV/C4/C5 freely, but I haven't checked. I believe that watching broadcast TV that someone else recorded for you is against the rules, but god knows how they'd know.
I believe there used to be a few places where you didn't need a license if you only watched ITV/C4 but that was because BBC signals weren't available in those areas (presumably coastal areas with high cliffs or something. Those dark spots no longer exist.
Bloke on Radio4 this morning sounded like he wanted to go into details of what happened but had been told not to.
He said that the "very sophisticated" attack got card numbers and CVC codes but that encryption hadn't been broken. He also said that they hadn't spotted it, rather one of their trusted partner security firms (presumably one of those sites that verifies other sites are secure - in which case they suck) which suggests that maybe it was something hiding on a form page.
I've not checked the app out. Is it anything more than a wrapper for some html pages? If it is, it sounds like someone actually got in to their system and listened in there, which is quite a lot worse.
Interestingly, Radio4 said (and wasn't contradicted by blokey) that passports numbers had been taken too, but everything since has said otherwise.