Posts by Ben XO

Huawei's P40 and P40 Pro handsets will not ship with Google Mobile Services, Richard Yu confirms

Downward spiral

Presumably at this rate we’ll have a huawei P45 in shocking pink with no apps and limited prospects before the year is out

Out of Steam? Wine draining away? Ubuntu's 64-bit-only x86 decision is causing migraines

What's unclear to me from the article is whether they're only dropping support for 32-bit builds of Ubuntu, or if they're also dropping the 32-bit compatibility libraries that you install to get 32-bit programs to work on a 64-bit env (that is, the libc6-i386 package).

If it's just the former, then I don't see how this would impact Steam or Wine.

The Revenue achieved RECORD numbers of e-tax returns ... by NOT shifting to GOV.UK

Personally I found that the GDS portion of filing my self assessment tax return this year - which included online identity verification, to allow me to log into the old directgov site - worked very well. Both the old and new parts worked together quite harmoniously.

fist-bumping is good for your health, says respected surveyor

Adventure Time seems to be a big promoter of the move. http://fc00.deviantart.net/fs70/f/2012/202/4/e/fistbump_by_gioilcavaliere-d581ece.png

Apple wins patent on charging iThings THROUGH THIN AIR

Have none of you seen the Eric Giler TED talk about efficient magnetic resonance over long distances? He powers a TV set from 1m away using resonant AC (note how it takes a few seconds for the magnetic resonance to build up).

It's induction that's inefficient over long distances. But magnetic resonance couples at specific frequencies - it's not just plain old induction.

BIG BOOBS banished from Linux kernel

Whilst I absolutely applaud the elimination of sexism in the software development culture, being "ashamed" of boobs is something feminism often rallies against. Simply saying "boobs" isn't supposed to be offensive to women. Boobs exist. Shrug. (What usually follows at this point is a stream of comments saying "I'm a woman and I thought it was funny": http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/14955.html)

Now, who's going to use the VM ID 0xFA7D1CC5 ?

Facebook simulated entire data center prior to launch

Up to a point.

Up to a point throwing hardware at a problem is cheaper than hiring developers. That point is relative to what you're building, of course.

Fight global warming with Asimov-style Psychohistory - profs

Teamwork for the win!

Finally, people actually working together on things...

Apple fanbois leak secrets of Mac OS X Lion

Find My Mac probably using IP + WiFi data

...which is how pre-GPS iPhone devices, and also how the OS X automatic timezone clock adjuster works.

HMV takes on mighty iTunes with 40p promo

Why, god, why bother?

I haven't figured out the point.

"10 million tracks" is not a lot in terms of absolute catalogue. It'll be all the same (popular) content as every other MP3 store, only less of it, as their deals settle in to line. 7digital and iTunes, and even Amazon MP3, have way way more - and still don't cater effectively to the long tail, who has to go to smaller stores such as Beatport or DJDownload to get what they need.

Even then, there's really no point without an effective referral scheme and integration with music discovery websites such as Last.fm or Spotify, where people go to FIND new music.

HMV should have done this ten years ago, or invested in someone who knows what they're doing, like 7digital.

Ah!

I jumped the gun. Turns out they did invest in 7digital after all. A wise move for a company who's primary asset is now their brand, not their stock.

Last.fm now offers Less.fm

Radio unaffected

This change does NOT affect radio, only on-demand streaming in page.

Level 3 wilts in London sunshine (again)

You may be pleased to know

that that particular server (with the 3 year uptime) wasn't affected, as it is in a different data centre.

Egypt offline for weekend after Med seabed cables cut

See me what?

It all sounds rather exhibitionist to me.

Shocker DNS spoofing vuln discovered three years ago by a student

3 years? try 10:

http://bak.spc.org/dms/archive/dns_id_attack.txt

dates back to 1998 and deals with the same vulnerability.

Vendors form alliance to fix DNS poisoning flaw

There are papers on this dating back *ten years*...

http://bak.spc.org/dms/archive/dns_id_attack.txt

Admitedly that deals with weak ID prediction rather than source-port spoofing, but still.

HP duplicates deduplication

Isn't this just called "stream compression" - like zip/lzh/etc?

LZH and friends are a family of "data deduplication algorithms"; huffman coding and all that jazz are based on well established principles of information theory, which is based around "de-duplicating" repeated data.

So, HP have a tape compression system. What's new about that exactly, apart from the name?

AMD CPU shoot-out: Phenom X3 and X4

TLB fix = disabling the L3 cache

I was under the impression that enabling the B2 fix basically just disables the entire L3 cache; therefore you almost certainly want this fix DISABLED for a Phenom B3 otherwise it won't perform much better than a B2.

HP pulls memory Missing Link from bottle of beer

Terminals.

This thing DOES only have 2 terminals. I think this is awesome! Very useful sounding indeed, and unlike anything else out there!

Beware the populist mash oozing out of Facebook and YouTube

What a marvellous article!

I think the conclusions drawn on Facebook are bollocks, frankly - your comments on the usefulness of Facebook have the same ring to them as a 45-year old mother bitching about how TopShop has nothing in her size. But despite that, I think the article's well written and hilariously so, therefore I approve anyway.

Boffins ponder Galileo signals as ocean monitors

Marine life that navigates by GPS?

How long do you reckon until such a thing evolves?

And then what of the ethical implications of switching GPS off...

Gene Simmons blames college kids for ruining music biz

Loss leader!

In the same breath he's said that he won't get paid from the music and that his licensing and merchandising is second to none.

Many record labels and acts are actually putting out music as a loss-leader now, knowing that it getting pirated is a good promotional tool, and that the real money is in tours, live shows and performance royalties.

FAST cracks down on pirates near Penzance

The Federation...

...is a nominal phrase that I, and many others like me, will forever associate with Star Trek and pretty much nothing else.

MS tweaks Vista with minor updates

Strike-back

The Register Episode V: The Register Strikes Through.

Uranus strikes a pose for Hubble's camera

why twice every 894 and not once every 447?

erm, if you think about it, it should be obvious!

Uranus goes round the sun, so there will be two times at which it's aligned edge on with the sun (once on each side). But Earth goes around the sun too, so those two points at which earth sees uranus edge on, again once on each side, will vary with an uneven period between them, although definitely twice within a longer period. of 894 years. apparently.

And what about all those times when it's edge on but the sun's in the way?

Siphoning MySpace tunes using Safari

The most useful FireFox extension...

that does an awful lot of very very useful things, is FireBug, which can definitely be used for this purpose.

'Partial nudity' said to hinder M-rated Halo 2 release

Pics...

...or it didn't happen.

Indian dealers are squealers over Microsoft piracy raids

"We are not against piracy" ?

Does that mean they're for piracy?

LG brings Google phone to Europe

So it's an LG branded Nokia N80 then?

http://nds3.nokia.com/pressphotos/public/global/devices/n80_internet/n80_04_website_low.jpg

I love this review. It reads to me as:

"Hi! It has GOOGLE pre-installed."

*picture of girls*

"It does all the things you'd expect of a phone!"

*picture of girls*

"It's pretty much just like a Nokia!"

*picture of girls with Google*

"Girl's not included."

<3