Posts by werdsmith

Look on the bright side, Pebble fans. At least your gizmo will work long enough for you to get beach body ready

Re: 3 things

I suspect you want more than 3 things because you've pretty much described a FitBit there.

With backlit LED screens? Looking at Surge, it's like going back to original Pebble 1 but at triple the cost.

Re: I love my Pebble

Looking at the Pebble 2 for example, I can't see anything it offers that doesn't exist on a Fitbit. Have I missed something?

How about a daylight visible (without backlight or OLED source) e-paper colour screen to start with.

Its very simple to create user watchfaces and watch apps.

Fitbit can thake their $50 and shove it up their overpriced underspec'd arseholes.

Biker nerfed by robo Chevy in San Francisco now lobs sueball at GM

"Regardless of who's legally in the right or wrong, a self driving car hitting another vehicle is a problem."

Should read:

""Regardless of who's legally in the right or wrong, a self driving car hitting another vehicle is a problem."

Re: @kain preacher

As a part time motorcyclist in the UK, I use my two wheel privilege to filter through heavy slow moving traffic. However, I have to accept that it is a risk thing to do and remember that the drivers in the vehicles I'm passing are fallible humans. Just assuming that I should be OK to do something because it is legal is a road to pain. People will make mistakes. The common cyclists error (I am also a cyclist) is to insist on their "right of way" even when it is potentially dangerous. It's the wrong mindset, always yield where it will minimise risk. If you are filtering then you watch the cars like a hawk and if a vehicle is manouvering you give it space until you are sure that you know what the driver is going to do. I would not have got close to a car changing lanes in heavy traffic, even if it appeared to be going away from me.

I've have 1 injury accident in 23 years. Caused by a deer.

Facebook invents new unit of time to measure modern attention spans: 1/705,600,000 of a sec

Re: Always Thought that

Yep, the Faecebook and its bottom-feeding mouth-breathing Jeremy Kyle featuring typical users can F off.

It's 2018 and… wow, you're still using Firefox? All right then, patch these horrid bugs

Re: It's 2018 and… wow, you're still using ...

I stopped using firefox because it was not compatible with my suspend/sleep mode habit instead of powering off restart. It would eventually fill RAM and stop the PC working. It's been fine ever since FF was uninstalled.

Aut-doh!-pilot: Driver jams 65mph Tesla Model S under fire truck, walks away from crash

Re: Don't call it Autopilot, for a start

With this level of stupid it really doesn't matter what you call it.

'WHAT THE F*CK IS GOING ON?' Linus Torvalds explodes at Intel spinning Spectre fix as a security feature

Re: The bug is better than the buggy fix !!!

So you never, for example, do Internet Banking? Or send of any kind of identifying documentation?

Nope.

@Tom7 Nothing sinister has appeared on my PC in decades.

Plenty of interesting stuff though, isn't that the point?

Re: The bug is better than the buggy fix !!!

@paulfederick

Indeed you are correct.I'm avoiding these updates and there is nothing on my home PC of any interest anyway. Anyone wants to take a look, be my guest but you'll be bored after 5 minutes. And what is the likelihood of a successful Spectre attack by browser? Seriously, I'm not running a VM farm, I don't give a shit about this and any of my own personal kit.

There will always be the prissy individuals that are frightened of everything and can't think for themselves though.

Twitter breaks bad news to 677,775 twits: You were duped by Russia

I was talking about the ordinary man on the street. Not the players.

Modern politics is more polarised and antagonistic than it used to be. Like the modern football hooligans.

It's plain obvious to anyone who keeps their eyes and ears open that social media and the web/internet are being used to try to bend and warp reality for anyone gullible enough to believe it. And that means enough people to effect an election. This is not just a Russia thing, it's coming from any number of sources, some of them close to home with ordinary individuals being motivated to propagate the BS.

Democracy has not caught up and so is in a worse state for it.

In Soviet California, pedestrian hits you! Bloke throws himself in front of self-driving car

Re: Sounds about right for America

That was a hoax, they are all acting:

https://youtu.be/UnP7-1-W4VQ

F-35 'incomparable' to Harrier jump jet, top test pilot tells El Reg

Re: VIFing?

IIRC, that's the sort of thing that gave the Harriers a significant edge over Argie planes the Falklands conflict

Their edge was that they were up against A4 Skyhawks which were good at delivering bombs but hopelessly vulnerable. It was incredibly brave of those Argentine pilots to go ahead with those missions in those circumstances, not to mention flying donkeys like the Pucara and the Aermacchi 339 which is just a trainer.

I think they lost only two Mirage, one to their own anti-aircraft defences. After that they changed tactics and fire Exocets from a long stand off position.

Re: Hearts & minds propaganda, courtesy of MoD

On the one hand, China with its population of billions will be able to produce a proportional number of brilliant minds. On the other hand, the USA with its opportunities, cash and sunny weather can recruit most of its brilliant minds from the entire world - including China. We know that the USA has its faults but it can still offer an attractive way of life for the well heeled, certainly more attractive than (we are led to believe) the lifestyle in China.

It's interesting though, how some nations will take technology from the rest of the world and lead at actually manufacturing and monetising it. I'm thinking South Korea and display panels. Much of hte fundamental research that goes into enabling those things to work actually comes out of Western universities.

Re: Hearts & minds propaganda, courtesy of MoD

those guerrillas are going to lose all their drone operators pretty fast,

That operator will pre-plan the flight and set the drone up to get on with the job by itself. They won't need super accuracy to attack a target like Camp Bastion. Not even GPS, just rough dead-reckoned guidance.

All aboard the Vomit Comet: Not the last train to Essex, but a modded 727 for weightless flight

Re: Can be done in Light Aircraft too

Bob Hoover flew those amazing routines in the Shrike Commander with the engines off and the props feathered too.

Can be done in Light Aircraft too

The look of confusion on this hound's face still makes me laugh:

https://youtu.be/6NvBGb5lf78

Drone crashes after operator failed to spot extra building site crane

Re: Common cause?

And shot does not have a bore or gauge measurement.

Upset Equation Editor was killed off? Now you can tell Microsoft to go forth and multiply: App back from the dead

Re: LibreOffice Writer or Math

Google docs can be held and edited offline, so no worries about short outages.

Drone perves defeated by tinfoil houses

I'm always amazed at how people manage to covertly snoop with a thing that sounds like 10,000 angry wasps. The view of the house in this video is about the same as you can see on Google Earth Pro anyway.

A drone operator was round these offices before christmas doing a survey of the building rooftops and nobody would rest until they could see where the weird noise was coming from, drones are about the most useless covert surveillance device possible.

OK, Google: Why does Chromecast clobber Wi-Fi connections?

I use the Chromecast thing only rarely, but I yank its power adapter out when not in use (I do this will all powered devices) so there is never this problem.

Transport pundit Christian Wolmar on why the driverless car is on a 'road to nowhere'

Re: They will never work in an urban environment.

In fact the passenger in the car would yell at the kids and the on-board video cameras would record their activity as evidence.

A kid can stop any car right now by standing in front of it. The sensors at the driver's retina would detect photons reflected from the surface of the kids. These detected photons would be sent back to the driver's brain where they would be interpreted as a human form in the path of the vehicle. A decision processing system within the driver's brain would result in signals being sent down nerve pathways to the limbs which would operate the vehicle interface to stop the car and/or steer it so as to avoid contact with the detected human whilst giving a long blast on the horn and swearing at the kid.

If you wanted to stop my car today by standing in front of it then you could do so, it has forward emergency braking and stops if there is an obstruction of any kind.

This process is vaguely similar to how a self driving vehicle would behave. I don't know if the self-driving car will also be programmed to give a long blast on the horn etc but it could instantly send pictures of the activity to any owner or law enforcement.

Re: They will never work in an urban environment.

How is an automated car ever going to get through a housing estate, with kids jumping out in front of them, playing chicken and just being annoying?

How does a human driver cope with this situation? Does he just run over the kids?

Beer hall putz: Regulator slaps northern pub over Nazi-themed ad

Re: The problem here is bigger than one pub...

The rest of Europe (you know, the bits that actually had to live under Nazi rule for four years) have long since let bygones be bygones

You haven't travelled much, have you?

UK exam chiefs: About the compsci coursework you've been working on. It means diddly-squat

You know those kids who have got parents who have written code professionally..... they are getting A* for the programming component. Not really a level playing field for those that have normal parents. I know from experience that the python program requirement in the coursework was a trivial 30 minute effort for an experienced coder.

Same applies with coursework in some of the other subjects. Kids that have parents that can speak a language, excel in that MFL exam.

Sky customer dinged for livestreaming pay-per-view boxing to Facebook

Go on on Periscope during any big gig on at the Arenas / stadiums.

GoPro exits drone market and slashes jobs amid sales warning

Re: Go Pro or Faux Pro

I'm surprised at only 20 minutes. Our one lasts over an hour. We also did a 3 hour time lapse of the snow melting no problem.

Quality is about 90% of the GoPro, for about 10% of the price so the GoPro doesn't make a case for itself. Nobody watching this stuff gets in close to pick at and scrutinise the video quality.

Re: The drone market was saturated years ago.

Can you do all that for 250g or under?

I can't. But there are plenty of very brilliant product engineers in China.

Re: Go Pro or Faux Pro

Same, my daughter who plays at video blogging with her friends asked for one. I got her a £30 from China and it is more than good enough.

Jocks in shock as Irn-Bru set to slash sugar and girder content

Re: Taste

The taste just reminds me of old fashioned fruit flavour cheap bubble gum in the 1970s.

Re: Guess what?

Tizer isn't even originally a Barrs drink, it's only been Barrs since 1972. Before that it was Pickup.

Irn Bru is OK, cold from a glass bottle with a roll and square sausage or a mutton pie if consumed on a dreich day in Scotland. In any other circumstance it can resume its primary purpose as a sink and drain unblocker.

UK drone collision study didn't show airliner window penetration

I'd actually love to see a drone get even vaguely close to a helicopter screen, the downwash from those rotors would send anything coming close heading in a rapidly downward direction...

Even a helicopter at 120MPH?

http://www.ktrs.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Helicopter-Bird-strike.jpg

A drone is a remote controlled helicopter that requires far less skill to fly.

Re: Shouldn't the engines be more of a concern than the windows?

I don't believe that a drone is a practical weapon against a flying airliner, even one armed with explosive, just too difficult and risky to get it on target.

It would be so much easier to use a drone with a dangerous payload against a large public gathering, crowd such as a sports event. Two or three drones attacking in quick sequence could do some serious primary damage and as much trouble in the ensuing panic.

The risk to airliners from drones is mostly the possibility of accident.

And we return to Munich's migration back to Windows – it's going to cost what now?! €100m!

Driven by something, read around the web various reports have a different angle on this from the reg.

It is reported that over 4000 windows hosts of various kinds remained after 10 years because their role couldn't be properly replaced due to software not being available.

The data centre downstairs from where I am sitting there is netware running still, because there is no economical replacement.

Honda pores over in-car navigation software with Alibaba – report

Re: Give me a car with

If the radio in the car is DAB or RDS then the clock syncs automatically and that has been the case in my cars for decades.

Kernel-memory-leaking Intel processor design flaw forces Linux, Windows redesign

Re: Can you hear it?

I assume block chain mining can be done on custom os if really needed. Else other work arounds?

Intel CPUs haven't been anywhere near powerful enough for blockchain on Bitcoin for many years. GPUs have also been left well behind.

It's all ASICs.

Re: Crap indeed

I'm quite happy to live with the security flaw on my home computers, so I hope this update is elective.

Did Mac OSX get mentioned in the article? I don't read that carefully.

How's this for a stocking filler next year? El Reg catches up with Gemini

Re: Want one!

"I still have my old Series 5.

Hmm... why haven't I kept using it....

Oh wait, the screen that's unreadable in sunlight"

Are you sure it was a Series 5?

The Psion display was transflective LCD, superb in sunlight, even directly on the screen.

Re: delivery and customs to the UK?

I don't know of any customs barriers between Bromley and the rest of the UK but with things going the way they are anything could happen

I don't think 228a High St Bromley is anything other than a registered office address provided by a firm of accountants above a Domino's Pizza shop.

But the prestigious address at Blandel Bridge House, Sloane Sq. SW1 might be getting warmer.

Re: Resistance has finally gone

I held back because of previous indiegogo disasters. I'm happy to pay the extra 100 or wait for an improved V2 as I would like linux and was disappointed with their focus on Android.

Also author, I'll take the feel of the Toyota over an Audi or Merc any day. I want it to keep working for years.

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

Re: "To provide a better experience to customers"

Yes, decent piece of OS functionality from Apple, but a bit silly to keep quiet about it.

Microsoft Surface Book 2: Electric Boogaloo. Bigger, badder, better

Re: Middle Income vs Middle Class

My kids and their crowd wouldn't be seen dead in Jordans, having labelled them chavwear.

Re: Eh?

My current employer, a Swiss based global corporate have a layer of management who can demand and get whatever they want. iPhone X, maxed out spec Dell XPS, MS Surface or Macbook Pro - not a single penny out of their own pocket. One gets the latest then they all want it. I'll be seeing these being readied in the office very soon after they come to market.

Yes, your old iPhone is slowing down: iOS hits brakes on CPUs as batteries wear out

That's what some people like to think, because it helps them to feel better.

The rest really don't give a shit what other people buy.

No. I have an iPhone because it was cheap to buy and it the lesser evil of the available options.

Re: This

"The batteries are replaceable. Just not by you at home."

Yes they are, up until and including iPhone 6S replacing a battery (or a screen) is a trivial task.

Re: I wonder...

The battery replacement for any iPhone up to 6S is a trivial easy task, and takes about 5 minutes.

From 7 onwards though, I haven't done one and I suspect because of the waterproofing it won't be so easy.

UK.gov pushes ahead with legal right to 10Mbps

But 10Mb/s is shite. Really poor, it should be pitching at 100 or better.