Posts by I am David Jones

Yolk's on you – eggs break less when they land sideways

Re: Small quibble...

It’s the same only if the CoM is vertically above the bottom of the shell, which depending on orientation is not necessarily the case.

Re: Small quibble...

I’ve no idea what you’re talking about. The impact velocity is only dependent on the distance that the egg can drop, ie from the lowest point of the shell to the impact surface (h). Acceleration due to gravity is independent of mass and mass distribution.

From basic physics, and as per the paper, the impact velocity can be calculated as sqrt(2gh).

Assumptions: air resistance is disregarded and the egg is non-rotating when released.

Trump's wind farm funding freeze is so much hot air, say states as they blow sueball to Washington

Re: Erm

Read my comment again, slowly if need be. I didn’t (and I haven’t seen anyone else) claim that wind energy is reliable. And the US dept of energy says it is cost effective, in America at least. Do you disagree with them?

Re: Erm

Wind energy is not fossil fuel / nuclear, it provides a significant proportion of US energy and it is cheap, hence it undeniably *helps* to provide "a reliable, diversified and affordable supply of energy", specifically the latter two aspects.

Google goes cold on Europe: Stops making smart thermostats for continental conditions

Re: "Heating systems in Europe are unique"

There’s only one in Cupertino!

UK's first permanent facial recognition cameras installed in South London

Re: Why the sympathy for the criminals?

The matter of ID cards wrt UK and other countries has been discussed to death here, but as a quick summary: unlike other places I know about, the UK envisioned ID cards coupled with a monster database storing nearly everything known about a person. With very nebulous criteria about who should have access to which parts of the database and under which circumstances. Think e.g medical records and insurance companies.

US Army’s laser obsession continues with yet another drone-zapper deal

How a out gluing a few cheap retro reflectors to the drones?

Bubble trouble in hydraulics blamed for NASA and SpaceX Crew-10 scrub

Re: What time is that ?!?!

No!! I very deliberately said “UK time”. Everyone in the UK inherently knows what this is, most everyone in Europe too. I specifically, lazily, don’t want to have to think about whether it is summer time or not.

Anecdote: it was a good while back and I’m not sure but I think it was the Radio Times listings. Viewing the website from Germany, it converted the schedule times to my local time (without telling me, of course). So eg the 6pm news showed as starting at 7pm. But so far, so good, I could work with that.

But they had the vertical red line too, indicating the present time. But that was not corrected for my local time! So at 7pm my time, when the 6pm news was about to start, the red line was lined up with the 5pm schedule.

Maybe it was a deliberate mind fuck… hence the helicopters

What time is that ?!?!

If you can be bothered to add currency conversions, and you always can, then please please please also convert world times to the UK time!!

So when will the next launch attempt be? Oh ok…. I’ll go a look it up myself, thanks very much.

Judge orders Feds rehire workers falsely fired for lousy performance

Re: Hmm

No chance, they won’t rehire them until the Supreme Court confirms the decision.

Saturn runs rings around Jupiter

Re: Should we Pluto some of them.

I think we should follow Earth’s shining example and permit a maximum of one moon per planet. Everything else is just space trash.

That’d also give me a chance of remembering all their names.

Things are looking down for cutting-edge cosmic observatories

Re: To give you an idea ....

Yes but it is also advised to sleep under rather than on your bed

First private moon lander to touch down safely starts sending selfies

Cannot survive the night?

I’m surprised they can’t be designed to manage this, maybe it is just not a priority right now.

The ups and down of a virtual trip to the Moon in Zero G's 727

Take my money!

I’d jump at the chance to take my family if they start operating in Europe.

Open Source Initiative defends disallowing board candidate after timezone SNAFU

And there’s another bugbear of mine.

UK newspapers which will fastidiously convert currency amounts all the time, but will never consider converting a world time to “UK time”.

100-plus spies fired after NSA internal chat board used for kinky sex talk

Why oh why?

There are plenty of private platforms available for discussing non-work stuff. I don’t understand why anyone would willingly put such …incredibly… private stuff anywhere near a work platform.

HP ditches 15-minute wait time policy due to 'feedback'

To be fair, a 15-minute wait and then access to a competent human would have been a fantastic service. That was the plan, right?

Sri Lanka goes bananas after monkey unplugs nation

Sounds like a new exhibit for the museum

https://www.livescience.com/57670-animal-electrocuted-at-atom-smasher-in-exhibit.html

US accuses Canadian math prodigy of $65M crypto scheme

Code isn’t law but a smart contract is effectively written in stone. Unlike a written contract, any mistakes cannot be corrected. It is permanently stored in the chain and will be executed come hell or high water. There are mitigations but it is a complex problem to solve.

Trump eyes up to 100% tariffs on foreign semiconductors, TSMC in crosshairs

I can’t argue with the principle of increasing self-sufficiency and supporting multiple suppliers for essential products/services. Would be good for Europe too.

If tariffs are the right means to reach that end, no idea. That’s where the popcorn comes in handy.

Robots in schools, care homes next? This UK biz hopes to make that happen

And ultimately?

I can readily believe that robots can provide meaningful companionship to the elderly. Not to mention useful physical tasks like lifting. And it will become cheaper than employing human carers.

But isn’t it inevitable that these technological developments will be used to fatten profit margins rather than actually improve care for the elderly?

South Carolina's abandoned nuclear reactors positioned to fuel the AI datacenter boom

Surface rust has become an expensive design feature so everybody wins!

Well, not the buyer, obviously.

Windows 10's demise nears, but Linux is forever

Re: All true, but one thing must really be mentioned

“Linux does require a willingness to deal with out-of-the-ordinary situations (like the gentleman above who got a blank screen after upgrading Mint) but Googling (always good to have another machine available) usually turns up someone who has had the *exact same* problem and has managed to solve it.”

My experience of delving into Linux troubleshooting is different. Plenty of users have had the exact same problem but there are 10x the number of solutions to be found, each seemingly entirely unrelated to the next. Command line, of course. Five minutes to look up the meaning of the command parameters of a particular solution. Fifty minutes to *begin* rabbit-holing trying to understand the parameters.

Blindly running lengthy commands from the Internet, not my favoured option, will typically fail more often than it works. So, for whatever reason, understanding both the problem and the solution eludes me far more with Linux than with Windows.

I’d much rather run Linux but so far there has always been some unsolvable problem, a dealbreaker. Talking to a specific piece of external hardware for example, or running a specific game. And once again I end up back with Windows.

I’m on Win11 now, I will try Linux again when support ends. But there is a limited amount of time that I am willing to spend trying to break free from MS. Choosing my battles…

Europe, UK weigh up how to respond to Trump's proposed tariffs. One WTF or two?

Re: And

Upvote. And I am extremely grateful that I, a born Brit, was fortunate to have the circumstances to obtain an EU nationality.

Copilot invades Microsoft 365 Personal and Family for an extra three bucks a month

Re: Proof that marketeers have heads full of air

Next quote: “we will deploy education centres for these troubled users to emphasise the benefits of Copilot. In *all* situations. *No* exceptions.”

Even modest makeup can thwart facial recognition

Re: Prog Rockers

In my head this has always been a community where we’d ‘duz’ each other (sprichst du) and not ‘siez’ (sprechen Sie). Even when spouting nonsense…

But what do I know, far too long in Germany and I still can’t get my head around it…

Brits must prove their age on adult sites by July, says watchdog

Re: Age verification

But does it work off-the-shelf for calls? For data? Shirley at some point a proper non-anonymous contract has to be formed.

I was in SE Asia recently and at the airports SIMs were cheap as … well, chips. Cash only for a number of days of access but they took a photograph there and then of me holding up my open passport. So easy but not anonymous.

Re: Age verification

Are you saying that in the UK you can buy and run a PAYG sim without providing any ID, without proving yourself to be an adult?

GM parks claims that driver location data was given to insurers, pushing up premiums

Re: My old chariot is as dumb as a log

Didn’t an Indian company have to bring some window winder engineers out of retirement to build some ultra low budget car? No-one else had experience building manually-wound windows!

Tesla recalls 239,382 vehicles over rearview camera problems

Starting a post with “downvoted for” is typically used to mean “(I have) downvoted (you) for”. So you’ll probably want to be explicit if that is not the case.

I will neither confirm nor deny down or upvoting anybody on this thread (but I haven’t).

Hulk smash Musk and Zuck! Actor Mark Ruffalo and non-billionaire pals back network tech underpinning Bluesky

Re: Nah

That’s the point, this is a single infrastructure with multiple, freely interchangeable ‘platforms’ (app views). Everyone’s content / friends / groups etc is stored independently of the app chosen to access it. Which if it works and gains traction, is a game-changer.

One thing it doesn’t have afaict is privacy, so this is a truly public forum. It is even public that user A is blocking user B. By design. But ok, an open, decentralised, public forum, not beholden to any particular company or person? I’d sign up to that.

Re: Nah

Isn’t more about being able to choose if or which extramist views are pushed to you? If I understood it right, if my preferred viewer app is e.g. bought out by someone who then starts pushing certain views (à la Musk/Twitter), then I can simply up sticks and swap to a different viewer app. All without losing my old content, friends, groups etc etc.

Europe hopes Trump trumps Biden's plan for US to play AI gatekeeper

Re: No limit for the Netherlands but for EU?

Guns. Lots of guns.

Absolute Linux has reached the end – where to next?

Re: Debian can be tiny

“A full 2/3 of a GB should be enough for a full graphical desktop with internet tools. It was 20Y ago and the core tools are not that much bigger. Again: DSL manages it.“

Can I quote you as “640M ought to be enough for anybody”? ;)

They've only gone and made Doom run in a PDF file

Re: How much ink?

And a *very* fast secretary to collect and show you the pages in the right order

Celebrating when EVs went to the Moon with a Lego Lunar Roving Vehicle build

Re: "We asked Lego why it did not create a custom part for the dish"

I’ll disagree. The “specially moulded’ parts of modern Lego cars are basically the bodywork, and the 8860 simply has none. I continue to be impressed by the ingenuity of modern technic sets.

But… thanks to you I am now going to have to delve into my collection and rebuild the 8860, my first ever “big” Lego set that I received way back when. So an upvote for that, curse you

New Outlook marches onto Windows 10 for what little time it has left

Re: Why?

It’s new! Is that not enough for you? Tsk.

Haiku Beta 5 / In tests it's (Fire)foxier / It pleases us well

Re: Well I like it

“There was a time when the comment section here was full of useful technical tips and very funny posts."

All the useful and

funny posters are still try-

ing to construct com-

ments in Haiku form.

No originality?

The joke will not age.

Court docs allege Meta trained its AI models on contentious trove of maybe-pirated content

Not to mention that you never had permission to read those books in the first place.

Garmin Connect outage leaves folks unable to share their fitness virtue signaling

As we all know

If the run isn’t broadcast to your mates by Garmin/Strava, then it didn’t happen. So mop up the sweat and tears and get back out there, biatches.

DEF CON's hacker-in-chief faces fortune in medical bills after paralyzing neck injury

So what was the accident?

My money is on an upside-down copy of the Kama sutra.

Windows 11 24H2 can run – sort of – in 184MB

It’d be interesting to see what sort of functionality could be had with a half gig or a gig. How much to get a usable browser?

Boffins ponder paltry brain data rate of 10 bits per second

Re: The brain

Is that a tuna in your pocket or are you just plaiced to see me?

Re: The brain

“Miaow”, said the cat. #TimDowling

Re: We have built in autocorrect while reading

Bet you couldn’t type it at nearly normal speed though!

Re: "listening comprehension in English (13 bits/s)" Huh?

In this context a bit is a unit of information content and not literally a digital bit as used in computing. For example, the words “heads” and “tails” contain only one bit of information each when referring to a tossed coin, irrespective of how many computing bits might be used to store those words as strings.

Starlink direct-to-cell is coming to Ukraine

Have I got this right, a standard mobile phone can transmit a strong enough signal to be picked up by a starlink satellite orbiting at say -checks Wikipedia- 1100 km??

Report claims FAA ignores most whistleblower complaints

A whistleblower whistleblowing is a high risk undertaking, so the idea that less than 10% are well-founded doesn’t meet my uninformed plausibility test. Sure, some may be malicious but still.

And I simply don’t trust any finding of “employment not threatened”, especially in America. Either the criteria are far too strict or they are badly assessed.

Bah humbug and a happy new year :)

Parker Solar Probe sends a "Still Alive" tone back to Earth

Good job

Mine’s the coat with SPF 10^8 in the pocket