Posts by Matthew 17

114 billion transistors, one big meh. Apple's M1 Ultra wake-up call

I think that this was always going to happen with technology; it would plateau as it would become so incredibly powerful it would hit a wall as few could find an application for it. TV screens are at 4K, soon they'll try to sell you 8K screens even though many people are happy with 1080 and can't tell the difference between it and 4k. Assuming they're able to sell us 8K screens, they'll then have the task of selling us 16K.

OK so I'll confess I'm ordering an M1 Ultra Studio but only because my 2013 Trashcan is finally getting too long in the tooth to run my studio, but its had some decent mileage so I don't mind the cost, but even though my trashcan wasn't hugely upgradeable when I got it, it's very modular by comparison and I can't help but feel that this new uber M1 isn't going to have anything like the same mileage before it's deemed a paperweight.

Chinese Super Micro 'spy chip' story gets even more strange as everyone doubles down

Even if the magic chips were real

You'd need magic switches, routers, firewalls etc to enable these magic chips to send the magic data over the network to get it to the evil overlords.

I know the US media seems to want to manufacture a cold war with China and paint them out to be evil overlords but someone needs to actually provide some evidence of how all of this was supposed to work otherwise I'm going to have to call BS on it all.

NASA boss insists US returning to the Moon after Peanuts to show for past four decades

They should just build the things that sit on top of hired launchers

Going back to the Moon is important, there's a lot there, none of it is alive but it's rich in everything else.

They keep sending things to trundle around Mars despite establishing over and over that it is dead, has always been dead and was never a warm sunny place. Let it go, it's no more interesting than the Moon.

You could build a moon base, build ships to fly to Mars from there.

Explore the Moons of Jupiter where there may actually be something alive.

1% GDP buys you a lot of cool science don't spend it all and then some building launchers when someone is happy to do that for you

I've got way too much cash, thinks Jeff Bezos. Hmmm, pay more tax? Pay staff more? Nah, let's just go into space

I'm with Bezos

Sure he might be a bit of a twat and perhaps not the nicest person to work for but he's one of only a handful of people who have the means to do something truly different. Governments are full of lawyers and accountants they don't innovate or do anything that can push us forward. They take credit when good things happen despite them and defer blame when things go wrong. Space only happened at all to find a way to spy on other countries or to make them think you could drop bombs from orbit. No strategy was ever aligned with a clear goal of making things better. Every few years they change their minds about what they're doing next and spend ever more $billions achieving little. Your Bezos and your Musks maybe children but they're trying to create a legacy of innovation. There's a very finite amount of resources on this planet, the rare metals and minerals that are required to power and make the things we like, all of that stuff is in essentially infinite supply in the Solar System, there's all the minerals, metals, hydrocarbons you could ever want, it would be impossible to use them all as the Sun will have long destroyed the whole system long before you could make a scratch. You can't pollute space, there's no life there to displace, you could have a world where all mining comes from space. That would be transformative to life here, if those technologies are developed they could snowball into real Star Trek type stuff. You'd never get governments to do something like that as they have to spend money on other things so that the masses keep them in power. Private companies / individuals have no such burdens and can therefore change the world. The next 100+ years could either be amazing or just more of the same humdrum. I'm glad we have the likes of Musk and Bezos and wish them every success, the scope of what's possible is beyond measure.

OMG! OIG to audit SLS: NASA probed over big rocket project's big budgets, big delays

They ripped up Apollo

and spent far, far more developing a dangerous vehicle that could carry only a tiny load and then only into LEO. They spent so much money on it, it became too expensive to fail so they built the thing anyway.

But they beat their drum and tried to sell the idea that this was more sensible than continuing with Apollo, making the Saturn VIII and Nova rockets from that technology (as per Soyuz)

They've now spent a fortune on developing Apollo 2.0 and that's getting to the tipping point whereby it's too expensive to fail so they'll plod on regardless. The Space station will have been ditched into the ocean before it does anything and they'll just keep reinventing the wheel with public money as before.

As Zuck apologizes again... Facebook admits 'most' of its 2bn+ users may have had public profiles slurped by bots

Re: "not selling it"

But that's the only reason the service exists and has value / makes money.

If they relied purely on paid adverts they'd be small beans compared to what they are now / were.

Don't want to alarm you, but defence bods think North Korea could nuke UK 'within a few years'

If they have Nukes then the US won't bomb them

They only attempt to install US-Friendly leaders in countries without them. I wish them every success. If they'e unable to make them I'm sure Russia will sell them some.

The politicians and the media will continue to make out he's another cycle path who wants to blow up the world to justify the US blowing the shit out of the country before they have the ability to make the weapons. They'll turn the chosen area into another desert and spend a few $bn in the process and kill/maim a few 100k of people.

The US is in a panic as they're essentially bankrupt but if they can ensure there are baddies to defend themselves against then maybe they can continue as they always have and bully the rest of the world into submission.

Intel outside: Apple 'prepping' non-Chipzilla Macs by 2020 (stop us if you're having deja vu)

An awful lot of software appeared on Macs when they went Intel as it became easier to port from PC

Presumably they can save money by having bagillion-core Arm-based Macs and they'll be fast enough for all the chromebook type activities most people are happy with but as always there's always suspicion that the people that use their hardware to earn a living aren't really key to any decision process.

Will see what the future holds.

Scientists change their minds, think water may be all over the Moon

Did you know that giant steps are what you take

walking on the moon?

uTorrent file-swappers urged to upgrade after PC hijack flaws fixed

I always felt sorry for the makers µTorrent as everyone called it YooTorrent

So they make a small application, it's small so they decide it could be seen as being positively micro, so they call it MicroTorrent and even shorten that and use the micro symbol µ. However no-one notices and just sees it as a u.

poor µTorrent :p

Mueller bombshell: 13 Russian 'troll factory' staffers charged with allegedly meddling in US presidential election

Can you be charged for posting shit on the internet?

This seems to be basically what happened; their bots and whatnot posted 'propaganda' about HC on social media. Folk write crap on there every day, there's a million SJW's and whatnot making up shit and moaning about the world. If these Russians are charged and therefore fake likes, bots and posting untruths online is therefore a criminal act the internet could become a very different place

Can't wait to get to Mars on a SpaceX ship? It's a cold, dead rock – boffins

Mars may be dead, and was always so, however...

Living there would be far more difficult than moving to Antarctica. All of these things are known. However given that you can't poison groundwater or displace a species of rare frogs there's no reason why you couldn't mine the shit out of it or use it as a stepping stone for deeper space exploration. As robotics and AI improve then Mars could be the next Cybertron colonised by robots, set to the task of mining and assembling huge domed cities for those biological bipeds to visit / live. Once the technology for automating the manufacturing of new robots exist from mining the raw materials to the assembly line then that process would run itself without cost or human intervention. Humans are limited in where they can live almost all of the universe would kill them instantly but machines can live anywhere without much limitation, one day they'll realise that.

You get a lawsuit! And you get a lawsuit! And you! Now Apple sued over CPU security flaws

Re: @ST Companies always withhold details of security flaws

"Apple isn't being sued because Meltdown and Spectre exist. Apple is being sued because they have known about Spectre and Meltdown since June 2017 at the latest and they did absolutely nothing about either until the vulnerabilities were publicly exposed."

True but that just shows that the fix took 6 months to write & test and go into production. That's the norm with any security issue that's discovered, you get a 6 month window to fix it before it goes public. These stories only create the panic when it goes over the 6 month period for the fix to be available. For how easy it was to patch would only be known to Apple's developers. There will likely be 100's of other yet to be public security issues they and similar are working on right now.

Make Apple, er, America Great Again: iGiant to bring home profits, pay $38bn in repatriation tax

Isn't there something like $3t kept overseas?

Makes sense to try and get that to come home.

They only need to find another $20trillion to pay off their credit card.

Ice cliffs found on Mars and NASA says they’re a tap for astronauts

As amazing as it will be when there are bootprints on Mars

The 'boffins' always seem to suggest that getting there is the difficult bit, the living there and the teraforming parts are a doddle.

We should land a bunch of Elonites onto central Antarctica with only what you can parachute in from orbit and see how they get on, it'll be infinitely more easy to find water, use solar power, grow food etc there so it should be a complete piece of piss.

Remember those holy tech wars we used to have? Heh, good times

This is the sort of article you'd expect from someone

Who liked the Speccy!

Admit it your parents didn't love you enough to get you a C64, shit sound and graphics does not improve playability.

Apple macOS so secure some apps can't be easily deleted

csrutil disable

The Protected apps or components that can't be removed such as itunes, photos or whatever you have to switch rootless off, then you can remove what you need and switch it back on again.

Meltdown, Spectre: The password theft bugs at the heart of Intel CPUs

Re: Good stuff!

Hackers was a great documentary, I always ensure the brightness on my terminal is sufficiently bright to project onto my face.

Also I've seen that War Games is getting a remake, that should be stopped at once.

Maybe Intel can help.

Meet R2-DILDO: 'Star Wars' sex toys? This is where the fun begins

That's not how the force works!

These toys aren't that new, I used to buzz womp rats in my T-16 back home.

World Vasectomy Day: 15k men line up for live vent-blocking

Get it done

Far safer that alternatives and the whole thing takes about 20 minutes.

I was a bit bruised for a few days afterwards and my plumbs seem to hang a little lower but beyond that I can't see any scaring and it all seems to work as normal.

US voting server in election security probe is mysteriously wiped

Won't have been formatted

Rather the drives fed through a degausser/shredder

Well at least it's secure now

Good for another 15 years

Moon trumps Mars in new US space policy

Needs to happen

They've been a load of space stations, they're always temporary structures that eventually get dumped in the ocean. The only reason there's the current space station is due to the lemon of a transport vehicle that was the space shuttle. The US government junked Apollo and they had to start again, spent far more money on building something that wasn't as good and considerably less safe to fly. If they'd kept Apollo they could have had a decades old moon base and more by now.

If they don't do this they'll end up with nothing, no ISS and China, Russia, Musk or whomever will set something up there. Going direct to Mars is far more complex than having something as a launch point, the Moon is ideal for this. Learning how to mine the Moon and building things there will provide invaluable data for doing the same on Mars and beyond. It's sat right there an is only a few days away, criminal that it's been ignored for nearly 45 years

macOS High Sierra more like 'Cry Sierra' for Mac-wielding beta testers

I've been running it since beta 5

I have a MBP that I use as a guinea pig / test platform to ensure that all my soft and hard ware will operate correctly before I update my production machines. The only bug I've still not seen fixed is the nightshift mode seems all over the place, flicking on and off, but the rest of the platform seems decent and nearly all my software now works.

I have to say though that I'm hugely impressed with APFS it's been a massive speed boost to the performance of the machine. Normally I wait for a .1 release but sod it I've been seduced by speed.

Behold iOS 11, an entirely new computer platform from Apple

My son installed it on his air

Quite impressed with it, however I'm still not convinced it is more practical or attractive to use over a Macbook.

TBH even if they just brought out MacOS for the iPad pro I still think I'd rather spend more and get a MBP.

Signs of ground ice found on ancient protoplanet asteroid Vesta

What would stop the water evaporating when it hit the Earth

Surely the asteroids would get quite hot.

I'm sure there was another process that created the water, a lot of trapped hydrogen igniting for example? Why does it have to come from elsewhere?

Well, debugger me. Microsoft's BSOD fixer is getting a makeover

The BSoD was never as useful as a Guru Meditation

The benchmark for error messages.

El Reg gets schooled on why SSDs will NOT kill off the trusty hard drive

I've been told that SSD isn't good for cold data storage

As you need to power them up every few months or they lose their contents.

I've a beer-cooler box in my loft with a load of HDD backups of my work based on this, hopefully they'll survive a long time :)

Elon Musk among 116 AI types calling on UN to nobble robo-weapons before they go all Skynet

It's an interesting game.....

The only smart move, is not to play

- Josua.

New Amiga to go on sale in late 2017

Amiga should have been the Mac

If Jobs had bought Amiga computers instead of Commodore and the Amiga had been the first Mac instead they'd have had a much more powerful machine and the machine a brighter future.

The Amiga was wonderful for a short period but they were never really able to keep on top of it and the rest of the world quietly caught up and left it behind.

The Telegraph has killed Prince Philip

Proof of the Illuminati

This shows that there is knowledge of future events as the news for it has already been written.

They already know what's going to happen, they just release information as and when appropriate to their plan.

science!!

Or similar

Microsoft Surface laptop: Is this your MacBook Air replacement?

The biggest problem with Mac alternatives is

They don't run MacOS.

But normally you can run Linux so not the end of the world, but this one probably doesn't either.

And costs as much as a MacBook Pro which is capable of running any OS and won't be work pennies when you try and sell it to buy a new one.

UK regulator set to ban ads depicting bumbling manchildren

this shouldn't be encouraged, it's another 1st world problem

We don't or at least shouldn't need 'protecting' from stereotypes, bad role models or anything we might see on the TV, on a billboard or on a computer. We seem to be encouraging a world where people are increasingly fragile and can't think for themselves, we need to tiptoe over endless eggshells to avoid offending them.

Obese people are told to be 'body confident' rather than to lose weight, they cost the NHS £5billion every year, there are so many of these body confident people about no-one notices any more, yet if you see someone who is anorexic then it's rare, people look and stare, this is despite the thin/athletic models in the magazines, on the TV, in adverts etc, or the slim manakins in the shop windows. They then use 'real women' in the adverts to avoid offence meaning that to be one you have to be overweight, if you are slim/athletic then you're presumably part of the problem! If you're a man that's useless around the house or can't change a wheel on a car then you're a stereotype, if you know how to fix stuff and don't have a problem with DIY and keeping the house clean then you're just another man that's keeping women down. If you're a woman who likes being a housewife then you're oppressed! Any model used will always offend someone, it's what they're there for, it gives them validation. It's a competition to see who can be the most frequently offended and self-righteous.

People don't need protecting, children should be taught how to think, not what to think. You should be confident in your own self and mind, your problems are your problems, they're not everyone else's, you're just as special as everyone else, i.e you're not special. No-one is interested in what you identify with if that's all you've got to contribute to the world. Go out and do something, be the best you can. If you find that the way a product is advertised offensive, awesome, don't buy their product, don't complain about it and demand that it's banned. We're bending over backwards for this tiny but very vocal minority of people who contribute nothing but demand everything. It's long past time we just ignored them and got on with our lives as all of these harmful adverts or stereotypes don't bother us, we're don't even notice them as we're just getting on with it. If you object to how something is advertised then just don't buy it. Marketers create adverts they think will help sell a product, if it doesn't work they'll try a different approach.

John McAfee plans to destroy Google. Details? Ummm...

Re: I'm a statistic

And so's my wife!

Guess who doesn't have to pay $1.3bn in back taxes? Of course it's fscking Google

The EU are always suing US IT firms for $bagillions

Have they ever managed to get any money from doing this, all that seems to happen is that they go back n forth through the courts for a few years then nothing?

Ever wonder why those Apple iPhone updates take so damn long?

Other than it taking a bit longer to update

Was anyone remotely inconvenienced with this?

If they'd asked users whether they wanted to change from one file system to another 99% of users would have had no idea what a filesystem was.

Even if a phone did die in the process restoring it is trivial.

If you're ever worried about an update bricking your device then wait to see how the update went for the masses before installing it yourself. They're not forced on you.

PCIe speed to double by 2019 to 128GB/s

I wonder what the Peripheral Component Interconnect Special Interest Group do for fun?

And is there a casual interest group also?

Going to Mars may give you cancer, warns doc

give the transport ship a magnetosphere

The Earth's magnetic field is physically large but as magnets go it's really weak.

You could create a comparable magnetic field around a small craft without adding much weight or energy requirements, just needs a coil with a few amps going through it.

The solar wind / cosmic rays would then be deflected and the borealis would give the astronauts something to look at whilst they're trapped inside for the trip.

I know there was the idea of filling the hull with a skin of water but that's going to add a lot of mass which makes it harder to get it up there.

UK PM May's response to London terror attack: Time to 'regulate' internet companies

Re: Book stores.

it's difficult to see how extra 'bobbies on the beat' would make any difference for this sort of crime.

Earth resists NASA's attempts to make red and green clouds

Re: Chemtrails FTW

Wasn't HAARP shut down?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Frequency_Active_Auroral_Research_Program

Google wants to track your phone and credit card through meatspace

So when it shows advertising doesn't work, no-one is influenced by them

Will the house of cards that is Google finally tumble?

UK.gov cuts deal with Microsoft to avoid £15m post-Brexit price hike

I only clicked the article because it had a C64 on the picture

I feel disappointed now.

Might go n play Delta to cheer myself up.

Apple’s premium TV plans – the hobby doomed to stay that way

Content licensing breaks everything

I have an ATV, I quite like it I can use it as an AirPlay device, mirror my Mac on it and I use it for YouTube/Netflix/iPlayer/4OD/Plex. there isn't an Amazon app for it which is a PITA as I've only 2 HDMI sockets on my TV and the other one has the BD player in. Ideally I'd have a smart telly that has all the functionality built in so I can just keep the DB player for the odd occasion when it's used.

But I don't want to have a subscription to Netflix, and another to Amazon Prime, and another to Apple, and another to something else all to just watch the odd thing that I do. Would be nice to just have a box that lets me watch anything on no matter who makes it and I'd just get an invoice at the end of the month paid via direct debit.

Mac Pro update: Apple promises another pricey thing it will no doubt abandon after a year

Re: "Once upon a time, you couldn't get a PC of equivalent spec as a Mac Pro"

In 2013 the trash can was good value, you couldn't buy a machine with that CPU/GPU's/RAM/PCIeSSD etc for the price, even a DIY machine would cost far more.

Yes that was way back in 2013 and the world has moved on. I guess for the most part people didn't need expensive Xeon CPU's as they didn't work in music/video production, they just wanted an 'iMac Pro' with a modern i7 and decent GPU in to play games on.

As of today, iThings are even harder for police to probe

not without warning

It doesn't automatically update the OS.

If you do it checks / prompts to see if you have a backup of your device.

If you're worried that a software update might break something then don't update your device straight away, if there are issues they'll soon make the news, if nothing happens then it's safe to update your device, but make sure you have a backup first.

:)

Apple's macOS is the safer choice – but not for the reason you think

Surely any system is secure until someone finds a way to break in?

If, because there are fewer hackers on MacOS it has less malware, rootkits and other exploits then it's by definition safer. If you put a Windows PC onto the Internet naked then it'll get owned almost straight away, whereas if you're using MacOS, Linux or any other unix-like OS then you're almost certainly going to be fine as long as you keep it all patched and don't do anything obviously daft.

But to argue that it might be like a sieve we just don't know and there isn't anyone to prove it then by the same argument it might be the most secure operating system ever devised. I think the anti-virus people are just annoyed they can't get any money out of Mac users and want to scare them into buying their software subscriptions.

Apple: Don't panic, but your Mac can be pwned via GarageBand .bands

Does it affect Logic Pro X?

as it can load GarageBand files.

Also, possibly worth mentioning that if you get a new Mac it does come bundled with what were the iWork / iLife apps. I generally do a reinstall of the OS when I get one just so it's a nice barebones install, it doesn't then install anything extra 'by default' unless you visit it the app store and download them.

Totally not-crazy billionaire Elon Musk: All of us – yes, even you – must become cyborgs

I think it's why he wants to move to Mars

He knows that to realise his world view almost everyone will be without a job. He's no concept that not everyone lives in that Californian IT bubble. If he can therefore create his new society/cult of mecca humans then it won't be a problem.

He accepts that if you drive something for a living you'll be out of work.

He then notes that if cars drive themselves people will stop buying them, they'll just turn up, take you where you want to be and drop you off.

He also notes that cars spend 85% of their time parked up so not only will no-one buy them we'll need far less of them too.

If you're not owning or driving a car then you'll not get insurance or visit a filling station and buy some chewing gum and a CD of 80's rock classics whilst you're there.

You'll not clean them or have the bumps taken out or buy a sat nav.

We'd not need white lines or sign posts, traffic lights or junctions either.

And we could 'drive' whilst drunk and watch Youtube and there shouldn't be any congestion which is nice.

But those tens of millions of people who're out of work and won't buy into this utopia are just spoilsports and need to be given a 'basic income' as compensation for now being unemployable, this will be paid by tax on the ever dwindling supply of people who's jobs have yet to be eradicated.

Better to create your own society with the new rules from day one.

You want WHO?! Reg readers vote Tom Baker for Doctor 13. Of course

YOU HAVE A WOMAN'S BOTTOM!

That's the role TB needs to resurrect

Macs don't get viruses? Hahaha, ha... seriously though, that Word doc could be malware

Malware and viruses aren't quite the same thing though

So a virus should be able to infect another machine on the network without the user doing anything.

Here you have to open a specific word document in Word presumably that's been engineered to include some malware. It's not going to 'infect' any other Mac on the network or replicate itself to be included into any of your other documents.

Whereas if you run an unprotected Windows machine on the internet then it'll run into trouble in minutes whether you open a document or not.

Still don't see any compelling reason to install anti-virus on a Mac, I run malwarebytes if I'm doing some housekeeping, never seen it report that it's found something bad.