* Posts by Christopher O'Neill

19 publicly visible posts • joined 9 Oct 2008

Google, Apple gear to raise tracking tag stalker alarm

Christopher O'Neill

Already implemented in Android?

This must be implemented already, at least in Samsung's version of Android.

I had an alert a month ago that there were 2 orphan airtags that were possibly tracking me, with the option to make them sound an alert. Turned out my neighbour had gone on holiday and left their airtags in the house.

Tesla driver blames full-self-driving software for eight-car Thanksgiving Day pile up

Christopher O'Neill

Tesla autopilot sudden braking happens all the time

Even without full self-driving, sudden braking has been a 'feature' of Tesla's standard traffic-aware cruise control for years. You can quickly press on the accelerator before the vehicle loses too much speed and regular Tesla drivers are probably used to hovering their foot close to the accelerator when passing HGVs, going through tunnels etc.

I've not noticed this issue on other cars I've driven with TACC.

Study suggests AI cruise control could kill traffic jams by cutting out the 'intuition' factor

Christopher O'Neill

So what are the AI drivers doing differently that reduces congestion?

It started at Pixar. Now it's the Apple-backed 3D file format viewed as HTML of metaverse

Christopher O'Neill

The "HTML of 3D"

Is it that bad?

Right-to-repair warriors seek broader DMCA exemptions to bypass digital locks on the stuff we own

Christopher O'Neill

DIY car repairs

We recently had to replace a faulty radio on a VW Golf. Being reluctant to pay VW £2,500 for a replacement, we sourced one second hand for £60 but then discovered that VW have a system in which the car's subsystems operate in a restricted mode if they are not the exact items fitted by VW at the factory. So the radio would switch on but would remain muted. Replacement heater controls will work for demisting windows but other climate functionality will be disabled. Other subsystems are similarly restricted.

It meant that we had to pay VW another £70 to plug in their laptop and add the replacement radio to the car's list of authorised devices.

Google gives away its internal $200 patch analysis tool for free

Christopher O'Neill

So, was it $1200 or $200?

Death Stars are a waste of time – here's the best way to take over the galaxy

Christopher O'Neill

Spin

All this talk of self replicating machines reminds me of the Spin series by Robert Charles Wilson, where they were a major plot element.

Junk your IT. Now. Before it drags you under

Christopher O'Neill

"Today we open a document in Microsoft Word - even on a multi-Ghz machine with a solid state disk and plenty of RAM - in a process that always takes a few seconds."

In the current versions of Word yes, but it's pretty much instant when using Word 2003 ;)

BAN email footers – they WASTE my INK, wails Ctrl+P MP

Christopher O'Neill

Thunderbird

Is this a good time to point out the annoying fact that Thunderbird is not able to print-out selected parts of a document? (the option is greyed out in the print dialog).

Apple's Windows XP moment: OS X Snow Leopard left to DIE

Christopher O'Neill

2007 hardware obsolete?

"After all, Mavericks is free. What are you waiting for?"

A new laptop? Mavericks is not available for my 2007 macbook (Intel Core-Duo).

What's up with that WhatsApp $19bn price tag? Answer: Voice calls

Christopher O'Neill

My mobile data provider (T-Mobile, or whatever it calls itself now) specifically disallows VOIP in the T&Cs, I'd imagine other network operators do also.

Forget invisible kittens, now TANKS draped in INVISIBILITY CLOAK

Christopher O'Neill

SEP field

'The technology involved in making something properly invisible is so mind-bogglingly complex that 999,999,999 times out of a billion it's simpler just to take the thing away and do without it....... The "Somebody Else's Problem field" is much simpler, more effective, and "can be run for over a hundred years on a single torch battery."'

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somebody_Else's_Problem

Fed up with Windows? Linux too easy? Get weird, go ALTERNATIVE

Christopher O'Neill
Trollface

Emacs

Surely Emacs counts as an alternative operating system? ;)

Video thrilled the radio star: Tracking the history of magnetic tape

Christopher O'Neill

Magnetic media

An interesting series of articles!

How about one on magnetic data media next? Floppy and hard disks etc.

Six things a text editor must do - or it's a one-way trip to the trash

Christopher O'Neill
Mushroom

Emacs + Evil

The extensibility of Emacs combined with the editing power of Vim. Unbeatable.

Shiny, shiny! The window's behind me...

Christopher O'Neill

Widescreen

Can we have a similar article on the lack of choice with regards to monitor aspect ratios? I find it increasingly annoying having to use laptops which force me to view webpages or documents through a letterbox.

The Lord of the Rings saga lies hidden deep in your Mac

Christopher O'Neill

Unsurprisingly, this also works on FreeBSD ;)

Am I the only person still using this OS?

Coders are creatives too: Where's our love?...

Christopher O'Neill
Terminator

Whilst inflating their own egos, most coders seem to have forgotten the real people who make all this amazing technology work - the hardware engineers.

Linux at 17 - What Windows promised to be

Christopher O'Neill
Boffin

Linux is part of a bigger picture

I think phrases such as "Linux on the desktop" are a bit misleading, Linux is just a kernel. There are other projects that are equal if not bigger in size/importance to Linux and they deserve a mention too - GNU, Gnome and QT/KDE for instance - where would Linux be without these? Still stuck in 1995 I guess.