Posts by A. Coatsworth

DARPA is testing a device soldiers can swallow to make them less stressed

Not that kind of edible...

No Panzerschokolade then... Boring!

NASA to silence Voyager's social media accounts

Re: Save APOD

You sure it is the same Crab Nebula every time?

It wouldn't surprise me if carcinisation is a thing in space too!

Instead of going in a blaze of glory, or fading gently into the endless night, Voyager will get a shameful death by beancounter.

What an ignominious end for one of mankind stellar achievements

_{yes, in theory this announcement has nothing to do with the end of the mission, but we all know MAGAs are itching to pull the plug on them scary sciency thingamajigs}

Feds gut host behind pig butchering scams that bilked $200M from Americans

>> Interpol prefers the term "romance baiting" because of its less pejorative description of the victims

Which I guess is the reason why El Reg insists in using the frowned-upon name. If so ---->

(see icon tooltip)

Techie fixed a ‘brown monitor’ by closing a door for a doctor

Re: Does not sound like any kind of fix to me

You see a brown door

and you want to paint it black?

Empire of office workers strikes back against RTO mandates

Re: Cuckoo land

Bosses don't want bums in seats. They want people to actually act on what they said here, and quit.

What's not to like? All the shareholder-pleasing benefits of a layoff round without the bad publicity.

Bonuses and martinis all around!

Who cares if the serfs fall on bad times because of this? That's what they are for. And who cares if this causes the best and brightest to leave? That's a problem for next FY and for sure can be fixed with more layoffs

Get a custom paint job for earbuds at a nail salon, type on a baguette, then build a fountain for your PC

>> Nvidia handed out t-shirts to media at Huang’s keynote and the XL-sized item given to The Register would be rated medium-sized outside Taiwan.

Will that be part of this Year End's contests? That thing would give Microsoft's ugly swaters a run for their money

OS-busting bug so bad that Microsoft blocks Windows Insider release

>>Canary fans told it hurts functionality to the point that it makes 'using your PC to do even basic things difficult'

[Insert "Oh, that's just normal Windows 11 behavior" snark here]

People find amazing ways to break computers. Cats are even more creative

Re: Been there

If your best cat left your computer unusable on a regular basis, I shudder to think what did the worst cats do

Amazon touts Vulcan – its first robot with a sense of 'touch'

Re: Meh!

Well, of course a guy in a robot suit will be better. It is an inverse Terminator!

Microsoft updates the Windows 11 Start Menu

Take my hat off to MS

>> Phone Link [...] provides easy access to calls, messages, and device information

SInce MS abandoned the cell phone business, they were missing on all of this delicious, delicious data. But now they found a way to syphon it even from iPhones, and beam it to the mothership.

I really have to commend them for the effort

Microsoft burnishes green cred by paying Swedes to burn biomass and bury CO₂

"carbon indulgences"

I'm stealing that. It's the best description I've seen of the whole circus

I may need to run this through Google's dumber-downer from the other article because I don't get it: MS is paying Sweden to burn wood -that did not need to be burnt otherwise- and bury the soot... And that somehow grants them the right to pollute somewhere else?

Palantir loves the smell of DOGE budget cuts in the morning

C'mon! You gotta do your part: the only way that billionaires like Musk and Zuck can keep paying zero taxes year after year is for you and me to continue to pay our income tax without fail.

They are sooo much better than us minions that they deserve it, don't they?

/s

The Telegraph jumps the gun on World War III

Re: poor reporter

Well, in this timeline it seems WWIII will be started by the nuclear powers in South Asia any day now, so not sure how much better it is...

AI-driven 20-ft robots coming for construction workers' jobs

No need to worry: nobody knows how the real world works better than a California startup, as we have seen multiple times.

Hey Google, if Chrome is going to be single soon, OpenAI is interested

if the idea was to identify the worst possible option to take ownership of Chrome, well, mission accomplished!

'Copilot will remember key details about you' for a 'catered to you' experience

Re: stop moaning you dinos

Don't flatter yourself, perusing your posts, you come out as a garden variety troll and not a very good one at that.

You are light years away of the likes of Eadon [1]

[1] moaning dinos will likely remember him

Privacy died last century, the only way to go is off-grid

Re: There is no such thing as off-grid nowadays

The phrase 'privacy' policy for a washing machine basically means we already lost the battle. Skynet may as well launch the nukes now

UK's first permanent facial recognition cameras installed in South London

Re: Hmmm

There were no false positives. Every person detained had something to hide even if not directly related to the reason why they where stopped in the first place. So it is fine to manage every living person as the criminals they are.

--Cardinal Richelieu

Credible nerd says stop using atop, doesn't say why, everyone panics

Re: "You might want to stop running atop."

Even if she is a respected professional -and I have no reason to doubt it- this absurd vagueposting helps no one.

Linus Torvalds forgot to release Linux 6.14 for a whole day

Re: This is the way the world ends...

Perhaps we all are but voices inside Linus' head...

HPE revenue outlook feels the thump of Trump tariffs

Re: Wait? What?

war. noun /ˈwȯr /

1.a. See: peace

:

More Voyager instruments shut down to eke out power supplies

Re: I wonder

Bloody hell, man... that went into Spirit territory. How can one feel sad for a chunk of metal millions of miles away?

Profit slide at HP can only mean one thing: Hammer time

>>The cost-cutting programme began in fiscal 2023

Cost cutting started long before I left pre-mitosis HP, nigh on 10 years ago

What can be left to cut, after being sliced, diced and sashimied for a decade, I can't fathom.

Microsoft's updated Windows battery indicator rollout runs out of juice

Re: FFS.

Green / Amber LEDs have been the bane of my existence. I is infuriating trying to set up a device and not knowing wether the blinking pattern you see is the "good one" (green) or "bad one" (yellow) because they are indistinguishable from one another. Usually looking at them through a phone camera works, but sheesh! is it not like there are no other color options.

As a kind of funny aside, the green traffic light in some US places look basically blue to me. Not sure if it your case but I always found it amusing (and great, as they are impossible to miss)

DOGE latest: Citrix supremo has 'read-only' access to US Treasury payment system

Drain-the-swamp!

Yup, that's how you drain the swamp: invite all your oligarch friends with irrestrict access and they'll drink the swamp dry in no time!

Someone is slipping a hidden backdoor into Juniper routers across the globe, activated by a magic packet

Re: Where Is That "Someone"? Guess!

Please! Please, stop repeating the dreaded B-word. It is tripping my profanity filters in a billion languages!

Why is Big Tech hellbent on making AI opt-out?

"Apple" is the keyword here: their fabled walled garden an Jobs' phrase "people don't know what they want until you show it to them" are the cornerstone of this behavior.

MS et al started mindlessly copying Apple's actions because they were successful and one slippery slope later, we are here: our machines are not actually ours but remain the property of big tech, users are treated with absolute contempt, tolerated only as beta testers or because more money can be extracted from them by any means necessary.

Celebrating when EVs went to the Moon with a Lego Lunar Roving Vehicle build

Re: "We asked Lego why it did not create a custom part for the dish"

It comes with the territory: you are posting at El Reg and are arguing against custom parts in a Lego set. Ergo, you are an old curmudgeon.

You are also damn right!!

BOFH: Forecasting and the fine art of desktop upgrades

Re: Great start to a new year of BOFH

I was expecting a **Dummy Mode ON** after that text

Fear of Foxconn reportedly driving possible Nissan, Honda and Mitsubishi merger

Re: Not just Foxconn

Where else, outside China, has got the necessary charging infrastructure for EVs?

Not my (third world) country for sure, but that doesn't stop people from buying chinese EVs in spades.

"Geometrys" and "Seagulls" are now a very common sight in the roads, a local newspaper tells me there are now 34.2 EVs per 10000 persons, which is a respectable ratio.

And this number is eating from the lower-end Japanese models (Suzuki, smaller Nissans) which used to dominate the market until not long ago.

US airspace closures, lack of answers deepen East Coast drone mystery

"but you all need to calm the hell down"

What? no! Crank the conspiracy teories to 11!

A "Los Angeles air raid "scenario would be hilarious for all onlookers, as shown in Spielberg's documentary 1941

Guide for the perplexed – Google is no longer the best search engine

Time for poorly-thought metaphors

In the good old times, google would let you hunter and gather all over the internet, so you could prepare your own meal.

With time it increasingly pushes on already prepared stuff you are not interested in.

Now with AI, the "solution" is to have a machine eat and digest the food for you, leaving it ready to be shat directly in your mouth... Is this progress?

China's homebrew Bluetooth alternative is on the march as Beijing pushes universal remotes

Re: Stream lossless stereo audio.

As per the article, The standard requires remote controls to allow voice control

But I am utterly convinced that it will only listen for the wake up word to comply with the user commands, and will not be listening for words and phrases that the Powers that Be consider double plus ungood. No sir!

Google Timeline location purge causes collateral damage

Re: Being old-school...

When I travel I always carry a small notebook and pen with me. Small enough to fit in my front pocket along with the cell phone. Never inconvenienced me... whenever I take them out to do some quick annotations, people looks at me like an alien.

These notebooks (I am on the third one) have a record of all the places I've visited since 2012. Obviously being dead tree slices, they are in danger of being destroyed very easily so I am in the process of digitalizing them.

I know that if I lose them now it will be my fault, but I am not at the mercy of a Silly-Con Valley company.

Some of the use cases in the article are noteworthy, and I can't but feel bad for these people, but trusting Google is the dumbest thing one can do online.

Microsoft hijacks keyboard shortcut to bring Copilot to your attention

Re: Time to do the right thing and kick the habit.

Easy enough to do at home, but MS doesn't care about that market anyhow.

I guess most people here who use Windows unwillingly, do so because there is no other option at the office. That is my case, at least.

Unless the S&P 500 gangs together to beat MS to a pulp for these stupidities, nothing will change.

Will that happen? I won't hold my breath, CIOs are probably getting very cute gifts from MS to avoid it.

DoJ wants Google to sell off Chrome and ban it from paying to be search default

Re: My choice

>>I understand the risks involved

You are an exception, as is most of the people who frequent these forums. This is not an accurate representation of how the average person uses internet.

>>I am sensible with what I share online

You are doubly an exception here. I commend you for that. The problem is that the vast majority of internet users don't even know that there are risks associated to what they share, much less that there are options beyond Google. For them. one day the blue e stopped being "the internet" and instead the colorful circle became that.

Alphabet has a virtual monopoly over the way people access the internet. This goes beyond the information they may have about any individual, and this kind of monopolies are never healthy.

NB: I am not one of the downvoters.

Europe glances Russia's way after Baltic Sea data cables severed

Re: Why would they bother?

>>ps.. what is it with El Reg and conspiracy theorists these days?

Well, you _do_ have a Silver Badge, so it seems conspiracy theorists have been here for a long time...

Data broker amasses 100M+ records on people – then someone snatches, sells it

Re: How to punish these guys

YES

Clues to Windows Intelligence found in Windows 11 builds

Re: Angry ladies with sponge cakes and scones.

Perhaps a change of name to "Windows Inclusive Intelligence", which would force Nintendo to release the hounds...

Their battle would be LEGENDARY

Your air fryer might be snitching on you to China

Re: Dumb

Checked one of their TVs at random. It has Component *and* Composite inputs... Almost brought a tear to my eye.

Now, I need to find out if they are available in this forsaken piece of land.

Toyota and Joby complete Japan's first air taxi flight test

Re: Solution in search of a problem?

You can throw all the redundancy you want at the machines, they will only be as safe as the pilot at the helm[1]. If this is massified, the barrier of entry will be lowered, meaning underpreprared people will be flying these things over densely populated places, which does not sound appealing.

[1] No mention in the note of how the test was piloted, but I'd hope no one is mental enough to try and put to production a fully automated deathflying machine

US Army should ditch tanks for AI drones, says Eric Schmidt

Well, he wants to get rid of the "tank" part, perhaps because he successfully got rid of the "think" a long time ago...

Microsoft accuses Google of creating a lobbying front called 'Open Cloud Coalition'

Re: Pot calling the kettle black

You just know the more indignant the answer from a company (or Nation-State) to an activity, the more likely they are engaging in the very same activity

GenAI's dirty secret: It's set to create a mountainous increase in e-waste

We all knew LLMs are basically GIGO, but this is ridiculous!

Huawei's farewell to Android isn't a marketing move, it's chess

Re: Remember The 1960's British Motorcycle Story?

With the difference that the Japanese bikes were objectively better.

Swapping Apple/Google with a locked Huawei environment would be like leaving 1984 for Brave New World! (other dystopias available for comparison)

$180 for an overpriced, dubious SSD drive? Maybe don't join the USB Club

>> inform your friends about whatever you publish

Phrases like this make me roll my eyes so hard I actually see my own thoughts... FOMO is really a mental health epidemic.

Nvidia CEO whines Europeans aren’t buying enough GPUs

"AI arms dealer says"

Not much to add to the discussion, just please buy a pint (or 10) to the sub-head writer for calling it as it is.

Tesla, Intel, deny they're the foreign company China just accused of making maps that threaten national security

Stalinism is based on paranoia, and it is the last remnant of communist ideology left in the CCP.