Posts by Catkin

Secret setting hints haptic feedback coming to Windows 11 UI

Re: Logitech iFeel mouse

Logitech have added haptics to the new MX mice

Microsoft will force its 'superintelligence' to be a 'humanist' and play nice with people

Re: MS Stock price

If I were that certain, I'd be making heavily leveraged shorts against some key players.

Re: Last attempt

I expect the refer to the last 10 days of performance, mirroring the modest slide on the S&P 500. If the current trend represents a 'bubble' 'popping' then that has to be the lowest pressure bubble in history (this isn't an argument for or against it being a bubble, merely a comment on using 10 days of weak market data to determine it).

I presume they either weren't alive in 2008, they don't actually invest in stocks or that year was so devastating that they obliterated all memory of it.

UK calls up Armed Forces veterans for digital ID soft launch

Re: Kool Aid 1984

Party loyalty (i.e. being able to count on a group of people to overlook all your malfeasance to prevent the other party from winning) is evaporating faster than vodka in a hot frying pan. This creates an incentive for the incumbent party to massively overreach under the guise of 'protecting democracy/the children' because the idea of simply sticking to their manifesto promises and listening to the public on everything else is unthinkable to them.

Literal crossed wires sent cops after innocent neighbors in child abuse case

Re: You should never cooperate with the police

It's a concept I fundamentally disagree with because it disproportionately favours the police but the legal term is Adverse Inference. Definitely worth reading up on so that you're properly aware of your actual rights (or, rather, the limits of them).

Everyone wants a fancy phone – even the folk buying them second-hand

I must be a weirdo

Give me expandable storage, a passable camera and a reasonably low lag experience and I'm happy. The last time I bought a new phone (entry level Galaxy) was because I needed an eSim option. A few years ago, it felt like there were actual reasons to upgrade, now, it's just because updates have ceased or the battery is toast and replacing it costs more than replacing the whole device.

I also don't see the appeal of foldables because the screen is so fragile.

Windows 95 was too fat to install itself so needed help from the slimmer 3.1

Re: Nothing ever changes

That's largely the product of safety and efficiency legislation pushing manufacturers into a corner. Back when you were allowed to sell a car with the aerodynamics of a house brick that would bisect a pedestrian if they so much as stumbled into it, there was much more wiggle room.

Ironically, the same rules that mean a pedestrian has to be ejected back onto the pavement and handed a nice cup of tea in the process means it's not possible to see children over the bonnet.

Slow Wi-Fi? Add houseplants to the list of suspects

Re: Microwaves don't pass well through water?

Also why you shouldn't take your laptop swimming. The sudden loss of wifi when underwater confuses the OS and, in its panic, it fries all the components. It's still safe to put them in Faraday bags because the darkness is relaxing, just like it is for birds.

AI can now design functional viruses – not the computer kind, either

Re: Virus produced by nation state ...

Blood antigens, while not 100% do, in some cases, follow quite predictable distributions as far as being rare in some groups and very common in others.

Apple's 'Awe Droppings' fall close to the tree

https://www.theregister.com/2013/05/30/apple_settles_idevice_warranty_lawsuit/

Microsoft readies Windows 11 25H2 while Windows 10 circles the drain

Re: "the installation is little more than an enablement package"...

That depends on your outlook. I do remember the sixteen million versions of Vista but, at the same time, it allows updates to be rolled out quickly once the new features have been verified as stable. That way, they can trickle new code out slowly without breaking everything for everyone if one part proves problematic.

Further, if you're on a particularly poor connection it saves one big lump of downloads (the counter being that your connection gets slowly used all the time, possibly with code that will never get enabled). It also spreads out the time to install updates (the counter being that it fills your drive.

While it is potentially abusable, it's not quite the same as a car manufacturer replacing a simple switch and relay on a heated seat with a signal that goes through a computer which only turns your heated seat on if you pay up.

Not in my browser! Vivaldi capo doubles down on generative AI ban

Re: Good show

That's my primary setup too. It's not so much seeing the ads in FF, it's that each video takes a solid minute to start playing and YouTube pops up a 'helpful' hint that the poor performance might be the fault of my ad blocker. Perhaps they're trying new code but, when it is happening, Brave seems to do just fine, playing immediately.

Re: Good show

Personally, I use it for YouTube because I find whatever advertising is actually taking place* less intrusive. I find 30s ads every 5 minutes or a minute for a video to load while YouTube fights with ublock to be more bother than having another browser installed on my system.

*I think there was one pop up about their own crypto but, unlike a Microsoft prompt to sign in or a YouTube prompt to show me shorts, when I told it to go away forever, it did

Unlike most of Musk's other ventures, Starship keeps it together for Flight Test 10

Re: "eventually reaching the surface and exploding as expected"

What would be your expectations for a realistic but ambitious test programme of a novel, reusable rocket of this weight class?

Two scrubs, one Starship: Third time lucky for SpaceX?

Re: Bring back the core rope memory

Very good point, at the same time, do have a look at the re-entry phase of flight test 4. It maintained effective command authority even as the forward flaps were turned to plasma.

Bring back the core rope memory

Apollo 12 quite happily flew though a thunderstorm and tanked a lightnight strike on the way up.

Mysterious X-37B spaceplane flies again, this time carrying a quantum GPS alternative

Re: anti-satellite weapons exist

Taking out satellites is a big Rubicon to cross, while jamming them is less likely to trigger a cascade of tit-for-tat space vandalism. It does make sense to do the sort of things they're doing with the new block of GPS satellites because the directional capabilities massively increase the power needed for effective jamming. This would necessitate an enemy force to either place their jammers closer to the front line (within range of more weapons systems) or increase the logistical inertia (think more generator trucks), harming their ability to move in response to incoming attacks.

Getting touchy-feely with a Raspberry Pi Touch Display 2

Re: Works As Expected - Caveats

Damn, that's viciously annoying because the interface is perfect for a diddly media player

Re: Now

5 inch is about the size of the Pi so it makes for a convenient form factor if you don't need much screen space (e.g. home automation control point).

Re: Works As Expected - Caveats

Apologies if you did but could I suggest editing the config.txt file for Kodi?

Australian university used Wi-Fi location data to identify student protestors

Re: Not exactly the brightest bulbs

Just to say, I agree with the right of students (along with everyone else) to protest, my comment was on their expectation to avoid consequences for their actions (while the wifi harvesting, which I disagree with, was not well advertised, the consequences for not vacating the building were). At the same time, they were preventing classes from taking place:

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/article/2024/may/17/university-campus-pro-palestine-protests-encampments-activists-uom-melbourne-police-action

Given that the primary role of a university is to educate and the students (who may not agree with their classmates) are paying tens of thousands of Australian dollars a year to do so, I think it is reasonable to deny protesters a heckler's veto over education taking place.

Not exactly the brightest bulbs

While I disagree with what UoM did the students aren't exactly displaying the best reasoning either. Given that they're announcing to the target of the protest that they're occupying a building owned by said target and that they'll be staying there for the forseeable future, I cannot really see how they reasonably expected to escape identification. Perhaps they had some sort of super-secret escape plan but the fact they'd then connect personal devices to a wifi network owned by the target (at least mobile networks require law enforcement intervention to collect data from) and expected to still maintain anonymity boggles my mind.

It could be that they simply believed reality would oblige if they got sufficiently angry at it.

Search-capable AI agents may cheat on benchmark tests

Re: For Clarity ....

The previous comment was in response to a statement that I interpreted to be about individual employees. Given the rate of hallucinating human reps I have to deal with, they're either not being fired, the turnover is spectacular or I am grotesquely unlucky to be weeding out the worst of the crop on a regular basis.

However, on the subject of your tangent, I am envious of you being able to exert total control over which suppliers you interact with. Short of outright starting a new career (even as a contractor, I'd be obliged to interact with key industry players), I cannot reasonably forsee a scenario where that is possible for me.

As before, I acknowledge the possibility that your experience differs

Re: For Clarity ....

My experience with call centres (in particular, but this also applies to businesses in general) clearly differs from yours.

Re: For Clarity ....

'AI' is a scam and will always be a scam until 'AI' is based on some other techniques that eliminate the 'lies' (Hallucinations).

Confidently providing incorrect information is something humans do quite frequently. (note the paradox of disagreement, provided you don't accuse me of being a LLM).

If anything, cheating by looking stuff up online and regurgitating it makes them more like human intelligence.

Relevant XKCD

Don't cave to Euro censorship or backdoor demands, Uncle Sam warns US tech firms

Re: However will we survive?

As a personal example, I do home machining/additive manufacturing and, despite my annoyance at being forced to use that platform, a lot of the discussion does happen on Meta groups. My presence there is so apolitical that the algorithm just serves me a mix of ads for Chinese tat machines and 'uplifting' nonsense stories. Some really impressive stuff (as far as achieving a great deal with limited resources) has happened through what is effectively international collaboration.

It's not just swivel-eyed loons on opposite ends of the political discussion slinging nonsense at each other.

"Not only have Americans been censored and expelled from platforms for uttering opinions and beliefs that were not shared by a small Silicon Valley elite, the previous administration actively worked to encourage such censorship."

Putting aside who it's coming from I can completey agree with a policy of discouraging tech companies from letting one country set the censorship standard outside of their borders (e.g. when Australia demanded global censorship of videos on X). However, the quotes on censorship in this article seem to pertain to internal private decisions.

The danger there is falling into the trap of compelled speech; where a private individual or corporation is forced to host material it disagrees with. It's in the same ballpark as the 'support gay marriage' cake case.

The UK Online Safety Act is about censorship, not safety

Re: Not for the children

"Firm apologises for saying it would not process LGBTQ+ payments", the root cause of the article is a Christian-fundamentalist campaign against anything online that doesn't fit their narrow prejudices.

This shouldn't be unexpected to those with foresight. When the payment processors stepped in to shut down legal but deeply unpleasant right wing pundits from receiving funds, I was aghast at the cheers because it seemed obvious that the same processors would be susceptible to pressure groups on all sides.

Re: Calling it censorship is partisan bullshit

Something, something, internalised misogyny

US spy chief claims UK backed down over Apple backdoor demand

Re: Reciprocate, please!

It is somewhat different. As far as I'm aware, the US government, while intolerably shitty, isn't demanding the destruction of strong encryption. One is fundamentally shitty, the other demonstrates a colossal lack of understanding of security.

Reckon you can put a nuclear reactor on the Moon?

The US and the Soviets have launched nuclear reactors into orbit. The US did it once, the Soviets on multiple occasions. As I posted above, a shiny new reactor isn't actually that dangerous until it's been operated.

Re: Hang on ....

The main worry is that we get to the point of Space Karen launching one of his unplanned rapid disassembly vehicles bedecked with an equally dodgy reactor for the Moon and drops the whole bundle to rain catastrophe on the heads of rest of us.

If it helps, this isn't atrocious in the grand scheme of things, unless you happen to be standing under it. Even assuming complete dispersal, that's a few tons of uranium (hopefully, insoluble oxide) spread over a wide area. The real nasties from reactor accidents are the transuranics, which aren't present in standard, fresh, unused reactor fuel.

They're not directly equivalent but, very generally, lead is somewhat more toxic and hundreds of tons of that still enters the atmosphere every year from piston aviation engines.

Re: Hang on ....

I think the mass of the cabling would exceed that of a reactor. Though regolith is reasonably rich in aluminium, I think a smelter and the equipment needed to turn it into cable would be an issue.

Not my thumbs down, it's a reasonable point in isolation.

Re: Hang on ....

With a 708 hour day-night cycle, you'd be in trouble unless you can make batteries out of lunar regolith.

Breathe easy: Apple Watch can read your oxygen levels again

Re: not presenting the blood oxygen measurement on the Watch

To be fair to Masimo, they've actually done a lot of novel R&D on the subject of obtaining accurate pulse oximetry from a moving subject and for doing so efficiently (using pulsed light that varies in pulse duration based upon the confidence of the measurement).

This isn't just 'a rectangle with rounded corners', the particular cited patent covers how multipoint readings can be combined to reduce noise from tissue motion. The reason Masimo had to take this path on the claim is that their patent specifies a single device for taking the reading, leaving the loophole Apple can exploit.

No more Blocktoberfest? German court throws book at ad blockers

Re: Ads, GFY

Heck, listening to it on a different DAC (or analogue source)/preamp/poweramp/speaker combo from the engineer would be a modification, to say nothing of said equipment being in a different room or with a different placement. I also hope you have roughly the same body type and sit in the same place as the audio engineer.

Minority Report: Now with more spreadsheets and guesswork

I can't possibly imagine anyone else who would want privacy.

Why blow up satellites when you can just hack them?

Re: While we shouldn't litter space with junk

That's a reasonable point. At the same time, the periapsis cannot be higher than the point of impact from a single collision so the higher energy debris will always spend some time experiencing that drag (admittedly, for a brief period relative to the overall orbital period). I can also see that, at apoapsis, if it encounters another satellite in a circular orbit of similar inclination, said third satellite will be moving faster, offering the possibility for another kick.

Intuitively, I would expect the drag/mass ratio to favour a reduced time before burn up but I entirely defer to actual numbers.

Re: While we shouldn't litter space with junk

Do you have a source on the '20-30 years' claim? I was under the impression that, in one piece, it was less than 5 years and, smashed the heck up, significantly less due to atmospheric drag.

Thanks, I suppose that if you hit a craft that's retrograde to your orbit, the overall effect will be prograde to your obit.

*retrograde relative to your orbit

Gravity is a pretty poor illustration of orbital mechanics. Unless it's prograde relative to your obit, it won't sweep through your position with each orbit. Kessler syndrome also applies more at altitudes significantly above the orbit of the Shuttle or ISS because, at those lower altitudes, there's enough atmosphere for drag to play a significant role before the cascade really gets going.

I highly recommend having a play around with KSP to understand the former, though it won't help with the latter, as its atmospheric simulation capabilities are limited for the purpose of simplifying gameplay.

$10 billion, 10 year US Army contract elevates Palantir to defense contracting royalty

Re: Is that "battlefield intelligence software" that predicted...

No, DCGS-A is for troops on the ground*. As per one of the linked articles, Raytheon's system was viewed by some as overly complex and expensive (due to custom hardware) while Palantir offered what was felt to be easier to use.

*for example, if one unit spots someone burying something by the road, that information would be disseminated to another that's planning a patrol in the area (extreme oversimplification).

ISS is still leaking air after latest repair efforts fail

Re: Might be missing something here

https://airandspace.si.edu/stories/editorial/catchin-zs-micro-g

Astronaut Danny Olivas describes this phenomenon from his perspective, describing how the buildup of a carbon dioxide bubble can cause a headache, or even suffocation

Reddit is people! Which means its search might not be so damaged by AI slop

Re: Hilarious!

That's the best case, the worse alternative is when people who want to talk politics/social matters decide that 'solidarity' is so important that the primary topic must take a knee. Said people then get weirdly offended when other people who were active in a sub dedicated to technical topic x are primarily interested in discussing x, accuse them of being fascists, either because x is 'inherently political' or must acknowledge a 'problematic' history vaguely connected to x and get them banned.

Naturally, the loss of interesting discussion turns others away so the political/social locusts move on to the next sub.

Banning VPNs to protect kids? Good luck with that

But, you see, the parents can take responsibility there to ensure their kids are protected by the mechanisms implemented to avoid the need for parents to take responsibility for their kids. It's so simple, even a politician can understand it.

Re: Private or Work?

It's disappointing that promising to draft and pass laws 'as quickly as possible' is something that some voters find enticing. It's like promising that, after staggering out of the pub, you'll get home as quickly as possible.

Google’s latest renewable energy deal is all gas bags and hot air

Depends which renewables. I imagine a large offshore wind farm would be a very attractive target to an undersea cable cutter.

Arch Linux users told to purge Firefox forks after AUR malware scare

Just going off the 2 articles, so please do provide more sources if you have them but opposing gay marriage in 2008 was hardly an extremist or unconventional belief. At the time, the majority of Americans were opposed.

Personally, I really don't care who gets married to who but it strikes me that if that were the metric by which it's reasonable to not use a developer's software, we'd all be running our computers on a pretty limited code base, given how neurodiverse the average coding team is.