Posts by MrXavia

SpaceX blasted massive plasma hole in Earth's ionosphere

Re: Yawn

I always thought an active structure is a better way we can build a space elevator than just relying on materials...

plus it could be built from the ground up, no need to launch rockets with all the materials first.

Five things you need to know about Microsoft's looming Windows 10 Spring Creators Update

Re: This Timeline thing

The only reason I can see to use windows 10 (and the reason I use it) is gaming, once there is better Linux game support then windows will loose traction again...

Even my 10 year old only uses windows because of games....

UK's London Gatwick Airport boasts of driverless vehicle trial

Re: Eliminate any pedestrian humans

"Just imagine how much faster the whole getting on off planes would be if people could be loaded in containers!"

It would be much more comfortable than current airline seats

Windows 10 to force you to use Edge, even if it isn't default browser

Re: So ?

"The only people left on the platform are unthinking cattle."

Errr no..

Windows is the only choice for many, some software just isn't available for Linux or Mac. Not all hardware is fully supported in Linux...

Personally I have Windows 10 (pro version), it is not the worst Windows ever, although I do have a fear that an update will cripple my PC at some point, or remove a feature I use... I've had that happen with Android apps in the past....

Re: Popcorn

Well if you search on the task bar or in Cortana you have bing and edge, you have no choice... I would much rather they force ms to use the default browser first than worry about a hardly used mail app

Europe plans special tax for Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon

Re: EUSSR

"while their shareholders get wealthier and wealthier is OK?"

If a company is not profitable, then they shareholders don't get any dividends,

they only way they make money is if they sell their shares....

No fortune is being taken out of the economy, in fact by definition a loss making company is spending more than they make, so that money is coming out of investors pockets and into the economy...

So far all I see is idiotic politicians and economists with no real ability to think suggesting rash ideas to take money from someone and give it to themselves in one way or another...

The tax system is broken globally, the UK tax system is a mess... too many different taxes and too many ways for big companies to try and avoid paying it, yet the little guy is over taxed

You can Ring my bell: Amazon pays ONE BEEEEELLION+ dollars for smart home upstart

one billion for a product not fit for purpose? wow.....

Voice assistants are always listening. So why won't they call police if they hear a crime?

Re: Hey Siri! Argh! Help!

Of course they do wait for keywords, can you imagine the processing required to do 24/7 speech recognition in the cloud?? and then imagine the cost! I would bet most companies want to shift the speech processing out of the cloud back to the device if they can and reduce their costs

This job Win-blows! Microsoft made me pull '75-hour weeks' in a shopping mall kiosk

Properly classified or not, being made to work 75hrs a week she deserves to be paid correctly!

Chrome adblockalypse will 'accelerate Google-Facebook duopoly'

I find adverts weird, constantly for sites i've visited recently, the advert won't effect my purchases, it won't make the publisher any money as I won't click on the link to a site i've already been to...

Now show me an advert for a different company, selling a similar thing to what I was browsing and maybe I might click, or show me adverts relevant to the content I am reading...

The problem is not adverts in general, that is how we learn about new sites/products, but the lack of relevant adverts and poor quality adverts is a problem

Bloke sues Microsoft: Give me $600m – or my copy of Windows 7 back

Re: i want a slice of that $600M

@LewisRage,

Have you used a computer with Windows 8/10 recently? took me 2 hours last week to actually get my windows 8 laptop to boot from a Win10 install USB stick (going from windows 8 to windows 10 is an upgrade).

Facial recognition software easily IDs white men, but error rates soar for black women

Re: Is spreading

but also women usually have one less differing facial feature to help.. Beards..

FYI: There's now an AI app that generates convincing fake smut vids using celebs' faces

Re: The child angle

They did indeed, our benevolent overlords love banning things without actually thinking through the problem... I often wonder if they ever actually think before acting...

From what I can see, bans usually drive stuff underground and increase the danger to people, because if there is no legal and harmless way to get what someone wants, they will often turn to illegal ways to get it...

Brit escorts: Without the internet to keep us safe, we'd be totally screwed

Makes sense to me, prostitution is a profession that will never go away, so the more that can be done to protect both the client and the worker the better...

Although this black list does remind me of the companions black list in firefly...

Electric cars to create new peak hour when they all need a charge

Re: Answering a few points in the comments...

"The UK and many other counties have committed themselves to stop selling fossil fueled vehicles."

What about bio-fuels? why can't we keep combustion engines but ramp up the bio-fuel production and reduce the pollution cars emit.

EV's have a place, but until a cheap, efficient, bio-fuel fuel-cell is created, combustion works best...

Re: EVs simply pay more for electricity

a full 100KW charge fwould be about £20 i expect for me...

Tesla Model S is about 400 miles for 100KW so about 5p/mile

a full 70 litre tank is about £85

I get around 700 miles out of that £85, so about 12p/mile

The tesla costs around £90k

My car cost £45k

I can drive 370,000 miles on the difference in price...

My car works out way cheaper, and could run on bio-fuels quite easily, so the only reason it is not 'green' is because of big oil..

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

Re: You do know that Moore’s law says nothing about speed?

"Just not everything can be run in parallel."

But I find most things that are computationally intensive can be,

Even your web browser should benefit from multi-processing.

NHS OKs offshoring patient data to cloud providers stateside

Re: Whatever next?

Considering the number of times i've seen a GP look something up on google I would not be surprised if someone used AWS Machine Learning and Alexa to provide an interface for DR's to look up medical information fast and assist diagnostics...

Why did I buy a gadget I know I'll never use?

"[...] they cannot be fried, boiled or microwaved. "

I dissagree, I serve fried sprouts, chop them (finely or quartered, add some bacon and chestnuts, a bit of salt & crushed garlic, and you have a lovely winter veg dish!

Facebook settles landmark revenge porn case with UK teen for undisclosed sum

Simply don't share anything you don't mind the world seeing....

It shouldn't be that way, people should know not to share intimate photos someone sends you, no matter what the age

UK.gov puts Suffolk 7-year-old's submarine design into production

Yup, My kids grew up with Octonauts and now my kids love The Deep

The Deep is great, its made me want to learn to scuba dive and crew a boat!

UK drone collision study didn't show airliner window penetration

This might deter a few idiots from flying a cheapo drone near airports and accidentally hitting a plane, but luckily these are mainly plastics and will cause negligible damage..

Hobbyists and professionals with expansive heavy drones will follow the rules, because they do already and don't want their precious toy being broken..

Those who want to fly something heavy into an aeroplane will do so anyway registration or not, no amount of legislation will prevent that, so active security measures are needed.

That was fast... unlike old iPhones: Apple sued for slowing down mobes

Re: That probably explains..

Make it easier to replace the batteries and then have a message saying battery has problems, please replace it as soon as possible and the phone will run slow until you have done this..

Not hard to do....

Erase 2017 from your brain. Face ID never happened. The Notch is an illusion

Re: I'd happily own a phone

"Unless you video call or take selfies"

I regularly video chat with friends afar, and when in a group, selfies are a way to ensure you are all in the photo.. SO both functions seem needed.. Then again I don't own an iPhone, I have a sony, with a bezel at the bottom and top to hold onto while taking a selfie or video chatting without accidentally touching the screen....

At Christmas, do you give peas a chance? Go cold turkey? What is the perfect festive feast?

Re: Follow that star (trek)

I think sprouts are best sliced and fried with bacon and chestnuts!

Delicious

Once again, UK doesn't rule out buying F-35A fighter jets

Re: OK... really stupid idea, but here goes...

The chinook could possibly lift it...

Quentin Tarantino in talks to make Star Trek movie

"Nah - Simon Pegg as the baddy would be a way better call..."

that would be brilliant, Scottie goes rogue!

UK.gov admits Investigatory Powers Act illegal under EU law

I expect not, because to continue working with European data, we will have to tick their boxes on data protection, I expect this will be part of the negotiated deal..

London mayor: Self-driving cars? Not without jacked-up taxes, you don't!

" they could, you know, just stop maintaining the roads."

I thought they already had?

From Vega with love: Pegasus interstellar asteroid's next stop

Wouldn't it be better to sit a few small probes at a the Legrange points with ion drives ready for missions like this?

If they were designed right, they could give plenty of science bonus while in place and then be re-purposed for intercept missions such as this?

US govt to use software to finger immigrants as potential crims? That's really dumb – boffins

Re: Feral Blundiering

I think you meant

"to error is human but it takes government to really screw things up"

Jet packs are real – and inventor just broke world speed record in it

Looks like a Very basic suit! (but still brilliant)

Just jets strapped to the back and arms with manual throttles...

Can you imagine what you could achieve with some more engineering and the same engines, maybe ducting on the fans while attaching them to the backpack rather than the arms, with computer automaton to balance the flight, some kind of thumb joystick in the hand to control the flight parameters maybe?

I could see a foldable wing, or wing suit being added to enable better fuel economy.

Why are we disappointed with the best streaming media box on the market?

Re: Which country?

can you get netflix on a Kodi box?

F-35s grounded by spares shortage

Re: New toys are always more exciting than repaired ones

Starts to make sopwith camels look attractive!

In all seriousness, by the time the F35 is ready for active deployment drones will be taking over the skies!

Even more warship cuts floated for the Royal Navy

Re: ah the costs of buying abroad

"As for airframes, it's still going to be cheaper buying Apache's from Boeing than Westlands even with the exchange rate change."

Except they never take into account the additional tax income, the reduction in unemployment benefits and general benefits of building in your own country vs importing.

Fines for crossing roads while TXTing enacted in Honolulu

I would argue no, as you would not be crossing the road, you would be standing in the middle of the road not crossing ;-)

Release the KRACKen patches: The good, the bad, and the ugly on this WPA2 Wi-Fi drama

Surely the problem is the devices connecting, if you have BYOD policy in place, how can you be certain that the devices are updated?

Elon Musk says Harry Potter and Bob the Builder will get SpaceX flying to Mars

Indeed, 22 minutes each way, meaning 44+ minutes flight time, you don't want to be wasting bandwidth with such high latency.

Thomas the Tank Engine lobotomised by fat (remote) controller

Re: @tim99 - Unions

I don't like the idea of unmanned passenger trains, in an emergency a conductor can ensure everyone is evacuated safely, a conductor is a visible deterrent for bad behaviour.

But I don't see a problem with automated driverless trains, they make sense, automated systems can be much more reliable and have more sensors than a human driver.

Musk: Come ride my Big F**king Rocket to Mars

Re: I'm not buying any of this

it's two stage to orbit.... perfectly feasible, even SSTO is feasible with rockets, just not practical (low payload capacity)...

Also the falcon 9 is two stage to orbit, except they dump the 2nd stage once in orbit, the new one doesn't, they sacrifice payload capacity for re-usability.

Dyson to build electric car that doesn't suck

Re: Solve this at the source

@James Hughes "No you don't need to own a car that can do 200miles. You get an electric car, then hire something else for the long journeys."

Bugger that, have you driven a hire car? they are awful!!

If you want something half decent, then you spend £300+ a day, add in the hastle of going to fetch it....

For most people its more cost effective to just buy a petrol/diesel car.

UK Data Protection Bill lands: Oh dear, security researchers – where's your exemption?

So, dictatorship by the back door... wonderful

Apple’s facial recognition: Well, it is more secure for the, er, sleeping user

A scary thought.

This uses a projected IR dot pattern for the 3d, in theory I could see that very dark black skin may absorb enough of the IR so that it isn't able to sense the depth, the same way that some IR sensor hand dryers/faucets wont work for black skin..

You have to hope Apple have tested this with many different skin types and makeup.

Boffins fear we might be running out of ideas

Re: Enough Already!

Name one thing that is at an acceptable level?

I cannot think of anything that couldn't do with an improvement!

Everyone loves programming in Python! You disagree? But it's the fastest growing, says Stack Overflow

"Do NOT attempt to force Python into a 'C' shaped hole"

Completely agree

I think Python is a great language, but C/C++ for the performance elements.

Python as the Glue to hold together the compiled C libraries is a great analogy, I like it!

It's happening! Official retro Thinkpad lappy spotted in the wild

Re: Screw 16:10

"Because 80% of the screen is wasted when writing a document or reading on the web?"

I have 3 wide screen monitors, right now the reg is split onto a single half of one of the screens... no wasted space at all

Connect at mine free Wi-Fi! I would knew what I is do! I is cafe boss!

Smart intercoms/bells are a good idea, that are usually badly implemented

Current intercoms are expensive and are clunky or wired.

Current smart intercoms are crappy and expensive, most don't even have the basic physical security of having the main guts on the inside and the speaker on the outside that the normal intercoms do, AND they require internet to work, so they are useless for anywhere with a poor internet conection..

Now if your like me, and have large garden (i.e. an old house in the UK, not a new build) then you need an intercom to be able to get back to the house when a delivery comes... So it makes sense to have a network connected intercom, and having video is a bonus as you can see who is at your door/gate and not even have to answer it if your not sure who it is.

I am making my own at the moment, because no one actually makes anything good in this market right now and I need one.

Nest cracks out cheaper spin of its thermostat

Re: It is worth it, you just have to try it...

my worry is nothing to do with privacy, its legacy...

what happens when they decide to pull the service? when they are brought up by another company that competes with nest and decides to retire the service?

anything that NEEDS the cloud to work is in my crazy, especially as for under £10 they can have a chip powerful enough to run a web server and provide the same service... Have 3 nest, design it to work as a cluster... have 10 smart devices, have them all work as a cluster, have any app work over the lan, THEN only need cloud for access outside the home

Apple bag-search class action sueball moves to Cali supreme court

Re: How about this -

iPhones are not that large, I am sure employees could be creative to find a way to remove them if they wanted to without needing a bag