Posts by ilovesaabaeros

Poland bans camera-packing cars made in China from military bases

Re: related but unrelated

It can be worse than that. I have an MG EV (I really like it, mostly) but the driver "assistance" features are terrible. The speed limit warning one especially believes that all UK National Speed Limits are 60mph, so on a motorway or dual carriageway where it's 70mph it nags constantly that you are speeding. Thankfully it can be disabled easily, but it has to be disabled evert time you start the car, which is annoying.

The steering assist stays off thankfully, since that will steer you back into the pothole you are swerving around unless you indicate. The only good "assistance" thing on it is the automatic cruise control, it's so much more smooth and comfortable than any other system I have experienced, even in supposedly higher end cars like Mercs and Volvos.

House of Lords votes to ban social media for Brits under 16

Re: only the parents

I was absolutely astonished earlier this week at the level of guidance some parents offer. I was standing at the ticket machine in a multi-storey car park waiting for it to complete "Authorising Transaction", a process that took several minutes for some reason. Anyway, as I stood there, a young boy of about 7 came up the stairs with his parents and stopped to piss in the corner, about 3 feet from me and it started running downhill towards my feet. When the mother asked why he had stopped, the father said "He's just taking a leak".

I almost said something, but the chances of being stabbed stopped me. There definitely should be a licence to breed.

Newly launched civil service pension portal from Capita is crapita, users report

The previous version had my start of service as 1906 for many years. Unfortunately the extra 90 years of benefits were not part of the calculation.

Britain's 5G experience 'among the worst in Europe' says MedUX

All the bars, no connection

I have a newish phone, Pixel 8, and often get several bars of 5G signal (1p Mobile on EE) but can do absolutely nothing with them about 80% of the time*. There is no way for me to force 4G either, it seems that the ability to do that is dictated by the network and either 1p or EE have determined that their users are not allowed to make that choice. I would be perfectly happy with a stable 4G connection for my mobile data needs, it covers maps and browsing for places to visit/eat/stay etc. just fine; as others have said, who is realistically watching movies all day on a phone screen, and of those who do, I presume most are using WiFi anyway, unless they have unlimited data packages.

*The major exception seems to be Nottingham, where I did a speedtest for fun and used a sizeable portion of my data package in no time at all, I got >600Mbps, which was nice.

Uncle Sam kills funding for CVE program. Yes, that CVE program

You could buy a used one, that way the money doesn't go to the US. They seem to be pretty well made and last a long time, we have been eyeing them up recently too.

UK ponders USB-C as common charging standard

Re: Public opinion?

Whilst a) and b) are very sensible suggestions, unfortunately c) won't help prolong the coffee machine. Brita and other carbon/charcoal filters don't soften water and it's the limescale that kills things.

We live in a very hard water area (Thames Valley) and recently had a whole house softener installed and the difference is staggering. No limescale on the sinks, round the taps or in the kettle. Shampoo and shower gel lasts at least twice as long since you don't need as much to get the same lather.

I reckon it will pay for itself in a few years due to reduced shampoo & descaler bills alone.

Re: What next?

With their 3 billion lumen strobe lights on the front of the bike. If a car had them fitted there would be fines and other unpleasantness, but cyclists appear to be able to fit whatever flashing lights they like. I think standard bike lights should be a thing. None of them should flash.

One-year countdown to 'biggest Ctrl-Alt-Delete in history' as Windows 10 approaches end of support

Re: Making the decision for me --

The progress bar could be a glass that slowly fills with Pepsi!

Smart homes may be a bright idea, just not for the dim bulbs who live in 'em

Re: X10

The Freely comment resonates with me; we have a satellite dish and are after a Freesat receiver/recorder. Looking about, the only real option are the £200+ Freesat branded ones, since the others all seem to not get any firmware updates any longer. Some research I did implies Freesat is dying and won't really exist after a few years, maybe 2030 if we're lucky, so I figured spending lots on a box with a known short lifetime was pointless and then saw Freely was a thing. I get good internet so streaming it would be fine, but wait, you have to buy a whole new TV, no set top boxes are available. I have a perfectly good LG 4k TV, no need to change it yet, why bin it for a new one made by TCL or Hisense (seem to be the only options for Freely TVs at present, no idea on their longevity)?

Since it's just streaming, why not release an app for Android TV boxes, I have an Nvidia Shield that is more than capable of doing the job, I suspect it's far more powerful than whatever ARM/Android gubbins is inside the low cost Freely TVs anyway.

Sorry. Rant over. It's fresh in my mind, I went too far down the free to air TV rabbit hole this weekend!

Valve powers up Arch Linux – because who needs Windows when you have a Steam Deck?

Re: Woa - desktops = production??

Definitely. I have had the same desktop since 1991. I mean, there is literally nothing of the original left, but it has organically morphed over the years from its humble 286 origins to what it is today. Same computer though!

Electric vehicles earn shocking report card for reliability

Re: 10-12 year warranty

"All mains gas boilers on the market in the UK have at least a 10 year warranty."

Not true, my new build house has an Ideal boiler with a pathetic 2 year warranty.

HP exec says quiet part out loud when it comes to locking in print customers

Re: Honestly....

Agilent is now Keysight, they keep changing the name!

Re: Honestly....

I made the vow never to buy another HP product about 15 years ago. I was posted from the UK to the US with work for a few years and took an HP 6 colour photo inkjet with me. It printed great photos and the ink was not cripplingly expensive, so I quite liked it. Eventually I needed a new cartridge (yellow as I recall) and bought one from a store, same model number as the one I took out. Once fitted, it moaned that there was a region incompatibility.

Region coding DVDs etc was a bad enough money grab but you could almost see through the lies and accept the release dates excuse for it, but region coded ink can only be for profit reasons. HP offered to change the region of my printer for me as a one-off gesture of good will, provided I paid to ship it to them and back. I shipped it straight to the bin and have never bought another HP product since. Or inkjet printer for that matter.

Tesla swerves liability in Autopilot death lawsuit

Re: Self Drive

The lane warning which snatches the wheel back when it thinks you are drifting over the white line is really annoying on anything other than a dual carriageway or larger in my experience. I used to get regular access to Hyundai Ioniq pool cars with the feature and every time I tried to avoid a pothole (most of the time these days) on a single carriageway road, it obviously thought I had fallen asleep and would take over and drive me back into the flaming pothole. After a few experiences like that I turned the "safety" feature off before moving away from the car park.

Microsoft's 11-year itch: The uncelebrated anniversary of Windows 8

The biggest issue for me with touch screen input on laptops is that I hate having a mucky smudged screen when I am using the device. Phones are ok because they are small enough to be wiped on your sleeve every now and then, but larger screens need more effort to clean.

I had a Lenovo Yoga for a time and it folded 180 degrees into a large and heavy tablet like device, it was a fun thing to do once or twice for the novelty, but I never used it in anger.

If anyone finds an $80M F-35 stealth fighter, please call the Pentagon

Wasn't Secombe's response something like "What colour was it?". I seem to recall reading that somewhere.

Are meta, self-referential or recursive science-fiction films doomed?

Re: Ready Player One

I felt the same. I related very closely to the book having played many of the games and seen the movies as someone born in the 70s. The film has very few of those references in it and the whole storyline is only the same insofar as they are looking for something to prevent the bad guys getting it - the journey on how they get there is so different from the book.

I think taken on its own merit, it's a fairly fun film with good special effects and had I not read the book, I would have really liked it. As it was, I enjoyed it, but am now listening to the audiobook version again!

Screw luxury fridges, you can now run webOS on your Raspberry Pi

Re: Web OS TV

I have a c. 18 month old LG 4k TV with WebOS (v2 I think). It's mostly great, however some of the apps, notably Netflix and iPlayer have annoying habits.

Netflix will randomly stop and appear to buffer, either halting at 25% or 99% complete and get no further. The only way to sort it is turn the TV off and back on again.

iPlayer stutters, predictably about once a minute, it's like it's skipping 1 frame of the programme.

I originally thought it was network related, but it doesn't appear to be, wired or wifi make no difference and other devices stream the same content from the same source and network socket/router just fine.

I will be trying this on a Pi, just to see if the problems persist.

HP Inc's rinky-dink ink stink: Unofficial cartridges, official refills spurned by printer DRM

I gave up on HP when they region coded ink

I moved from the UK to the US for several years and took a really nice HP photo printer (model escapes me, maybe an 8350?) with me. I bought a genuine yellow ink tank only for the printer to refuse to print since it was from the wrong region! HP offered to reset the region for me, if I shipped it to them at my cost and paid US$85 to have it shipped back afterwards. For a printer that cost me £50...

It went straight in the bin and I bought a US$50 monochrome Brother laser instead. Piccies get printed at Photobox or equivalent or on a dye-sub postcard printer instead now. Never buying another HP product.