* Posts by Tromos

1188 publicly visible posts • joined 23 Sep 2013

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GitHub's Copilot flies into its first open source copyright lawsuit

Tromos

Re: Is it "fair use" or is it intellectual property theft?

"...might be legal in say 150 years?"

Not if Disney get in on the act.

Rivian recalls nearly every vehicle it has sold

Tromos
Joke

Rivian's least favourite movie?

Total Recall

Charge a future EV in less than five minutes – using literally cool NASA tech

Tromos

I see the cable as less of a problem than the connector. With those kinds of currents flowing, it wouldn't take much to weld the plug to the socket.

VideoLAN to India: If you love FOSS so much, why have you blocked our downloads?

Tromos

A futile exercise

Blocking VLC to protect or censor media is like banning spoons to prevent obesity.

California Governor signs child privacy law requiring online age checks

Tromos
Childcatcher

Simple way to dispense with the need for an age check

Extend the same privacy protections to adults too.

Microsoft warns of bugs after nation pushes back DST switchover

Tromos
Joke

If DST was a good idea...

...the druids would have arranged for Stonehenge to be picked up and rotated 15 degrees twice a year.

Record label drops AI rapper after backlash over stereotypes

Tromos

Call centre accent spoofing.

The main customer for this is going to be the scam call centres that India is riddled with. When 'Peter' from Microsoft calls to inform you that a virus has been found on your computer, the Indian accent often prevents proceedings going the way the caller desires and this is not for any racist reasons.

This software has only one purpose, to deceive, and I sincerely hope the backers lose out in a big way.

Microsoft looks beyond the US with Windows Subsystem for Android

Tromos

Re: great

Keep flappy bird. Wipe Windows 11.

$185m anti-malware patent dispute: Norton and Columbia University fight on

Tromos

Re: Juries determine facts

Does "bobble heads" deciding patent validity refer to jury members or is it with reference to the USPTO staff that grant them in the first place?

Samsung unveils hardened SD card that can last 16 years if you treat it right

Tromos
Joke

"can sustain 16 years of continual writes."

Just don't attempt any reads.

The metaverse of fantasy worlds is itself still a fantasy

Tromos

Two cohorts?

Make that three. Missed out digital criminals.

HP finance manager went on $5m personal spending spree with company card

Tromos
Joke

5.2 megabucks

They're gonna need to sell another half pint of printer ink to make up the shortfall.

RIP Ninjacat: No longer fits in Windows 11 world

Tromos

Keep the cat

Ditch the rest

D-Wave to go public after $1.2 billion merger deal with SPAC

Tromos

Re: You invest in a SPAC that merges with a company developing quantum computing

With a rather large probability that you don't have it, but someone else does.

US carriers want to junk three times more Chinese comms kit than planned

Tromos

Budget shortfall

At a guess, I would assume that the amount set aside was based on what the original equipment cost, rather than the cost of the (probably inferior) replacement kit. This is what you get for requiring an actual backdoor included rather than a mythical one.

Grab some tissues: Meta's share price tanks after Facebook emits latest figures

Tromos

Metaverse

Wasting billions, just so a headcase can play with a headset.

What are real organisations doing with zero trust?

Tromos
Joke

This survey

I don't trust it.

US Navy in mad dash to salvage F-35C that fell off a carrier into South China Sea

Tromos

Irrelevant how far away recovery capability is. As long as they have something closer that can listen to the transponder and get a location before the batteries run out.

Meta trains data2vec neural network to grok speech, images, text so it can 'understand the world'

Tromos

"noticing if you miss an ingredient"

I can usually tell, when I'm doing my egg and chips. Anything more sophisticated, I leave to professionals.

Tougher rules on targeted ads, deepfakes, crafty web design, and more? Euro lawmakers give a thumbs up

Tromos

I sincerely hope that 'user consent' puts paid to the 'maybe later' or 'not now' buttons used by naggy pop-ups trying to persuade you to change browser or install some unwanted feature. There needs to be a flat refusal option that prevents the pop-up from ever appearing again, after all, it's not as if a refusal now would forever deny me the opportunity to install Google Chrome if dementia set in and I changed my mind.

Weed dispensary software company's ambitions pruned after Spotify trademark clash

Tromos
Joke

They could try 'iPot'. Can't think of anyone who would object to that.

Four years: That's how long Azure's App Service had a source code leak bug

Tromos

$7,500 bounty for responsible disclosure?!?!

C'mon Microscrooge, you can do better than that.

Lack shame? Fancy some festive Windows knitwear? We've got your back

Tromos

Next year's jumper?

Same as this year, but with lots of patches applied.

Virgin Media fined £50,000 after spamming 451,000 who didn't want marketing emails

Tromos

That'll teach 'em.

I'm sure the fine will be paid promptly. Plain biscuits instead of choccy on the tea trolley for a couple of weeks should save enough cash. Then they can get down to apologising for their misdeed. A quick email to say sorry to all concerned and explain they only did it because their marketing emails really are too good to miss out on.

Microsoft wins court approval to take over sites run by Chinese crime gang

Tromos

I'd be a lot happier...

...if MS had a Prevention of Digital Crimes Unit. As it stands, it sounds like they have set up a unit for producing digital crimes, but let's leave that to the Windows development team.

UK watchdog's punishment for Blackbaud, Easyjet, other big privacy lawbreakers was slap on the wrist in private

Tromos

Further regulatory action

Such as being sent to bed early or no pudding?

Nuclear fusion firm Pulsar fires up a UK-built hybrid rocket engine

Tromos
Joke

Flames came out of the right end

That's good. Unless, of course, if they were meant to come out of the left end.

Do not try this at home: Man spends $5,000 on a 48TB Raspberry Pi storage server

Tromos

Re: Even if money is not an issue

Adding 4 8TB SSDs at 830 a pop will not give you 48TB. It is quite easy to be 1300 better off when you've skimped on two lots of 830.

Sometimes you need to look at the cold, hard numbers CAREFULLY first.

Ofcom announces plan to protect endangered species – the Great British phone box

Tromos
Joke

if you're a superhero who needs to make a quick change into your costume

Not a problem for Flash

Google's Pixel 6 fingerprint reader is rubbish because of 'enhanced security algorithms'

Tromos
FAIL

Try the hyper-enhanced security mode.

That's where any input to any sensor instantly bricks the phone. Can't get more secure than that.

VMware's divorce from Dell is complete: Virtualization giant now a separate biz with $64bn valuation

Tromos
Joke

Wants to be the 'Switzerland' of cloud

Ah yes, the favourite destination of anyone wanting to go downhill.

Zuckerberg wants to create a make-believe world in which you can hide from all the damage Facebook has done

Tromos

I have an immersive headset for Zuckerberg

It's a bucket of icy water.

US consumer watchdog starts sniffing around tech giants' use of your spending data

Tromos

"The digital transactions industry has a good story to tell..."

Fiction?

Behold the Megatron: Microsoft and Nvidia build massive language processor

Tromos

Cleansing toxic language

Do a bit more training. Scrape text from Facebook and Twitter and apply with negative weightings.

Want to check out Windows 11 but don't want to buy a new PC? Here's how to bypass the hardware requirements

Tromos

"Zero training on WIN11"

No problem. Just follow standard big business practice and recruit a couple of extra hands - "must have minimum 3 years Windows 11 experience".

Get real: Say what you like about your app but don't be surprised if I trollsplain

Tromos

"They docked at the ISS this week."

I get it. The first zero-G porn movie.

Reason 3,995 to hold off on that Windows 11 upgrade: Iffy performance on AMD silicon

Tromos
Joke

"FTW tech response that puts high-performance gaming front and center"

I think I've finally worked out what FTW stands for. Just one question. What have MS got against the Welsh?

IKEA: Cameras were hidden in the ceiling above warehouse toilets for 'health and safety'

Tromos

Re: What will they call these cameras in the catalog

Previous suggestions too long. More in keeping with the house style would be 'VOYUR'.

China discloses new space tech: Coloured cargo labels to replace beige ones taikonauts found fiddly

Tromos
Joke

Made from crab shells

So was the Astra rocket. That's why it took off sideways.

RIP Sir Clive Sinclair: British home computer trailblazer dies aged 81

Tromos

Re: A pioneer in the early days of amateur electronics

The electronics block in Edgware Road had disappeared many years ago, but one of the stalwarts started a second shop a block further North and on the opposite side as their original shop was rather small and cramped. Henry's Radio was the name and it was still going last time I passed through the area (a couple of years ago).

One of the few retail outlets for many Sinclair Radionics products.

Tromos

Amongst his many early products, one which I had (and it worked really well, too) was a matchbox sized radio. I remember having a good laugh when some film director decided that its miniature size and futuristic styling made it an excellent communications device for secret agents. I can't remember the name of the film, but I think it was Patrick McGoohan that was speaking into the tuning dial of the device!

It was ingenious penny saving tricks that were a feature of many of his products and a prime example was the use of the earphone jack on this radio. On many radios the earphone jack also featured a metal contact that would break the circuit and silence the speaker when the earpiece was plugged in. This little radio did not have a loudspeaker, so it was a stroke of genius to bend the contact so it made rather than broke the circuit and use this as the on/off switch for the device.

This, together with some other component saving tricks, enabled the radio to be sold in kit form for the princely sum of thirty-nine shillings and six pence if memory serves (it often doesn't these days).

Thank you and RIP Sir Clive for this, the calculator, the 81, Speccy and QL, which provided years of pleasure.

SpaceX prepares to launch four civilians and a glass dome into space

Tromos
Joke

What IS the best sex position in space?

Mission: Aries

Facebook building 'on-demand executable file format' that self-inflates using homebrew compression

Tromos

20%? That's nothing...

...I've found a way of compressing Facebook executables 100%.

This is not the tech unicorn you are looking for... and other stories

Tromos
Coat

Get me some drone footage of that alligator...

...and make it snappy!

You walk in with a plan. You leave with GPS-tracking Nordic hiking poles. The same old story, eh?

Tromos

I often set out with the intention of just getting...

...the special offer tools, but find myself also weighed down with unplanned purchases such as cheese, pasta, fruit and ice cream.

McDonald's email blunder broadcasts database creds to comedy competition winners

Tromos

Re: "We take data privacy very seriously"

I'm sure it's uttered as sincerely as the line "We come in peace." from the movie "Mars Attacks".

Compromise reached as Linux kernel community protests about treating compiler warnings as errors

Tromos

Warnings are usually there for a reason.

Something like an unused variable warning should not be trivialized. I have come across a case where a variable was declared for a specific purpose but the code accidentally used a similarly named variable that was being used for something else. Turns out that two different values don't fit into one storage location.

The only reason this is such a pain now is that -Werror wasn't the default from the start and things have accumulated over the years. I hope that a slow cleanup can take place with a view to eventually allowing -Werror to be the default for ALL builds. If it turns out that there are some truly trivial warnings, this is a good opportunity to either remove them or downgrade them to observations.

Arms not long enough to reach the plug socket? Room-wide wireless charging is on the way

Tromos
Joke

"...how much power could be absorbed by a person in the room..."

That would rather depend on if they were wearing a tinfoil hat.

EU to formally probe Nvidia's $54bn takeover over British chip designer Arm – report

Tromos
Joke

It'd also cost you a leg.

Cops responding to ShotSpotter's AI alerts rarely find evidence of gun crime, says Chicago watchdog

Tromos

Compensation

I'm hoping the guy that lost almost a year of his life sues them and takes a goodly chunk out of that 33 megabucks.

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