The No Subject Thread - The Bear and Badger

Kazuo

regmcfly wrote:

Edinburgh finally taking on London this festival

https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/inside-edinburgh-shop-crisps-cost-18945492

It seems to take on half the London population every festival.

nick_md

In my usual post-train boozer and, uncharacteristically for Sunday, there's an old fella doing a great string of classics on a too-loud-for-the-occassion guitar and amp set up. There's stock backing tracks of Bad Moon rising and Wagon Wheel, and he's noodling over it in an out of tune guitar. Guys got a leather waistcoat and looks like a character from Phoenix Nights. Love this pub.

nick_md

He's onto The Gambler now.

nick_md

Oh, it's a proper Irish pub too and yer man's Irish, so got that class Irish Country jukebox feel.

Lord_Griff

Yossarian wrote:

Interesting long read on the evolution of language:

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/aug/15/why-its-time-to-stop-worrying-about-the-decline-of-the-english-language

Pinker wrote about language far more betterer.

bad_hair_day

Sounds grand nick. Open fire?

nick_md

No mate it's the boozer opposite the station, it's spit and sawdust as it comes. Love it.

"Guinness is it?"

Yes mate.

"Take a seat, I'll bring it over".

Don't get that in yer craft brewery places. £7 I paid for a pint in Holborn yesterday. The Bull Tavern Woolwich does the finest Guinness this side of the river for £3.60.

acemuzzy

Someone explain this to me...

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/aug/18/british-man-sets-new-cycling-speed-record-of-more-than-174mph

Surely it's not "under his own power" if he's been dragged along by a Porsche to build his speed up?!?

Moot_Geeza

nick_md wrote:

He's onto The Gambler now.

Can't think of a more perfect song to tie a bow on the mental image. Of course he played The Gambler, ha.

Yossarian

The top answer on this is superb:

https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-most-sophisticated-piece-of-software-ever-written-1

davyK

Read about Stuxnet a while ago. A brilliant piece of work.

I ranted elsewhere here (think in the British politics thread) about how the UK should be realigning its defence to 21C - a key part of which should be a cyber force - instead of building enormous aircraft carriers.

Here is an example of the sort of thing our military should be doing instead of playing World Police in expensive big boys' toys.

The real brilliance of Stuxnet is that it was designed to carry any payload - it was the missile/delivery system if you will, with the malware being the payload.

In theory , a mass Stuxnet (or similar) attack with different warheads could disable an entire nation. Exactly the sort of thing some of our brightest should be thinking about.

djchump

The Wired article about how Stuxnet was discovered and dissected is a much better read: https://www.wired.com/2011/07/how-digital-detectives-deciphered-stuxnet/

djchump

davyK wrote:

Read about Stuxnet a while ago. A brilliant piece of work. I ranted elsewhere here (think in the British politics thread) about how the UK should be realigning its defence to 21C - a key part of which should be a cyber force - instead of building enormous aircraft carriers. Here is an example of the sort of thing our military should be doing instead of playing World Police in expensive big boys' toys.

I doubt they're twiddling their thumbs at GCHQ. There's a reason they try to recruit all the best mathematicians, coders and cryptographers.

davyK

djchump wrote:

davyK wrote:

Read about Stuxnet a while ago. A brilliant piece of work. I ranted elsewhere here (think in the British politics thread) about how the UK should be realigning its defence to 21C - a key part of which should be a cyber force - instead of building enormous aircraft carriers. Here is an example of the sort of thing our military should be doing instead of playing World Police in expensive big boys' toys.

I doubt they're twiddling their thumbs at GCHQ. There's a reason they try to recruit all the best mathematicians, coders and cryptographers.

I know - but how much more of this sort of thing could be funded from the fraction of the cost of that leaky white elephant?

poprock

acemuzzy wrote:

Someone explain this to me...

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/aug/18/british-man-sets-new-cycling-speed-record-of-more-than-174mph

Surely it's not "under his own power" if he's been dragged along by a Porsche to build his speed up?!?

Daft, isn’t it? I wrote about this for one of the Porsche magazines a while back, after a previous failed attempt by the same guy.

Like a lot of word records, the small print allows for some shortcuts. He has to pedal under his own steam for a certain distance to record a record speed. But he can be in the aerodynamic slipstream of a support vehicle. And he can be towed up to speed then released – but he does still have to maintain the speed himself afterwards.

I reckon there might be a separate record for speed from a standing start, but I dunno.

The Porsche connection is because the previous record, standing since the ’70s (I think? Can’t be arsed to look it up again just now) was set in the slipstream behind a Porsche 935 race car with a big box welded to the back.

Porsche thought showing off that they could achieve the same performance nowadays with a standard roadgoing SUV would be a decent PR stunt.

MattyJ

davyK wrote:

djchump wrote:

davyK wrote:

Read about Stuxnet a while ago. A brilliant piece of work. I ranted elsewhere here (think in the British politics thread) about how the UK should be realigning its defence to 21C - a key part of which should be a cyber force - instead of building enormous aircraft carriers. Here is an example of the sort of thing our military should be doing instead of playing World Police in expensive big boys' toys.

I doubt they're twiddling their thumbs at GCHQ. There's a reason they try to recruit all the best mathematicians, coders and cryptographers.

I know - but how much more of this sort of thing could be funded from the fraction of the cost of that leaky white elephant?

The number of times I've been asked to identify cost savings and then think 'how about we just don't build one plane" is quite surprising.

davyK

heh.

We need a conventional force, but we should prioritise it for defence and NATO commitments. We just don't have the wherewithall to play in the big league that way.

That aircraft carrier just looks like a vanity project. Maybe it does have a strategic purpose but it seems to be that it's in an asset for foreign theatres.

LivDiv

My boiler wouldn't fire yesterday morning so I called out an engineer who came out this afternoon and has just left.

He took the front off the boiler, cleaned the water trap, still no luck. He said it wasn't good, a case of trouble shooting and likely a new boiler because there was no gas getting to the pilot light or something.
Anyway a last ditch, one in a million check he suggested seeing if my meter was on.

Checked outside lo and behold someone had switched my meter off.
That someone quite obviously being the gas engineer fitting a boiler in the flat above me.

We both go up to see the guy. My boy wants paying obviously and he wanted to back me up in claiming the money back of these numpties.

The bloke upstairs couldn't produce his gas safe card, then started telling my boy he doesn't know how to do his job and shouldnt being taking the front off my boiler.

Suddenly there is a blazing row between two boiler engineers with me in the middle. My boy being totally rational the other bloke sweating, knowing he will be £102 out of pocket for this fuck up.
Other boy claims the owner showed him which meter it was, we go outside and he has indeed identified my meter as the one pointed out. Shit engineer is sweating now shouting that it doesn't make sense because two meters have no.4 written on them. I live in no.6 and the other flat is no.8.

By this point me and my boy are shouting at him that a marker pen doesn't matter he needs to look at the serial numbers on the actual meter, showing him my bill matching my meter.

Other engineer is still blaming the home owners, he doesn't have any contact details for them (bullshit) but said he would give them my number when they rock up later today.

Someone owes me a ton here and I'm not fussed who pays it.

dynamiteReady

What company did the other guy work for, and can you get your engineer to provide some kind of written statement?

Diluted Dante

Thats awesome.

LivDiv

Yeah my guy wrote it out on the invoice and said he will back me up if there are any problems.

I rang gas safe and luckily could confirm the shit one was registered that way instead, although it is still an offence to not be able to produce his license card.

Wookienopants

Call trading standards on him. If he couldn’t produce his gas safety card they’ll be all over him and it’ll cost him way more than £100

LivDiv

I'll play nice for now as I want my £100 back in the easiest way possible but that is the ace up my sleeve.

LivDiv

Diluted Dante wrote:

Thats awesome.

It is certainly more awesome than the £2500 rough quote he gave me for a new boiler.

The Daddy

Yossarian wrote:

The top answer on this is superb:

https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-most-sophisticated-piece-of-software-ever-written-1

djchump wrote:

The Wired article about how Stuxnet was discovered and dissected is a much better read: https://www.wired.com/2011/07/how-digital-detectives-deciphered-stuxnet/

Had a good read of these earlier. Was vaguely aware of it but didn’t have any idea how mental the whole thing was. Will be adding this article to the a-level computing reading list this year.

Yossarian

https://twitter.com/KatieKushxx/status/1163586572706385920

Diluted Dante

Ahahahaha

Yossarian

I can’t stop watching it.

mk64

Lol

g.man

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