Posts by Geoff Johnson

Xiaomi what's inside: Wow, teardown nerds find debut smartwatch isn't actually a solder-and-resin nightmare

I found out how to get the screen off a Xiaomi Amazfit...

...thanks to an accident with a wallpaper steamer in a confined space. I've not tried swimming with it on ever since, but it seems rain proof.

NASA 'nauts do what flagship smartphone fans can only dream of: Change the batteries

Beresheet

Is Beresheet going to land in Dewoods?

I am just a mapper: Solar drones take to the skies above Blighty

Re: What can you fit in 25kg...

1/6th of a Sysadmin, apparently.

NASA has Mars InSight as latest lander due to arrive today

Re: Information

Google say 20:00 GMT / UTC

Elon Musk invents bus stop, waits for applause, internet LOLs

150 mph

On my local route, the stops are only a few hundred yards apart. Not sure what G-force you'd need to get to 150MPH and stop at the next one, and whether a human can survive it.

Terry Pratchett's unfinished works flattened by steamroller

I wholeheartedly agree with this action.

After reading the book they pieced together from from Douglas Adams' old hard drive, I'd request this too.

Four techies flummoxed for hours by flickering 'E' on monitor

Re: Laboratory waterbath

When I worked at a University, the MRI department all had bar magnets blutacked to their monitors to compensate for the big magnet in the next room.

Apple frees a few private APIs, makes them public

Which APIs

Does anyone have a list (or know where to find a list) of the APIs we're now allowed to use?

Ever visited a land now under Islamic State rule? And you want to see America? Hand over that Facebook, Twitter, pal

Re: Now under IS control?

Looking at this story, I'd say the USA is pretty much controlled by IS.

Royal Horticultural Society's PC is rooted for all to see

Activate windows.

This weekend I played an arcade game with the activate windows message permanently visible in the screen corner. Maybe there are some of those on mission critical machines that should be looked after better.

OK Google, Alexa, why can't I choose my own safe, er, wake word?

Next-gen viruses.

In the middle of the night, the Office PCs will spring to life and shout

Hey Cortana.

Open www.where-my-virus-is.com.

Download virus.msi.

Install virus.msi.

Blighty's telly, radio watchdog Ofcom does a swear

It all changes at time goes by.

I remember Ade Edmundson getting in trouble for saying fart on Wogan. A few years (ok, maybe decades) later and Saturday morning kids telly were doing a sketch called fart attack.

Give it a few decades more and kids TV will be saying fuck, while some currently innocent words will be banned instead.

Elon Musk: I'm gonna turn Mars into a $10bn death-dealing interplanetary gas station

Orbital tourism.

No mention of taking groups of people for a week in orbit. If he can get people to Mars for 200k, he should be able to manage that for a reasonable price. Currently people pay tens of millions for a quick jaunt to the ISS and Branson is asking a small fortune for a few minutes of sub orbital flight.

Go forth Spitzer! To infinity and....

Re: distance

Good points.

Facebook, Twitter and Google are to blame for terrorism, say MPs

Page 3.

Page 3 quotes lots of "Key Facts" like these...

Between mid-2015 and February 2016, Twitter had suspended over 125,000 accounts

globally that were linked to terrorists. Google removed over 14 million videos

globally in 2014 which related to all kinds of abuse.

So how can they say they're not doing anything against terrorism.

Get yer gnashers round 64-layer 3D NAND, beam WDC and Toshiba

Why so small?

A quick web search shows Micron sell 2TB 2D Flash. Compared to that, what's so good about 500 Gb? Write endurance maybe, but SSDs now are good for several complete drive writes per day for years.

Etch a stretch: 3D NAND layer cake flop leads to 'string stacking'

Busses

If all the contacts can be placed at one edge, a staircase formation of 48 layer dies with data and address busses running up the steps could be huge capacity. So why are we still paying much more for ssd than spinning rust?

Huawei: Our fake phone camera pic shame

EXIF

When will people learn that there's more to a JPEG than a pretty picture.

Global 'terror database' World-Check leaked

Don't worry

With the incoming snoopers charter, all of your internet connection records will be stored on a database that only the government and a select few hacking groups have access to.

Lenovo Solution Center portal patched to shutter hacker god mode hole

uninstall it to protect themselves.

The whole story summed up in half a sentence.

Genes take a shot at rebooting after death

Not that surprising

These are probably just junk genes. Things only get evolved away if they have a detrimental effect during the useful lifetime of the organism.

Watch as SpaceX's latest Falcon rocket burns then crashes

Re: @YACC

Thanks. Excellent description.

Different approach

This seemed to slow down much more, almost stop even, long before landing. The others seemed to come in really quick, with the brakes on full right up to the touchdown.

TalkTalk scam-scammers still scam-scamming

I think you should have a warning here.

Something about never giving unexpected callers access to your computer.

I know most Reg readers would know this, but maybe casual Googlers will land on this page too.

Great, IBM has had a PCM breakthrough. Who exactly is going to manufacture?

So where's my PCM SLC drive?

Look we've made our unobtainable chips better.

Google tries social again

Shame.

I know it has its problems, but I kind of like hangouts. I expect in a few months it will be deprecated in favor of their new toy.

Watch it again: SpaceX's boomerang rocket lands on robo-sea-barge

Great film of the last one here.

Found this while checking out the link above.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDK5TF2BOhQ

One of those draggable 360 degree videos, so you can see the rocket approach. Worth watching if you like this kind of thing.

SpaceX's Musk: We'll reuse today's Falcon 9 rocket within 2 months

Just go for it.

It's not rocket scien... oh wait.

Go for it anyway.

Re: The plans are going to sound crazy

Aren't they the same person anyway, just using a different name depending on the type of story?

Re: Weight Savings

As far as I know, the only design decision made for cost reasons was to make all of the engines and fuel tank segments the same. Which is why these rockets are the same thickness all the way up, rather than the saturn 5 with each stage a bit thinner. But I doubt you'd save much weight by changing that, you still need the same size, only the shape changes.

The plans are going to sound crazy

As if bringing something the size of a 20 storey building travelling at over 7000kph over 100km high down onto a boat named "Of course I still love you" doesn't sound crazy.

What to call a £200m 15,000-tonne polar vessel – how about Boaty McBoatface?

RRS End Of The World Explorer

would get my vote if the page worked.

UK carrier Three in network-wide ad-block shock

"relevant and interesting"

Does anyone else tend to find targeted are are usually for the thing they just bought from Amazon.

Qualcomm drops antenna, amplifier silicon on OEMs

Not such a bad read.

I can see a lot of people didn't get all the way down to the comments button at the bottom, but I found some nice nuggets of interesting information between the chip numbers. Please don't let the lack of comments put you off this more technical side of the news.

Intel and Micron's XPoint: Is it PCM? We think it is

Patents

Sounds to me like someone has a patent on phase change memory, so they want to pretend they're not infringing.

UK Home Sec's defence of bulk spying: We 'found' a paedo (we already knew about)

Anonymous will have a field day.

What happens WHEN (not if) some of this slurped data falls into the wrong hands. Though to be honest, I think anyone who wants it is "the wrong hands."

You can hack a PC just by looking at it, say 3M and HP

Re: This is far cheaper...

That would look better if the screen was black without the goggles. Working at a monitor that looks off would really confuse people.

EDIT: before anyone mentions it, I know it wouldn't work that way, but it would look cool if it did.

NEW ERA for HUMANITY? NASA says something 'major' FOUND ON MARS

Re: It'll be a rock

Reminds me of this...

LISTER: OK, OK. What's Holly spotted?

RIMMER: An unidentified object.

LISTER: You mean a rock.

RIMMER: It might not be.

LISTER: They're always rocks.

RIMMER: Mostly they're rocks, I agree, but maybe this one's different.

LISTER: Rimmer, there's nothing out there, you know. There's nobody out

there. No alien monsters, no Zargon warships, no beautiful blondes

with beehive hairdos who say, "Show me some more of this Earth thing

called kissing." There's just you, me, the Cat, and a lot of floating

smegging rocks. That's it. Finito.

Sorry, can't get the formatting right.

Volkswagen used software to CHEAT on AIR POLLUTION tests, alleges US gov

It passes the test as written then.

So it detects when it's stood still idling and runs in low performance low emission mode. When under normal use you get decent performance but a bit more emission. Surely it's a pass. Unless you ban them from varying the engine map for different situations. In which case we're back to carburetors and even then only if they have a manual choke.

I know this is diesel so the carb bit doesn't really apply.

RFID wants to TRACK my TODGER, so I am going to CUT it OFF

RFID reading washing machine.

I guess its possible to have an RFID reading washing machine that reads the washing instructions and runs the appropriate program. However I can see it going wrong in so many ways. Like complete refusal to wash any of your clothes together because the instructions vary in some negligible way. Washing machine noticing a neerby dishcloth and putting your best shirt through the ulta-violent don't give a toss cycle. Levi recommend aerial, you can't use persil for this garment. Can't contact the server at Levi.com, please try again later. Etc. Etc. Etc.

Google's new scribble-tab-ulous handwriting interface for Android

Local Processing

though Imon-line now, I tried off- line. It seems exactly the same.

Using it to write this is taking ages though.

I think it needs more language Knowledge. It could also used better word suggestion system that knows what letters can get missunderstood.

overall not as bad as I expected, but very slow compared to typing.

The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies – Thin plot, great CGI effects

sequels

If Peter Jackson is so keen on multi part stories, can we have another episode of Braindead (otherwise known as Dead Alive) please? However please don't try improving Bad Taste, you'll be doomed to fail on that.

El Reg Redesign - leave your comment here.

Re: El Reg Redesign - leave your comment here.

Lose the fixed nav bar and it would be OK.

Fixed content is a waste of space, especially on small screens.

HOT YOUNG STAR about to GIVE BIRTH, long range images show

Looks to me like at least one big planet near the star, then some small ones before several more big ones. I suppose this kind of fits with the high number of very large known exoplanets that have close in orbits. Though that could also just be down to big close planets being much easier to detect. Apart from the big close one, its a bit like our solar system too.

My biggest conclusion is that I want to see more images like this.

Good grief! Have you seen BlackBerry's square smartphone?

I agree

But it looks like it would be bloody good to use. To me, function wins over form in a phone.

Our Vulture 2 rocket spaceplane crammed with more power

Sort of seconded

I remember reading that the plane is made from nylon. Why do you need to mount the antenna outside?

XBOX One will learn to play media from USB and DLNA sources

ps4

Does the PS4 have this functionality? I see a lot of comments about the PS3, but not 4.

Engineering fault stops SpaceX launch of machine comms satellite network

First stage

Does anyone know whether they're planning to bring the first stage down gently again?

POND SCUM shine a path to more efficient solar cells

Re: Evolution works

I'd bet a lot of solar cell research is very similar to evolution anyway. If a formula works, try tweaking it a bit for the next batch of cells. If a formula doesn't, work very well, drop that line of research. Give it a few billion years and they'll have it cracked.

S is for SMACKDOWN: Samsung takes Galaxy Tab slab war fruit-side

Re: 2560 x 1600 resolution

I guess size makes a difference. TV size displays need big machinery to make them. I also suspect that there'll be X defects per square yard of screen produced, so the bigger the screen, the lower the yield.