Posts by Jan 0

UN warns of global e-waste wave as amount of gadgets dumped jumps 21% in 5 years

Re: Someone's confused

I wonder how a corrected ranking would look if they separated South America from North America?

Brit MPs vote down bid to delay IR35 reforms, press ahead with new tax rules for private-sector contractors

Re: The big consultancy firms want IR35

Errm, most of the "consultants" that I've met from these large firms turned out to be contractors rather than employees! Is that unusual?

Rental electric scooters to clutter UK street scenes after Department of Transport gives year-long trial the thumbs-up

Re: No they're not an effective means to reduce car traffic

I think that throwing each abandoned scooter back into the road will be very effective at reducing car traffic.

'It's really hard to find maintainers...' Linus Torvalds ponders the future of Linux

Re: I wonder why?

@Smooth Newt

Toss in a genetic algorithm and you might find your solution before the heat death of the universe.

Apple said to be removing charger, headphones from upcoming iPhone 12 series

Re: Fast charging

Does anyone now of any independent assessment of fast charging.. How much battery lifespan do we trade for fast charging?

Let's roll the 3d6 dice on today's security drama: Ah, 15, that's LG allegedly hacked, source code stolen by Maze ransomware gang

>At LG, we take cybersecurity issues very seriously," a spokesperson told The Register.

Was the Register's reply that it's obvious that they don't?

I think they still feel Lucky, do you think they deserve a Gold Star?

Sorry to drone on and on but have you heard of Ingenuity? NASA's camera-copter is ready to head off to Mars

Hard to test this

I was wondering how this helicopter drone was tested. I read that it has been flown in a large vacuum chamber* (~600 Pa or ~ 6 mb at Mars' surface), but gravity is also lower on Mars and can't be conveniently simulated.

Apparently it can only fly for 90 seconds before it needs to spend a day recharging! I presume that that's about keeping its weight down. It's there as a proof of concept rather than as a tool.

*see https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/23/science/mars-helicopter-nasa.html

Maze ransomware gang threatens to publish sensitive stolen data after US aerospace biz sensibly refuses to pay

Re: Another key consulting firm gets hacked

COW: What happened to frequent read only snapshots of your data?

Huawei's EMUI 10.1 update shows Chinese mobile giant hunkering down for the long haul without Google wares

Re: This post has been deleted by a moderator

Come back Moderatrix, all is forgiven.

Only true boffins will be able to grasp Blighty's new legal definitions of the humble metre and kilogram

Re: Why a kilogram?

When I was at school in the 60s, we were taught to use both the Imperial and the cgs (centimetre, gram and second) system. cgs: Inconsistent length versus inconsistent mass in SI. Our Science teachers advised us that SI (and global warming) was coming. My engineer father used to use slugs and poundals in his caculations. I have no idea what system they belonged to. SI was an easy to transition after cgs.

If nobody is counting does time stop? Then if no time is passing, how can anybody start counting again?

Re: Spelling

"Boomers" is another USAism. In the UK, we were Bulge Babies, or just the "Bulge".

No Wiggle room: Two weeks after angry bike shop customers report mystery orders on their accounts, firm confirms payment cards delinked

Re: At Chris G, re: Lycranthropist.

A cycling "cape" back then was a real cape: a bag tailored to fit over your head and extend over the handlebars and down your back. It would keep you much drier than a Goretex jacket in a downpour. However, you could get wet from upward splashes. Modern cyclists call thin, fitted, rain jackets capes. (Maybe it's a mistranslation from French or Italian?)

BoJo looks to jumpstart UK economy with £6k taxpayer-funded incentive for Brits to buy electric cars – report

Shopping trips

A car is very inappropriate for shopping trips, a ~1.5 tonne trolley doesn't make sense for a few kg of shopping. How about a £6000 incentive for anyone who wants to buy an electric cargo bike?

Re: Buy more cars - drive them less

> a removable cell which is light enough, that we can take in and recharge overnight.

Or why not exchange it for a full cell at your nearest filling station?

Our government could mandate that all cars would use cells from a small range of shapes and sizes which were common to all car makes.

80-characters-per-line limits should be terminal, says Linux kernel chief Linus Torvalds

Re: not the terminal, the punch card

Eek! A little googling reveals just how bad my memory may be! The person I'm trying to recall certainly wasn't "the" H Matusow, although I expect that other people have the same name.

Better late than never.

Re: not the terminal, the punch card

All hail Zappa, allright, but that's not the origin. It was written on the envelope that contained your credit or charge card statement, printed on a Hollerith card. You weren't supposed to damage it, because it would be reread when you sent it back with a cheque. Was Harvey Matusow the original cracker? Didn't he repunch his card to change his balance to a large positive value, withdraw the balance, then scarper from the USA with the cash?

International banking wasn't very international back then. I knew of a guy, the departing business partner of my neighbour in the 60s, who emigrated to Australia a couple of days after maxing out his Barclaycard with professional camera equipment bought on Oxford Steet (Dixons, maybe?). He was never chased for the balance.

Nokia's reboot of the 5310 is a blissfully dumb phone that will lug some mp3s about just fine

>EDGE. Oh yeah, that's when you spend all day on the edge of getting a connection.

It's fine if you just want to use a terminal over ssh.

BoJo buckles: UK govt to cut Huawei 5G kit use 'to zero by 2023' after pressure from Tory MPs, Uncle Sam

Re: Build it here

I think we have evidence from countries like China (either one), Vietnam, Singapore, etc. that it is possible to rapidly build a first class industrial economy without colonies.

We can't produce enough food in this country, because we don't try. Our agricultural industry maximises profits not food production. I would guess that the WW2 productivity of allotments is still well ahead of current agribusiness.

What we need is a government made up of STEM experts and a supportive electorate. We would also need an entirely different model of management in our industries.

Re: Security or politics or economic competition ?

> If we ban Huawei then Western kit will be bought. At greater expense which will slow the rest of the economy

Ermm, no. If we buy Western kit, we're circulating money in the Western economy. Growth is all about circulating money, not sending it out of the economy.

It's time to relaunch it. Shouldn't a first world country be able to build its own infrastructure?

Forget BYOD, this is BYOVM: Ransomware tries to evade antivirus by hiding in a virtual machine on infected systems

As usual, it's for Windows, the gift that keeps on giving (to malware writers).

Hooray! It's IT Day! Let's hear it for the lukewarm mugs of dirty water that everyone seems to like so much

Re: I drink both and I speak for me

I'm not Italian, but my experience is that Italy is one of the few places in the world where you can be sure that wherever you go, whether it be the street vendor at the 6 am fish market, or the Palazzo turned hotel at 3 pm, the coffee will be pleasantly drinkable and often divine. All you have to do is ask for "un caffè" and a perfect espresso will be delivered, I have no idea what you get if you ask for a Machiatto or an Americano, nor do I care. I just want the unsullied flavour of pure, fresh coffee.

Although I've got a fancy Pavoni machine somewhere, I find it best just to use a 1 cup "Moka" pot at home. Incidentally, you can make good coffee with nothing more than a small pan - surely less equipment than tea.

<rant>As for putting milk anywhere near coffee or tea, I don't understand why some adults are so keen on this calf food! The dairy industry is already dumping a lot of its waste into other food products, how long before it starts encouraging us to put whey into tea as well (anything that saves them the cost of tippng it down disused mines:) I am aware that with time, effort and experience milk can be converted into exquisite cheeses, but it seems that the dairy industry prefers a minute profit following a huge advertising budget </rant> Don't get me started on butter!

Bionic eyes to be a thing in the next decade? Possibly. Boffins mark sensor-density breakthrough

Re: We have the technology

Maybe call it the "Quarter of a Billion Dollar Man" to account for inflation.

More interestingly, what is the liquid metal in the "wires"? Mercury? Gallium? Surely not Rubidium! The design is interesting, but how are they proposing to interface it with the rest of the brain? I think I'd prefer an external camera with a supercomputer that whispers in my ear: E.g. "Just to the right of you there's a really cute guy, they look interested." or "The coffee cup is on the table two inches in front of your middle finger." I think I could adapt to that, without having dangerous metals in my skull.

With millions upon millions out of work in the US, here come the scammers claiming victims' unemployment money using stolen info

There's something fundamentally flawed about calling a secret service The Secret Service, especially when it makes itself known to the world and makes Press Releases.. Nobody knows about my secret cellar laboratory for instance, oh, wait...

Fancy watching 'Bake Off' together with mates and alone at the same time? The BBC's built a tool to do that

Does this use multicasting in an attempt to cut down on bandwidth? This could be a blessing in disguise.

Apple's MagicPairing for Bluetooth fails to enchant after mischief-making bugs found hiding in the stack

Re: So

Yes indeed. Just see how many commentards here use "of" when they mean "'ve".

Beer gut-ted: As many as '70 million pints' spoiled during coronavirus pandemic must be destroyed in Britain

Re: It's probably not actually "bad".

Ah, now I know why I like dark beers:)

Mines the one with a bottle of Baltic Trader in the pocket.

Re: K'in eejets.

Agreed. Wash for whisky is essentially unhopped beer.

Similarly ,although you can't make a drinkable fermented product from potatoes, they make wonderful chips* and the best vodka!

That's the fried potato stakes that you dip hot into <insert favourite>. Garlic mayo for me.

Mirror mirror on the wall, why will my mouse not work at all?

Re: problems getting started

> .. but these days, at least one manufacturer has made the logo light up, thus wasting battery life.

Well, no. That's the backlight for the screen, lit up when the screen is in use . All you have to do is to make the lid transparent where you want the light to shine through.

Re: obvious

It was the lack of buttons that irked me. I was used to Sun's three button mice.

Serial killer spotted on the night train from Newcastle

Re: Manufacturer???

Ferrograph? The British company that used to build reel to reel Wearite tape recorders?

The EDP website is a festering pit of scripts. It makes other newspaper sites look refreshingly home grown.

Comms giant Telefonica confirms O2 in talks to merge with Virgin Media

>Prices aren’t that bad either...

Maybe not, but you'd have to live in Peterborough. (A bland and soulless town, save for a few interesting shops with Asian owners, a maglev train and a shabby sculpture "park".)

Latvian drone wrests control from human overlords and shuts down entire nation's skies

Considering it's massive size and minimal mass, it sounds as if it's mostly balsawood and tissue paper. No so good for radar unless they upgrade the tissue to aluminised mylar:)

Bye, Russia: NASA wheels out astronauts, describes plan for first all-American manned launch into orbit since 2011

Cost?

If cost rather than shame was the driving factor, I expect that they'd be buying a Chinese launch package.

As Brit cyber-spies drop 'whitelist' and 'blacklist', tech boss says: If you’re thinking about getting in touch saying this is political correctness gone mad, don’t bother

Re: Irrelevent

But there isn't a single melanin and red and ginger haired people have both eumelanin and pheomelanin in their skin.

Florida man might just stick it to HP for injecting sneaky DRM update into his printers that rejected non-HP ink

Re: Canon inkjets on Linux

What are these "drivers" that you speak of? This is Unix/Linux-land. A printer is just a file.

Fright at the museum: Bored curators play spooky Top Trumps on Twitter over who has the creepiest object

Re: had a live cow with a hole where you could look into its stomach

Mr. Alexis St. Martin was even more interesting and useful than a cow.

Iran military manages to keep a straight face while waggling miracle widget that 'can detect coronavirus from 100m away'

Try Kornbluth?

You might enjoy reading "The Marching Morons".

Google: We've blocked 126 million COVID-19 phishing scams in the past week

Re: Pointless

> The number that matters is how many have they let through?

It would be so nice if Google could return 20 million emails to every spammers' real mailbox.

Star's rosette orbit around our supermassive black hole proves Einstein's Theory of General Relativity correct

Re: Theory?

> originally 100% proof alcohol was concentrated enough that black powder would still ignite if soaked in the stuff

It's not "% proof", just proof or degrees/° proof, 100% alcohol is 175°, that's 75° over proof.

> Oh for the days

It's still not difficult to make your own black powder, 'though you can't walk into a chemists' shop like I did as a kid and walk out with three twists of paper containing charcoal, potassium nitrate and flowers of sulphur.

Doom Eternal: Reboot sequel is cluttered but we're only here for the rippin' and the tearin'

Grandads

The "grandads" here will also recall that Doom was developed on NeXTSTEP and available as a free download for Linux & Unix machines. Certainly for Irix and Solaris, maybe HP-UX and Tru-64?

COBOL-coding volunteers sought as slammed mainframes slow New Jersey's coronavirus response

Do these mainframes run the ICL OS whose source code has been lost?

Planet Computers has really let things slide: Firm's third real-keyboard gizmo boasts 5G, Android 10, Linux support

Re: Whilst I loved (and still have) my Psion5mx...

Is a Jorno too big for you? Properly staggered keys and a rugged case that props up your gizmo.

Re: "deforming shirt pockets"

Try a thigh pocket. They can often hold a 10" tablet. 8", no sweat. Bonus: your 'phone doesn't fall out when you want to pick something up from the floor.

What are you doing at quarter past? WebEx wants you on calls then, to ease corona-congestion

Re: A lesson for crontab as well

Thumbs up for mentioning rrdtool. How sysadmins live without it is beyond me.

White House turns to Big Tech to fix coronavirus blunders while classifying previous conversations

Re: Oh My!

Does the Communist Party USA still put up presidential candidates? It's a long time since I was last aware of one, maybe now's the time.

Hear, hear: The first to invent idiot-cancelling headphones gets my cash

Re: Recommendations

I suggest that you start with a manufacturer that already makes excellent headphones. It's not a good start if their expertise lies elsewhere, for example, in reflecting sound of walls.