* Posts by Jan 0

1387 publicly visible posts • joined 14 Dec 2009

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Caffeine makes fuel cells more efficient, cuts cost of energy storage

Jan 0 Silver badge

Caffeine is hydrophobic?

Does that mean it's purely in suspension in my espresso? How does caffeine get from my intestine into my blood? Do I have to consume olive oil?

It is a bird, a plane or a Chinese spy balloon? None of the above

Jan 0 Silver badge

@IGotOut

Errm, have you had a sarcasm bypass fitted?

Space nukes: The unbelievably bad idea that's exactly that ... unbelievable

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Re: Arguments

> WaPo "How Ukraine became Ukraine, in 7 maps"

Well now I know that WaPo isn't a Chinese sage, but I can't load that page. Does anyone have a link that works?

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Re: Star wars?

I remember it as START WARS!

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Re: Star wars?

You've overlooked the fact that a dollar will buy you a lot more stuff or people's time in Russia and the PRC. Maybe there isn't much of an imbalance.

Joint European Torus experiments end on a 69 megajoules high

Jan 0 Silver badge

Is the promise of carbon-free energy production the only way to get money to study fusion?

Aren't there far simpler ways to use the heat of the Sun or the World's interior to raise steam and spin turbines.?

I'm all for nuclear fusion research, but hope it can do rather more than just raise steam.

Could it generate exotic isotopes , new subatomic particles or new elements?

Isn't pushing the limits of experimental parameters an end in itself?

EU repair rights bill tells manufacturers to fix up or ship out

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Re: meanwhile in the UK....

I expect we'll be getting a lot of the unsold inventory that can't be sold in the EU in 2026.

Techie climbed a mountain only be told not to touch the kit on top

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Re: “many thanks from the grateful postmaster”

>Not running Horizon then?

Well it doesn't sound as if the postmaster was under arrest.

Huawei prepares to split from Android on consumer devices with HarmonyOS Next

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I have no idea what GMS is. There's no GMS on my M6, but Spotify is running fine on HarmonyOS.

However, I'm not sure that I'd trust mine to keep my banking details secret.

Netgear hauls Huawei to court over Wi-Fi patent spat

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Suppression of Human Rights.

I like products made in a country with chain gangs.

LockBit shows no remorse for ransomware attack on children's hospital

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Re: Time

> To go and check my tape backups!

Lockbit: That would be the ones that we have been subtly editing for the past 15 months?

The literal Rolls-Royce of EVs is recalled over fire risk

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I'm very disappointed!

Why isn't the asking price in guineas?

Cory Doctorow has a plan to wipe away the enshittification of tech

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Surely "soccerizer"?

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Wot no Dabsy?

Surely Dabsy is the best author for this topic.

**Bring Back Our Dabsy!**

Elon Musk's brain-computer interface outfit Neuralink tests its tech on a human

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Re: This could be a really big deal

> could also see fighter pilots ....., direct input and control.

Substituting wiring and computer control for muscles and electro-mechanical control systems, is still not direct input and control. It's just less visible.

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> If I was a quadriplegic ...

It might be a good idea to see the monkeys dying from brain infections and battery leaks as well, to let me make an informed choice.

Things are going to get weird as the nanometer era draws to a close

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Re: Weird is as weird does

A poetic, language-appreciating friend to boot. Hurrah for the new AMFM!!

UK Civil Aviation Authority ponders vertiports for flying taxis

Jan 0 Silver badge

Autorotation

A helicopter that has lost its rotor is not going to autorotate, it's going to "autoplunge".

A helicoptor that has lost power may still be able to autorotate

Peregrine bows out with a bang as SLIM aims for Moon's rocky runway

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Re: UTC

That's why we should've kept on calling it GMT.

Wing, Alphabet's drone delivery unit, designs bigger bird to deliver pasta, faster

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Re: ingredients for dinner - pasta, marinara sauce, parmesan cheese, canned olives and garlic.

What's better is smaller vehicles on the road: trundlebots please.

How Sinclair's QL computer outshined Apple's Macintosh against all odds

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Re: Love/Hate

Were looped tape drives really new? I think I remember them featuring either in an article, or adverts, in Scientific American long before the QL arrived.

Tesla owners in deep freeze discover the cold, hard truth about EVs

Jan 0 Silver badge

Re: Sounds like Tesla drivers should always carry a can of petrol with them in Winter

Reminds me of the 70s/80s winters in East Anglia when I used to crawl in the snow to point a blowlamp at the sump and the (derv) fuel tank. Maybe Tesla could provide a "patch" to do the same with their batteries? Maybe a small coke stove with flues through the battery?

Drivers: We'll take that plain dumb car over a flashy data-spilling internet one, thanks

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Re: Perhaps it's time for vehicle makers to take note.

I don't want them to take note. I want some lesser known vehicle maker to quietly get on with selling basic vehicles to people prepared to look for them.

Cutting-edge microscopy reveals bottled water has 'up to 100 times' more bits of plastic than previously feared

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Re: Should have tested beer

Fining agents are basically gelatin. That's ground fish bladders for the gentry and ground abbatoir cartilage for you and me.

Next BT CEO Allison Kirkby takes the wheel from next month

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Never mind the job titles.

Did she start out as an engineer? If not, why is she in the running?

DARPA's air-steered X-65 jet heads into production with goal of flying by 2025

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Re: What could go wrong... Ram Air

I have a hazy recollection that the ram effect can only work down to airspeeds of the order of 300 to 350 mph. That could make an unpowered landing more than a brown pants situation.

X-ploited: Mandiant restores hijacked Twitter account after attempted crypto heist

Jan 0 Silver badge

It seems that sarcasm is effectively dead in 2024!

New cars bought in the UK must be zero emission by 2035 – it's the law

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Re: Think of the Grid!

> ... without private driveways or garages, thus for these people hundreds of thousands of public charge points are needed...

Not if we get our robot cars soon. They can bugger off to a charger somewhere else while the charge ready to pick you up the next day.

Jan 0 Silver badge

Re: Think of the Grid!

Also how many USA homes have an oven, or even what we used to call a kitchen? A room with a fridge, a freezer, a boiling water tap and two dishwashers isn't a kitchen!

Scientists mull Solar Radiation Management – a potential climate-change stop-gap

Jan 0 Silver badge

Re: Gigabequerels per Tonne...

None of us can tell how many ACs are arguing with cyberdemon. Why don't you have a name?

Hacktivists boast: We shut down Iran's gas pumps today

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Thanks Jessica Lyons Hardcastle!

For including the word "petrol", to disambiguate the article, before I got deep in it

Apple pops blue bubbles of Beeper Mini's iMessage service again

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Re: Blue bubbles?

I had no idea that it did that. I just see it as a way to send text messages when you have an Internet connection via a WiFi router, but no phone mast nearby.

National Grid latest UK org to zap Chinese kit from critical infrastructure

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Re: 特洛伊木马

ට්රෝජන් අශ්වයා?

සමහර විට අශ්ව බෝල්ක් පමණක්ද?

NASA engineers scratch heads as Voyager 1 starts spouting cosmic gibberish

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The distress signal is working!

The Space Pirates have arrived to capture it, but they're having a battle with the Space Binmen who have already marked it as scrap. Space AA say there's a 20 hour delay and no hotel available.

Here's how fast a spacecraft should fly to successfully detect amino acids erupting from Enceladus

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Boffin

Spectrometer

I think the article needs to point out that the "spectrometer" is not looking at an electromagnetic spectrum.

It' is, presumably, a Mass Spectrometer, which measures the mass of ionised molecules.

Korean peninsula space race sees South and North launch tit for tat spy sats

Jan 0 Silver badge
Headmaster

US aircraft carriers at Norfolk naval base!

Oi! Get your place names right. Norfolk has a US airbase at Feltwell and some presence at Marham but no naval bases. Which Norfolk are you referring to?

If you just write "Norfolk, without qualification, it has to mean the original Norfolk, not one of the many places"named" by uninquisitive and unimaginative colonists. (When you move to a new country, it's polite to discover what the locals call your new location.)

UK government rings the death knell for SIM farms

Jan 0 Silver badge

Tugend?

Is that my arse or my willy?

Jan 0 Silver badge
Headmaster

Re: Upper Fifth

Wasn't that for people too thick to go into the Sixth Form, but whose parents didn't want to expose them to harsh realities.

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Re: Ban banning things

>typical motion of a train ?

That's by far and away the smoothest train journey I've ever taken. I wouldn't have known we were moving if there weren't windows so that you can glimpse the tunnel outside!

Microsoft unleashes Copilot preview on Windows 10 insiders

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Real Pilot?

It already is. Why isn't Copilot (satnav) suing Micro$oft for beelions?

NASA's Psyche spacecraft beams back a 'Hello' from 10 million miles away

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Re: Fabulous, but…

I think it's an embarrassing fungal infection.

Airbus to test sat-stabilizing 'Detumbler' to simplify astro-garbage disposal

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Re: Magnetorque Coil

For small values of "just".

It's perfectly legal for cars to harvest your texts, call logs

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Re: Why not use a satnav app?

As a motorcyclist, I used to ride around 24,000 miles a year. My bikes all had windscreens and I found that long thin plastic bags. elastic bands, and a Bluetooth intercom, were the way to go. However, I thought we were talking about car navigation!

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Re: I can see two cases here

Why not use a real satnav app on your 'phone? One that can download whole countries in advance?

Robot mistakes man for box of peppers, kills him

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Re:You don't use motors for griping things

Somewhere, there has to be a motor powering the hydraulics.

Musk thinks X marks the spot for Grok AI engine based on social network

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Are we strangers?

Did anybody reading El Reg, need to be told what "grok" means?

***Bring Back Our Dabsy***

UK throws millions at scheme to heat homes with waste energy from datacenters

Jan 0 Silver badge

That sounds very like my Victorian terrace. I've replaced the gruesome concrete tiles with proper insulation and ceramic pantiles.

The 77 mm of PIR external insulation* is covered in brick slips, rather than whole bricks.

Above and beyond, I've replaced the ancient double glazed windows, with Acoya draught sealed wooden sash windows and modern double glazed units.

There's no reason why our government couldn't facilitate this for whole terraces.

*More would be better, but Planners don't think that very deep "reveals" are acceptable when the neighbouring houses don't have them. (In an ideal world I'd have used Spacetherm, but until more of us use it, the price will remain eyewatering.)

Jan 0 Silver badge

Yes, but gas heated tumbler dryers are rare nowadays.

We're getting that fry-day feeling... US Army gets hold of drone-cooking microwave rig

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Re: Soled

just how is your blind drone, with it's rotors inside a "tinfoil" bag going to navigate to it's target? Perhaps you could just launch it with a catapult?

UK govt finds £225M for Isambard-AI supercomputer powered by Nvidia

Jan 0 Silver badge

Re: Lucky they built it in Bristol then, otherwise it would be confusing

Keeping the original name:Brunel C.A.T. would have been even wiser!

"""Dabsy might approve"""

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