Posts by Jason Bloomberg

Europe completes first phase of silicon independence project

Re: Is this an EU or Europe thing ?

I suspect most Brexiters would be fine joining an EU CPU initiative. It's not exactly a 'red flag' hot topic that anyone is likely to have heard drunks in Wetherspoons uttering "dey tooook oour silicons!"

All covered by "Bloody EU".

It's a spectrum - there are a few "I didn't like how it was going but I'm happy to trade with them, work with them" but a whole lot more with an "It's evil! We must have nothing to do with them" perspective.

There's no value in reasoning with those who believe Farage ought to be, not just knighted, but made a saint, that the UK's future is as the 51st State with a Trumpian lording over us.

The real problem is we have a government which seems beholden to such voters, is too afraid to upset them lest they lose power.

Want to buy your own piece of the Pi? No 'urgency' says Upton of the listing rumours

But I thought...

https://www.theregister.com/2021/09/21/raspberry_pis_trading_arm_snags

"The trading arm of the Raspberry Pi Foundation has received a £33m investment - putting paid to rumours that the company was looking to float on the stock exchange as a means of funding growth."

Apparently not :)

BOFH: What if International Bad Actors designed the vaccine to make us watch more Steven Seagal movies?

Re: circular history

Nanobots are mostly found in processed meat. Everyone who hasn't been vegan since 1980 is already screwed.

Remember Mad Cow Disease? Early version nanobots were incompatible with bovine brains; kaboom!

The ideal sat-nav is one that stops the car, winds down the window, and asks directions

Re: Rallying cries!

Note for anyone who's never driven in Angus: the roads are routinely twisty, and if you see a sign indicating a bend ahead, they really, really mean it! (see selected icon)

Unlike Norfolk where I was belting along some road, ignoring bend signs, because they really didn't merit any. Then I rounded the bend which didn't have a sign but really should have.

"Sphincter muscles work" was the best positive I could take away from that experience.

Lawsuit accusing Robinhood and Citadel Securities of colluding to stop GameStop shares from skyrocketing thrown out by judge

Re: But RobinHood did block buying Gamestop

With no good reason

I would say stopping those who wanted to exploit suckers would be reason enough.

It seemed to me those who wanted to exploit the suckers were the ones encouraging gullible people to buy the stock, hoping to leave them carrying the can when it all imploded.

Maybe that's Evil Capitalism 101 but it didn't seem right to me. It feels rather karmic that those hoping to shaft others got shafted themselves.

Netflix shows South Korea a rerun of 'We Won't Pay Your Telcos For Bandwidth'

Re: Open Connect

Why would Netflix offer to supply and install it for "free"?

Presumably to mitigate the sort of thing which is happening in SK, where an ISP asserts the content provider and their subscribers are imposing undue costs upon them.

It could even be taken as an indication that Netflix are aware of the adverse consequences of what they do.

But it's not as simple as one side is to blame the other being blameless.

Take an analogy of a government deciding to give everyone who commutes to work free cash, where the infrastructure for commuting isn't suitable for what is being encouraged. The infrastructure guys will take a beating, be blamed for not being adequate, but they did not create the situation they find themselves in.

Or, perhaps, people being forced into having electric vehicles without enough capacity to charge them.

Remember when you thought fax machines were dead-matter teleporters? Ah, just me, then

"Ever-thickening blanket of bafflement"

One of the advantages of reaching A Certain Age (TM) is you can ask "what's an email address?" with a straight face and have those trying to add it to their spam list believe you.

Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W: Nippy stocking filler for the nerd in your life – if you can get one

Re: Bloody BBC

If the BBC had backed the Raspberry Pi they would have been sued by every other business they weren't backing, would have faced a huge backlash from the anti-BBC sector who don't believe any BBC money should be going in the direction of commerical organisations.

IKEA: Cameras were hidden in the ceiling above warehouse toilets for 'health and safety'

Re: Disgusting!!

Where I once worked there was a notice in the toilet insisting "please leave this room how you would expect to find it" -- maybe they were just complying?

Great reset? More like Fake Reset: Leaders need a reality check if they think their best staff will give up hybrid work

Re: It Depends…

one thing the management said, which makes sense is, the production workers feel snubbed, because they don't get the opportunity to work from home. If you have half the workforce forced to work on site and the other half is "sitting on the sofa, watching Netflix", you are going to get resentment.

It is up to management to ensure there isn't that resentment, that such nonsense isn't allowed to tear the company apart.

I know of a company where the resentment is flowing the other way, because that company is paying workers a bonus for merely turning up at the office.

We are all having to find our feet in this new era and there will be issues we need to resolve, concerns which need to be addressed. But it's not beyond wit and wisdom to do that. Those who do will succeed, those who can't or won't will struggle.

Re: Flexibility is key.

if you earn an enhanced salary for working in e.g. central London but no longer wish to travel everyday and incur expense, your employer might be looking at that right now... salary cut anyone?

I have no problem in taking pay cuts when they leave me no worse off. Losing the money I would spend on commuting isn't an actual loss. Saving commuting time makes it a win for me.

I have also taken pay cuts to do less work. There's more to life than salary.

A speech recognition app goes into a bar. Speak up if you’ve heard it already

Aroogah, Aroogah, Aroogah!

My speciality is kicking open the nearest fire exit as soon as the fire alarm goes off in an office, supermarket or venue.

Most people don't realise how quickly fire and smoke can spread and I have no intention of being killed in the crush when they do find out. I'm not going to make any apologies for my survival instinct.

What's best, when it is an unannounced alarm test, that crashing through a fire exit often sets the alarms off for real and, if there are 'break this' security protections, they have to be replaced. Causing inconvenience for them is an equitable price for the inconvenience they caused me in not warning it was just a test.

And it's hard to beat the enjoyment of a row with some management wanker or security knob insisting the fire exit shouldn't have been used and threatening to call the police over 'criminal damage' when it does happen.

Apple is about to start scanning iPhone users' devices for banned content, professor warns

Re: As bad as the crime is

Don't worry - If you have done nothing wrong you have nothing to fear.

The bad part is that with my method, any human looking at where the image is located (the web cache) would be acutely aware that this was pushed to the device without the user's knowledge

That's where I hide my dodgy stuff

Just kidding but any prosecutor worth their salt will be arguing that's what defendants do in order to gain plausible deniability of their crime, hoping to put their crime beyond reasonable doubt.

If you are using an 'I didn't put it there' defence in court then it obviously hasn't convinced prosecutors and there's no guarantee it will convince a judge or jury.

Biden to sign exec order calling for right-to-repair rules for farmers, maybe rest of us

Re: Leftists

And just wait until Right to Repair allows terrorists to turn tractors and other products into Lean Mean Death Machines.

Gov.UK vows to chop red tape in the digital sector. What could possibly go wrong?

"only regulate when absolutely necessary"

That always scares the shit out of me knowing they have a more relaxed definition of "absolutely necessary" than I do.

After all it's not "absolutely necessary" to protect lives when prepared to accept avoidable deaths.

It is a race to the bottom and Johnson is determined we will win it.

Audacity users stick the knife – and fork – in to strip audio editor of unwanted features

Icbina

"I can't believe it's not Audacity".

US Supreme Court rules teens cussing out schools on social media is protected speech

And fuck the snitches

And all the other Puritanical Snowflakes.

Whatever you've been doing during lockdown, you better stop it right now

"Humans go nutso when left on their own"

Not all of us. Due to not going nutso I have plenty of space left in my garden for more dead bodies.

UK tells UN that nation-states should retaliate against cyber badness with no warning

Battle-Ready Brexit Britain

Ever since Brexit it seems the UK has been shifting towards an ever more conflict-ready posture.

My fear is any pretext will do and will be used to get Johnson his desired Churchill Moment.

Given his record for over-promising and under-delivering I expect we might all be speaking Chinese, Russian or French by the end of the decade. If any of us are still around.

Attack of the cryptidiots: One wants Bitcoin-flush hard drive he threw out in 2013 back, the other lost USB stick password

Re: Don't ever write down your password on a piece of paper

While you are at it, post it online so it will be there forever and ever.

Covfefe

Two wrongs don't make a right: They make a successful project sign-off

Zeros and Heroes

I have to confess I have never known what the rules are for the pluralizationalism (*) of words ending in "o".

(*) Have at it you Grammar Nazis of the Commentariat - It's my wilfully given gift for 2021.

What can the 1944 OSS manual teach us before we all return to sabotage the office?

Brlliant

May I be first to say, on this 1st of Johnson 0001, "Happy New Year". We should see how well it's going by the 1st of Farage.

Brexit trade deal advises governments to use Netscape Communicator and SHA-1. Why? It's all in the DNA

Re: 20 year old tech...

It's unlikely that they will diverge.

But how is Boris and his government going to deliver these supposed "opportunities" if they don't?

I fear this is a deal which will soon become no deal.

UK on track to miss even its slashed full-fibre gigabit coverage goals, warn MPs

Johnson's career

Can best be summed up as "over-promising and under-delivering".

He does both with great panache and a cheery smile which, I imagine, is why the vacuous love him.

The one with Cyndi Lauper's "Time after Time" CD in the pocket.

Atlantic City auctions off chance to hit Big Red Button and make grotesque Trump Plaza casino go boom

Re: The possibilities are ...

IWON2020

How to leak data via Wi-Fi when there's no Wi-Fi chip: Boffin turns memory bus into covert data transmitter

Re: Ever notice ...

Every time you see a headline about getting data out of a computer in some seemingly insane way, you can pretty much guarantee Bu-Gurion University is involved.

I knew it would be them before I even read the article. Pretty much one-trick ponies but it gets them a regular supply of free publicity.

Up yours, Europe! Our 100% prime British broadband is cheaper than yours... but also slower and a bit of a rip-off

Value for money

I'm not sure how one measures that. I consider I get VFM because the price I pay is fair enough for the service I get while paying more for higher speed wouldn't really be any gain for me. But I know others who would judge it differently.

Cruise, Kidman and an unfortunate misunderstanding at the local chemist

The over-reaching long arm of the law

I had a friend who was a bus driver. One day he found a carrier bag containing 'recreational drugs' a careless passenger had left behind. Told to follow company procedures when he was back at the depot he dutifully trudged off to the local police station in his lunch break to hand them in.

Where they held him for hours while giving him the third degree. The very obvious defence that "no dealer in their right mind would hand in their own drugs" cut no ice.

He was eventually released and, having lost a driver for an entire shift, company policy changed and the police were never bothered over dodgy finds ever again.

Exonerated: First subpostmasters cleared of criminal convictions in Post Office Horizon scandal

As well as addressing the consequences of these particular cases; we need to take a long hard look at the judicial system which allowed such grievous miscarriages to occur.

Useful quantum computers will be impossible without error correction. Good thing these folks are working on it

It's all beyond me

"It involves creating a cavity with two mirrors and bouncing photons back and forth so the light creates an interference pattern that represents quantum information.

The shiny monoliths at Utah and elsewhere all seem to be three sided. Perhaps we're being given a clue?

Scotch eggs ascend to the 'substantial meal' pantheon as means to pop to pub for a pint during pernicious pandemic

Re: It's all bollocks

If you ate seventeen packets of cheese and onion crisps or a dozen packs of peanuts, I defy anyone to deny that is not a substantial meal.

It's that 'more than one' which discounts a packet of crisps, bag of peanuts, scotch egg from being a substantial meal in its own right.

A substantial meal to me is one which leaves a very hungry me full enough that I wouldn't want to - and couldn't - eat the same again in that one sitting.

The other test is whether one would tell the waiter to fuck right off if it were served when a "substantial meal" had been ordered.

But we all know this pretend confusion is really about subverting the lockdown restrictions.

Mysterious Utah monolith mysteriously disappears without trace

Distracted by the shiny thing

Why is no one menthioning the rather obvious face carved into the rock?

Are we just meant to pretend it's not there?

It may date back to 1994 but there's no end in sight for the UK's Chief customs system as Brexit rules beckon

Re: Still. The Farage Garage will be open for business on time.

How about we dress it up as 'People were asked a question and those that answered gave their preference.'

How about we describe it how it was; where the options people had were to stay in the EU or to believe the Brexiteers when they lied about what the consequences of voting to leave would mean, lied about what they actually wanted, and never admitted they were playing a bait and switch game until after the votes were cast.

I will never accept the referendum as legitimate because of that.

One thing is very clear; the majority did not vote to leave the EU without a deal.

China prepares for launch of Chang'e 5 mission to Moon, which would make it third nation to return lunar sample

Re: Waiting for trump to tweet...

I believe China is trying to steal the moon, one sack load at a time.

BBC picks SiFive RISC-V chip for Doctor Who programming-for-kids kit – with Jodie Whittaker narrating

Re: Timely rip-off

A $100 for a SBC? That's a bit rich isn't it? For the same amount you can get a full-blown Raspberry Pi 400 All-in-one computer.

It's not $100 for just an SBC. It seems to come with three crocodile-clip leads as well :)

But to be serious, while one could buy a Pi cheaper it's a different target market. And try running your Pi 400 on three or four AA batteries and seeing how long it runs for.

America's largest radio telescope close to collapse as engineers race to fix fraying cables

Farewell Arecibo

It doesn't look to me that there's any way to resolve the current situation other than to let her fall.

And let's hope that serves as a wake-up call for what else we might lose when we don't invest in maintenance and preserving what we haver. But I fear it won't.

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson pledges £12bn green economy package

Re: How exactly?

you don't need a 1:1 chargers to cars ratio.

Possibly not but it seems to me that whenever anyone suggests we need far fewer chargers than cars they seem to forget that most people will be charging overnight, while at work or parked while shopping, and they'll leave their car plugged in for the duration preventing others from using it.

Extending driving range will help but not entirely if people choose to keep topped up in case they go through a rough patch when they can't access a charger. Having charging bays with time limited occupancy may help but will be quite inconvenient.

It seems to me they are rushing into this without knowing exactly what will be needed, without being able to answer fundamental questions on how it can be made to work. And, if it doesn't; there's no escape route.

Re: Not a chance !

I fail to see how anyone with any basic understanding of the work involved could realistically say that this will be done in 9 years.

I was assuming that's why they have a parallel plan to get people cycling and walking.

Mind you I might be be misunderestimating them. All their other delusional fantasies have tuned out just fine. Haven't they?

Images of women coerced by adult companies poison dataset popularised by deepfake smut creators

And, even if someone does look like the deepfake you were busy shuffling over the night before, that doesn't necessarily put them at risk.

The kind of people who would equate being in a porn film as giving permission for sexual assault are hopefully few and far between and likely don't care who their victims are anyway.

Halt don't catch fire: Amazon recalls hundreds of thousands of Ring doorbells over exploding battery fears

Re: Shows people don't read the instructions

+1

This wasn't a case about Americans (or anyone else) being so stupid that they didn't understand coffee can be hot. What McDonald's were selling was so much hotter than would ever have been expected, dangerously hot and injurious when spilled.

Like pop-tarts and toasties; "hot" does not cut it when "danger of scalding injuries" is appropriate.

Did I or did I not ask you to double-check that the socket was on? Now I've driven 15 miles, what have we found?

That "switch the socket off before unplugging" came about because people could get their fingers behind the plug body and make contact with the live prong when trying to pull out a stubborn plug.

These days most live and neutral prongs are partially insulated but not all are. It's still good practice.

Trump's official campaign website vandalized by hackers who 'had enough of the President's fake news'

Re: A sign of the times

Trump is not actually particuarly dangerous. He's portrayed that way, but he's mostly mouth.

Seems to me he did a pretty good job of nearly talking us into a nuclear war over North Korea and it's not going so great with China.

It's not just what he says; it's how others respond.

His threats to wipe Iran off the face of the earth were the catalyst for them shooting down a civilian airliner.

Machine learning gets semi conscious... Waymo, Daimler vow to bring self-driving trucks to American highways

"Duel"

Life imitating art.

Don't upset the trucks. Respect a semi -- ooo-er, missus.

NHS COVID-19 contact tracing app is leaving some unable to access government self-isolation grants

Re: Might be on purpose.

I thought it was a feature. Instructions to isolate from the app are purely advisory, not legally binding, and I'm not sure there's any way to determine an individual has genuinely received such an instruction.

That means anyone fancying a small windfall could claim they were told to self-isolate and demand their free £500.

The government won't pay for school meals, seems to want to drown migrants in the Channel, so I'm not surprised there's no magic code for a free handout of cash.

And I'm not surprised that lying shit Hancock is lying again. This government has a full quota of world-beating lying liars.

Is Google fudging search rankings to benefit pages that embed YouTube vids? Or is this just another ‘bug’?

Clickbait

"Is Google fudging search rankings to benefit pages that embed YouTube vids? Or is this just another ‘bug’?

In fact, what was happening, the team found out was that anything loaded onto the page using an iframe tag, such as an embedded YouTube video, was simply discounted from Google’s PageSpeed tool altogether.

Well done El Reg - You made a Clickbait Victim out of me. Hope you are proud of yourselves.

We bought a knockoff Lego launchpad kit from China for our Saturn V rocket so you don't have to

Lego?

We were a Betta Bilda household which was I believe an Airfix product. Much more limited with building houses and castles the most it would really stretch to even with a vivid kid's imagination.

I really enjoyed pushing the roof tiles together to build roofs. Which may explain why I got into embedded assembly language.

Virginia voter registration website falls over hours before deadline. The Russians? No, a broken fiber line

Meanwhile, on the other side of the pond

In the UK it is continually proposed that we should allow voting by SMS, email, TV Red Button services, via ATMs, in supermarkets, anywhere and anyhow.

That's because those who control us aren't so much concerned about voter fraud than ensuring voter numbers makes it look like our alleged system of democracy is still legitimate. They don't care about who wins so much as ensuring the system persists.

As long as we can pretend we have democracy; all will be fine.