Posts by Millwright

Headset hype meets harsh reality as Apple and Meta VR shipments fizzle in 2025

Game Segment

Just one word: Steam.

You don't need Linux to run free and open source software

AoL

Largely agree Liam but one caveat: Ninite does what it says on the tin but says it will:

"-not bother you with any choices or options

-install apps in their default location"

Both of which make it unusable for me. The first can be addressed after installation but not the second.

I'd like to raise a hand in support of Jot+ Notes. Not FOSS, Windows-only but free, and a simple, brilliantly functional tool.

US cuffs 475 at Hyundai–LG battery plant – feds tout largest single-site raid

Somebody put this troll back under a rock.

JetBrains previews Kineto for vibe no-coding

No, tell us what you *really* think.

Double-detonation supernova could explain why the universe is full of candles

So what makes sulphur and calcium 'more complex' than iron? Do they have more complex fusion pathways? Structurally of course they're both simpler.

Financial 'stretch' for UK to join Europe's Starlink rival, says minister

Re: A price must be paid for disloyalty

"while not being able to properly punctuation them ". Good grief.

China's EV champ BYD reveals super-fast charging that leaves Tesla eating dust

Re: Aaaarrghh

Of course the demand will go up. Not just ICE replacement but getting the fossil mix down will increase the need for electricity very considerably. So what? We knew that anyway, and the answer is to continue investing in renewables production, storage and distribution.

There are plenty of challenges in all of this, but renewables only being effective in the summer is not one of them.

Re: Aaaarrghh

You seem to think renewable = solar. In fact PV only accounts for ~5% of UK electricity production whereas wind is around 25%. Hydro and other (year-round available) sources contribute a bit over 13%. These are 2023 figures from the UK Government.

First private moon lander to touch down safely starts sending selfies

Re: Also, Elon, don't forget that ...

...for spelling my name wrong.

Heart of glass: Human genome stored for 'eternity' in 5D memory crystal

Circular

"The 5D memory crystals can also accommodate high-resolution graphics, so instructions for post-apocalypse re-industrialization, semiconductor competency, and optical engineering are available to those who might want to read the data but lack the necessary tools."

UK minister recalls two planning decisions which blocked datacenter investment

Slow electrons

"placing datacenters near cities makes sense given the amount of time it takes for data to travel from one place to another"

Open Source world's Bruce Perens emits draft Post-Open Zero Cost License

I don't have a dog in this fight, except a small puppy as an end-user. What I can say though is that I'm doubly happy that Mr Perens is willing to have a sensible debate with the commenters here, and that in the main the latter are providing thoughtful objections and insights into a very gnarly matter. Thank you all, have a beer.

Google Cloud chief is really psyched about this AI thing

"Enterprise Truth"

World's largest nuclear fusion reactor comes online in Japan

There's a lot of 'anti-greenie' tosh being written in here. Knocking down straw men to bolster untenable arguments is as old as debate, so I shouldn't be surprised.

Yes, renewables like wind and solar are intermittent. There are two obvious fixes for this - grid scale stoarge (including producing fuel hydrogen, cryogenic and thermal storage as well as batteries) and diversification into other non-fossil, non-nuclear types of genertion such as tidal flow (needs good sites and sound ecological planning but predicatable and reliable, marine current (hard engineering but energy dense and very reliable and predicatable), geothermal, wave power, salinity gradients and so on. None of these is a magic bullet and some may never be practical at meaningful scale but there are a lot of options and some proven to be both achievable and of very great potential output.

Two other avenues are bigger, longer interconnects to link places with different weather patterns (vulnerable to issues of politics and sabotage) and it's opposite, decentralised generation and storage. The latter ties in with the expected vast increase in electric vehicles, which IF the V2H and V2G infrastructure is in place will provide a lot of grid demand smoothing and storage.

Fusion has a lot of potential problems, some of them noted already like waste generation and the tritium issue. These may be overcome with diligence, intelligence and lots of money but to start crowing now about the demise of renewables is both unscientific and an act of wishful thinking on the part of insecure nuke Believers.

Elon is the bakery owner swearing in the street about Yelp critics canceling him

Re: if your still on xitter

I believe the favoured label for your ex is "Self-hating Jew". Being a goy with similar views I of course get "anti-semite".

EFF urges Chrome users to get out of the Privacy Sandbox

"Differential privacy".

Just sayin'

Nextcloud boss: You gotta fight … for your right … to 'plug into Windows and offer the exact same service'

Re: There's no consumer service

Nextcloud have partners, sure. Makes sense to me to have a wide choice of providers who can specialise in service provision using the underlying tech, and there's also the option to self-host instead/as well.

Facebook may soon reveal new name – we're sure Reg readers will be more creative than Zuck's marketroids

Boskone.

As in "Zuckerberg, speaking for Boskone"

Electric car makers ready to jump into battery recycling amid stuttering supply chains

Aluminium air

Aluminium air are primary batteries - not rechargeable. So they /have/ to be recycled after the equivalent of a few charges for a lithium or other secondary battery.

They may have significant use cases, but there are enough issues with the infrastructure needed for swap-out that they're not a universal replacement.

Pentagon scraps $10bn JEDI winner-takes-all cloud contract

Re: Biden seems to be downsizing

You missed (doubtless among others but I have reasons for remembering this one):

Grenada 1983

Dedicated (Local) Cloud Infrastructure-as-a-Service to grow almost 1000 per cent in five years

Maths, dear chaps. 138M to 14B is a touch over 100x, which is 10,000%

Lenovo ThinkPad P1: Sumptuous pro PC that gets a tad warm

Re: Terrible customer service

I have a T480 whose screen went iffy a month ago. Support was brilliant - some quick diagnostic questions then a free 3-day pickup, fix and return sorted pronto.

Intriguingly the support was provided by....IBM Canada. I'm in the UK.

Berkeley bio-boffins' butt-blasting belly-bothering batt-teria generates electricity

Do the math(s)

500 milliAmps. The team estimate that each bacteria cell can give off about 100,000 electrons per second.

[...] In the electrochemical chamber there are approximately 100 billion bacterial cells,

10^5 x 10^11 = 10^16 electrons per second

1A =~ 6 x 10^18 electrons per second -> 0.5A =~ 3 x 10^18 electrons per second

Two orders of magnitude error. Tsk

Morrisons launches bizarre Yorkshire Pudding pizza thing

Obviously it needs a snug fitting pizza on top of the cheese and tomato filling and basic toppings. Back of the fag packet suggests 5 3/4" would do nicely.

Sci-Fi titan Jerry Pournelle passes,
aged 84

Am I the only one here who thought his story writing dreadful, ill-constructed, predictable drivel only saved from utter uselessness by the Niven collaboration? And the only one who found Chaos Manor a sink of ill-informed, name-dropping posturing?

Seems like it. I will grant that he managed to give me a few unintentional laughs by the sheer buffoonery of some of his CM hardware tales.

Confirmation of who constitutes average whisky consumer helps resolve dispute

As any fule kno, Scotch comes in several levels of desirability. So does non-Scotch whisk(e)y but that's another discussion.

Sub-basement: Nasty blends of industrial grain alcohol with a meagre admixture of the cheapest, roughest malts. [Covers nearly everything that isn't labelled 'Malt'.]

Basement: Somewhat malt-heavier blends, often heavily marketed and usually at a price premium exceeding their value. Major example: Chivas Regal.

Ground floor: Vatted or blended malts. No nasty grain spirit. Vary from nigh-undrinkable to very good indeed. An example of the good stuff: the regional blends from Douglas Laing, like Big Peat.

Upper storey: Single malts. Vary from fairly bland but non-poisonous to distinctly characterful, complex and delightful. Region and style according to taste of course, barring the next level.

Penthouse: Islay.

British firm to build world's first offshore automated ship

Another thing about oil rigs

My nephew is a trainee engineer on the North Sea rig supply boats. They have /lots/ of accommodation space as they are rescue craft as well as delivery ships: and I don't see that function being automated.

Pluck-filled platter-stuff: Bold disk drive makers fatten up

Geometry

Yes, you have to take case/bearing thickness into account when you double the z height - but unless that scales up linearly or worse you'll have relatively more, not less, room inside the higher units.

It's still only breeding faster carthorses to compete with lorries though.

Flying Spaghetti Monster is not God, rules mortal judge

No, he didn't. He broke with Rome and created the Church of England but he was doctrinally Catholic. Protestantism - which started mainly in mainland Europe and whose followers in England, like the Lollards, had been given a hard time for centuries - came later under Edward VI and Elizabeth 1.

Seagate offers California Uni genome data storage K-drives

So 1PB = 250,000 x 4TB ?

German football hero battles Nazi doppelgänger

They're not too good with names. The Russian under Uncle Joe reads ' Iosif Vissarionovitch Stalin' as is correct, but the English is a mashup of his early and late surnames. He was Iosif Vissarionovitch Dzhugashvili (Russian form) in his Georgia days.

Sony Xperia M4 Aqua 4G: The Android smartie that can take its drink

"If the Moto G were available for £150, the natural order would be restored."

It is, unlocked PAYG from 3. I've got one.

Testing Motorola's Moto G third-gen mobe: Is it still king of the hill?

Bought one a few days ago for £140 (+ £1 SIM and £10 top-up) unlocked from 3. Nice phone at that price, good replacement for the original G I just broke.