* Posts by kyza

220 publicly visible posts • joined 6 Jun 2011

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Australian central bank says 'speculative mania' and crime fuel Bitcoin

kyza

View BTC as a non-liquid, limited commodity rather than a currency and it makes a lot more sense.

'Mining' is a very literal term - as the maximum available quantity is reached, it becomes increasinly expensive to extract both the resource and value from that resource.

Boffins discover tightest black hole binary system – and it's supermassive

kyza

@Kaltern

Sympathy upvote.

Google unleashes 20m lab-created blood-thirsty freaks on a city. And this is a good thing, it says

kyza

Re: what could possibly go wrong?

Your proof is a link to Natural News.

OK. I won't downvote you, I'll just point and laugh instead.

As ad boycott picks up pace, Google knows it doesn't have to worry

kyza

Re: Excellent

...and as soon as the tracking stats (clicks, audience reach and other normal campaign reporting metrics) across their digital campaigns start to dip and/or they start to see CPx increase they'll be back on YT, just as the article states.

The boycott itself is a PR move - brand owners don't have an ethical bone in their body, but they know what can and can't damage brand image and making a hoo-ha about this is all about ensuring they look good.

NASA to fire 1Gbps laser 'Wi-Fi' ... into spaaaaace

kyza

Ping

But will the ping be low enough for good CS:GO?

TV anchor says live on-air 'Alexa, order me a dollhouse' – guess what happens next

kyza

Can't believe the writer forgot the Great Furby Radio Massacre when a DJ asked kids to put their Furbies to the radio to talk to each other and they all died.

How Rogue One's Imperial stormtroopers SAVED Star Wars and restored order

kyza

Re: Not seen R1 yet but...

Seriously? You're bothered about the old EU being removed as canon enough to regard it as being 'destroyed'?

You can still read the books, comics, play the games etc, without worrying about anything at all, because it is all fiction. As in 'made up stuff' that's not worth being so emotionally invested in.

Besides, the old EU was a mess chronologically, anything and everything was retconned to the services of the new tales, and 90% of it was complete cack.

That's not to say the newer stuff is much better, it is still patchy, but at least this time there's a degree of control being exercised over how its created so it will at least be a coherent whole.

Cryptography vs. bigotry: The debate Australia needs to have

kyza

Her position is, ironically, very similar to those radicalised Muslims she appears to think are hiding around every corner, but don't let that idea confuse you. She's an authoritarian, a racist (look at her record and comments on Aboriginals for that if you like) and a bigot, since she is targeting one religion specifically for her ire.

And if you're worried about being seen to be a racist or a bigot perhaps you should take a look at what you're saying and how you're saying it and consider why that might be the case, instead of being defensive and blaming 'the politically correct masses'.

kyza

Nothing wrong with punching a racist, be it up or down.

First successful Hyperloop test module hits 100mph in four seconds

kyza

Re: Objections, objections...

"If you are against X, then by definition you are wrong because new things that were hard turned out to be easy"

Well no - they still proved to be hard, and in many cases still are hard even though they have solutions that have been used for decades.

Spaceflight is a good example.

Perhaps all the issues raised by people on this thread are all completely unsolvable; perhaps some are but not in a satisfactory way; perhaps some can be solved, or solved in a better way, by changes to other parts of society and environment.

Public & private investment money gets wasted on far worse and worthless things than a high-speed transit system that can be wholly powered by non-fossil fuels, and can potentially reduce car and air transport use over medium-long distances but hey, I know from being here a long time that EngineerReg seems to be comprised of people who really don't like new ideas if they personally can't see a solution to the issues at hand.

E-cigarettes help save lives, says Royal College of Physicians

kyza

Bacon isn't harm free either, nor is beef and kale is psychologically damaging when used in any quantity*

Balance of risks, moderation, whatever you want to call it, is the key to most things.

*the last point may or may not be true, there are no studies beyond my own observations that it is both disgusting, and those who promote its use are afflicted by righteousenza stupidia.

ExoMars mission thunders aloft from Baikonur

kyza

Filmed on a potato

Here's a much better version...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2r7qqK5E7fU

A typo stopped hackers siphoning nearly $1bn out of Bangladesh

kyza

Re: I just checked my account

That the system of finance has a lot of Jewish names in it probably had more to do with AH's decision making process than some principled desire to free the volk from debt-slavery...

Chinese boffins grow new eye lenses using stem cells

kyza

Re: Someone's been watching Blade Runner

'Just eyes, see. Just Eyes. You Nexus huh? I design your eyes'

Pentagon to Dept of Defense: Give us $580bn for cyberwar and spacewar

kyza

Asteroids

Surely for that amount of money it'd be just as cost efficient to get some unmanned boosters out to the Belt, attach them to some medium size rocks and boost them back to geostationary orbit with the boosters pointing toward Earth?

I mean that's eventually what'll happen with any large orbital political conglomerates when they run into jurisdictional challenges from earth. Once you've got a power bloc in space, attempting to shout orders at it from the bottom of a gravity well isn't going to end in a good way.

Norks uses ballistic missile to launch silent 'satellite'

kyza

Re: National Insecurity

Maybe he's conflating the plotlines to the games Homefront (US invasion by DPRK) and Modern Warfare 2 (SAS guy fires nuke to EMP US to fight off Rooski invasion facilitated by a crazy US General).

Tesla PowerWall is a good deal if you don't mind a 25-year payback

kyza

Australian tax

Currently, the direct conversion cost is AU$4,182.

Quite how this morphs into AU$12K is for me, as a recently migrated Pom, a truly mysterious phenomenon.

What could possibly add 8 grand to the cost? Shipping costs shouldn't be that high, plus I live in Brisbane, which is a port city so no need to schlep up from NSW or down from Gladstone.

In fact the only big cost I can see is the inverter and fitting, but a domestic inverter will be ~$3k and, while I realise that my adoptive state supports a closed market for sparks (yes, thanks for not letting me change a domestic plug, Queensland), $5K for sales & fitting?

Still, give it a couple of years/V2.0 and I'm on board - last quarter we generated 95% of the leccy we used, so I reckon some efficiency tinkering will get that to balance, making it worth coming off-grid - even for $12K (10 year payback at that cost).

SpaceX: launch, check. Landing? Needs work

kyza

Re: Live embarassment

It's how Stalin would run a space program, and the people who matter to SpaceX ( neither of us, I suspect ) will be cringing.

I nominate this for my 'worst hyperbole in an internet comment today' award.

Under Stalin you wouldn't even have known there was a launch if it had gone wrong.

Curiosity Rover eyes Mars' creeping dunes

kyza

*cough* Arrakis

Who owns space? Looking at the US asteroid-mining act

kyza

The funniest thing about this article is that the writer, for all his expertise, thinks earth laws will have any bearing on what private companies do outside of our gravity well once privste companies start building space habitats and factories in orbit around Earth and elsewhere...

'We won't let you bring your asteroids to earth!' say the U.N. or whomever

'If you don't allow us to bring them to earth slowly and make money from them, we'll bring them to earth via a mass accelerator and start flattening your cities, how about them apples?' say the Orbital conglomerates.

The issue of extra-planetary sovereignty has been discussed to death in so many SF novels, and the general upshot is if you're at the bottom of a gravity well you're in no position to order anyone about.

NASA palms off blunder-bot Valkyrie for top US universities to fix

kyza

Cooper: Hey TARS, what's your honesty parameter?

TARS: 90 percent.

Cooper: 90 percent?

TARS: Absolute honesty isn't always the most diplomatic nor the safest form of communication with emotional beings.

Cooper: Okay, 90 percent it is.

I wonder what NASA's honesty parameter is set to based on how much of a mess the original project was...

It's almost time for Australia's fibre fetishists to give up

kyza

This is all very lovely and wonderful, and I think the fact that someone is squeezing this much performance out of copper amazing.

But in the context of public policy, and especially NBN, this is ultimately just kicking the can down the road. Irrespective of whatever estimates on traffic are NOW, as has been endlessly demonstrated, demand always surges to meet capacity. Just because we can't envisage what could possibly fill a 1gb pipe today doesn't mean a content creator won't tomorrow.

Personally I'd just like to be getting more than 10mbits/s...but then I had a conversation with someone who has just moved into a new house in Upper Kedron and found out when they moved in that they won't even be getting landlines installed for another 12 months.

Yup, Australia, the country where new build homes can be developed without ANY kind of infrastructure requirement on the developer.

Massive global cooling process discovered as Paris climate deal looms

kyza

Obviously once this new data has been fed into the current modelling systems and they still come out saying 'Nothing's really changed, we're still cooking the planet, just maybe a few decades more slowly' LP will be back out decrying VOCs as being another questionable data point and looking for the next thing that suits his confirmation bias.

Australian court slaps down Hollywood's speculative invoices

kyza

So I wonder how they'd asses the value if someone had only seeded about 0.01% of the file, which I am told is not an uncommon occurrence when you have crappy upstream on a popular torrent.

'Yes m'lud, I did distribute the material, but only approximately 1 second of the credits.'

Body-worn cameras a 'Pandora's Box' says ex Vic Police chief Nixon

kyza

Given the behaviour of OB in the US even with bodycams it would appear that public mistrust of the forces of law'n'order is quite well founded.

I won't even start on police corruption here in sunny QLD as I'm certain other Aus commentards are well aware of the state's illustrious history of having a 'few bad apples'.

Project Morpheus VR headset hands-on at the Sony Summer Showcase

kyza

Re: I'm still trying to get my head around how Sony are doing this

There's considerable difference in the setup.

OR (and the Vive for that matter) is 2x1440p OLEDs, refreshing at 90hz and 90FPS per screen - hence the need for a beefy PC.

Morpheus is a single 1080p OLED refreshing at 120hz, with software FPS either set to 60 or 120FPS using asynchronous reprojection (TimeWarp in OR speak) to get 60FPS to an apparent 120. This is not the same as the frame interpolation you get on your TV which introduces latency. The single screen is split by software into showing 2x960x1080 screens.

Sony are getting around the SDE (screen door effect) by manufacturing OLED panels with a higher fill density in the centre of the screen, where your eyes will spend most of their time.

Image quality is AA, CA and the rest of the graphics package and is driven by software design, not hardware. The Heist has ligfhting and texture work at least as good as a PS3 running at 1080p native res. This is also before taking into account the massive leap that VR's immersion brings to the table and the fact that graphcis tech that works for a 2D screen (for example, shaders) either don't work or aren't required for VR where things like good lighting, decent AA solutions and above everything else a locked, rock solid framerate.

You're also overstating ORs case - they've licensed their rendering tech to Samsung for the GearVR series running on mobile - and a PS4 is comfortably more powerful than that.

Finally - there is no extra rendering hardware in the headset - again, adding this would incur a latency penalty, and the prime sources of non-vestibular disconnect nausea in VR are low framerate and poor tracking latency - neither of which the Morpheus or PS4 has an issue with.

Microsoft says Oculus Rift distorts world, grinds corrective lenses

kyza

Re: Bah!

I'm sure you're being facetious, but here's an article on why VR HMD lenses distort the image, and why it is corrected by software

http://rifty-business.blogspot.com.au/2013/08/understanding-oculus-rift-distortion.html

kyza

It doesn't tell us which model OR was the comparison made with, and while the MS lenses are clearer, what I'm seeing more than anything else is a ramping of the screen-door effect, which the OR lenses minimise by making things slightly blurrier

Oz goes mad with the ban-hammer

kyza
Childcatcher

Not only do I have to pay a lot more for my games, I also have the wonderful nannying government telling me what I can and can't buy.

Which is why I still have a UK PSN account, and have found it easier to order games and have them shipped to Aus from both the US and UK than buying them from EB Games or JB Hifi.

The 'echo chamber' effect misleading people on climate change

kyza

Re: Political Bullshit

'Socialist world views'.

That pretty much nails you politically, and compromises your 'scientific' position in the same way you attempt to paint climate science as politically compromised.

Netflix fail proves copper NBN leaves Australia utterly 4Ked

kyza

Re: Yes, without super high def entertainment there is nothing to do.

You<===========================================>The Point

Magnifico! Galileo satellite nudged back into correct orbit

kyza

Mad scientist words

I'm fitting Passive Hydrogen Masers to all the sharks at my secret base near Oberpfaffenhofen.

US astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson: US is losing science race

kyza

Re: Only themselves to blame

Creationism is not taught anywhere

Apart from in the home and in the churches the majority of Americans attend. 42% of the US population believe in a God that created humans as they are, 31% saying god had a guiding hand in evolution.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/170822/believe-creationist-view-human-origins.aspx

The faith-based view of the world may well be compatible (with a colossal amount of cognitive dissonance) with a view that evolution exists, but much of the debate around science in the US - be it evolution, climate science or GM - is driven by a fundamental misapprehension of how the scientific process works, what a hypothesis vs a theory is etc.

Clearly Marxism is to blame for that.

EU dangles $6bn threat over Google in endless search abuse probe

kyza

Should I be looking for an /s tag in here somewhere?

'Google should make its web experience shit for consumers because convenience and being able to find things easily and quickly on the internet is a Bad Thing.'

I'm sorry, but as a nebulous consumer, I quite like a quick answer to questions like that.

4K-ing excellent TV is on its way ... in its own sweet time, natch

kyza

Once they're down below AUD$1500 for a 55" and upscaling software has come on a bit I'm in. I had a fiddle with a Sony 4K telly a while back and once I'd reduced the settings to normal viewing levels (i.e. all the picture 'enhancers' either disabled or minimised) I was still mightily impressed with both the native $k content and the BD of Toy Story 3 being upscaled.

When it comes to content I'll do the same thing I've done with BD - my core collection of absolute must have movies I consider classics I'll quadruple dip (in some cases - the Godfather trilogy I think will be a quintiple dip as I had both 'The Epic' BBC version and cinema release on VHS) and any decent new releases I'll buy in 4K or, more likely, buy a digital copy of them.

You don't have to replace your entire collection - upscaled DVDs look great on my old Sony when played through the PS3, and I reckon the same will apply to 4K.

kyza

Re: On being slowly boiled alive with video standards

I've had a Blu-Ray player since I bought my UK PS3 in 2008 along with a 32"1080P telly connected via HDMI and I've never had an issue with audio skipping on either BDs or DVDs in two TV and one console upgrade since then.

So it's probably just a faulty player, rather than a failing in the whole format.

Finally, a USEFUL smart device: Intel boffins cook up gyro-magneto-'puter bike helmet

kyza

Re: All that safety...

As some have said, some people can't turn their heads that much without twisting their torso, which in turn means they unintentionally turn the handlebar.

Then they shouldn't be on a bike on the road.

I might be getting a bit long in the tooth, but when I took the old UK Cycling Proficiency Test one of the exercises you have to pass is being able to look back over your shoulder without altering the direction of the bicycle.

In much the same way that way too many drivers rely solely on a mirror check, riding in London, and latterly Brisbane, too many cyclists don't do rearward checks correctly, indicate or generally show any kind of road awareness or understanding/reading of what the traffic immediately in front and behind them are about to do (e.g. a car turning left without indicating will still have to break and as the turn starts the body will visibly shift, both are advance cues but some riders don't seem to know how to read them and have to brake sharply to avoid being knocked off).

Melting permafrost switches to nasty, high-gear methane release

kyza

Can you get Lewis to write a counterpoint article to this report, for 'balance'?

Xbox One FAILS to beat PS3 - yes, PS 3 - week one sales

kyza

Think you might be re-writing this paragraph after Friday:

Microsoft needn’t worry about failing to beat the PS3’s opening sales tally. Britain, like North America, favoured the Xbox 360 over the the PS3 overall, and seems likely to do so when it comes to the successors to those machines.

In NA & Canada PS4 sold 1m+ units in first 24 hrs; Xbone has sold about that number worldwide

PlayStation daddy on new PS4: She's ALL 'PLAY', NO 'Station' this time

kyza

Sony only stopped making the PS2 this year - 13 years in production, 150mn+ units sold.

When Sony are talking about a 10 year lifecycle, they're talking about total lifecycle across world markets - there's likely to be PS3 support (proper support) for at least another 2 years, possibly longer.

kyza

Re: Yes, because MP3 playback is "too hard."

But funnily enough:

IT PLAYS VIDEOGAMES

Which to be quite frank is 100% more than the Xbone which does nothing whatsoever until you download the Day1 patch.

kyza

Users: Build us a gaming machine, that plays games, and ignore all the multimedia stuff that gets in the way of playing games!

Sony: Here, have a console that's completely prioritised gaming.

Users; WAAAHHHH! Where are all the multimedia functions!?!?!

Sony:??? *sigh* OK, we'll give it to you soon.

The truth about mystery Trojan found in space

kyza

I'm really not understanding why anyone would even be allowed to take up a USB drive that hadn't been comprehensively checked both before and after any files or apps were dumped on it.

Boffins look down back of Amazon Web Services, find a SUPERCOMPUTER

kyza

But does it play BF4 on Utlra?

Leaping SpaceX GRASSHOPPER ROCKET jumps 2,500ft, lands safely

kyza

Re: Hexacopter choreographer

You should probably offer your services to SpaceX as a volunteer hexacopter programmer or something.

Is this the silicon chip KILLER? Boffins boot up carbon-nanotube CPU

kyza

But..

...can it run BF4 @ 4k/120fps?

Xbox One launch date REVEALED - and it's on the 360's birthday

kyza

Yeah, you get to pay £80 more for the privilege of a piece of hardware you don't have to use to make the console function anymore.

kyza

The culmination of many years of listening to you, our fans,

And 6 months of panicking and U-turns on just about every feature we said it'd launch with at E3:

DRM stuff - gone

Always on interwebs - Gone

Kinect - doesn't have to be switched on

Clearly listening to the wrong set of fans, eh?

Tesla tops $20bn as Elon Musk claims arm-wave design tech

kyza

Musk-inspired Tony Stark

Would it be wrong to point out that Iron Man first appeared in 1963, 8 years before Musk was born?

Kim Kardashian's bosom pal in bling snatch Instagram unpleasantness

kyza

I'm deeply distressed - I only got as far as 'Kim Kardashian's bosom' and find out the article, far from displaying or being about KKs mounds of heavenly glory, is actually about some twat being a twat and getting twatted for it.

Boo!

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