Posts by Michael Strorm

User demanded a ‘wireless’ computer and was outraged when its battery died

I was going to buy one of those, but I couldn't figure out why it came with a built-in hair dryer.

Then I realised it was a Babyliss laptop.

Re: Did you think it had a nuclear battery ...

"Do not dispose of with normal household waste".

Lazy git ignores warning and chucks it in the bin anyway.

Except instead of it causing a fire like it would with a lithium battery, everyone else has the same idea, the batteries exceed critical mass and a nuclear explosion destroys the bin lorry and wipes out the neighbourhood within a one mile radius.

UK reheats Edinburgh supercomputer plan sans exascale chops

Re: Why Edinburgh?

Why not?

It's meant to be part of UK infrastructure, after all, not specifically England's (nor the rUK's).

We keep getting told by unionist politicians that Scotland enjoys the claimed benefits of being a part of the United Kingdom. You're saying that it shouldn't?

So long as Scotland remains a part of the UK, that's how it's supposed to work, unless and until either Scotland votes for independence *or* the majority of people in England and elsewhere vote to end the union.

But if you want to make a fuss about it, it's not like Westminster had a problem locating the UK's nuclear subs up here, is it? I'm sure that had nothing to do with the fact that even a major retaliatory strike on them would be safely far from any significantly-populated regions of England.

Since you want your share, what's the nearest site to Manchester that would be practical to move them to?

[sic]

> Also, I guess Glascow (birthplace of the Glascow Haskell Compiler) is expected to use the Archers (both in Scotland) ...

I'm pretty sure that's *not* how you spell "Glass cow".

Lovely thumbnail of Edinburgh Castle beside the front page link, I'm sure. But that has nothing to do with the University of Edinburgh- i.e. where the computer will be built- any more than a picture of the Tower of London would have anything to do with University College London if they'd chosen to build it there.

Google outfoxed by crafty squatters in $1B London HQ's rooftop garden

Re: Fox's or Fox'es?

Perhaps JWLong already knows that, but they're one of those thickos that think Hitler came from Australia?

Ex-NASA Admin pick blames Musk ties for pulled nomination

Note: Pooche died on the way back to his home planet

> "We don't have a craft that could do it, and building one will be hideously expensive. But worse, the radiation exposure on the trip would be extremely high."

I have the ideal solution.

Someone should convince Elon to (a) do it at his own expense and (b) that since he's the one paying, he should get to go there first.

I mean, even if he's heard of the risk of cosmic radiation and solar flares, his actual "scientific" knowledge seems to come from goofy sci-fi space operas, so he probably thinks they'd give him super powers instead of frying his DNA.

That'd be what *anyone* would call a win-win!

Datacenters have a public image problem, industry confesses to The Reg

Exactly. They're relying on the public being ignorant and assuming that "Ooh, big shiny tech thing means lots of big shiny tech jobs for people working there". Missing the fact that most of the high-quality, high-tech jobs they're likely to generate will be remote with surprisingly few local roles.

I've said before that your average data centre needs two in-person employees- a security guard and a dog. The dog being there to bite the guard if he attempts to fiddle with any of the computers. (*)

This is obviously a joke, but only a partial exaggeration. Data centres offer few benefits to the local areas in which they're placed, relative to the significant disruption and demands they place on the infrastructure.

It's easy to talk about NIMBYism, but why the fuck *should* they be expected to want a massive, ugly and disruptive monstrosity in their back garden when they're getting little in return and the people reaping most of the benefits are several hundred miles away?

And when it comes to data centres built specifically to serve big business' greedy, self-serving attempt to win the AI race with endless self-aggrandising promises, it's not clear that even *those* "benefits" exist.

Regular data centres are a shitty deal for local communities and AI data centres are worse.

(*) Yes, I did indeed rip this off an older joke about aeroplanes.

X's new 'encrypted' XChat feature seems no more secure than the failure that came before it

Re: Coded Truth...

I thought taking off and nuking the site from orbit was the only way to be sure?

Re: I wonder

> "he will pivot to Mars and sod off in that direction"

Note: Elon died on the way to his new home planet.

Microsoft's plain text editor gets fancy as Notepad gains formatting options

Re: And next...

You said that as a joke, so you obviously haven't heard... they *do* want to add AI to Notepad.

https://www.theregister.com/2025/05/23/microsoft_ai_notepad/.

This, unfortunately, is very much *not* a joke.

Re: Everything is old is new is old is new again

In that case, those models are sold alongside the "original" Fiat 500 (*) and are more spin-offs than successors. Or rather, an obvious attempt by Fiat, a company always best-known for small cars- and never as successful or influential with larger models- to leverage the success of the 500 to sell larger vehicles.

Even if that makes a mockery of any indirect connection their name suggests to the original (and genuinely tiny by modern standards) Fiat 500. (**)

(*) Yes, I know that the "Fiat 500" launched in the 2000s wasn't even the "original" Fiat 500, but you know what I mean.

(**) Yes, I know that one's not even the original either and there was a still earlier Fiat 500. But the better-known 50s version is the one the 2000s version was styled after. And even the "regular" new 500 is significantly larger than its inspiration.

Re: Everything is old is new is old is new again

> "In the 1980s, the Honda Civic was the generic term for a small and cheap car. [..] In the 1990s, both Civic and Accord grew, and by the early 2000s, the Civic was now larger than the Accord had been in 1980. And so, Honda introduced [the Fit] which was closer to the size of the 1980s Civic."

It's not just Honda. This observation has been made regarding car models/brands in general, i.e. that they tend to grow larger with each new generation.

IIRC it's because people are often conservative and loyal to what they're already happy with and- assuming they have no problems with their current car- will be happy to replace it with the "same" "model". But also that those same people tend to want, and be happy with, slightly larger cars as time goes on and they get older. So they drag the brand/model in that direction.

And if anyone does need a *genuinely* small and cheap car, they're (possibly) more likely to be younger first-time-buyers- in the position our older customers above were in a few decades prior- with less badge-attachment and more likely to buy the "Fit" instead of the now-larger "Civic". (And if Honda they see the "Fit" has ended up in the same boat as the "Civic" and they're losing out on sales, they can always release another small model).

Re: Wordpad

"Feature creep".

Though admittedly, if feature creep was going to have happened to Notepad at all, you'd expect it to have already happened decades ago.

VodafoneThree's a crowd – now comes the hard bit

Re: Quality of service

It's almost as if the cathedrals are to blame for those cities' poor phone reception and mass-produced cheddar.

Re: Were all the good names taken?

Meant to also say that the name "3"/"Three" having been chosen twenty years back to draw attention to the fact they were a 3G network might count against them now that it's a dated anachronism.

Then again, maybe nowadays it's one of those names that's so well-established that people forget (and don't think about) its origins, and that really doesn't matter anyway.

Re: Were all the good names taken?

I'm guessing you mean "Three" (née "3") rather than "Vodafone"?

I'd already been about to say that I suspected they'd do the usual thing that happens with double-barreled corporate merger names like that, i.e. ditching one of the two halves a year or two down the line and reverting to the original name of the other company, i.e. "Vodafone". (Then again, this isn't a merger of the parent companies themselves, just their UK networks).

But now that I think about it, I'm not sure that they wouldn't keep the "Three" bit instead due to better recognition. Even though I checked and was surprised to find they still have a larger market share than Three (20% versus 15%) you just never seem to hear or see the "Vodafone" name these days.

It feels like one of those brands that were important during the 90s- and you're familiar with it because of that- but where part of your brain wants to file it in the "big in their day but got bought out and disappeared 15-to-20 years ago" category like Cellnet.

On the other hand, not sure how the ownership of the Vodafone and Three brands would affect that decision. Ditto the fact that apparently Vodafone (the parent company) will own 51% of the merged network and Three 49%.

Regardless, I can't see them using VodafoneThree as a retail brand. I suspect they'll continue using both separately for at least some time, possibly ditching one later.

Microsoft patches the patch that put Windows 11 in a coma

> "Perhaps a class action lawsuit to the effect that unauthorised changes to computer systems is illegal."

I can guess- and in truth assume with complete confidence- that there's going to be something *somewhere* in that 379 page EULA you "accepted" (but didn't read) which says you authorise MS to make any changes they "need" or want to your computer.

It's most likely near the bit covering ownership of your firstborn.

Windows in a coma, I know, I know...

...it's serious.

AROS turns any PC into an Amiga with USB-bootable distro

> "Btw. It's not AROS Research Operating System but Amiga Research Operating System :-)"

It was "Amiga Research Operating System" originally, and they changed it because they didn't have the rights to the Amiga trademark.

Re: Incredible

Can't edit my post any more, but here's a link to a comment I made where I mention the hobbyist/enthusiast community and complain about the fact that the Amiga was never given the credit or use it deserved as a serious machine.

But yeah, I'm an ignorant gamer who didn't know any of that. Sure.

Re: Incredible

"Did you ever use workbench? Did you make anything on your Amiga or did you just play games on it?"

I *wrote* games on it, albeit not very good ones. I used it for chip music and MIDI. I used it for graphics. I wrote my sixth-year English dissertation and other things on it. Yes, I played games on it too.

I was still using it up until I got a boring PC in 1998 and I'm well aware of the Amiga's serious uses and the hobbyist community.

You can shoot the messenger because you didn't like what I said, but it doesn't change the fact that by mid-1994 the Amiga was already in slow commercial decline as far as the mainstream went.

"How is that any argument? By mid-1994 Commodore had gone bankrupt."

Stop being a fucking pedant. I was referring to the point at which Commodore went bankrupt, which Wikipedia states was May 1994.

"Did you get a hard drive for it? [..] I am asking because you seem to be unaware of the community around the brand, and the A500+ was a version of the Amiga that gamers bought."

I'd just turned sixteen, and I'm not from a rich family. The A500+ was the only model I could remotely afford and I sure as hell wouldn't have had the money for a hard drive *or* a higher end system at that point. (Commodore went bankrupt not long after I was considering upgrading to an A1200 with built-in HDD).

Anyway, what I'm saying is... f*** you, you patronising, elitist, would-be-gatekeeping asshole.

I knew that there were Doom clones on the Amiga. Circa 1995-6 I had a coverdisk demo of a Doom clone that ran on the A500. (I checked a bit and I'm almost certain it was Citadel).

I remember it ran in a window in the middle of the screen at a barely-playable frame rate (something the video confirms). It was still kind of impressive that they got anything resembling Doom to run on the A500, but only in the "dancing bear" sense (i.e. it's not that it does it well, it's that it does it at all).

Anyway, when I clicked on your link I was initially extremely impressed but wondering how- even with the benefit of 30 years to have developed countless optimised coding tricks- they got it running *quite* so fast on a stock A500.

Then I came back here, noticed the noticed the second paragraph in your comment, checked the video and noticed it was running with a 28 MHz accelerator. Nice and all that, but not how it would have appeared to most people with a stock A500 or A500+ back in the day (even with the Fast RAM expansion it requires, which most people didn't have).

I suspect it would have played faster than Citadel even at the stock 7 MHz (which ironically would have impressed me more).

> "I was just flat broke all through until 1993. I spent that entire time considering each Atari ST variant that came available, but I could never afford anything."

You probably didn't miss much. I'd bought an ST in early 1991 because I hadn't quite enough money for an Amiga at that point.

I soon regretted that because, aside from not being as good, the ST was already in noticeable decline by 1991. (The ST had been the machine of choice a few years prior, but was quickly eclipsed after the Amiga 500's price fell to £399).

I sold it within the year and got the machine I'd *really* wanted in the first place- i.e. an Amiga- anyway.

> "Doom on PlayStation, with a controller, was WAY better than on the 486 mega machines of the era."

Well, it probably should have. The PlayStation was designed from scratch as a console with hardware capable of "proper" 3D, so it should have been able to render Doom's restricted/pseudo-3D environment without any problem. (And, to be fair, Doom would already have been a couple of years old by that point).

Re: Incredible

I put it that way to emphasise the point that it was at pretty much that *exact* moment- i.e. when I read the article- that I *knew* they'd blown any final chance the Amiga had of recovery and that it was over.

It wasn't even a rival to the PC/DOS/Windows, OS/2 or the Mac by then and- in reality- it never was.

Of course, it should have been and it *could* have been. The Amiga was miles ahead in terms of hardware and OS compared to the PC (which even when new was dragged down by its already-dated 1970s roots in both respects and got worse as they had to kludgeily work their way round the limitations of that original design).

But the Amiga was never well-marketed and never got the respect or use it should have been due for its innnovations. I don't think it ever saw much professional adoption outside the video/graphics production niche.

Even in its heyday it was more popular with enthusiasts and mainly- sorry to say it, but it's true- with games players. And when the latter moved on to the PC and their younger siblings bought Mega Drives and SNESs instead, that's what killed it.

Re: Incredible

"How could a company with products that was coveted by so many people go bankrupt?"

While the Amiga was already in noticeable decline by mid-1994, I think that Commodore's bankruptcy was significantly hastened both by dubious financial practices and by mismanagement.

"Everyone [in Europe] still wanted to buy Amigas and the community around the Amiga was very healthy."

That would definitely have been true circa the late 80s and early 90s when the Amiga was at its most popular. (*) But I don't think it was quite so true by mid-1994.

I bought my A500+ in late 1991. With hindsight, I always got the impression that I'd bought it *just* when the Amiga's popularity had reached its peak- something that sales figures broadly confirm- and was about to go into decline.

And honestly, once that decline- due to ever cheaper and more powerful PCs and consoles (Mega Drive and later SNES) happened, it seemed to happen fast. By late 1992, interest at my school had already shifted towards the PC. (**) Then Doom came out in late 1993 and definitively moved gaming towards the PC.

The CD32 was selling okay as a short-term cash cow (even if it would have been decimated by the PlayStation regardless). But while the Amiga wasn't completely dead by mid-1994, it was rapidly becoming yesterday's news, and...

"We all thought that the Amiga product would be sold to someone that could carry on the legacy."

I thought that too. With hindsight, I suspect that the Amiga was already fatally doomed by Commodore's bankruptcy, if not the long delay that followed it.

But at the time there still seemed to be a chance.

So, ironically, I held out hope *until* we got the news we'd been waiting for over a year later- Escom had acquired the rights and were explaining their plans. They were going to restart manufacture of the A1200... with virtually the same, out-of-date, almost-three-year-old spec.

And they were going to charge £100 *more* for it than it had been selling for before Commodore's bankruptcy over a year prior. (***)

And *that's* when I knew the Amiga was over.

---

(*) Most likely due to the price reduction of the A500 from £499 to £399- or equivalent- in late 1988.

(**) IMHO the fiasco of the A600 launch in mid-1992 didn't help and was arguably the "jump the shark" point where the Amiga was toppled from its throne.

(***) To be fair, Escom argued that they *had* to charge this much to cover the costs of acquisition and restarting manufacturing. That may have been true, but in a market that had already lost interest in the Amiga, *no-one* except diehard fans was going to pay that much for yesterday's computer.

Re: I have a LOT of Amiga games

> "AROS, in my view, is even more niche than emulation since it's much more "just" the Amiga OS experience brought up to date for those who really want that type of OS to use and work with."

Thanks- that confirms my original impression that it's (broadly) aimed at the same niche market of diehard AmigaOS enthusiasts as the "official" PowerPC-based AmigaOS 4.

That being the case, it raises the question as to how much benefit forking out for the latter brings you over that beyond its lineage and being the "officially"-endorsed/licensed "Amiga" from whoever owns the IP and trademark?

That and the fact you're restricted to running it on their proprietary, nonstandard architecture Power-PC-based hardware which- from what I've heard- is both massively underpowered and overpriced by modern standards. I understand that the main motivation for this is less technical- since it's still not compatible with the classic Amiga hardware- so much as a contrivance to fund the development of AmigaOS.

However, it all sounds annoyingly restrictive in the face of a rival that doesn't have that lock-in and lets you take advantage of x86 hardware that's cheap yet orders of magnitude more powerful than it was in the Amiga's heyday.

(And yes, like the PC itself, like DOS and Windows, the x86 architecture was considered unwieldy and kludgey by Amiga owners back then. And arguably it still is even if it's just a wrapper around a sort-of-RISC core nowadays, but it gets you a lot of bang for your buck.)

NiCd battery leakage will fsck up your A500/A500+ if it hasn't already done so...

If you- or anyone else- still have an A500 Plus, which has the onboard clock's NiCd battery backup soldered onto the main board, I'd recommend you that have that removed ASAP.

I found out that mine had leaked the better part of a decade ago and had damaged the main board to the point it doesn't boot.

Apparently they're repairable because it's only a single-layer board, but that's certainly beyond my skills- I removed the battery and cleaned the residue and corrosion off the board to reduce the chance of further damage and left it like that.

The original A500 didn't have an RTC backup battery built in like that, but it was a common inclusion on many "trapdoor" RAM expansions. There's a better chance of surviving that if the leakage doesn't get onto the main board, but I'd still remove the battery and/or RAM expansion to be on the safe side.

Re: I have a LOT of Amiga games

I had an Amiga back in the day, but I never got much into Amiga emulation, so apologies for my lack of familiarity with this, but...

Do you mean running them under the (optional) integrated support for m68k-based AmigaOS programs I was referring to above, which apparently uses a version of UAE called Janus-UAE?

Or do you mean simply running the regular version of "WinUAE" under AROS in a similar manner to how one would run it under Windows, i.e. running a separate but "full" Classic 68K Amiga emulator *within* AROS? (And isn't "WinUAE" the Windows port anyway?)

And if the latter, is there any benefit to running *that* emulator under AROS rather than another OS if you simply want to play Lotus 2 and you aren't interested in AROS for its own sake?

Re: I have a LOT of Amiga games

If I understand correctly, AROS seems first and foremost to be intended as a workalike/clone and updated version of the Amiga OS, rather than a carbon-copy emulation of the original hardware.

In this sense, it's probably closer to later versions of the "official" AmigaOS- aimed at the niche enthusiast market and designed to run on proprietary PowerPC-based systems that aren't binary/hardware compatible with the classic Amigas- than nostalgia-focused emulator systems like "The A500 Mini".

Anyway, according to Wikipedia, AROS *is* directly binary compatible with AmigaOS binaries, but only when run on m68k-based hardware. It also, apparently, supports built-in emulation to allow AmigaOS binaries (still, presumably, those compiled for m68k) to be run under different architectures.

However, the vast majority of classic Amiga games boot and "hit the hardware" directly, bypassing the OS, so I'm not sure how well they'd work with this.

I'm also not sure that ever was the intention. I suspect that if you simply want to load up and play Lotus 2 or whatever, there are probably more suitable options, like the aforementioned A500 Mini or PC-based alternatives.

(I also suspect that the vast majority of games you would like to run will already have been transferred to emulator-compatible formats and available online via, er, unofficial means!)

Ex-Meta exec: Copyright consent obligation = end of AI biz

Re: Book publishers...

The leeches will, I suspect, be given the legal right to ignore anything like that if necessary.

Re: would destroy the AI industry overnight

Clegg was the one who was Wallace off of Wallace and Grommit.

> "lying tory bastards and stupid unentitled socialists dickheads"

"Socialists"? Not a chance. Whatever the current government is, it's not socialist.

I've no idea what Labour under Starmer expect us to *think* they believe in or stand for- let alone what he actually believes in private or what actually drives him and his colleagues. So we can only judge them by what they say and do and whatever they are, it's clear after a year in power that they aren't "socialist" or even left of centre. (*)

This was the impression I got before the election. I thought my opinion of them as "Red Tories" was as low as it could get. I never imagined they'd be not just as bad as that, but worse, not even Toryism wearing a pretend-socialist disguise, but as "beige Tories"- a bland, stifling continuation of Tory policies with no hint of ideology behind it.

They're Tories in all but name, or rather, a replacement for what the actual Tories would have been before *they* lurched even further to the right.

If Labour want to let AI companies build their businesses on stolen intellectual property and creative works, it's not because they're "socialist", it's because they're either in bed with the AI business and/or that they're besotted with the delusional idea that AI will be the magic solution that restores growth and willing to sacrifice everyone in the creative industries along the way.

(*) Unless one is inclined to accept the Overton window having been dragged to the right almost continuously for over forty years, along with what constitutes the "centre" and consider Labour "left wing" because- by that definition- they're always so.

Europe warns giant e-tailer to stop cheating consumers or face its wrath

Scamazon

Yeah, it's funny how Amazon is slow and seemingly reluctant to address numerous exploitable loopholes like that along with other dubious tactics and the sale of dubious if not downright illegal goods from third-party sellers they happen to make a lot of money from.

Beyond a certain point that type of inaction crosses into being clearly complicit- regardless of their claims to be merely a "marketplace"- and Amazon crossed it years ago.

Amazon today is pretty much the antithesis of the reliable, clean and trustworthy experience I had when I first used them in the late 1990s.

They didn't go downhill straightaway when they introduced Marketplace, but at some point they clearly realised there was more money to be made by not just allowing the more dubious sellers to use such tactics, but in actively aiding them (e.g. removing critical reviews pointing out unreliable and/or fake products) and making it harder to separate them out. They've degraded the search experience to the extent it's almost unusable- it's clear that Amazon will show you what suits *them* first and foremost, regardless of what you want, hoping that you give in and choose that.

As someone said in the late 2010s, "Amazon is not the same company they were 10 years ago. You can feel the skeeviness is creeping in."

That was bordering on charitable even then, and we're now so far down that road that "skeeviness" is practically Amazon's defining characteristic.

Some signs of AI model collapse begin to reveal themselves

Re: Entropy

You mean that after it gets shittier, it gets shittierier, then shittierierier, then shittierierierier.....?

Re: "Ignorance is strength"

It's not an avatar (something that The Register forums don't support), it's one of the icons you can choose on a per-post basis.

Re: "an article I read on Litvenyenko"

> "I'm not sure there's any sort of argument to be had about spelling unless you are actually an expert in Russio-Cyrillic to English translation"

I take your point, but I wasn't the one who was arguing whether or not it was the correct transliteration and/or spelling in the first place. And I'm sure even you would draw the line if it was rendered as "Throatwarbler Mangrove". :-)

Re: "an article I read on Litvenyenko"

Google *did* come up with a "did you mean" when I entered "Litvenyenko". Even so I'd have assumed it would also done the same when Cookiecutter did their original search- i.e. drawn their attention to the misspelling- so it either didn't do so in that case, or it did so and there was another reason their search came up blank. (Including the possibility I already mentioned).

Re: Human Nature

I can't really disagree with anything you said, but to be fair and play devil's advocate here...

> "As for search, I've been looking for an article I read on Litvenyenko for MONTHS now [..] Google is useless"

...is it possible that the article has been taken offline or made no longer publicly-accessible (e.g. shoved behind a paywall) at some stage and has been de-indexed by Google for that reason?

Or then again, it could well be Google just being shit as usual.

Builder.ai coded itself into a corner – now it's bankrupt

Re: Cold Hard Calculation

The Matrix was a great film but, yeah, that part was crap.

I heard somewhere that early versions of the script had humans being held captive to exploit their brains' processing/computing power, but the powers that be thought this would be too complicated for people to understand and changed it.

However, looking it up just now, I find some people disputing that this was ever the case.

I suppose one could say that the whole thing proved to be...

...a mechanical turkey.

Lenovo thought it could surf geopolitics, until Trump's sudden tariff changes

Re: Move production to the US…

If nothing else, you're not going to build a plant in the US for tens or hundreds of millions- or in the case of semiconductors, several billion- on the basis of an economic policy and forecast that a capricious US government can- and will- change overnight.

Re: It would have worked fine for Amazon

> "I think a lot of times they figure if they don't look at the tag they'll just assume it is American."

Just not caring or intentionally sticking their heads in the sand so they have an "excuse"- for themselves as much as anyone else- that they didn't know they were buying imported goods?

As I said, they're hypocrites who cave when it comes to putting their money where their mouth is, they just don't like to be reminded of that.

> "That town is basically that factory, if they end up closing that plant it'll take the town down with it."

Who did the town vote for in last year's election?

Re: It would have worked fine for Amazon

> "Amazon was just afraid of a MAGA boycott, though I'm sure not where the boycotters would be able to go. The only brick and mortar places to buy in rural MAGAland is Walmart and Dollar General, which also import most of their stuff from China."

They'd have gone to those places anyway, because they're hypocrites, they just don't like their attention being drawn to that fact.

They mouth off endlessly about buying American and bringing manufacturing back. But when push comes to shove and it's time to put their money where their mouth is, they almost always buy the cheaper Chinese-built stuff anyway. (*)

They wouldn't have been upset because Amazon was importing stuff from China. They'd have been upset that they weren't being pandered to via the same excuses and backdoor tactics to cover the cost of the tariffs and avoid upsetting their customers by obscuring the fact that the only people responsible for all this were themselves and the failed businessman they'd made their god.

(Not- as other people have noted- that, even ignoring that, Amazon would actually have signed off regardless on what was only ever likely an employee proposal, purely because it would have given away their cost prices).

(*) This, among other reasons, is why it was always obvious that Trump was going to cave on the Chinese tariffs that would have cut his weak-willed followers off from the stream of cheap imports they were addicted to.

Virgin Media O2 patches hole that let callers snoop on your coordinates

If they've reversed their decision on this...

...does that make it a VoLTE-face?

Automatic UK-to-US English converter produced amazing mistakes by the vanload

Re: Sinister buttocks

You sure it wasn't a reference to the "Left Behind" franchise of books and films aimed at right-wing evangelical Christian American types (*), which apparently involves those "left behind" after the rapture?

I always thought they should do a sequel to that called "Right Behind: The Other Buttock".

(*) But I repeat myself... most likely more than once.

How sticky notes saved 'the single biggest digital program in the world'

Re: "assumptions don't turn out to be what humans look like when you hit them"

> "Money trickles UPWARDS"

Bingo.

"The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover didn’t know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night, anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow's hands."

- Will Rogers

Fired US govt workers, Uncle Xi wants you! – to apply for this fake consulting gig

Re: Not original

> "[Japanese company] would employ some candidates even if there wasn't an immediate need for them. The rationale was logical -- it was about depriving competitors assets"

Microsoft has *long* been known for luring away talented, high-end researchers with very high salaries, sending them to work in their labs, having them churn out lots of interesting stuff... and ignoring it in favour of another iteration of their formula cash cow.

It's open to question whether they were ever *really* interested in that research and genuinely wanted to innovate (even if that fell victim to internal politics and divisions protecting their existing fiefdoms).

Or whether it was *always* simply a conscious and deliberate attempt to remove them as the threat they might have represented to the MS-favouring status quo if working for someone else, while not *actually* being interested in what they did?