Posts by onefang

Fortnite 'fesses up: New female character's jiggly bits 'unintended' and 'embarrassing'

Re: Meanwhile in World of Warcraft...

"Hint to game devs: This is what a woman in full plate armour looks like"

I'm wondering why there's a big hole in the middle you can see all the way through?

Re: Meanwhile in World of Warcraft...

Also meanwhile, in SecondLife, jiggly body parts have been around for ages, and not just breasts.

Attempt to clean up tech area has shocking effect on kit

Re: It's not always the cleaners

"Ok, now explain why a surveyor working in the middle of a field has to wear a hard hat, hi-vis vest and steel toe boots."

I'm still wondering why people have to wear shoes in offices. Is it those rabid computers that are well known for leaping off desks and attacking people? Probably explains why some computers are chained to their desk. Though shouldn't office workers be wearing thigh high boots and flak jackets as well?

BTW, I've read through the local Elf'n'safety legislation, it doesn't mention anything about office footwear.

Re: Lights ON, lights OFF - Ah, cleaning crews

Reminds me of an intermittent fault that was happening in some bit of embedded kit I was softwarely responsible for. Was a bit of a head scratcher, so the client brought it in for me to have a look at. Naturally it worked fine while we stared at it scratching our noggins. Until I went to the kitchen to get a drink, then it fell over when I opened the fridge. On a hunch we tried it again, and each time I opened the fridge door, the device fell over. With that clue and a bit more investigation, we eventually found the lengthy reset line from the front panel to the main computer board was a little bit too long and not properly protected. It was picking up electrical noise from my ancient fridges door switch, and resetting the computer. Out in the field the source of noise could have been anything.

VR going mainstream? Yeah, next year, says Facebook, for the third year in a row

Re: I went all in and it's the most expensive desk dust protector in my office

"3 cameras looking down at me (yea, I know, they only see the infrared frequency.... right....)"

I dunno about the Oculus CV 1, but the Oculus DK2 (the one I have) it's fairly obvious it's not seeing visible light, since the silver coating on the lens reflects all visible light. Also, it's just an ordinary web cam. Fire up your favourite web cam software and see what the cameras can see. Though with strong sunlight streaming through your window, it can probably see a lot.

Re: Not "when" but "why"

"I'm not interested in a toy that costs me $400+ so I can sit on the couch and get fatter."

VR is not only three dimensional, it's all around you. So you tend to want to turn around a lot to see what's behind you. Couches wont work for that, you need a swivel chair. Which would provide a tiny modicum of exercise as you rotate.

On top of that, some of the devices provide 6 degrees of freedom, you can stand up, walk around, or run around. Room scale it is usually called. Can be quite the workout dodging virtual bullets.

Re: PSVR

"Of course by then, everyone and their dog will be producing headsets."

Over in China, everyone and their dog is producing VR headsets. Mostly Google Cardboard type from what I can tell. I picked up one from Aldi for AU$30 to add to my collection.

Why are sat-nav walking directions always so hopeless?

Re: Determining South (in the Northern hemisphere) from a clock

"Hmm, I wonder if there is an app for that?"

I think there is. I thought I had installed it, but looks like I didn't, otherwise I'd name it.

Re: what our USAnian friends have against people with a love of walking

"My theory is that it has something to do with the considerable percentage of US citizens that have been conceived on the back seat of a motorcar."

I was conceived in the back seat of a car, or so my parents told me before I screamed TMI and stopped listening. I walk everywhere, sometimes very long distances, sometimes with heavy packs.

I never have any problems with navigation, but that's just me, no need to use GPS. What I do have problems with is pedestrians being second class citizens in the eyes of town planners. Around here it's trains at the top, buses (they have their own roads or lanes half the time), all other motorised vehicles, push bikes, pedestrians, and way down the bottom is barefoot pedestrians (like me).

Fuzzy logic makes a comeback – in picking where Earth sticks its probes into alien worlds

Using this sort of technology is space gives me the warm and fuzzies.

Virtual reality saves wannabe prison officers from actually, you know, having to visit

Will they put prisoners in virtual prisons next? Super glue a headset to their face, show them a simulation of a small prison cell, chain them to a bed.

NASA to celebrate 55th anniversary of first Moon landing by, er, deciding how to land humans on the Moon again

Landing a person on the moon these days should only need roughly the equivalent of your average smartphones computing power, and a really large fire cracker. I'm sure there's an app for that.

Bombing raids during WWII sent out shockwaves powerful enough to alter the Earth's ionosphere

Re: Amounts so huge, that I simply can't process them.

I was thinking "Shit-ton" myself.

Don't get THAT personal, says personalised cards firm Moonpig. Dick pics. They mean dick pics

Re: Recipient: Stormy Daniels

"why is there a mushroom in the photo?"

That's not a mushroom.

WLinux brings a custom Windows Subsystem for Linux experience to the Microsoft Store

"WSL-optimised distribution is aimed at developers and pro users with a bunch of popular development tools"

"Of course, the source is available for free for those unafraid of build tools."

So basically it's free for their entire planned user base. Though I guess they might make money from lazy developer types. Wait ... good business plan after all.

Swedish ISP spanked for sexist 'distracted boyfriend' advert for developer jobs

This photo isn't about sex at all. The guy noticed the strange slogan on the back of the woman in red, and is about to say "What the fuck?". The woman in blue is keeping a close eye on where the guy is looking, as she picks his pocket. Both women are in cahoots, the red wearing one is the distraction.

Internet be nimble, internet be QUIC, Cloudflare shows off new networking shtick

Re: Don't blame poor little UDP for second life.

"Linden Labs and it's code is to blame for the lag, not UDP : )"

As a developer that has had years of experience working with Linden Labs code, and the OpenSim variety, I'll happily admit it's all seriously crap. I've said so often enough in the past. I was saying so to someone I gave a demo to today when my avatar refused to lie down on the beach towel. But even they have replaced some of their home grown UDP mess with standard HTTP. Sure, UDP isn't to blame, but as you mentioned, LL's crappy re-implementation of bits of TCP was, and their other crap code.

Dropping TCP and trying to layer the same sort of reliability of transport on top of UDP is what SecondLife tried long ago. That didn't work out so well, constant lag, "What does it look like at your end" *, having to rebake a lot, etc. The advantage of using TCP protocols to transport content around is that we have been doing that for a very long time, we know how to do it, there's many tools to work around the kinks.

* Though I'll note something that not many people know, the texture used on terrains is procedurally generated at the client end, with some randomness, each time you visit a place. So not only will that look different to different people, it'll look different next time you look. Nothing to do with UDP v TCP.

Nameless Right To Be Forgotten Google sueball man tries Court of Appeal – yet again

Re: Well, I can tell you that it's NOT me

Not me either, but I've never been anywhere UK.

I wonder if I ain't Spartacus will pop up to claim they ain't ABC either?

"The Register has found that normally helpful and talkative official sources simply ignore routine requests for information about this particular case,"

Sorry, you want info about a case concerning who exactly?

Might end up being a curious form of Streisand Effect, so much noise being made about this that someone's gonna figure out who this person is by putting the clues together, then publish the details.

iFixit engineers have an L of a time pulling apart Apple's iPhone XS

Re: THey are probably trying to be clever

If El Reg runs out of downvotes, coz you got them all and they broke the counter, then the rest of us commentards will just be happy you took one for the team. Thanks, have an upvote and a beer to ease your pain.

BOFH: Is everybody ready for the meeting? Grab a crayon – let's get technical

Re: Is there anybody out there??

Have an upvote for the Pink Floyd lyrics.

Have I been pwned, Firefox? OK, let's ask its Have I Been Pwned tool

Re: zoology

OK, that's a red panda then. In my defense, I had never seen nor heard about red pandas before, I was expecting something that looked more like the big black and white pandas, only red.

I expect the small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri might get the joke.

Re: zoology

You forgot to mention the last couple of words in the caption, which at the time I read it said -

"This cute tiger cub is perfect for illustrating this article on Internet Explorer"

Though it doesn't look like a panda to me.

The small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri should still be upset.

Cookie clutter: Chrome saves Google cookies from cookie jar purges

"and has pressured its own advertising clients to be more transparent about their own cookie policies in the past."

Ah, do as I say, not as I do.

Cisco sneaks hardcoded secret root backdoor into vid surveillance kit

Re: At this point..

"One has to ask, are there any Hardware products without hardcoded admin level accounts on them?"

Looking at the stuff on my computer desk, my other glasses, the analogue thermometer, the stand I use for my phone, the Leatherman, the desk itself, I'm fairly sure none of that hardware has any sort of admin account on them. The TV remote control I'm not so sure about, it IS a smart TV after all.

I'm guessing all those down votes where given to me after the caption was corrected. Tough crowd. I'm gonna need a bigger coat.

"It's a giant city-destroy bug - geddit, bug? Software bug?"

There's a bug in your captionING.

I'll ged my coat, hopefully de moths haven't been addit.

Office 2019 lumbers to the stage once more as Microsoft promises future releases

"WTF do we need AI in a word processor, or spreadsheet, or slide deck?"

AI in a word processor to write your documents for you. So that instead of using the same template over and over again to tell people your web site has just been breached and all their credit card details are now on the dark web, everyone gets a deeply personalized letter that is full of the sorts of information Microsoft has been slurping from your PC for the last couple of years.

Dear Jim,

Last week, while you where visiting your sick grandmother in hospital, our web site suffered a rather unfortunate incident, rather like when your under age daughter Jenny accidentally sent that sext to Robert (your priest) instead of Bobby (her boyfriend). As a result, your credit card details have been exposed, and that lengthy list of items you recently purchased from BDSMtoys'R'us has been published publicly on our FaceBook feed.

P.S. Your gramma is fine, and will be released tomorrow, but her dog has fleas, caught them from the mutt next door. Probably a good idea to leave your own dog at home next time you visit her.

P.P.S. Robert has promised to not send that photo to any more of his friends. Microsoft have assured us that they will delete it from his OneDrive account, for a small fee. We pointed Microsoft at the copy of your credit card details available on the dark web, just in case they didn't already have their own copy.

Have a nice day Jim, and don't forget your anniversary next week, like you did last year.

Linux kernel's 'seat warmer' drops 4.19-rc5 with – wow – little drama

Re: Inclusiveness demands tolerance

"I don't think we need to give up on social progress"

I think we gave up on social progress long ago. For far too long it's been - lets keep kicking those horrible scum that are poor, give whatever help we can to those deprived people with too much money, and change our Prime Minister again coz reasons. I can't recall the last time those in charge said "Hey, lets make a good change, coz it's the right thing to do to make the world a better place for all". At least not in my country.

That syncing feeling when you realise you may be telling Google more than you thought

Re: The problem isn't "google slurp" alone

"I used to have one but it disappeared a while ago."

Now I'm wondering how you managed to lose your silver badge. Did it fall behind the back of the couch? Or you changed your alias?

Re: @ArrZarr - Shrug

"My memory is cloudy around that time."

But in these more modern times, your memory is now backed up to the cloud?

Re: Plenty of Google Chrome alternatives

"Palemoon on Windows and Android."

If Palemoon has an Android version, I've just failed to find it anywhere. Not in F-droid, not in Google Play, not on the Palemoon web site. Where is this Android version?

Re: How much more will Google get away with...

"I have grown suspicious of the ethical sense of people who work for Google"

Google have tried to recruit me a few times. I turned them down each time.

Which of my several Google accounts will it automatically sign in to?

Facebook sued for exposing content moderators to Facebook

Re: Godwin's Law 2.0

"What, you're going to make us invent an infinite regression of new words to describe snowflakes"

No need, each snowflake is uniquely different. We just need to invent a taxonomy for describing them individually.

I'll get my coat, it's getting cold with all these snowflakes around.

Re: Cruel and unusual

This brings up my old ideas of an extended web of trust. The general idea being that you trust specific people to have good / bad taste in specific areas. Alice trusts that Bob has good taste in comedies, but bad taste in wines. While Dave trusts Bobs taste in wines, but thinks Bob is an idiot when it comes to cars. So when Bob thinks a particular wine tastes great, Alice avoids it and Dave tries some. When Bob says the latest Adam Sandler movie is terrible, Alice avoids it and Dave seeks the opinions of others.

So get the people that enjoy watching the beheadings to rate them. So those of us that really don't want to see beheadings know what to avoid, the stuff that gets good ratings from the beheading fans.

"I would like to point out that , at least in Quebec , jurors who have no choice in the matter , are exposed to , sometimes , unbelievable violence and prosecution tactics that leave them in pts and are given NO support whatsoever for their trouble."

Here in Australia, I recently had jury duty. From the very beginning various support services where offered for those sitting through nasty cases. I didn't get anything nasty, so no idea if the support services are any good.

Open-source alt-droid wants to know if it's still leaking data to Google

Open source contacts, phone, and SMS apps?

Signal can handle all SMS duties? Or is it just being used as an SMS like service, but not actually compatible with the rest of the non Signal using SMS world?

I've long desired to switch to open source contacts, phone, and SMS apps on Android, preferably available from F-Droid. I just haven't sat down to evaluate them all yet. What are the options, and what do people think of them?

How an over-zealous yank took down the trading floor of a US bank

Re: DevOps?

"Total Quality Artificial Intelligence Administered Stateful Software Management."

You left off blockchain.

Re: Unplugging the keyboard = kernel panic ?

I've always wondered which setting turns off that horrid bell sound. Thanks.

Re: Unplugging the keyboard = kernel panic ?

PFYs can be any gender, and this is the Internet, women can also be any gender.

Re: DevOps?

"All we need is a buzzy name and we can get waterfall development back in fashion."

Golden Showers?

Gonna need a good rain coat now.

Re: Unplugging the keyboard = kernel panic ?

"Beards of all colours and even non-beards welcome."

Non-beards? Don't we usually call them PFYs or women?

Re: Unplugging the keyboard = kernel panic ?

"I am also fairly sure if I did grow a beard it would be of all colours"

My beard used to look like that. Now the red and brown hairs have faded to grey, as have some of the black ones, the blond ones are hard to tell if they are now gray or not. No grey anywhere else though.

Fat chance: Cholesterol leads boffins to discover world's oldest animal fossil – 558m years old

Re: So what does Cholesterol do in the body that's so important the genes are unchanged in

"Or was God around when the dinosaurs were here?"

Yes, only instead of a long flowing white beard, God had feathers and very very short arms.

Re: Just one thing I don't understand...

"'Throw' might be a wacky translation,"

The researchers are Aussies I think, not a lot of translation needed.

The curious sudden rise of free US election 'net security guardians

"protecting the honest men and women in US elections"

What about protecting the dishonest ones? I'm sure that's a much bigger market.

Virus screener goes down, Intel patches more chips, Pegasus government spying code spreads across globe

"the updates will be distributed to OS and/or mootherboard vendors"

Are these Copy On Write mootherboards?

Mines a leather coat, with a beef steak in the pocket.