Posts by David 132

Gothenburg's self-driving bus trammed on day one

Re: Was it lidar, sonar, radar or vision?

I see your point.

Outlook has an image problem

Me too!

(note icon...)

> What, you mean concentrating on what's said and not how pretty it looks? Sacrilege! The next thing is you'll be ranting against top-posting again! Even though every single

> messenger client follows established e-mail netiquette of quoting what you want to respond to, :-)

Microsoft lets users exile floating Copilot button after interface rage

Re: We've listened...

"For your convenience and to show how much we value our customers, CoPilot will now offer to assist you at random intervals every few minutes, by playing at full volume the sound of a goat in extreme pain."

AMD says its $4K Ryzen AI Halo workstation practically pays for itself

Re: They broke the rest of the website, why not the subheadings?

>They've made a computer that can run on alcohol?

Yes, and it also yells "Bite my shiny metal ass!" at regular intervals.

Re: IT paying for itself

Look up "EURion Constellation" if you're not already familiar with it - it's fascinating.

Years after UK Post Office scandal broke, Accenture and OneView Commerce bag contract to replace Horizon

Post office System

Space factories edge closer after experimental capsule survives hypersonic landing

Before I saw that others had spotted the same errors, I was going to click the "Send Corrections" link - but it seems that since the site's re-jig, that link now tries to use my local e-mail client to send the feedback. I'm 99% sure that previously, it used a web-form on the site itself.

I can't speak for anyone else, but I prefer (just... because, OK?) not to use my e-mail program for things like that.

Plex appeal fades as Lifetime Pass jumps to $750

Well, I wouldn't be too smug... as Plex obviously want to terminate the Lifetime Pass deal and its subscribers who cost them ongoing money without generating revenue, think carefully about the implications of that word "terminate".

What I'm saying is, watch out for taciturn Eastern-European assassins, falling pianos... or perhaps it'll be as simple as "huh. Why does my Plex setup insist on playing nothing but The Ring and chainsaw-juggling tutorial videos???"

Re: Eek

I wonder if you could now re-sell it to someone else at the bargain, bargain price of only $500 or so? ...agree a sale, receive the funds, then log in & change the account e-mail address to the buyer's?

(only half-joking)

The MBA obsession with OpEx over CapEx will be the death of us all. "You'll own nothing, and be happy"™

Re: Procrastination pays

Consider Jellyfin. It's perhaps a little more rough-and-ready around the edges, betraying its community-project nature, but I've been using it and (as commented above) it's plenty slick enough for my needs.

I have no experience of the Android TV app for Jellyfin, but I'm quite happy with the Roku and iOS apps - they do show movie titles, and seem (to my eyes) perfectly slick enough.

There's an alternative, also official, Jellyfin iOS client named "Swiftfin" which in some ways works better than the Jellyfin app. I think it uses a different video decoding engine. I keep both on my phone, and if one doesn't play correctly, I just switch to t'other.

I switched away from Plex, after using it happily for a long time, when it spontaneously keeled over on my NAS one day and refused to re-install. I switched to JF and haven't looked back.

Those spared latest Meta job cuts forcibly reassigned to AI roles

Re: We're ... flattening teams

Euphemasia, noun., "his role was redundant in the age of AI so we felt euphemasia was the kindest option..."

Google Cloud suspended major customer Railway.com without cause, causing outage

Taking all bets...

"We will update this story if we receive more than corporate platitudes."

Does that ever actually happen, these days? $5 Imaginary Internet Dollars says the response, if it eventually appears, contains at least one of the phrases "to be regretted", "in accordance with", or some wankery about "valued customers".

Microsoft remembers that taskbars used to move

Re: WinME FTW

Yeah, they did boot up very slowly.

"It just works"

Personally, when hearing that expression, I've always used the second definition of the word "just" - that is, "barely", as in "I just missed being flattened by that stampeding yak, I don't know how!"

So yes, in that sense, Windows just works.

Re: the upgrade to Win12 can't come soon enough

All of which suggests that the next version of Windows will be cloud only to minimize local hardware requirements, and you'll be expected to connect to it using a web browser, at a very reasonable per-minute cost.

I wish I could be certain I was joking...

Windows boot partition runs out of space for Microsoft's May security update

Re: Nostradamus

Thank you Pascal, I am blushing.

Re: Except...

Better be a bloody amazing bootstrap sequence, in Dolby surround and Technicolor!

You know how in Windows 3.1, you could hold down a certain combination of keys whilst clicking the "About" menu item, and get a 32x32px cartoon of Bill Gates?

Well, time's moved on. Now thanks to the miracle of Moore's Law... hold down the appropriate combination of keys, type in the correct blockchain address, issue just the right instructions to CoPilot, and... be treated, on bootup, to an 8K HDR film extravaganza (directed by Wes Anderson, no less) of Satya Nadella doing a provocative and no-holds-barred Chippendales routine.

Re: Except...

500MB on this Dell that I'm typing this comment on, although to be fair I don't know if that's from the factory, or from our more-farsighted-than-most IT department.

Re: Time to give Windows

My first - and I really, really don't want to start a Four Yorkshiremen thread here - was a 20MB MFM drive in a Commodore A590 sidecar expansion unit for my Amiga 500. It was absolutely thrilling to see how quickly the desktop icons populated, compared to floppy disks, and the drive seemed, to shamelessly borrow a Blackadder line, "as capacious as an elephant's scrotum".

Typing this now, I suddenly recall too that the A590 could take SIMMs (or was it DIP chips?) to expand the system memory, unless I'm mistaken. It's been almost 40 years, after all :)

Re: Nostradamus

No, but Anathema Device has some as-yet un-decoded index cards in which Agnes Nutter talks cryptically about "do Notte truste the soft wares of Red-Monde".

Generations of the Device family have been unable to interpret them.

DOOM soundtrack added to National Recording Registry

I've just had a flashback to the era when soundcards weren't standard fitment in PCs, and we had to resort to creative alternatives (or should that be, alternatives to Creative? ...sorry).

Anyone else remember the Windows 3.1 driver that allowed the motherboard beeper to be used as a - poor quality - monaural sound device?

I do also recall my first encounter with MP3 files, circa 1995, and marvelling at the fact that a complete, proper (no soundtracker-like tricks) song could be encapsulated in a relatively small file, at what sounded to my non-audiophile ears like CD quality.

Cloud-managed earbuds sound strange - as a concept, and on a plane

Re: It's a race to see what will happen first

Well, aren't you just the miserable cynic.

We live in an age of technological marvels - rejoice that it's entirely possible, with modern supply chain cost-cutting, software development practices, and corporate attention-deficit-disorder, for more than one of those things to happen simultaneously!

Microsoft researchers find AI models and agents can't handle long-running tasks

Re: Quantum Communication ..... AI@ITs Work, REST and Play

If you're referring to the Bob I think you ARE, no I HAVE not, or at leaat not SEEN any posts WITH random CAPITALIZATION...

Re: "can't handle long-running tasks"

Hey now, as far back as 1995, Microsoft had a version of Windows that could handle tasks that lasted even as long as 49.69 days!

(For those young'uns who don't get the joke: https://www.cnet.com/culture/windows-may-crash-after-49-7-days/ )

Quit VMware and you’ll emerge with more complex and less capable infrastructure

Re: I disagree

You're not alone; the AC above had exactly the same experience.

Rodent-obsessed developer creates Ratty to bring 3D graphics to the command line

Re: What is the difference between a graphics terminal and a graphics window?

A shrew-d comment.

(No more mouse-related puns, please, or you'll be souris...)

On a more serious note, I'd never considered the shell window as a possible hantavirus vector. Gives new meaning to "terminal illness", I suppose?

HP stuffed a PC into a keyboard. We took it for a spin

Re: Sold by weight, not by volume

"It's 4 Times As Good™"

Re: I miss the days of this sort of stuff

That URL is a fascinating trip back in time. Thanks for sharing it.

A dollar/pound exchange rate of 2:1... them were the days!

And it surprises me that DB9/Centronics/PS2 ports were present as recently as '08; in my fuzzy memory, they'd all but died out by the first half of that decade.

Re: Horrible keyboard layout

I have a Dell Precision notebook in front of me, supposedly their mobile workstation line, and it has the same flaw.

Re: Put it inside a decent keyboard

Although it is categorised as an offensive weapon in several jurisdictions, being ideally suited to those seeking to batter someone to death with a blunt instrument - and then type their confession using the same.

The best approach, surely, would be a decent keyboard (ideally one of the modern remakes of classic IBM designs), with a hatch underneath à la Amiga 500 to install a Pi Compute Module.

London’s BT Tower to get rooftop swimming pool

Or to avoid the wave, simply arrange matters so that the pool stays still and the tower (and optionally, the rest of London) rotates.

Re: Do you remember when...

I'll have to remember that as an interview technique to make myself seem more mysterious and interesting than I, in fact, am!

"So it says here you worked for $bigtechcompany for 25 years?"

"I am not at liberty to confirm that."

Re: Just be cause you can do something ...

Maybe the pool would function as a tuned mass damper?

Re: Do you remember when...

On the same note, one of my most treasured possessions (for its quirkiness, I hasten to add) is a map of "S.W. London und Windsor" printed by the Germans in early 1940 to be handed out to the troops invading the UK as part of the planned Operation Sealion. It of course lacks the M25, M4, Heathrow... but it does have various tourist points of interest on it. And down at the very bottom of the sheet, an acknowledgment that it uses map data "(C) 1926 Ordnance Survey".

I always chuckle at the thought that the one heinous taboo the invaders weren't willing to violate was Copyright Infringement :)

Re: Is the water

The "swimming pool" story is just a plausible cover story.

The actual plan is to construct the pool, then fill it with cream to lure any giant kittens that might happen to be nearby.

Re: Considering

I'm sure the architect has thought of that, and written "Do not use Heavy Water" on the plans.

Re: Not an easy building to alter...

Groan.

Get out, and take your coat with you :)

Re: Do you remember when...

Eh, we're talking about a country that has roadsigns pointing to SECRET NUCLEAR BUNKER*, so I can well believe it.

*yeah yeah, I know, now tourist attractions

Re: Not an easy building to alter...

I prefer Randall Munroe's solution, albeit it might take a little longer.

Yes, local LLMs are ready to ease the compute strain

Thank you

...for giving us the Kettle transcription that some of us, at least, were asking for previously. It does make it easier to get value from the content as an alternative to listening to the audio podcast.

IBM Cloud evaporates as datacenter loses power

Re: I see no issues

Well, it worked for Napoleon

Do you mean Nelson?

Napoleon is better known for "Not tonight, Josephine" - when she asked him if his IBM Cloud services were online.

Re: Finally

"Joop! You fool! You've shut down the Do Not Smoulder server! Everything's now igniting!

We've only gone and done it: Changed what you're used to

Allowing comments on the Blocks & Files or DevClass partner sites would be a huge step forward. Is it unnecessarily cruel/suspicious/mean of me to suggest that the reason for disallowing comments is so as not to upset the sponsors?

Disappearing Comments links?

I was initially hostile to the new layout, then learned to accept it, but logging on tonight - Firefox, with uBlock Origin and NoScript disabled, I add - none of the stories seem to have a link to their Comments at either the top or bottom of the page. Even stories that I was commenting on earlier today.

A temporary glitch?

Mercifully, I remembered the direct address https://forums.theregister.com so was able to come here!

Firefox integrates an ad-blocker, but not to block ads

Re: Pot calling kettle black

Well, I might need to temper my earlier optimism.

As I write this, the front-page story related to this one, Mozilla boasts Mythos boosted Firefox bug cull , doesn't have a link to its comments, whether at the top or the bottom of the article. Now, it's possible that comments have been consciously disabled on that story, I suppose, but if so then a clearer indication would be nice.

State-backed hackers hammer Palo Alto firewall zero-day before patch lands

Re: I like the new layout.

For what it's worth, I've just e-mailed them using the Corrections link at the top of the page to highlight that "Add Section Name Here" glitch.

Re: I like the new layout.

Reminiscent of the Amiga magazine (Amiga Format?) in days of yore - about '91 or so - that went to press with the page that described the cover disk's contents bearing the immortal placeholder words "Type Some Shit In Here Please".