Posts by Tromos

NASA wants to sell International Space Station to private enterprise

I'd go for it...

...but the bank is grumbling about the size of the mortgage and you wouldn't believe how much the surveyor wants to charge.

Nvidia welcomes Intel into AI era: Fancy a benchmark deathmatch?

Re: A question.

It's a type of three-toed sloth beloved of Scrabble players.

DVLA misses out on £400m in tax after scrapping paper discs

Lost 80 megaquid...

...but saved 10 on admin, so that's OK then.

If this headline was a security warning, 90% of you would ignore it

"posterior frontopolar prefrontal"

Am I the only one that reads that as "Behind, front, before the front"?

McDonald's launches wearable then pulls it after kid feels the burn

Wearables?

One of these days they'll branch out into edibles.

Shark bosses sink teeth into booming ransomware market

20 per cent cut

What are the coders going to do if they don't get their cut? Hopefully, take it to court.

Microsoft to overhaul Windows 10 UI – with a 3D Holographic Shell

Even in this country...

...it's just too hot at the moment to wear a bloody headset.

Vodafone: Dear customers. We're sorry we killed your Demon

Some choice!

"...the choice of either moving their addresses to another, paid-for service or losing them altogether"

Who was it that said "choice is good for the consumer"?

US extradition of Silk Road suspect OK'd by Irish judge

Extradition proceedings should be banned.

They appear to be the leading cause of Aspergers.

Adblock Plus blocks Facebook's ad-blocker buster: It's a block party!

Re: arms race @Charles 9

Facebook is far from being the only way to keep in touch. One almost forgotten solution that has been around for more than a couple of decades is Internet Relay Chat (IRC). Set up your own private channel for family and friends and then you can have multiway chats, transfer files, etc. No need for your family pictures to become tagged, geolocated, recognized and otherwise processed property of some data slurping corporation.

Business users force Microsoft to back off Windows 10 PC kill plan

Backing down is the first sensible decision for ages.

Forcing people off Windows 7 is not guaranteed to see them take up 10. Once they have gone elsewhere, I would say very few would ever come back. To permanently lose even a fraction of your customer base is attempted, if not actual, commercial suicide.

Italian MP threatens parents forcing veggie diets on kids with jail

Bacon deprivation=Unnecessary cruelty

In Italy, acceptable substitutes include Parma ham, Salami Milano, Mortadella Bologna, etc.

Your 'intimate personal massager' – cough – is spying on you

Can it be...

...taken off vibrate and set to ring?

Again with the cheap internet access in India, Facebook?

Useful information

From Facebook? You jest.

Bloke faces years in the clink for using hacker-leaked press releases in $30m trading scam

Re: Can someone please explain.

A closer fire alarm analogy to insider trading would be discovering a fire and running off without giving the alarm in case others trying to get away impede your escape. Still think there's nothing wrong with it?

Don't want to vote for Clinton or Trump? How about this woman who says Wi-Fi melts kids' brains?

A woman who fears her Linksys.

How silly. Everyone knows it's those D-Links are the ones to watch out for.

TP-Link fined $200k, told to be nice to wireless router tinkers after throwing a hissy fit

Extra power

BT are currently advertising the country's 'most powerful broadband' and appear to be claiming a longer range. Are their hubs pushing out more power than others are allowed to, or is it the usual false advertising?

Windows 10 Pro Anniversary Update tweaked to stop you disabling app promos

2017 is the year of...

...Windows off the desktop.

Bot-herders fire fake GPS co-ords at Niantic to collect Pokémon

Shortcut software

PRINT "Congratulations, you are a level 40 Pokémon master"

It's 2016 and your passwords can still be sniffed from wireless keyboards

Re: Yet another driver towards 2FA

Who mentioned TEMPEST?

Er, Shakespeare?

Apple Watch exec Bob Mansfield 'gets into secret Apple car'

Re: An iAUto would ....

...have square wheels with rounded corners

Google tests its own quantum computer – both qubits of it

Not for me

Quantum Software Engineer? Won't see me taking on a two bit job like that!

Selfie-proof smartmobes will hit stores for Christmas

Re: Er, 80% is not very good...

It's much worse than that. The wording in the article says "up to 80%" which I understand to mean that 4 out of 5 surviving was the best they could manage, but 3, 2, 1 or zero survivors are also on the cards.

Schrödinger's cat explained with neutrinos

Re: Neutrons change flavor but Leggett cannot contain fewer gs

Simple. The first two 'g's are in a state of superposition.

Torrent is a word, and you can't ban words, rules French court

OK, they can't block 'torrent', but I see no reason for not complying with the other part of their request and removing their names from all searches.

Blighty's Coastguard goes into battle against waterborne Pokemon

Re: Angry Pokemon?

Crushing their candy should do the trick

Boffins unveil 500TB/in² disk. Yeah, it's made of chlorine. -196˚C, why?

Keep it well away from Sodium. Your data could end up resembling Lot's wife.

Since you love Flash so much, Adobe now has TWO versions for you

52 fixes

But how many new bugs? What's the net score? Who's winning?

Congrats, Linux users – you're finally officially alpha males... on Skype

An added bonus

It includes the first Linux version of GWX.

Cycling paramedics in epic rush to save patient who ate stale sandwich

About time 999 calls were charged at 500 pounds, refundable in actual cases of emergency. It would either stop misuse of resources or fund extra resources, a rare win-win situation.

New DNA 'hard drive' could keep files intact for millions of years

I'm afraid...

...that your memory card is showing signs of early-onset Alzheimers.

Behold the ROBOT RECTUM... medics' relief

Forget it.

Anyone buying one ends up getting a bum deal.

Huawei: Our fake phone camera pic shame

Easily fixed

Just make them give the necessary add-on equipment to every purchaser of a P9. I'm sure they won't get any complaints after that.

Sterling's post-Brexit dollar woes are forcing up tech kit prices

"the pound could reach parity with the dollar"

Tech kit prices have had this factored in for decades.

Wannabe West Midlands gun smuggler jailed for ten months

One possibility...

...he was new to drugs and wanted to try "shooting up"

Trans-Pacific FASTER fibre fires first photons, finally

Re: Google takes 10 Tbps for cloudy ad-slinging

"...Google's exclusive access to two of the cable's fibres, each with 100 wavelengths running 100 Gbps"

That makes 20 Tbps, so I guess the other 10 is for the NSA.

My plan to heal this BROKEN, BREXITED BRITAIN

"Steve Bong is battling for a digital Europe"

Exactly what the referendum was about - one Europe or zero Europe.

Rejoice, fatties: Giving chocolate electric shocks makes it healthier

Healthy options

Another way to tackle obesity is to apply the electricity to the person reaching for the Mars bar.

UberEats into food delivery with new app launch in London

I can cook, so...

What's so special about cooking? Just set the timer, press 'start' and wait for the ping.

Lester Haines: RIP

What everybody has already said...

...plus my personal thanks for all the hugely entertaining articles which often went on to produce some superb comment threads.

Now Google backs everyone's favorite trade pact: The TPP

Let's reciprocate the 'special relationship' with Obama...

...and stick TPP at the back of the queue.

Government regulation will clip coders' wings, says Bruce Schneier

"We are going to see...more trusting of the government"

Altogether now-

"OH NO, WE'RE NOT"

Lexus cars suffer Purple Screen of Death – code bug turns the air blue

Quick fix

Ctrl-Accelerator-Del

Universe's shock rapidly expanding waistline may squash Einstein flat

In order to pin down a value for the Hubble constant, it first needs to be renamed as the Hubble variable. This is based on one of the well established laws of Sod as applied to computing, namely "Constants aren't and variables won't."

You deleted the customer. What now? Human error - deal with it

Change management no use

The new management was just as bad as the old.

Twitter expands beyond 140 characters

Re: Urban hipster churnalists unite! You have nothing to lose but your tweets

What's the point of nationalising Twitter? It seems to be perfectly capable of losing money hand-over-fist without that unnecessary step.

Shakes on a plane: How dangerous is turbulence?

Onset of turbulence is entirely predictable

Always starts while tea/coffee trolley is doing its rounds.

Google asks the public to name the forthcoming Android N operating system

Just name it after...

...what is required to actually get the update.

'New phone needed'

Chaps make working 6502 CPU by hand. Because why not?

Re: Why So Slow?

The high capacitance is probably due to the packing density putting relatively large chunks of conductors in close proximity to each other. I don't think distance (within reason) is too much of an issue for 1 MHz operation, spreading things out with a single layer board and classical discrete components might have been a better option. Open up a CDC6600 and you would find 4 large bays loosely packed with modules interconnected with wiring (usually twisted pairs) up to a couple of metres long. Use of emitter coupled logic and finely crafted tuning were critical to achieving the speed.

Non-police orgs merrily accessed PNC without authority, says HMIC

1970s Fujitsu mainframe

Maybe about time for an upgrade - possibly a Raspberry Pi?