Posts by Rattus Rattus

YouTube supremo says vid-streaming-slash-piracy giant can't afford EU's copyright overhaul

Re: So what?

YouTube has ads? Huh.

Planned European death ray may not need Brit boffinry brain-picking

Re: when are we...

Don't know where he expected to carry that in a Hornet cockpit, anyway.

Size does matter, chaps: Oversized todgers an evolutionary handicap

I've got an enormous cock

He's damn loud when he squawks at daybreak.

Samsung Galaxy S9: Still the Lord of All Droids

If you're willing to forgo the removeable battery, you can get most of what you're looking for in the Xiaomi Mi A1 for about £180. I just moved from my old S5 to the Xiaomi and am pretty pleased with it.

It's April 2018, and we've had to sit on this Windows 10 Spring Creators Update headline for days

I can't even get 1709 to install on my stick PC despite repeated attempts. And the failure doesn't give anything remotely resembling a useful error message. I need to find the time to wrestle with the shitty BIOS so I can convince it to boot off a Linux thumb drive and make the machine actually useful again.

German sauna drags punters to court over naked truth

Re: Stamp it out.

Spotted the German?

How life started on Earth: Sulfur dioxide builds up, volcanoes blow, job done – boffins

I had some rather sulfidic anions last night in my dinner and my volcano is belching pretty large concentrations this morning.

What the @#$%&!? Microsoft bans nudity, swearing in Skype, emails, Office 365 docs

Re: @bombastic bob

And so they should. It's shiitake mushroom.

ACCC clamping down on Premium Billing Direct payments

Re: Why so greedy????

Fraudulent? Yes, if they can get away with it. Criminal? Well, not if you can buy enough politicians to make it legal.

Re: Why so greedy????

Got to produce ever-rising returns for the shareholder. There is never such a thing as "enough" in a capitalist system, it demands infinite growth and ever-increasing profits.

Five things you need to know about Microsoft's looming Windows 10 Spring Creators Update

Re: My personal OS is ...

What have they done to deserve being saddled with a console?

Uber breaks self-driving car record: First robo-ride to kill a pedestrian

Re: How good is the cars anticipation?

With all these comments about small children, I want to know who all these parents are that (A) fail to teach their kids basic road safety; and (B) allow their kids anywhere remotely near a road without holding their hands until they're old enough to have learned?

I'm frankly pretty fed up with the calls to wrap the whole world in cotton wool because some parents are too stupid to actually parent.

Cyborg fined for riding train without valid ticket

If they're well designed they shouldn't. I have a transport card, my work door card, and a bank card all in my wallet together and I just swipe the whole wallet over over the relevant sensor. The sensor reads the card it's looking for and ignores the others.

Boffins find sign of water existing deep into Earth's mantle by looking at diamonds

Non standard oddball unit "miles"

Tch, come on Reg. If you're not going to use proper length units like kilo-linguini you should at least convert to metric.

London Mayor calls for social networks and sharing economy to stop harming society

@Arctic Fox

Faux News

I watched Fox News

It was hilarious.

Fun fact of the day: Voice recognition tech is naturally sexist

Female voices...

"...more easily masked by noise."

Oh how I wish that were true.

A smartphone recession is coming and animated poo emojis can't stop it

Re: God you luddites are boring

My PC even cold boots in about a quarter the time my phone does, thanks to a nice fast SSD. And then once the phone is booted I have to wait some more while it initialises things and faffs about with memory. I could start my desktop, read the email, reply, and shut down in less time than it would take just to start my phone and open the email on it. All with the comfort of a proper keyboard, too. No, a phone is what you use for emergency access when you're away from your real computer.

Re: My OnePlus 5 is fine

I'm still using my 2012 Nexus 7, also mainly as an eBook reader. I thought about replacing it, but when I looked at tablet prices I thought "You want HOW effing much?!" and went right back to the N7. I'm not paying more than $250 AUD, tops, for a WiFi-only slab.

Re: Back to basics

Or just don't make a habit of dropping your phone. I'm still using my S5 which has never had so much as a screen protector in its lifetime and it still doesn't have a scratch, let alone a crack.

Does my boom look big in this? New universe measurements bewilder boffins

Re: two days to travel from Los Angeles, CA to San Antonio, TX by road

Try visiting Australia then. My state is bigger than Alaska and Texas combined, and takes two days to drive across the short way. Three to four days to travel its length.

Who wanted a future in which AI can copy your voice and say things you never uttered? Who?!

Re: license to have children

That's not such a bad idea, TBH. I would get behind it.

@BigAndos

Emma Watson?

Re: Not a single lawful one?!

No, I can do one better: Alan Rickman.

Gilbert Gottfried.

Microsoft Australia changes App Store T&Cs to pay GST

MS still has an app store? Huh.

*Wakes up in Chrome's post-adblockalyptic landscape* Wow, hardly anything's changed!

re: Ballmer

You know, I miss Steve Ballmer. After a few years of Satellite Nutella I'm starting to think the sweaty one wasn't so bad.

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ErDGpdmBZkY

Farts away! Plane makes unscheduled stop after man won't stop guffing

Re: Open the window?

My hovercraft is full of eels!

Crypto-gurus: Which idiots told the FBI that Feds-only backdoors in encryption are possible?

Her name is Alberta, she lives in Vancouver!

US states accused of skimming cash from 911 emergency call dosh

Re: Wanting without paying

"Every tax payer wants certain services to exist and wants them paid for by the other tax payers"

On a national level, with a sovereign currency, that's not really how tax works. Tax isn't raised to pay for government spending although it's often framed that way, the government owns the currency and mints and can spend as much as they like. Government spends money into existence. Tax is a mechanism to remove money from circulation so spending new money into existence doesn't cause too much inflation. This is why a government budget is not like a business or household budget and should not be managed like one.

Non-sovereign governments, however, such as states and cities, do have to raise the money they spend in one way or another. This includes taxes, fines, fees, duties, and direct grants from the national government.

Re: "New York State is run by Democrats. "

"The truth is to non Americans outside America it's very difficult to tell what you call Democrats apart from what you call Republicans."

So far as I've been able to tell, they've got a conservative, religious, big-business-oriented right wing party, and a REALLY conservative, religious, big-business-oriented right wing party.

To hack Australia and learn its secrets, buy second-hand furniture

Re: ElReg: so educational

Named after the insect - "white ants," better known as termites. 'Cos they're fairly ant shaped, and they're, well, white.

User stepped on mouse, complained pedal wasn’t making PC go faster

Re: Aged Parent

So he already understands lookup tables!

Trump White House mulls nationalizing 5G... an idea going down like 'a balloon made out of a Ford Pinto'

American Backdoor

I think I've seen that movie.

Stop us if you've heard this one before: Tokyo crypto-cash exchange 'hacked' for half a billion bucks

Re: Portable gold

"when he decided that protecting the UK's triple-A rating was more important than investing in industry and in training"

Funny, Australia is in the same position for the same reasons. This is looking less like accident and more like a deliberate choice.

Mass limit proposed so boffins can tell when they've fingered a brown dwarf or a fat planet

Re: Firing up

Stars can shine

People can try

But that's about it

(Apologies to Dan Salvato)

NASA rethinking InSight probe mission after dust storm predicted for Mars

Re: direct entry from interplanetary cruise

Just like my Kerbal missions. Atmospheres make everything so much easier!

You want wires with that? Burger King backs, er, net neutrality

Re: You can make some people believe anything if you dumb it down enough

True. For example, that "trickle down" economics works, or that tax breaks for the wealthy create jobs, or that America is the "land of the free".

FYI: There's now an AI app that generates convincing fake smut vids using celebs' faces

Re: Too much Daily Mail for my liking

Yep, as soon as someone starts on the "think of the kiddies!" drivel these days I automatically take the whole text only half as seriously, and usually start looking for the hidden motive.

This has been coming for a long time, and those who think it should not have been released have obviously forgotten how the internet works. There is no security through obscurity, once a tool like this exists it is guaranteed to be in the wold sooner rather than later. Yes, yes, you can make your neighbour look bad, child porn uses, etc etc. That's all beside the point. No point in wringing your hands over it. The only thing we can do is adapt to its existence. In fact, release of this app should make stuff like "revenge porn" less of an issue rather than more - if an ex releases a genuine video of you, you can easily point to this app and say "Not me, clearly made up."

NASA is sniffing jet fuel over Germany

Re: Market distortion

For completely optional resources they are. For necessities they are not.

Re: Market distortion

Markets are not always the best distribution mechanism.

Australia won't prescribe its national broadband network a high-fibre diet

90% of the [construction] cost of an FTTH network

...and 10,000% of the ongoing maintenance costs.

@bd1235

Thanks for commenting, Mr Turnbull, but haven't your lot got tired of the "Everything's Labor's fault!" line yet?

Boffins closer to solving what causes weird radio bursts from space

Re: Alien? Unlikely

Great. So aliens exist, but it turns out they're Vogons.

Hold on to your aaSes: Yup, Windows 10 'as a service' is incoming

No

Console is not an option.

Pastry in a manger: We're soz, Greggs man said

Re: I ain't Spartacus

The only true doughnut is the cinnamon-dusted ring (shaddup). All those iced or jam-filled... things are mere cakes and no doughnut at all!

Lord of the Rings TV show shopped around Hollywood

Re: Most of the appeal of GoT

"Most of the appeal of GoT is the scheming and intrigue, lifted from European history. Until the most recent series, the fantasy elements have sat on the periphery"

Which I guess is why it turned out boring as shite and I ended up dumping it after a couple of seasons. No I don't care who's screwing who or whose family has a ten generations old rivalry with another. I want magic blowing shit up and dragons setting fire to things.

Re: love-interest for Treebeard

Well the Entwives are long gone. Are there any Entmistresses?