Posts by Horridbloke

Intel gives the world a Core i9 desktop CPU to play with

Re: At 140 Watts...

I once set up my PC to vent its hot air into a growing enclosure to help the chillies along. That was a Core 2 quad 6600 IIRC.

Disney plotting 15 more years of Star Wars

@Aladdin Sane

Isn't there a risk the directors will go back and ruin the films with service packs?

Oh...

The rise of AI marks an end to CPU dominated computing

Re: Bloody AI's

I recall a lecturer in college saying that 25 years ago, so bravo Sir or Madam or Thingy!

Need the toilet? Wanna watch a video ad about erectile dysfunction?

Re: Contests

That's a bad idea, because stag groups (in town) or QA delivery teams (at work) will treat it as a relay event and make an even bigger mess.

Burger King's 'OK Google' sad ad saga somehow gets worse

Re: that said, here's a challenge to Google - I *dare* you !!!!!!

Buy what if you want to search for "cancel"?

User lubed PC with butter, because pressing a button didn't work

No, Deluxe Paint.

Help wanted: Uber boss Travis seeks babysitter for him and his execs

Only one candidate

These folks are fools. They realise they're fools, they've admitted they're fools and they want to stop being fools.

Mr T would be perfect for the role.

Nokia’s big comeback: Watches, bathroom scales, a 3310 PR gimmick, Snake, erm...

Good grief...

You want a vibrant green phone for WORK?

British defence minister refuses to rule out F-35A purchase

Re: A is actually not a bad piece of kit

"Would the vertical take off version not have to have a trust to weight ratio of more the 1 to work ?"

By my understanding there isn't a vertical take off version.

One-way Martian ticket: Pick passengers for Musk's first Mars pioneer squad

Noel Edmonds

Send Noel Edmonds.

That's cold: This is how our boss told us our jobs are at risk, staffers claim

How to be callous

Some years ago our office was ushered into our cramped conference room and told about the latest rightsizing. We developers survived that one, but the testing team were shedding two people, who I shall call Karen and Terrance.

Karen had been told a few minutes earlier and was presumably packing up at that point. Terrance, on the other hand, was on holiday with his family that week. It was okay though, when he got in on Monday the boss (Bill) wandered over to him for a word. They disappeared into a room for five minutes, then Terrance reappeared. He spent three hours apparently catatonic at his desk then disappeared at noon. We never saw or heard from him again.

I really regret not letting Terrance know the rest of the office got the news before him - that would have been worth a few grand compromise agreement or tribunal verdict.

BBC to demand logins for iPlayer in early 2017

Re: Presumably, logins will be address based

Nope, just those people who watch BBC / iPlayer.

We live in a world where a 'Hamdog' burger hybrid is patented

Re: * I know, I know...

200% better is three times as good.

10000% better is a hundred and one times as good.

Thailand plans to track non-citizens with their mobile phones

@AC

Nope, things work just like that in Thailand too.

If it's reasonably easy to check the status of a sim then there will be another opportunity for dodgy coppers to grab some 500 baht fines. Best ditch the local sim when you get back to the airport.

Seagate in 10TB drive brand brainstorm

Slow handclap...

"Skyhawk" - in contrast to normal hawks that burrow their way through the earth's core...

Google-backed solar electricity facility sets itself on fire

Re: Predicting Problems

"Would make for a hell of a movie-plot threat..."

Die Hard From A Nasty Sunburn.

Android Pay may, er, pay... providing it gets over security hurdle

Excellent news

Do we really want to reach the point where paying for things with anonymous cash ceases to be an option? I'm a nice honest law-abiding guy and I have something to hide - what I spend my money on.

Extreme photo-bombing: Bad ImageMagick bug puts countless websites at risk of hijacking

@Dr Spork

An M25 flyover selfie would be pretty underwhelming, but the photo used in the article features Wat Rong Khun, a temple in Northern Thailand. There's lots of strange and beautiful stuff in that corner of the world that justifies snapping a memento.

I'm unsure why people get so upset about selfies. Compare them to the bad medical tips, ropey politics, phrases that might pertain to football and the mild-to-moderate racism that spews up on most people's facebook walls. Self-portrait photos are among the least-offensive items on social media.

Is it the selfie stick that irks people? The last time I was at Heathrow I was walking just behind a group of lads filming themselves on a go-pro-on-a-stick as they walked to their gate. It seemed silly but is that really worth getting annoyed about?

Good enough IT really is good enough. You don't need new hardware

Re: I'm not...

"Hyperconverging" is a pretty long word but round here we pronounce it "tosh".

Tokyo rebrands 2020 Olympics

No giant robots?

I wanted giant robots. As there are no giant robots I will not be watching.

FOUR Avatar sequels

Terminator 6

I think the next terminator flick is due to be called "Help! My Father-In-Law Is A Cyborg Assassin!".

(Still better than Salvation though.)

USB-C adds authentication protocol

@Timeo

Yes, there are power-line-only dongles for traditional usb connectors. The issue with USB-C is power and signalling on the same pin, so that traditional approach doesn't work. I'm wondering whether the introduction of a cunning capacitor or something (I don't do hardware) would enable current flow but wreck the signalling needed for any communication. The big question there is whether some signalling is needed to negotiate / request current - something USB devices are supposed to do but don't always.

Is it possible to build a USB-C charge "condom" with some filtering to stop any signalling?

'Fart detector' wins Chinese Physics prize

The fart will literally follow you...

It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead.

Your pointy-haired boss 'bought a cloud' with his credit card. Now what?

Re: Why the PHB should only be given *minimal* access to any system.

Did everybody actually agree to those amendments? They're idiots if they did.

Doom is BOOM! BOOM! BACK!

Re: But for sheer mindless...

I remember Backlash (ST and Amiga). It was fun, but weirdly I enjoyed the game that inspired it (Encounter, a 1984-era FPS for the Commodore 64) more.

Encounter was true genius.

Mozilla will emit 'first version' of Servo-based Rust browser in June

The poor craftsman blames their tools."

Mozilla is choosing some better tools.

13 CubeSats to ride mighty US lifter

Space Launch System?

NASA should have gone the whole hog and called it Up Goer Seven.

(Or possibly eight or nine. Shuttle aside I'm not sure what else they've done since Apollo. Yes, I realise there's been other stuff)

NOTHING trumps extra pizza on IT projects. Not even more people

"Achieve the goals of the business"

So DevOps is about doing good work instead of bad work? It's an interesting approach.

BBC risks wrath of android rights activists with Robot Wars reboot

Re: Who is presenting?

I wonder if Jeremy Clarkson could ever be desperate enough to return. (He fronted RW before it was any good.)

Doctor Who: The Hybrid finally reveals itself in the epic Heaven Sent

Re: shovel

Perhaps he did take and use the shovel on occasion. The iterations couldn't all have been identical.

What the world needs now is Pi, sweet $5 Raspberry Pi Zero

Re: "you can get composite video from the 3.5mm jack"

The one you buy yourself and solder onto the board (I think).

Facebook brings creepy ’Minority Report’-style ads one step closer

My FB profile has me a lot older than my real age so I see adverts for incontinence products.

Apparently this is what winning feels like.

Facebook...

I'm constantly amazed how most people fail to think about privacy issues. Several years ago, back when Facebook seemed to email absolutely everything to absolutely everybody by default, I started to get fairly high frequency updates as to the location of a iPhone-carrying friend of mine. I hadn't made any effort to stalk him or anything, I was just getting near-hourly updates as to wherever he had just "signed into" as he went about his work around town.

Anyway after a couple of days of this I commented on the latest update showing him in a town twenty miles down the road. I asked whether it would be a good time to burgle his house.

The updates stopped after that.

Royal Mail mulls drones for rural deliveries

Re: smash through my window and set the house on fire

I think Citylink already have a patent on that.

Doctor Who's good/bad duality, war futility tale in The Zygon Inversion fails to fizz

Re: Re Parachutes

Perhaps they were sonic parachutes.

Oh dear, Microsoft: UK.gov signs deal with LibreOffice

Re: WTF is that picture?

Looks like somebody's remaking Max Headroom.

(Icon coz of the blipverts.)

HTC's new One A9 will gulp Android updates days after Nexus mobes

Reputation...

Back in 2010 I bought an original HTC Desire, partly on the manufacturer's express promise to add DivX compatibility. It never happened. Why should I take any notice of their promises for this one?

Boffins promise file system that will NEVER lose data

Sounds better than my last effort..

A while back I was tasked with implementing a block-level data storage solution intended for enterprise use (though not actually a filing system). The brief handed to me was a hand-scrawled description of several data structures with arrows pointing to them. Data integrity was addressed by the sentence at the very end: "+ data protection features".

I was very glad to leave that job.

Google TUGS Nexus 7-INCHER from its online store

I'm holding out...

... for the Nexus 40.

What's Meg Whitman fussing over: The fate of HP ... or the font on a DISRUPTIVE new logo?

Re: Green Rectangle

The Brown Ring Of Quality was already taken.

SCARESTEROID of the week to miss Earth on Friday

Re: The UNIVERSE will end on Friday

No, not really.

Ransomware holds schools hostage: 'Now give us Bitcoin worth $129k, er, $124k, wait ...'

"It's seriously good to hear about a non-IT organisation who have actually got the hang of reassuring press statements."

FTFY

Pass the Lollipop: Google creepily warms to body contact with Android lock function

Re: Just don't walk along with it

What if you can't find a wall?

Boffins build Cyborg beetles, fly them by remote control

This is stage 1

Stage 2 involves Austrian bodybuilders.

DARPA's 'Cortical Modem' will plug straight into your brain

I like DARPA...

... they remind me of when I was ten.

(Still waiting for the skateboard with built-in minigun.)

Keyless vehicle theft suspects cuffed after key Met Police, er, 'lockdown'

Re: Old-school tech

I gave up on my crooklock when I switched to a car with an airbag - the thing wouldn't physically fit on the obese steering wheel.

Turbocharged quad-core Raspberry Pi 2 unleashed, global geekgasm likely

Re: Competitors dead in the water?

I have just taken delivery of my pi 2 and had a brief play with it. The raspbian image was updated using apt-get on the old hardware yesterday in readiness. The pi 2 booted and ran much much faster - the difference is much like we used to enjoy when upgrading from a five-year-old pc to the latest and greatest back in the nineties. The GUI, Epiphany browser and LibreOffice all ran pretty smooth. Considering this is currently running userland binaries for the older architecture I'm impressed.

Gangnam Style BREAKS YouTube

@Eddy

The dollar value is large, sure, but what price can you put on happiness?

Boffins find Jackie Chan's SUPERCOP is good for something

Re: Idiots!

True, Sammo Hung demonstrates unparalleled randomness in that one.