"I actually don't understand the "$420" bit, the share price then was literally $23 a share. What part was $420? I don't get it, it could only have been a stupid joke."
Posts by Shades
910 publicly visible posts • joined 27 Mar 2008
Musk, Tesla win securities fraud battle over that 'funding secured' tweet
ChatGPT has mastered the confidence trick, and that's a terrible look for AI
Elon Musk to abused Twitter users: Your tormentors are coming back
I, for one...
... am rather glad this is happening. Not because I think Musk is the second coming, or that Twitter should be a free-for-all, but because the moderation team was an absolute f**king joke.
My gaming account got "suspended" after responding to a post, consisting of a screenshot of some awful racist shit some old fart had posted elsewhere on Twitter, with "I can't wait for these racist old bastards to die off". Yes, yes, I must have done other stuff before to get to the point where my my account got suspended but that consisted of telling racists and homophobes to "Go f*ck yourself" or "F*ck off"
Pointing out that I had not contravened their stated rule - "You may not engage in the targeted harassment of someone, or incite other people to do so. This includes wishing or hoping that someone experiences physical harm" - completely fell on deaf ears. I hadn't targeted someone, I hadn't incited anyone, nor had I hoped or wished for anything, but apparently being impatient for nature to run its course is very bad.
Then again, being forced into what is essentially "read only" mode has meant that when I peruse Twitter just to see whats going on I much more quickly realise the human race is utterly doomed and close it again sooner rather than getting dragged into pointless arguments with utter morons.
Windows Subsystem for Linux now packaged as a Microsoft Store app
Re: So what's the improvement in the store version?
WTF are you on about?
I don't have a MS account, never had an MS account, and yet, here I am looking at Windows Subsystem for Linux in the MS store app. The "Get" button is active and if I click on it it proceeds as expected. IIRC MS may have expected you to have an MS account for their store app under Windows 8 but they ditched that requirement ages ago.
World's richest man posts memes as $44b Twitter acquisition veers off course
"One laid-off staffer was in charge of managing the system which controls badge access to Twitter's buildings. He was called back in to help regain access to HQ by those who had locked themselves out. "Thanks for helping out. You're a lifesaver," Musk replied on Twitter."
I wonder how much "helping out" cost him? hahahaha
Absolute nozzle.
Musk tells of risk of Twitter bankruptcy as tweeters trash brands
Twitter employees sue over lack of 60-day layoff notice
Re: The situation in Ireland is perhaps more interesting
Ireland, being a European country with proper social security and universal healthcare, of course has much, much, much less in the way of job protection than even the most 'liberal' American state.The simple reality is that in the US healthcare is tied to jobs, so getting fired is very, very serious. In Europe, that isn't a thing, so getting fired is not important, so the protections are scanty: as long as it's not discriminatory, you can be fired for any reason or none, with no more than the minimal statutory compensation.
Can't work out if you're just a very bad troll or seriously cracked?
LG makes a TV roughly the size of a queen-sized bed
Elon Musk 'buying Manchester United' football club
Report slams UK plan to become 'science superpower' by 2030
Re: thank you
Let's take a little look at that...
AGREEMENT BETWEEN THE GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED KINGDOM OF GREAT BRITAIN AND NORTHERN IRELAND AND THE GOVERNMENT OF IRELAND[...]
RIGHTS, SAFEGUARDS AND EQUALITY OF OPPORTUNITY.
Human Rights
1. The parties affirm their commitment to the mutual respect, the civil rights and the religious liberties of everyone in the community. Against the background of the recent history of communal conflict, the parties affirm in particular:
[...]
• the right to freely choose one’s place of residence;
Can't do that with a hard border.
[...]• the right to equal opportunity in all social and economic activity, regardless of class, creed, disability, gender or ethnicity;
Can't do that with a hard border either.
[...]Economic, Social and Cultural Issues
[...]
2. Subject to the public consultation currently under way, the British Government will make rapid progress with:
(i) a new regional development strategy for Northern Ireland, for consideration in due course by a the Assembly, tackling the problems of a divided society and social cohesion in urban, rural and border areas
Can't tackle societal division and social cohesion in border areas with a hard border between the two.
SECURITY1. The participants note that the development of a peaceful environment on the basis of this agreement can and should mean a normalisation of security arrangements and practices.
The normalisation of security arrangements is what it is now. Re-introducing a hard border would now be an "un-normalisation" of security arrangements.
2. The British Government will make progress towards the objective of as early a return as possible to normal security arrangements in Northern Ireland, consistent with the level of threat and with a published overall strategy, dealing with:[...]
(ii) the removal of security installations;
Any border installation is a de facto "security installation".
Hive to pull the plug on smart home gadgets by 2025
Twitter shareholders to vote on Elon Musk's acquisition
Photonic processor can classify millions of images faster than you can blink
Sony Interactive Entertainment pulls PlayStation from Russia
A Windows 11 tsunami? No, more of a ripple as Microsoft's latest OS hits 5% PC market
Ecuador shreds Julian Assange's citizenship
Radioactive hybrid terror pigs have made themselves a home in Fukushima's exclusion zone
Royal Yacht Britannia's successor to cost about 1 North of England NHS IT consultancy framework
Asus ROG Phone 3: An ugly but refreshing choice – for gaming fans only
WTF has happened to El Reg?
"I almost wish other manufacturers borrowed this approach, particularly Samsung.Imagine if you could neatly clip a USB-C dock to the side of your phone, touting all the ports you’ll need to connect a display and peripherals. Its DeX mode would start to feel a lot more useful, and less like an also-ran bolted on.
This is an idea Samsung should borrow - neatly clipping a USB-C dock to the side of your phone, touting all the ports you’ll reasonably need to use your phone as a desktop computer in DeX mode,"
The Department of Redundancy Department obviously hasn't been furloughed.
"its 144Hz aspect ratio"
Aspect ratios come in Hz now, do they?
"Colours feel a bit washed out and saturated."
*Bzzzzt*. Contradiction.
Cancelling my subscription, etc, etc.
Let's check in now with the new California monolith... And it's gone, torn down by a bunch of MAGA muppets
€13bn wings its way back to Apple after Euro court rules Irish tax deal wasn't 'state aid'
I've got me a stalker! Obsessive downvoter alert!
UK finds itself almost alone with centralized virus contact-tracing app that probably won't work well, asks for your location, may be illegal
Re: And what about the people ...
"likely earning crapita (or similar) a fat wad of cash."
For once its not Crapita, but a company called Faculty.
Faculty, formerly ASI Data Science and Advanced Skills Initiative Ltd, was hired to work with Cummings on the Vote Leave campaign and has since, quelle surprise, been awarded at least 7 government contracts in the last 18 months. Want to guess what political party one of its shareholders is associated with?
Further still, Ben Warner, former principle of Faculty and brother of the founder, was hired by Cummings to work at Downing Street, after running the Conservatives private election model and (are you sitting down?) worked closely with Cummings on the Vote Leave campaign.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess the work done for Vote Leave and the Conservatives was pro bono.
Reach for the sky: Pixar founders win Turing Award for pioneering 3D animation – and getting rid of jagged edges
As I posted somewhere above, Catmull-Clark subdivision appears to be making its way into games, even on the current gen consoles.
Re: Interesting article, but...
"It's a technique that allows a single polygon to simulate multiple smaller polygons with a smooth gradation between the joins.This allows a model to appear to be high-polygon when it is in fact relatively simple and low-polygon.
What's more the technique is open and as such is widely used. Blender includes it as a modifier"
Blender may use Catmull-Clark as a method to decide how to subdivide faces but it doesn't "simulate" the additional smaller polygons to make a model "appear" like it has a high polygon count as your post would suggest; Subdivide a simple cube 4 times with Subdivision Surface and you'll end up with a sphere (of sorts) with 1,536 faces. All those extra faces are there as if you manually created them. Catmull-Clark, or at least it implementation in Blender, isn't some visual trickery, like Smooth Shading, to "simulate" the "appearance" of extra detail. The editable verts/edges/faces do become something more akin to "handles" on curves in vector based image editors but you don't get the look of a high polygon model without the extra CPU/GPU overheads that brings.
What I'm more impressed with is it appears that some games are now using live Catmull-Clark subdivision (slightly edited to keep edges without adjoining faces always sharp) on their models in certain circumstances where there is less going on (like in menus or photomodes) and they can afford to significantly bump up the per-model poly count. It wouldn't surprise, on the next gen of consoles, if we start to see live Catmull-Clark subdivision in many more (playable) areas of games since, as well as making lower poly models look better, it also effectively acts as a form of "compression" in a similar way as vector based images do compared to a bitmap based image for certain types of images.
UK plod could lose access to 79 million criminal alerts in event of a no-deal Brexit
Leaked EU doc plots €100bn fund to protect European firms against international tech giants
Re: Nothing to see here
If the guys running the EU had any sense at all they'd shower Trump with love and he wouldn't know what to do with it."And lets just send drug addicts to Columbia to get straight. There's no flaws in that plan either, right?
"Why is a president of a military dictatorship like North Korea politically and diplomatically smarter that the president of the EU?"1) Kim isn't but he is smarter than Trump, who handed priceless propaganda to Kim on a silver platter. Tell me, how did that all work out? Of course though its entirely possible the entire world collectively imagined Kim, post-Singapore, "destroying" already destroyed weapons facilities; rebuilding weapons facilities; and resuming missile tests.
2) I see you're another one of those "informed" Brexiteers; There is no such thing as "President of the EU". I'm sure that was an innocent mistake though, not born of deceitfulness or ignorance.
"Same thing with the WA backstop. It costs the EU (and by that I include Ireland) absolutely *nothing* to not have it, and it's a massive cost to having it and they refuse to budge on it, it's utterly nutty."If you don't think the backstop is necessary then you clearly don't get why its an absolute necessity. Next you'll be telling us that there is no way out of the backstop without the EU's permission, and its all a big trick to keep the UK in the EU, won't you? Spoiler Alert: There is, for both the UK and the EU, but you've read the WA and you knew that? You have read the WA, haven't you?
"It boggles my mind this is the system and people that citizens of the EU actually want to be governed by. Simple problems require simple solutions, not pretending they are or actually making them 5000x more complex than they need to be."I've got some bad news for you; only one type of person see's everything as simple. I'd love to hear your solution for inserting the square peg into the round hole that is the Good Friday Agreement and Brexit (I need a laugh!)
Microsoft Surface users baffled after investing in kit that throttles itself to the point of passing out
Re: FTFY
"their heat & CPU management is good"
They are not without their issues: The Register: Core blimey! Apple macOS update lifts boot from MacBook Pro neck
Built-in GPU
Looks like something is absolutely hammering the built-in GPU too. I wonder if the heat from that is causing something to send the signal to the CPU to slowdown? I've never seen an Intel GPU utilisation that high, especially when there is a discrete GPU there to do the real heavy lifting.
Someone's spreading an MBR-trashing copy of the Christchurch killer's 'manifesto' – and we're OK with this, maybe?
Buffer overflow flaw in British Airways in-flight entertainment systems will affect other airlines, but why try it in the air?
Re: Entertainment system pen testing
"Car radios are linked to the engine management far more than you would think. The CAN bus is everywhere!"
Theres a hidden function (requiring a finger twisting keypress combination) on my radio that can bring up speed in Kmh on its crappy red dot-matrix LCD screen and my car is not all that far off being 20 years old now. I have absolutely no clue what its purpose is for as its not something mentioned in the cars manual and the car has both Mph and Kmh on the dials.
Age checks for online pr0n? I've never heard of it but it sounds like a good idea – survey
Post-Brexit plan for .EU tweaked: No dot-EU web domains for Europeans in UK, no appeals, etc
Re: STUPID STUPID STUPID
"The notion that because something was legal or allowed it must always remain as such is utterly ridiculous."
And that is what makes me laugh about people* who think that something that has the word "Amendment" in its title is absolutely set in stone.
*Second Amendment nutjobs.
You like JavaScript! You really like it! Scripting lingo tops dev survey of programming languages
Apple: You can't sue us for slowing down your iPhones because you, er, invited us into, uh, your home... we can explain
Re: "Apple had no duty to disclose the facts regarding software capability and battery capacity."
"They are famous for quoting things like engine power as "adequate" rather than giving actual numbers."
Not actual numbers like page 13 of the Wraith brochure?
Or pages 25, 26, 27 of the Phantom brochure?
How about pages 42, 43 and 44 of the Ghost brochure?
Or maybe page 26 of the Dawn brochure?
More nodding dogs green-light terrible UK.gov pr0n age verification plans
Punkt: A minimalist Android for the paranoid
'Incommunicado' Assange anoints new WikiLeaks editor in chief
Forget dumping games designers for AI – turns out it takes two to tango
Braking bad: Mitsubishi recalls 68k SUVs over buggy software
Vodafone sues Ofcom to reclaim 'overpaid' mobe spectrum fees
The Irony...
BBC: Millions overcharged for mobile contracts
"About four million people have been charged for mobile phones they already own, spending £500m extra on contracts, according to Citizens Advice.Three of Britain's biggest mobile networks, EE, Three and Vodafone, continue to charge for handsets even after the cost has been paid off.
Many customers have no idea they are being charged for phones after their contracts have ended."
I've been telling various people, who don't immediately upgrade and/or go SIM only once their contract has expired, this for years; if your contract costs you (e.g.) £45 p/m and your networks SIM only deal is £20 p/m what do you think the difference in cost is?
V/MNO's have been very sly at convincing people that handsets are "free" if you have them with a contract (I'm sure some even still advertise the phones as such) and take advantage by charging full whack (phone + network allowance/usage), even though the customer has completely paid for the phone once the contract has expired.
V/MNO's should, at the very least, be forced, by law, to explicitly and clearly state in-store/on-screen and in paperwork that the phone is completely paid for by the end of the contract to make people aware that they will be paying over the odds - continually paying for a phone they've already paid for - if they let the "contract" run. Or, preferably, should be forced, by law, upon the expiration of a contract to only charge what they would charge for a SIM only deal.
Microsoft pulls plug on IPv6-only Wi-Fi network over borked VPN fears
UK.gov finally adds Galileo and Copernicus to the Brexit divorce bill
Re: TL;DR
"The United Kingdom has been through far, far worse things than a no deal Brexit and it only made us stronger, true then we wen't filled with limp writsed, soy boy wimps like you in those times but I'm confident our feminists can take your place."
Oh do fuck off.
What are these worse things that only made us stronger? Let me just reach into my bag of "Brexiteer Bollocks", rummage around for a tired old trope, and... Oh, dear God, its not WW2, is it? It is, isn't it?
As for the name calling; that's one reason, of many, why so many of you Brexiteers are regarded with such contempt. It's pathetic. Grow. The. Fuck. Up.