* Posts by Cubical Drone

194 publicly visible posts • joined 25 May 2012

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Federal agencies buying Americans' internet data challenged by US senators

Cubical Drone

Addressing a symptom and not the disease.

You cannot blame the government entities, no matter how creepy, for availing themselves of information that is out there that everyone and their dog has access to. It would be like being mad that they were using phone books to find peoples’ addresses.

The real issue is that this sort of data hovering can go on in the first place.

Mozilla finds 18 of 25 popular reproductive health apps share your data

Cubical Drone

Re: Women as breeder cattle, rights

I will just drop the text of the 9th Amendment here:

"The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."

IBM deliberately misclassified mainframe sales to enrich execs, lawsuit claims

Cubical Drone

Let me make sure I have this right. Huge incentives for certain results were offered to a bunch of narcissistic psychopaths with pretty much no oversight.

These narcissistic psychopaths then pulled every underhanded move that they could think of to achieve the results and claim the huge incentives.

Why is this stuff even news anymore? It seems as surprising as the sun rising in the east.

To our total surprise, Apple makes adding alternative payment systems to apps 'painful, expensive, clunky'

Cubical Drone

Problem is that they (the corps) would just have to wait until the consumers tossed a fit and then the politicians would cave. I think that the desired affect could be achieved if they could cut off these corps ability to hide thier profits in Ireland.

50 lines of Bash to bring a Wordle fan out of their shell

Cubical Drone

Re: Quit vim

:x

IBM finally finds a private equiteer willing to purchase Watson Health

Cubical Drone

Re: Anything

Reminds me of the old joke where a union representative was walking through a car plant with the plant manager who was showing off the new robotics.

The plant manager says to the union rep, "bet you are trying to figure out how to get these robots to join the union and pay dues?" To which the union rep replied, "no, I am trying to figure out how you are going to get them to buy cars."

Lay down your souls to the gods of rock 'n' roll: Conspiracy theorists' 5G 'vaccine' chip schematic is actually for a guitar pedal

Cubical Drone

Re: Doh!

There is a variant to that one that I like.

"Arguing with idiots is like trying to play chess with a pigeon. No matter how good you are, the bird knocks over all the pieces, craps on the board then struts around like it has won."

BOFH: Rome, I have been thy soldier 40 years... give me a staff of honour for mine age

Cubical Drone

This is a good example of the second important reason to treat everyone with respect regardless of thier station.

(The first reason is simply 'Don't be a prick.')

Woman calls cops on shadowy baddie barricaded in bathroom... to discover: Roomba gone rogue

Cubical Drone
Terminator

I welcome our autonomous cleansing overlords!

Tim Apple. Larry Oracle. Ginni Layoffs: It works so why the heck not?

Cubical Drone

Doesn't go quite far enough.

Politicians should have to abide by the same practice, taking the name of their largest corporate donor or influence as their last name. (Donald Fox, or maybe Donald Putin).

You're an admin! You're an admin! You're all admins, thanks to this Microsoft Exchange zero-day and exploit

Cubical Drone

Not sure MS understands the meaning of 'proactively'.

“Microsoft has a strong commitment to security and a demonstrated track record of investigating and proactively eventually updating impacted devices as soon as possible,"

FIFY

Motorola: Oops, phone busted? Grab a spudger and go get 'em, champ

Cubical Drone

Major repair?

"The kit includes the necessary tools to undertake major repairs such as replacing the battery and display."

The fact that changing a battery is a major repair is part of the larger issue.

Science: Broke brats glued to the web while silk-stocking scions have better things to do

Cubical Drone

Re: The Least Forgotten Generation Ever

I always try to tell people that the difference between a tattoo and something on the internet is that, although painful and expensive, a tattoo can be removed.

NASA 'sextortionist' allegedly tricked women into revealing their password reset answers, stole their nude selfies

Cubical Drone

Re: And service providers...

That is the best way to go about it. Treat those answers like the passwords that they are.

Shatner's solar-powered Bitcoin gambit wouldn't power a deflector shield

Cubical Drone

"To put 3MW in perspective, that's roughly the yield of the rooftop array on BMW Mini plant in Oxford."

Is this a new addition to the Reg standards. I will admit something for amounts of electricity is needed.

Lawyer warned FCC of Securus phone-tracking risks 10 months ago

Cubical Drone

"Petro is hopeful that this revived effort to get the FCC scrutinizing Securus will prove more successful."

Smirk, giggle, giggle, hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!

Agile development exposed as techie superstition

Cubical Drone

Re: There were studies ...

Some of my coworkers and I noticed the same affect around the same time. We would have a problem with our code and ask another programmer to look at it. While explaining the code to the other programmer, we would, inevitably, see the issue ourselves.

We would joke around and say that all we really needed was a golden retriever that would just sit there so we could explain it to him. After a while, we would literally ask someone to come to our desk to 'play golden retriever'.

I have also seen this practice call 'rubber ducking', the idea being you sit a rubber duck on your desk and explain the code to them.

Whatever the name, it is a highly effective practice.

Pointless US Congress net neutrality vote will take place tomorrow!

Cubical Drone

"so throw away any claim to a political higher ground..."

While I agree, unfortunately the moral high ground gets you nothing now a days, while the reverse seems to get you a lot.

US judge to Facebook: Nope, facial recognition lawsuit has to go to jury

Cubical Drone

Interesting

"learns for itself what distinguishes different faces and then improves itself based on its successes and failures, using unknown criteria that have yielded successful outputs in the past"

If this flies, that means that anyone can hide behind a black box system.

Hotel, motel, Holiday Inn? Doesn't matter – they may need to update their room key software

Cubical Drone

That line goes back further

Hotel, motel, Holiday Inn goes back to Rapper's Delight by the Sugarhill Gang which was released in 1980

Snubbed R Us: Microsoft eschews Vulture Consultants in Playmobil tech research

Cubical Drone

When will it stop?

Will people not be happy until every tactile experience that requires imagination be replaced or plugged into a video screen?

What a hang up: US big box biz Best Buy kicks Huawei to the curb

Cubical Drone

Relocation needed.

If they just move to Russia they will be fine.

US cable giant tries to wriggle out of 'crap ISP' legal battle now that net neutrality is dead

Cubical Drone

Judge: "includes no language purporting to create, extend or modify the preemptive reach of the transparency rule."

Ajit Pai: "Hold my beer."

Uh-oh! Someone hit the Kalanick button! Uber's fired CEO claims Waymo deal vindicates him

Cubical Drone

What a douche bag

Wonder when he will announce he is running for President.

Uber and its 245 million reasons to settle with Google's Waymo

Cubical Drone

But why didn't Google decide to simply kill off the company?

They pretty much don't have to.

From what I have seen it appears that Uber is banking on using self driving cars in the future and are just keeping those pesky human drivers around until then.

Assuming that the part about Uber not using any of the stolen tech is enforced, what are the odds of these morons actually coming up with the needed tech themselves (I am going with 'not a chance in hell'). So then they will have to buy the tech (with what, I have no idea, since they have no money and are probably running out of equity to trade), and there is even a chance that they would have to purchase said tech from Google.

All in all, it this doesn't kill them off, it certainly kills off their hopes and dreams for the future.

IMHO

Supermassive black holes scoff just one star per year, say space weight watchers

Cubical Drone

3.669 per cent of the maximum velocity of a sheep in a vacuum in Reg units

Kudos for putting the speed in a form that us Reg readers can get our heads around.

Shopper f-bombed PC shop staff, so they mocked her with too-polite tech tutorial

Cubical Drone

Re: PC world

-and if it breaks, you needed a new one anyways.

Facebook folds fake news flag: We're not disputing that

Cubical Drone

"This is particularly problematic in countries with very few fact-checkers, where the volume of potentially false news stories and the limited capacity of the fact-checkers made it difficult for us to get ratings from multiple fact-checkers,"

Don't bother trying to make a list of the countries this statement applies to, they don't make a pad of paper that big.

What network neutrality madness has happened today? Take a big breath

Cubical Drone

It's about time

It has taken a while, but we have finally jumped from plutocracy to full blown kleptocracy.

Apple looks forward to wiping $47bn off its overseas profit tax bill – thanks to US shakeup

Cubical Drone

Re: Yes, by all means, bring that cash home

There is a misconception on this. The money could be in any bank or TBills. The overseas part is just an accounting thing. Until they move it on the books and pay taxes on it, they can only use the money for certain things, but could be in a bank anywhere in the world, including the US.

No 2017 bonus for you, HPE tells employees

Cubical Drone

Reminds me of the old joke...

A guy is walking in to the office building he works in when his boss drives up in a expensive new car.

The guy says to the boss, "nice car!"

The boss replies, "yes, and you know what, if you work really hard, put in a bunch of overtime, and do a real good job, next year, I will get another one."

Big Tech fumes over Prez Trump's decision to deport a million kids

Cubical Drone

...because we are a nation of laws

I am constantly amazed that he is able to say this stuff with a straight face.

Kalanick stations! Ex-Uber CEO sued for fraud by soured sugar daddy

Cubical Drone

Is is just me...

or does that photo look like a father and daughter before prom?

Judge holds Uber's feet to the fire over alleged Waymo tech theft

Cubical Drone

"Uber has, for the second time in a week, hit a bit of a brick wall when it comes to societal expectations of corporate behavior."

Seeing how low those societal expectations seem to be, that is impressive as hell!

A non-Standards Soviet approved measure of weight? Sod off, BBC!

Cubical Drone

Re: LOL you guys/gals

The correct unit for force is a Norris. As a rough guess, I would say that he experienced about .0111 of a Norris.

We've found a ‘vaccine’ for fake news. Wait! No, we really are Cambridge researchers

Cubical Drone

Re: There is another way...

What do we Want?

Evidenced based change!

When do we want it?

After peer review!

Trump fan Peter Thiel 'considering' CA Terminator role*

Cubical Drone

No electoral college at the state level.

We should be safe.

No Soylent for Santa after key ingredient supply is choked off

Cubical Drone

Wrong ingredients

If they would have just made the stuff out of people, like they are supposed to, they wouldn't have this problem.

Quantum traffic jam of atoms could unlock origin of dark energy, physicists claim

Cubical Drone

Traffic can be both good and bad...

...but you don't know which until you are stuck in it.

GOP senators push FCC to kill support for local broadband

Cubical Drone

The hypocrisy is breathtaking

The Republicans always want governing pushed down to the most local level, except when that local level (in this case the municipality) wants to to something they don't like, then they want to push it back up to a level that agrees with them (the states in this case).

‘Insufficient evidence’ makes Brit cops drop revenge porn probes

Cubical Drone

MAD

So remember boys and girls, if your soul mate wants incriminating pics of you, make sure to get some of them (mutually assured destruction) since it seems that humans are incapable of not being douche bags.

BOFH: I'm not doing this for the benefit of your health, you know

Cubical Drone

Re: For the nice people across the pond

Why did you do that!! After many years and gallons of alcohol I had managed to blot that song from my memory. Now it is back. You are evil!!

They’re FAT. They’re ROUND. They’re worth almost a POUND. Smart waaatch, smart waaatch

Cubical Drone

Someone needed to say it.

Not sure that Wena is a great name. I keep having phrases pop into my mind like:

I love my Wena.

I am always playing with my Wena.

Would you like to touch my Wena?

My dog will not stop licking my Wena!

Oh my God! My Wena has stopped working!

I am so, so, very sorry. Let the down votes commence.

Cognitive computing: What can and can’t we do, and should lipreading be banned?

Cubical Drone

Doubt this will get very far.

If you think about it, this sort of thing is just perfect for replacing humans at the C level (CEO, CFO, etc) level of corporations, hence its doom.

Tree hugger? Your wooden harem is much bigger than thought

Cubical Drone

I for one...

...welcome our bark covered overlords.

Also, can someone direct me to somewhere that will educate me in how to recognize a Larch?

Giant sea scorpion which prowled ancient oceans revealed

Cubical Drone

Re: Sy-Fy fodder.

"Pentecopterus IX: This Time it's Personal!"

US Congress oils up, jumps over ropes into DNS wrestling match

Cubical Drone

Theory verses reality

The upsides mentioned in this article are the theory, or more accurately the fantasy; the downsides are the reality.

We stand on the brink of global cyber war, warns encryption guru

Cubical Drone

"We're sleepwalking into the demise of national governments as meaningful entities..."

Thought we were already there.

Virgin Galactic will get into space 'within 18 months to two years'

Cubical Drone

At 250K a pop.

"We are democratising plutocracisng space."

FIFY

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