* Posts by Rob E

16 publicly visible posts • joined 18 Jul 2013

Square peg of modem won't fit into round hole of PC? I saw to it, bloke tells horrified mate

Rob E

Ha, I've actually had to get medieval on a computer motherboard relatively recently!

I had to fit a card that uses a 16x PCI-E card into a motherboard with only a 1x PCI-E slot available.

With a little bit of neat hacksaw work while trying not to slice through any motherboard tracks, I managed to saw a cutout in the back of the slot, so the card can overhang out of the back. Fortunately, there were no tall components etc behind it, and it merrily works away (albeit at 1x speed, which is all that's needed in this particular use case). Great success!

LightAnchors array: LEDs in routers, power strips, and more, can sneakily ship data to this smartphone app

Rob E

Re: I liked the idea of a smoke alarm status message

TBH, it's no different from the sticker on the bottom of every router with it's SSID & Password written down. You could take a photo of the sticker then "its out there and can be replayed". It's no worse.

And for things like a smoke alarm which is hard to access and read details off the bottom, it's a decent use case - probably far cheaper than an LCD to display it's battery status, or time-since-last-alert or whatnot.

As with all tech - it's not perfect and not for everything. but it could be handy. so meh, I like it.

Microsoft gives Windows 10 a name, throws folks a bone

Rob E

Re: With the Lenovo Explorer now down to $132 (from an original $349) ...

I'd also like to know where they can be had for $132

Seems to be still pricey in the states as well. Maybe a typo on the price?

Windows 0-day pops up out of nowhere Twitter

Rob E
Trollface

Sorry to be a pedant but

When M$ says “proactively update impacted advices as soon as possible.”, presumably they actually mean "Reactively update impacted devices"

Boss regrets pointing finger at chilled out techie who finished upgrade early

Rob E

Re: Oh so familiar

I've never used a single cloud provider that supports direct debit. Have you?

Microsoft Azure Europe embraced the other GDPR: Generally Down, Possibly Recovering

Rob E

Twitter is blocked on our network, so any status updates on there are useless :(

Sure, use it if you must, but not in place of a proper support channel!

Lester Haines: RIP

Rob E
Coffee/keyboard

Speechless

That is a hell of a shock

RIP Lester. I feel privileged to have met you. All the best on your future travelling amongst the stars :(

BBC's 3D blunder BLASTED OUR BRAINS – Doctor Who fans

Rob E

3D still being filmed using 2D methods?

That screengrab is a perfect example of why I don't like 3D in it's current form, and no wonder it gives people headaches.

TV/Film directors have been so used to forcing people to focus on what they want you to look at by using depth of field, making the stuff they want you to see pin-sharp, and everything else out of focus. This is all well and good in 2D, but they use the same techniques on 3D.

The idea of 3D is it lets your own eyes do the focusing, so you can instinctively appreciate that not everything is the same distance away.

So if I wanted to look at that woman in the background I should be able to do so. But no matter how much I tried straining my eyes, she would never come into focus!

No wonder it puts people off when part of the picture seems to be 3d (the bit they want you to look at) and the rest of it is not - it definitely messes it up for me. The technology, (having to wear glasses) and the filming techniques (as above) are still not there yet.

LOHAN twangs BRASTRAP to unfetter mighty orbs

Rob E

Re: does this thing fall from a great height?

Yep, not to worry, it will have a parachute!

The Cutdown device goes between the balloon and the parachute, which would be used for a graceful landing after balloon burst in any event.

Circling the RIM: BB10 becomes chamber of horrors for BlackBerry

Rob E

Re: Too little, too late

I know what you mean, there are a few cool query-based features missing on fulltouch phones.

But, you can "Mark all prior as read" on the Z10. Just hold on a date divider in your emails, and you get the menu to mark all prior as read.

Rob E

To be fair, BB10 is nice looking OS. Open, dev friendly, fast, modern etc etc.

The main issue is simply that nobody uses it. People have already jumped on the Android and iOS bandwagons (and the app developers have followed them).

2 Years too late - spot on.

In case of LOHAN flight emergency, gobble THIS Iridium-Arduino sandwich

Rob E

Looking good, hats off to Dave!

Lets think:

Safety High Altitude Vertical Ejection Device

Avoid Disaster Emergency Letgo Equipment

General Abort Giveup Apparatus

Safety High Elevation Emergency Nogo

Balloon Eliminating Emergency Rupture System

Cutdown Ejection Required Vertical Emergency Zap Apparatus

...ok better get back to work now

Password-keeper LastPass plugs up IE cache leak vuln

Rob E

Re: Putting all your passwords on the internet

I dunno, I quite like the lastpass security model. Your passwords only go "on the internet" in a peer-reviewed encrypted form. Thus any weak points should be limited to either machines you use, or your master password. (You did use a secure one, right?)

But the main advantage for me - it makes it practical to use and manage thousands of completely random long passwords, a unique one for everything you use.

The fact that its used by so many people and the security blips have been few and far between, and rather limited in practical risk anyway makes me relatively confident.

Brits: We can stop trolling if we know where they live - poll

Rob E
Facepalm

Pointless

What exactly was the point of this survey?

A YouGov/dailymail poll does not make for good practical law. How would this ever be possible?

Firstly you'd have to legally define exactly what a social network is, which is not simple.

Then somehow force these sites (who are often based abroad) to ask for addresses.

Then after all that, prevent users from putting in whatever details they like.

I know, lets ISP Block any websites like this INSTANT TROLL FAKE ID generator: http://www.fakenamegenerator.com/gen-random-en-uk.php

What a complete waste of time.

Netflix dares UK freetards: Watch new Breaking Bad NOW or torrent it?

Rob E
Meh

Re: Smart move

Agreed, its well past due that the entertainment industry allows fast and easy content delivery for a sane price. In fact, this might have got me to sign up to netflix ( ...if I didn't already have newsgroups subscription, which has been merrily grabbing all my favourite shows automatically for me for quite some time.)

Herin lies the problem. Pirating has become so commonplace in the past few years while the industry sat on its arse. They industry is going to have to pull something very special out of the bag to tempt people back from the dark side.

This, whist a nice gesture, probably won't do it. Its just 9 episodes of one show (albeit a good one).

Until something is universally decent, and gets ALL of the episodes of ALL of the shows you want to watch, its not going to be able to compete with pirating.

Heavenly SPEARS gives LOHAN a hot satisfying BANG

Rob E
Flame

Re: PIC

I did wonder about that. It might be the case, but its not designed to cause too much blast. We're after a slow hot burn rather than a big bang, so there isn't actually very much blackmatch in there. Also there is some wadding separating it from the PIC.

I think the next thing to do is a bit more testing. We need to get some PIC down to the frosty -60°C found up at that height. I think we'll get a mini rig set up in a dry ice bath and see if we can dig into the root cause of its refusal to burn.