Posts by werdsmith

America ain't exactly outlawing gas cars but it's steering hard into EVs

Re: Change can happen quickly...

I'm on 2nd EV with a 3rd one ordered.

No way I'm ever willingly going back to old fashioned ICE cars having driven EV. Thank you.

Re: Distances

Spelling out the EV range problem on the web for the billionth time, just in case somebody can't work it out for themselves and hasn't seen it 10 times already.

UK govt wants standalone 5G by 2030 but won't shell out to help hit target

Re: Would you ignore the referendum?

It’s not about ignoring a majority vote. FFS, its about respecting a majority vote and not denying the opportunity to vote indefinitely. So it’s a more democratic stance than yours.

Re: Would you ignore the referendum?

The twats with their sanctimonious crap about ageism need to get real. It’s not about people dying for a political aim, it’s just life as it has always been. Nature. We are all going the same way.

And it is well known that the leave vote was very weighted to the older generation. The ones that are not going to have to live long and with the consequences and felt economically insulated not having to worry about working. They actually didn’t give a shit about their own families or the wishes of the young - who are going to have to live with it. And if you ask for their reasoning, the best they can come up with is it was an emotional decision. Because anything else is admitting being a gullible mug. Their grandchildren say thanks for nothing.

If you are old and did vote remain, great. You are a minority and this is not all about you. I did feel the young were more important in this decision because they are the ones who are going to have to live with it the longest. Personally I am not elderly but I am economically safe, I don’t really have to worry about the economy. But my kids do, my vote was for them and reflected their wishes.

Surprised CodeJunky isn’t here having another conniption.

Re: Would you ignore the referendum?

Don’t need to ignore the referendum. Just wait a few more years for the older generation to move on to the sunlit uplands in the sky then have another referendum.

A referendum isn’t final, it’s just a snapshot in time. Times change.

40% of IT security pros say they've been told not to report a data leak

Re: "respondents said they [..] obeyed those orders"

Why risk it?

So fire me. I’ll go and work for the rivals. Why be worried about being fired? Don’t be beheld to an employer.

SpaceX calendar marked with big red circle for 'first Starship launch' this month

Re: New Reg unit required

Or Cole….

Re: New Reg unit required

You mean like we don’t need 100s of airliners to carry 1000s across the Atlantic every day?

Re: New Reg unit required

I'm looking forwards to the day when we develop a way to get to space/around space without using the brute force method

I look forward to that day too, in one of my future incarnations as a member of a climate adapted human species. Though gravity "slingshot" manoeuvres are already a thing, and maintaining orbit doesn't require much boost.

Re: Wildlife??

Cape Canaveral is also in the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge.

Places where development is excluded for miles around turn out to be ideal places for nature.

Re: New Reg unit required

I can't get my head round how the thrust generated by the hot gas at the engine cones is coupled to the structure above to lift all that mass. 4000+ tonnes at lift off. Just amazing.

Re: Stay up late

I travelled to Florida for a shuttle launch, stayed for 2 weeks, with the scheduled shuttle launch on day 2. Left Florida with the shuttle still not launched. Still had a great time though.

Some years later I got to see one when the mission went off without delay and got the sonic boom-boom later when it returned.

I always think of the disappointed crowds on Cocoa Beach when there is cancelled launch, they are usually having a great time with BBQs etc. I wonder if it is as busy these days with the routine launches? Anybody been recently?

Turns out people don't like it when they suspect a machine's talking to them

Re: Bing Knows

Brazil is excused because I've never been there and it sounds like an exotic exciting place.

Re: Bing Knows

Excellent, thank you. I now know enough about liquid cups to know I was right to avoid them.

Now, I just need someone to explain cups of non-liquid cups like flour and stuff.

Re: Bing Knows

I understand American English at C2 level. I could hardly not as we are all unavoidably exposed to it so regularly.

However, I’ve never investigated what a “cup” is when measuring ingredients. If I see it in a recipe then I just move on to another one.

I don’t know how to interpret school “grades” to age, so when the password is check question appears “what was the name of the school you attended at nth grade” then “what the fuck is nth grade” is my preferred answer.

And I still don’t get “could be bothered” but I can’t be bothered to worry about it, nor cups and grades.

Maybe I’m just too lazy to make the effort. AI would do a much better job.

Is it time to tip open source developers? Here's one way to do it

Unfortunately, not being able to pay bills can sometimes lead to elevated stress and a feeling of satisfaction is not normally accepted as payment by upstream service providers.

Pursuit of satisfaction of the brain’s reward mechanism sounds like addictive behaviour.

A model something like PRS which supports music creators might have some merit. If I knew where to pay money then I would be happy to pay.

I’ve lately spoken to a developer who put 100s of hours into a developing a library for no reward and has since had to purchase software that was developed using his own library.

Can’t keep expecting people to work hard for nothing whilst others parasite off their efforts to get rich.

Imagine a farmer growing a crop of corn and a giant corporate bakery taking the harvest and turning it into doughnuts for sale.

Microsoft stumps loyal fans by making OneDrive handle Outlook attachments

Re: Home auto-archive

The company is providing their platform and not asking for any cash. Anyone with any sense knows that they have bills to pay to provide that service. No need to see any terms and conditions, no need for any legal oversight.

Re: Stick to IMAP, move to local every so often

It's akin to thr entire music industry pulling all albums and singles, and instead forcing everyone into a subscription model with no ability whatsoever to own music anymore.

It’s not about the diehard old techies holding out. A generation will emerge believing that the subscription model is the only way, normal way. My daughter uses Spotify and doesn’t understand why I have my own collection of music on physical media. It just doesn’t make sense to her. It doesn’t make sense to me to pay repeatedly for the same music, especially as I have already purchased the right to listen to it. So the music industry is already going down the road you describe.

Cash App founder stabbed to death in San Francisco

Re: You really think this was a "mugging"

In my ignorance I came off the freeway on south Chicago. I needed a bog and I was hungry. It was

a black neighbourhood and 2 of us were welcomed in the most friendly way. Ended up staying for a couple of hours so they could laugh at our accents.

Re: Another No Information Opinion idiot...

What an absolute Rigsby comment that is.

Re: Another No Information Opinion idiot...

I had a night out in The Mission in the 1990s.

Felt very safe and comfortable.

Compared to Las Vegas in the same year when I just couldn’t wait to get out.

I guess times have changed.

We lived in a shared house in an affluent part of Walnut Creek in the East Bay. We didn’t have enough door keys for everyone so the front door was never locked. Never saw any crime at all in 2 years other than what we did ourselves.

Microsoft ditches plans for 500,000 sq ft London office

Re: Enfield

Oxford Street is just London's high street. It doesn't claim anything else. It always was where the the chains are. It used to have some of the signature stores, like HMV and Virgin etc, but I would never have thought of going there for any benefit other than having them all together.

Now there are the Westfields, or Battersea etc which can exclude the the rain. And London has New Bond Street, Knightsbridge and the little specialist quarters like that.

Re: Enfield

I regularly emerge from the tube at Oxford Circus, as recently as last week. I normally head west towards JL and Selfridge, then double back and head down Regent Street towards Piccadilly Circus. This takes me twice past that big armoured vehicle in the window. Yes there are a few of those crappy shops dotted about but the selective photography in the doom monger rags and the description above is absolutely not what I see.

Re: Enfield

Microsoft’s neighbours on Oxford St are mostly empty shops and money-laundering fronts disguised as American Candy shops.

You’ve provided an example of considerable exaggeration there.

Royal Mail wins worst April Fools' joke 2023

The Royal Mail used to be reliable and relatively inexpensive important.

Now it's greetings cards and junk mail.

Microsoft App Center has been down for nearly a day, and no word on when it'll end

Re: Not working

Indeed, this is the first I’ve heard of it. I won’t be investigating any further.

Tesla Semi, out since December, already facing a recall over brakes

Sure. but adding a computer will not make old-style failures disappear. It only adds a whole new class of potential failures.

The electronic handbrake does tend to reduce the number of rollaway incidents when people get out of the car and forget to apply it.

Re: Trucked

*Battery EV.

EVs with an external energy supply like overhead wires or a local diesel generator are pretty good at hauling loads over distance.

Parts of UK booted offline as Virgin Media suffers massive broadband outage

No they are happy to admit the problem and offering the compensation here.

I have Virgin. It’s usually very good but I had to use my redundant connection this time.

My redundant connection is my next neighbours WIFI. He has an ADSL connection, we have a mutual arrangement to share when there is an outage. He needs mine more often than I need to use his.

Australian bank stops handling cash at the counter in some branches

Re: Opening hours

I can no longer think of a reason not to dump them and move everything to an online-only bank.

Yes, this is what the bank is hoping you will do. Times have changed, counter services are not necessary any more. Just like coal merchants.

The traditional High Street names all offer their service online too.

Cash! I remember cash, long time since I dealt with any. My daughter has no need of it and when her grandfather gave her some on a milestone birthday, she didn’t know what to do with it. She passed it to us, and we banked it though an ATM and transferred the amount to her account.

So, her grandfather got it out of an ATM, passed it to her, she passed it to us, we put it back in the ATM.

What was the point of that?

NASA names astronauts picked for next Artemis Moon test flight

Re: Forget about everything else.

And Australia is a member of Eurovision :)

Re: When the Apollo crews were always all white men

I don’t think they need to be super test pilot types anyway. They won’t be doing much flying, they have a representative job to do.

Much like Gagarin, reputedly chosen above other candidates because of his broad warm smile.

Parisians say au revoir to shared e-scooters

Re: Spin class ...

The squeaky wheel gets the oil.

School principal resigns after writing $100,000 check to Elon Musk impersonator

Re: "I am very smart"

My organisation is using random phishing emails on its staff as part of training. I spotted most of them, but during one particularly hectic moment, circumstances combined and I fell for one of them.

Kicked myself hard, really disappointed but it feels like very effective training.

Re: "I am very smart"

When somebody drops in their academic achievements or their years of professional experience to back up what they are saying online, it’s fairly safe to assume they are liars.

And I know this to be a fact because I have a PhD in online behaviour and I’ve practiced in this field for more than 20 years.

India flies – and lands – reusable autonomous spaceplane

Re: No, it doesn't look like the Shuttle or Buran

If the landing gear is from the parts bin then it’s close to its design max if it is meeting the runway at 220 mph.

Virgin Orbit lays off 85% of staff as funding deal falters

But why develop a space port limited to high inclination? One that couldn't launch to the orbit used by ISS?

Build one that can do anything. Like the French did.

Daftness. Geographically not positioned for launches apart from limited high inclination stuff from north Scotland.

Find somewhere equatorial with a marine down range to the East and do it there. Like the French did.

Scientists speak their brains: Please don’t call us boffins

Re: I, for one, would be honored!

I know that. The bit I am missing is that we should all know that register takes great pride in using tabloids puerilsims.

He should know that, as he has one of those grey shields things against his name. He should also know that anyone with a grey shieldy thing has not just stumbled onto Register.

Re: Schoolyard Education, Yeah?

In school you just learned to “own” any name you didn’t like. Instantly undermining it, effectively disabling the motivation and ending the problem.

Those that whined about it only encouraged it.

Re: I, for one, would be honored!

You can assume that I don’t know what you are on about.

Re: Whereas

Professor John I.Q. Nerdelbaum Frink Jr.

Re: I, for one, would be honored!

I've always felt it was a puerile tabloid word used by people who are without a clue about what they are talking about.

Re: Hmmm

84% of primary school teachers in the UK are female. 63% of secondary school teachers in the UK are female. Yet in SLT and head teacher roles the numbers are much more even.

Had enough of Android? First 'Focal' based Ubuntu Touch is out

Re: Only two Serious Contenders

Jolla Sailfish, the continued development of Maemo/Meego Linux phone OS is a very well executed phone OS and under appreciated.

On the supported devices, like the Sony Xperia range up to 10 III it has the UI very well integrated with fully working phone functions. It uses android components like libhybris to get over the driver problem. If you want to drop into a shell and build apps with GCC or G++, or grab python from the repository then you can. It also provides support to run Android apps.

Re: Renaming and discontinuing

It was created using a modified Linux kernel and those modifications are not contributed to Linux development so it is very much diverged from Linux.

Today's old folks set to smash through longevity records

Re: Sshhhhh!!!!!

Statins, ace inhibitors, beta blockers and the like all handed out for free by the NHS have driven down mortality from some causes but led to an increase in other debilitating illnesses as more people live on past where they might otherwise have reached.

Moon's glass beads contain enough water to support a mission

Extracting water and oxygen from Lunar regolith is not really a new idea. Loads of work already done. ProSPA experiment carrying lab-proven experiments to trial on the Lunar surface was supposed to go in 2025 on Luna 27, but I guess a new plan is needed now certain countries are on the naughty steppe.