Posts by PhilipN

One careful driver: Make room in the garage... Bloodhound jet-powered car is up for sale

Room in the back for the groceries?

Might make an offer.

Nothing new since the microwave: Let's get those home tech inventors cooking

Re: Smart heating system?

“ frost on the INSIDE of the windows”

First time we met ice in the days before refrigerators were commonplace.

Yes, children, there was such a time.

Honor has flown the nest: Announces first phone as an independent firm, inks deals with supply chain big dogs

Smart timing

Wait until [ Donald who? ] was out. He probably had his pen poised over another ban with "Honor" in the title.

Actually on reflection he probably did not. D.T. did not do "Cause and Effect".

Must 'completely free' mean 'hard to install'? Newbie gripe sparks some soul-searching among Debian community

"Windows just works"

Learn something new ....

Screw you, gadget-menders! No really, you'll need loads of screwdrivers to fix Apple's AirPods Max headphones

Re: A car self-diagnoses now

Software! (Wicked chuckle.)

Mate of mine is importing a brand spanking new Land Rover Defender into Australia. Took months to arrive but that is another story.

The local dealer when prepping the vehicle for delivery and attempting to download the latest software "rendered the vehicle inoperable". Seems this means it is unsalvageable. As my mate reported : "What the actual ...k???" and the car was designed in the UK, the software in India, and it is assembled in Slovakia so - "What was I thinking???"

I have not dared to ask him the latest.

Part of a wider problem

Those who in their student days customarily stuck their heads under the bonnet with plugs-and-points kit in hand needn't bother. A car self-diagnoses now. Except that it doesn't. The so-called mechanic (snort!) plugs in his box of tricks but still has no idea what to repair. The onboard system tells him which PCB to rip out, toss, and replace. When it doesn't the mechanic (snigger!) in pristine overalls and with well-manicured fingernails hasn't a clue.

Long gone are the days when the bloke down the garage could sit in your car, start it up (or at least try to turn it over) and tell you within 15 seconds what the problem is. I had much more confidence in him than the youth with the diagnostic device in hand. But then I have a natural suspicion of any kid who hasn't started shaving - male or female.

That's it. It's over. It's really over. From today, Adobe Flash Player no longer works. We're free. We can just leave

Going down Memory Lane ...

Searched Turtle Graphics.

Still a thing.

All it took was a pandemic to revive PCs: Canalys proclaims sales up 25% in Q4 as world+dog stays home

"market to expand"

Really? When all those workhorse PC's are sitting idle on desks gathering dust in the office? Which suggests in the event the Work-from-home regime dissipates PC sales will fall off a cliff.

Trump silenced online: Facebook, Twitter etc balk at insurrection, shut the door after horse bolts and nearly burns down the stable

And - Darwinism in action

Took social media and the jellyfish in Washington how long to evolve backbones?

United States Congress stormed by violent followers of defeated president, Biden win confirmation halted

Tech angle?

...... tiptoes out the door.

And now for something completely different: A lightweight, fast browser that won't slurp your data

Wombwell?

Place Up North same name.

"serves the Penistone and Hallam lines"

How apt.

Either that or someone's having a laugh.

No amount of Glasgow handshaking will revive this borked kiosk

Re: Pacific Quay?

Notice the original baker's dozen of your DV'ers ebbed away as the Scots slowly learnt irony.

A pub denied: One man's tale of festive frolics postponed by the curse of the On Call phone

Roy?

The Blade Runner Roy or the Die Hard Roy?

This product is terrible. Can you deliver it in 20 years’ time when it becomes popular?

Tobacco tin??

Notice nobody commented on this because nobody knows what they are these days.

How about young Dabbsy? Roll yer owns behind the bike shed with Harold Wilson’s favourite, Ermine Hunt?

Let the chips fall where they may: US Commerce dept whacks Middle Kingdom firm SMIC on naughty list

Re: This will cause more pain in the long term

Simple Newtonian cause and effect.

Previously it was a 25-year plan. Now it is a 5-year plan.

Confused

A company set up to compete with Intel and which so far has failed to do so after many years of trying and many billions of dollars is a threat to national security? Despite the many more billions of dollars spent on national security?

About $15m in advertising booked to appear on millions of smart TVs was never seen by anyone, says Oracle

Course we had it tuff

In our day it were subliminal tactics and motivational psychology* for real men. None of this namby pamby streaming media in your face ads for molly-coddled milllennials.

*Vance Packard. The Hidden Persuaders (q.v.) first published 1957 - A.D.

HP bows to pressure, reinstates free monthly ink plan... for existing customers

Name another maker

Curiously the name Lexmark sprang to mind.

And that the sale of its printer division seems to mark the start of IBM’s long decline?

Raven geniuses: Four-month-old corvids have similar cognitive abilities to great apes at same age, study finds

Ive wondered...

You a friend of his?

Google Cloud (over)Run: How a free trial experiment ended with a $72,000 bill overnight

intention of avoiding paying your bills

Spade-calling : intention to defraud*. Many people do it all the time in trivial ways. Happily the enforcement authorities have more pressing matters to handle, and they do not wish to become debt collectors for commercial organisations anyway. *Free advice : commit nothing in writing (including 1's and 0's) setting out the game plan.

Apple fires warning shot at Facebook and Google on privacy, pledges fight against 'data-industrial complex'

What is this thing called "Facebook"?

Avoided it like the plague since the start.

Boffins from China push quantum computing envelope for 'supremacy' in emerging photon field

Re: China is a manufactured monoculture

Utter nonsense.

A group of countries...

Now which "countries" would those be?

Marine archaeologists catch a break on the bottom of the Baltic Sea: A 75-year-old Enigma Machine

Self-depreciatory

That's ok. It diminishes over time.

Where's the mysterious metal monolith today then? Oh look, it's atop a California mountain

Re: Technically ......

"continue to burn"

Long discussion here about aluminium warships burning (or not) some years ago during the tenure of a site editor with military characteristics and stimulated by events during the Falklands War. Details (including the final conclusion, if there was one) escape me since I am not into violence.

Re: Not aluminium?

Rectangle ...?

Length, width but no depth. Now that gets interesting. But then does it even exist?

Re: "Where will the mysterious metal monolith appear next?"

Occasionally mantra throughout the play during badinage between a couple of tramps (main characters) : "....waiting ..... waiting for Godot.."

LibreOffice 7.1 beta boasts impressive range of features let down by a lack of polish and poor mobile efforts

Star Writer

Actually comparing eggs with eggs - Star Office.

Took ages to load since it used a monolithic code base, and then was (putting it VERY mildly) rough around the edges.

USA adds China’s top chipmaker to list of companies American money can’t legally buy a slice of

Ho-hum

Given a choice between US shareholders and continuing to poach engineers from TSMC - no contest.

Except now there are plenty of competitors emerging inside China for the same talent pool.

It's been an Honor serving with you but you're our 'competitors' now, Huawei tells its sawn-off mobile limb

Re: "lesser cultures"??

I stand corrected.

But in my defence I did not know Americans, and engineers, did irony. Learn something new ..

"lesser cultures"??

I'll give you the benefit of the doubt but whether you meant it or not or were just being sloppy it is a shocking statement.

When Uncle Sam is 10 times as old as it is now that would be the opportunity to crow.

As it is - tangential - I have tried Huawei phones, watches and notebooks. All excellent to the point where, across the board, Apple had to play catch up with its latest products, Except that Huawei is already a step ahead with its own latest products.

How the US attacked Huawei: Former CEO of DocuSign and Ariba turned diplomat Keith Krach tells his tale

Learning from the best?

Creaking memory cells suggest Microsoft would approach another software company all friendly like sign confidentiality agreements get their hands on the code then wave bye-bye.

Stacker anyone?

Bloated middle age beckons: Windows 1.0 turns 35 and is dealing with its mid-life crisis, just about

"first build of the OS"

Nope, not an OS.

Watchdog signals Boeing 737 Max jets can return to US skies following software upgrade, pilot training

Scares the pants off me

The relationship between the human brain and the computer is not symbiotic. Put it this way : as a kid I drove a beaten up old Morris Minor like an idiot because everything was under my control. Over time you learnt the car's foibles. Now I drive a car full of F1 technology which is a no-brainer. Except it isn't. It will have its own foibles which are not at all knowable after lengthy driving experience so I have no idea what the limits are.

Then, being human, we try to find those limits or, worse, **** with the onboard computer (same thing) by doing something different just to see what it will do. For fun.

Tragically the pilots on the two flights in question did not know the limits of their software, nor was the software sufficiently self-aware (God forbid) to know it was screwing up. Double failure.

Nothing coming from the FAA or Boeing reassures me that this will not happen again. The only failsafe mechanism I want to see is one with a brain. A real one.

America's largest radio telescope close to collapse as engineers race to fix fraying cables

Re: Emergency measures?

A very good collage.

[Checks meeting agenda...] Where does it say 'Talk cr*p and waste everyone's time'?

Video Calls - UGH!

At least with old-fashioned telephone conferences I could try and finish the crossword, grunting occasionally.

Now I have to try and look moderately human. Save that with more than a couple of participants on the screen everyone looks like a dickhead anyway.

China compromised F-35 subcontractor and forced expensive software system rewrite, academic tells MPs

“What they were able to do we do not know”

That’s really helpful.

So the real news is ..... ?

Mr President? Donald?! Any chance you can actually decide if Oracle can buy us or do we have to leave?

Same old question

Security risk - why?

Ok forget it. Evidence never counted for much anyway.

Curse of Arecibo strikes again: Now another cable breaks, smashes into America's largest radio telescope

“not what we wanted to see”

Understatement of the century so far.

Apple opens pre-orders of iPhone 12 Mini and Pro Max models, the cheapest and most expensive in the lineup

Re: Flying out the door

OK, ta.

I am not, but my daughter is and I am getting her a Mini from John Lewis. Their website says available 13 Nov - do not believe it.

Flying out the door

Took more than 20 minutes past the announced time for the pre-order web page to come up.

Then I got to payment 4 or 5 times before it summarily booted me out.

Finally got in an order - for delivery at least 2 weeks later than the one first promulgated.

What's worse is you pay online in full. Or in part with an Apple credit - which you cannot get with an existing phone because you have to trade it in to get the credit - duh.

So either you manage without a phone for God knows how long - and I do not believe the delivery time - or (as advised by one the Geniuses in the Apple Store) use a spare phone. Yeah right. I have to move all my facial sign-ins and other biodata - if it even works - to another presumably old out-of-date phone which has been in a drawer with a flat battery.

Great way for Apple to avoid a trade-in AND force you to have 2 frigging iPhones instead of one. ****!

China sets itself 2035 goal for technology self-sufficiency and covets title as the world’s top innovator

So where did Uncle Sam get the recipes for pizza and tutti frutti ice cream?

Or, since this is a tech site, the nascent theories for atomic weaponry?*

*Here's a clue : try University of Birmingham, the British one.

China reveals audit of 320,000 local apps, with 34 booted from app stores and hundreds of devs warned they could suffer same fate

Man hours

Broad parameters for checking so until someone knowledgeable about such matters pipes up, assume we are talking about a minimum of 10 minutes per app (320,000 of 'em) so total man hours 3200000 /60 = > 50K hours so a team of 50 means 1,000 hours each at 10 hours a day means more than three months with no time to meet their girlfriends/boyfriends/whatever. Even 5 minutes per app = a damn long time

By which time they have to start again on all the new/updated apps.

I hope they had an app for that. Or actually I don't care.

But throws into profile the number of people FB, Twitter etc reckon they have to vet posts. Mr. Orange needs a team all to himself.

What does everyone make of today's Google antitrust action? Only the stock market is happy with the status quo

Re: Discomfort

Your first paragraph - yes, everybody knows that.

Instead of Google try Huawei Petal Search. Mr. Orange won't like you, though.

Discomfort

Google does not have its hand in my pocket. This is not a Microsoft situation. There is a co-respondent - the advertiser. He fills Google's coffers, not me.

We bought a knockoff Lego launchpad kit from China for our Saturn V rocket so you don't have to

Re: Lego?

Me! Me! Me!

I still have a photo somewhere of the Betta Bilda cathedral, taken from a low angle because I did not have enough pieces for the other side and my brother would not let me use his kit. B*****d!

Mark Zuckerberg, 36, decides that having people on his website deny the deaths of six million Jews is a bad thing

Re: One year consultation?

Wrong. It is fundamental to YOUR categorisation of her identity. That is what is disgusting.

One year consultation?

Gagging on the hypocrisy.

Now here is a REALLY crazy idea - when mentioning anybody avoid any adjectives alluding to the skin colour.

I called out The Times on this a year ago when they reported on joint winners of the Booker Prize. One was referred to as black and British. The other was referred to as Canadian (but not "white Canadian"). Utterly ******g disgusting.

Crown Prosecution Service solicitor accused of targeting judge ex-wife's lover through work computer systems

Re: ?

“Cavort” has very positive connotations. I wish I was doing it right now.

Britain should have binned Huawei 5G kit years ago to cuddle up with Trump, says Parliamentary committee

Re: Well done, Cotton

Your last paragraph - could not agree more. But it’s worse than that. Go to the House of Commons website (and please, pretty please, El Reg provide links when you refer to this kind of report) the opening words are :

“ The UK Government wants to be a global leader in 5G”.

What does that even mean? The “U.K. Government” (sic) wants to be a leader ..... not the U.K? But not in production .... in usage? Which cloud cuckoo land are they inhabiting?