Posts by myithingwontcharge 85 publicly visible posts • joined 22 Aug 2016
The way quantum entanglement can be described is like a pair of socks. If I give you one of my socks and then travel to the other side of the universe, you have no idea which sock you have.
But then if I put my sock on my right foot, your sock instantly becomes the left sock, faster than the speed of light would allow you to see my feet.
Of course what you can do with that knowledge is where the research is being done. At present we're only just learning to walk, bare foot.
"These subscription costs are below Garmin Inreach or Spot. But I suppose the crowds for those won't switch to fragile smartphones"
The problem with a subscription for this sort of thing is that it's a service only for emergencies. I cant imagine many average people (obvious edge cases such as explorers and remote populations excepted) paying £/€/$60/year for the ability to send a 999/112 text, just in case they have the extremly rare event of an accident and no coverage from any network. Then for those that don't, there's the possibility of bad publicity when it turns out your brand of phone didn't allow emergency access when it could have done. I'm not sure that's even legal.
Frankly they'd probably make more money by charging several £/$/€ per message and allowing texts to anyone. At least then many users would spend some money once in a while just to see if it works.
Though I suspect they technically can't, as the return channel for any replies would be just as expensive.
"The advertisers will keep coming as long as there are eyeballs on the site"
Thats not really how advertising works. Want to sell sugar water to the public? Then you need to make it look classy and fun. There's very little of that left in Twitters image and now many negative associations that didn't exist before, so advertising your product on the site risks doing more harm than good to many brands. Ironically, the more users remain, the worse the damage to a brand could be. Brands don't like that kind of risk.
Quote: "I really do think that for critical infrastructure such as Gas,Electricity and Telecoms there should be a state owned national fibre network, with access available on an equal basis to anybody who wants to sell to end customers. "
The fact we already have an effective broadband monopoly in many parts of the country is why fibre prices are high and availability poor. We need more competition, not none. As an example, Openreach often seem to add fibre to an area only when prompted by the plans of a competitor.
Just ask anyone who experienced it how bad the phone network was under the monopoly of the GPO or who has to deal with the Australian national broadband omnishambles.
" in the majority of cases it's been local news websites"
It may appear to be just a news website, but the fact they're concerned about complying with the utterly trivial requirements of data privacy that should require, strongly implies they're mining and selling personal data in dangerous and immoral ways.
"Before Musk, Twitter banned the sitting president of the USA but allowed the Taliban to remain on the platform and openly and gleefully ignored all antisemitism."
To be fair, Twitter didn't ban Trump until after he tried to overthrow the elected government. That's actually a crime in the US, a country that has some rather strange (to outsiders) "free speech" rules.
The Taliban on the other hand are a government, no matter how abhorrent that may be.
"If you're perfectly happy with CP/M on some old 8088 based system, good for you"
While CPM/86 can run on an 8088, thats really an OS upgrade too far. Better true CP/M on an 8080 or (if you're one of the cool modern kids) a Z80 as an OS shouldn't need 16 bit hardware just for an upgrade. :-)
"think USB-C really is a single standard instead of a confusing mishmash of different PD levels"
USB-C is infinity better than the confusing and undocumented mishmash of USB-A and micro-USB current ratings and the many user issues they cause. Yes your Iphone will fast charge, but only if the charger is rated at least 2.1 amps. You plugged an Ipad into the 1A USB-A charger that came with your Iphone? Why on earth would you expect that to work? What do you mean the plugs are identical and theres absolutely no indication it wouldn't? It's clearly documented in light grey on light grey 1mm high text inside the charging port, right next to the sign that says "beware of the leopard".
I expect the EU knew exactly what they were doing which is why they've made the right decision. They gave the industry a decade to get their shit together and the industry only made things worse.
Just out of interest what stops you SSHing into a separate Linux machine, VPS or VM as most dev teams would (no matter what their desktop OS)? Given the variable support for WSLg (which would be very useful to roll out Linux apps to Windows users and I've always suspected was the final intention) I'm guessing most people are only using WSL for command line stuff at the moment, which in my experience causes more issues than it solves compared to just SSHing to a real computer (where's the file system gone, why can't I connect to the IP address, how have the permissions got mangled etc)?
"Focus on essentials first "
You mean all the things brexit broke and the country (including all my local Tesco stores it seems) now has no staff and resources to fix. I wish him good luck. :-)
Hint: That was actually the original issue and blaming the press and public for it is just gaslighting.
It's not panic buying if there's a real shortage. It's not panic buying if you can see the shelves are already empty. It's not panic buying if over 1/4 of garages are not getting deliveries and you need to get to hospital. It's the media's job to report that and they would be failing if they didn't.
Buying the next brand is fine until it runs out, or you're allergic to one of the ingredients, or there are no other brands left. Stop blaming the problem on the symptoms, we should all know the actual cause of the problems by now.
"even though they will actually take a room on the 13th floor if it's labelled as 14 instead"
Which strikes me as monumentally more dangerous than the irrational fear of a number. "Hello fire department? Yes I'm on the 14th floor. No the 14th. What do you mean you can't find anyone there?".
In 1975 not only were there no lines available and a waiting list, but we ended up having to share a line with our neighbours* (yes really).
Tell that to kids to day....
* Then known as a "party line" in the days long before 0898 numbers, but without the fun part and still with large bills.
"You know they make Bluetooth keyboards and mice, right? What is your objection to solving your problem that way instead of with a USB hub?"
While they have a use case, wireless devices often cause more issues than they solve (usually due to dead batteries at a key moment). Also many people have to hotdesk and use whatever screen and keyboard is provided. If you think carrying a myriad of dongles and cables around is bad, I doubt the suggestion of a keybaord as well is going to go down well. :-)
"If Twitter is that important in someone's life, they REALLY need to re-examine their life choices."
You could say the same thing about television, newspapers or just about any communications medium.
Politicians have a duty to communicate with their citizens and have to use whatever method that population uses. If Twitter is being used by a large percentage of Indians he has a duty to use it, otherwise there would be no issue here. If Twitter are breaking the law and causing political issues in India by illegally removing posts, the government will be forced to take action.
I'm not saying that's right or wrong, it's simply the definition of a politician's job.
"Blaming that on Twitter is a little far fetched, unless he's alleging that Twitter wanted to silence him so they lied when they said there was a DCMA request."
You miss the point. DCMA does not apply in India. If Twitter are applying DCMA in India they are breaking the law.
"If they make laws with obligations that directly conflict with Twitter's obligations under US law, Twitter will be left with no other choice but to stop operating in India entirely. Maybe that's what the authors of the law intended, to allow an Indian company to take over that market?"
If Twitter can't legally stick to the law they can't do business just like anyone else. That appears to be a US law problem for US companies, not an Indian law problem. It does not prevent anyone in any other country providing a service.
"If you had a forum, did PATRIOT Act required you to setup a company in the US to process censorship requests?"
No, because the US has a policy of kidnapping or deporting under false pretenses anyone they wish to detain for years with or without trial, even if those people have committed no crime in their own country. The EU doesn't work like that, we have a justice system that requires things like evidence.
"More US companies should be doing that."
The only reason for a US company to block EU access is because they can't stick to the laws on data and consumer protection. If I was a US citizen in the US, I would be rather weary of dealing with any US company that couldn't stick to those minimum standards.
"The problem is that the law applies to services that EU citizens, not EU residents"
This is not unusual and was a precedent originally set by the USA. I think the USA even tries to tax it's citizens when they're in another country! The result is the EU is applying it's rules to protect it's citizens globally in the same way, in order to create a level playing field.
The difference of course is that EU citizens are under no obligation to report a non-EU company breaking EU rules when they're not in the EU (though they can if they wish), where as a US citizen can go to prison if they break US rules while outside the US.
Just to be clear (as it's too late to edit my ambiguous wording on re-reading), I don't necessarily agree or disagree with TERREG (or any other US or EU rules - the rules themselves are not the point of issue here). However the original poster was complaining about a lack of voting on (and the enforcement of) TERREG. The EU's requirement for an office to allow enforcement seems perfectly reasonable and actually very sensible to assist compliance with all laws. TERREG itself was voted on (though there was no final vote as that's not how that process works), it was enforcement that would not expected to be subject to a vote (since by definition lawmakers expect their laws to be enforced).
I commented below that if your country's laws force you to break the laws of another country, you can't legally do business in that other country. TERREG is just the EU's way of making sure they can (quite rightly) enforce that. People don't vote on if a law should be enforced, they vote on if the law should exist in the first place, which is why the enforcement aspect was not subject to the same voting mechanism. The only people with any reason to complain about it are criminals and terrorists.
You want to do business in the EU while hiding in a country that has lower legal standards? Well then you need to have an office in the EU so there's someone to arrest if you break the law.
Want to do business in a country? Then you have to adhere to that country's laws no matter what they are (see also Apple and China).
What's that you say? Your country forces you to break those laws in order to stick to theirs? Well then you can't legally do business in that other country.
"It a little frustrating that el reg think excel is the story here rather than “if you starve public services of cash for 10 years don’t be surprised if their systems are held together with sellotape and string”
They claim to have spend something like £12 billion on this broken bollocks. Money is not and never was the issue, it was a total lack of skills and clue. I mean they appointed Dido Harding to run the thing FFS. If that doesn't tell you that it was never expected to work and someone's just pocketed the money, nothing will.
I'm getting 800 Mbps download on Three in Birmingham which sounds amazing until you realise the upload is only 25 Mbps. That's actually less than I was getting on 4G. Since upload is pretty much all that matters to a mobile user, it almost seems like a downgrade. Seriously, we all upload videos and photos to Facebook, Twatter, the cloud etc and that's about the only thing that really needed immediate improvement and is also the one thing that many home broadband connections fail spectacularly at.
I'm not sure who designed the 5G standard but you had one job.....
>he signed up for regular updates with TomTom and forgot about it, and he's trying to blame Mazda for it.
As I read the article he signed up using the dashboard on his car. That implies that Tomtom was an option presented by Mazda and managed by their interface. Therefore he is correct to blame Mazda if wiping the car does not remove any associated subscriptions, especially if the manual implies it does.
@Cliffwilliams44
I'm not sure if that post was meant to be ironic, but either way thank you for documenting almost every attitude that's the cause of racial discrimination, by extrapolating your judgement on an entire race from a personal and statistically irrelevant sample for one role in one city where you admit you already had a cognitive bias for people that matched you and your peers.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
