Posts by A. Coatsworth

Is it broken yet? Is it? Is it? Ooh that means I can buy a sparkly, new but otherwise hard-to-justify replacement!

Re: Right to repair?

Funniest part is that they are dumbed down, while at the same time they are labeled as "smart"

I know there is social commentary somewhere in there...

Survey of astronomers and geophysicists shines a light on 'bleak' systemic bullying

Re: Have a little think

Because it might as well be bad science?

Europe mulls anonymous crypto-wallet ban, rules to make transfers more traceable

Re: Being in the wrong

>>Not sure why are you using this racist term in 2021

I know this is completely off-topic, but WHAT THE ACTUAL FSCK??

O, Big Brother, please enlighten me: when did the Thought Police criminalize the word "marihuana" and why?

Good news: Jeff Bezos went to space. Bad news: He's back

Nyah-nyah-nyah!

My favorite billionaire (who baseless accuses people of child molesting, and crashes the market for short-term profit) is better than your favorite billionaire (who keeps people on virtual slavery working conditions, and fights unions like a 1800's industrial baron)

Human behavior is surely baffling, even from the normally-intelligent people who frequent these fora, taking side for one of these people that not only wouldn't give a flying fig for us, but would trample us for profit.

Total recall: Amazon faces legal action from US consumer protection group over hazardous goods

Re: All the items named were being sold by third-party sellers.

I wouldn't be surprised if the defective products were "Amazon basics" knock offs. Where they were made is irrelevant.

Of all the nasty business practices Amazon does, these "basics" must be one of the lowest.

Facebook pulls plug on mind-reading neural interface that restored a user's speech

>>we are no longer pursuing a research path to develop a silent, non-invasive speech interface

Of course not! "non-invasive" is anathema to the Zuck. They may be back when they manage to make it as obtrusive as possible

Trouts on a plane: Utah drops fish into lakes from aircraft and circa 95% survive

Nature... uhhh... finds a way

>>[Fish] are not native to the lakes and do not breed

100% effective, guv'mint guarantee! I can't see how this could go wrong

Microsoft struggles to wake from PrintNightmare: Latest print spooler patch can be bypassed, researchers say

Re: Copilot?

This exchange was so Stob!

Have a cold one on me

Radioactive hybrid terror pigs have made themselves a home in Fukushima's exclusion zone

Re: Waiting for the anime version...

More like Mononoke-Hime, with a giant, toxic demon-boar coming out of the forest to attack human settlements.

(One of Miyazaki's best - highly recommended)

Microsoft wasn't joking about the Dev Channel not enforcing hardware checks: Windows 11 pops up on Pi, mobile phone

Why any person would want to do such a thing is open to question

Because it's there.

- Sir Edmund Hillary

Hmmmmm, how to cool that overheating CPU, if only there was a solution...

>>I fail to see how Jake's comment falls down

Two words: Dunning Krueger

Three things that have vanished: $3.6bn in Bitcoin, a crypto investment biz, and the two brothers who ran it

Re: Surprised?

>>need diligent investigation before you hand over any money

People didn't do their investigation with Tulips, didn't do it with South Sea slaves, won't do it now. The world keeps turning.

Fools are parted from their money and the unscrupulous make a mint... I try to avoid being part of the former, and hope I will never be part of the later, not much else one can do as individual.

Pyjama bottoms crew, listen up: In 2022 we'll still be at home

Re: Thing of the past

Going back to a co-working room instead of a dedicated company office?

Awesome! I didn't think there would be a way things could become worse than they were before the pandemic, yet here we are with a winning idea

John McAfee dead: Antivirus tycoon killed himself in prison after court OK'd extradition, says lawyer

This is the time of alternative facts so I choose to believe he faked his dead and is currently sailing the Mediterranean with a boatful of very questionable associates.

We will hear new shenanigans from him soon enough.

Roger Waters tells Facebook CEO to Zuck off after 'huge' song rights request

"The answer is: fuck you! No fucking way!" Waters told the cheering crowd

I can't but wonder how many of them were live-tweeting or streaming the event, and couldn't hear the deafening Woosh! of irony flying by their heads because of the cheers...

Dealing with the pandemic by drinking and swearing? Boffins say you're not alone

Re: The 5 rules of problematic drinking

Guinness bottles instruct you to "enjoy it straight from the bottle" Are they trying to turn us all into alcoholics?

These sneaky Irish...

Prez Biden narrowly escapes cicada assassination attempt, hunkers down in Cornwall

When will scientist learn?

Nothing good can come from calling your discovery or phenomenon "X"

Planet X, Parasite X, Monster X... the list goes on. An scientists though calling this "Brood X" was a good idea?

Had they called it "Fluffy Swarm of Love", nothing of this would had happened

Door-opening insect mega-swarm emerges in Eastern US, descends on Washington DC

I for one...

welcome our new Maigicicada overlords, and, as a member of the commentariat, commend El Reg for not resorting to this overused Simpsons cliché during their coverage.

Sold: €15k invisible sculpture that's a must-see for art lovers

I'm certain there must an adequate and innocent way to explain this, that doesn't involve a money laundering scheme...

But I can't think of any such explanation right now.

Firefox 89: Can this redesign stem browser's decline?

Re: Help Palemoon Take over from Firefox?

I love the idea, but a handful of sites[1] have qualms with Palemoon: they identify it as an obsolete browser and refuse to let me proceed.

In my personal PC I have Palemoon as main driver, but I need to have FF standing by to deal with this sort of stupidity.

[1]banking for example, so unfortunately hey are not sites I can just stop using ...

Ganja believe it? Police make hash of suspected weed farm raid, pot Bitcoin mine instead

Re: Dirty servers + clean shelves, oink oink

That's one weird post, mr or ms Anonymous,

What were you smoki... oh... OH! ok, carry on

Lessons have not been learned: Microsoft's Modern Comments leave users reaching for the rollback button

Re: "Modern Commenting"

Change for the sake of change has been the bane of technology for a long time. This seems to be a cultural phenomenon, and probably won't change any time soon: business schools evangelize about "embracing change" no matter what, instead of teaching to critically evaluate the new stuff before adopting it.

Agile with its "move fast, break thigs" attitude has certainly not helped things.

Waymo self-driving robotaxi goes rogue with passenger inside, escapes support staff

The tech is impressive during predictable scenarios, but they are likely going to have trouble dealing with these unstructured situations for some time to come

Implying that a fscking big decision tree is not IA? That's not very googly of you...

*Groans*

have very begrudgingly upvote.

Not keen on a 5G mast in your street? At least it'd be harder for crackpots to burn down 'a flying cell tower in orbit'

Going by the current record, half the satellites will be hacked within 3 months of launch, one third will be obsolete and thus unresponsive before they even get to orbit, and the rest will be knocked offline every time someone farts in the general direction of a AWS cluster.

Vietnam’s biggest industrial conglomerate quits smartphones and TV biz, bets on electric cars

Work VinFast, not VinSmart

... wait, that's how the saying goes?

Spent Chinese rocket stage set to make an uncontrolled return to Earth

The person killed in those cases is almost invariably inside the falling object... That is not the case here, as far as we can tell.

Although, given the CCP's way to do things and their utter disregard for human life, we will never know for sure

China launches first module of new, crewed, Tiangong-3 space station

I first saw the term Terran in StarCraft, not Star Trek so it is OK in my book. Besides it has a nice ring to it, that other words like "earthling" just don't have. I can imagine a future where earthling becomes a slur for the sons of Terra!

Michael Collins, once the world's 'loneliest man,' is dead. If that name means little or nothing to you, read this

What would be our future?

https://xkcd.com/893/

Even if he didn't like the label of "hero", that's what he was

China claims it has stolen a march on 6G with colossal patent portfolio

Wow!

The $0.25 army is on a roll today defending the Middle Kingdom's honor!

Traffic lights, who needs 'em? Lucky Kentucky residents up in arms over first roundabout

I once drove for a few hundred Km in France (Paris to Bayeux, using secondary roads)

Based on my limited experience, I'd say the estimate of 300.000 roundabouts is a few zeros short!

Belgian police seize 28 tons of cocaine after 'cracking' Sky ECC's chat app encryption

Re: 28 million grammes of coke

Antwerp... Second busiest port in Europe, where goods from all over the world are received to be distributed in all of the continent.

But nope, that is not the case here. If the blow was found in Belgium then it is for local use only: Belgians consume coke by the kilo...

Microsoft 365 tries again at filtering swearing, bad behavior: Classifiers for seven languages offered

So many missed opportunities

"Threat, Targeted Harassment and Profanities Classifier" Pfffttt...

Why not calling it Targeting Incoming Threats System?

Or Profanities and Harassment Universal Controller and Keeper

Or Total Work Anti-Threat System

Or...

Diary of a report writer and his big break into bad business

Re: predilection for active verbs.

Look at the byline pic. Daniel Craig is the only option!

US state AGs: How can Facebook, Google, Twitter say they tackle misinformation when *gestures wildly at COVID-19 BS everywhere*

Re: Ban social media.

>> Shut them down, wipe all their servers & backups, retrain all their employees to be level 1 help desk

…Dump the crocks in a boiling bowl;

pound them up with a thumping pole;

an when you're finished, if there are any whole,

send them down the hall to roll!

Guilty: Sister and brother who over-ordered hundreds of MacBooks for university and sold the kit for millions

Re: "Gentlemen do not read each other's mail."

Can you imagine the police admitting they intercepted communications from the accused without a warrant?

That would be, quite literally, a "get out of jail free" card.

Move aside, Technoking: All hail the Sweat Master and his many inspirational job titles

Re: Hyphen

Honest (if Paris-esque) question:

How would you mispronounce "miniseries"? Seeing it written like that, I can't imagine alternative pronunciations

Partial beer print horror as Microsoft's printer bug fix, er, doesn't

Sing along!

99 little bugs in the code

99 little bugs in the code

99 little bugs in the code

Take one down, patch it 'round!

117 little bugs in the code

Google: US antitrust regulator was totally right to let us off the hook nearly 10 years ago

I guess the author wanted to write "hypocritically", but it wouldn't pass the editors

'No' does not mean 'yes'... unless you are a scriptwriter for software user interfaces

Re: when to use the word "fewer" instead of the word "less"

That is Interesting. For me as a non-native speaker (who learned American English) the phrase "I could care less" sounds hopelessly wrong, that is why it seemed funny to make the "correction" in the previous message.

I didn't really know there was a British vs American debate about it.

Re: when to use the word "fewer" instead of the word "less"

I think you mean "I could care fewer about Grammar Nazis"

What happens when cancel culture meets Adolf Hitler pareidolia? Amazon decides it needs a new app icon

Doppelgänger everywhere!

On the subject of logos and seeing figures in the clouds, I always thought the logo for Costa Rica's meteorology institute (https://www.imn.ac.cr/en/inicio) could pass for a gentle brother of El Reg's vulture

Boffins trap ultra-cold plasma-in-a-bottle, a move that may unlock secrets of exotic stars

Re: Presumably

>>heat is motion, and motion is motion and all energy is motion and mass is motion

So you are saying that they have really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like?

Well, I'll be damned! I never thought I'd live to see it!

Apache foundation ousts TinkerPop project co-founder for tweeting 'offensive humor that borders on hate speech'

Re: It's elementary

Yes, this is not a criminal case, the language I used probably is not exact. I'm at a loss for the right words to describe the situation.

As Jake helpfully put it in a later comment, this was brought to the court of public opinion, and there the guy's career was summarily executed: After being kicked from his own project and basically labeled a Nazi, who would want to associate with him? He'll become a pariah, and that's that.

As for the due process, where I work the code of conduct has the wording "[...] up to and including termination". This clearly means the boot is not the preferred course of action, nor is it the one applied for a first time offender, NOR is it applied without an investigation from HR. I know it because I've seen it happen (not to me, luckily)

Again, there is no proof anything like this happened. Someone complained and he was thrown by the board without a second thought.

Re: It's elementary

I find the use of the word allegedly in your post very telling, because it highlights my main gripe with this whole debacle. I am all for people facing consequences for their acts, but justice should 1. Be proportional to the crime, and 2. Follow the due process.

I don't see how any of that is met in this case. The allegedly should imply "innocent until proven guilty"

A summary execution is not justice.

instead we'll invite you, if you so care, to look and form your own opinion.

I care, but I can't go to Twitter to find out what he actually said, so i am left with an incomplete and worrying understanding of the situation:

What I collect from the article is that he said an extremely lame and possibly offensive joke. His punishment: being removed from his own project that he founded a decade ago.

Whitout judging the "joke" itself (I can't) I wonder, is the punishment fitting for the crime?

People really think it is ok to destroy someone's life work for an ill-thought joke? Had he threatened someone or promoted violence against someone or something, I'd understand it... Or perhaps he did. It would be good to know *what* was so henious as to warrant this reaction.

Things like this lend some credibility to the "cancel culture" argument. He crossed some nebulously defined line and got immediately judged and sentenced without right to appeal. Yes, freedom of speech is not freedom from consequence. But I saw once again, is the punishment appropriate?

Web prank horror: Man shot dead while pretending to rob someone at knife-point for a YouTube video

Re: Sickening

The gun discussion is a red herring. There are many scenarios in which this stuns could have gone south: the people could have had knives of their own or wrestled it from him or beaten him within an inch of his life, or a trigger-happy cop could have shot before he had a chance to scream "it's just a prank, bro!"

What we should be discussing is why so many morons think it is fun and profitable to perform and film their crimes, and disguise them as "pranks"

Youtube' responsibility?

In the end, the "prankster" asshole [1] was not performing his borderline criminal stunts just for sh*ts and giggles. Youtube was making money out of the videos and paying him for them.

So, can Youtube/Google/Alphabet be considered at least partially responsible for this incident?

I would expect the standard social media defense, namely that they only provide a platform for the people, won't fly if there is an exchange of money in the middle.

[1] never agreed with this saying of "respect the dead". The guy was clearly an idiot when he was alive, and I don't see how his death changes it.

Borkem ipsum: Supermarket gifts Thailand a tech fail that will echo down the millennia – and probably choke a turtle

Re: Thanks!

Took a look at CorporateIpsum (www.cipsum.com). I swear to Sibö, it is more coherent than many real press releases I've read

Nearly 70 years after America made einsteinium in its first full-scale thermo-nuke experiment, mystery element yields secrets of its chemistry

“You cannot control the transmutation process,” Carter said

That is LOUSY alchemy. Going on that route, they will end up ceating an abomination against God, and probably losing some body parts in the process...

On a serious note, I love stuff like this. -"We found this cool thing about a rare element" -ok, what benefit can we get from it?" -*shrugs*

They are doing sicence for the hell of it (or rather, simply to learn more about the world), not to get a quick return of investment.