I'm skeptical of a claim of "60,000 hours of drone operation". That's 30 years full-time (40 hours per week) operation.
Posts by gormful
55 publicly visible posts • joined 24 Jul 2017
NATO tests aquatic drones to protect cables, coastlines
Despite cyberattacks, water security standards remain a pipe dream
Google to kill off URL shortener once and for all
Turns out cops are super interested in subpoenaing suspects' push notifications
Not even poor Notepad is safe from Microsoft's AI obsession
The best thing about Notepad is that it has always launched instantaneously -- it allows you to write something down before you forget it.
The second-best thing about Notepad is that it just recorded what you type, not what Microsoft thinks you meant to type.
How many minutes will we have to wait for this new version to launch? And how will it improve all the phone numbers and so forth that I type?
EU launches investigation into X under Digital Services Act
HP printer software turns up uninvited on Windows systems
Microsoft kicks Calibri to the curb for Aptos as default font
Microsoft will upgrade Windows 10 21H2 users whether they like it or not
Cop a load of this DIY e-ink calendar to help plan those projects you'll never finish
NASA to send prototype robot surgeon into space
Repairability champ Framework's modular laptop gets a speed boost
MIT's thin plastic speakers fall flat. And that's by design
C: Everyone's favourite programming language isn't a programming language
New York Times outlays seven-figure sum for 1,900 lines of JavaScript – yes, we mean Wordle
Google Chrome 97 relaxes privacy protection just a little to help out Microsoft
Our (large multinational) company has a TON of internal systems of various ages. To log on to some of them in Chrome, one must first remove its cookies from the previous session.
I can't IMAGINE teaching some of our users to do that through the developer API. (And if they remove ALL corporate cookies the new way, they'll have to reauthenticate to every other damned Web site in the corporation.
Good move, Google.
Texas' anti-moderation social network law blocked by judge
Banned: The 1,170 words you can't use with GitHub Copilot
Faster Python: Mark Shannon, author of newly endorsed plan, speaks to The Register
Microsoft has gone to great lengths to push its tech, but survey suggests many devs slipped through the .NET
"Not entirely sure but the category ".NET Developer Command Line Interface" probably represents the Vim/Linux users."
Or we Vim/Windows users who can't stand Visual Studio.
I like C# a lot, and the .Net libraries aren't bad at all. But I'd drop them like a hot potato if the only way to use them was with an IDE.
Chipmaker TSMC to build 'up to five' more factories in Arizona
Google is updating Meet so at least you won't have to look at your hollow, careworn face
The JavaScript ecosystem is 'hopelessly fragmented'... so here is another runtime: Deno is now a company
Choose your fighter! March Mammal Madness pits poor, innocent critters against each other in mortal combat
HP bows to pressure, reinstates free monthly ink plan... for existing customers
Re: Alternatives?
I *love* my Brother laser printer. It prints great, toner cartridges are cheap, and there's none of this "subscription" nonsense. And my Brother sheet-feed scanner also Just Works.
Hmmm... I wonder if HP will come up with a way to charge a per-page subscription fee for scanning? I wouldn't put it past them.
Excel Hell: It's not just blame for pandemic pandemonium being spread between the sheets
Re: What should I use instead
How about just Excel, but with a flag that turns OFF all automatic data conversion? Just edit the strings that are there; don't strip leading zeros from stock numbers or interpret gene names as dates.
It would be AWESOME simply to have an application to edit data in CSV files that DOESN'T "re-imagine" data values whenever it bloody well feels like it.
US voting hardware maker's shock discovery: Security improves when you actually work with the community
Why don't they just remove the wifi and cell modems from the voting machines? And stop connecting the tabulators to the Internet? And stop using an opaque non-human-readable barcode as the official "paper ballot"?
But ES&S has an entire C-suite full of rabid Trump donors, so instead they talk about "bug bounties" to stall discussing real issues until after the election.
Or states could just choose to use hand-marked paper ballots. But that's not the way America rolls. Sad.
Are you sitting comfortably? Then we'll begin. Hang on, the PDP 11/70 has dropped offline
Had the same issue with a VAX 2000 we installed in a power plant control room in the early 90s.
The CPU drawer was positioned near the bottom of the rack, which put the RUN/HALT switch at the exact height of the rim of the janitor's wheeled mop bucket.
We got a spurious HALT every couple of weeks. Fortunately, the HALT switch on a VAX merely suspends the CPU; pressing the switch again continues operation without missing a beat (except for timed-out network ops).
Famously flawed, it is 30 years since the Hubble Space Telescope was launched
The missus and I went down to Florida to watch the launch of Atlantis on STS-125, the final Hubble service mission. It was cool seeing two Shuttles ready for flight. (Endeavour was prepped for a rescue, because Atlantis couldn't reach the ISS from Hubble's orbit if necessary.) The launch was awesome.
Interestingly, STS-125 was the only Shuttle mission ever to launch early. NASA bumped it up a day, because keeping Endeavour ready to launch was expensive. It cost me a fortune to change our travel plans at the last minute to make it to the Cape in time for the launch.
RIP FTP? File Transfer Protocol switched off by default in Chrome 80
From Soviet to science fiction icon, the weird life of Isaac Asimov 100 years on
In 1973 I attended a lecture by Asimov at college.
After the talk, I stood in line and watched him patiently sign fifty or sixty copies of "I, Robot" and the Science Fiction Book Club edition of "Foundation Trilogy". When it was my turn, I bashfully turned over my copy of "101 Lecherous Limericks" (it was the only Asimov book I had on with me on campus).
His face lit up, and he stood up and declaimed a couple of dozen REALLY filthy (and really funny) limericks.
Good times...
We strained our eyes with Lenovo's monster monitor: 43.4 inches for price of five 24" screens
Google relents slightly in ad-blocker crackdown – for paid-up enterprise Chrome users, everyone else not so much
Re: I'm suffering from deja vu!
> Mozilla will have made it as painless as possible for the people
> least interested in changing browsers to switch to Firefox, while
> alienating all of the users that want something other than Chrome.
> They will have made the move to Firefox as pointless for Chrome
> users as it is painless.
Brilliantly put.
I've been using Firefox since the Phoenix days, even though Mozilla has always worked hard to discourage me. Fortunately Google is doing their best to push me away from Chrome.
I know Microsoft has adopted Chrome, but they should be financing Mozilla as a hedge against Chrome becoming even suckier.
Just do IoT? We'd walk a mile in someone else's Nike smart sneakers, but they seem to be 'bricked'
Wow, fancy that. Web ad giant Google to block ad-blockers in Chrome. For safety, apparently
Firefox forever (except at work)
Unfortunately, I still have to use Chrome (or IE) at work. Firefox doesn't integrate gracefully with the Active Directory authentication needed for all of our intranet stuff.
But for everything else, I've been using Firefox since it was named Phoenix. This latest announcement makes me feel even more smug about my choice.
Fee, Fi, bring your own one... Google opens up Project Fi to mobes built by Apple, LG, Samsung
Good news
Project|Google Fi is cheap, and has hassle-free international roaming and hassle-free support. Here in the US, Fi is a steal: $20/month for unlimited talk/text for the first line, $15/month for each additional line, $0 for a data-only SIM, and $10/GB/month (with a refund for unused megabytes!). The service works in almost every country in the world. And the Fi app has a dedicated button that dials tech support, where friendly agents speak unaccented colloquial English and solve your problem without trying to upsell you.
I've used Fi for several years, but I've never recommended it to my friends because the phones have been so flippin' expensive. This is good news.
Internet luminaries urge EU to kill off automated copyright filter proposal
Hello, this is the FTC. You have been selected for a free lawsuit... Robocall pair sued
Das blinkenlights are back thanks to RPi revival of the PDP-11
Wow. I lost both of my PDP-11s (and a couple of MicroVAXen) in a house fire in 2010, and I've missed the blinkenlights ever since. Gotta get one of these.
And I ALSO have to get one of the PiDP-8 kits. I cut my teeth on a PDP-8 in 1970. Still remember the thrill when I first got to use a "high-speed" fanfold paper tape reader back in 1973.
Looking forward to displaying both kits, with lights a-blinking, in my old VAX 2000 short rack.
Software development slow because 'Most of our ideas suck'
Re: More utter bullsh ... snake oil
"Good luck trying 'continuous experimentation' in software that actually *matters* like healthcare."
Or pharmaceutical manufacturing. Or chemical manufacturing. Or power generation. Or a dozen other industries I've written software for in the past forty years.
Astroboffins spot a fat 'monster' ALIEN planet terrorizing tiny dwarf
Mozilla whips out Rusty new Firefox Quantum (and that's a good thing)
Re: Got scared about losing extensions
Looks like the three add-ons I find critical won't be ported to FF57: Master Password Timeout, Open in Browser, and Classic Theme Restorer.
(sigh) If I wanted to use a fast browser that's ugly and doesn't have the features I need, I would have simply switched to the deplorable Chrome. Thanks, Mozilla!