Posts by lukewarmdog

Sounds suspiciously like the unwanted offspring of cloud computing and phone contracts.

I can't see HP supplying me with a machine that can run DOOM in the evening but which clocks down to run Office during the day. But maybe that is exactly what they're thinking.

That game you were playing? Bits of it ramped up to the full specs of your machine. Your bill is therefore £30 more this month than last month. Last month you only used 20% of your allowance but we're still going to charge you the full months worth. Why not upgrade your package to have more compute cycles and get a free cinema ticket?

""Robots blamed"

If only they'd had a robots.txt installed on the servers, a cautionary tale from Frank Herbert about how we mustn't hand over control of our currencies to the machines as they'll just use it to take down humanity from the inside. After all, he who controls the stock exchange selling the spice, controls the spice. And the Universe.

The app is surely all that is needed and should be configured by the doctor / pharmacist not the user.

Typically you go to the doctor, they write something totally illegible on a bit of paper, you take that to the pharmacy, they print a label you can read on a box of the pills you need to take.

Alternatively whilst the doc is typing out what he just wrote into your medical notes, he could update your phones app and the app can then buzz (or whatever) to say it's time to take your pills. This also reduces the risk of the end user not setting their alarms to remind themselves of what they need to take.

Honestly you'd think whoever came up with this was some kind of e-ink manufacturer trying to find a reason to be relevant.

Working in a school, the kids would often prank the teacher and / or the next set of students in after them.

Without disconnecting it you swap mouse A from computer A over to computer B and vice versa. Cue two confused people, neither of whom's mouse works. You can also disconnect the mouse (and anything else) and people assume they're broken because if the cables go round the back and look like they should be plugged in.. people think they must be. Especially teachers. Replacing the teachers mouse with a broken one was a favourite. Just hide the working one behind the machine, put broken one in it's place. I had one teacher who was made up she had got a wireless mouse and said it was a pity it didn't work. I pointed out someone had just pulled the whole cable out of a wired one.

Rearranging all the keys on the keyboard to spell words was always fun. I was really impressed once, this whole sentence had been formed. Until I realised that to make it they'd had to borrow keys from multiple keyboards making an amusing discovery actually a lot of work.

"We've written an AI but it's totally safe because WE built it"

Reminds me of that time someone invented dynamite. These things have a habit of blowing up.

We really should be working on something to surpass humanity using AI to invent even better AI so it can finally invent fully working robot brains and bodies.

Then we can get on with the job of transferring our consciousness to those new robot bodies and minds and become the robots ourselves. Then we can move out into the Universe overthrowing stuff preemptively.

"No one should be woken up by a low-battery chirp at 2:00am."

See Nest themselves admit nobody should buy one.

It's not SMART if it just pisses you off. It's not dumb if it doesn't. These are just things. All you can say is my £4 detector does its job admirably whilst your $99 has not. So let's think about this, should you buy another unnecessary $99 product? No, no you should not. As you've demonstrated it doesn't add anything except annoyance. The mains version would have alleviated the battery issue but would have made it harder to remove/replace so no easy win there.

And you know what, screw the app. If my house is on fire, I'd rather find out when I get home than have it ruin my holiday. Now if my house burned down and the smart fire alarm booked me a hotel before it melted.. that might be a helpful feature.

An interactive house needs to be created holistically, you can't just buy some stuff off the shelf, screw them to your walls and hope the app that ties them together isn't buggy.

Google - "oh frabjous day, we've made an iPhone!"

Apple fanboys : "why?"

Android fanboys : "why?"

Apple lawyers "woohoo, payday"

Sorry you wanted a 99?

My bad I got you 69s

"Lauri Love is a 31-year-old hacker on the autistic spectrum; he is accused of doing some totally stupid/misguided things and has allegedly hacked into all sorts of places that should not have been hacked"

In that last sentence it should say

"should not have been hackable"

I mean seriously, you've got a guy with a stupid name, an even stupider sounding disease and he hacked your very expensive websites which apparently employs the geniusest of geniuses.

I'd be setting my own house in order, quietly, not very publicly announcing how crap at security I am.

very confused

The article says they provided fake cards but the cards worked, the pubs etc were happy with the service so they were genuine cards?

I'm also confused because why is this a card based system anyway? Why don't these businesses have a box and an account and information is provided to that box based on their account choices and payments? And just how much are these cards worth if they've amassed this reported fortune?

All seems really backwards, a low tech scam that deliver high tech entertainment.

The Tube is your own personal hell (or heaven) and isn't there to be interrupted.

Unless you want it to be. Maybe you want a chat. Except nobody else wants to hear you chat what can only be complete rubbishy small talk. "Oh i see you have a badge, so do I, do you live in London? Me neither, on your way to work (in the morning) or home (in the evening), what do you do in work".

You're now interfering with my peace and quiet and as the Tube is fairly noisy, you're probably compensating by speaking loudly so now everyone in the carriage can hear you. This just isn't a great place to have a chat.

A "fancy a coffee" badge sponsored by Starbucks would be a better idea, a "Trafalgar Square at 4 o'clock chat" badge could be performance art, a "20% OAP discount at Sam's fish and chip shop between 12 and 2" could well drive custom if the old dears could read all that on a small badge.

To me "Tube chat" is like "Motorway chat".. the impracticality of it should have nixed this from the outset altho it has made for good reading of aggrieved travellers.

about being mad

So we have pioneering explorers who set out to climb Everest or find America (not that it was lost) and some died at sea and we don't know anything about them but some found.. stuff and lived. So those are the odds we're comparing here, just so I'm clear? The commentators here who want to go to Mars think going there is like finding America (still wasn't lost) which is on Earth which we already live in and can breathe the air on and walk around in and build stuff with stuff we find lying around.That's like going to Mars?

I don't think so.

And those who think that going would be heroic.. no you'd be like those people who died on the way to America who we don't know about. Except with the added bonus of Martian atmosphere, space travel, radiation poisoning and everything else.

I'd love there to be a visitable colony on another planet. And sure, start with Mars if you must with the better goal of finding Earth 2. Which begs the question why land at all? Why not take the Battlestar Galactica approach and build ships we can live on rather than colonising a completely inhospitable planet? I'd sign up for space station duty before Mars duty.

There was also a comment about curiosity being mankinds second greatest blessing. How far did that get Curie? It would imho be more sensible to send prison inmates to mars and see what happens. If they survive we can just humanely dispose of them later and then take over. Why send the scientists first? We still need those guys.Curiosity needs blending with various other human characteristics before it's safe to act on.

http://explosm.net/comics/95/

I hooked up a bunch of cans of grapefruit flavoured pop that my mate loves and now he has an Internet of Tings

My local online newspaper has started putting up a massive footer to tell me I'm browsing them from behind an ad-blocker.

http://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/

"Did you know that advertising supports local journalism and promotes local businesses? Find out how to turn off your ad blocker."

Me not clicking on adverts supports local journalism? Pretty sure the first law of thermodynamics paraphrases to "you can't make something from nothing".

I'd be surprised if anyone thinks this is a good idea, "we're storing your data in Google" sounds like you've been assimilated into a Borg collective.

Selling things on the Internet isn't hacking, otherwise everyone on ebay, amazon etc is in big big trouble.

"It has taught us that regardless of what you do to stay secure, it still may not be enough."

An old server they weren't using still attached to the database?

Nobody thought to unplug it?

I'd suggest they weren't doing anything to "stay" secure which is definitely nowhere near enough..

I love that they are identified as "masterminds" at the start of Kreb's article.

Clearly anything but..

I particularly like hair colouring products. "Covers up to 100% of your grey". Well.. obviously.. I mean even if you missed your head completely whilst applying it, the statement would still stand.

Most people who tried it, loved it and would buy it and recommend it to a friend and they'd recommend it to their friends it's that awesome!" And in the small print it says according to a survey of 11 people. There just isn't small print small enough to make that kind of claim and keep a straight face.

"increasing the amount it pays security staff, so that it can get the best talent"

Surely firing all the current staff first however as they've proven to be incredibly incompetent.

Also find it a bit weird that the NSA merely warns you that you are riddled with malware. I'd have thought maybe they'd have popped round for a chat, turned your servers off and purged them. Unless it was somehow in their best interest to allow a massive hack like this to take place of course..

checks and cheques

Please note they are different things, can't just use one in the headline and a different one in the article.

I'd assume most people paid for their tech on a debit or credit card in which case refunds should be done via the same method.

Yawn, someone else talking on behalf of Europe, scaremongering no better than Farage. Can't pick which pile of bollocks you want to believe when it comes to Brexit, it's all bollocks.

Plus.. I'd put money on the fact that data mostly goes from the UK to help the EU and the EU would lose out way more in this situation.

But.. on a positive note.. maybe all the illegal data slurping and monitoring will come to a stop. No? Then this mans posturing doesn't really mean much, right?

Doesn't it rather depend on the site being able to accept donations?

I could install Brave and surf somewhere and want to give them money but actually not be able to because they rely on ads for their income and don't need the extra hassle of setting up a bank account capable of accepting bitcoin and having to audit and manage tax around this new method.

In the meantime I'd have bought a bitcoin worth £4,000 for nothing.

Wait.. £3,995

Wait.. £3,990

Wait.. some anonymous hacker has stolen my bitcoin!!

thanks a lot Brave,,

I see a flaw

You are asked to verify one piece of likeness with another one that you provide.

So if you upload your passport or driving licence with a doctored photo you could probably open a bank account with your dick.

As for proof of life.. there would be some satisfaction (maybe a lot if you do it right) in waving your dick at your banks login screen.

Free Flight

Why the hell would you ask for a ride on the very thing that just blew up your satellite?

Unless the business just took out massive life insurance policies on the bosses and is hoping for a repeat performance..

If they're really so bothered.. Ban Facebook. Invent their own monitored replacement like China.

Otherwise just blowing hot air.

"signals from stars"

Ah, the Streisand effect then.

Maybe that four seconds was her next album being transmitted to her.

The problem of free trade and free movement need separating. Not everything once enshrined should remain. Seems to me that would solve a large part of the problem. It might take the Eurozone to disintegrate before they allow something like this but there's a decent chance that will happen.

Expert?

"Ewan is the newest addition to the uSwitch team, and is a whiz-kid analyst able to demystify the communications market with his encyclopedic knowledge of tariffs, price plans and all the latest handsets."

How does he qualify as a broadband expert? He has some price plans on his computer that he can easily compare.

“Compared to other fibre deals on the market, Unlimited Fibre Broadband 38 is competitive,"

And this is the summary of an expert in the field of broadband? A sentence that says pretty much nothing but takes up a whole line of an article.

And Vodafone, a pat on the back, really? Pointy sticks in orifices would be more appropriate.

Aiming to be slightly better than Talk Talk is a really low bar.

oh dear

Six billion dollar company complains about a 40 million delayed payment.

Why is this news?

Oh wait.. blames Brexit.

Interesting to finally get a tech angle on this meme.

In other news Sainsburys said they're actually making more money since the Brexit vote.

Arrows and oranges.