Posts by Phil O'Sophical

Tech support world record? 8.5 seconds from seeing to fixing

Re: Doh..

Product design classes don't teach you how people actually use products, they teach you how the 'experts' think people use products. Even car manufacturers are no longer immune, hence the infestation of touch screens in modern vehicles.

NASA fires up super-quiet supersonic X-59 aircraft

As long as they get enough taxes back during operation to cover the development costs, it still fits with a capitalist ethos.

Depends on what it burns.

Re: Why would that pose difficulties for a passenger jet?

the tapered nose to be half the plane even when scaling up. MIght work, but the passenger capacity in relation to the dead weight of the hardware would be ridiculously low

The nose doesn't have to be empty, or even windowless. Weight distribution is always an issue, but is there any reason the nose couldn't be used for storage, fuel for example? Or maybe limited seating, either very luxurious for 1st class, or cramped and windowless for cattle class? Beds?

Top 10 billionaires make nearly $64B in post-Trump election stock surge

I suppose they've got a few months to cash in before Trump actually gets into office

To late, in the UK at least, because now they'll get screwed by Rachel Reeves's budget. It was a bummer of a month really, sell early to avoid CG tax rises, or wait in case Trump got elected. Couldn't win.

Microsoft rolls out AI-enabled Notepad to Windows Insiders

And then you remember systemd...

Nolanverse Batmobile leaps barrier between film and reality – but it'll cost you

unspecified "advanced software upgrades"

Oh gawd, it probably has Alexa...

Euro execs extend net zero timescales amid energy cost and supply crunch

Re: Manufacturing dichotomies

King Canute did it.

No, he didn't.

Canute was surrounded by sycophantic courtiers who claimed that he was all-powerful. He took them to the beach to show them that he could not stop the tide on command, because he was only a man and could not usurp the powers of God.

Officials warn of Russia's tech-for-troops deal with North Korea amid Ukraine conflict

Re: "DPRK soldiers should ... surrender to Ukrainian forces"

families back in the DPRK who would be punished if they defected or surrendered

That would require the state to admit that they had done so, which they're unlikely to do.

I think it more likely that any defecting troops would be simply listed as "bravely killed in action", or some such phrase.

Cybercrooks are targeting Bengal cat lovers in Australia for some reason

Bengal cats?

You'd think that they would be better off targeting people with white Persian cats, in the hope of infiltrating some evil villains' lairs and getting all their world-domination secrets.

Your air fryer might be snitching on you to China

Why the hell, for example, do you need location to scan for available WiFi networks?

At a guess, because the device can determine its location by the WiFi networks it sees, so if the app doesn't have permission to find its location, it can't be allowed to look at WiFi networks.

Amazon's nuclear datacenter dreams stall as watchdog rejects power deal

Re: Seems clear cut to me

But why should the customers have to solve the failures of government policy?

It's a bit late to change the system now.

If Trump gets elected, get your tech buying done asap

Now we know what Musk wants in return for all those votes he's buying for his pal Donald, 60% tariffs on Chinese EVs.

UK gov report to propose special zones for datacenters, 'AI visas'

Re: Bargain basement

Where are these skilled immigrants going to live, now that successive governments have annihilated the rental market, and Labour seem intent on forcing new housing developments into Tory-voting greenbelt areas rather than Labour-voting cities?

Beijing claims it's found 'underwater lighthouses' that its foes use for espionage

But you should see the one that got away...

Fired Disney staffer accused of hacking menu to add profanity, wingdings, removes allergen info

Re: Sounds like they really need to fire more people!

his work credentials, which still functioned after his termination. That means whoever's in charge of your HR exit process should be looking for a new job about now.

Exactly. By all means jail this clown for what he did, but Disney's damages/compensation should be limited to a symbolic $0.01

UK sleep experts say it's time to kill daylight saving for good

Re: Hmm

It would be a very sad world where people gave up the ability to move freely and interact for periods longer than 90 days with a "Why travel?" philosophy.

How many of those people have 90+ days of vacation a year, that would allow them to do that?! I too have friends around the world, but I'm not going to travel to the US (or even to France) for an afternoon's chat over a beer.

Re: Hmm

Yes, for that week or two when the US and EU changed on different dates the extra hour was a killer, especially when the 9-hours between CET and PST became 10 hours. We just cancelled meetings for that period.

My car has a satnav, it knows exactly what the time is, and exactly where it is, so it should know whether DST is in effect. It doesn't, I still have to set it manually.

Re: I disagree

Sleep experts all seem to ignore the fact that some people just function better later in the day (or even deep into the night)

Which surely has nothing to do with which numbers show up on a clock face?

Which bit is nonsense? You can read the EU's statement here: https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/policies/seasonal-time-changes/ The parliament adopted the position in 2021, the Council has not yet come to a decision, nor even a timeline. The directive to fix the date of the change entered into force in 2001, but "Member states are free to decide which time zone they want to be in", so that cannot be imposed on them.

The EU were supposed to be getting rid of summer-time. They should get a move on and implement it

The problem the EU has is that although it can specify when the member countries change to/from summer time, it does not have the power to decide which timezone individual members use. The EU could abolish it, and then find that France chooses to stay on GMT+1 'winter' time, but Spain opts for GMT+2 'summer' time all year round. It's so concerned about the possible chaos that it's easier to do nothing.

Re: cross border data collection nightmare.

In the end all data was stored with UTC timestamps.

Time should always be stored in UTC/GMT, daylight saving is purely a display issue just like non-GMT timezones. Even Microsoft has this right now.

If you store it in UTC there is no "extra hour for which there is no data", there is data for every hour. There is a display issue, if someone asks for the data for "02:30 on October 27th" you need to know if they want 02:30 BST or 02:30 GMT, but that's no different from fielding a request from California where it would be PST. You just need the users to be precise in their queries.

UK immigration seeks tech support, development partner for border crossing systems

Re: The official withdrawal was when?

There's not a single mention of the EU in this article, and the UK was never a Schengen member anyway, so this isn't an EU-related issue. The UK borders are for the most part air&sea so deal with travellers from all over the world. The only land border the UK has is with Ireland, where the CTA makes it a special case anyway.

OpenAI loses another senior figure, disperses safety research team he led

Re: "remove the obligation to work for a living"

Why would you take it away from them ?

Human nature. "Because you can", "Because you want more of it than you have", etc.

It may not be nice, nor ethical, but it's how many people are programmed.

San Francisco billboards call out tech firms for not paying for open source

Many large companies do contribute to FOSS maintenance, though it's more in the area of 100k than 10m per year.

Ford CEO admits he drives a Chinese electric vehicle and doesn't want to give it up

And on how to make up for the fuel duty they're not getting from EVs

Re: For years I've wanted this

Mazda MX-30 R-EV

Re: :)

What do you pay for insurance? Genuine question, it seems to be an increasingly hot issue with EVs.

Yet another UK government seeks to reform GDPR

Re: Tory-Lite

Which is all we got from Cameron's Tories as well.

Woman stuck upside down under rock for hours after trying to retrieve dropped phone

Re: And she was barefoot ?

What the blazes was she doing barefoot in the hills ?

I think you can see her shoes (look like plastic Crocs-style) just beside her feet, so presumably they came off when she fell.

I suppose the question should then be "what the blazes was she doing hiking in those shoes?"

Richard Branson to take balloon ride to edge of space

Re: Rubbing Shoulders with Branson

She's clearly fit...

fully stocked bar

The effects of alcohol increase with altitude. I remember the hangover from an evening in Denver, and that was only 5000 feet up. I hate to think what it would be like from 100k feet :-)

It's about time Intel, AMD dropped x86 games and turned to the real threat

Re: x86 Train Wreck

But this is the job of the compiler. (hand rolled assembler excluded, though I've not seen any that uses newer features except in very niche areas)

Incompatibilities are due to compile-time options.

That's true, but not everyone has the option of compiling from source. A commercial product might be able to ship a couple of pre-compiled binaries, but won't have 174 of them.

All too often you need to target compiler options for performance, especially for things like a compute-intensive kernel. Compiling for the lowest common denominator of a processor may mean passing on considerable performance gains from more complete/recent CPUs.

Some older CPUs (uVAX comes to mind) handled this by having non-implemented instructions trigger a machine trap, the trap handler could then emulate the instruction from its "bigger brother" in software and return to the main flow. Often gave poorer performance, but at least things would run. I don't know if any of the x86 processors have an equivalent.

The billionaire behind Trump's 'unhackable' phone is on a mission to fight Tesla's FSD

Re: What's the point of a secure phone for Trump?

Ewwww. Pass the mind bleach.

FTC drops hammer on unwanted subscriptions with 'click to cancel' rule

Will they tackle Amazon Prime next?

UK ponders USB-C as common charging standard

However there is no reason that the USB-C standard cannot evolve.

No doubt USB-D/E/F etc. will appear soon, the risk is that by standardising one type over a wide area you create a disincentive to develop a better one, because changing standards takes years of discussion (and rightly so).

By all means recommend a standard, but I'm not convinced that mandating one, and only one, is necessarily a good idea from the point of view of promoting innovation.

Re: I'm sorry, but only our popcorn will work in this theatre.

If it screwed up it was usually because the UK is good at developing and setting standards but not good at following standards that were not invented here.

Isn't that true of almost every country, worldwide?!

Boeing again delays the 777X – the plane that's supposed to turn things around

Re: Terminated staff are only non-union, of course

This is why we have unions (and quite strong ones in Germany, France and Scandinavia).

Given the state of the economy in the first two of those, I'm not sure that's anything to boast about.

Techie took five minutes to fix problem Adobe and Microsoft couldn't solve in two weeks

Re: As an electrician.

Sadly I have done that very thing myself. Complaints from my wife that she couldn't connect to the internet, all seemed fine to me. Checking showed that her laptop wasn't connected to WiFi. After much Windows-related investigating (it's always Windows' fault) I eventually logged into the router to check - WiFi was switched off.

My excuse was that I didn't know that the network activity LED on the Fritzbox is also a toggle switch, which I had bumped when putting the vacuum cleaner back in the under-stairs cupboard some hours previously...

Post Office CEO tells inquiry: Leadership was in 'dream world' over Horizon scandal

Re: Unrequested comma surplus

It's American punctuation style, with punctuation kept inside the quotation marks. Looks very strange to people raised with English grammar.

Missing Thunderbirds footage found in British garden shed

Re: Amazing coincidence?

Hopefully the latter doesn't have any "lost episodes"

Just like the TV show, the sequel versions are much worse than the older series...

Re: Recovering lost films from collectors is an interesting subject

That Bob Monkhouse (if you know the name). Was a really nice guy.

King of the one-liners. I always liked "They laughed when I said I wanted to be a comedian. They're not laughing now."

After we fix that, how about we also accidentally break something important?

Re: hmm , am I a hoarder

This is why I leave a soldering iron and multimeter at my mum-in-law's house. You never know when you'll need it, like yesterday when she said " can you fix this thingy?"

Ryanair faces GDPR turbulence over customer ID checks

Re: I never fly Ryanair

In that situation, RyanAir / EasyJet etc. would be the last people on Earth I'd want to be giving money to.

I'd take EasyJet over Lufthansa, at least you'd have some chance of arriving on time and with your luggage.

Extracting vendor promises won't fix cybersecurity. Extracting teeth might

Re: C

if you use open source you should pay for it. All this effort does not come free.

Surely that's up to the author? There's nothing stopping an author from adding a condition to their licence saying that commercial use requires payment, which was commonplace in the shareware world of the 80s and early 90s. If you don't do that then it's hardly the fault of the commercial user to simply take it & use it, as the licence permits.

Re: C

Developers can write crap hackable code in Rust just as they can in C.

Kamala Harris campaign motorcade halted by confused robotaxis

Re: The beginning of a robot uprising

I've always thought that exchange is a perfect example of how AI isn't intelligent at all.

Bring the joy of train delays home with your very own departure board

Re: Cool.

some people DO need to be constantly reminded not to leave their entire drum kit on the train!

Or not to spend so much time in the pub after the gig!

Re: Cool.

"The next station stop is xxx" is the one that annoys me.

Oh yes, and the Heathrow inter-terminal announcements that "transit is arriving" - it's a train, transit is what it does, not what it is.