Posts by Ed@theregister

IBM kills Hack A Hair Dryer women-in-tech vid after backlash

Anyone got any suggestions for the next thing I can pretend to be offended by, in order to conform with prevailing social media trends?

I was thinking something to do with cats.

Donald Trump wants Bill Gates to 'close the Internet', Jeff Bezos to pay tax

“We have to talk to them [about], maybe in certain areas, closing that internet up in some way.”

So, you're going to close up an idea, a concept. This is simply playing to the right wing gallery in the US, and I doubt Trump, who is not stupid, really believes this stuff.

Apart from anything else, how do we physically close the internet, at least for any meaningful length of time?

Team America, world police, take down 37,479 counterfeit sites

Remember, there is no "I" in "Team America".

Microsoft wants to be your phone company, at least for voice

My experience of Skype has been largely poor. Poor sound and picture quality, if a picture even appears at all, and constant breaks, leading to someone saying 'Lets just do a conference call'. I guess I need more bandwidth, but it's been a bad experience in techie London offices as well as my little house.

British woman loses £1.6 million to romance scam love rats

Yeah, I do wonder what her friends were saying. Didn't one of them say 'Look, hang on a minute?' Upsetting story though, but Im guessing a lot more common than people think.

Amazon's new drones powered by Jeremy Clarkson's sarcasm

Yeah, this whole thing is years away from being adopted into the mainstream, if it every does. Thousands of drones, carrying electrical devices and tea bags, flying over highly populated areas, all having to avoid each other, and people.

What happens when every single supermarket and retailer decides to offer a drone service? Or the Post Office? Who has priority, and who has the ultimate responsibility when things go titsup?

It could work as a highly specialized service (for emergency supplies for example) or for people wanting to pay a fortune for immediate delivery, but we'll see.

How to solve a Rubik's Cube in five seconds

Hey, Bishop. Do the thing with the knife

That's pretty amazing. I thought a banjo player's fingers on a fret board were quick. I wonder how long it would take to arrange the each side of the cube in every possible combination, one after the other, using only the human hand and mind. Don't desert me boffins!

Doctor Who: The Hybrid finally reveals itself in the epic Heaven Sent

Mmm, I just don't get it

When I say that, it's a reference to Dr Who in general. What is so good about these shows? Why do they attract almost universal praise (same applies to Adele while we're at it, but then again I'm not a middle aged divorcee or 14 year old girl, so why would I get Adele?)

The most recent incarnations of Dr Who (the last 10 years), or at any rate the ones that Ive been forced to watch before we acquired a second Sky box, just seem shallow. Aliens intent on destroying humanity, the good Dr uses Dawkins-like logic and time travel to save us. That's is. Add the occasional love interest, family feud, and off we go.

Also, for someone able to transverse time and space at will, he does seem very fond of suburban London in the very recent past. But then again, recent incarnations were seemingly fixated with abandoned quarries, in the mid 1970s. Or abandoned shopping malls, in the 1970s.

Still, lots of people like it, which is a guarantee of quality. I guess.