Posts by NomadUK

How I made a Chrome extension for converting Reg articles to UK spelling

If I'd wanted to live in the 51st state, I wouldn't have left the place and lived in Blighty for years, eventually (and after considerable effort and expense!) becoming a naturalised citizen, a Massachusetts Yankee in Queen Elizabeth's (now King Charles's) Court. And even though I'm now back on the other side of the Pond (I hope only temporarily), it rankles no end watching the increasing Americanisation of Emily (great film, that). One of Churchill's biggest mistakes was hitching the wagon to the burgeoning American empire, as though somehow the Yanks would give a flying f*ck about Airstrip One except as a forward operations base and seemingly bottomless source of quality stage, film, and television actors.

Anyway, yes, there seem increasingly fewer reasons to read The Register these days; I have noticed that I just don't bother, as the articles all seem to be duplicates of what's already available on other (equally boring) sites, with little to nothing to distinguish it — and now not even the language. Meh. Guess I'll just save myself some time in the mornings.

RIP: Creators of the GIF and TRS-80

Entered into at least one TRS-80 in any Radio Shack I happened to visit at the time ...

10 PRINT "I WISH I WAS A MACINTOSH"

20 GOTO 10

RUN

So clever, younger me.

Apple warns sideloading iOS apps will ruin everything

That's a convoluted way of saying you're not responsible enough to decide what gets loaded onto your iPhone.

If you've ever dealt with a member of the general public — or, as I prefer to call them, the Great Unwashed — you'll realise this is actually a perfectly valid point of view.

More cracks found in Russian annex of the International Space Station

an external enemy forces everyone to pull together and put up with the privations of a badly run state

That explains the US and UK, but what about Russia?

Russia: Forget about the Nauka incident. Who punched the hole in the Soyuz, hmm?

Clearly, the 0.07 figure is a dead giveaway as to who was *actually* licensed to drill ...

What happens when the internet realizes the stock market is basically a casino? They go shopping at the Mall

'Lose'. Not 'loose'. 'Lose'. Christ.

Living up to its 'un-carrier' slogan, T-Mobile US stops carrying incoming calls, data in nationwide outage

Strange Curves

Oddly, looking at the Downdetector home page, the problem report curves for Metro, T-Mobile, Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, US Cellular, Consumer Cellular, Century Link, Mint, and Cricket all look strangely similar. Even Google and YouTube have the same general shape: all have a sudden peak at around 15.00 - 16.00 on 15 June, gradually tapering off.

Whoa, whoa... Tesla slams brakes on allegations of 'unintended acceleration' bug: 'Completely false and was brought by a short-seller'

Can't stand Tesla, but....

Malcolm Gladwell did an episode in the first series of his podcast, 'Revisionist History', in which he thoroughly examined and debunked the whole Toyota uncontrolled acceleration fable, showing that it was almost exclusively due to driver error. A small fraction might — might — have been due to the floor mat, but that was uncertain. Almost every case was due to the driver thinking they were pressing the brake when in fact they were pressing the accelerator.

Google tightens the screw on 'less secure apps', will block most access from June 2020

Re: Thunderbird is fine. K9 doesn't do OAUTH2 yet

MailMate is quite nice if you're on a Mac. IMAP only, but the closest thing to the fabulous but long-in-the-tooth Mailsmith from Bare Bones.

100 mysterious blinking lights in the night sky could be evidence of alien life... or something weird, say boffins

Phenomen{on|a}

'Rapid changes over 70 years suggest stranger phenomenon...'

'A stranger phenomenon' or 'stranger phenomena'. Pick one.

Astroboffins spot the most energetic photons yet from gamma ray burst – and here's hoping Earth is right in the way of the next one

Re: Here's hoping..

Dunno. The only other obvious alternative is a big asteroid, and we might be able to deflect those.

14 sailors die aboard Russian cable spy, er, ocean research nuke sub after fire breaks out

Re: Out of interest...

This book came out in 1998 and is brilliant. I used to work with a fellow who was a submariner and strongly hinted that he was involved in some of these things but, of course, could not actually talk about it.

So, yes, the idea that the Russians are somehow unique in their desire to tap undersea cables is — to put it mildly — disingenuous.

Eggheads have found a positive link between the number of racist tweets and the number of racist hate crimes in US cities

'Castleton reported the lowest number of racially motivated hate crimes, but ranked 17th in posting the highest proportion of racist tweets.'

This may have something to do with a lack of targets, as Vermont is pretty much the whitest state in the country (there are a number of contenders, but I think Vermont has them all beat).

Chrome ad-blocker crackdown preview due late July. Here's a half-dozen reasons why add-on devs are still upset

Um, Safari. But, yes, on macOS and iOS only.

Amazon teases package drone, US civil rights folk want facial recog tech ban and AI carumba – YouTube!

Unwittingly!

I'm trying to figure out how parents 'unwittingly' post their home movies to YouTube. Do they do it in their sleep? Does their hand slip across the mouse and keyboard as they reach for their coffee cup and inadvertently execute the upload?

IBM to kill off Watson... Workspace from end of February

My mind is going, Dave. I can feel it.

Drones Bill said to be ready for world+dog's crayons 'this summer'

I guess I've been out of the loop for awhile. What does 'world+dog' mean?

How a QR code can fool iOS 11's Camera app into opening evil.com rather than nice.co.uk

Only mostly sucks, not totally

Interestingly, it seems that, if one uses the Camera app directly from the desktop, the resulting dialog does display the full URL at the bottom (this is with iOS 11.12), so one can see that it's a dodgy URL (by dragging down on the dialog). But if one activates Camera from the lock screen, it doesn't.

Unfortunately, the displayed URL is also accompanied by a view of the destination URL, which rather obviates the point of displaying the URL beforehand. So, not all that brilliant.