Posts by werdsmith

UK getting ready to go it alone on Galileo

Re: UK has the resources

Interesting, what have you all got against eLoran?

Maybe the same problem as using GPS ?

Maybe we should go for eDecca instead. Or eNDB.

Quit that job and earn $185k... cleaning up San Francisco's notoriously crappy sidewalks

Re: Not seeing much extra shit out there..

w gentrified. Most of the shit you see on the sidewalks is actually dog shit. The human stuff is in alleyways and doorways.

Oh, well that's OK then.

Re: I miss the good old days in San Fran

SF was the safest feeling (for me) US city when I lived in the East Bay in the 90s.

Las Vegas was the least safe feeling back then. I couldn't wait to run out of there.

Re: Solution was already animated

King of the Hill episode - Business is Picking Up. The guy used a big vacuum cleaner to suck up the poop...

It was real before animated. Paris used to have dogshit vacuum scooters, I believe that they have discontinued and are now replaced by vans with the vacuum cleaners on.

Re: re. mayor London Breed

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Breed

Muslim American woman sues US border cops: Gimme back my seized iPhone's data!

Re: Intolerant

I hate intolerant people. It doesn't matter what their colour or creed

You should be more tolerant.

Re: When Booking-Travel now the first thing I usually do is:

I have travelled the world.

The country that I felt the least free in was the one that is always banging on about being the land of the free.

Apple leaks rekindle some hope for iPhone 'supercycle' this year

Re: I've said this before

But I dont want to pay $1579 (Aussie) for the "entry" iPhone X or similar.

Neither do I, but mine and your personal shopping preferences are very irrelevant.

In fact the vast majority of iPhone X users won't pay out AU$1579. They will pay some nominal monthly amount that includes calls, text and data and they won't notice it among all the other subscriptions. Or they will be employer supplied.

Re: It was actually the 3D scanners

iPhone X was always the version one of that class of phone and is really a beta in a way. Much like the origonal iPhone was technically inferior to its competition (2G only for example).

Re: Apple will end up like Nokia

An operating system that has only incremental updates and is old and tired just like S60.

Symbian was the OS, S60 was a UI that reached 5th Edition and then disappeared into Anna, Belle and was road mapped for Carla and Donna. It was then reclassified as a "Software Platform". But Nokia was a company that also had Meego/Maemo then.

But I agree that iOS is looking a bit old and tired, but I don't think Apple have too much incentive to change it much given the dreadful offering of the alternative competition.

Unpicking the Pixel puzzle: Why Google is struggling to impress

Re: Going the way of Redmond....

Android is on a hundred different cheapo phones and so is considered a low rent OS. How can you have a premium phone with a low rent OS?

Self-driving cars will be safe, we're testing them in a massive AI Sim

Re: L5

No. The Uber accident was not caused by “AI”, it was caused by Uber being an unscrupulous taxi operator, and spannering its safety system. Literally, that’s the beginning and end of it, any non-AI taxi operator acting similarly could have done this.

Your description of events leaves me thinking that it could only have been a sabotage.

Horse Drawn

There are many accounts of incidents in the 19th/18th century where horse-drawn carts and gigs had made their way home with an incapacitated (drunk or in a laudanum sleep) driver. These self driving vehicles are not new!

Re: Does it include

"I guess the most positive precedents are things like the simulators used in pilot training. The pilot doesn't go straight from the simulator to being in charge of something critical: it's just one stage of training."

Simulators in pilot training are more for familiarisation with type and to practice and examination in unusual emergencies. Ab initio training is done is small real aircraft, though early instrument flying training benefits from practice with simulation.

Re: Does it include

It's very rare that you have to worry about a couple of drunk chicks stepping out into the road without looking.

This has happened to me, in fact a lady stepped into the road, then woke up and stepped back, but my car was already braking before I could press the brake pedal (even though I was covering it anyway) and it stopped well short of where I could have done with reaction times. Impressive tech and already well established.

Re: L5

If you could design an affordable vehicle that could drive itself along easy roads like motorways

That's my car. It does it very well, but I am required to monitor it and I find concentrating on what it is doing much more tiring and boring than actually driving, so I switch off the lane system. I still have forward emergency braking enabled though I've never allowed it to kick in, and the adaptive cruise control is a absolute dream and I would not like to go back to a car without it.

ZX Spectrum reboot scandal biz gets £35k legal costs delayed

Re: Horace goes to Epping forest

Dodgy indeed.

One of Levy's other projejcts. Read it, watch the videos and see if you can imagine anything more weird than this:

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/flirt-with-a-chatbot/x/17934435#/

Bizarre is understating it.

Boffins build the smallest transistor, controlled by an atom

Re: Slight numerical error.

If this is just an on off switch as described in the article, then it won’t even be capable of even a simple class A amplifier circuit. It will only be useful for logic and so millions will be required.

Re: They show quantized conduction as expected for a single/few atom junction...

It's useful as a switch where we might want to measure the state of the junction and use it to hold information I suppose.

The article mentions on and off but nothing about the gradual increase in flow with forward bias that you would get around the knee of a doped layer silicon transistor.

Home Office seeks Brexit tech boss – but doesn't splash the cash

Re: Unbelievable

52% are.

Rejoice! Thousands more kids flock to computing A-level

Re: Good luck to em

I remember doing a lot of UML and not much coding.

But we could already do the coding, so for assignments we used to write the code and then make up UML to fit.

Re: Fundamentals of IT

I put my son off IT. He got his grades this morning and he's off to do an MEng in Civil & Structural.

----

The GCSE computing (for which I errm, I mean he got A* in the coding coursework) put my son off the A level version. He has gone to do an MPhys instead.

Google risks mega-fine in EU over location 'stalking'

Re: it also tells you that it will do it.

Your browsing history won't be retained in your browser, but only a dumb fuck would believe that this means that it won't be recorded somewhere if they are told your activity is still visible downstream.

"Google even continues to record your browsing history when you put the browser into "Incognito Mode".

It does, but it also tells you that it will do it.

Three more data-leaking security holes found in Intel chips as designers swap security for speed

Re: Going a bit overboard, El Reg

I'll bet that most BB users didn't and still don't know anything about those keys being shared with governments.

Samsung Galaxy Note 9: A steep price to pay

Re: Another price increase .....

Sorry if that was hard to follow, but I think I've made my point.

Fine rebuttal and devastating too.

Re: The one thing I wholeheartedly agree with Jobs on ...

Love it!

Solipsism getting called out today on El Reg!

More please!

Windows is coming to Chromebooks… with Google’s blessing

Re: It's happening...

Some chromebooks costs a couple of hundred quid, some cost a grand so hardware will be variable and I wonder if Windows will only support a minimum spec so only the more expensive chromebooks will have it as an option.

Either way, my aincient chromebook runs linux anyway.

Wasted worker wasps wanna know – oi! – who are you looking at?

Re: Wasps

Use ant powder to kill wasps nests.

Karcher. Highly effective and less risky than a weed-burner when close to buildings. Karcher removes all kinds of pests that have made the mistake of trying to co-habit with humans.

When in a beer garden one option is to bait them away from you with a cider soaked beermat.

Or wait for them to crawl inside an empty glass, place a beer mat over the top and be amused at the thing trying to escape (for a short time before releasing the thing at a safe distance from your table).

ZX Spectrum Vega+ blows a FUSE: It runs open-source emulator

That will be the reason for the flood of similar cases that followed the precedent then.

An established legal case has already defined the IndieGoGo donations / pre-orders / pledges / whatever they are called as "orders", nothing less, in this exact case.

That was a one off, special circumstances because of email correspondence. Since then that avenue has been firmly closed and you will notice a lack of follow up cases.

Re: @Steve K

My original authentic Sinclair buying experience was to walk into either WHSmith or Boots and buy one off the shelf. I had ZX81, Spectrum and QL.

Indiegogo won't do anything, because they can't.

No promises were made, backers have to accept that there are no guarantees and they are taking a risk.

And most of all, RCL have shipped units and delivered other perks (hall of fame).

So while RCL may have screwed up massively, that was always one of the options. IndieGogo are not going to get anywhere with debt collecters, because the bones that are left after the solicitors have picked out some of what they are owed, will be worthless.

Re: FUSE?

I thought it was common knowledge that it was using FUSE.

Absolutely, there has been messageboard discussion with ex-insiders for months talking about this.

Does Reg think it got some kind of scoop?

Creased Lightning: Profits wobble at Virgin Media while fibre project stays sluggish

Re: UKTV

They have reached an agreement and those channels were back.

It was obvious this was going to happen.

Space, the final Trump-tier: America to beam up $8bn for Space Force

Re: Interesting

Developing space weapon system prototypes is a good way of keeping engineers occupied

All the concept work was done decades ago. By Gerry Anderson.

Re: I'll go with the subhead

I prefer the 1978 "I Lost My Heart to a Starship Trooper" 1978 Sarah Brightman record featuring Hot Gossip.

The last phablet? 6.4in Samsung Galaxy Note 9 leaves you $1k lighter, needs 'water cooling'

Re: $1,250

How about $65 per month with calls and data included?

That's the number that people see.

Re: Nobody buys Samsung anymore...

...more likely they're just too bloody expensive.

Although having said that, I still see enough of them about.

It's all about the network deals and monthly payments rather than the full price.

Say what you will about self-driving cars – the security is looking 'OK'

I have changed to a new car with more self driving capability and it's fun, it's also a fun party trick to demonstrate it to people but it is actually easier to drive yourself than it is to monitor it doing the driving.

Almost 1 in 3 Brits think they lack computer skills to do their jobs well

Our management level who demand the most expensive Dell XPS or MS Surface book do no more than use Outlook and Skype for work and Edge browser to look at the news and do click and collect purchases from John Lewis.

Re: Outside the IT dept its more like 3 in 3

It applies to me. I'm shit at my job and I can't believe I've been getting away with it all these years.

Some of the stuff I do is so damn easy that I can't believe they pay me a good salary for it.

That's how it feels to me. Other people seem to value my work though.

Facebook insists it has 'no plans' to exploit your personal banking info for ads – just as we have 'no plans' to trust it

Re: Just say NO

The rest of us have been badly let down by the Faecebook underclass.

Oracle's JEDI mine trick: IT giant sticks a bomb under Pentagon's $10bn single-vendor cloud plan

the database goliath sets out its arguments against a single vendor award – broadly that it could damage innovation, competition, and security.

Damage innovation and competition? Oracle would know something about that.

ZX Spectrum reboot latest: Some Vega+s arrive, Sky pulls plug, Clive drops ball

Re: As with all these cases, eveyone out for themselves, the customer comes last

Change the world? Who is claiming that?

I've backed several things via Kickstarter and IndieGogo and in every case I've received something excellent, interesting and useful that I would not have otherwise had. By using simple diligence (it's not hard), I haven't been involved with a single failure or financial loss and in all cases I've enjoyed watching the process of getting the item to the backer over the months. Because most projects that get fully funded, actually get delivered. You only read about the failures and it creates the false impression.

It's not a big deal and it's not a scary big nasty bogey picker that frightens genxers who were happy to blow cash on smoking, rainy holidays, and drinking shit beer for years on end whilst stinking of Brut 33 and Old Spice. That old generation that ran up debt paying through the nose for shit from the catalogue and countless K-Tel and Ronco eternal drawer-dwelling tat.

Re: Fifty is a bloody odd number

One of the reasons I held back from backing Planet Gemini, until I was sure, was because they were only aiming for $200K which I felt was never going to be enough. In the end they have attracted over $2.5M so far and I have a fine product.

I don't think there is much laughing at RCL because it has been said that they have a legal bill of over £200K and those law firms aren't going to let that go. And I would guess that the rest of the cash is squandered on salaries and other expenses.

The actual vega+ as shown for the start of the campaign actually looks really nice, but the final product is a poor cut down version. The internals and firmware are a state because the good engineers were badly treated, not paid and generally alienated by RCL.

Re: Looks excellent!

"You don't hear Ferrari owners moaning because their knobs squeak a bit,"

In fact that's a hell of a party trick in the right company. As long as there are no cats around.

Re: You've only got yourselves to blame.....

Yes those orignal popular 80s computers were rough and ready but I never noticed. To me in that era they were like some kind of magic. And without Sinclair I would not have got my hands on one at the right time. He drove the price down with his corner cutting and his sales numbers dragged the market with him. It was the point of revolution which actually did more for me than I can explain here. They most certainly not crap when not naively judged against the benefit of 35 years of development.

I haven't backed this one as I spotted the red flags early and felt it was a £50 device not £100. But I like the idea.

Re: As with all these cases, eveyone out for themselves, the customer comes last

Crowd funding is often successful in getting stuff made that there isn't necessarily a big enough market to sustain a product, but enough people that would want one that would not be able to get one otherwise.

It has its place.

Don't they owe people 4000 of these?

I think there were 50 done, judging by the size of the order for populated PCBs.