Posts by druck

Plastic fiver: 28 years' work, saves acres of cotton... may have killed less than ONE cow*

Re: Silly people

I was going to post vegans should go away and procreate, or a euphemism to that effect, but I'd rather they didn't breed in anyway, think of the poor children denied the delights of a bacon butty.

Nokia restores ‘Phones’

Re: Makes you wonder

One word; Elop.

Imagine every mistake you can make with a new software rollout...

Re: As if the justice system in the US wasn't fucked enough already...

The US is only a week extradition treaty away...

Vegans furious as Bank of England admits ‘trace’ of animal fat in £5 notes

@Pontius

Sorry but vegans are the most self-righteous self-denying fools on the planet, and will get no respect from me.

50 years on, the Soviet-era Soyuz rocket is still our favorite space truck

I'd say its less about learning something, and more about knowing they wont get the cash from congress to spunk on some even more hideously expensive ground up new design, and instead keeping favour by retaining employment at some of the old Shuttle factories.

Airbus flies new plane for the first time

Re: Go A350 !

My first job after university was writing the cabin software for the A330/A340, I hope they are using something a bit better than old 68000s in the A350.

NASA sets fire to stuff in SPAAACE. On purpose. Because science

Re: "If you're going to have crime, it might as well be organized crime"

Better than the uncontrolled test(s) on Mir.

2016. AI boffins picked a hell of a year to train a neural net by making it watch the news

BBC News Subtitles

Did they compare the result of the lip reading against the text of the BBC News subtitles? If so the error rate is going to be much higher, as the subtitles are often gibberish.

Rumble in the off-the-shelf server jungle: HPE comes out swinging

Inverse halo

The high end Itanium systems are rotting on the vine with no significant new silicon from Intel in years, which tends to put an inverse halo on the rest of the range. Which is a shame, as a lot of the mid range systems are quite nice.

NASA trying to rein in next-generation super-heavy lifter costs

Re: James Hansen will be furious

Lets just look what NASA does with the results of its climate change research, you don't have to go any further than this very website http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/05/02/a_tale_of_two_thermometers/

LinkedIn competitor offers to drop Russians into same legal trap that caught LinkedIn

You couldn't...

...make it up!

Facebook recruits some help to fight fakes, but doubles down on wisdom of the crowd

Fake the fakers

So we can expect armies of nutjobs marking legit stories as fakes now, so their preferred fakes wont stand out.

Australian government lends nbn™ AU$19.5bn to finish the job

Subsidies

I was going to say something, but then I remembered the situation with UK broadband, government money and BT, and realised we are in no to position to comment.

LinkedIn officially KickedOut of Russia

Owned

Kind of hard to feel sorry for Linkedin now they are owned by Microsoft.

Searching for 'Fatty Kim the Third' banned on Chinese social media

The UNHCR left out execution by anti-aircraft weapon, which he reserves for his personal favourites.

UK warships to have less firepower than 19th century equivalents as missiles withdrawn

Re: When was the last time a RN fired a shot in anger?

@Voland's right hand: is there no subject that you don't feel qualified to spout crap on?

Brit smart streetlight bods Telensa named 'global market leader'

Around our way not only did the new LED lights involve a pole swap, but they also removed one in every 4 poles too, so there are now great sections of what now looks like absolute darkness compared to the new bright lights.

Ironically 3 out of the 4 remaining lights shine in to our back garden, making it impossible to see the stars, unless you hide behind the shed one the one spot they don't reach, and then you can only see directly above you.

Ours seem to be particularly badly designed to spill so much light away from the road. At my parents the new LED ones there are so tightly targeted that while the road is well illuminated the front of the houses are now in darkness, you can hardly see them on the other side of the road. Of course my parents are now worried this will allow criminals free reign to creep around.

So a bloody bad idea all round.

Tech Trump: Silicon Valley steps into the valley of unhappiness

Re: ¡Bong!

Nearly http://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/1/2016/11/15/steve_bong_let_me_talk_to_trump/

¡Bong!

I'd love to see a Steve ¡Bong! vs Donald Trump showdown.

Boffins of the future gear up to build their own beastmode rigs

Re: Pi

Raspberry Pi's no, but this might be worth a go http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/11/15/packet_dotnet_arm_cloud/

Encrypted email sign-ups instantly double in wake of Trump victory

Re: FUD

@bombastic bob: Whatever the merit your views may have is completely destroyed by using silly names, it makes you look like an idiot.

HP Elite x3 phablet: The three-in-one business has been waiting for?

It was ok until...

While reading the article you can start to see some merit in the idea, but then you get to that screen shot of the start menu, and realise the full horror of having to put up with Windows 10.

Fleeing Aussie burglar shot in arse with bow and arrow

IC2 in police parlance.

Anti-ultrasound tech aims to foil the dog-whistle marketeers

Re: Or

My hearing threshold is down to 8KHz.

Build your Type 26 warships next year? Sure, MoD – now, about that contract...

Re: Have they finished the aircraft carriers yet?

If the Scot Nats get their way( and vote to SCEXIT the UK) perhaps they will be built at Barrow alongside the new subs.

The Scot Nats are so deluded, they think they can get independence, still build the ships for R-UK and keep a couple for themselves while they are at it. In the words of the great lady "NO, NO, NO".

10x faster servers? Pop a CAPI in your dome

Cars or trains?

From the description of the coherency, it sounds like it should be a multi-line rail tracks next to the old PCI free-way, rather than just a faster free-way.

New MH370 handshake and wing debris analysis suggests rapid descent

Re: Conspiracy ..

Another reason for the further analysis of the signals only coming out now, is that they have been monitoring the signals from other aircraft flying in that region for several years to correlate the pings against the known positions and flight profiles of those aircraft.

ESMA urges companies to disclose potential Brexit impact

Brexit FUD backfire

I suspect this is an European institution looking create Brexit FUD in the UK, but if it is applied Europe wide they will find it's European firms that will have more to lose.

Windows 10 market share stalls after free upgrade offer ends

What a load of blinked crap from someone too afraid to leave Microsoft's apron strings.

Yes there are thousands of Windows programs to download, most with dodgy downloaders which will also install a load of malware too unless you are extra vigilant. On the other hand Linux has thousands of programs available in its repositories, which are only a click a way in your software installer, and never, ever, download crap you don't want.

More movie and TV binge-streaming sites join UK banned list

Hopefully...

..the site my brother-in-law decided to show me is on the banned list. He was telling us how he gets movies for his kids for free, and brought the site up on the smart TV in our playroom. I've never seen such a steaming pile of add infested low quality crap, and had to completely reset the machine to make sure it was free of any nasties afterwards. I'll gladly pay for Amazon Prime to avoid our kids being subjected to endless unsuitable adverts, such as online gambling sites and loan sharks.

BRAAA-AI-NS, BRAAA-AI-NS! Boffins unleash zombie-obsessed nightmare neural net

The picture of Trump...

Isn't nearly as scary as the real thing.

<<<No joke>>> (Don't do it)

Intel's new chip targets industrial IoT

Re: unique needs of the IoT market.

ARM based IOT board like the Raspberry Pi - £30

Cheapest board with an Atom on board - well over £100.

Not going to fly.

I've arrived on Mars. Argggh, my back!

Exploration is dangerous

With thinking like this we would never have discovered half the world, America included. The explorers of the past made huge sacrifices on long sea voyages, with damage to their health far worse than loosing some muscle mass or an increased cancer risk, for those that survived at all.

The astronauts are willing to take the necessary risks to explore another planet, it just needs the pen pushers and politicians to have the bottle to do something which may go wrong.

'Outpaced' ASIO was infiltrated by Soviets

Reds

Hey, who wasn't - and who isn't?

UK fintech firm reaches for Ireland Brexit escape hatch

Re: @johnaaronrose

What you read was wrong, once Article 50 is triggered there is no mechanism to revoke it.

Sky’s CEO drops MVNO bombshell at results conference

Maybe...

...a large MVNO will trigger some more investment in O2's infrastructure, and get them off the bottom of the table for data speed.

Fruity hacking group juiced by Microsoft's October patch parade

Re: The

Lee D wrote:

But Truetype rendering - and pretty much all font-rendering - is a horrible job. Everything from font hinting bytecode machines to sub-pixel rendering integrating with graphics drivers.

Strange then how RISC OS was performing fully vector rendered, hinted and anti-aliased font plotting back in 1989 on an 512KB 8MHz ARM2 Acorn Archimedes.

Microsoft kinda did OK this quarter – but whatever, Wall Street loves Satya Nadella

Up the Cloud

I hope Microsoft's cloud does exceptional well, as eventually Microsoft will be the only one actually running Microsoft software.

Verizon: Data center sale going nicely. Yahoo! bid? Not so much

Adjustment

Just change buy to runaway.

Dynamic IP addresses are your personal property, CJEU rules

Identification

The German appeals court agreed with Breyer that an IP address could be used to identify an individual… but only up to a point. Only the ISP can make the identification,

And only if they are supplied with the correct information including the timezone.

A friend of mine was accused of piracy, and had hell of a difficult time fighting against the case, until it was discovered that the accuser had specified the timezone as GMT+x rather than GMT-x, which then meant someone else was using the particular IP address.

Microsoft reveals career-enhancing .PNG files

This badge...

...is all I need!

Freeze on refrigerants heats up search for replacements

Re: Ongoing maintenance

Even with an single belt, an electronic clutch can be used to ensure pump doesn't run all the time.

Drone idiots are still endangering real aircraft and breaking the rules

Kubla Cant wrote:

I can see it's bad news if a drone gets sucked into an engine, but I'm slightly surprised that they pose other risks. The wash from an airliner is considerable - enough to pose a serious danger to light aircraft in its vicinity. Unless it's directly in the path I would have thought a drone would just be blown away.

Where to begin? Which bit of an aircraft do you think is ok to be hit by a solid object at several hundred miles per hour? And the wake is behind the aircraft, it doesn't stop things hitting the front.

DIY storage startup: Tech, check. Techies, check... Er, credibility?

As with the last part, a bit too much on how whizzy the pretend storage system is, and not enough on the business side of things.

German regulators won't let Tesla use the name 'Autopilot'

Re: Go Germany! I don't think so ha ha

Or turning of nuclear power, in favour of a hideous combination of expensive wind and dirty coal.

Yahoo! cancels! earnings! call!, dodges! hacking! questions!

Re: Verizon

Yes that's a much better explanation. I naively thought that it might be because not a single executive could hold their head up in shame, or perhaps they looking on ebay for seppuku swords.

Location boffins demo satellite-free navigation

Re: "AM/FM radio"

@ S4qFBxkFFg Yes you can use the ADF with AM transmitters, but even using proper ADF or VOR beacons, how good is your fix? 1 mile accuracy is plenty good enough for an enroute report, or establish your location visually, but is never going to get you a fix to within the width of a road lane, which is what an autonomous vehicle needs.

Aussie Aussie Aussie, oi oi oi you, you're fired: Apple sacks staff secretly snapping shoppers

Lee D wrote:

We seriously need to move to a system where every program is entirely self-contained and portable

That would be RISC OS then.

Wi-Fi baby heart monitor may have the worst IoT security of 2016

Re: To be fair to Owlet...

I suspect there are not many actual parents contributing to this topic, and don't appreciate the worry that new parents feel every time they put their babies down to sleep

Cot death is a very small risk for most families, certainly not enough to hooking your child up to a medical grade ECG machine every time it's put in a cot. But so as you don't feel guilty for not checking them every 10 minutes during their sleep for the first year of their life, particularly when you are out and leaving the duty to a baby sitter, some sort of unobtrusive and reliable monitor would good, and that's why there is a market for these sorts of things.

We don't expect these things to have FIPS 140-2 security certifications, but not being wide open to anyone if WiFi range would be a good start.

Re: Prize winning security

Maybe AC works for an IOT company.