Posts by John B Stone

Expensive junk worth collecting

With the astronomical (sorry) cost of putting metal in orbit, it would be useful to collect it so that you can recycle it up there, which should be cheaper than launching new bits. Presumably eventually some automated high-efficiency low-thrust drive craft will be put to use to do so. Though I guess the legality of ownership and salvage rights could be a nightmare.

Is comparing Socialist spending categories vs Capitalist categories meaningful?

Comparing Socialist* countries corporate and government spending vs Capitalist countries corporate and government spending and drawing conclusions from the categories seems to stretch credulity. Though hey I guess its the sort of error a western data trained machine learning model would make so bonus points for that.

(* or whatever label you care to put on China)

ISPs with secure systems and irrefutable logs?

Surely for the logs to be useful (and to stand up in court) the ISPs have to have solid security and rigorous testing of their systems. Logs of ISPs who for example had been subject to any hack would have to be automatically ruled out...

More than a coincidence?

I didn't think that Titius-Bode sequence was widely accepted as being anything other than a coincidence. But as they are predicting increased planet detection rates based upon using it, then I guess we are about to find out if it has some use.

SNAFU

So hindsight bias turned up to 11 when looking at someone else to blame and that will lead to more budget being allocated (and possibly employ a few reg readers). Even if plausibility doesn't withstand even mild analysis.

Hindsight bias turned down to zero when looking at if it was self to blame.

Situation normal for pretty much any organisation.

Note that early versions of poodletest showed recent Firefox versions as _not_ vulnerable incorrectly and that has now been fixed.

There are not too difficult end user fixes for Firefox, Chrome and IE.

IE: on the Internet Options-Advanced tab untick "Use SSL 3.0" and apply

Firefox: (as mentioned above) type about:config in the URL and then find and double click security.tls.version.min and set it to 1

Chrome - slightly harder as you need to add a parameter to the command line in the shortcut you use to launch chrome. Add " --ssl-version-min=tls1" to the end of the shortcut's properties/target line after "\chrome.exe"

After all of those you should restart the browser and retest. For some reason I had to logout/in to make the chrome change work.

Its possible some websites wont work after that, though I haven't found any yet, I have noticed some authentication failures that require a retry.

Isn't one of the big savings gained by adjusting the _boiler_ temperature (not the room thermostats) to be as low as practical (at least for condensing boilers) throughout the year? This temperature varies with the seasons (general ambient temperature), and may have the side effect of stopping your pipes banging.

Secure forever for you and close relatives?

Even if the system is secure now, it has to stay secure for your entire lifetime and probably your children's lifetime too - as your medical history is useful in predicting around 50% of your parent's/sibling's/children's susceptibility. Though that likely excludes the more embarrassing personal medical history but not the insurance issues.

And therefore if you opt out but the records of your parents/siblings/children who haven't are ever cracked then perhaps 50% of your info can be inferred.

Would you bet on tech not being able to break current encryption in 20, 40, 60 years time?

If it has the predicted density of 1.3 and diameter 60% bigger than the Earth then surface (cloud top) gravity is about the same as Mars at around 0.4G.

As it is low mass and warm it is probably losing Hydrogen and Helium at a high rate (geologically speaking). It likely has an escape velocity lower than Earth.

Make it a write only store?

Why not make the passwords not viewable (and encrypted)? It appears most users don't know they are even there in any case.

The only times I have used it is when I can't immediately remember/find a password and needed it on another device/browser and that only a handful of times over the years.

This has made me consider using a stupidly long and complex password to protect them and then throwing away the password (in Firefox).

so NOT using the internet makes you live longer?

According to national statistics on life expectancy half of the current people over 75 will be, ahem, naturally removed from the system in 6 years or less. So this statistic will rapidly fall. In fact it falls by over 10% per year.

As as the report is only indicating a 9% reduction in a year then either:

A) more, not less, under 75 year olds have never used the internet

OR

B) NOT using the internet is an indicator for longer life expectancy

But is its carbon footprint lower than fossil fuel?

Shouldn't the question be whether its lifetime carbon footprint is overall less than generating the same energy using the most efficient fossil fuel? Not whether it is carbon neutral.

It's not going to be economic anytime soon though.

It's not the TVs it's the computers (it's our fault)

Most new TVs have the standby nailed already so this will mostly sort itself over the next few years as old TVs get replaced with digital TVs. My new LCD TV uses less than 1 watt on standby already.

It's computer gear where reducing standby wattage will make a big difference. 10-20w in "off" mode for your desktop computer, printer and wireless router is fairly standard. Note many cheap printers have external transformers that use almost as much power when turned off (at the printer) as they do when turned on (e.g. Lexmark).