Posts by Christopher Reeve's Horse

Smuggler caught with 256 Intel Core processors wrapped around him in cling film

Must have taken ages

to clean all the thermal compound off him...

Hubble memory errors persist despite NASA booting long-idle backup payload computer

Perhaps...

the telescope has taken one PEEK too many?

Maybe it just needs a POKE?

etc...

Listen, son... Monster trucks just aren't cool anymore. Real winners drive Tesla Roadsters

Happy Meal tat

I'd still much rather have paper based crap than plastic based crap, thank you very much

And actually, the kids have really enjoyed the recent 3D dinosaurs...

Beloved pixel pusher Paint prepares to join Notepad for updates from Microsoft Store

Yeah but...

Surely someone is going to mention the cynical ploy that's behind this? To access the Windows Store you need to be logged in with a Microsoft Account. Providing updates to Paint aren't anyone's priority, it's just being used as a user behaviour steering device surely?

Machine learning devs, rejoice: You can now rent up to 16 Nvidia A100 GPUs on a single machine via Google

So that's where all the GPUs are...

I'm surprised even Google has the financial resources to find GPUs these days!

It's wild the lengths Facebook engineers will go to find new ways to show you inane ads about tat: This time, AR...

Re: More agency?

I came here to say pretty much exactly that. Basically any agency other than the individual's own free will. Do I want every waking moment of my life turned into a nightmarish version of a Facebook live feed, which is constantly trying to direct and influence every interaction, movement and thought I have? No, no I don't. Or for the Aussie translation; Facebook can Get F*****.

Customer comment and contributions no more as Microsoft pulls the plug on Office 365 UserVoice forum

While the likes of Excel and Word continue to listen...

Thank god for that, or I literally wouldn't know how to fill my working day!

Google says once third-party cookies are toast, Chrome won't help ad networks track individuals around the web

Re: You're alright, Jack?

Quite a lot of routers don't allow you to change the DNS address - all the Homehub devices provided by BT for example. Sure, there are workarounds such as setting up different DHCP servers, but it's less than ideal.

Either way, DNS content filtering is already on shaky ground with the advent of DoH, as the local client can specify whatever DNS it wants. At this point solving the filtering content becomes much more complicated than your average home user is going to be able to manage.

FortressIQ just comes out and says it: To really understand business processes, feed your staff's screen activity to an AI

Or, you know...

Perhaps in a modern, ethically run business with an engaged workforce, they could just talk to employees about how they work, and what systemic issues they encounter in achieving their outputs and goals. Just a thought.

Microsoft's underwhelming, underpowered dual-screen Surface Duo phone arrives in the UK this month for £1,349

Re: Trusting M$?

There's approximately 37 Windows RT owners that would like a word with you...

The Fat iPhone, 11 years on: The iPad's over a decade old and we're still not sure what it's for

Re: There's no mandatory App Store to act as a gatekeeper, so you can run whatever software you want

But yet it's Microsoft that are actually trying to pull that kind of bullshit with Windows 10S or whatever it is... TBH for some people a good bit of restriction is probably good idea. Oh, hi Mum!

The other obvious usage cases

I can't believe no-one's mentioned that they double up as high quality wipe clean kitchen chopping boards...

Robinhood plays Sheriff of Nottingham as it pauses GameStop, AMC, BlackBerry etc stock sales, gets sued

Re: Piggly Wiggly

It's only now 'worth' that much because the hedge funds upped the stake by betting heavily against the company. In poker you can have a very high stakes game with everyone holding low value hands, and this situation in the market is more like a casino bet than a valuation of the company.

What happens when the internet realizes the stock market is basically a casino? They go shopping at the Mall

The Big Short Squeeze

I'm not sure this is the same as a pump and dump at all. I think it's been identified (someone please say I'm wrong if this is the case) that certain Hedge Funds are hugely overexposed to their own short options, like I think I saw the number that 140% of the entire float of GME shares is in short options. That's right, there are apparently substantially more shares being shorted than actually exist!

By my limited understanding the big funds are obliged to have to buy the stocks on expiration of their options, so there's every chance that the price will continue to increase and the hedge funds loose billions more by being forced into buying at super inflated prices - which continues to drive the price further up. It's not like loosing an investment, this is like turbo-charged hyper loosing. Obviously I'd love to be sympathetic etc. A big bluff is being called by lots of people with relatively low risk individual stakes. It's hilarious.

Just to be clear - I have no financial position on GME (or anything else). I think the phrase is "we. just. love. the. stock"

One careful driver: Make room in the garage... Bloodhound jet-powered car is up for sale

Peanuts

I don't get it. To the average billionaire or international corporation with an alignment of brand character, the amount of money to complete this would be trivial, and the marketing opportunity staggeringly enormous. Record breaking machines, and pictures of their iconic liveries and partner's logos go down in history forever, take F1 for example.

Sure, there's a risk of catastrophic failure and the resulting 2 mile long meat crayon, but hey, you know, life is for living and everything...

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey says Trump ban means the service has failed

No acknowledgement

For enabling 4 years of utter insanity. They chose profit and promotion over responsibility and accountability, even by only the standards of their own T&C's.

You can now pepper your Windows 10 desktop with Android apps... if you have a Samsung phone, that is

What? Why?

Why would I want Android apps displayed on a PC? What on earth does this help achieve? Especially if there's a long list of exceptions and work around's, it hardly seems worth the personal investment in comprehending a use case, never mind keeping on top of these exceptions as they inevitably change going forward. High effort, low reward.

America's democracy on the brink, Brexit looming, climate crashing... when better to get the first fast radio burst from our own galaxy?

Re:

Even a neutron star fails to be the densest thing in the news this week!

Run Windows on a Chromebook: All the details. Not so fast, home user...

The madness comes full circle

The browser became an operating system, and now an operating system becomes the browser.

Excel Hell: It's not just blame for pandemic pandemonium being spread between the sheets

Re: Relax...

Technically incompetent at every level?

Yes, your argument is very good, but typically the user of excel has an entirely different area of technical competence. You clearly have a technical competence for Bash scripts, and that's great, but the problem is the overlap of responsibilities and the management of resources, and probably not the technical competence of the original user.

Now Nvidia's monster GeForce RTX 3090 cards snaffled up by bots, scalpers – if only there had been a warning

Re: Hefty price

Oh not another one... "tHE hUmAn EyE caN oNLy seE 30 fPs"

Although I suppose maybe some people don't notice the difference, but I suffer from noticing motion judder on almost every camera pan, especially is there's moving text.

Re: About Time

I'd completely agree with that. And to add, even if you can get a 3080 right now you'd obviously get extra performance over a 1080ti, but you also consume significantly more wattage. TDP is up from 250W to >320W.

Unless you're using a 4K display, using high end VR, or you specifically need the RT or Tensor capabilities beyond gaming, I recommend sticking with the trusty Pascal cards for a while longer yet.

Ever found yourself praying to whatever deity runs Microsoft Teams? You're not alone

Typical Microsoft

They already use DAX as an acronym for the Data Analysis Expressions in Power BI, and now there's a new DAX with a completely different meaning.

I'll admit that you're not likely to get them confused, but come on, it's a bit of a lack of imagination isn't it?

I AM ERROR: Tired of chewing up your RAM? Razer tells gamers where to stick its special gum for the RGB crowd

Consumables

I think I'd rather eat their hardware.

The Honor MagicBook Pro looks nice, runs like a dream, and isn't too expensive either. What more could you want?

And the software?

Clutter free Windows 10 installation, or buckets of inexplicable (or possibly untrustworthy) Beijing bloat?

Digital pregnancy testing sticks turn out to have very analogue internals when it comes to getting results

Doomed

I'm sure I saw something about this pregnancy tester being modified to run Doom. Now that, is taking the piss!

You're stuck inside, gaming's getting you through, and you've $1,500 to burn. Check out Nvidia's latest GPUs

Yep, a little competition is great - even though we don't know how good that competition is going to be yet.

One thing that's a little disappointing is the relatively small memory on the 3080. There's a lot of people with 10 series cards (because they were so dominant for so long) that didn't upgrade to 20 series (because prices were too high), it would be slightly bitter to go from a 1080ti with 11GB to a 3080 with 10GB. Even if the silicon performance is markedly better, the limited VRAM might come back to haunt you sooner that you'd like - and it's an awfully big step up to the 24GB 3090. Lets hope that a more sensible 3080ti comes along some time, possibly along with a decent 3060 at a lower price point?

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it's a 56-year-old satellite burning up in the sky spotted by sharp school kids

Re: Image source

Clips like that are a powerful reminder of just how mind boggling fast these things are really going, it never fails to amaze me. Footage from orbit always gives a very serene impression that belies the devastating 17,000+ mph speed.

Apparently the kinetic energy of the ISS is approx 20% of the energy released by the Hiroshima bomb.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joule#Terajoule

As promised, Apple will now entertain suggestions from the hoi polloi on how it should run its App Store

Re: A larger share ?

I stand corrected, but the general gist remains.

Re: hoi polloi

I believe it's called a double tautology.

Re: A larger share ?

I don't have a major problem with the 30% rate in the app store, as the justification is that it enables the store to offer free content for users, and zero fees for developers. Developers can choose their own app prices, so the 30% can be factored in if they want.

I think the bigger issue is around in-app purchases, and the distinction of what these are. So if some poor mug wants to buy an upgrade within a game, they also pay the 30% for in-game purchases? I'm not sure whether this is good or bad, especially if the game is offered for free. Fundamentally, how is this different from the Amazon app, which is free, and allows you to buy things without paying an extra apple tax on everything? I'm sure there's a whole load of legal differentiation and technicalities here, and I'm not sure I want to spend any of my time having to understand it all - not unless someone's going to give ME an extra 30% to do so.

Facebook apologizes to users, businesses for Apple’s monstrous efforts to protect its customers' privacy

Re: Personalised ads actually make less money

1. I did intend to mean social networks in a broader sense.

2. Neo-liberalism; 7 minutes of Noam Chomsky can explain it better, but to quote "undermining mechanisms of social solidarity, mutual support, and popular engagement."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tBzSLu3MZ6I

Re: Personalised ads actually make less money

And that kind of proves a slightly tangential point. You're here, posting comments on an El Reg article - you're already likely to be part of a demographic that's responsive to things that are geeky and interesting.

There's no need for someone who wants to advertise things to you to have to engage with a company that whores so much user data, the answer was already obvious. Companies that want to buy advertising are drinking the cool-aid, and missing the point that targeting was already quite achievable.

Meanwhile Facebook are happy to sell false promises to advertisers and then double down on bulk selling user data; data which is unfortunately being used to actively corrupt democracy and advance neo-liberal agendas. Ironic really, given how social networks are generally supposed to empower individuals.

Re: Let's be clear here. It's *not* Facebooks data.

I guess in the early days you could perhaps argue that you did get something in return i.e. access to a load of banter and updates from people you know or knew. These days it's just a toxic and manipulated stream of adverts, desperate MLM spam, and biopics of narcissistic personal breakdowns. I do everything I reasonably can to avoid having anything to do with it, including feeding it any data.

The truth is, honest people need willpower to cheat, while cheaters need it to be honest

If it were possible to trust certain politicians even less...

then this kind of analysis shows it can always be worse than you think.

I'm sure everyone can think of a few example politicians who frequently 'strain plausibility'. I honestly believe that some of them have so little cognitive control that they don't have any realistic chance of stating truths or facts.

Um, almost the entire Scots Wikipedia was written by someone with no idea of the language – 10,000s of articles

Re: Wee radge bastard

I feel a staiheid rammy coming on about this

So... just 'Good' then? KFC pulls Finger Lickin' slogan while pandemic rumbles on

Re: You missed

or Knuckles, Feathers and Claws

Uncle Sam to blow millions on getting fusion power finally working – with the help of AI

F1

I've not looked in huge detail at the F1 analysis, but I think it's based on qualifying 'raw' speed, the main comparison being against teammates. I have my doubts about the accuracy and usefulness of the outcome.

Not all teammates are equal, but even if this is taken into account there will still be large areas of bias. Not all teams treat their drivers equally, not all cars are produced or specified equally (in the same team), some teams technical development direction will be specifically to suit their number 1 driver, and some drivers (those experienced and talented enough) will sacrifice their qualifying setup for better race pace. The list goes on I'm sure. It's as much a talking point generator than a meaningful analysis.

And even after all that, raw qualifying speed is only one part of being the best 'complete package' F1 driver. I've watched it for a long time, and I would put Hamilton right at the top of this list. It's a privilege to witness the levels of performance he has reached.

If Fairphone can support a 5-year-old handset, the other vendors could too. Right?

Re: oneplus is great

I always assumed battery damage was caused, or accelerated, by repeatedly drawing it down to low levels? Every day is a learning day I suppose.

Consumers aren’t being served by Android

The improvements are small increments, nothing revolutionary has really benefited general consumers for years. The vendors have happily set a market expectation for frequent replacement, most apps and games are stifled by in app purchase mechanics. Milked for hardware, and then milked for the software.

Sure, cameras have improved and processors are faster, but if consumer interests were genuinely being served we’d still have flagships with replaceable batteries and headphone jacks, and no forced Bixby buttons! If the most convincing reason for an upgrade is increasingly becoming ‘I’m no longer getting updates’ then something is terribly wrong with the entire market.

Smartwatches win the consumer tech sector for Q1 2020 as locked-down folk take up fight against corona-carbs

Yep

Working from home has definitely changed things, big time. It’s now trivially easy to pop out at lunchtime for a run or ride, whereas I wouldn’t have done before. I probably see more runners and cyclists than cars these days.

Machine learning helps geoboffins spot huge beds of hot rocks 1,000km across deep below Earth's surface

Re: My guess is..

Your right, it's dominated by gravity and the sheer mass. Momentum isn't the right expression.

However...

3.00E+19 kg of oceanic crust travelling at 3.17E-10 m/s has a momentum of 9,512,940,000 kg m/s

100,000 kg of jumbo travelling at 500mph (223.52 m/s) has a momentum of only 22,352,000 kg m/s

If you'd have said 425 jumbo jets travelling at speed, I may have believed you.

My guess is..

It's something to do with remnants of subducted oceanic crust. Once subduction begins, oceanic slabs become very dense, stripped of lighter material through partial melting. They also have a surprisingly large amount of momentum, and may sink all the way to the mantle/core boundary.

This site http://www.atlas-of-the-underworld.org/ has details of lots of named and identified slab remnants around the world, and the Hades Underworld Explorer even lets you produce a cross section of the mantle from tomography data, simply by drawing a line on the surface map. http://www.atlas-of-the-underworld.org/hades-underworld-explorer/.

Google and Parallels bring Windows apps to Chromebooks, in parallel with VMware and Citrix

'On the way to the cloud'

Presumably a cloudy future where literally everything everyone does is owned, controlled, processed and analysed by Google, by any chance? Gee thanks. Or you could interoperate this as a way to make Chromebooks marginally more useful and saleable, particularly to businesses that don't want to (or can't) drop dependence on MS Office and 'other legacy apps'.

There could potentially be some longer term performance benefits however... MS and Google has been pushing more and more use of browser based office applications, but as far as I'm aware they still process data (slowly and inefficiently) on the local client. You just can't open a stonkingly massive and complex Excel model in the online application. But if the file is already in the cloud (via Drive, One-Drive or SharePoint etc.) and the software interface is already in the browser, why not use much more massive cloud processing power behind the scenes, to deliver something more capable than the local hardware or native application? That seems to be the missing link, unless I'm misunderstanding something?

Tens of millions of Internet-of-Things, network-connected gizmos at risk of remote hijacking? Computer, engage shocked mode

But it likely won't get junked until the primary purpose fails, because how would 'your average user' know anything about the security holes? Even if their security had been compromised, they still wouldn't be aware how.

Meatspace meetup Web Summit reckons you'll be ready to revisit the world in November

It'll be alright

I'm pretty sure web developers are ardently subjected to social distance much of the time, they've got a fairly low baseline transmission risk...

Meet the dog that's all byte and no bark: Boston Dynamics touts robo-pooch Spot with $75k-a-pop price tag

Re: A less friendly-looking version of Spot was featured ...

Anton Chigurh* was so ahead of his time.

*Javier Bardem in No Country from Old Men, with his captive bolt gun

Re: So.....

Depends whose perimeter you want to patrol?

Now you've done it: Cyber attack targeted Australian brewery 'n' dairy biz Lion

Also deals in milk as well as alcohol

Was it those pesky white russian hackers again?