Posts by Monty Cantsin

Google Street View car careens into creek after 100mph cop chase

The officer didn't actually say he was able to identify the car as as a Google Maps car by virtue of the 360-degree cameras mounted on the roof. That seems to be a fabrication by El Reg.

The Press Release from the Middletown Police Department actually says:

"As the Vehicle passed by it was identified by Dean as a Google Mapping car with several 360 degree cameras mounted on a tall antenna on top of the car."

(I've only an FB link for it: https://www.facebook.com/100067048532793/posts/press-releaseon-07312023-at-approximately-1700-hours-chief-landon-j-dean-observe/618828023695477/)

Clearly the Google Street View decals all over the car helped in in that determination, with him then merely observing that there was a camera on a structure on top of it.

NanoAvionics satellite pulls out GoPro to take stunning selfie over Earth

Did they build a little robot to yank the battery?

As the owner of a GoPro 7, I'm intrigued to know know how they deal with the constant lockups of the camera. Down here on Earth, the only solution is to physically pull and reinsert the battery - not fun to do on a surfboard or kayak on the ocean, pretty difficult I'd say on a satellite.

Audacity users stick the knife – and fork – in to strip audio editor of unwanted features

Audacean People's Front

Unfixable Apple M1 chip bug enables cross-process chatter, breaking OS security model

Re: More importantly...

There bloody well is!

https://m1racles.com/

From Amanda Holden to petrol-filled water guns: It has been a weird week for 5G

Re: Assume the Conclusion

"However repellent these loonies are, I find such unctuous condescending appealing to maudlin self-interest equalling appalling."

You find people burning down comms infrastructure on the grounds of a completely nonsenseical conspiracy theory and someone asking that people not maliciously disrupt the same comms infrastructure that we all rely on for daily life "equalling appalling (sic)" ?

You need to get your fucking priorities straight, bud. Because at the moment, you're one of the repellent loonies.

Apple creates face shield for health workers, resists the temptation to call it the 'iMask'

Re: same shit design

I assume, given the current situation, this is going to be used in conjunction with some form of mouth/nose covering (N95 respirator, surgical mask), and so the dynamics of exhilation will be quite different from that coming from uncovered orifices.

I'll never let go, Jack. I'll never let go: Yes, Sony's Xperia 1 II has a 3.5mm headphone port

Sony Ericsson were waaaaay before the "nobody needs 3.5mm anymore" bandwagon. Back in 2004, at a time when you definitely needed wired headphones, I had a K700 with no 3.5mm jack. You either had to use their ghastly earbuds with the big, bulbous propriatry multi-pin jack, or buy a big, bulbous propriatry multi-pin jack adapter to use decent earphones with it.

Smartwatch owners love their calorie-counting gadgets, but they are verrry expensive

Re: 1 Day Battery Life?

Agreed, it seems to be a common misconception. My Series 0 Apple Watch (2015) only lasted a day, but the ones that came after can certainly last longer (have a Series 4 at the moment).

That said, I don't sleep with it on. It comes off as I get into bed and goes on it's charging stand, where it acts as a bedside clock (in nightstand mode). I've no interest in sleep tracking (not that the AW really does it anyway), so charging the watch at night just isn't an issue.

Whoa, France. Take it easy. Wow. You're out of control. Fining Apple 55 minutes of revenue for secretly slowing down iPhones? Maniaques!

Re: On the other hand

"And less waterproof"

So a GoPro that you can take surfing or scuba diving can have a removable battery, but an iPhone that's only designed to survive a dunk in the toilet can't.

We strained our eyes with Lenovo's monster monitor: 43.4 inches for price of five 24" screens

Re: Vertical space rules

Vertical space? Duh, just flip it to portrait!

I discovered the world's last video rental kiosk and it would make a great spaceship

Re: DVD rental

Yeah, there's one in the Shannon Town Centre too.

Of course, Shannon is only in the process of getting its first cinema, so I suspect the DVD vending machine is seen as space-aged future technology there, rather than a quaint throwback to simpler times.

Virtual inanity: Solution to Irish border requires data and tech not yet available, MPs told

Re: "There are over 200 roads that cross the border."

But the point is that there aren't external EU/Schengen border crossings without customs posts. Take a look at a map - you won't find thousands of crossings.

I can't get the actual total number, but click though the individual borders listed here. I was very surprised to see how few border crossings there are for each EU/Non EU country interface.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/External_border_of_the_European_Union#Border_status_and_cooperation

For instance, on the 535km Poland Ukraine border (comparable in length to the Irish one, and describe as "the most often crossed eastern border of the EU") there's a grand total of 7 road crossings (11 crossings in total including rail).

Taking the example of the longest border in the Schengen Area, the Sweden/Norway border (1,630km) has 10 road crossings with customs stations, and only a further 30 with none.

Must watch: GE's smart light bulb reset process is a masterpiece... of modern techno-insanity

Re: Video just gives the wrong explanation ...

" But why not do something like: turn on/off three times quickly, wait 2-3 seconds, then turn on/off three times quickly."

Because you'd reset your bulb every time you send the message "SS" in Morse code with your lamp.

London's Metropolitan Police arrest Julian Assange

"Article was updated after i posted, so my original comments were correct at time of posting."

We truly live in the Post Truth era.

TV piracy ring walks the plank after Euro cops launch 14 raids and shutter 11 data centres

shuttering...

Maybe they surrounded the data centres in a wooden mold and poured concrete into it?

Core-blimey! Riddle of Earth's mysterious center finally 'solved' by smarty seismologists

Re: Bold claim ....

"If science teaches us nothing else, it's that life seems to occur wherever you look for it."

Not quite. Science has taught is that life seems to occur wherever you look for it *on Earth*. Where there's a magnetosphere to protect it from cosmic nasties. It hasn't shown up (yet) anywhere else we've looked.

"The understanding of the Earth's inner core has direct consequences for the generation and maintenance of the geomagnetic field, and without that geomagnetic field there would be no life on the Earth's surface."

This sentence seems to suggest that without an understanding of the inner core, the generation and maintenance of the geomagnetic field is at imminent risk, as is all life on earth. Quite an onerous responsibility for these geophysicists.

An upset tummy and a sphincter-loosening blackout: Lunar spaceflight is all glamour

Re: Atheist vs. Bigot?

"When I was in college I met my first atheist."

Since literally everyone is born an atheist (those that don't remain so only learn theism/polytheism/pantheism/whatever later in life), I doubt that was the case.

Giraffe hacks printers worldwide to promote God-awful YouTuber. Did we read that one right?

Re: Get me a babysitter

Iron Bones: "Perhaps not understandung that is the problem."

Understandung

Noun

1. The ability to understand something crap; Comprehenshit.

What a meth: Woman held for 3 months after cops mistake candy floss for hard drugs

My S-Max has 2 under-floor storage areas in the middle row (and another in the boot when the 3rd row seats are up. My kids regularly fill them with toys, banana peels, sand and anything else they can get their grubby hands on.

The only thing unbelievable about candyfloss beings stored there is that kids will eat their own body-weight of the stuff, so it's unlikely that they would stuff it into a hole in the floor instead of the hole in their face. However some are squirrel like, and will stow sugary treats for future consumption.

Huawei's Watch GT snubs Google for homegrown OS

Re: 2-week battery life

"Back in the days before phones became "smart" you did only charge them every 10-14 days and people rarely forgot and ran out of power. "

What? People were constantly forgetting to charge their phones back then. In my experience, a lot of people didn't actually plug them in until they had run out. And with the plethora of proprietary chargers that each manufacturer employed (sometimes even different models by the same manufacturer used different chargers), it was often bloody difficult to blag one off someone else when you were caught short.

Like the poster above, I charge my phone and watch every night, regardless of what power is left. Simple habit to get into, and it always leaves me with contingency capacity. No interest in sleep tracking - I'm quite glad to have 8 hours of my day that isn't monitored by anyone, even me.

Apple in XS new sensation: Latest iPhone carries XS-sive price tag

Re: Emergency call

"As emergency call will be useless without GPS turned on"

Well, not necessarily. If you're connected to your phone and GPS in turned on on it, then the watch can still know your position from the phone. Also, even if you're not with your watch, it's possible that the watch is smart enough to turn on GPS itself if it needs it in an emergency, then off again after it's made the call (speculation on my part, but that's the obvious solution to the problem).

Apple pushes new iOS 12 beta build to silence notification spam

So the "A new iOS update is now available. Please update from the iOS 12 beta." bug was fixed with an iOS update. Which means the updated was (eventually) available. Which means it wasn't a bug!

So if you want Bluetooth/WiFi off permanently, you do it one way (in Settings, where more permanent things happen). If you want them off temporarily, you do it the other way (in Control Center, where more changeable things happen). I don't really see the problem with having the choice, and it explains exactly what's happening right there beside the setting. .

Black holes can briefly bring dead white dwarf stars back to life

Re: End of the world as we know it?

Since the universe is expanding, there'll always be stuff out of the reach of black holes. Eventually, even the black holes will evaporate due to Hawking radiation. Over a big enough time scale, all particles will decay and we'll be left with a universe populated only by leptons and photos, each so far apart from each other that they never get the chance to interact. An ever expanding cold, dark universe where even entropy no longer exists, continuing for eternity.

But the good news is that the canteen has burgers on today.

VMware 'pressured' hotel to shut down tech event close to VMworld, IGEL sues resort giant

Elementary...

It seems that Disrupt was disrupted.

It may be poor man's Photoshop, but GIMP casts a Long Shadow with latest update

Re: Forget the geeky stuff, sort out the user experience.

"Come on, lots of things have names that don't specify exactly what they do. I'll give you a big one. Google."

What are you talking about? You use Google to Google things. It couldn't be any more descriptive!

Creep travels half the world to harass online teen gamer… and gets shot by her mom – cops

Re: "Flew halfway around the world" = "Auckland to Sydney"?

@ Anonymous Coward, I only read the first 3 words of the title of your post, so I have no idea what you're complaining about, but I'm presuming you're a well informed and reasonable individual who wouldn't jump to incorrect conclusions based on incomplete information and then go an inform the world of any mistaken assumptions in an impulsive and embarrassing manner.

Woman sues NASA for ownership of vial of space dust

Re: So... uhm...

"Actually the Apollo program, like everything else at NASA, was funded by the US taxpayers, which in my view places moon dust clearly in the public domain."

NASA owing it would keep the mood dust in the public domain, since NASA's ownership is itself in the public domain.

This woman owning it would place it in the private domain.

British egg producers saddened by Google salad emoji update

Re: More inclusive?

"Non vegans will NOT be represented by that salad.. and they are a majority. "

Reminds me of the time my wife brought a home cooked meal to her father's house. He opened the dish and said "what is is?". "Vegetarian lasagne", she replies. He pushed it away saying "But sure I'm not a vegetarian."

There's nothing about not having an egg in a salad that excludes non-vegans. Non vegans don't (and don't have to) have an animal product in each and every meal in order to maintain their non-vegan status.

However, are they not concerned that breatharianism are being excluded by the lack of an emoji for no food?

Astroboffins find most distant source of oxygen in the universe

Re: tangent time

"Still bubbles of universes forming out of existing universes nearly infinitely is mighty tempting and doesn't require ours to be unique in any way."

"Nearly infinitely" makes no sense. It's either finite or infinite. The gap between N (where N is a "nearly infinite" value and infinity is the same as the gap between 1 and infinity. Which, in both cases is infinity.

If this bubble of universes is infinite, than you're basically saying it's turtles all the way down.

If this bubble of universes is finite, then there must be a start at some point, where you can't call on a previous universe as the progenitor. Thus you're really just doing a time-reversed version of kicking the can down the road in explaining the origins of existence. At some stage you have to stop relying on "so, there was one before and..." and actually explain things.

Fog off! No more misty eyes for self-driving cars, declare MIT boffins

Re: FAIL

"Either the camera video stinks or those headlights are useless at anything over about maybe 15 MPH. Better headlight technology is much easier (and cheaper) to implement."

I have a Volvo (an older model than the one in question,mind). The dipped beams are useless. The only disappointing part of the car.

Brace yourselves, fanboys. Winter is coming. And the iPhone X can't handle the cold

"as the autumn weather turns to winter for much of the world and temperatures drop."

Technically, it's for 50% of the world, but the Tropics and a fair bit north won't be too affected by temperature drops. The southern hemisphere will see the temperature rise as they're heading into summer.

Donald, YOU'RE FIRED: Rogue Twitter worker quits, deletes President Trump's account

Re: Fake news

@ Adam Foxton. You're confusing two issues though. Sure, the POTUS probably shouldn't be using Twitter the way he does (of course, it's not his only communication channel), and sure, you're merely hitching a ride on their platform, so you're never going to be in control.

But regardless of who's account was deleted, Twitter shouldn't have it so a CS employee can unilaterally delete *anyone's* account under any circumstances. There should be something like a two-step process that requires a supervisor's approval. Having the process so lax is just leaving it open to abuse - and such abuse is a security and reputational risk that needs to be mitigated against.

Boeing slams $2m on the desk, bellows: Now where's my jetpack?

Re: Already done?

"Where does it say Boeing expects the general public to use this?"

From the article: “What we are seeking is an 'everyone' personal flying device, capable of being flown by ANYONE, ANYWHERE. It should be a device for ALL: young and old, city-dweller and country-dweller, expert and novice.”

I'm not saying you're wrong about us never getting jetpacks, but Boeing pretty clearly state (in shouty capital letters, no less) that they expect the general public to be able to use it.

'Bio-hacker' embeds public transport ticket under his skin

"Hacking is an emotive term"

I think, given that the card had to be cut up for this to work, the term is used in one of its original senses

hack [Verb]

1. Cut with rough or heavy blows.

Boffins' five eyes surprise: Bees correct colour for ambient light

"(like never take photos towards the sun, always away from it etc)"

So, how does one take a photo of a sunset?

Wowee, it's Samsung's next me-too AI gizmo: The Apple HomePod

Re: Ohmigosh I am such a marketing sucker

"You've just summed up Bose....lots of bass but the rest kinda sucks."

Huh? Lots of bass? I thought the standard Bose bashing line was "No highs, no lows, must be Bose!"

(fwiw, I really like my QC35s)

Fitbit picks up Pebble, throws Pebble as far as it can into the sea

Imagine you bought all the furniture in a house, and immediately after you left with it, the owners demolished the house. Should you be blamed for the destruction of the house?

New MacBook Pro beckons fanbois to become strip pokers

Re: "Touch" in the classroom

So no different from keyboards, mice and trackpads.

'You've been hacked, pay up' ... Ransomware forces your PC to read out a hostage note

Re: "Eastern Europeans go free"

"Anything east of Prague is Eastern Europe" was the answer I got from some Czech clients recently. Obviously Praguers.

Wake up, sheeple! If you ask Siri about 9/11 it will rat you out to the police!

If the yanks use the proper date format (11/9) this wouldn't be an issue.

Unless something ever happened on the 9th of November, of course. But I don't think it did.

DEATH by VEGETABLES: Woman charged with killing boyf using carrots. And peas

I would have thought canned carrots are fairly common - although the ones I see in the supermarket (never bought them) are usually in jars, not cans, and they're those little baby carrots.

For the worst thing in a can ever, nothing beats Canned Whole Chicken:

http://www.seriouseats.com/2009/04/whole-chicken-in-a-can-taste-test.html

This is why we CAN have nice things: Samsung Galaxy Alpha

"You mean like cars? Metal cars versus carbon-fibre ones?"

Carbon-fibre isn't plastic.

I can't believe I had to write that...

Credit card cutting flaw could have killed EVERY AD on Twitter

Re: only 2800

Would have been more apt if it was 2600.

Rap chap tapped for $3 BEELLION: Apple buys Dr Dre's Beats

Re: WTF?

Um, the PowerPC processors were the ones that were made by Motorola (and IBM) that apple used to use (they used Motorola's 68k processors before that). Apple then switched to Intel in 2006, and are still on Intel processors to this day.

Also, it's RISC, not Risk.

Scottish leader splurged £20k appealing disclosure of EU membership legal bungle

Re: "Sic" yourself

Yep, you'd regularly hear that in Ireland too. Jasper Hamill should try and remember that there's numerous valid dialects of English.

German guardsmen growing mono-boobs from drilling with Nazi-era rifles

So the old song was anatomically incorrect

Should have been: "Hitler has only got one boob"

TomTom for Android with hands-free kit review

Re: Question

I'd be interested in knowing that too. I'm in the same situation - upgraded from a 3GS to a 5, and the old TomTom cradle won't work.

The spec sheet seems to suggest it will:

Smartphone compatible: The car kit fits all Bluetooth®-enabled phones charged with a micro-USB connector and which are 100-127.5 mm tall or 54-80.5 mm wide.

(http://www.tomtom.com/en_ie/products/accessories/for-smartphone/hands-free-car-kit-smartphone-9UOB.001.09/)

I already have the Lightning Micro-USB adapter. But I'll wait for independent confirmation before I splash the cash.

Star Trek tractor beam to save Earth from asteroid Armageddon

Dinosaurs are still around.

<--- Here's one.