Posts by quartzie

France levels up local video game slang with list of French terms to replace foreign words

Re: Now that is a fine example of administrative busybodies

Most Slavic languages adopted weekend without any translation:

Víkend, Vikend, uïk-end, weekend, vikhidni, vykhadnyja.

Cars in driver-assist mode hit a third of cyclists, all oncoming cars in tests

Re: "three leading systems" WTF?

Beware outsourced remote drivers.

Imagine how well a left-driving remote gnome is going to do in right-driving locations.

Microsoft updates Edge's Internet Explorer mode

Sharepoint mapping

One special quirk I used IE for was authenticating a sharepoint mounted in Windows Explorer.

Without IE, the only remaining option will be to sync, which is an issue on sharepoint folders with deep folder hierarchies.

12-year-old revives Unity desktop, develops software repo client, builds gaming environment for Ubuntu...

my 12 year old...

self feels a bit overwhelmed at the memory.

I did learn to tweak Autoexec.bat and Config.sys (+ dismantle and eventually reinstall Win 3.11) at that age, but I probably still preferred playing Wacky Wheels at that age. It may have been the year I learned about TurboPascal, though.

Can't imagine contributing any code whatsoever to a project like that as a 7th grader.

God of War: How do you improve on perfection? You port it to PC, obviously

Pick up the Horizon port again

I've had a ton of fun with the PC port of Horizon Zero Dawn, and i can confirm the patched version is really a masterpiece.

Compared to that, i was at times underwhelmed by GoW on PC, especially water could use some transparency.

Both are great stories, though, and well worth playing.

Smart things are so dumb because they take after their makers. Let's fix that

Re: What are error messages for?

The remote control in the above post is simply called "Junior" ;)

On the other hand, said remote control is rather expensive to keep, and its reliability can become questionable during the 10-15th year of use.

Mature networking vendor seeks flexible commitment from software suitors

Swapping nightmare...

As flogging Cisco wares is part of my daily bread and butter, I'm only worried what switching contract commits would entail in our SAP.

At the same time, customers with over $100k in licensing fees alone are not going to be switching very often... if at all. There tends to be a good amount of "if it works, don't touch it" reticence, unless the CFO is "woke" and has a bone to pick with the CIO.

Dell won't ship energy-hungry PCs to California and five other US states due to power regulations

Crypto Currency impact coolly ignored

It seems to me that in all this green push, they willfully ignore the growing impact of crypto currencies and the newest bitchain abomination - NFT.

Since the tech industry considers Crypto "cool", it doesn't matter that it consumes enormous amounts of power for 0 real value.

OVH reveals it's scrubbing servers – to get smoke residue off before rebooting

Re: This is very low-rent

Having first hand experience with smoke-besotted paraphernalia from a house that *didn't* burn down, I wouldn't power up anything that had been covered with the stuff for more than disaster recovery.

Insurance providers know why they won't cover that stuff any more.

Sadly, the catastrophic impact with Apophis asteroid isn't going to happen in 2068

Hats off to the astroboffins

While I understand that they need to produce headlines to justify their ever more expensive toys, I'm still amazed that the astroboffins can actually track a lump of crud flying around in space with such accuracy.

ThinkPad T14s AMD Gen 1: Workhorse that does the business – and dares you to push that red button

won't someone think of spelling?

At the risk of sounding overly pedantic, the Taiwanese semicon mill is called TSMC, not TCMS.

How do you save an ailing sales pitch? Just burn down the client's office with their own whiteboard

Taiwan Experience

According to my experience, not necessarily.

Most 110V plugs are of the [ | | ] type, or grounded [ | . | ]

I residential buildings, the 220V plugs are for AC's mostly and are keyed [ | . - ], but in legacy engineer shops, you'll often see just RED versions of the 110V [ | | ] socket, which is somewhat disconcerting ;-)

We'll get you later: SAP CEO promises help for customers in 'financial distress'

Re: Expanding their share of the wallet

The market has long come up with a solution to that problem - print more money.

That said, I just love how all our corp systems have to bend over backwards just to get the next PO accepted by our SAP without too much bloodshed.

Help! My printer won't print no matter how much I shout at it!

Re: HP

I would strongly suggest to refrain from using glossy paper in your Laserjet. It's designed to work with wet ink, not dry powder toner and certainly not made to withstand the baking process required for Laser Toner.

You might find that the lifetime of your printer has suddenly become much, much shorter.

The state of OpenPGP key servers: Kristian, can you renew my certificate? A month later: Kristian? Ten days later: Too late, it’s expired

Re: Abdul Abulbul Amir

Obviously, the afghan internet would have been screwed.af

Windows fails to reach the Finnish line as Helsinki signage pleads for help

incompetent lot

Now if only there was a way to manage a fleet of windows computers and their updates, or perhaps use a suitable edition fit for commercial deployments.

Gone in 9 seconds: Virgin Orbit's maiden rocket flight went perfectly until it didn't

Re: Nerdy but interesting...

Also why the venerable 747 was cheerfully used to flight-test many other jet engines.

Note that while GE's huge GE9X engine for was mounted on the regular wing, while Rolls-Royce borged an alien winglet onto the hump of a Qantas Jumbo.

Singapore releases the robot hounds to enforce social distancing in parks

Nice Specs: 2 modular (weapon) bays...., -25 to +45°C in Singapore?!?

Now there's a properly creepy critter. 2 modular (read weapon) bays tickle my fancy, but only operates up to 45°C - I guess Boston Dynamics reps have not been to Singapore yet?

The ultimate 4-wheel-drive: How ESA's keeping XMM-Newton alive after 20 years and beyond

EPA needs better marketing

Honestly, this is the first time I remember hearing or reading about a European "Hubble-style" observatory living this long. Obviously, the Americans have better marketing chops.

Hey, I wrote this neat little program for you guys called the IMAC User Notification Tool

reimbursement required

You, sir, owe me a clean keyboard.

/*there goes my morning coffee while lazily reading through TheReg.

Sur-Pies! Google shocks world with sudden Android 9 Pixel push

Re: Compelling, isn't it?

With the amount of v̶o̶l̶u̶n̶t̶a̶r̶y̶ ̶s̶h̶a̶r̶i̶n̶g meaningless spying, I'm bound to start looking for alternatives.

Are iSheep any better off?

What does it take for an OpenAI bot to best Dota 2 heroes? 128,000 CPU cores, 256 Nvidia GPUs

Re: How many orders of magnitude

yet strangely, some people seem determined to play it out...

No top-ups, please, I'm a millennial: Lightweight yoof shunning booze like never before

oooof.

I don't consider 4 pints anywhere near "binge drinking", but 20 pints is more than enough for an extended weekend drinking party for me.

Am I getting old at not-quite-40?

Long haul flights on a one-aisle plane? Airbus thinks you’re up for it

Re: The Golden Age of flying is over

I beg to differ.

If your airline is cheap enough to cram seats into non-reclining spacing, then it's a madness, but reclining seats are most certainly NOT designed to work only on half-full flights.

I'm 6"2", and will look for extra leg room seats where available, but I will recline, especially on a 10-12 hour flight, since I want to be in working condition at my destination.

In cramped short hauls, it's a matter of consideration, especially in local Asian island hoppers, but on long hauls and red-eyes I'll recline to keep sane. Fortunately, in my experience, these flights have generally been amenable to reclining.

No Windows 10, no Office 2019, says Microsoft

Only function I need in Office

So far, I've not wanted for a single extra office function, save for effin' Outlook to support UTF-8 CSV import/export, just the way Excel does.

I imagine this will be missing from Office 2019 as well.

Perv raided college girls' online accounts for nude snaps – by cracking their security questions

Re: Everytime I see "Mother's maiden name" on the list of security question...

Ay, there's the rub.

These questions are a stupid "solution" to a practical problem - Passwords, and their (often moronic) implementation.

Case in point: My reasonably computer-literate parents already struggle with the idea of keeping separate complex passwords for every account they use - and they use far fewer than I do. Remembering said passwords is a lost cause.

I'm trying to get them used to the idea of a password manager, but they are more likely to use pen and paper, so the complexity of the password is going to suffer.

Want to bet how many people don't really have anyone with at least rudimentary understanding of computer security they could ask for advice?

GitHub shrugs off drone maker DJI's crypto key DMCA takedown effort

Re: Any idea?

Because in some countries, the geofences are set up so rigidly it is virtually impossible to fly even in your garden.

Fortunately not the case in most of Europe, but DJI's geofencing has been known to fork up people's toys.

That, and because idiots want close ups of flying jetliners.

Yes, your old iPhone is slowing down: iOS hits brakes on CPUs as batteries wear out

Re: Economy

@John Savard: As a business oriented person, I found a fly in your soup, corrected below.

"They should be trying to make a product which can be sold at the HIGHEST ACCEPTABLE price, to benefit the maximum number of consumers."

Businesses are striving for profit, not just volume. High manufacturing volume @ near-zero margin can cover your production expenses, but not generate profit - see almost all current Android manufacturers for reference.

Almost all the profit in mobile phone market is generated by Apple, even though they do not have a dominant market share.

Re: Every week, something different

I had the same problem with an old Sony Z2 - it just wouldn't stop working well.

I wanted to upgrade to get some new features, but with reasonable maintenance the thing just wouldn't die - or underperform. Until one day the battery gave up ghost, ballooned and took waterproofing away - a downpour on the very same day proved deadly to the compass & IMU.

Took three years of fine performance and a freak coincidence to cripple the phone, otherwise another battery would have been good for another year, at least.

Hey, you know why it's called the iPhone X? When you see Apple's repair bill, your response will be X-rated

cracked screen fetish

i never quite understood the fetish about cracked iPhone screens. Even with the high replacement cost, there are just too many such sheePhones around.

My S7 lives in a thin silicon bumper case and a glass sticker on the screen. I've had to replace the sticker a few times, but the screen remains spotless. Just why is iPhone equipped with a screen *designed* to be broken?

Mind boggles...

Microsoft, IBM, Intel refuse to hand over family jewels to China

Marketing Fail

The Chinamen should have offered "Complimentary Release Candidate Safety Testing"

Apple drops dongle prices to make USB-C upgrade affordable

USB-C Compatibility

USB-C is in fact fairly compatible with previous standards, but also incorporates high power transmission option, which can be potentially dangerous over low quality cables. Unfortunately, the original standard doesn't sufficiently check cable quality and specs, creating a potential fire hazard

Researchers crack Oz Govt medical data in 'easy' attack with PCs

Homework assignment

Did they just tell curious and smart people what NOT to do?

That should work...

New DNA 'hard drive' could keep files intact for millions of years

Re: millions of years

I believe that information may not require such a huge storage density, and could be easily carved in a chunk of reasonably durable material nearby.

Prior art: Voyager's golden LP.

Would YOU start a fire? TRAPPED in a new-build server farm

Re: stern words warranted

Handy as these things are, they probably rely on the missing cell signal...

Wouldn't have been much help in this case.

Inside Electric Mountain: Britain's biggest rechargeable battery

Us kettles

The breakers might go up to 20A, but finding a kettle over 1600W is a miracle.

Mud sticks: Microsoft, Windows 10 and reputational damage

Unfinished but necessary

Windows 7 was a success, but it was aging and that showed in the cracks.

The old windowing system and rendering were completely useless on HiDPI screens, and many hardware enhancements were only possible by generally hacking drivers onto an aged kernel.

Windows 8 brought a lot of necessary new guts, with an unfortunate interface.

From what I can see on my Surface, Win 10 is basically an evolution of that, with many things I used to dislike in Win 8 resolved.

My pet peeve is probably about the forced updates, which I hate on both Windows and Android.

Obama puts down his encrypted phone long enough to tell us: Knock it off with the encryption

too predictable

whenever US politicians have wanted to push a security related (and mostly illegal) agenda, they've defaulted to two "unbeatable" arguments.

POTUS Obama just proved my point: bla bla bla bla pedophiles blabla bla bla bla terrorists blabla....

Behold our SPINNING DATA GRAVE: WD carts out 6.3TB cold storage drive

Re: Short warranty for Archive drive?

Unfortunately, that number is only the theoretical Mean Time Between Failures. Although it may sound confidently optimistic, WD castrated the idea by offering a paltry 3 year warranty on your archive drives.

Surely they must have another business case for this model?

Doom, Mario, Pac-Man level up to video gaming's Hall of Fame

am I the one-man cheering section for Prince of Persia?

As for impactful games, I wouldn't throw out Max Payne's Bullet Time.

Sane people, I BEG you: Stop the software defined moronocalypse

Re: As my father-in-law always said

There is a basic problem with the definition of driving in your response.

Technically speaking, you can sit in a car and make it move without ever going through driving school, but actually *driving* a car means you take into account road rules, traffic around you and general safety.

With those included in "driving", then no, it isn't easier to do when drunk.

Unlock and start General Motors cars with a $100 box of tricks – hacker

Man in the replay....

Rather than a man in the middle, I'd classify the approach as a drive-by replay attack.

WHY can't Silicon Valley create breakable non-breakable encryption, cry US politicians

No new research necessary at all

Since the good fellow wants to have his cake and eat it too, I suggest we mandate a simple substitution cipher for all his private email.

Given that the weakest link in any encryption system is the human element, having a human-controlled backdoor to cryptography is akin to sending a partially sealed envelope.

Given their track record, it is unreasonable to trust any government to look out for the people. The US govt is just a case in point, openly paying homage to the highest bidders (er... lobbying parties).

Post-pub nosh neckfiller: Smažený sýr

On the delicacy's pronunciation

I'd suggest "smajhenee seer" as the closest approximation in the Queen's tongue, with the final "R" borrowed from Spanish, rather than English. (try readspeaker.com for the real version)

My family's tradition definitely calls for a Camembert-style cheese, though almost any cheese with a stronger flavour will do. Feel free to experiment with diced/mashed spuds, but do not skimp on the tartar sauce, if you've already got a decent mayo. Just add some finely diced pickles and onion to bring the flavour out.

Given the meal's fat content, I wholeheartedly recommend a pint of your favourite Pilsner as a digestive.

EU cyber-cop: Dark-net crooks think they're beyond reach (until now)

Not even a Blip

Once you realize that this (1M $ in Bitcoin) won't even register on the scale of the real evildoers (mafia, bankers, politicians), this announcement loses a lot of its fanfare.

Fat-fingered admin downs entire Joyent data center

Worst day of my life: Shot down a cloud

I'm sure it's considered a magic trick to shoot down clouds, unless you work as a BOFH of one.

Sick of walking into things while gawping at your iPhone? Apple has a patent app. for that

USPTO awarding crap, as usual

I know they are busy with all those patent assertions of late, but there's at least one example of direct prior art here in the comments. Reckon a google search would have revealed that in about 10 seconds and thrown out this ridiculous iPatent as it should have been?

AMD teases workstation pros with 16GB FirePro W9100 graphics card

And price war ensues...

IIRC, Nvidia just announced their Geforce GTX Titan Z with 8 TFLOPS and a paltry 12 GB of RAM for a $1000 less.

While it's not a Quadro per se (unlike the FirePro branding), I wouldn't say the performance will be too bad for that money.

Sounds like a price war to me...

Nvidia unveils Titan Z: An 8TFLOPS off-the-shelf supercomputer disguised as a gfx card

Re: But...

All 5760 instances should run just fine :D

Now you just need someone to rewrite it for CUDA...

Software needs meaty cores, not thin, stringy ARMs, says Intel

Re: @Trevor Pott

Two points.

Hadoop (and many other parallel/hybrid processing frameworks) cannot change the fact that some problems simply aren't very suitable for parallel processing. I believe Intel employs a good number of people who know their way around Hadoop, but they've also noticed not everyone is doing big data in their own garden.

That said, if you've attempted parallel processing on any larger scale, you would notice that getting the system to run efficiently, given a limited memory bandwidth, is a major task and often crucial for deployment on any cloudy distributed platform.