Posts by myhandler

FYI: BMW puts heated seats, other features behind paywall

They sold Saab's engine tech to China - even though that was specfically blocked in the buy out clause when GM bought Saab. But corporate lawyers always find a way round.

Microsoft delays controversial ban on paid-for open source, WebKit in app store

thanks - that figures.

What relevance does an MS App store have ???

They don't do phones anymore. Just download it anywhere else.

Am I missing something?

Thunderbird is coming to Android – in K-9 Mail form

Yep Fair Email is excellent, handles multiple accounts no problem, and zero spying

AI-powered browser extension to automatically click away cookie pop-ups now promised

Re: You need AI/ML for that?

It's hilarious how the JS haters here think they have *the* answer.

It's become a cult here.

They fail to grasp they are a tiny percentage of the population.

Might they consider this extension is not built with them in mind?

Yes, yes, downvote away.

South Yorkshire to test fiber broadband through water pipes

Re: Where's Elon when you need him?

Elon will suggest a mini-sub. A tiny-sub.. that then pulls a thin fibre, which pulls a thicker fibre and so on.

All that megaherz in the water though, homoeopaths will kick up a stink.

Russian IT pros flee Putin, says tech lobby group

I read on another forum, from a Russian uaing a VPN, that they have a shortage of paper - they still like to print lots. Till receipts, official docs, but there's a loo roll shortage too.

But they can't quickly convert to plastic payment - they buy in the credit card plastic and card chips. Lots of the population lack smart phones - but those that do have them dislike QR codes as part of their anti vax beliefs. Not enough CCTV cameras either.

They didn't think to build up a central warehouse of server stuff, hard drives, what have you.

Then they manage this on a region by region basis and the regulations are different between them.

The buck (rouble) needs to stop with that disgusting cretin at the top.

Oxidation-proof copper could replace gold, meaning cheaper chips, says prof

"atomic sputtering epitaxy"

Is that the same 'sputter' as the one in the Eels' song Novocaine for the soul?

Yes, Mark Zuckerberg is still pushing metaverse. Next step, language translation

It's good news all round, Meta is metastasizing.

Website fined by German court for leaking visitor's IP address via Google Fonts

You're clearly not a typographer or graphic designer. A type face says so much more than just the semantics. You really want to return to every site being in Times, Arial or Verdana?

Vulnerabilities and censorship tools among hot new features in Beijing's Olympics app

Tibet

Pooh bear

Free Hong Kong

Dalai Lama

Uighurs

etc.

etc.

GTFO & GFY Xi JinPing

Malaysia tweaks copyright law to hit streamers of copyright-infringing content

Re: Copyright is easy when it's obvious...

If you're looking to reprint it, can't you add a statement that you're looking for the descendants etc etc and then make sure you don't spend the profits for 10 years? Or are you hoping to build a TV series around it?

Why would someone downvote you? Off topic? Oh no, quelle desastre.

We've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Mega-comets lurking in solar systems, spewing carbon monoxide

"the mega-comet exhibited a coma a startling 23.8 astronomical units (AU) from the Sun – roughly 24 times the distance between the Earth and our star

Meaningless approximation? How about just saying what an AU is.

Or measure in football pitches.

Giant Japanese corporations to launch bank-backed digital currency

Re: Digital currency good. Blockchain pointless?

Jaoan lower in honesty than the UK? That might need looking at.

Through the Looking Glass – holographic display hardware is great, but it's not enough

Re: What is that depth information used for?

You can't avoid that bloody effect. Every documentary uses it. I'm a purist. I like my images as they were shot, flat and no sodding fake colorization (TM) either.

Macmillan best-biscuit list unexpectedly promotes breakfast cereal to treat status

That'll be *brouhaha* for the heading... not 'brewhaha'

Or was the sub-ed thinking it witty with a cuppa?

Apple, Google yank opposition voting strategy app from Russian software stores

This being the country where Boris Vishnevsky, who's another Kremlin critic, finds himself up against two other guys with almost identical names and look-alike faces.

Why we abandoned open source: LiveCode CEO on retreat despite successful kickstarter

Looks very like Macromedia Director's Lingo

84-year-old fined €250,000 for keeping Nazi war machines – including tank – in basement

Goodness, I was only asking a "how come"

So many downvotes - I bet half those clickers didn't know the facts till they read the helpful explanation. Or perhaps it was my gratuitous side swipe at Yanks..

Anyway, now I know it's a kampfenwagen I'll look at VW Campers in a new light

How come it's a "Panther"? They're called Panzers in any books and movies, whether English or German.

...has it been rewritten for the septic readership?

NFT or not to NFT: Steve Jobs' first job application auction shows physically unique beats cryptographically unique

wtf. so physical thing on scrappy old paper is worth more than imaginary thing conjured out of nothing?

who'd have thought it.

Facebook gardening group triumphs over slapdash Zuck censorbots

"We have plans to build out better.."

sounds disturbingly familiar...

Six years in the making, Vivaldi Mail arrives alongside version 4.0 of the company's browser

Ther's a calandar plug-in/add-on for Thunderbird and it understands Outlook event dates. Works for me

Apple sued in nightmare case involving teen wrongly accused of shoplifting, driver's permit used by impostor, and unreliable facial-rec tech

Re: Justice

No the impostor is just a thief. The fault is with facial recognition systems and employees who believe computers never make mistakes. That's how it's going to be from now.

Huawei wins big intellectual property case in Europe – against fashion house Chanel

Re: Quite apart from which...

Yeah but long long aog this led to a dispute between the fledgling Apple Computers and the Beatles Apple Music Corp.

"Oh no, we won't ever get into music" said Apple

Adobe co-founder and PostScript co-creator Charles Geschke dies, aged 81

Re: Passes what?

Yep me too. It's an abhorrent Americanism.

The Mac and at the root of it Postscript changed my life.

Illustrator 88!

OK, Google: Unshackled from Windows, Edge team is free to follow where Chromium leads

Release "cadence"

Right, I had a marketing guy use the phrase cadence to me just last week, "we'll establish a monthly cadence to discuss.. " wtf?

Why do they they have to pollute everything?

OVH founder says UPS fixed up day before blaze is early suspect as source of data centre destruction

OVH founder says UPS fixed up day before blaze

**.. fixed up...**

Ewww, what sort of English is that? Antipodean? Strasbourgian?

How do we combat mass global misinformation? How about making the internet a little harder to use

Re: Not that hard to search

As a long term user of web search there's vastly more garbage in search results than there used to be. Plenty of you here must have noticed that.

Some of that may be down to Google's algorithm but mostly that garbage gets views, views make money so they make more garbage.

Half the rabid sentiment on the net is designed just for clicks and likes.

It's a self full dumbing shit machine that is consuming us.

In wake of Apple privacy controls, Facebook mulls just begging its iOS app users to let it track them over the web

Re: Google next?

Not only that but when opt out of Google's cookies there are three separate items you must do individually. Each page is designed differently using different phraseology, all designed to obfuscate the issue.

It's pathetic - it shows the contempt in which they hold the public.

Project Ticino: Microsoft's Erich Gamma on Visual Studio Code past, present, and future

it's free

Police drone plunged 70ft into pond after operator mashed pop-up that was actually the emergency cut-out button

Falling from a chain's height, shurely?

Attack of the cryptidiots: One wants Bitcoin-flush hard drive he threw out in 2013 back, the other lost USB stick password

Yes some nice person has indeed already offered him that fix - for a mere 10% he will mass produce duplicates and somehow test, test, test till he finds the magic key - he might then disappear into the sunset of course .

Unauthorised RAC staffer harvested customer details then sold them to accident claims management company

These two should have done time - it has to be taken seriously.

And the RAC need a hefty fine for having a lousy data protection scheme.

Re: These type of activity is a plague on humanity

Yep - I had a claims adjustment guy, phoning from Liverpool when I live in London, saying " Now we've inspected your lovely motor all you need to do is approve this..."

You'd think I had a flash Jag or a Beemer, nope.

Nothing to link him to the insuracne company either.

Techies start growing an Alphabet-wide labor union: 200-plus sign up, only tens of thousands more to go

Re: Interesting

What you really mean is 40 years experience of the American dream.

Elon Musk says he tried to sell Tesla to Apple, which didn’t bite and wouldn't even meet

Re: You read it here first

Nah, it'll be a square steering wheel with round corners.

See 'Austin Allegro'

Raven geniuses: Four-month-old corvids have similar cognitive abilities to great apes at same age, study finds

Re: Octopi are

Yep that's the book I got my information from. Book is not as much of a study as I'd hoped but not bad. It does discuss our avian friends.

Re: Social is the key

Octopi are not social animals. They eat each other and rarely congregate. However their processing system is distributed, it's not just in the brain area.: limbs can act semi-autonomously - I bet that gets them thinking.

The revolution will not be televised because my television has been radicalised

Sadly there's very few newspapers with good in-depth coverage any more. Here in the UK The Independent died a few years ago - its website is hell on earth with thousands of ads. The Graun? The paper gets thinner and thinner and it's not a patch on the pre-Lebedev Independent.

Test tube babies: Virgin Hyperloop pops pair of staffers in a pod, shoots them along 500m vacuum tunnel

Re: Logistical Challenges

There'll be a short section of tube that opens to the air like a tube train station. I will work like an spaceship airlock. Then maybe plenty of sub sections that can each be isolated if there's a problem, the locks open and close automatically if a train approaches.

I can't believe your comment - how do you think railways manage to avoid collisions? Ok it fails sometimes but not often.

Getting 28 pods in and out is easy to automate - look at the food industry programmes on TV, e.g. Ocado warehouses, where everything is on automated lines.

Let's... drawer a veil over why this laser printer would decide to stop working randomly

Long, long ago in the days of SE30 Macs, a user said her machine kept switching off while she was typing. It kept happening day after day. In the end I got a cup of coffee and sat with her while she typed. She was one of those hyped up people who fidget and she swung her lower leg so her fancy pointy shoe tapped against the power switch just enough to kill it.

A year later she had a go at me for not double checking her sums when we placed her 'maths' in a business proposal. A marketing exec in case you wondered.

Congrats, Meg Whitman, another multi-billion-dollar write-off for the CV: Her web vid upstart Quibi implodes

"Always pivot" - that's all you need to know.

Typical. Museum of London Docklands display would be ready to set sail were it not for no-show cast member

Re: Ah the heady days of Director

I always thought Director and Lingo would make a great way for kids to learn about coding and simple animating. Go the frame, yeah!

What a Hancock-up: Excel spreadsheet blunder blamed after England under-reports 16,000 COVID-19 cases

Re: CSV?

Ceci n'est pas une pipe?

The perils of building a career on YouTube: Guitar teacher's channel nearly deleted after music publisher complains

Happened to two people on a musician's synth forum, that they and I have been members of for years. Not some random comment off Farsebk. I could email one of the people now if you want?

FWIW: if you post a piece of classical music to YouTube, that you have *recreated using synthesisers* you will get a take down notice from Wendy Carlos' lawyers. The system is out of control.

Adobe Illustrator's open source rival Inkscape delivers v1.0.1 - with experimental Scribus PDF export

Haha - I did that in Thailand in a Thai version of Illustrator, I was a shortcut user, so it took a few tries to find the n'th item down in the fourth menu across! (Commerical printing if you must know).

Re: Shooting themselves in the foot to save their hand

I've been using Illustrator since version 88 (you may not believe it but in 1988 they chose '88' rather than version 2 or 3 or whatever).

Scribus is usable, but not at all refined, not even to QuarkXpress standard as it was in 1988. (Yes I've used more recent versions).

But why is this export not just a straight "Export as PDF"?

As for Freehand - oh, the delights of orphaned Freehand EPS files that can't be edited!

Illustrator has a very good interface, better than Photoshop, shame about the rental license.

Highways England primes market for £2bn tech spend as part of massive investment in crumbling roads network

More "Smart" motorways ?

Miles and miles of 50 mph average speed limits, that take months to complete and all you get are fancier road warning signs.

And no hard shoulder for added extra accidents, so they can show off the new signage.