Posts by katrinab

The iPhone 15 has a Goldilocks issue: Too big or too small. Maybe a case will make it just right

Re: Phones are lovely but they'd be much better without cameras

Being able to take a photo of a document and copy/paste the text is useful. You don't need an SLR for that, and the SLR wouldn't work as well anyway.

Re: Phones are lovely but they'd be much better without cameras

The reason the back isn't made out of metal is because of inductive charging. So the choices are glass, plastic, or maybe some sort of ceramic.

Re: Phones are lovely but they'd be much better without cameras

I would prefer it if they had a camera strip like the Google Pixel phones. Then the phone will sit on the table without moving around, and slightly raised towards you.

I guess I will have to hand back my Apple Fan-girl card now ...

Google on trial: Feds challenge deals that set your web search defaults

There is this little-known obscure desktop operating system called Windows, where Google isn't the default search engine. But most people still choose to install Chrome on it rather than use the bundled web-browser.

Why Chromebooks are the new immortals of tech

Indeed. I only once had to make use of my pre-update backup to roll-back an upgrade to a new major release, and that was because rclone had not yet been updated to support it. I tried again a couple of months later, and that time it worked fine.

My Ivy Bridge i7 3770 runs Windows 10 just fine, and is very usable for anything other than the latest games and stuff like video editing. That is about 11 years old now, and should be good for about another 2 years. Windows 11 isn't officially supported, but with a couple of registry edits at install-time, you can get it running.

Now IBM sued for age discrim by its own HR veterans

Am I missing something?

Surely if someone is about to retire iminently, it is cheaper to just wait for that to happen than to make them redundant?

EU right to repair updates pass latest hurdle

Re: That's Phillips screwed then.....

Are they covered by the USB-C law?

I have hair straighteners that charge via USB-C. It would be nice if my shaver also did.

Sysadmin and spouse admit to part in 'massive' pirated Avaya licenses scam

Re: Similarity to "BMW's pay-as-you-toast subscription failure" article in The Register?

There is a big difference between advanced features in a VOIP system, and paying £20 per month for a power switch. The hardware version of a heater switch costs pennies. To buy, not rent.

Lawsuit claims Google Maps led dad of two over collapsed bridge to his death

Re: So answer this.

If Google Maps didn't exist, you would be using whatever the American equivalent of the A-Z maps is, and probably would stick to main roads.

Intel slaps forehead, says I got it: AI PCs. Sell them AI PCs

Re: I understand why they want to sell it

Most people don't buy hardware features, that is true, but they do buy hardware capable of running specific software.

So it is down to what software makes use of it.

As a starting point, I would look at what people are runing the requires for example Apple Neural Engine or Google Tensor Cores, and then ask if it moves sense to move that from the phone to the desktop.

For me, being able to recognise text in photos and copy/paste it, is useful. Works on my iPad with an A14, but not on my iPhone with an A11.

GNU turns 40: Stallman's baby still not ready for prime time, but hey, there's cake

Re: RMS contribution

Probably.

Windows NT started out as a micro kernel, and went that way.

So what if China has 7nm chips now, there's no Huawei it can make them 'at scale'

Re: Lay off guys

People still seem to be thinking back to when the Soviet Union + Soviet-aligned countries were the 2nd largest "country" in the world behind China.

India overtook them in the 1960s, and overtook China earlier this year.

When the Soviet Union collapsed, around 1/3 of the population was Russia, 1/3 other Soviet Union, and 1/3 aligned countries.

Now they are only a little over twice the size of the UK, and smaller than countries like Bangladesh and Nigeria. They are still the largest country in the world in terms of km², but it is mostly uninhabited.

Re: Ah, I see

Very much so. Mine has 16 normal spaces and 0 charging spaces.

Not rental though, my parking space is marked out on the title deeds.

Re: We've seen this before

I'm not sure what you consider the foreseeable future, but my guess is that at some point in the next 10 years, they will be producing stuff that is comparable to what TSMC and Samsung are producing at that time. Right now, they are about 5 years behind.

Re: Ah, I see

top 25% or so of the population by income who live in a city in a house with its own driveway / garage and don't need to drive anywhere

Re: What ?

Asianometry certainly knows is stuff. Good recommendation.

What I would say though is that SMIC aren't using EUV, they are pushing DUV to its absolute limits.

However, I think ASML is also the only company in the world that makes DUV machines.

My question is, if SMIC got hold of an EUV machine, would they be able to apply the same techniques to that, and produce even smaller chips than Samsung and TSMC?

'Small monthly payment' only thing that stands between X and bot chaos, says Musk

How much would you value using it if most other people valued it at £0/month? You are mostly there for the other people that are there.

Re: Updated version of the "Fletcher Memorial Home"?

Or this one.

Some people do pay to use X.

However, would they still pay to use it if the people who don't pay are no longer around to read their Xeets?

Buiding Excel-like UI for Uber's China ops exposed Microsoft calculation quirks

Re: Is Excel really the right tool for numerical analysis?

You no longer need to copy the formula 1000 times.

You could for example put =SEQUENCE(1000) in cell A1

In B1, you could put =A1#*2 [The # means that it references all of the cells output by the formula in A1, not just A1 itself.]

In C1, you could put =SUM(B1#)

Or, you could do =SUM(SEQUENCE(1000)*2) to get the same result.

Getting to the bottom of BMW's pay-as-you-toast subscription failure

That is because it is the principal of it.

People understand that a seat with heating elements in it is going to cost more than one without. You can decide whether it is worth paying £350 for.

People understand that Netflix has an ongoing cost to cover servers, bandwidth, royalties to film producers and so on and they can decide whether it is worth paying £16 per month.

If they are going to fit the more expensive type of seats to the car anyway, then there is no ongoing cost to BMW to allow you to use the switch to operate them.

Re: don't forget

I'm guessing the turn signal subscription must be really expensive?

Do they charge by the flash, or is it a monthly unlimited subscription?

Unity closes offices, cancels town hall after threat in wake of runtime fee restructure

Re: On false equivalences

Yes, but when Flash was a thing, the runtime was free to install.

Also, it is less important now because there are alternatives, but their PDF reader is free.

Amazon unleashes Gen AI for product descriptions, curbs it for Kindle

Re: Amazon has offered product from brands called CARWORNIC and TBMPOY

Just looking at some random shoe brands that come up:

Wealsex

Covidi

Wbdk

Vocntvy

Noagenjt

Mgnlrti

Dkny [actually that is a real brand]

Dghm

Re: Amazon has offered product from brands called CARWORNIC and TBMPOY

I'm almost certain these names are made up by random letter generators that are filtered against the trademark database.

No AI involved, just the sort of random number generator you could program on a 1980s computer.

Google promises eternity of updates for Chromebooks – that's a decade for everyone else

The SSL stuff needs updates otherwise it will basically stop working.

Re: Probably smart move

I parsed it as XXIII without particularly thinking about the fact that it was invalid.

Stoner Cats NFT project declawed for being an unregistered security

Re: Get Rich Quick

Nope.

Re: Get Rich Quick

The only get rich quick scheme that works is selling get rich quick schemes.

Dutch consumer groups sue Google over its entire business model

Re: Illness

I'm guessing the attraction of Coutts to rich people is that they can flash their card around and let people know they are rich, which only works if normal people actually know that Coutts is a rich person's bank. Otherwise it is an obscure bank that nobody has heard of, and flashing the card doesn't have the desired effect.

How to snoop on passwords with this one weird trick (involving public Wi-Fi signals)

Apple Keychain uses TouchID/FaceID, so I don't need to worry about that. I'm pretty sure Google's password manager is the same on Android.

Surely passwords usually get transmitted as a single packet when you tap the login button rather than as indivitual keystrokes? Which would make this technique useless?

And most of the time, you don't actually type them in, you load them in from your keychain / password manager?

These days you can teach old tech a bunch of new tricks

Re: A first?

Indeed. How could anyone "enjoy" that POS. If you want to run software from that era, put it on Windows 98 SE.

Lightning struck: Apple switches to USB-C for iPhone 15 lineup

Re: "can reach out for help when there's no cell signal coverage over satellite connections"

That was only for 911/999/112 etc calls, not vehicle breakdown.

Re: "can reach out for help when there's no cell signal coverage over satellite connections"

Your breakdown insurer needs to be set up to receive the messages, and needs to have an app that is capable of transmitting them.

For me, it is because my 8+ is getting a bit old now.

Re: "can reach out for help when there's no cell signal coverage over satellite connections"

You can select from a choice of pre-prepared text messages to send. It will help you align the phone perfectly with the sky to send it, and it will take a few minutes to send.

Local governments aren't businesses – so why are they force-fed business software?

Re: It needs to be asked

I think it is both.

Re: Forced-fed???

One big difference:

If I pay a private company to do something, I agree the price, and make sure I get what I paid for. It doesn't matter to me that every penny I paid them was used to deliver what I ordered.

If I give a council funding to replace crumbly school roofs, they must use that money to replace crumbly school roofs, they can't divert it to other budgets. This is something that a standard accounting ledger can't deal with.

Local Authorities follow the Code of Practive on Local Authority Accounting issued by the Institute of Public Finance Accounting.

Yes the debits and credits are the same, but there are a lot of additional requirements that don't apply to regular commercial companies.

Things like how to deal with restricted funds, how to deal with assets purchased using restricted funds.

For example, if you were to get funding to replace crumbly school roofs, you can only spend it on school roofs, not on anything else. There will be a time limit on how long you have to spend the money, or you have to send it back. Then if you were to sell the school building in the future, its value might have increased as a result of it having a non-crumbly roof and there will almost certainly be rules that state it must be used to buy or build another school building.

Re: It was only after the implementation began that they revealed that they couldn't.

The point isn't that they are more or less complex than private enterprises, the point is that they are different.

Linux 6.6's in-kernel SMB networking server graduates

Re: Bootnote

My settings are

[timemachine]

comment = timemachine

path = /pool/timemachine

force group = "Domain Users"

directory mode = 0777

force directory mode = 0777

create mode = 0666

force create mode = 0666

vfs objects = zfsacl catia fruit streams_xattr

fruit:volume_uuid = 119e171f-1b88-4304-afd4-e378b90921e4

fruit:metadata = stream

fruit:model = MacSamba

fruit:posix_rename = yes

fruit:zero_file_id = yes

fruit:veto_appledouble = no

fruit:wipe_intentionally_left_blank_rfork = yes

fruit:delete_empty_adfiles = yes

fruit:time machine = yes

available = yes

read only = no

browsable = yes

public = yes

writable = yes

I also have avahi-daemon which provides the Apple Bonjour stuff that lets the Mac know of the Time Machine's existence.

Power grids tremble as electric vehicle growth set to accelerate 19% next year

Re: For many of us, hybrids make more sense than BEVs

Are you suggesting you can get electricity for 2.76p/kWh? No chance of that.

Or £2.76/kWh? It isn't quite that bad yet. Give it another couple of years though.

Or maybe you are confused with 5p vs £5? It seems to be a very British thing to quote prices in our subdivision unit of currency. 5p = £0.05.

Re: For many of us, hybrids make more sense than BEVs

"It was clear by 2011 that EV's actually use about 1/3 the energy of fossil fuelled vehicles"

Not quite. They are more efficient from plug to wheel because most of the efficiency losses have taken place before the electricity reaches your wall socket.

If you were to charge up your electric car from a petrol powered generator, I don't think it would use 2-3 times less petrol than if you put the petrol directly into a petrol-powered car. You would maybe see some savings from not having the engine idle when not driving at 0km/h. Hybrids and stop/start engines also give you those efficiency gains.

Re: For many of us, hybrids make more sense than BEVs

Public chargers are taxed at 20%, domestic electricity at 5%, so there is already precedent for this.

Most miles are driven by people who drive lots of miles, and you can’t drive many miles on a 13A plug. My guess is if you want anything bigger than that at home, they will put it on a separate meter and tax it st a higher rate.

Re: For many of us, hybrids make more sense than BEVs

They are not.

1 litre of petrol costs about £1.50. That is equivalent to 9.7kWh, so about 15.5p/kWh.

1 kWh of electricity at a public charger costs about 70p.

Electric cars are more efficient than petrol cars, but somewhere between 2 - 3 times more efficient, not 4.5 times.

If I was able to charge my car overnight at home, it would be about 14p/kWh. But overnight rates run from 1:30am to 8:30am where I am, so if I have to drive to work, I'm only going to realistically get about 5 hours. Daytime rate is about 40p/kWh, that is probably going to be about the same or possibly a little more expensive than petrol.

Guy who ran Bitcoins4Less tells Feds he had less than zero laundering protections

Re: Cheap sentence?

I do think it is a sufficient punishment to deter other people from trying the same thing.

BMW deems drivers worthy of warmth, ends heated car seat subscription

You've already paid for the heating elements to be fitted in the seats, they are just charging you extra to use them, and going to extra expense to make the car less functional by restricting access to this feature.

I'm OK with charging a subscription for things like a revenue camera database, because that is something that needs to be updated, and that requires extra work beyond what it took to get your car in its completed state to the BMW dealer forecourt.

Just give me a convenient place to put my phone though, as I would prefer to use that for things like navigation.

AI to replace 2.4 million jobs in the US by 2030, many fewer than other forms of automation

Fortan had it figured out in 1957, but that is a programming language.

My point is, that we are not yet at a place where a computer can read a load of books on a subject and actually apply the knowledge to problems rather than just regurgitate it. For this reason, I think LLMs are fundamentally flawed, and while there may be use-cases for them, it is far from the magic bullet that some people think it is.