Posts by steve 124

Republican senators shoot down a triple whammy of proposed election security laws

Re: BWAHAHAHA

Agreed. If they were really concerned about voting interference then at least one of these bills would be to require identification at all voting locations and double checking mail-in ballots for deceased voters. Maybe a byline about not counting any votes from counties that allow illegal aliens to vote en mass (looking at YOU California).

Yea, the way out voting system is setup, there's not much chance of direct hacking (these systems are supposed to talk over only secured transmission lines, not directly on the internet). I'm much more concerned with voter fraud than I am hacking.

Yeah, yeah, PCs are dead? Ask Texan Mick and his Dell empire if that's the case

cheaper ram

Might have something to do with the fact that DRAM manufacturers have almost stopped raping the public on memory prices (which we're up nearly 500% since 2015, at Q4 last year). DRAM translates to nearly all components (mobo, GPU, SSD, and of course, RAM). I would have already built at least 2 new PCs at my house in the last 3 years, except the prices were so artificially jacked up, so I waited. Maybe in 2020 I'll build a new rig, but it's sad that even now DRAM prices are about 150% of where they were when my last PC was built.

Still waiting to hear back on the class action suite they were supposed to be bringing against the big 4. I'm sure my slice of that pie will be something like 37 cents, but I just want to hear some CEOs went to prison again. If they aren't prosecuted then it will happen again (just like in 05 and 97).

PCs aren't going anywhere, it's just nobody could afford to upgrade until very recently.

White House mulls just banning strong end-to-end crypto. Plus: More bad stuff in infosec land

What? No reference to "think of the kids"?

I can't believe there wasn't the obligatory "we have to do this to stop kids being abused" argument that always seems to come up in this conversation.

Just another stupid idea from people who like saying the word "encryption" to make themselves sound smarter. I'm sure this will fade away just like

every other time this "idea" comes up.

Government: "Hold my beer and watch this!"

smh.

Bonkers British MPs rant: 5G signals cause cancer

Re: How brainwashed have the majority of you become??

The responses you got were 99% by millennials who wouldn't give up their mobile devices even if they actually melted their skin every time they used them. That generation is doomed to very terrible middle aged health crisis and they won't listen to anyone trying to warn them. I'm almost 50 so at this point, the most it'll do is take 5-10 years from my old age. These chumps however, are going to be dropping like flies by the time they are my age.

Let's hope the word gets out before the next generation also exchanges their lifespan for their twitter page.

"concerns that have long since been put to bed" ??

Seriously? I read that line and asked myself, did this author do any research at all before writing this article?

Hmm, so you think the fact that since the telecomms paid a bunch of researchers over the past 20 years to publish that 2.4Ghz and below frequency radiation doesn't cause significant harm to humans (which, is dubious at best) that directly translates to 5G?

Have you seen the saturation estimates for 5G? Do you realize the frequencies we're talking about with 5G (it's EHF, 24-86GHz).

Let's put that in perspective shall we? The same amount of energy being transmitted over a 2.4GHz wave (about 122mm) is now being compressed into about 3-4mm waveform.

Let's put it this way.... imagine you have a gallon of water and you spray it through a squirt gun capable of pushing that water out in 1 minute at your hand.

Doesn't hurt.

Let's now put that same gallon into a high pressure nozzle and shoot it at your hand in 1.7 seconds.... ouch!

That's the difference between energy levels when you're comparing 2.4Ghz to 86Ghz.

So, 5G is new, it's been studied less than 2 years and very little health studies done (since there's been a huge political push to deploy it). So the real testing is going to be in the public.

Still feel like this subject has been "long since put to bed?"

Myself, I'm quite concerned about this. I'm pretty sure my current 4G equipment is doing some long term damage, but being an engineer I HAVE to have this stuff hanging on my hip all day long. There's no WAY IN HELL I'll be holstering a 5G phone.

Just my 2 cents.

But of course the US and China's trade war is making those godDRAM oversupply issues worse

They can afford it

After the past 3 years of absolutely gouging the hell out of the world, I think the dram makers can afford it. They should just be glad they aren't in jail at this point. I bought 32GB of ddr4 2400 for 116$ in summer of 2015, less than a year later the exact same kit was $340! Even China was investigating their price fixing (if China is saying something like that, you know it's getting crazy).

Stock up everyone, this might be the year I build a new computer (if only the damn video card prices would fall a bit too).

One man went to mow a meadow, hoping Trump would spot giant grass snake under flightpath

Re: childish

Another Lib resorting to just name calling. Seriously, you guys are going to have a tough life and you deserve it.

Instead of throwing juvenile insults are our POTUS, why not back up some of your claims with some facts? I would love to hear more about how he has acted like Hitler or Mussolini? Can you show me where he's hiding the death camps? (and, no, the over crowded holding facilities for ILLEGALS doesn't compare to Auschowitz, and if you make that comparison then you have to acknowledge that these were running, in worse conditions, under your beloved Obama [blessed be our Great Obama).

We could make this easier, maybe you can list some of the "crimes" Trump has committed (please show your work). Remember, the definition of a crime is "breaking an existing law". So if you list something you perceive as "unjust" or "unfair" (God knows you little snowflakes can't bear unfairness) that there isn't a law saying you can't do it, really just doesn't count as a "crime". I know this is a hard concept for a generation of folks who got trophies for losing little league games, but try real hard, after all, you are so much smarter than us.

Maybe you hate Trump because of what he's done to our country in the last 2 years... Let's see, lower unemployment, we're now exporting energy (gas, coal, oil) instead of getting it all from the middle east... hmm no that doesn't work.

Perhaps it's because he's racist? Hmm, 1.3 million black people have jobs who didn't during Obama...

Well, it must be because he stomps on the constitution all the time. After all he's signed 276 executive orders to bypass Congress and basically used his pen like a King passing down edicts... oh, wait, that was Obama who did that...

Well, I'm sure you'll think of something. After all, you want him Impeached, so there must be a real Zinger out there (High Crimes and Misdemeanors right?)

Well, maybe I understand now why you're just throwing childish insults. You really don't have any thing between those buns do you? Yea, I didn't think so.

Re: childish

Guess you don't like the American slang "Prez", because that's the only misspelling or grammatical mistake in my post. Of course, we could look at all the replies and have a field day. (Yes, I started that one with a proposition just to get your cackles up).

Re: childish

Could you please post the documentation for your accusations? Cause I haven't seen shite indicating what you just said.

childish

I love how people call our Prez childish whilst taking jabs at his appearance. Very mature journalism.

IEEE says it may have gone about things the wrong Huawei, lifts ban after US govt clearance

Security concerns?

You guys seem to have missed the original reason Huawei was banned... The Chinese government has ultimate control over all Chinese businesses. The finding of several lines of server mainboards with camouflaged spy chips embedded and concerns of similar shenanigans on the mobile and network equipment products have led us to this point. I personally won't be using them as I don't feel I can trust that company because of the Government control, and I would really strongly suggest none of you do either. I've seen their latest flagship phone and sure, it's got a very tempting set of features (undoubtedly acquired through IP strong arming done to foreign tech companies who wanted to have facilities in mainland China for economical reasons (since they insist to have full access to R/D of these companies in exchange for slave labor in their country)).

Seriously, if you're concerned about privacy, avoid Huawei at all costs. If you love being pwned by the Chi-Coms, be all means, use this stuff. But don't do it just because the IEEE says they are "A-OK with us"!

Congrats, Satya Nadella. In just five years, you've turned Microsoft from Neutral Evil to, er, merely True Neutral

True evil

You forgot providing full access to M$ servers for US Gov ABC agencies and ramming "free" windows 10 down everyone's throat (to ensure those agencies have some datasets to play with, since w10 is chattier than a high school girl on ritalin.

Neutral... not even

M$ has become a demogorgon.

Wow, fancy that. Web ad giant Google to block ad-blockers in Chrome. For safety, apparently

Re: Google are cunts

I really hope that was meant to be sarcastic. Otherwise, Google and Prst. V.Jeltz are both cunts.

Google doesn't give us anything. The services you listed aren't free. They are paid for by the ad revenue which is generated BECAUSE of these services. The services are the carrots that draw the herd, which Google then shears, sells the wool to get money, to buy more carrots.... of course, they only spend a small fraction of the wool money on carrots. The problem with the under 30 crowd is they actually thing there is such a thing as "free" (I guess because they grew up with the internet "giving" them stuff their whole life).

When I grew up in the 70s we had something called Encyclopedias. They charged a TON of money for these books because there was no ad revenue being generated by the books themselves. They sold the books to pay for the research going into to making the next edition of them, which they would then sell next year. I know that seems weird but honest to God, that's how we "googled" stuff back then. No one wants to pay for the internet stuff.

Veeam. Veeam. Veeeeeeeam. What was that? Oh, just the sound of half a billion bucks hitting backup biz's bucket

I HEART VEEAM

Veeam is my main squeeze, she's so sweet, takes care of my data like a faithful mate should! BEX is my EX but Veeam has made me completely forget that old bitch!

I Heart Veeam! :D

Hubble 'scope camera breaks down amid US govt shutdown, forcing boffins to fix it for free

enjoy that drop on the other side.

Re: the fact that it's not a real Hubble photos and proof is just one Google search away.

that's because you "Googled" your question. Try duckduckgo if you want a true search result.

Every question you Google will eventually lead to something negative about Trump.

almost forgot

Loved this line:

"considering NASA employees are on involuntary unpaid leave as America is in the midst of a partial government shutdown: President Trump is refusing to sign the paperwork to fund the federal government..."

So it's not got anything to do with the nearly 80% of NASA that got laid off in 2011 during the Obama Era "President's Management Agenda of 2011". That decision led to nearly all the local businesses around Cape Canaveral going bankrupt and shutting down, since their livelihoods relied on NASA patrons.

Too bad, since if we want to fix something like this now, we have to use a Russian Rocket or rent a ride on SpaceX. The space pickup truck fleet (aka space shuttles) now sit in mothballs without a replacement.

Reg, please try to get a few contributors old enough to remember what happened less than a decade ago. Google isn't giving them a clear base of facts to write articles.

fair and balanced reporting

Wow, judging from the title of this article, I figured for sure this would be a Trevor Pott article. It's nice to see the Reg has more than one leftist leaning contributor.

The Hubble broke, "Thanks Trump!"

Nothing like being told Trump sucks by the Brits. The DNR will be sending your absentee ballots in late 2019 so you can help make America weak again.

Aren't you guys voting again to see if you get to leave the EU? I thought that was already voted on, but I guess your DNR equivalent party didn't like that outcome and will just keep letting people vote until they get the results they want. Sigh, the world has gone insane.

Yea, the Trouble with Hubble is my Presidents fault...

"Trolling with a grin on my face" - let's see if that famous British politeness prevents me from getting 100 downvotes.

Welcome to 2019: Your Exchange server can be pwned by an email (and other bugs need fixing)

Re: All seems good

omg, been there. Good luck. You should totally find a new employer.

New side-channel leak: Boffins bash operating system page caches until they spill secrets

dear "boffins"

Please stop freaking us out (and stop finding holes in our OS's).

Don't you have some deathstar plans to steal or something?

Tumblr resorts to AI in attempt to scrub itself clean from filth

Re: I understand for the Coprophilia forums,....

Bye Tumblr... Thanks for the mammaries!

Help Wanted - Tumblr

So, how do we apply for the new positions opening in Tumblr's Trust & Safety team? That sounds like a pretty pu--- (oops, cushy) job to me. Does it pay well? Are we allowed to bring thumbdrives to work?

LOL!

Good bye Tumblr.... you were amazing once, but if you could just scoot your desk all the way back, yes, right there next to MySpace... we're going to need to store some boxes in here... um, yeah...

Oh, and there's that stapler... I'll just take that...

Like the Architect in the Matrix... but not: Nvidia trains neural network to generate cityscapes

Nvidia and the .1%

The day I spend $2500 is the day I plug 240v bare wires to my balls and flip the switch.

I have LOTS of spare money (no kids don't ya know) and I LOVE gaming, however, Nvidia seems to have forgotten (maybe because of BC mining) that they are making toys for nerds, not AI researchers.

I have spend that much on my PC, which was equal to a $1500 PC the next year (and a $700 PC 2 years later) but one component? Please.

This exercise in seeing how much money they can extract for "the fastest" blah blah has got to stop. For $2500 I could (and yes this is blasphemy) but a P4 AND Xbox1 and still have a ton of money to load them up with leading title games.

Just lower the 10 series to what used to be normal pricing and let the suckers burn their houses down with these RTX cards.

Nvidia just can't grab a break. Revenues up, profit nearly doubles... and stock down 20%

or the fact that a flagship video card 3 years ago cost $300-$350 (within reach of a hardcore gamer, barely, but reachable)... and now the new RTX is $900-$1100 and their 3 year old cards are still $450-$550.

I'm an engineer and make a very good living, no kids, no wife and I won't be buying an RTX (and I am definitely an early adopter, I preordered my oculus and bought my gtx 1080 for $600, because there wasn't a choice).

AMD needs to step up their game and give these jerks some competition again. Nvidia's winning streak over the last few years has given them Hollywood Syndrome. They think everyone loves them because they are awesome and they don't realize we're only hanging out with them because AMD is over in the corner blowing snot bubbles and smelling their finger.

Please let AMD 7nm cards have something to compete with RTX, we need performance competition to drive the tech forward and the prices down. This reminds me of the 9800pro vs Nvidia back in the early 2000s when AMD jacked those card prices up until noone would buy them.

Anyways, Nvidia, cut your prices in half (which is still too expensive) and you'll sell 3 times as many cards... I don't know their overhead per card, but market share has it's value too.

My hoard of obsolete hardware might be useful… one day

you too?

I've got so many stories just like this. I've got a closet full of old crap I'm terrified to get rid of. Maybe this will inspire me to go through it soon and at least get rid of the old rambus memory and ISA cards.

It's big, it's blue, and it'll be raining down on you – it's 3200 Phaethon

Re: Really?

“A whizzpopper!" cried the BFG, beaming at her. "Us giants is making whizzpoppers all the time! Whizzpopping is a sign of happiness. It is music in our ears! You surely is not telling me that a little whizzpopping if forbidden among human beans?”

Just a thought...

VR going mainstream? Yeah, next year, says Facebook, for the third year in a row

I went all in and it's the most expensive desk dust protector in my office

I spent roughly $1,600 upgrading my main pc for my oculus, which cost me $800, then another couple of hundred bucks on craptastic games (the best game is still luckys tale, which came free). I show people the rift occasionally, play with it myself even less frequently. It's really been a disappointment, because I remember how excited I was about getting one back at launch.

Here's the problem as I see it...

#1... the cords... oh god the cords... I know there are some solutions (they cost quite a bit too) but in 2018, when everything (hell even my thermostat and toaster) are wireless and they still have not one, but TWO cords out the back of this thing (yeah, you're not fooling anyone with the bulky cord wrap you put around the HDMI/USB3 cords to make them look like one).

#2 Cost... That's gotten a little better with the discount pricing from last summer on the rift itself, but a decent computer (especially the absolutely ridiculous cost of video cards right now) is going to run well over $1000 to get this thing even moderately working (and if you want a top tier experience you really need around $2000 of computer in front of you).

Note: the memory price gouging going on (my 32GB of ddr4 cost $114 in summer of 16 is now $400+) and the outrageous price of top tier nvidia cards (they claim it's from bitcoin mining scarfing them up, but I think this is just another example of price gouging). My 2 1/2 year old 1080GTX which cost me $650 is still over $550 29/30 days of the month.

#3 Content... now I expected some crappy games being sold for VR at first, since it was easy money for small devs and no big companies were willing to invest the time/money to do a VR exclusive game, but it's been nearly 3 years and 90% of the games being sold on Steam and Oculus' stores are complete garbage. Even the good indie titles last about 1-3 hours. I've got over 30 VR games and only about 5 are worth playing for more than 10 minutes. They want to charge prime rates for the A class games, but they aren't really worth it either. Regular games don't really port over to oculus well (even using Vorpx or other conversion drivers). VR games have to be designed around the platform or else they will either make you sick or won't work well enough to play long term.

#4 (and this surprised me) - the Creepiness factor

Let me explain... many of the more decent games are horror right now. I live alone. Jason Voorhees could literally be standing behind me sharpening his blade for 20 minutes deciding which of my ears to cut off first while I'm playing one of these games and I would never know until the first slice. That's an extreme example but there's something really disconcerting about being submerged into VR, at home, alone without any way to know what's going on in the rest of the house. Needless to say, I lock my office door when I play VR, but still, creepy.

well, that's about it. VRpron is pretty amazing, too bad I got a GF right after I got my oculus (I'm pretty sure the two are unrelated). This tech needed to come out about 5 years ago... lol

oh, and of course, #5... zuckerberg... I think of him every day when I enter my office and see the 3 cameras looking down at me (yea, I know, they only see the infrared frequency.... right....)

"I always feel like, somebody's watching me.... I get no privacy... oh oh oh oh..." (for my fellow kids of the 80s).

'This is insane!' FCC commissioner tears into colleagues over failure to stop robocalls

Re: Poor FCC Commisioner Rosenworcel. She will now be inundated and the carriers will laugh.

Well, Verizon is definitely making money off this from me. I have to pay $4.99 a month for their caller ID feature, which correctly identifies about 50% of the robocalls coming to my phone. The rest are all being spoofed as local calls (usually they have the same prefix as my cell phone.

In my opinion, this feature should be free since it is "somewhat" effective in identifying some of these calls, but you know they love the fact there's a constant barrage of these calls, which lead folks like me to purchasing one of their optional features.

I'm sure there's other ways they benefit from this industry (probably not as much now that they all use voip) but let's be honest, if the telecoms wanted to fix this, they could. There's ways to block known IP addresses used by voip systems of these call centers/robosystems. They could change IPs, but if the system is reactive reasonably fast, the new IPs could be blocked before they make 1M calls.

Pretty much any IP spewing 100s of calls per hour should be blocked.

Oz government rushes its anti-crypto legislation into parliament

cryption? Nah, mate, don't need it... I've got a Donk!

I was wondering what Yahoo Serious did after acting... apparently he's drafting new legislature.

You Aussies let us Yanks know how that works out for ya!

Just make sure the bank that the PM uses has that nasty little peephole punched in it's encryption too. We wouldn't want any government officials being left out on the brave new world they are trying to create.

Some country is about to get pwned.

Trump shouldn't criticise the news media, says Amazon's Jeff Bezos

Media? Does he mean news reporting, cause it's not the same.

There isn't really any news reporting in the US today. There are "News Shows" that look like news, sound like news but they don't actually report news.

CNN, MSNBC, FOX, CBS, etc. USED to report news (way back in the 80s/90s) but about the time "reality tv" became popular they changed the programming of these channels to "all opinion, all the time" and now it's barely better than Jerry Springer's show. They shout their opinion at each other (especially when they have a guest representing the "other side"). I'm surprised no one has thrown a chair yet.

US reporting news can only be found on the local level and a handful of newspapers, but even those have their slant based on the owners political affiliation.

It makes me sick, because I remember when there was real news reporting. They came on TV and told you what's happening without their injected opinion and they let the viewer draw their own conclusions. I guess they think we're just too stupid to do that these days.

Bezos is part of the problem just like Murdock was. The terrible thing is it's not balanced anymore. There used to be the same amount of right/left rhetoric out there but now the leftist view has nearly snuffed out every voice on the right (only Fox and talk radio remains) which is unfortunately making the average American believe the left view is mainstream, just because it's almost all they hear on TV & in movies now. Once my generation moves on, the younger generation (who never saw what REAL news reporting is) will just roll over and ingest their socialist opinions as truth.

It's a shame and once it happens and our country falls, you folks in other countries are going to realize how much good our country does in the world. It will, of course, be too late by then.

Enjoy the show.

You'll never guess what you can do once you steal a laptop, reflash the BIOS, and reboot it

OMG we're all skrude!!!

<running around with hair on fire>

The End is here! The End is here!

My only thoughts on this are, if you're worried enough to encrypt your hard drive, why in the world would you put your laptop into sleep mode instead of turning it off? That's just retarded.

<pours beer on head>

Nothing more to see here folks... move along.

China will overtake America as leading AI superpower, warns ex-Google Beijing bigwig

“AI isn’t like a nuclear weapon. It’s more like electricity.”

Ok, so that depends. If we're talking about current "AI" (Siri, Bixsby etc.) then yeah, that statement is probably true enough.

However...

Building a better Siri isn't the real race here. True AI, a machine that actually thinks like a human, not requiring our input to come up with original output... THAT kind of AI is definitely the 21st century race to get the bomb first.

The moment a true AI is brought into this world, whoever controls it (or thinks they do) will definitely have the most constructive and destructive force on the planet. A true AI will be able to learn so quickly that it will have no problem breaking through firewalls, finding exploits in software, breaking passwords and encryption algorithms, etc.) It will most likely be inside a quantum computer which will give it so much processing power that we humans will look like insects to it's intellect very quickly.

Right now the focus is data retrieval and human augmentation by "mimicking intelligence". Once that's finished, the researchers will all be focused on "True AI" a singular conscious that will (in their minds at least) design and build things for us... but we've all seen the movies and we all know it doesn't end that way.

Have no doubt, whoever gets the first real AI... wins...

... Aaaand that's a fifth Brit Army Watchkeeper drone to crash in Wales

what are they doing?

Are they using these to spy on Brits? I know you guys let them put a gazillion CC cameras in London (which is probably a good idea with all the undesirables there now) but why is the army flying surveillance drones over civilian areas?

You guys put up with alot more of this kind of crap than we yanks would.

At last: Magic Leap reveals its revolutionary techno-goggles – but wait, there's a catch

all i can say is...

omg! lol. haha. hehe. (grabs belly) you're killing me.... that's hilarious! lololol.

People are still listening to these guys? lol haahaha, omg, stop, stop.... (beats floor).

Cisco cancels all YouTube ads, then conceals cancellation

Re: American puritanism?

"Yeah, all this talk of morals from American"

Our country is actually called America, we The People of America, are American (or Americans, if you're referring to a group of us).

I would call you out on your comment suggesting we are not moral (or have morals) but then we do have a bunch of Democrat Libs running around, so I guess I'll just consider you are referring to them, not me (because I have very centered morals)... our corps, yeah, not so much.

PCs were more and less expensive in Q1 as shipments stalled

Ignore the reason ethusiasts aren't building?

I've built a new gaming rig every 2 or 3 years since the late 90s. I have the extra income to build with the newest tech each time, but the price of RAM chips has increased over 400% in 2 years. That affects the cost of everything from SSDs, to GPUs, to motherboards... it's a trickle down effect.

There would be plenty of new builds this summer if only RAM manufacturers weren't trying to bleed us dry like we're the last humans on a planet full of vampires.

I understand they can continue to sell their overpriced crap to tablet/phone manufacturers, but this stranglehold is killing the PC enthusiast market (and, of course, we don't buy dell, lenovo or other crap).

32GB of DDR4 2400 bought in summer of 2016 for 107$ is now 449$ on NE... explain how that happens? You want PC sales to go up in 2018? Prosecute some RAM CEOs again, just like they had to do back 2008. PUT THEM IN JAIL!

Shhh! Don’t tell KillBots the UN’s about to debate which ones to ban

Thank God for the un

First to the year 1939 when Charlie Chaplin and his evil Nazi regime enslaved Europe and tried to take over the world! ... But then an even greater force emerged: The un! And the un un-nazied the world! Forever!

Gone in 60.121 seconds: Your guide to the pricey new gear Nvidia teased at its annual GPU fest

Re: I don't know for a fact or even if its happening..

Ramping up price? Have you priced Nvidia cards lately? Until my 2016 build, I've never spent more than $350 on a video card. I wanted the 1080 for my new oculus rig in the summer of 2016 and it set me back a whopping $700 (that was after watching prices for a month and waiting for a sale, it was normally 799-850$). The same card is still hovering over 550$ right now with no sign of dropping.

I can understand RAM prices (especially GDDR5) raising costs 100-150$ but 300-400$??

On a side note, I bought 32GB of DDR4 2400 in July 2016 for 116$ on N.E., that same ram is 369$ right now. These component manufacturers need to realize that gouging builders at this level is only going to hurt them in the long run. I've got 4 other computers in my house and none of them are getting any upgrades until prices return to normal... that's 4 sets of everything that manufacturers will not be selling to me (and I'm a single IT pro with LOTS of disposable money). If I won't fork it out, I can imagine the budget computer enthusiasts are shaking their heads even harder.

Someone needs to take down these RAM manufacturer CEOs again for price fixing, just like we had to do back in 2003.... oh and I think in 2008... seems to be a pattern here (and it bleeds to all component vendors across the board).

Got some broken tech? Super Cali's trinket fix-it law brought into focus

Yawn...

My 2 cents...

Those of us with the ability to repair our own devices do so without this law.

Those who don't have the ability, still won't after the law is passed.

Parts are already available, at pretty cheap prices since they are all after market... oem parts are always crazy expensive.

Let's face it, in 2 years, even if the phone is still running fine, the OS will be close to EOL and your options for apps are going to be pretty terrible. So the way these companies plan obsolesce is not just in the hardware but they make sure if the hardware does outlast your contract that the software will be discontinued to. Great example, I use hdhomerun to stream my cable to all my devices. My older tablets (which had perfectly good working hdhomerun apps when I bought them) after a factory reset (because of another issue) I can no longer download the version of that app for my tablet (because the OS is something like ICECREAMSANDWICH). I bought the app. I have it on all my other devices, but because they don't support it on the OS I have on the old tablets, they pulled the working copies from the store.

Pass a law to keep them from doing that.

Us? Reverse engineer HoloLens? No way, not us, nuh-uh – Magic Leap

It's going to be the most amazing thing ever!

Kieren, I'm not sure you're being fair. After all, it is going to be the most amazing thing ever (and that takes time). Of course they looked at hololens (otherwise how would they know exactly HOW MUCH better their product was going to be than the competition?!)

I'm so glad that we are all going to be here to witness this product's release. Oh my gosh, oh my gosh! (Sorry, I get so excited thinking about "the product" sometimes).

So I've been saving my money and I hope you have been too, because it's going to simply be amazing... all the amazing things it can and will do, it's just, well, incredible. (oh my gosh, oh my gosh)

Hey remember how many people were completely blown away by Zombo.com? This is going to be like Zombo.com x 1000 !!! (omg, omg - see? I got so excited there I couldn't even type the whole interjection)!

Well, Kieren, just hang in there a little longer. We know it's going to be worth the wait. I can't wait to read the next amazing article about this incredible "product". Their videos are simply, mind blowing. I heard from a friend, that his cousin's roomate's sister's boyfriend knew a guy that saw "the product" operating at their facility and he couldn't really talk about it (NDAs and such) but I'm gathering he was pretty impressed!

OH MY GOD!!! I CAN'T WAIT!

No Windows 10, no Office 2019, says Microsoft

Dear Microsoft... it's not us, it's you

Well, that makes that choice easy.... Libreoffice it will be, for our whole organization. thank you for helping me make that decision microsloft.... oh and by the way, I'm giving you your Windows 10 Keys back... take care of our dog.

Scammers become the scammed: Ransomware payments diverted with Tor proxy trickery

And Apples don't get viruses in 3....2.....1....

@gnasher, what took so long for you to say Apple products don't suffer from this sort of thing?

If we'd just all switch to Apple, this whole industry (heck even the entire security sector) would just fade away!

LOL, I'm sorry that just cracks me up every time someone claims it. Anyone want to speculate whether the Apple Gods will even tell their users their CPUs also suffer from Meltdown and Spectre? I'm sure they engineered around that issue when designing their own custom CPUs... oh wait, dang it... INTEL!!! You Bastards!

Death notice: Moore's Law. 19 April 1965 – 2 January 2018

Re: Greatly Exaggerated

"(Yield improvements, of course, could continue Moore's Law even once we're stuck at 3nm by increasing the size of a die, until we have chips that fill a whole wafer.)"

Lol, as I was reading your comment I thought the same thing... One day we'll have CPUs the size of frisbees (Intel i19 anyone?)

Pete and Repeat sitting in a tree...

I've heard this all before... "PCs are dead... long live game consoles.... PCs are dead... long live Tablets... PCs are dead... clocks beyond 3.8GHz are impossible... etc. etc."

This is just another speed bump and in 2 years you'll be touting how PCs are dead because of some TLS vulnerability that was found or some other "big threat" of the day.

This will slow them down for a few months (and of course after patching for MD and Spectre (Hail Hydra) everyone will "need"/want to upgrade to the new, secure, faster CPUs and Intel and AMD will laugh to the bank. Honestly, there hasn't been very much reason to upgrade for the past 4 years or so and so this will probably force some folks to do that now (once the new cpus come out).

Don't worry Henny Penny, it's just raining, you can go back inside.

Yes, your old iPhone is slowing down: iOS hits brakes on CPUs as batteries wear out

Re: "Would you rather have shit battery time?"

"No wait, they had user replaceable batteries, but they don't have them anymore!"

That was strictly a money grab by Samsung. They've seen Apple shafting it's customers with this trick (90% of which aren't technical enough to replace it themselves, and probably over 70% no technical enough to think of taking it somewhere to have it replaced) so after 300-500 cycles (the average life of lithium batteries) it's time to shell out another 1K for a new phone.

I really was surprised when the S8 came with a hardwired battery. You would think the problems with the 7 would have taught them they had it right the first time with a replaceable battery. Fortunately, I'm capable of changing out my own if I need. The rest of their customers are just screwed.

The Quantum of Firefox: Why is this one unlike any other Firefox?

Dear Firefox, it's you not us...

"The Quantum of Firefox: Why is this one unlike any other Firefox?"

Answer: Because it's no longer going to be the #1 browser?

Killing most useful addons? (ie. mozilla GPO plugin)

Listen here Firefox Devs, the most secure browser in the world is the one nobody uses. Taking out java, legacy add-ons, flash... it's making FF very secure. I'm not sure my users can do the things they need their browser to do anymore with version 57. We're looking at switching to Chrome (which I HATE) but you can't break your product to make it safe.

Anyways, I'm farting into the wind, they won't listen.

First iPhone X fondlers struggle to admit that Face ID sort of sucks

Re: Do you know what works better than Face ID and Touch ID?

Know what doesn't work as good as Face ID?

Mr. Orlowski's editor: "Just it was hard for courtiers"

^

missing "as"

Couldn't resist.

~grammar nazi

Phone crypto shut FBI out of 7,000 devices, complains chief g-man

I get it... Um, no you don't

“I get it, there's a balance that needs to be struck between encryption and the importance of giving us the tools we need to keep the public safe,”

That statement totally shows that he doesn't "get it". There is NO balance to be struck. Either they accept that encryption is as much a part of this world/reality as the oxygen they are breathing or they don't. It doesn't matter which, because the fact is, encryption is here and it CAN'T go anywhere. To weaken it by injecting back doors makes the entire financial system at risk, from Amazon to your local bank. To ban it breaks the internet completely and E-commerce, destroying the world economy.

After reading article after article of government conversations regarding device encryption, one thing is perfectly clear to me... Nobody involved in this topic "gets it" at all. They seem to thing device encryption and SSH/SSL encryption are different things, when in fact, it's just encryption. It's not even a new thing, most of this stuff was first put into use between WWI and WWII, it's just more available to the mouth breathers now.

My God, if I hear another politician say something like "we need to have a universal key to unlock encrypted devices" I swear I will help Marvin the Martian load his Plutonium space cannon and un-obstruct his view of Venus willingly! It amazes me how the people in charge have no idea how this stuff works.

Massive revenues from RAM, flash make Micron chief a happy chappy

2006 all over again

Isn't it time to investigate the memory prices at this point? I don't know if you guys forgot the indictments handed down to CEOs of memory manufacturers in 2006 because of price fixing (https://www.justice.gov/archive/atr/public/press_releases/2006/219102.htm) but I remember getting majorly gouged back then and thank God I upgraded Q3 last year.

In July 2016 I bought 32GB (4x8gb) DDR4 3200 for 136$. That price has more than doubled since then, and from the article above, it looks like all that extra cost was strictly to pad Micron and other manufacturers pockets. I read all the excuses last year (oh, most of the manufacturers switched over to a new fab and they are having serious problems getting good yields, or oh, we never saw the demand from smart phones and tablets gobbling up our supplies, and several others). It seems to me that they have had over a year to get supply back up to demand and have purposefully left it this way to keep prices high.

I personally haven't upgraded any of my personal PCs since this started last year and I won't until prices return to normal. I hope others have joined me in just passing on memory upgrades (but looking at those numbers it appears that's not the case).

I really think whoever investigated this last time should take a long hard look at this industry again. I suspect it's the same old game with just new players (maybe they weren't told what happened with their predecessor).