Posts by CCCP

Texas cops sue Tesla claiming 'systematic fraud' in Autopilot after Model X ploughed into two parked police cars

Drunk driving is illegal and dangerous

It's a stretch to argue it's Tesla's fault a driver get's into a car intoxicated and is not aware enough to avoid a crash.

Having said that, no cars, Teslas incuded, are self driving today, so Full Self Driving (FSD) is massively over-selling the ability. I base this on owning a Tesla model 3. It's very, very clever, but you need to be aware at all times.

Tesla finds itself leading the pack of car makers by some distance, and therefore becomes the first to defend itself as we test the legal boudaries and responsibililty. I for one, am glad Tesla is shouldering that role, even though I disagree how they promote their cars' capabilities.

Hey, Brits. Your Google data is leaving the EU before you are: Hoard to be shipped from Ireland to US next month

Re: OMFG

Obvious troll is obvious.

S20 Ultra 5G: Samsung unfurls Galaxy flagship with bonkers 108MP cam, 6.9-inch display

Re: SFail

"The 2-year contract... runs out around March".

So, you received your S10+ around March 2018, about a year before it was released... Unlikely.

Mainstream auto makers stuff in more self-driving tech: 8% of new Euro cars have Level 2 smarts

Re: Level 3 is a disaster waiting to happen

Cars and aeroplanes controlled by humans are disasters waiting to happen FTFY

The question is how we use technology to reduce the chances of bad things happening. However, as we eliminite some accident reasons, e.g. road rage and distraction, we will inadvertently create others. This trade off bothers people and is sometimes seen as immoral, even if less people die overall. Hence the focus is on the people who died in a self-driving Tesla, rather than the statistical improvement in accident rate.

UK regulator set to ban ads depicting bumbling manchildren

Society shouldn't move forward. Period. (well actually it should)

FFS, we all (apart from the misogynists) know that less stereotyping probably leads to a more successful outcome for society overall. Sometimes that movement needs a nudge in the right direction, which is what this is.

Stop being so fracking alarmist about control. Advertisers know they shouldn't be using cheap stereotypes to sell stuff. So they drag their heels, because it is easy. France recently had a similar thing about underweight models used in advertising. It is just wrong, so they legislated.

Once equal treatment becomes the norm, we can scrap these laws as antiquated. But for now, we need them.

Despite high-profile hires, Apple's TV plans are doomed

Platforms galore - easy to fall into

So I agree there way more /good/ TV than you can possible watch as a single person, but consider a household with teenagers. They keep strange hours and watch a lot of TV (bit like me really). Before you flame, both are active sports players and like the outdoors, and do OK at school.

We pay for Netflix/Sky/Amazon, though the latter is only part of prime. Which leaves the duplication of Netflix and Sky - and there is more difference than similarities. We'll be keeping both.

We have an apple tv somewhere, gathering dust; and I agree with the author, apple are too late to the party. Just like they thought Spotify could be toppled, they'll find video content a congested space.

Swedish school pumps up volume to ease toilet trauma

Just show them the election result...

And they'll piss themselves laughing. Problem solved.

We're not saying we're living in a simulation but someone's simulated the universe in a computer

Re: #REALLY??

A bit like your post then?

HPE to staff: 'We are permanently clipping your costs'

I read: .."catering polices new norms"

Wtf? Have they got so desperate that the catering staff are policing compliance?

Wait...

So despite all the cash ploughed into big data, no one knows how to make it profitable

Sawing our collective branch

The vitriol here is telling. Tech people are a very conservative bunch - which is really weird as technology, mostly, is at the forefront if not the driver of change. I counted one positive comment about how it could be made to work in some situations.

The problem is that the only viable owner of big data is the the CEO. But that is doomed at the present as they don't understand the potential, and so get bored. Maybe in the next decade we'll see a new class of CEOs for whom data flow is the essence of the company, and therefore big data is in the DNA - and I don't mean the adslingers or so called disruptors, but real companies.

IBM: ALL travel must be approved now, and shut up about the copter

Re: Just like old times.

@bob vistakin

In some languages mouse has the same double meaning as beaver. Just sayin'

Drugs, vodka, Volvo: The Scandinavian answer to Britain's future new border

Re: I don't think this will work here...

@Spawn

Indeed, moonshine is still a thing in the Scandi outback. Last crayfish party I was at, someone brought several 5L jerrycans labelled "singsong & violence"...

America's mystery X-37B space drone lands after two years in orbit

Is it just me...

...or does the "blind" appearance of this space plane look very sinister? Yes, I know it's a drone, but we got used to the Shuttle having "eyes", with humans behind them. This one doesn't seem friendly...

I think they call it Uncanny Valley, where something it familiar, yet off.

Astroboffins clock thriving stellar nursery nestled in violent supermassive black hole

So a giant double-ended hairdryer then

Perfect for the Flying Spaghetti Monster and his mate to dry their noodly appendages after a dip. Just dodge the starballs...

Redmond's on fire, your 365 is terrified: Microsoft email outage en masse

Funnily enough LI had log in problems too

Seems MS had some mother of a problem deep in the back end. But have they taken over LI authentication already?

Chevy Bolt electric car came alive, reversed into my workbench, says stunned bloke

Re: Odd belief

@AC

No, and no. Freezing handbrake does happen in the wrong conditions.

Eight years ago my Saab 9-3 was stuck at the train station because of -5C or maybe lower. In desperation I peed on the calipers and it worked! Wife was disgusted (maybe because it's way harder for a lady).

Britain collects new naval tanker a mere 18 months late

Re: Maggy what have we done... @Hans1

@boltar

If you are going to attack spelling "guys" with a "z, you are not allowed mistakes like "Arn't".

It should be "Aren't".

Google sends Titan broadband drones to the unicorns' graveyard

Alphabet, aka Google, has a poor history of success

Apart from search, Google don't have any revenue successes. Diversification, if that is a thing for them, has failed spectacularly. Cars, shopping, news, social network, mail, drones, skynet etc

They ended up with a natural monopoly in search ads (EMEA+US at least), which provides 90% of their revenue.

Obviously Android dominates mobile, but it doesn't buy the lattes.

Lloyds Bank customers still flogging the online dead horse

Re: No. Nope. Nada.

@Stuart 22

What, you type your web addresses with a comma too? ;-)

No. Nope. Nada.

Lloydsbank,com not working at 12:20 today, Thursday.

Stop pretending "it's returning to normal". Because it quite plainly is not.

Black horse blacks out: Lloyds Bank website goes down

Re: Problems not fully resolved?

Agree it seems like correct DNS is taking a looong time to propagate, or maybe isn't propagating... Still not working at 12pm Thursday.

IANAE, but getting DNS wrong is like Ebola on a bad day: easy to get awful consequences and hard to stop.

Re: Nope. Nope.

Did they fire all the network engineers? I am not an engineer, but it looks like DNS (for Lloyds) has gone awol.

Nope. Nope.

Still not working. Oh come on. FFS. I'm about to complete a property purchase. Really...

Dieselgate: VW pleads guilty, will cough up $4.3bn, throws 6 staff under its cheatware bus

US of A - Galactic Jurisdiction?

I hope Germany tells the US to go swivel regarding the German individuals. They have form. I assume you can't be tried for the same offence twice across Germany and the US, so German justice will do nicely.

There was nothing directed at any particular country, just general cheating by VW. So the US has no reason to feel particularly affronted, but of course their courts do.

I have no hope German justice will prevail however, especially now.

Spotty battery life costs Apple's MacBook Pro its gold-star rating

Peak Apple?

Time to short Apple stock if you're brave.

It's sad that Apple can't be a true MS competitor after all.

(disclaimer: as a household we're shifting away from apple)

The Life and Times of Lester Haines

Thank You Lester

I didn't know you, and we were often at opposing views. But I salute you for the informed discussion that is the hallmark of el Reg. This is becoming a rare commodity.

RIP Lester

Beauty is in the AI of the beholder: Young blokes teach computer to judge women by their looks

Re: I can see the benefits.

@ Voland's...

When you said "legs are above chest level...", I had a completely different picture in my mind and was wondering what kind of job it was for...

UK Home Office slurps 1,500 schoolkids' records per month

@ retired.....

Are you drunk already on a Monday morning? Retired people have all the fun.

No one is suggesting criminals not be punished, or that their children are not affected by it. So whom, exactly, are you arguing with?

The issue at stake is whether we believe education is a basic human need for all children, regardless of their status. We need to swivel our perspective a couple of feet lower and see it from a child's point of view. Now do we think education should be freely available to all children?

For me it's quite simple. The population globally is heading for an age bomb (think Japan, but everywhere). If we don't educate what few little sprites we have, it is not going to end well.

Jeremy Hunt: Telcos must block teens from sexting each other

The Curse of Technology (e.g. sexting)

Is not what the general population (yes, massive over-simplification) think it is: the fact that it exists in the first place.

The problem is the growing gap between what tech actually is and does, and the understanding of that among those who are elected to govern.

This is compounded in two ways (probably more):

1) The rate of tech change is speeding up whilst politicians seem to get dimmer for every generation.

2) The current mood is "post truth", i.e. experts are idiots. This does not bode well for dealing with change.

[side note: if rate of tech change is compound like interest rates, we are in for more of this, faster. Where's my Mars ticket?]

'Data saturation' helped to crash the Schiaparelli Mars probe

Re: Pathetitudinous

Look on the bright side. Post Brexit, the UK (minus Scotland maybe) can pull out of the ESA and crash craft into Mars all on its own. It has form.

Robot cars probably won't happen, sniffs US transport chief

Why all the edge cases?

I don't get it. The objections to car autonomy are always weird edge cases. When on deity's earth do you choose between an artic and 15 pedestrians... AFAIK the vast majority of accidents are lapses of concentration of the driver and/or over-confidence.

Computer cars suffer neither of these. As others have pointed out, the 'puters only need to be better than the average meatbag for it to reduce deaths. If the auto car gets confused, it'll just slow down and maybe stop, and so will all the other auto cars behind it. No more pile-ups.

Oh, and no road rage deaths/injuries. Ever.

Europe to order Apple to cough up 'one beeellion Euros in back taxes'

Re: Barking up the wrong tree?

I assume, by lack of definition, by "EU boffin", you mean all and sundry not "English". If that is what you mean, "citizens here" makes no sense what so ever.

It may have escaped you, but all French/German/Danish... citizens are citizens of their own country, just like you are. So stop slandering all 500m by name-calling. Idiot.

Uber and Volvo take on Ford in race to launch self-driving vehicles

DRL show when a car is running

A big benefit is in a car park or along a row of parked cars - you can see which cars are running. Cyclists especially appreciate to know which car could drive off, but it helps everyone. Sweden has less fatalities per car, per mile and per population than the UK (at least according to wikipedia), so maybe it works. Both countries are among the safest in the wolrd btw.

A motorbike should occupy the same road space as a car (2/3 from the left of the lane ISTR from the test), so I don't buy this argument against DRL. If they are filtering unsafely, Darwin will rule.

What next for the F-35 after Turkey's threats to turn its back on NATO?

Re: Turkey

@jb

Typical UK perspective comment. It's all NATO and the EU. It's like the UK didn't draw half the map of the Middle East that is now the problem. No, not my problem mate...

The UK does not have a right to cross its arms and "observe" and make smart comments. The Beeb does it all the time and it drives me nuts. We're OK on our island Jack.

Grow some and be part of the solution for once. (No, you can't invoke Godwin's)

Adblock Plus blocks Facebook block of Adblock Plus block of Facebook block of Adblock Plus block of Facebook ads

Good vs Poor users = FB fighting the tide

As any fule now, a "better" audience is more valuable to advertisers. "Better" can mean more targeted, or more willing to spend, or both. Conversely, if a media outlet's audience quality declines, they have a big problem.

As el Reg commentards are leaving FB in droves, well, small heaps, it indicates FB's audience quality is getting worse. (Pat on the back for commentards).

So, FB is left with friends and family, a very hard bunch to earn money from ("monetize" for merkins).

So they force-feed ads anyway they can, foie gras-style. (BTW it won't be long before we see this from LI. Microsoft?)

BAM! Astroboffins now have a second way of picking up black holes' collision super kicks

Billiards?

The gravity well of a black hole bends space/time long before (better than "further out") the event horizon. Two holes spinning fast enough will "bounce" (bad analogy) before the two event horizons merge. Then super kick I assume.

"Fragments" isn't quite right. Flame on.

Vodafone hints at relocation from UK

Re: Surprise, surprise

It is annoying, or maybe typical, that some people can't differentiate a trade surplus/deficit, with actual trade.

As others have pointed out, a trade deficit is relatively easy to finance, you just need trust. Just look at the US of A. However, a trade deficit isn't a particular disadvantage, but strength/weakness in actual trade is.

I have said this before, but UK sends 38-45% of its exports to the EU, i.e. a lot. Germany and France only export just over 7% of their export to the UK, i.e. not very much.

Some commentard on here said the UK "clearly has the whip hand". I don't think so. However, most countries still in the EU are neither vindictive nor stupid, so a deal may be struck. Free movement of people will be the battle ground above all others.

Botnet-powered ballot stuffing suspected in 2nd referendum petition

Be careful the company you keep

A lady in our village protested on FB "Voting leave doesn't make me a racist".

The reply was "No, but all the racists voted leave."

Time to re-file your patents and trademarks, Britain

Re: Complete Tosh!!

@AC

"It would be just as disastrous.." - not quite.

EU share of UK exports is 38-48% (HMRC, Nov'14-Apr'16). However, UK is only 7.1% of German and 7.2% of French exports (OEC, 2014). That's not really an even starting point for negotiations.

Supercell bought for $8.6bn

Tencent, and Microsoft, think they can "reverse" into the so called social part of the internet, because they are crap at it. Surprise, you'll still suck at it post-acquisition.

No, Microsoftsoft haven't screwed up Mineraft yet, but give them time.

How's your driving, Elon? Musk tweets that Tesla Model S 'floats'

Re: I would like to know

@alister

I can confirm this works. My Honda Civic briefly became a boat/submarine in about 3.2 linguine of water. I gunned it 'cause I was scared and had no way to retreat. Bow wave saved the electrics/intake.

"Saved" is relative, as every single light on the dash lit up like a christmas tree and the car went into limp mode. Oh, and the driver-side window opened. YMMV

A week of drying out sorted everything (I think). Now sold...

Mutant space germs threaten International Space Station

Re: No surprise

Slight amend. There's no way you could remove all bacteria and keep the wannabe astro/cosmonaut alive.

Off topic, isn't about bloody time we have single word for space travellers, instead of country variations? I vote for stellanaut because it's Latin for star and sounds like beer.

Dell slips into a slimmer red dress after sales diet

Re: The Downward Spiral of Product Quality vs. Profit

You mean owners, not shareholders. Dell took the company private in 2013, precisely to get away from the stock market's 90-day ADHD.

Brit twitchers a-tizz at bearded vulture sighting

IT angle?

Apart from the fact that bird spotters are often geeks I fail to seet it.

=====

Idiot. "Vulture" is the key.

Germans stick traffic lights in pavements for addicts who can't take their eyes off phones

Never mind the article - this might be a good idea

It always struck me that the pedestrian lights were hard for the visually impaired to spot and decipher. Yes, I know there are audio signals, but at a busy junction they're difficult to hear.

Also, whether smart phone-impaired or not, you always look at where you put your feet, so ground level is not a bad place for flashing red.

Costly? Maybe. But you'd only bother at busy junctions. And injured humans are very expensive to fix.

India orders 770 million LED light bulbs, prices drop 83 per cent

Re: Basic economics?

You answered your own question. "All things" are not equal over the medium or even short term. As production capacity ramps and becomes more efficient, and new technology comes on stream, prices fall. LEDs will become the new incandescents, i.e. cheap and ubiquitous.

China thought the same way when they strangled rare earths' supply, 80% of the world's capacity IIRC, to drive up prices. It failed because new sources were found and industry switched technology.

Don't tussle with Keynes, or Schumpeter, you will fail. [flame on economics haters]

Woman scales Ben Nevis wielding selfie stick instead of ice axe

@Breen Whitman

You're not very good at trolling. Pick a different site.

Whatever happened to ... Nest?

Software will eat everything... sometimes

Reality has a horrible ability to bite Silicon Valley in the behind.

UK housing stock, as an example, does not lend itself easily to be Nest controlled, what with old boilers, poor circulation and so on. A quick gander of the forums will suggest as much.

I wager that each geography/country has other idiosyncrasies, making Nest a typical 'valley bubble attempt at best.

For a more useful UK idea, look up Positive Input Ventilation (PIV). Cheap, cheerful, and based on engineering.

Japan loses contact with new space 'scope just weeks after launch

Fingers crossed...

Though it looks like a fubar. What with so soon after the Exomars launch anomaly, it's just going to give the nay-spacers more ammunition.

It's hard, OK?

NASA's mighty SLS to burn 1.215 Olympic-sized pools

Re: Family sized swimming pools...

Second that. Ours, well, the one that came with the rented house, is 85,000 l. Close enough to 20,000 gallons.

It was interesting to work out because it's sort of a 90 degree triangle, but the hypotenuse is 'Z' shaped.

But we digress, as already stated, Olympice Size Pools is a safer measure.