Posts by Oh Matron!

Fuming Tom Hanks says he had nothing to do with that AI dental ad clone of him

Re: "Bootleg movies" with replica actors created with AI will start to pop up

I'd love to see LOTR with Benny Hill as Gimli, and Mick Fleetwood as Saruman

The home Wi-Fi upgrade we never asked for is coming. The one we need is not

Re: Too pessimistic

Microwave ovens work at 2.45GHz, which is closer to the WiFi range you've had since, we;;. WiFi began

UK government hurt by delays in legacy tech upgrades, skills shortages

Re: Loads of options….

probably hired from Infosys....

Lost voices, ignored words: Apple's speech recognition needs urgent reform

Shame.....

Apple, in my eyes, has always been great with accessibility features.

However, I also use Siri to dictate on my iPhone as I'd rather keep my phone in my pocket rather than advertise to the scroats of london that I have an iPhone

However, iOS 16 has been absolute Garbage compared to iOS of old.... It *may* be that I use my Airpods pro rather than my older powerbeats pro to dictate, not sure...

Even having Siri read stuff back is hideously broken: It can't differentiate between

"I live here" and "Now, live from Norwich..."

This is a choice by Apple to be this bad. If their goggles want to be successful, eye and hand gestures can't be relied upon solely: Voice has to be right up there too.

We regret to inform you Earth will not be destroyed by an asteroid within 1,000 years

"hail mary"

Great book by Andy Weir. His humour is excellent

Singapore tells its people: Go forth and block those ads

Vinegar.....

Sorry, Android users, although there's probably a Chrome extension that does the same thing

Vinegar is a Safari Extension that blocks Facebook and Youtube ads when watching videos

And it's so effective, when you have the need to use the normal FB or YT app, you realize what such a poor experience video consumption is on mobile devices

"But, what of the poor content creators who are not getting Ad revenue?"

You mean the same content creators that stick a minute's worth of "This video is brought to you in partnership with" in every video?

CAN do attitude: How thieves steal cars using network bus

Easily solvable....

My XC90 (RIP) used MAC based authorisation for things like the Radio, etc, and replacement radios wouldn't work unless you switched off the MOST protection

HOWEVER: The second that you turn on mechanisms like this for the entire bus, hobbiest CANBus readers are likely to stop working for all but the most simplistic of faults

At the very least, radio keyfob messsages should be signed

Adidas grapples with $1.3B in unsold Yeezy sneakers after breaking up with Kanye West

"though The Register has always believed him to be hideous"

FTFY

Light from a long time ago reaches James Webb Space Telescope

Re: Light the blue touch paper and retire quickly …

There's no edge just as much as there's no centre. If you can get your head around that, which many people can't....

Massive but not as dense

Was literally listening to this on the World Service's Science Hour:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3ct3b09

Back then, only Helium and Hydrogen existed (with maybe a touch of lithium), which allowed stars to be much bigger, but not as dense, as no other elements existed

Big stars burn quicker, thought, which resulted in more death of stars into supernova / black holes, which is where elements up to and including iron were formed.

And it's only when black holes collided that everything else was created

I find this stuff truly fascinating......

Most Londoners would quit before they give up working from home

Re: As somebody who vastly prefers working from the office...

And that's the point.... Flexibility. This is not a binary decision: I'm in the office today, amongst colleagues I love, and have already solved a couple of problems face to face.

However, the work I do from home is different and has different requirements. I can go for a run through unmanaged forest, instead of the 40 minute bike ride from Chelsea and Westminister (Thankfully the ankle biters are at home this week, so things are a little quiet).

Flexibility is king. And that's the message a company needs to message.

Footnote: When I work from home, my pesos are more likely to go into local businesses rather than the megacorps that frequent london and pay no tax

Tencent fired 100 people for corruption during 2022

Pony Ma?

New phone, who dat?

Surely you can't be serious: Airbus close to landing fully automated passenger jets

Re: An step in the path to reduce the number of pilots needed to fly commercial.

I've been binge watching Mentour Pilot on Youtube, and what is VERY apparent is that, under high workloads, pilots panic and do the craziest things, including shutting down the wrong engines. Pretty much nearly every crash is due to operator error rather than equipment.

HOWEVER: There's an astoundingly big caveat to that: Some of the situations are because there's no president: The Air France flight from Brazil, for example: To Have all three speed readings wrong was unheard of, and the pilots had only trained for stalls at low level, not at 35,000 feet.

Musk says spat with Apple over App Store ejection threat for Twitter was 'misunderstanding'

Tim was clear that Apple never considered doing so.

or, to put it another way:

"I had a paddy, lost all concept of rational thought and had a bout of verbal diarrhea"

What's that, Lassie? Boston Dynamics is suing its robot dog tech rival?

Re: Really, going to court?

But only if Craig Charles commentates

Another crypto shocker: Major player actually corrects $400m mistake instead of cratering

Re: Uh, about currency of the spendable type..

Nope. Not at all.

On my various frequent flyer accounts nectar, etc, it does mention that points have no monitory value. Crypto, it appears, is just the same :-)

Twitter is suffering from mad bro disease. Open thinking can build it back better

And this year's Gerald Ratner award goes to....

My account deletion is in proggess

InSight Mars lander has only 'few weeks' of power left

Re: Use inclined solar panels

erm... slight problem with that is the lack of, erm, air...

The Martian atmospheric pressure is 0.095 psi

Earth's sea level atmospheric pressure is 14.7 psi

You'd need a LOT of air

Government by Gmail catches up with UK minister... who is reappointed anyway

FTFY

"To the disgust of most, Braverman was reappointed as Home Secretary"

No, I will not pay the bill. Why? Because we pay you to fix things, not break them

an old thread but I interned in one of the mainframe support departments at ICL. A fantastic bunch who worked hard but still enjoyed life. Still in touch with the manager

Starlink decoded for use as GPS alternative – without Elon Musk's help

I learnt a few weeks ago.....

That:

"He said SpaceX could publish a clock correction for each satellite - something that is currently done for GPS - which would reduce errors to under one meter"

Is due to relativity. Because the satellites are moving so fast (relative to you), you need the correction to account for the differences in time between you and the satellite!

This stuff fascinates me :-)

President Biden still wants his cybersecurity labels on those smart devices

Re: "I can't help but think that such labelling is pretty pointless"

agreed. Self certification didn't work too well at Boeing. It certainly won't work at some generic manufacturer

It's official: UK telcos legally obligated to remove Huawei kit

Re: It's official

I'm all in with "Trainings"

Meta, Google learn the art of the quiet layoff

Ad Revenue....

I do my bit.... Have yet to wean myself off FB...

Removed the app off my iOS device. Installed Vinegar plug in for Safari.

Videos on FB (and youtube) are now ad free.

best £3 I ever spent...

BT CEO orders staff: Back to the office or risk 'disciplinary action'

Re: Great advert for their own product

I'm guessing BT doesn't use it's own services...

https://www.businessdirect.bt.com/technology-articles/homeworking/

"Coronavirus led to a huge rise in the number of employees working from home. And, where possible, this is set to become the new ‘norm’. "

Hypocrites.

UK's largest water company investigates datacenters' use as drought hits

Re: I'm betting ..

Have a leak in putney. Started the 14th. Meant to be fixed by the 16th. I started filling buckets to water the local trees given Thames are doing sweet FA about it

And yet those beacons of greed, golf courses, still get watered.

Bloke robbed of $800,000 in cryptocurrency by fake wallet app wants payback from Google

Hustle

To quote the fantastic TV series, "you can't con an honest man"

Software issues cost Volkswagen CEO Herbert Diess his job

Re: Usual mistake

They should be poaching from Siemens: If there's one company who knows how to do robust, industrial code, it's them

I sat here thinking "Weekly, huh, that will be agile...."

And then realised how much of a muppet I'd been: Agile would be, quite possibly, the very worst methodology for development for this use case

This credit card-sized PC board can use an Intel Core i7

Re: Conversion

If you can't do F - 30 divide by 2 in a couple of seconds then you are Jacob Rees Mogg AICMFP

Apple forgoes cooling systems in M2 MacBook Air

Re: Sticky Stuff

I found the narrative quite passive aggressive: The whining about getting the speakers out, for example. Just a bunch of screws and no swearing, unlike other mac's I could mention.

If the repairability on this isn't 9/10 I'd be surprised

Re: The title is no longer required.

for older macs with HDDs there used to be a screen saver that used the accelerometer to move liquid around the screen as you tilted the mac. Was lovely to see. Useless, but lovely...

Just because you failed doesn't mean you weren't right

Re: Weather Satellites

I think your down vote was from Dominic Raaaaaaaaaaaaaab who doesn't believe in such things as climate change.

Tories spar over UK's delayed Online Safety Bill

Re: Lets hope it

I've got a Safari Extension called Vinegar installed. I only remember that youtube has videos when I use a different browser...

Elon Musk had secret twins in 2021 with Neuralink exec

Population collapse....

Is the biggest threat to capitalism, not humanity. Capitalism is the biggest threat to humanity

Hangouts hangs up: Google chat app shuts this year

yeah, and it was called something equally as nauseating...

Apple update approach 'not realistic' in enterprise, but login 'shim' gets thumbsup

Re: "Apple demonstrates they don't have a deep appreciation of the enterprise"

So, it's a little more nuanced than that. Admins have the flexibility of when updates are installed, even including the scheduling of updates. JumpCloud are new to MDM to I'd give their comments a little latitude

However, surely it's better than, "I'll just reboot windows before this important ca,,,,,, WTF? Why are you installing updates that you didn't tell me about NOW?!"

Apple offers improved Linux support in macOS Ventura

Love or hate apple....

You've got to admit, this is really cool.... Especially for those closed source apps....

Apple dev roundup: Weather data meets privacy, and other good stuff

Re: "without associating coordinates with personal information"

No, no, no, no, no.

Apple never knows where the user it. It doesn't even know where the device is. All processing is done on device.

I think you've got Apple confused with Google

Ransomware attack sends US county back to 1977

Re: Rise of the machines

I wouldn;t be too worried about terminators.... I'd be more worried about a threat actor uploading a bogus firmware update to john deer tractors. That would result in a horrible famine!

UK government reviewing stake in BT owned by French tycoon Patrick Drahi

Obviously not a Tory donor, Drahi...

That is all.

Microsoft-backed robovans to deliver grub in London

Canals....

How long till we find one, wheels up, in the grand union?

Hate the traffic? YOU are the traffic.

Pictured: Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way

Re: Pah, They set the constraints for a black hole. And a black hole was what they got.

Go read "Light in the darkness" by Heino Falcke. Then see if your opinion was correct

ZX Spectrum: Q&A with some of the folks who worked on legendary PC

Rochdale...

There's not many things to be proud of coming from Rochdale, but one of them is that A&F software, makers of Chucky Eggs, was based in said town :-)

SpaceX's Starlink service lands first aviation customer

But that's the great thing: You can bring starlink onboard with you and launch your own paid for service :-) Just make sure you get a decent balcony :-)

Netflix to crack down on account sharing, offer ad-laden cheaper options

Re: Add ADS Subtract SUBS

Once you discover Vinegar on iOS, delete facebook and youtube, and use web only, Youtube especially becomes a much more enjoyable experience... No ads, airplay from phone to appleTV...

European Right to Repair resolution headed for vote

Re: This is all about hardware

This would screw up Android handset vendors, that's for sure...

Re: (Yet) another regulation the UK will need to abide by

"Despite having zero input into it."

A choice it made democratically.

French court pulls SpaceX's Starlink license

Not quite...

"Users are required to order a small dish with tripod to set up in an open area at home"

1. It's not a dish. A3 size would be closer

2. A small dish is big enough for a melton mowbray pork pie with a side of branston. It's bigger than that.