* Posts by Nik 2

134 publicly visible posts • joined 29 Sep 2015

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Uncle Sam may force Google to sell Chrome browser, or Android OS

Nik 2

I think that Apple has a get-out in that it doesn't have the market share that Android does. Also the position of Search as a window into consumer preferences and the means of control of results and hence user behaviour isn't there.

But yes, I do think that the abuse of power is there.

Raspberry Pi AI Camera takes inferencing load off the CPU

Nik 2

Re: Yes

Average speed cameras work by reading registration numbers, so it's always surprised me that they can't look these up on a DVLA database and see to which class of vehicle they belong.

China’s quantum* crypto tech may be unhackable, but it's hardly a secret

Nik 2
Thumb Up

10/10

<<The best use for QKD is to knock up an impressive PowerPoint deck and show it to a funding agency.>>

Top class 'El Reg', cynicism at its finest. Well done!

AT&T sues Broadcom for 'breaking' VMware support extension contract

Nik 2

Re: I've seen this sales play somewhere before, but where..?

This is the key difference between a 'cell phone' and a 'mobile', because in the UK a mobile contract can be ported in 24 hours with no cost and no inconvenience whatsoever :-)

Nik 2
Mushroom

Re: IANAL

This is the popcorn icon. If you have enough popcorn...

HPE to pursue $4B claim against estate of Mike Lynch over Autonomy acquisition

Nik 2

<<If HP "substantially succeeded" in 2022 then why did they feel the need to continue with the criminal trial in the US last year, at which Mike Lynch was acquitted? Pure spite, I assume.>>

The continuation of criminal cases is largely determined by the judicial authorities rather than those claiming to have been wronged by the defendant.

Tiny solid-state battery promises to pack a punch in pocket gadgets

Nik 2

Re: Capacity

30-50% is a lot less than the 100x claimed in the headline, IMHO.

Nik 2

Capacity

A Panasonic CR2032 cell has about 225 mAh at 3 volts, or 775 mWh

Volume is about 1cm^3, implying 775 Wh/litre

Energiser's spec sheet gives 683 mWh/cc, so TDK's tech nis either much better than claimed or their current cells are rubbish...

Hubble plays spin the bottle with last few gyros

Nik 2
Mushroom

Re: Another refurb mission?

SpaceX's normal rapid engineering approach isn't useful here. We don't have a collection of Hubbles for them to blow up, even if they do end up fixing the fifth one at a quarter of the cost of any other outfit.

Icon: Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly

A tale of two missions: Starliner and Starship both achieve milestones

Nik 2

Re: "before toppling over into the ocean"

No, that was the plan. Hovered for several seconds above the surface of the water, then was ditched.

US Army doubles down on laser tag with $95M for prototyping

Nik 2

Re: Price?

The effective range of a shotgun is fairly low, even against a DJI drone.

Cost is a factor, but the laser is probably capable of firing more than one shot.

Ten years since the first corp ransomware, Mikko Hyppönen sees no end in sight

Nik 2
Facepalm

Murphy's law applies

Nothing is foolproof because fools are so damn ingenious.

A previous employer sent a series of vaguely obvious fake phishing messages to all staff. Clicking the first link took you to a 'oops, silly' web page, the second to a mandatory repeat if the infosec training and the third took you to HR for formal disciplinary action.

A colleague managed to click a link while everyone around was discussing the merits of the campaign in general and the specifics of the latest message. Literally interrupted the conversation to ask why an email about approving invoices had taken her to the corporate training page...

Got an old Raspberry Pi spare? Try RISC OS. It is, literally, something else

Nik 2

And create a RAM drive on the fly. Magic technology in the world before HDD

The end of classic Outlook for Windows is coming. Are you ready?

Nik 2

Re: It's garbage

Try it. Open Outlook, pick up an email with the mouse and drag it to the desktop. You'll see the behaviour the OP is referring to.

I doubt I've don that more than once since I moved from Lotus Notes in 2003, but that's the point of this thread. Users use features in lots of different ways and those features are important to those users.

I discovered yesterday that new Teams can't alert you when a user comes back online, which was occasionally very useful to me. Why it's not there is anybody's guess, but I suppose MS knows how much it was used. I don't care if I'm in a minority of one, it was a handy feature for me.

Watchdog calls for more plugs, less monopoly in EV charging network

Nik 2

Re: It is still not as simple as pulling up in a forecourt and filling up a tank

For most of the chargers I use, the situation is better than this suggests. I carry my charge lead with me and the Type 2 connector is the equivalent of the USB-A socket that is on the other end.

Damn Small Linux returns after a 12-year gap

Nik 2

"...entry on the application menu was spelled "brawsers". While the updare fixed that... "

Oh, the irony...

Tiny11 shrinks Windows 11 23H2 down to pocket size

Nik 2

Ancient and Low Powered?

I would love to be able to install Win11 on ancient and low-powered machines - my 700+ desktop fleet includes some very old machines, but my school doesn't have the budget to upgrade them all before 2025. Security updates are important to us, as is a setup that is as consistent as possible for teachers, students and sysadmins.

That would be my second choice, behind having a Win10 with updates.

3rd party software like this? Interesting and clever as it may be, it's not for us.

Microsoft's bug bounty turns 10. Are these kinds of rewards making code more secure?

Nik 2

"Attacks are on the rise. That's not going to change. How are you using your bug bounty program to shape your live incident response and make it more efficient?"

Announce that you will give any unspent funds in the bug bounty pot to the dev team, a set period after product launch.

Pentagon seeks government gossips to dish dirt on UFOs

Nik 2

RAF since April Fool's day in 1918

Royal Flying Corps and Royal Navy Air Service prior to that.

Do SSD failures follow the bathtub curve? Ask Backblaze

Nik 2

An Uncomfortable Bath

That looks like a long way from the classic bathtub curve found in mechanical devices - there's no flat bit on the bottom, and the down and up curves are at similar gradients.

A proper bathtub shows a very steep drop followed by a prolonged period of low failure rates and a gradual increase after that, but this looks like one of those fancy tubs that are only found in showrooms and expensive boutique hotels.

Scientists spot startlingly close black holes in Hyades star cluster

Nik 2
Mushroom

Re: The Asylum has shown the way

Take off and nuke it from orbit. It's the only way to be sure...

Microsoft's Surface Pro 9 requires a tedious balancing act

Nik 2

Rubbish review

I like my Surface Pro, but I understand why others wouldn't. A decision to buy the latest one would be based on the spec uplift from the previous version and the price point(s)

It would be useful to have a review from someone who had used one before - it's hardly a new form-factor

NASA's electric plane tech is coming in for a late, bumpy landing

Nik 2

Re: Any scientists left at NASA?

<quote>We might get slightly better batteries in the future, but battery technology is not subject to Moore's law - we can't expect revolutionary new chemistry to turn up out of nowhere.</quote>

I broadly agree with you, but one should never underestimate the ingenuity of very smart people with a sufficient financial motivation. There are often ways round unsolvable problems, and lots of modern tech was seen as improbable or impossible [or pointless - ed] until it became commonplace.

Energy density has risen from 55Wh/litre to 1600 in 12 years, and 80Wh/kg to 700 since 1990*. Still a lot of dead weight to carry around, but never say never.

*https://physicsworld.com/a/lithium-ion-batteries-break-energy-density-record/

NASA tests bot built to slither across, and beneath, alien worlds' ice

Nik 2
Coat

Re: Slither of the machines?

Robot underlords?

LattePanda's Sigma crams a 12-core Intel Raptor Lake CPU into an itty-bitty SBC

Nik 2

LOL to the cry-switch concept, but I think that you can do facial recognition on a Pi4.

Spain gets EU cash to test next gen network, and US 'scrum for 6G' already under way

Nik 2

Use case <-> specification link?

Can anyone explain how the futuristic use case scenarios affect the design of the specification?

I can see that video and voice calling means that the various data packets need to arrive consistently in a way that isn't needed for, say, email or web browsing, but once we have a spec that delivers that is there anything to improve beyond reliability bandwidth and latency?

TIA

Warning: Microsoft Teams Free (classic) will be gone in 2 months

Nik 2

Re: With apologies to the late Douglas Adams

Two months later, it's happening again

https://www.theregister.com/2023/03/28/new_teams_client_preview/?td=rt-3a

Nik 2

With apologies to the late Douglas Adams

“There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly how the Teams UI works and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.

There is another theory which states that this has already happened.”

BOFH: I care a lot ... about onion bhajis

Nik 2

Re: Small Rural AM station?

Thank you, Big_Boomer. I'll consider myself better informed. HAGW

Nik 2
Pint

Small Rural AM station?

Has the BOFH gone stateside too now? He and the PFY will have to find a bar to frequent before, during and after their lunch breaks if they're moved away from their beloved pubs.

Elon Musk yearns for AI devs to build 'anti-woke' rival ChatGPT bot

Nik 2

Re: World's first AI government adviser in Romania

Does seem one of the more egregious uses of 'AI' as a label for something.

And, if they're looking to use a system to analyse users concerns to suggest polcy decisions then it's going to have to be really good at avoiding sampling bias.

WINE Windows translation layer has matured like a fine... you get the picture

Nik 2

Re: Ribbon interface holdouts

Me? Voice away, but I am genuinely surprised that this depth of feeling remains.

Nik 2

Ribbon interface holdouts

16 years down the line, is there anyone who uses MS office on a regular basis who hasn't learned to use the ribbon interface?

James Webb Space Telescope suffers another hitch: Instrument down

Nik 2

Re: R2 Unit

That would be the R3 unit, obviously.

The concept is derived entirely from Dr Zeuss' 'The Cat in the Hat Comes Back', where Little Cats A through Z emerged from the hat of their predecessor.

JWST ls limited to the R9 unit due to the problems encountered in constructing robots smaller than a single atom, but DARPA is rumoured to be developing self-repairing quarks at the size of an R14.

Virgin Orbit doesn't

Nik 2

Re: A30\A303

Not /quite/ as God intended. The full spiel should really refer to every turning by the name of an adjacent pub.

Massive energy storage system goes online in UK

Nik 2

Capacity for EVs

"Electric cars by 2030 will massively increase generating capacity needed"

Total car and van miles in the UK is around 275 billion pa, which needs ~70TWh of energy.

That's about 20 of current total production, but given the cyclical nature of energy consumption, the increase to peak capacity will be much smaller, as long as the peak time for charging EVs doesn't coincide with the existing peaks.

Looked at the from the other end, an average car covers 20 miles a day [Per gov.uk figures], equating to ~5kWh. Recharging in the low demand period from 11pm to 6am gives an average load of ~850 watts per vehicle; 1.7kW for a 2-car household. I don't buy the argument that EVs mean that we have to increase local or national grid capacities because 850 watts is the sort of power the lights my kids leave on used to use before the move to LED.

Nik 2

Re: Tiny

True, but you can't* swim in a field of batteries.

*If you find for any reason that you can, you /really/ shouldn't.

Someone has to say it: Voice assistants are not doing it for big tech

Nik 2

Remembering

Extending that to a general skill for remembering where arbitrary objects have been put would be genuinely useful.

Linking it to a video device to note which member of the family took said item out and put it back somewhere else would be priceless.

US Supreme Court asked if cops can plant spy cams around homes

Nik 2

I have seen manufacturing drawings with a dimension given as 300mm +- 0.001 inch

Which still works, even if it is fundamentally silly.

Serious surfer? How to browse like a pro on Firefox

Nik 2

Re: Not for me, I'm afraid.

It's the bane of much modern software; operating systems, browsers, MS Office...

I know users who keep updates switched off because they're convinced that things they can't find have been silently removed in an update for the sake of 'user convenience' And they're not always wrong.

NASA's Space Launch System rocket is on track for August 29 liftoff

Nik 2

Re: FFS!!!

Use of US units generally indicates a straight copy/paste from the press release, especially where the imperial measurement would usually be expressed in tonnes.

SpaceX crewed flight to ISS delayed by damaged rocket

Nik 2

5 - for now...

It's also not necessarily a final position, either. The data so far accumulated gives sufficient confidence to go to 5, further data may (or may not) give confidence to go beyond that.

The "As a result, NASA has determined they are comfortable with up to a five-time reuse for both the Falcon 9 and the Crew Dragon capsule," is very very different to the sub-headline of "NASA urged to reuse Musk hardware no more than five times"

Poor editing, el reg.

Leading Arch Linux derivative Manjaro puts out version 21.3

Nik 2

En_GB

There seem to be other issues, but I would suggest that anyone who doesn't know whether they want en_GB or en_US probably shouldn't be installing any operating system, let alone Linux.

Japan lets its banks and other entities issue stablecoins

Nik 2

non-fiat digital currency?

This stablecoin is an officially recognised form of currency without a relationship to any physical asset. Its face value is guaranteed because the government of Japan says it is.

How is this not a fiat currency?

If it is a fiat currency, what advantage does it offer over the existing currency, other than that it can be traded without the use of a clearing bank?

Intel plans immersion lab to chill its power-hungry chips

Nik 2
Meh

<quote>I don't see where is Intel innovation here?</quote>

<quote>This is important because liquid and immersion cooling requires completely different form factors than what's used in air cooled datacenters today. This unfamiliarity remains one of the technology's biggest inhibitors.</quote>

Is it that they have developed a totally different form factor specially for liquid cooled systems?

Rocket Lab successfully catches falling rocket booster with a helicopter

Nik 2

Re: Catch and release, then.

The one that got away?

Russia's Mir space station returned to Earth 21 years ago

Nik 2
Alien

Supervise deorbit from on board?!

No thanks! Although if your re-entry vehicle is controlled from earth you mght not have a lot of choice in the matter...

Raspberry Pi's trading arm snags £33m investment as flotation rumours sink

Nik 2

Re: With the 'Sale' of shares.......

The note about 'sharing the vision' suggests that Raspi has considered who it is selling to, and will therefore have had a condition attached.

One careful driver: Make room in the garage... Bloodhound jet-powered car is up for sale

Nik 2

They must be terribly expensive in tax

"They must be terribly expensive in tax"

£37,000,000,000 is the current estimate, and every penny paid for by taxes...

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