Posts by AK565

Apple said to be removing charger, headphones from upcoming iPhone 12 series

I mentioned the Audi Olympic rings to a friend once. He looked at me as one looks at a young child who's rather slow on the uptake, "No, those are 4 cockrings rings and if you'd ever watched any German gay porn you'd know that."

I'm still not sure what to make of his comment. I have sampled the genre a few times..... I found myself getting distracted by all sorts of ancillary weirdness, shall we say.

As for Audi drivers, 2 weeks after paying off my car a year early I was on a rain soaked highway one morning when this wanker couldn't decide whether to bear left or right at a split. He then chose to stop in the middle to figure things out. I was just congratulating myself on having avoided this A6 when I was rear-ended (and not in a good way) by van. Meanwhile the Audi wanker made his decision and sped off. I was not amused.

A memo from the distant future... June 2022: The boss decides working from home isn't the new normal after all

Re: "Working from home is a privilege not a right"

Exactly, and the most upwardly mobile tend to be the first out the door. And then management is mystified as to why quality and quantity of work completed drops. I'd like to say "pretends to be mystified", but all too often the puzzlement appeared genuine.

I'm going with it being a control thing.

Re: It would be so easy to pick apart so many of these points....

Points for the use of "wirehead".

Several times when I worked in a corporate environment I came in to work during severe snowstorms. The place was a ghost town. The phone hardly rang bec most those who'd be calling were home. Afterward my bosses would ask me how I got so much done. I always gave the same answer, "I wasn't interrupted." The answer usually left them befuddled.

Re: Executive double-speak

Working from home literally adds 4 hours to my day EVERY workday. 3 hour commute plus 1 hour of extra sleep as I don't have to do as much to 'get ready' in the morning. I also save about $400 per month in commuting and lunch expenses.

Re: New Normal?

You said the key word, "naked". I haven't worn anything below the waist since lockdown began, save footwear and gentleman's bits & bobs, leather or Stainless Steel. I've no desire to wear pants for a three hour round trip just to appease managers who admit they know nothing of my job.

I imagine at some point the naturist groups I belong to will resume in-person meetings. In the spirit of compromise I'll come into the office the usual T/Th those groups meet.

Re: New Normal?

Thank you. I've never been able to figure out how an office plan that maximizes distractions is supposed to improve productivity.

Re: New Normal?

I'm actually quite impressed by the "up to two dozen" part. Personally, when I'm in a group larger than 5 that sucks balls I find it rather difficult to keep track of activities, regardless of how beneficial they might be. As an observer I've noted that groups larger than 5 have a tendency to divide into smaller groups. I've formulated a few theories, but it's become clear more data is needed.

NASA scientists mull sending a spacecraft on a 13-year mission to visit Neptune's 'bizarre' moon, Triton

Re: Faster!

Those of us of a certain age were promised nuclear powered flying cars, colonies on the moon with excursions to the dark side. We were also promised vacations on Mars where we could ski down mountains of unimaginable heights. Oh, and long before anyone even thought of "The Energy Crisis" we were promised limitless electricity from nuclear power. Our ships and airplanes would also be nuclear powered. Speaking of airplanes, supersonic airliners were supposed to be phasing out about now in favor of sub-orbital hypersonic planes that would cut NYC - London from three hours to ONE.

THAT is why us folk approaching retirement age are so cranky all the time. We want the tech we were promised!

Big Tech trade association warns Uncle Sam against knee-jerk national security measures that harm industry

Nice thoughts, but.....

I'm afraid there's is a larger, overarching problem. All of this is far, far too complicated for the orange one to understand. You need to work around him. Full stop.

Trump's Make Space Great Again video pulled after former 'naut says: Nope

Make America Great Britain Again

The thought has occurred. The main 'donor states' (pay more to D.C. than they get back) might be interested. NY, NJ, Mass., Conn. are in the top 5 and the rest of New England would prob go along. Do you think the Queen would take us back? From this side of the pond it certainly looks like you guys are doing better than we are.

Re: 450 cities protesting racism

I actually grew up not far from Plymouth, Mass of pilgrim fame. ' Religious dissidents' was the phrase used. SOme were zealots and some weren't. Zealotry tended to wane among those who stayed on the East Coast and wax among those who moved west. The revolution? The teaching was that George ignored the colonists'rights as British subjects so it was his own damn fault the whole thing happened.

Speaking of monarchs.... Some people here in the north east US have been wondering..... Do you think if we asked really, really nicely the Queen would take back New England, NY, and NJ? NY, NJ, Conn., and Mass. all pay way more in taxes than we get back from DC so we can offer a sweet deal. Pretty please?

Indian app that deleted Chinese apps from Androids deleted from Play Store

Re: the common denominator in all of those disputes.

Agreed with an upvote.

I'd like to add that 'Islam' is nearly as broad a label as 'Christianity'. Just as some Christian groups regard other Christian groups as heretical, so do some groups within Islam.

Example: a few years back several imams from a rather strict variety of Islam showed up uninvited at the Polish mosque in Brooklyn, NY, US and told the Imam there he was doing things 'wrong' and tried to 'correct' the situation. The Polish imam sent them on their way quite quickly.

Yes, Poland has had Muslims since the 1400's or so. Most of them lived in the areas the Soviets took after WWII.

GSMA report: Sorry, handset makers, 5G is not going to save the smartphone market

Keep the shiny-shiny....

Are those of us who actually do shit with our phones really such a small segment of the buying public?

If I could have my way I'd want a BBerry 9900 or Nokia e70 with a large enough screen for my clients to e-sign forms with their finger. Imd like a battery to actually last a day and the phone tought enough to handle the occasional tumble onto concrete or dip into water.

As for speed, what do you need for decent video calling? Sign language is a bitch with less than 1080p 30f/s. But IIRC, even decent 3G can give that or am I mistaken?

Beyond that, I don't care. From what I read, most El Reg readers don't either. So what's wrong with these cell phone manufacturers?

Mind your language: Microsoft set to swing the axe on 27 languages in iOS Outlook

Re: I can type any language I want?

Agreed. Here's the thing. There are actually TWO Americas. The Coasts&Great Lakes and the Interior. Most well off, white, adult males in the interior have no idea that most of the white adult males in the world are nothing like them except for skin, hair, and eye color. Nearly all are non-ethnic, monolingual English speakers who are utterly convinced they are at the center, are the norm, are what's 'right'. There's no changing them. Their response to Covid19? I rest my case.

Re: You vill parle Amrecianish Da!

Adding words to the dictionary changes nothing? Good, I'm not the only one with that problem then.

Yes, American are much worse than Brits with monolingualism. More likely than not most of the people involved with writing that list had never heard of half the languages. And if the languages were actually important they would have heard of them. Yes, that's the way a distressingly large number of Americans think. Remember, we're talking about people who think the Bible was originally written in English. They also think Jesus was white and spoke English.

Huge if true... Trump explodes as he learns open source could erode China tech ban

Re: Thailand is opening up

Agreed. The problem appears to be the word "so" in your second sentence. Most Americans don't have the background knowledge of how common sickness spreads therefore it's unlikely the cause/effect relationship you're pointing out will be understood or accepted.

More basic is that many Americans can't / won't process the fact that the spread of disease is not contingent upon what humans understand or accept.

Of course this makes no sense. Yet, here we are.

US govt can talk about the end of lockdown, but Silicon Valley says 'as long as it takes' – and Twitter says 'WFH forever'

Re: It has been a strange couple of months

1 or 2 days in the office, the rest at home is my preferred compromise. While I miss the opportunity to bounce ideas off coworkers, I'm more efficient with the routine tasks home alone. My r/t commute was three hours and had almost a mile of walking so that might influence my view.

Author of infamous Google diversity manifesto drops lawsuit against web giant

Re: i knew this thread would quickly devolve into sticks and stones

"Cis" (or not) is an objective fact. But I don't think that's your point. IMO, an ongoing problem is these kinds of issues tend to attract people who are more interested in ranting and railing than in addressing any actual issue. Regarding "cis" itself.... I'd say half the time I hear it, being cis or not is completely irrelevant to the conversation. So using the word simply announces the speaker has his own agenda and doesn't give a shit about the conversation. So you're probably right to be pissed off at its usage.

Fun fact: You know that nauseating LGBTQIA++++++ ? Most people who are members of those communities have no idea what 3/4 of those letters actually mean and don't care. Oh, and before anyone says anything, I'm 'G' myself so I'll call it nauseating all I please.

I'm getting offf my soapbox now.

Re: re: evil Corp

My gay, Greek orthodox friend gets daily adverts on book face for "real Muslim brides". So there is that.

Re: re: evil Corp

Why do so few realise? A couple of things:

1. Many people are working more hours than their counterparts did 20 or 30 years ago. The discretionary time to keep up on this isn't physically there.

2. Keeping up on this requires a shitload more time & energy than it did even 10 years ago.

3. It's simply too complicated for the average person to understand.

I'm really confident I'm one of the least tech savvy subscribers here. At the same time, I know much more than the average person. Feel like I'm 2/3 of the way to the right on the Dunning-Kruger curve. I know enough to know that I'm really not that knowledgeable, yet I'm surrounded by "experts" who crowd the left end of the curve and try to tell me I "don't really understand" how google works and that I'm being ridiculous with my concerns.

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Spacecraft with graphene sails powered by starlight and lasers

Re: Well... Laptop as weapon

True. I had no idea when I bought my ThinkPad x200s I was buying the laptop equivalent of the Nokia 3310.

and here I was thinking I was being all witty posting a Kzinti reference further up the page........

Motes ...

Aha! I knew I'd read of this somewhere before...

One of Niven's ships used such a laser to maintain contact with earth. The crew didn't think of it as a weapon therefore the craft was determined to unarmed by a Kzinti telepath. However a few crew members knew better and used said laser to obliterate the Kzinti when they attacked.

Q of the day: Why is 'Kzinti' already in my phone's dictionary?

Vivaldi browser to perform a symphony of ad and tracker blocking with version 3.0

Re: It's not bad

You're referring to Opera Blink, I assume?

Re: It's not bad

For those of us who are a bit slow, you mean Opera with Presto?

Intelsat orbital comms satellite is back online after first robo-recovery mounting and tug job gets it back into position

Do you perhaps mean 9x5? I ask because 5x9 sounds very uncomfortable.

COBOL-coding volunteers sought as slammed mainframes slow New Jersey's coronavirus response

Volunteers???

I'm really stuck on this point. My brain can't process that TPTB actually want highly trained professionals (of ANY field) to work for free. I get asking people to "volunteer" to come out of retirement and go back to work. But to ask them to work for free is pretty ballsy.

Are TPTB working for free? I doubt it highly.

Re: Over thinking this?

Silly me, I took all this as a given.

I agree, but you forgot to mention that most non-tech management assumes that tech people don't understand what's "really" going on or how things "really" work in the "real" world. They also assume that tech people really want the equipment for their own pet projects that aren't work related.

The whole volunteer thing is just absurd. Why would anyone do that? You want access to a person's skills? Then you pay for it. This applies across the board: programmers, doctors, nurses, interpreters, teachers, etc. It's a safe bet the people calling for volunteers aren't themselves volunteering.

Windows 7 will not go gentle into that good night: Ageing OS refuses to shut down

Re: Microsoft has a long history of sabotaging products which they want their customers to replace.

Not only Nexus...

I had a Motorola Razr M which I loved. After an update (4.2 to 4.4?) battery life literally dropped by half. It only took a minute of searching to find this was a near universal problem.

Neither the first nor last time this has happened. Something New!Shiny! comes out and older models mysteriously start developing problems.

Fed-up air safety bods ban A350 pilots from enjoying cockpit coffees

Have to admit, this is prob the most entertaining article I've read here.

Banning coffee? I assume some time next week there'll be a follow-up about how a decaffeinated flight crew increases passenger safety.

Seriously, the comic material is endless. I wouldn't be surprised if this wound up being a Key & Peele (sp?) skit.

The BlackBerry may be dead, but others are lining up to take its place

Blackberry should license their keyboards (even SureType) to other manufacturers to make case covers, battery backs, snap-ons, and handheld BlueTooth units all with their keyboards. And they should license the software for their touch screen keyboards. I'd love a 9900, Q10, or SureType keyboard for my iPhone.

I'd've bought a Key2 if it'd been less expensive or came with a deal from my carrier the way my iPhone 8+ did.

Beware the Friday afternoon 'Could you just..?' from the muppet who wants to come between you and your beer

Re: „I use Macintosh“

For those of you der haben Deutsch studiert, a professor once told us, "For dative plural stick an -(e)n on the word, but if it looks really stupid just take it off."

Same professor: " -(e)n or -(e)m: you can't tell the difference at conversational speed anyway, so it really doesn't matter. Either one is sufficient for grammatical clarity."

Re: „I use Macintosh“

Why do you have to teach English? It's quite simple: a large number of English teachers don't know English grammar. I was working in an ESL class once and a student asked the difference between "who" and "whom". The teacher replied that if it's before the verb the proper form is "who" and "whom" if it is after the verb".

I remained professional and refrained from trying to takeover the class. To this day I'm proud of that.

Microsoft boffin inadvertently highlights .NET image woes by running C# on Windows 3.11

Re: 'Facts' are historically situated

Part of the problem is what Dilbert called something like "automatic application of the corollary".

Eg. Most Corvettes are owned by males aged 35-55. Therefore most males aged 35-55 who own cars own Corvettes.

See the problem?

Here it's "Most of the time in most situations the power holders are mostly white men. Therefore most white men are power holders."

It's amazing how many people rake this mistake.

Google reveals new schedule for 'phasing out support for Chrome Apps across all operating systems'

Re: So, Google is pulling a Microsoft ?

Several times in recent years I've toyed with the idea of moving everything to Google and a Chromebook. But each time I researched I seemed to get a totally different picture of what I had to do. Now I realize I wasn't confused; it really was different each time because Google kept changing. Thanks!

The Windows Phone keeps ringing but no one's home: Microsoft finally lets platform die

Agreed. I only left BB10 because work-related apps stopped working on top of the few social/reading/research apps I used.

It's been years and I still suck at touch screen typing. It's funny, I never thought of myself as having large hands until I tried to type on a touch screen. I've tried nearly every keyboard over the years and the only one I've developed any muscle memory for is MessageEase. It's the least frustrating for extended typing and probably gives me the highest net (after corrections) wpm.

I'd still go back to BB in a second if it worked for me.

Dough! Jobs microsite for UK's data watchdog set hundreds of cookies without visitors' consent

Re: That is something the ICO is well aware of

This matches my experience. It often shows up in subtle ways. IMO, countless man-hours are lost by such things as having to explain to higher-ups that the weekly report can't be printed in color on the department's B&W printer.... And having to explain this to the same higher-ups every week.

In a touching show of solidarity with the NBA and Blizzard, Apple completely caves to China on HK protest app

Re: Google too

So of Apple and Google are crossed off the list, the alternative for a cell phone buyer is... ???

Tetraplegic patient can now move his four limbs with the help of a badass neuroprosthetic suit

Re: Truly Amazing

IIRC the upper limit for healthspan is about 115 and lifespan is about 125 due to the general breakdown of neurons in both central and peripheral systems.

IR35 blame game: Barclays to halt off-payroll contractors, goes directly to PAYE

Re: Obviously they will increase the rates by the customary amount to compensate

My previous employer fired its staff interpreters to replace us with 1099 workers contracted through an agency. As employees we could be shuffled to cover in-house needs as they arose during our shifts and 1099 workers covered holes we could not. The 1099 workers cost 66% more per hour and have a two hour minimum even if they come in to cover a 20 minute staff meeting. Just yesterday I ran into a former coworker who informed me that monthly interpretation/translation costs have more than doubled since this change was made. Yet the director who made this decision still insists the department is saving money despite it being self-evidently not the case. Yes, there is an outside funding stream for 1099 workers but it is static and did NOT increase as a result of the decision to use only 1099 workers.

As stated previously, nobody does the maths.

US immigration uses Google Translate to scan people's social media for bad posts – Er, don't do that, says everyone else

What's scary is that there're actually quite a few people who actually do think this way.

OTOH, there're also quite a few people who think that learning (or failing to learn) a language is something that randomly happens to people. I see this often in 'heritage language' situations. Those who failed to learn it more often than not refuse to acknowledge that family members who did learn it actually put any effort into it. Yes, I'm aware that makes no sense, but there you go.

Electric cars can't cut UK carbon emissions while only the wealthy can afford to own one

Actually, as a white, middle class, middle aged American male who chose a pay raise over writing a PhD dissertation I'm very confident that as a group we both spout and accept/believe a jaw-droppingly large amount of pseudo-science.

My MacBook Woe: I got up close and personal with city's snatch'n'dash crooks (aka some bastard stole my laptop)

Re: That's horrible.

I hope you're with a new lady friend.

WTF is Boeing on? Not just customer databases lying around on the web. 787 jetliner code, too, security bugs and all

Re: A Modest Proposal

That'd never happen because there'd be too much of a chance of someone having to take responsibility and/or there being actual consequences in the event of a fuck-up.

And we're back live with the state of the smartphone market in 2019. Any hope? Yeah, nah

Re: Sales 101: When you can't sell by adding new features, take away existing ones.

I wish I could give this more than one thumbs up. Software 'updates' that reduced battery life and/or caused my phone to become 'too old' for needed apps are the main reasons I've changed phones.

As many as 100,000 IBM staff axed in recent years as Big Blue battles to reinvent itself from IT's 'old fuddy duddy'

Re: no wonder IBM is dying

Erasure.

Exactly. They fire their doohickey expert and when the doohickey breaks down they have no idea what to do. So they scrap the doohickey and replace it with a thingamabob that costs twice as much to buy and run. This is followed by a claim that buying the dookickey was a mistake to begin with. Ridiculous? That's my point.

Hell hath no fury like a radar engineer scorned

Re: Can this inform the 5G debate?

"Differently realitied" ... I am SO stealing that!

I'm forever searching for politically correct ways to convey concepts like "reality denial", "delusional", etc.

Thank you :-)

Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean Google isn't listening to everything you say

Re: Why do people put this in their homes?

This is a good point. After being an El Reg subscriber for several years I'm confident I'm one of the least tech-savvy readers. Yet i'm MILES ahead of John Q. Public, at least in the US. Most people have no idea that the privacy issues discussed here even exist, much less how such iasues could affect their lives.

Tesla’s Autopilot losing track of devs crashing out of 'leccy car maker

Re: Autonomous driving is months, years, or decades away

So with FSD I'd give up all the control but none of the responsibility? In what universe does that work?