Posts by Old Hand

Astroboffins order most advanced spectrograph ever to sniff out alien life

Was that a Spelling Mistake I saw ? I believe it said ArmazoNes

Yours Pedantically, LvS

Scientists use Raspberry Pi tech to protect NASA telescope data

Re: I'm reminded of early space exploration

It WAS Lead, once. I remember kids writing on slates (smoothed pieces of the roofing-material in a wooden frame) when I was one on the 1940s. Lead was used because it was malleable and easy to make a Point with, and could be wiped off. Pencils with graphite took over; someone wrote a book about that transition . . . Graphite came from a small outcrop in Cumbria, which suddenly became valuable.

(And ball-points came in because they could be used in swooping aircraft. LvS

5% of the cloud now runs on Arm as chip designer plans 2023 IPO

Worth noting that arm originally stood for Acorn Risc Machine. and Risc stood for Reduced Instruction Set. But that is lost in history now . . . LvS

AMD: Our latest, pricier mega-cache Epyc processors leapfrog Intel’s

The plural of die is NOT dies but DICE

EurekAI... Neural network leads chemists to discover 'four new materials'

You could have mentioned that the focus was on Lithium because is is so LIGHT chemical terms; third in the periodic table.

Today's arms race is all about AI and it's China vs America, says US defense secretary

A factor of a thousand should be checked . . .

Choc horror: The UK's Information Commisioner probes its own mammoth £6,248 Hotel Chocolat spend

Yes, I LOVE chocolat chocolats Expensive but well worth it.

Watt's next for batteries? It'll be more of the same, not longer life, because physics and chemistry are hard

No-one has mentioned a factor strongly favouring Lithium batteries. The original author should have pointed out that Lithium is the THIRD element in the Periodic Table; only Hydrogen and Helium come before it and so its density os very low too. That favours Energy Density too.

Come kneel with us at UK's Cathedral, er, Oil Rig of the Canal: Engineering masterpiece Anderton Boat Lift

Thank you for your occasional coverage of Good Old-Fashioned ENGINEERING! We need to remember what the people did with slide rules and 7-figure Log tables.

Take-off crash 'n' burn didn't kill the Concorde, it was just too bloody expensive to maintain

Thank you!

I am very pleased to see you making notable bits of past British history available again. Thanks,

UK Science Museum will reconsider its 'sexist' brain quiz

Tongue in Cheek !!

How wonderful for teachers to be able to claim "No, I wasn't serious; couldn't you tell my tongue was in my cheek"

Just think about the wider applications of that reasoning, and then send your protest to the Science Museum!

N. Joseph Woodland, inventor of the barcode, dies at 91

What about the gum ?

I hope The Reg will tell us if the Smithsonian celebrates the 40th Anniversary of the Chewing Gum next year. Perhaps they could auction the remaining pieces in the pack to raise funds - unless they are already "pre-owned".

ITU suggests replaceable cables for power supplies

PSUs

Nice idea; most of us have boxes of Wall-Warts for dead equipment. We are able to wield soldering irons better than many, I expect. Some good work has been done already in adopting figure-8 for input and now we need a standard for DC output cables. But not USB, precisely because it already has a power rating too low to be good. Then what to do about the current rating at each voltage? Mustn't overheat them. ??

The Register Comments Guidelines

ModeRATING again

I failed to make clear enough that my questions were not about Thumbs but about the 'slider' and whether it should be applied to the >form< or the >content< of the article. I understand thumbs but don't know WHO or WHAT one is Dis/Approving with the slider; the reporting, or the subject of the report.

Moderating

I'm very pleased to see the amount of care that goes into filtering your posts. Without it the trash level would clearly rise to become unacceptable.

I am curious about the RATING system because I do not understand and cannot discover whether the Rating applies to the form or to the subject of the original article. Much of the reporting is good and some excellent; is THAT what I am rating ??

Some of the proposals/ideas/policies being discussed in articles are rubbish and some are sound; is the raw subject matter of the article what I am rating ??

Old Hand

Facebook 'contributes' €15.3bn to EU economy... bitch

Units?

Can anyone see what the units are for the Value Added column in the article? I am sure it is greater that 26k Euros

Happy 40th birthday, Intel 4004!

I see the picture is of the one in Teak; does anyone know if they did it in Mahogany too?

Web surfers stumble upon new planets

Old Hand

PlanetHunters has 40000 members but the project has linked up ober 300,000 brains. How many brains does each member have ? (On average, of course.)

Digital content faces rating scrutiny

Where ?

Too late now, but it would have been good to have the word AUSTRALIA appear in the first paragraph of this.

ICO lets police maintain ANPR location secrecy

What makes them different?

Speed Cameras round here are painted yellow so people learn to slow down even if the case contains no active camera. Some social benefit occurs.

What is different about NCPR Cameras? If people knew where they were (and were concerned) they would take care in those neghbourhoods. If people don't know where they are that social benefit is lost.

Time for one policeman to talkto another policeman?

Masses marvel at 'Most Useless Machine'

Supply chain

I saw one of these around 1960, in plastic with a little green hand. I just had to build one too; trouble was, where to get a hand? No-one would lend me one, so in the end I went to a Second Hand Shop :-)