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Comment Re:Ah, preview! (Score 3, Interesting) 49

It doesn't "run code". It doesn't need to.
It's not a new issue, just a new instance of it. If you have a file that contains external resources, such as HTML, to preview it you need to load the external resources. Which isn't a vulnerability in itself, but allows you to initiate a new network access request without user action. And Windows will helpfully attempt to log in to the random external server with the username and password of the current local user, which is the real vulnerability.
And the password is hashed, but that provides no real security - the hash effectively is the password and is sent in plain text on the wire.

Comment Re:Auto-matic lights (Score 1) 90

Yes, and I listed several fall-backs.
Computer is working but truck immobilised - computer commands beacons on
Computer breaks - watchdog trips, bypasses computer and turns beacons on
Electrical supply fails - local battery turns beacon on

It's not perfect - for example the computer could get into a livelock and keep resetting the watchdog but not triggering the beacons itself. But then neither is the current system - having the driver place flares or beacons assumes that the driver is able to get out of the cab, and has working beacons/flares.

Comment Re:Auto-matic lights (Score 1) 90

The most likely situation is that the computer is fully working, but can't move the truck. Either there's something wrong mechanically (engine failure, flat tyre) or the computer can't "see" clearly enough to move safely. Even if the computer has failed, "turn on all the lights if the computer fails" is a fairly simple thing to do - a watchdog timer holding off a relay that connects the lights to the battery (bypassing any electronic control). You can even deal with an electrical system failure by putting a battery in the light unit, held off by the main power, as building emergency lights do.

Comment Re:Offtopic, but... (Score 2) 89

Slashdot doesn't support Unicode and assumes all input is ASCII. If you enter a non-ASCII character, your browser encodes it as UTF-8 but Slashdot reads it as ASCII (or possibly one of the 8-bit character sets).
IIRC they did support Unicode at one point but trolls used it to mess up the page formatting (ridiculous numbers of combining characters, right-to-left markers, unmatched combining characters, etc) and kept evading simple sanity checks, so they just went with "no extended characters at all, ASCII only".

Comment Re:Delivered at the wind farm? (Score 2) 184

It's right there in the summary - "land on makeshift dirt runways adjacent to wind farms". I have my doubts about the practicality of that - large planes generally need a tarmac runway. You're going to need some interesting landing gear to land a plane that size on a soft surface. And enough flat ground to lay out a very long runway.

Comment Re:Interesting option... (Score 1) 99

The main issue if you have PVC in your plastic is that burning it can produce some nasty chlorine compounds in the exhaust. And if you don't have PVC in your plastic - how sure are you that you don't?

The innovative bit here seems to be separating the chlorine out of a PVC mix, leaving only hydrocarbons which can be safely burned.

Comment Re: Forgot some. (Score 2) 22

The military budget isn't completely unlimited. Arguably if an opponent can convince us to shoot down their $500 drones with $1m missiles, they've already won.

And printing money only works up to a point. https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2F...

Comment Re: It doesn't seem so odd (Score 2) 169

No, Scotland and Wales don't have so much of an issue. I don't really know what the situation is in Northern Ireland but haven't heard much about shortages there. Scotland and Wales are wetter and hillier that England, and less densely populated. A good part of the English midlands actually gets their water from Wales.
Not to say that there's no issues outside England, but it's certainly in England that there's most concern.

Comment Re:It's called demand and supply. (Score 1) 20

That's not the same thing. While they vary their price, everyone still sees the same price. If there's a lot of demand, the price goes up for everyone, while if they need to fill seats the price goes down for everyone. The proposed pricing uses AI to work out how much each person is willing to pay and offer them a personal price. So they might offer me a seat for $400 because I'm broke and/or stingy, while charging you $1000 since they think you're well off and will pay whatever they ask.

To some extent it's not new - coupons and rebates are the same sort of idea, as people who aren't prepared to pay high prices will put in the legwork while those who don't care will just pay what's on the price tag. But there's nothing stopping someone rich jumping through the hoops too. The difference here is that if the AI thinks you're rich you can't jump through the hoop as they'll take the hoop away.

Comment Re:They are compliant (Score 1) 89

They think they're compliant. If you disagree, you're free to take them to court - though the legal bills will be huge.

They offer you the source code, and you're allowed to distribute it. They won't (and can't) take legal action against you for doing that, and they will honour all their contracts with you regardless. They won't do anything to you at all. They will just decline to do any new business with you in future. That's certainly against the spirit of the GPL. Is it against the letter? Well, that's what lawyers get paid big bucks for.

Comment Re:UK "Life Sentence" may be only 15 years in pris (Score 1) 45

Yes, it might be. It's a peculiarity of the way sentencing works. Once a sentence is passed, it can't be increased (except by appeal in limited circumstances), so the headline figure is actually the maximum. You'll probably get let out sooner, but you're "on license", not actually free. If you don't behave - even if you're not convicted of a new crime - you're back in jail.

With a life sentence, unless you get one of the rare "whole life tariffs", you'll probably get released at some point. But you're still "on license" - forever. Misbehave and you're straight back in jail, even if you've been out for years. And the parole board doesn't have to let you out when the tariff is up - you could be in for your whole life anyway if the parole board doesn't think you should be released.

Comment Re:Seems difficult (Score 1) 30

The Apollo missions were manually piloted (with computer assistance). Computers may be good but "land a spacecraft on an unmapped lunar surface" is still a challenge. Also Apollo was intended to take off from the moon so had a lot of fuel on board, which gives more scope for modifying the landing trajectory and even aborting the landing.

Comment Re:Saving Face. (Score 1) 124

No, it's just ambiguous syntax as usual. Nikon is being described as "Japanese" and a "camera maker". Which is correct - Nikon is headquartered in Japan, and makes cameras. They're not claiming to be a "Japanese-camera maker", i.e. a maker of Japanese cameras, which they are not. To be precise, they're a "Japanese Chinese-camera maker" - a Japanese company that makes Chinese cameras.

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