Posts by killakrust

Attention! Very important science: Tapping a can of fizzy beer does... absolutely nothing

It must be just me

I always thought the tapping thing was just a joke. I do the same thing with shaken up cans of fizzy, but squeeze the bujezzus out of the can at the same time. The squeezing (not while opening of course) seems to stop the foaming.

Republican senators shoot down a triple whammy of proposed election security laws

Foul Play

Illegal use of Whataboutisim. Poster attempted to discredit apposing position by charging them with hypocrisy without evidence.

New Android P beta is 'very close', 'near-final' but also just 'early'

Re: Wonder what it'll break ?

It's not exactly a unique problem to Android though. For example; I have an iPod Touch, and tried connecting to iTunes a while back. I wouldn't work unless iOS was updated, so I dutifully ran the update. Now half the apps I'd paid for don't work, and even though most have updates, they won't install because they were built for newer hardware.

Super Cali's futuristic robo-cars in focus – even though watchdogs say they're something quite atrocious

Re: Fully exposed?

Just to be clear. No one has been killed in an autonomous self-driving vehicle... yet. The only fatality on record is that Tesla driver that ignored a load of warnings and carried on watching Harry Potter instead of supervising the 'Auto-pilot'.

Firefox 52 kills plugins – except Flash – and runs up a red flag for HTTP

Re: Flash left, ad blockers gone?

Plugins =/= Ad-Ons

The ad blockers are still available. You're welcome.

Shopping for PCs? Ding, dong, the Dock is dead in 2017's new models

Re: Or we can read this as

Even better, the existing Dell laptop range (7000) won't fit into the existing docking stations. The new Precision laptops had the bottom port moved further back, and now the docking stand has to be modified with blu-tack to move the replicator up about 60mm just so the 7510 will fit.

I love my M4800 with dock, and am not happy to hear they are going to do away with the bottom docking method. It makes my life so easy. I just walk into the office and slap the PC on the replicator, and start working. Soon I'm going to be expected to fiddle with USB connections every time, FML.

COP BLOCKED: Uber app thwarted arrests of its drivers by fooling police with 'ghost cars'

Re: Perverting The Course Of Justice

INAL, but Is this 'Perverting to Course of Justice' though? I thought in most countriies the law says you are not required to incriminate yourself.

On a smaller scale, if you were an unlicenced taxi driver, and you recieved a call from a number that you knew was from a police officer requesting a ride, you would be under no requirement to turn up to get arrested.

Europe loves to pay by bonk* - survey

Re: Who the hell is using them daily?

I use Android pay for most of my transactions these days, unless the terminal does not do contactless of course). It's so much quicker than yanking out your wallet, pulling out a card, popping it in the machine, putting in your pin, waiting for authorisation. Now all I have to do yank out my phone, thumb the home button to unlock, wave near terminal, done.

Can't wait for the £30 transaction limit to be increased (I assume it will happen at some point).

AMD promises code fix for power-hungry Radeon RX 480 GPU

Re: Just a small bump in the road...

Nope, they are correct. Stats show that 3 out 4 graphics cards are Nvidia.

http://cdn.wccftech.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Nvidia-AMD.png

Space Data dudes say Google lifted Loon balloon tune

Re: WWI

From Project Loon homepage: "By partnering with Telecommunications companies to share cellular spectrum we’ve enabled people to connect to the balloon network directly from their phones and other LTE-enabled devices. The signal is then passed across the balloon network and back down to the global Internet on Earth.".

It does not seem irresponsible or pointless to have the facility to quickly set up a cellular network after a disaster. I don't understand how you came to your conclusions??

Windy Wanaka wallops NASA's Super Pressure Balloon launch

Wanaka... perhaps not he best choice

I grew up not far from there, and it touted as one of the best places in the world for gliders, due to the great amount of wind and updrafts created by the surrounding plains and hills.

FYI, it's pronounced 'Wah Nuh Kuh'. I always used to laugh when Yanks say 'Wha Nay Kay'.

It's come to this for IBM: Watson is now a gimmick app on the iPhone

Re: Arggggggg

Hey Watson! What is the plural of 'Lego"?

Get an Apple Watch or die warns Tim Cook

2 bpm?

Nice one, you should call GBR and let them know you have broken the current record of 27bpm.

Exploit devs allegedly bag $1m for 'secret' iOS 9.1 untethered jailbreak

Wouldn't it be simpler...

Wouldn't it be simpler for Apple, Google etc to just get a Zerodium subscription? If Zerdium won't allow it for some reason, then they could pay off one of their existing customers to get the exploit data.

Drunk Japanese warrior cuffed after NINJA STRIKE on shop robot

Slow morning...

All these comments and no one has said it...

Iron Man is gonna be on the warpath!

NASA's Messenger craft SMASHES into Mercury: See ya later, alien crater

Re: Ran out of fuel and crashed?

Presumably it will deorbit for the same reason that objects in Low Earth Orbit will. Things like solar wind and gravity perturbations eventually decay the orbit.

I think I read that they did in fact deliberately lower Messengers orbit so it would crash too.

The real universe is not like KSP where you can just sit in a 75km orbit for ever. ;)

UK spaceport, phase two: Now where do we PUT the bleeding thing?

Here, have an up-vote - PFH Fan

The new Falcon Heavy: MOST POWERFUL ROCKET since the Apollo moonshots

Re: Kerbal Sim

This just in: SpaceX releases images of the Falcon SUPER Heavy Launcher.

http://i1286.photobucket.com/albums/a610/DaveofDefeat/2013-05-20_00004_zpsaa8fbcd5.jpg

Remember Corel? It's just entered .DLL hell

Re: I confess - I use Corel

Yep, me too. I've been using Paint Shop Pro 7 for years, and there are very few reasons I can find to re-train myself on Photoshop.

If someone could hack in 32bit BMP support I'd be soooo happy.

Hard to tell from the article, but the issue might not affect the really old products like Jasc PSP 7. The X7 version is v17 from what I can gather (the latest version).

You go fast, but we go 'further' and 'deeper' – Voda tells 'Speedy' EE

Re: Not that deep

I've had the opposite experience. At work we switched from O2 to EE, and now the only way I can make or take a call on the mobile at home or work is if I stand next to a window. I thought maybe it was my fault for flashing AOKP onto my S5, but my IT Manager's M8 has exactly the same issue after switching to EE. He even said that it was due to EE's signal penetration being awful.

At home the wife's Note 3 is on Vodafone and gets a great signal, while mine says 2-3 bars, but still can't make/take calls.

Be real, Apple: In-app goodie grab games AREN'T FREE – EU

Keh...?

Your comment makes absolutely no cents! Geddit!

Britain's HUMAN DNA-strewing Moon mission rakes in £200k

Re: £600,000

India's Mars Orbiter only cost US$73 million. I reckon we could give them it to them to boost, and get the price under US$50 million.

India's MOM Mars mission makes final course correction

Why Explore Space?

Obligatory letter from Dr. Ernst Stuhlinger, associate director of science at NASA (1970).

http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/08/why-explore-space.html

What the BLOCK? Microsoft to gobble Minecraft-maker 'for $2bn'

Same here. My 6 year old plays Minecraft no problem on my old Acer laptop which runs a Core2 Duo 1.8ghz CPU and Geforce Go 7600. I just worked out that the laptop is seven and a half years old.

The Java used to be a real resource hog on 1.7.9 Minecraft, but seems much better on 1.7.10 (not tried 1.8).

PCIe hard drives? You read that right, says WD

Re: Stop!

Yeah kinda annoyed me too. I looked it up. A v4 PCIe lane is roughly 16Gbit/s. A 16 lane connection would be 256Gbit/s (or 32GB/s... nice).

Recommendations for NAS-based home media set-up

Thirded! This is precisely what I use.

An HP microserver works out cheaper and more powerful than any NAS devices, plus you get the benefit of flexibility due to it being a server.

I run Windows 8 with its built in software RAID. XBMC on that, plus a TeamSpeak server, plus a Torrent client fed by Google drive, and even a Minecraft server.

Try and find one with a cashback offer from HP, then bung a Radeon HD5450 low profile in there and you are good to go.

Google's Drive SLASH, secret 'big upgrade': Coincidence? Hardly

Re: Good news, but still lagging behind the competition in features

Dan, I also use GDrive, and some of the missing functionality you mentioned is already there.

1. Selective syncing: There is a selective sync option in the GDrive preferences. You just tick the folders you want to get backed up. I suppose if you want only certain file types then you would be out of luck, so I agree they could do with adding more functionality here.

2. File deltas (Versioning): While there is no versioning on the Google Drive folder on the PC, you can go onto the Google Drive Web folder and right-click any file and choose 'manage revisions', then you can download or restore older versions of the file. Saved my ass the other day!

3. Full system backup: This ones a bit trickier, but on my system I just move a folder to my Google Drive and create a hard link in Windows from the original location using the 'mklink' command. The only downside is if you have a small hard drive (SSD perhaps) and you want to backup files from a large secondary partition, you can't really do it, as the files have to physically exist in the Google Drive folder.

Tuesday declared 'The Day we Fight Back' against NSA et al

Re: killakrusty Jon Smith IQ19 Don't bother.

@Mark 65: Cheers mate. I really should know better than feeding the troll. But sometimes I just can't help it.

Re: killakrusty Jon Smith IQ19 Don't bother.

""Nice straw man argument Matt...." So nice I see you just can't counter it? At what point do we decide saving a life is "too expensive", either medically or security-wise? Oh, sorry, you probably didn't want me to raise that point seeing as it tramples all over the moronic arguments of you sheeple."

- Why would I bother trying to counter an invalid argument, other than pointing out that it is invalid. Not sure why you feel the need for name calling : (

""....medical research and mass snooping by the government are not the same thing...." Even a broken clock is right at least twice a day, now all you have to do is be right about one more thing and you'll prove it. Sorry, but, going on your post, I rate your chances as close to zero."

- I honestly have no idea what you are trying to communicate with your response?!?

"".....Could you please cite your sources that show how many lives have been saved by said surveillance intelligence?...." How's this for a simple comparison - the number of people killed by terrorists in the US and UK yesterday is zero, compared to the five people killed by Islamist terrorists (that would dearly love to kill Yanks and Brits) in Iraq alone. BTW, three of those five were videoed being beheaded by their AQ murderers. Now, YOU stop bleating for a minute and try and answer one simple question - if the security services aren't doing anything useful, why is AQ unable to mount attacks other than by lone-wolf nutjobs in the US or UK? Do you think they've changed their minds?"

- So basically, you believe that without mass state sponsored surveillance on it's citizens, the country would basically be overrun by sadistic religious nut-jobs. Yet your only evidence is to cite the number of "terrorist" killings in Iraq, a country still in the midst of a tribal/religious war? Please tell me more!!

"Don't worry, the rest of us will give you a nice long pause to think about it seeing as thinking for yourself is obviously such a taxing and unfamilar task to you."

- Actually the math is not that hard. If someone could prove to me with credible verifiable data that mass surveillance is value for money, and really saves a ton of lives, then I'd be all for it. Feel free to post those stats and make me a changed man.

Re: Jon Smith IQ19 Don't bother.

Nice straw man argument Matt, but medical research and mass snooping by the government are not the same thing.

Could you please cite your sources that show how many lives have been saved by said surveillance intelligence? The US government has already admitted the intelligence they gather has been next to useless at actually stopping any attacks on their home soil.

http://theweek.com/article/index/254401/is-the-nsas-data-snooping-actually-effective

IRON MAN MUSK: Elon reveals Tony Stark-style 3D design smarts

Re: I call bullshit

Precisely. That was impression I got from the video too. As a seasoned CAD user also, the input method shown seems to be 'ok' for spinning around a 3d object, but inherently useless for actually designing said 3d object.

Maybe they will post another video of this software at some point that shows them actually drawing something, but until then I call bullshit.

French boffins: Regard, our record-breaking long, fat, wet pipe

Not if

David Cameron has anything to do with it!

'We the People' seek to double NASA budget – at least

Re: Life in Mars

Nope, sorry Mark, but there is a psychological phenomenon called Pareidolia.

So basically you are seeing what you want to see, much like when I look up at a cloud and see a dragon.

As far as I could see, all the images you cited on Facebook were just rocks, and in some cases jpeg artifacts.

Apple to upgrade to '5G WiFi' this year?

5G? What a load of tosh. 802.11ac is the 27th revision of the standard.

The only way you could call it 5th Gen is if you go a-Gen1, b-Gen2, g-Gen3, n-Gen4, ac-Gen5, then ad-Gen6 (WiGig).

As the comments above seem to indicate, calling it 5G, makes the commentards think it has something to do with mobile phones.

Photos of 'iPad mini' body stir rumor pot

I can tell by the pixels!!

I'm astonished this even made it to an article on the reg. That chassis in the first image is obviously being held sideways, yet they have shopped the apple logo and dock connection as if the displayed edge was the bottom.

Try harder next time: 3/10

A load of Tosh: External hard drives the new 'personal clouds'

3TB + memory sticks FTW

"The box only holds 3TB - USB sticks will hold more and you can carry them in your pocket." - Awsome, can you point me in the direction of these 3TB+ USB sticks?