Presumably a lot of this is Wooden Dollars time. For example: "the budget request for the veteran Voyager spacecraft is set to increase from $6.5 million to $7 million for FY2025, increasing to $7.6 million in FY2029." I'm guessing they've not actually got (say), a team of 100 scientists on $65K pa working full time on it, it's more that's primarily time required on the deep space network which has a notional value attached to it?
Posts by Annihilator
3777 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Jun 2009
Page:
NASA's FY2025 budget request means tough times ahead for Chandra and Hubble
HP print rental service seeks more users to become subscription addicts
Re: RE: wise choice
HP doesn't have the clogging issue primarily because their printheads are within the cartridges. Ironically, the biggest issue I had during a (sort of) free trial of HP Ink was my light usage, meaning that a cartridge would get clogged, but HP refused to replace it as the levels still showed high.
HP also dcked me off with their free ink trial. Bought the printer with "2 years free Instant Ink!" emblazoned on the box. What that meant in reality was "£120 credit, signed up to the £5 a month plan". When that subsequently went up to a £7 a month plan, suddenly £120 doesn't buy 2 years anymore... Good luck arguing that with HP though.
Hold up world, HP's all-in-one print subscription's about to land, and don't forget AI PCs
Re: Customers are happy with subscriptions?
It's self-fulfilling prophecy though. Subscribers wouldn't subscribe if they weren't happy with the subscription. (well broadly anyway, there will always be some idiots merrily continuing)
Now, if they were to measure subscriber satisfaction past and present, that might be a different score. But equally probably still higher than the people who'd look at this service and laugh at it before moving along.
Staff say Dell's return to office mandate is a stealth layoff, especially for women
Nope, my manager and my visibility have nothing to do with it. It's the *commute* as I've already explained.
If I'm working at home, I can drop my kids off at school and be at my desk before 9. If I'm forced to an office, I'd be there by 10am.
If I'm working at home, I can pick my kids up at 4 (but usually 5 due to after-school activities like tennis etc) and be missing from my desk for 15 minutes. If I'm in an office, I'd need to leave at 3pm to achieve that.
PS - I love that you've created this account fully to make this argument.
So, consider school starts at 08:45 and finishes about 16:00. I can do drop off and be back at my remote desk way before 09:00. I can't do that if I'm being forced back to an office. Similarly pickup - I can pick them up and be back at my desk before anyone would ever notice, and they can then take care of themselves in the house while I'm there - they're broadly self-sufficient. 3 times out of 5, they'd be in some sort of after-school club or activity anyway, so pickup is closer to 17:00. But again, I can't do that if I have to leave an office and commute an hour to get to the school.
So yes, it sadly disproportionately affects women more than men, as currently, the societal "norm" is that women are usually the primary care-givers and men are usually the higher earners, therefore the ones least likely to give up a job when pushed into this scenario. The wage gap for *the same roles* is currently around 10%, and has been for a while. There are a number of reasons for this, one of the biggest being maternity vs paternity disparity, pushing women out of work for 6-12 months when having a child. Biomechanics also mean this is a more likely outcome.
Flexible working, remote working etc has been one of the biggest levers to level the playing field across the gender divide. While this situation exists, policies such as this one will disproportionately affect women.
Trident missile test a damp squib after rocket goes 'plop,' fails to ignite
One of the great jobs must be a nuclear bomb salesman. You can just say "aw it's a cracker this one... As a matter of fact Mrs Thatcher, this is the only one that cockroaches are frightened of." You could fill it with doughnuts. Because they're not gonna say "well let's go out to the carpark and see if it works". It could be full of sandshoes and sweeties.
- Billy Connolly.
Hackers mod a Sony PlayStation Portal to run PSP games
Back when the PS4 launched this service (remote play has been a thing for a while now), I tried it out from an office location and it was surprisingly good. The app is PSRemotePlay and is available for iOS devices and I assume Android ones. PS4 controllers can be paired to iPads/iPhones, so essentially you could play with your normal PS controller and using the iPad as a remote screen. Was hard pushed to tell the difference.
"many of which were originally stored on optical Universal Media Disks capable of holding 900MB or 1.8GB of storage"
The PSP went through a major homebrew/hacking era too, and it turns out that the images of the UMDs were relatively compressible into .cso files. Just checked my backups and my 36 games takes up about 16GB. Was a boon for taking multiple games on holiday etc, as I'd easily fit a reasonable collection onto an (at the time) enormous 8GB Memory Stick. Loaded much faster too.
Sounds like there's a reasonable amount of space on PS Portal too then.
Must admit though if I was spending money on this stuff any more, I'd be buying a Backbone One controller for half the price that basically straps onto your phone to allow you to remote play your PS4/5.
Apple makes it official: No Home Screen web apps in European Union
Was anyone really using this feature though?
Frankly I'm fed up of the appification of what is essentially websites. Sites like Reddit and others constantly badger me to use the app instead of the browser (and even bar you from accessing it via the web if there's a hint of adult content about it - I never know if there is, I just don't read that page).
Imagine theregister launched an app and nagged you to use that instead of visiting the website.
CERN seeks €20B to build a bigger, faster, particle accelerator
Re: Priorities
Absolutely. I'm utterly fed up of the "but what about..." arguments for any science funding. Space exploration gets battered by it too. There are always "better" things to spend money on. Curing cancer, ending poverty, etc etc.
Meanwhile, the world collectively spends around $2.2 trillion annually on various militaries. The US contributing 40% of that alone. As you say, perhaps for just one year they could spend $2.18 trillion instead. They could even spend $2.119 trillion over the next 20 years if it's easier - call it $2.2 for simplicity.
Apple Vision Pro has densest display iFixit's ever seen, and almost-OK repairability
Re: Surprised the PPD is that low
It's.... complicated. Apple's is a significant step up in terms of pixel density and PPD. For example, the Quest 2 and PSVR2 are both around 20 PPD of vision, but various things make the difference, such as gaps between pixels etc in terms of the screen door effect, how the lens distributes the pixels. I'd imagine the effective PPD in the centre of the screen is higher than the peripheral views - you tend not to look only with your eyes to the extremes of what you can actually make your eyes do.
Using a PSVR2 I was blown away at the detail I was able to see, but then I was impressed with the original PSVR too (despite knowing I was looking at a screen). I imagine that the Apple one will equally be a "wow" moment.
It's the balance between pixel density and size of the device. They could have achieved 60PPD if they'd made smaller pixels (probably not possible yet), or a bigger display (same density, more pixels) but further away from the eye, making a bigger set of ski goggles.
iFixit tears Apple's Vision Pro to pieces
Re: Cnnot use with glasses so need prescription lens inserts
There are lenses in front of the displays though - my optical physics is as rusty as my own eye-sight, but I'd wager that having them moveable would do the trick. Much like I can use a pair of binoculars without my glasses.
Or, even more simply, just have room inside the headset to wear your own glasses - like others do.
Apple's Vision Pro costs big bucks to buy and repair ... just don't mention the box design
Re: Haven't <> Aren't
While it’s true that the Vision device can run iPad apps, the developer can specifically opt out. And tellingly, both Netflix and YouTube have done just that, as well as saying they won’t be creating a native app.
So unsurprisingly, you won’t be able to stream Apple TV’s competitors content while wearing a Vision Pro. I expect they’ll have a change of heart if those sales numbers go up though.
UK merger of Vodafone and Three in competition watchdog's crosshairs
Microsoft braces for automatic AI takeover with Copilot at Windows startup
I misread this as Microsoft were sticking Copilot in charge of an experimental new version of Windows and genuinely thought “ah well, it couldn’t be worse…”
Annoyingly for me, Copilot is also the name of a brilliant satnav app for smartphones (before apple and Google did turn-by-turn directions) and I still have a fondness for the name. Not for much longer I reckon.
Nvidia slowed RTX 4090 GPU by 11 percent, to make it 100 percent legal for export to China
Re: Slower Version
Yep. Most if not all CPUs were manufactured in this way, especially in the earlier days when all that defined a CPU was its base clock speed and multipliers. Essentially all Pentiums were created on the same die, tested to see how it performed and then badged at the correct clock speed. The higher cost was primarily down to the rarity and low yields - a P200 was identical to a P133 off the production line, just one was more stable than the other.
Similarly with cores as you mentioned, they'd sell 3-core processors. Realistically, no one was ever going to design a 3-core CPU, but a defective core on a quad-core device was fairly common. AMD did this with the Phenom range - Toliman (3-core Phenom) was an Agena chip with a defective core.
Bank boss hated IT, loved the beach, was clueless about ports and politeness
Re: bullshit detected
Yeah but we in the IT industry have a perverse definition of "fitting". We'll scoff at someone plugging an RJ11 into an RJ45 socket, but at the same time have the PCI-E spec which allows for x1, x4 and x8 cards to happily sit in a x16 slot. From memory you can also make a x16 card run at reduced bandwidth in a x4 slot, but I might be misremembering that bit (plus who would actually do it).
NASA's Psyche spacecraft beams back a 'Hello' from 10 million miles away
Software is listening for the options you want it to offer, and it's about time
Apple exec defends 8GB $1,599 MacBook Pro, claims it's like 16GB in a PC
It's tricky - because I tend to believe the whole "8GB in an OSX environment is equivalent to a 16GB Windows ecosystem". I'm doing very little on this 16GB laptop currently, and a quick glance at task manager suggests 12GB is occupied. I've got Teams, Outlook, Excel (with a very basic spreadsheet) and Edge open currently - arguably, nothing.
I'd be interested to see benchmarks between the 8GB and 16GB models, to see if it holds up. And also, any rough equivalent benchmarks against similarly specced x86 machines. Most use cases quoted here seem to be Photoshop/Premier large projects, so it should be fairly easy to do a comparison.
Help, Android 14 ate my Pixel! Bug causes endless reboots, loss of storage access
X looks back at year of so-called 'engineering excellence' under Musk
Re: So pay to play
"Not without them being as stringently regulated as any other actual bank."
Yep. Musk will no doubt be proudly banging on about how he'll look to be nimbler than the regulations allow, ignoring that the regulations are blimmin important and there for a reason.
Anyone with half a brain will swerve whatever system he proffers. Just look to his previous version of X (PayPal) to see the absolute lax controls around that for details.
You've just spent $400 on a baby monitor. Now you need a subscription
Blink
I bought a few Blink cameras for the house a few years ago as a quick and dirty solution to a security problem. That was nice too, with alerting, live viewing and local recording, as well as 30-days cloud storage of latest clips. About 6 months ago, Amazon decided to charge £8.99 for the same service.
So basically, I've now got 3 useless cameras that I can't even repurpose or connect to a NAS. Landfill.
Raspberry Pi 5 revealed, and it should satisfy your need for speed
Doom developer John Carmack thinks artificial general intelligence is doable by 2030
"LLMs are a product of limited hardware resources"
In otherwords, if we throw more and more monkeys at the problem, then as we approach infinite monkeys eventually we'll get Shakespeare.
"he has a long history of getting a lot out of not much"
I mis-read that as "he has a long history of not getting out much", which is probably true as well.
How TCP's congestion control saved the internet
No, no, no! Disco joke hit bum note in the rehab center
Re: So the system didn't cut the ringtone when the phone was picked up
I'd imagine it was a skeuomorphism. In old-skool phones, picking up the phone didn't result in instant silence, the literal bell continued to be heard reverberating. Similarly if I think back to the DTMF touch tone ones that replaced them continued to play the whole ring after the phone was picked up. Either for simplistic design, or because an interrupted ring sounded discombobulating.
BT confirms it's switching off 3G in UK from Jan next year
Vodafone 5G premium
"Switching 3G off to make room for 5G". The implication being if you live in a 3G only service area, it will be replaced with a nice shiny 5G service.
Thankfully, Vodafone will charge you an extra 10% for an equivalent 5G compatible contract (£30 a month SIM only for "Unlimited", £33 a month for "Unlimited Max" which is the same plan but "includes 5G at no extra cost"... except for the £3).
Best I can tell, the rest don't charge more for 5G.
Scared of flying? Good news! Software glitches keep aircraft on the ground
Apple races to patch the latest zero-day iPhone exploit
Re: This was patched yesterday
Not to be that other guy...
"Apple moved swiftly, assigning two CVEs to the exploit chain – CVE-2023-41064 and CVE-2023-41061 – and issuing updates for iOS and iPadOS"
"As for the latest exploits, the advice is to update your iOS and iPadOS devices immediately"
And despite all that, it was a zero-day exploit discovered in the wild. So still newsworthy, and a prompt reminder to patch. Despite having auto-updates on, mine hadn't done it yet - just done it manually.
We all scream for ice cream – so why are McDonald's machines always broken?
I think that's the same with everything though. I had caused to repair my dishwasher (new heater) and washing machine (drain pump) in the last month and sourced the appropriate spare parts. The heater was only £30, and the drain pump £58, so both economical repairs, but at some point it won't be. If I were to build either machine using entirely spare parts, it would be more than double the cost of the same machine at retail.
The whole "right to repair" movement is a great step for the IT industry, but I think it's going to be shocking what the prices being charged for components will be. A new hinge for a laptop being £30 for example.
Just found the original.. Basically, McDonalds have locked the franchise owners into a single contract for repairs that are crippling high. They even stamped down on a company that was selling a tool (Kytch) to franchise owners to troubleshoot and fix the machines on their own. The whole story is pretty dark.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrDEtSlqJC4
Farewell WordPad, we hardly knew ye
Computer graphics pioneer John Warnock dies at 82
On the plus side, I bet his obituary looks incredible across all platforms.
Sad times. I remember struggling through my dissertation laying it out in LaTex to generate a .ps version to submit (it was a Comp Sci degree, and part of the assignment detail). While it was an utter pain in the A to mark it up that way, I must admit that it looked beautiful once compiled.
Judge denies HP's plea to throw out all-in-one printer lockdown lawsuit
Re: I ditched HP printers
I had that for a while, but I got disillusioned by them for a couple of reasons:
1) I originally bought the printer because it came with "2 years of Instant Ink". What it actually came with was credit to a certain value, and then a year later they hiked the price of Instant Ink to the point the credit only lasted 15 months. So I threw my toys out the pram and stopped using it after that.
2) Their ink cartridges have a phenomenal habit of drying up and smearing to the point of not being usable, but the printer still shows it as having ink in it, so they won't replace the cartridge. It sort of died in that state in the end.