Posts by Stratman

Apple owes billions in back taxes over Ireland state aid rule break

I wouldn't be even a little bit surprised if none of it is actually paid.

Yes, I am being intolerably smug – because I ignored you and saved the project

Re: Every office has one.

Fewer - not as many

Less - not as much

Easy

NASA ought to pay up after space debris punched a hole in my roof, homeowner says

Re: Sounds fair

What if its your own nuclear weapon?

Then it's arson and not covered :-)

Waymo robotaxi drives down wrong side of street after being alarmed by unicyclists

Re: Pretty bad

Yeah, pretty bad that it elected to go into the oncoming lane.

[...]

Sounds like an indefensible case of overtaking when unsafe to do so.

Truck-to-truck worm could infect – and disrupt – entire US commercial fleet

Re: The Hollywood script writes itself

Guess it would have to be a Short rather than a full length feature...

Dunno 'bout that, ever seen Vanishing Point?

How to run an LLM on your PC, not in the cloud, in less than 10 minutes

Re: There should be removal instructions or a removal script

I wonder if asking it "How do I uninstall you?" would work.

I might as well type "I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that" now to get it over with.

Aircraft rivet hole issues cause delays to Boeing 737 Max deliveries

Re: Boeing should

You can delegate tasks, you can't delegate responsibility. It's sold as a Boeing it's bought as a Boeing. It's a Boeing.

Standards-obsessed boss ignored one, and suffered all night for his sin

The vision mixers were Grass Valley, and very good they were too.

My round ------->

A long time ago I worked for a world famous broadcasting corporation based in Britain, in telly outside broadcasts. At the time we were using Philips LDK5 cameras whose base ends had two cameras worth side by side in a ninteen inch rack with their hefty power supplies under the desks, 3U above ground level. These had protruding push button on/off switches. Being Philips they provided guards around them and being Philips they usually fell off. The spring was nicely strong and they didn't change state until they were released. This is important.

We were doing a routine Match of the Day one weekend and midway through the first half a colleague who was sat at his desk stretched out his legs and we all heard an ominous click. "Don't move!" we yelled at him. The sole of his shoe had depressed the guardless on/off button and he now faced the rest of the half holding the moderately strong action switch pressed in . Oh how we laughed.

To his credit he lasted the rest of the first half without releasing it but looked in some discomfort as he limped off for his half time cuppa.

Tesla says California's Autopilot action violates its free speech rights

Re: All the more reason

I can't not pronounce the X more like 'sh'. It seems more appropriate too.

UK's cookie crumble: Data watchdog serves up tougher recipe for consent banners

Re: Next should be non consentual email

They need to have my email address. I never, as far as I am aware, agreed to receive this stuff, I have replied asking them to stop sending it.

I wonder if the ICO would do anything about this ?

Have you tried asking it?

Microsoft billing 3 cents a minute to revisit tedious Teams meetings via API

Re: Meeting Tax

Alternatively just have meetings standing up. No chairs and certainly no tea and biscuits.

With version 117, Firefox finally speaks Chrome's translation language

I enabled it in about:config (and restarted Firefox, to save another fifty posts) but it doesn't work for me. I went to a German newspaper site, the icon was nowhere to be seen. Asking the intertubes suggests Fifefox Nightly is needed at the moment, and as you mention in the article, release 118 is when the masses will be blessed with it.

Man who nearly killed physical media returns with $60,000 vinyl turntable

Re: Poor design in my opinion

Nudge it to change track? Just like a vinyl record player then.

Three seconds of audio could end up costing Fox $500,000

Re: Harmony by disharmony

Then apologising for making a fuss.

Twitter tweaks third-party app rules to ban third-party apps

"Tweak New Twitter" does exactly what you have described, and is how use it.

ChatGPT has mastered the confidence trick, and that's a terrible look for AI

Re: I asked it what War and Peace was about.

I'm pretty sure Sir Terry wrote The Colour of Magic

Study suggests AI cruise control could kill traffic jams by cutting out the 'intuition' factor

Re: It can only do so much

Same here in London, except the car-hating powers that be time the lights to cause as much delay and frustration as possible.

Vonage to pay $100m for making it nearly impossible to cancel internet phone services

Good. Now do the same with Amazon Prime.

Make it as easy to cancel Prime as it is to sign up. Same number of clickthroughs, buttons of equal prominence, no double, triple, quadruple or more negatives and make joining Prime a separate transaction as opposed to now where it's intricately entangled with making a purchase.

Twitter's most valuable users are ghosting the platform

Firefox add-on

Tweak New Twitter

Remove algorithmic content from Twitter, hide news & trends, control which shared tweets appear on your timeline, and improve the UI

Works a treat, I only see accounts I follow. It gives you pretty much full control over what you see and what you don't.

This maglev turntable costs more than an average luxury electric car

Re: A fool and his money...

A phile and his money, surely?

US warns cryptominers must cut power use to avoid busting US carbon goals

Re: Comparing wax apples with silk poppies

Bitcoins that I mined uses ASIC not GPU, that is ETH. Is it wasteful? Heck yes. That is the point. It cost to create it, so it has value

Not to me it doesn't. It only has value if someong else thinks it does, and I'd seriously question their judgement and perception of value.

Windows 10 update breaks audio for some systems

"Microsoft has confirmed the BitLocker update issue, and said it's only affecting Windows 11 users. For now, Microsoft is warning all BitLocker users to disable the service prior to installing the update."

How is Mr. or Mrs. Average User meant to know thing like this?

Coinbase CEO says everything's OK after SEC filing gives netizens the jitters

Stablecoin collapse sends tokens tumbling

Crypto-currency markets are being rocked after a popular token lost 99% of its value, dragging down a so-called "stablecoin" with it. (Link to BBC Tech report on tumbling funny money)

An international incident or just some finger trouble at the console?

"Yep, we just disconnected France." >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Cryptocurrency ATMs illegal right now in UK

Crypto ATMs. Do they have spinning wheels and a big lever on the side?

Photon fantastic: James Webb Space Telescope spies its first starlight

Hats have been doffed.

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

Re: F35 A, B & C models

Or more bluntly, the F-35 is FUBAR

HPE has 'substantially succeeded' in its £3.3bn fraud trial against Autonomy's Mike Lynch – judge

Home Secretary approves extradition

BBC article

Leaked footage shows British F-35B falling off HMS Queen Elizabeth and pilot's death-defying ejection

Somebody mught find themselves answering questions on the subject of the Official Secrets Act.

I can't believe that any images taken on board a carrier don't need to be cleared from on high before being published.

REvil gang member identified living luxury lifestyle in Russia, says German media

If they know who

and where he is, how come he's not hanging from a meathook with electrodes on his gonads?

Or is he???

IPSE: More than a third of freelancers have quit contracting since IR35 reforms

Re: Forgot NI? @elsergiovolador

*As long as there aren't nasty side effects like Brown discovered when he buggered pensions.

One problem with integrating NI with income tax is indeed pensions. Money paid into a pension scheme is paid before tax is deducted but after NI has been taken. By adding NI to income tax pensioners would therefore pay NI twice, once on the way in and again on the way out, something they might find objectionable.

There are a lot of pensioners and every one of them has a vote, something which will not have escaped the attention of politicians.

Guntrader breach perp: I don't think it's a crime to dump 111k people's details online in Google Earth format

Wouldn't it be a shame

if Ernie's name and address somehow appeared in the next issue of Hunting Monthly or whatever those types read.

Perseverance to take a second stab at Martian rocks ... but first it has to scratch'n'sniff

The rock in question

Astronomy Picture of the Day

Someone of a more conspiratorial mindset might say there are tool marks on Rochette.

A new island has popped up off the coast of Japan thanks to an underwater volcano

Has China built a runway on it yet?

Engineers' Laurel and Hardy moment caused British Airways 787 to take an accidental knee

I'm quite surprised there aren't automatic lockouts to prevent this very thing.

IT management biz Kaseya's VSA abused to infect businesses with ransomware

Once assembled, these fully functional firearms often become a tool for senseless violence,” said the state's Attorney General Josh Shapiro.

As opposed to all the other guns there.

Facebook granted patent for 'artificial reality' baseball cap. Repeat, an 'artificial reality' baseball cap

One problem

The likely wearers of the device will be like "Hey bruv, why iz the glasses on the back of me 'ed, innit?"

Brit watchdog shows some teeth over McAfee antivirus auto-renewals

Good. Now for the rest.

Amazon being a 'prime' example. If I were a regulator I'd mandate a 'Cancel' button alongside the 'Sign Up' one. It should be as easy to leave as to join, same number of clickthroughs, buttons of equal prominence as so forth.

Belgian police seize 28 tons of cocaine after 'cracking' Sky ECC's chat app encryption

I suppose this means Fleetwood Mac's reunion tour is off?

Yep, you're totally unique: That one very special user and their very special problem

You'd love a TVR

Blockchain may be the machinery of mischief, but it can't help telling the truth

I keep having these thoughts that a blockchain would be a reasonably good solution to 'proof of vaccination', should one be required.

Why am I wrong?

For the sake of the question, I'm not necessarily saying one should be required.

Someone defeated the anti-crypto-coin-mining protection for Nvidia's 'gamers only' RTX 3060 ... It was Nvidia

What we need...

...is a concerted effort to trash the value price of Bitcoin. Something like GameStop giving the shorters a poke in the eye. What would it take and how could it be achieved?

NTT boffins reckon they’ve out-randomed current quantum random number generators

Re: Silly

Talking of random noise...

UK Supreme Court declares Uber drivers are workers, not self-employed: Ride biz's legal battle ends in a crash

I notice that

all reports of the outcome refers to 'workers', not 'employees'. Is there a difference in law? Does this mean Uber must pay employer's National Insurance? That would be fun to watch.

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

Has it been determined why the pop up appeared?

Hollywood drone pilot admits he crashed gizmo into cop chopper, triggering emergency landing

I always find it strange that a sentence doesn't reflect the actual crime but seems to depend largely on the outcome.

Fly a drone into a chopper, superficial damage - a year inside

Fly a drone into a chopper, injury or death - 200 years inside.

Notice the crime is the same in both cases, and it's not as if the perp had any control over the outcome.

Master boot vinyl record: It just gives DOS on my IBM PC a warmer, more authentic tone

Re: So he mentioned the amp..

Never mind the turntable, what cables did he use? Were they crystal aligned? Did they have special stereo electrons ? Did they have a nuanced mid-high separation of the ambience?

Other audiophool twattery is available.

NHS COVID-19 app's first weekend: With fundamental testing flaw ironed out, bugs remaining are relatively trivial

Police told not to download Covid app

According to the BBC

The National Police Chiefs Council (NPCC) has confirmed officers are being told not to install the NHS Covid-19 app on their work smartphones.

The app detects when users have been in proximity to someone with the virus.

Some officers have also been told they may not need to obey self-isolate alerts generated by the app when downloaded to their personal phones.

Lancashire Constabulary has told staff to call the force's own Covid-19 helpline instead.

Read the linked article before letting slip the dogs of war ;-)

Epic, Spotify, ProtonMail and pals rise up as one against Apple's 30% cut, call for end to Cupertino-style markets

Why don't they

just pull their existing apps from Apple and exclude them from future apps? Remember, it wasn't technical superiority that enabled VHS to win the war with Betamax (Beta was technically much better), it was the availability of films. The VHS consortium bought the rights to a whole lot of films and released them on VHS only, if you wanted to watch one you had to have a VHS player.