* Posts by danR2

217 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Nov 2012

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I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Light-powered nanocardboard robots dancing in the Martian sky searching for alien life

danR2

Dust

80 nm channels are going clog up pretty fast anywhere near a dust event.

I suggest landing a N2 extraction machine and using nitrogen as a lifting gas in the 95% CO2 atmosphere. One-meter balloons should be able to lift several grams of solid sensory and telemetry hardware.

NASA told to get act together on commercial crew vendors as chance of US-free ISS rises

danR2

Re: Spanked?

The only two instances of "money was spanked" (with an inanimate passive in operation) that I could find were both British, as far as I could tell, "spunked" being much more common.

Boeing comes clean on parachute borkage as the ISS crew is set to shrink

danR2

Re: Quality system

The following assumes something about the quality-review that is not detailed in the article.

The quality unassuring-assurance lies in the apparent static nature of the photographic documentation and review of assembly. There should be four hi-res video cameras above and around every assembly station, that loop-record 24/7. Nobody has to turn them on or off.

No looking at stills. Too static: you could miss something that was not connected properly, because connecting is verbal, not nominal; it is an action, not a series of states.

24 hours before test, 3 people will have watched the packing of the parachute second-by-second, minute-by-minute. Those will be the packers themselves. Seeing the connecting process as a streaming flow, they will be matching visually, and by kinaesthetic memory, what they are seeing by what they know to be correct.

Welcome. You're now in a timeline in which US presidential hopeful Beto was a member of a legendary hacker crew

danR2

Re: Nice

I'm wary of the Kremlin's well-aged policy of targeting the values of a site's typical demographic whichever way it injures its victim.

That is to say, not "whiny libbie leftie Beto' screed (which would be suitable in Fox comments), but 'Dem in name only'...

It's all a matter of time: Super-chill atomic clock could sniff gravitational waves, dark matter

danR2

Neither in the article, nor in the comments, is it clear to me that the time-resolution of these clocks is sufficient to track relative variations in the rate of time between spatially displaced clocks. This would speak to the sort of periods involved in measuring gravitational waves. Alternatively, one could sample the readouts at varying rates and signal-average the readout instances, and look for spikes in the sample-rate spectrum.

Ie, one could sample the readouts 1000 times at 0.1 ms, at 0.2, 0.4.... 6.4ms ... etc.

If I'm not clear, I need my morning second cuppa, sorry. Maybe someone can repair the above so it makes more sense.

It's November 2018, and Microsoft's super-secure Edge browser can be pwned eight different ways by a web page

danR2

I'm tired of making this response as well

I've been making it now and then or something akin for the past ~5 years over the interwebz. I've never seen any in-depth article, and preferably article series, address it front and center:

For every flaw, vulnerability, zero-day, Beijing's army of coders, hackers, and software scientists almost certainly find two. And China doesn't participate in the international community of flaw-exposers. On the contrary: public disclosure of a weakness is regarded as an offense. And not to keep Microsoft safe. Or Android, or iOS, or OSX.

A flaw is part of a body of assets to be exploited. John Bolton, and Dotus himself, might want to think about that.

What could be more embarrassing for a Russian spy: Their info splashed online – or that they drive a Lada?

danR2

The sad thing is

100+ GRU agents driving the same Lada. That would be some rotating car-pool. Monday: 3 in the front, 7 in the back, "...Igor, Maxim, Sergei, Boris; you're in the trunk."

"Oh Shitski, again‽ "

Apple hauled into US Supreme Court over, no, not ebooks, patents, staff wages, keyboards... but its App Store

danR2

"...and there is no way you can buy anything from the app-maker except through Apple."

through Apple

See, the preposition used only underscores my gut-feeling, at least for me. Apple is the conduit through which I shove my money down to the app-maker. It's app-maker I sense whom I am paying. Apple steals some of that cash on the way down, but I have no sense that I'm paying them.

At that abstract moment of transaction, I get the app and the developer gets my dough. That it's Apple's store, and they take their skim doesn't alter that perception. The Court will surely hear 'arguments' about this, and their judgement may well taken into account such arguments. And, experiences may differ. That's mine, maybe Apple will be unfortunate and nobody shares it.

danR2

Re: My gut feeling about the paying process

If that's not a rhetorical question, it doesn't enter my mind at the moment of purchase. I've always felt I was paying the app-maker. There's no argument about this, its not an objective evaluation. It's subjective. And it's possible the SCOTUS will be interested in such questions, as well as legal arguments and precedents.

danR2

Apple is the seller.

When you buy the app, do you get the impression you are sending the money to the app-maker? I certainly do. I do not feel I'm sending it to Apple, but that they are doing an agenty/commissioney sort of thing. Same with Playstore (I have Apple and Android devices).

danR2

My gut feeling about the paying process

While Apple may be mediating the transaction, my impression is not that I'm paying Apple. I'm paying the developer, yes. Notwithstanding any legal/logical argument about who is getting paid. I do understand Apple is sorta kinda getting a commission. But it's not like I feel I'm paying them for the product.

Any social media accounts to declare? US wants travelers to tell

danR2

Re: Congrats, Trump. you just wiped out Facebook and Twitter

I'm saying it from a Trumpistani's perspective: taking a wrecking-ball to a free-market economy. Why stop with rattling Amazon? One minute he's a bull in the regulation china-shop, next he's a one-dotus regulator.

danR2
FAIL

Congrats, Trump. you just wiped out Facebook and Twitter

1 billion people delete their accounts. Overnight.

Sneaky satellite launch raises risk of Gravity-style space collision

danR2

Don't worry about the FCC

There's no safety regulation Dotus can't throw a *monkey-wrench into.

*adjustable spanner, for those across the pond.

Google reveals Edge bug that Microsoft has had trouble fixing

danR2

You Beijing didn't know?

They probably have unearthed 10 zero-days they keep to themselves for every one that is disclosed in the West. They do very little in the way of contribution to the White hat community. When a new vulnerability is discovered, or patched, how often does it come out from some Chinese researcher, company, computer academic, programmer, hacker or otherwise?

On the contrary, they have started to muzzle what little voice there was.

MY GOD, IT'S FULL OF CARS: SpaceX parks a Tesla in orbit (just don't mention the barge)

danR2

Re: Academics

Yes, but I wouldn't ask clients to contract to something so iffy. I'd have gathered student projects, good, bad or indifferent, and offer no guarantees, beyond minimal telemetry where needed for a project: say a cam and mic for each.

The car gives nobody anything by way of science or inspiration.

HMS Queen Elizabeth has sprung a leak and everyone's all a-tizzy

danR2

Leaky...

McLeakBottom

UK, US govt and pals on WannaCry culprit: It woz the Norks wot done it

danR2

Dynamic heatmaps hardly implicated N.K.

Even as early heat-maps of the strikes came in, it made no sense Pyongyang would have been responsible: Russia was hit first (then heavily later) then the Ukraine, then Europe massively and quite a lot of China. The U.S. was moderately or even lightly hit.

Why on earth would Kim pick on China and Russia?

Stephen Hawking's boffin buds buy HPE HPC to ogle universe

danR2

Until the nature of the greater fraction of matter present in the universe today (MACHOS, WIMPS, whatever...), and dark energy, and/or a tweak in the value of the gravitational inverse square law, is identified, I see little chance of a supercomputed extrapolation of the origins telling us much of anything of the earliest seconds and milliseconds.

Particle boffins show off 'cheap', cute little CosI, world's smallest neutrino detector

danR2

a reactor, or THE reactor?

Perhaps the choice of article is the problem, or a nano-typo. (the) reactor it was near was perhaps a convenient source of neutrinos for a test run, but it also generated neutrons and other garbage not easily shielded from. 'A' reactor implies it was just some random irrelevant reactor, which I find unlikely; researchers can expect to find noise from a nuclear reactor.

WannaCry-slayer Marcus Hutchins 'built Kronos banking trojan' – FBI

danR2

Apparently he does other thing for a living as well.

Yes. It just happened to be him. What I'm insinuating is a development from my presumption of the solidity of the indictment, which I've read at length.

danR2

Re: Also Wannacry?

'...he was investigating it' reminds me of the time I stole a pocketknife from the store, buried it in the public right-of-way beside the road, and then went and told my mother about the knife I 'found'. She gave me an instantaneous, level-gazed, 'cool story' "Where did you get that knife, Danny?" reply and I was quickly sent off to return it to the store. With an apology.

danR2

bad guys...

I haven't heard that many banksters were unduly inconvenienced.

danR2

Also Wannacry?

I've read the indictment, and it looks solid. It would be odd for a dedicated hacker-for-money to stumble over just the solution to another criminal exploit, let alone play 'save-the-day' hero. At least I can't recollect the like.

Now your boss can tear you a new Glasshole: Google's techno-specs reborn as biz gear

danR2

It's OK, I'm a doctor...

At Dignity Health, he says, doctors have been using Glass with an Augmedix transcription application to capture discussions with patients instead of taking notes by hand.

'At Dignity Hearth, your privacy is paramount, this whole audio-visual discussion about your rectal polyps and history of bipolar disorder will be securely uploaded onto an encrypted server until some imbeciIe employee with a grudge or a profit-motive walks off with a usb....'

Oops! Facebook outed its antiterror cops whilst they banned admins

danR2
Coffee/keyboard

Zuck the cold-blooded tightwad.

"Even so, we contacted each of them individually to offer support, answer their questions, and take meaningful steps to ensure their safety."

Oh for pity's sake, Zuck you gawdamned cheapskate. They are now in permanent danger. Give them 1 million dollars, with early retirement; and work with the authorities for them to have a new life, new identity, and possibly new country.

Andy Rubin teases next week's launch of Essential phone

danR2
Unhappy

Re: Bulge looks like a camera to me...

Yep, you're right. It's already been posted under the original Twitter image. Just have click on Reg's image. It's almost certainly a 360.

Is that all he's got? I'd be expecting: The phone you will never see in the dreaded news articles

"Phone exploit"

"Kremlin has your dirty pictures"

"NSA can control your fitness app"

"All your iris/retina/fingerprint are belong to us"

"etc."

Like a celeb going bonkers with botox, Google injects 'AI' into anything it can

danR2

Re: "11.5 petaflops of computation for machine learning workloads"

The 'learning' it does may involve understanding phenomena at a very granular level of precision, such as might be needed for space vehicle reentry at hypersonic flow and requiring the application of Navier-Stokes equations of fluid dynamics.

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/langley/nasa-langley-revs-up-interest-in-machine-learning

danR2

Re: Another thing to delete from your phone

'... because, Dave, although you took very thorough precautions... against my seeing you...'

Don't click that Google Docs link! Gmail hijack mail spreads like wildfire

danR2

Re: Is Alphabet's soup losing a few letters?

I can take the 'credit' for using an ill-defined word like 'fumbley' so loosely, but can 16 upvoters really have agreed with such a straw-man analogy?

Nor, I hope, has The Register base fully committed to an about face on the slogan 'biting the hand that feeds IT', especially regarding the biggest cyber-billboard on the planet in the garb of a (increasingly fumbley, ill-mannered, inconsiderate) search-engine.

danR2

Re: Is Alphabet's soup losing a few letters?

It's not a 'screw-up', and that's not what I meant, whatever he meant. It's a phishing vulnerability, and indicative of a growing host of fumbley things Google is doing that go sideways for end-users, some trivial, some inconvenient, most addressed in Google's usual opaque manner. Nor is it just Google, but Facebook and others.

danR2

Is Alphabet's soup losing a few letters?

I get the impression they are not merely doing more and more shady things, they are doing things more and more fumbley.

Microsoft sparks new war with Google with, er, $999+ lappies for kids

danR2

Horrid Shade of Green

Probably focus-groups found 'smell-my-finger' would have doubled sales, but MS marketing... balked.

danR2

Apple's Nuclear Option: ~ 100 gigabuck reserves

Tim Cook can simply hand out 10 million free laptops or tablets.

MS and Chrome vaporized.

Uber cloaked its spying and all it got from Apple was a slap on the wrist

danR2

legislation?

If cyber-stalking and surveilling public and police officials isn't a crime, maybe federal legislators should start thinking it should be.

Base specs leak for Windows 10 Cloud – Microsoft's wannabe ChromeOS assassin

danR2

Very old term

"Cargo cult" was something of a topic in the 60s. There were documentiaries. I thought they simply petered out, and were no longer a thing.

Feel guilty for scoffing Easter chocolate? Good news: Scientists have made NEGATIVE mass

danR2

limited context

If you read the paper, you'll see the narrowly circumscribed limits under which they 'push' (a word that appears nowhere in the publication) the condensate. Words like 'quasimomentum', and the simple logic that something cannot go toward the pushing force, if the force is applied with a stout finger (supercooled, of course), should be a clue.

Far out: Dark matter bridges millions of light-years long spotted between galaxies

danR2

Re: Dark Matter? What about a worm hole?

A worm-hole is a tunnel of space-time itself, not a structure with extension through space. Distant from a worm-hole, all we (would) see is the hole part, a three dimensional analog akin to the hole you would plug a vacuum hose into in the wall for a central vacuum system. All the plumbing is hidden from view.

danR2

postscript

Lyman far-UV absorption lines?

danR2
Holmes

All impossibilities been explored?

They've found something (pretty) dark that bends light paths. Is it filaments of helium? neutral hydrogen? Has it been mapped at 21 cm and nothing found? Just asking.

"How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?" -Holmes

Sorry eh? Canadian mounties own up: Yes, we own 10 IMSI-catchers

danR2

Re: Even in Canada

It goes far beyond that. It's been known for some time the Vancouver police have been using cell-tower emulators, and the array of equipment available to the various and sundry powers-that-be (military, CSIS, undercover, Mounties, not to mention commercial and private-dick [excluding foreign spooks {leaving out downright criminal} ] ) that can be used under loophole, or special regulation, or supposed exigencies, or simply out unethical and personal appropriation ("I'll just listen in on that *&%@$# so-and-so") will always be below the tip of the iceberg.

SpaceX wows world with a ho-hum launch of a reused rocket, landing it on a tiny boring barge

danR2

Re: Amazing

I'll see competition when big aero starts putting fly-back airbreathers into the first-stage phase of launch. This land-on-tail stuff is thrilling Buck-Rogers era, but it's literally a waste of oxygen. Light and medium launch weight systems should be taking off and returning to airport runways, and getting reflown within the hour.

danR2

Re: Bad people winning the world.

Musk's employees are unquestionably one of the most satisfied group of people around, let alone workers. His approval rating on glass door is through the ceiling.

Polls? How very 2016. Now Google Street View AI scanner can predict how people will vote

danR2

Re: simpler way?

That would depend on the goal of the study. The finding here is that auto-choices map reliably onto voting-choices.

danR2
FAIL

"...pickup trucks, Volkswagens and Aston Martins..."

"Bond 007 at your service mein Herr Trump, once ah git ma truck off th' blocks..."

Deadly Tesla smash probe: No recall needed, says Uncle Sam

danR2

Re: In other news

*shills

danR2

Face it: Humans are lousy drivers

NTSB Transportation Assessment 2025

A year-long investigation into all-causes accident mishaps concludes that human error is the most frequent factor in all forms of transportation mishaps, including walking. Their report has been submitted to Congress, and Majority leader Mr. 1001011001 is expected to start debate on the morning of 01001110...

Now for a really cool micro-drum solo: Boffins chill gizmo below quantum limit

danR2

Re: Very

In other words, they appear to be calling displacements of the membrane perpendicular to its expanse 'heat', and damping of those excursions 'cooling'. No doubt the membrane's constituent atoms' heat kinetic energy has been reduced to extremely low cryogenic T, but that's not the focus of the article, nor is it anything exceptional.

danR2

Re: Very

By 'real problem' I mean the way the experiment has been presented as though anisotropic particle kinetic energy has been reduced to nearly absolute zero.

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