Posts by Wenlocke

Unintended acceleration leads to recall of every Cybertruck produced so far

You forget the PSA at either the end or begjnning of several Captain Scarlet episodes.

"Captain Scarlet is indestructible. You are not. Remember this, do not try to imitate him."

Another redesign on the cards for iPhone as EU rules call for removable batteries

Side effects

One interesting side effect if this ends up getting spread wide is going to be on the state of foldables. Essentially, at the moment, in order to make the whole thing work size-wise, they all more or less use two smaller batteries, one in each half in order to pack the same battery capacity into a frame that is essentially split down the middle. Moving to one battery to allow it to be removable probably means a ground-up redesign of the whole concept, since, for example, you can't really have a removable battery on the half that has a screen on each side.

We shall watch these moves with great interest.

Codebreakers decipher Mary, Queen of Scots' secret letters 436 years after her execution

Re: You could get into Cuneiform as an amateur.

or complaining about the quality of Ea-nasir's copper, and how crtap he was at delivering it on time, apparently.

Imagine that, 3000 years down the line, and what survives of your legacy, what people know of your time is "That Ea-nasir, he was a bit crap, wasn't he?"

Corporate execs: Get back, get back, to the office where you once belonged

Assuming you have an office to go back to

I started with my current company early into lockdown, so literally spent about two days in the office before starting back on WFH. they were ending the lease on that place and looking for a new one back then. four failed attempts to find appropriate office space later, they decided we were fully remote.

In theory they can ask us to change our contracts to go back to the office, but they are currently saving office and energy costs, so I don't see that changing anytime soon.

SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket launches after three-year hiatus with secret US sats

Re: Wasn't space meant to be used…

The main thing to note there is that The Tango-Adjacent Ex-President just split out those capabilities and responsibilities from the Air Force, and gave them the new outfits, funky letterheads, and overly masculine verbiage. Its most likely the same stuff was being pulled under the auspices of the USAF, without all the fanfare.

Ad blockers struggle under Chrome's new rules

Re: Advertising weary?

The sponsorship ones can get out of hand though.

For example, thanks to their astroturfing of tons every niche hobby and gamer-related channel going, you couldn't pay me enough to play Raid: Shadow Legends. It might be the Best Game Ever, but the whole thing is waaaay oversaturated. Yeah sure, I might consider someone's opinion valid, but when 20 or 30 people I watch are all spouting the same thing with a few of the words swapped round, I tend to be skeptical.

I recognise that for some small content creators, these people pay good dollar so its a reasonable survival tactic, given how crap YT revenues have become, but it just means that any merits the game may have had have been obliterated by the tide of astroturfing.

Bosses using AI to hire candidates risk discriminating against disabled applicants

That whole "employment gap" thing has always annoyed me tremendously. Because the implication is that unless you were productive pretty much continuously, then you're useless. It also buys into the whole "being unemployed is a failure of character" take that we get from, well, mainly people whose livelihood depends on there being people to work for peanuts..

I can kind of see a bit of suspicion in jobs where they do heavy vetting (does this person applying for a job in the security services have a nice large year off where they spent some time living somewhere suspicious? Might want to look at that,) but really, there's very little excuse for it outside of security and financial arenas.

New York Times outlays seven-figure sum for 1,900 lines of JavaScript – yes, we mean Wordle

What's even funnier is, if you right-click/save the page including its JS, the whole thing runs client-side. You could play for a couple of years without ever having to go through a paywall of any sort.

Alleged Brit SIM-swapper will kill himself if extradited to US for trial, London court told

Re: "he might commit suicide, making his an "exceptional" case"

"high profile"

Translation: Wealthy (and usually white)

Council culture: Software test leads to absurd local planning SNAFU

Re: Not absolutely no means.

There's been a lot of trouble at t'mill in this regard in West Yorkshire of late.

GitHub merges 'useless garbage' says Linus Torvalds as new NTFS support added to Linux kernel 5.15

Hammersmith.

Report details how Airbus pilots saved the day when all three flight computers failed on landing

Total Inability To Safely Unburden Plane

Tesla owners win legal fight after software update crippled older Model S batteries

Re: Carbon neutral

Rivian are touting about 5 tons ballpark towing capacity for their upcoming R1S. Like most things EV, we're not quite there yet, but getting closer all the time.

IBM, Red Hat face copyright, antitrust lawsuit from SCO Group successor Xinuos

Re: Obligatory Quote

This. Their legal team had a scary reputation.

Obligatory Quote

Not long ago, the Black Gate of Armonk swung open.

The lights went out, my skin crawled, and dogs began to howl.

I asked my neighbor what it was and he said, "Those are the Nazgul. Once, they were human. Now, they are IBM's lawyers."

OVH data centre destroyed by fire in Strasbourg – all services unavailable

I used to work near there. If you know what to look for, the mahoosive cooling pipes sticking out of the mound are a dead giveaway.

LastPass to limit fans of free password manager to one device type only – computer or mobile – from next month

I wouldn't mind paying what they're asking, if only they'd have a bloody "pay monthly" option rather than "quote you per month, force you to pay per year."

That one always gets my goat.

Linus Torvalds labels Super Bowl 'violent version of egg-and-spoon race'

Re: Never understood some names

The one that really confuses non-merkins is the franchise system. Why exactly can your local team up sticks and move to a completely different city in a different state?

Corsair's K70 MK.2 does nothing a cheaper keyboard can't, but the steep price gets you top-notch components

Last year...

I picked up the full height (as opposed to low profile) version from Amazon for £105 (Christmas sale) and at that price, it's a very nice keyboard. At £150, I'm less sure, but I have no complaints about it. if you can get a deal somewhere, definitely consider it.

UK's Ministry of Justice puts out feelers for SaaS ERP with up to £100m on the table

Winning tender....

....Some tiny wordpress-based website creation company that is run by Dom's mate down the pub.

They've only gone and bloody done it! NASA, SpaceX send two fellas off to the International Space Station

Re: Lift off

We remarked on this. I have a suspicion that it's largely due to how we expect space launches to go, since the vast majority of public perception is based on film of either Saturn V or the shuttle.

Saturn V was 50odd years ago, so rocket tech has improved, and also stonkingly heavy (so takes more oomph to get going.)

The Shuttle had to balance out different start up procedures and different axes of thrust between the main engines and the SRB's, each of which had entirely different thrust characteristics. The whole stack was also stonkingly heavy.

There's footage of the Falcon Heavy launch where it takes a little longer between light-off and lift (albeit not much), but that involves the same engine types in the same plane so it's a lot simpler to work with.

While I'm no means an expert, and you could probably find better explanations, it does just seem to be mostly down to the much lower weight and the much simpler, but more advanced engine setup and layout meaning it can go from zero to launch thrust much faster.

Turns out Elon can't control the weather – what a scrub: Rain, clouds delay historic manned SpaceX-NASA launch

Re: Ginger Baboon getting dangerously in on the picture

I was honestly half-expecting him to go "how dare you, launch anyway, that's an order."

and/or rant about the agency on twitter.

Nine million logs of Brits' road journeys spill onto the internet from password-less number-plate camera dashboard

To be fair, coming from Sheffield, I can state that the authoritarian crap coming out of the chief executive has naff all to do with party politics, and everything do with with assholes given power.

Samsung's Galaxy S7 line has had a good run with four years of security updates – but you'll want to trade yours in now

My old S7e is currently being used by SWMBO, and it does what she wants, although we might have to do something about that if the bank app decides it doesn't like the OS.

Never thought we'd write this headline: Under Siege Steven Seagal is not Above The Law, must fork out $314,000 after boosting crypto-coin biz

Re: Seems more like...

Bootnotestothehead.

Razr sharp foldable: Samsung whips out Galaxy Z Flip – and, oh snap, it's £1,300

The main selling point here, really, is the things the folding make possible. Spec-wise, it's more in the wheelhouse of the S10 than the S20 (which, as I have mentioned elsewhere, to me feels like a whole load of power searching for a purpose as I don't play high end phone games, and 5G is unlikely to be available in many of the places I need to go in the next two years.)

A phone with a screen I can watch movies on and with that size when closed for stowage? That's an interesting proposition, as long as the hardware holds up.

Also, a customer service bod at Vodafone claims they'll be opening this up for preorder later this month. YMMV.

Flipping heck: Footage leaks of Samsung's upcoming bendy smartphone in action

A little bird (well, an unusually helpful vodafone support bod) tells me that, at the very least, Voda are also getting this later on in the month (preorders at the end of the month, apparently)

YMMV on whether you believe them or not.

In a high-security preview, we got our claws on Samsung's Galaxy S20 and S20+... which are annoyingly good

It's good but...

....is it more use to me than my S9+?

So far, I have to say, it doesn't look like any of my use cases will be significantly improved over my imminently out of contract current slab. Even 5G doesn't impress me as I don't tend to go places that currently or soon will have it. So pending something really spectacular, that's about it down this line.

Now the Z Fold? That looks like something that I might actually find useful, if it proves durable enough, and that's largely because of the form factor. Travel and commuting, I find that I end up shuffling my phone around various pockets as I move, due to the size of the slab, and a phone that fits into that small package sounds like something I'd be interested in. the specs appear to be roughly equivalent to last years top tier, which is more than plenty for me. It will mostly depend on the battery life at that point. (or really push the boat out and wait until they release the rumoured Fold 2)

Tabletop battle-toys purveyor Games Workshop again warns of risks in Microsoft Dynamics 365 ERP project

The one with two thin ones.

Boffins show the 2017 Nork nuke can move, move, move any mountain (by a meter)

Re: Nice headline

and of course no mention of the Shamen is complete without possibly their most (in)famous tune, Ebeneezer Goode. Great fun, and possibly the most transparent "we really aren;t fooling anyone here, but dear god it is funny" with the bloke in the cape and hat on TOTP

When the IT department speaks, users listen. Or face the consequences

Re: Been on the receiving end of that

Our school had the best excuse for losing coursework. After the end of term but before the GCSE and A Level art work were due to be sent off to be graded, half the school got burnt down by some scrote. As I recall, they went by mock results for those subjects that year.

You've got (Ginni's) mail! Judge orders IBM to cough up CEO, execs' internal memos in age-discrim legal battle

Apropos of, well, this.

"Not long ago, the Black Gate of Armonk swung open. The lights went out, my skin crawled, and dogs began to howl. I asked my neighbour what it was and he said, 'Those are the Nazgul. Once they were human, now they are IBM's lawyers.'"

US government sues ex-IT guy for breaking his NDA (Yes, we mean Edward Snowden)

Clearly the NSA, despite being surveillance gurus, have never heard of the Streisand Effect

or.... maybe they have.

Tinfoil Underpants time, but maybe that's exactly what they want. They know people will buy it, they go after it to make it a huge seller... and they quietly net the proceeds. Okay, so it's peanuts in all likelihood, in the grand scheme of their budget, but someone somewhere has to be on the end of the slush fund.

Magnetic cockroaches, dirty money, wombat poo and posties' balls: It's the Ig Nobels 2019

Re: The little girl on stage

The classic iron bar with a heater. The longer you speak, the warmer it gets. No gloves allowed, so the longer you speak, the more chance you have of getting burned. Encourages brevity.

Not so easy to make a quick getaway when it takes 3 hours to juice up your motor, eh Brits?

Other Fun Stuff (TM)

There are other factors in the "lectric car shenanigans" area that cause problems.

"Charge overnight at home" is one of those fun ones that works very well, if you are lucky enough to live in a home, where because you have a drive, or because your street is big enough, you can park your leaf or whatever directly outside. In a lot of older towns (especially with a lot of terracing or other dense housing) it is frequently impossible to park your car directly outside your house or close to, so that becomes "how long is my extension cable" or "can I persuade the neighbour it ends up near to run a feed if they haven't already used it?" Urban parking density for housing is an issue as it is, let alone if all of a sudden, everyone needs to get outside their house to charge up their main vehicle.

The still vanishingly small second-hand market for electric vehicles (due to their newness, and other factors) means that the people who will spend a few hundred to a couple of thousand on a car because it's what they can afford simply can't get an electric vehicle at any point in maybe the next 20 years or so. Cutting off their options before new options are ready is going to price people out of driving at all.

I do recall at one point they were looking at fuel-station-swappable battery packs (calor gas cylinder model). You come in, the old pack is taken out of your car, a fresh fully charged one is slotted in, and away you go. The old one is charged again, and someone else gets it later on. Never sure what happened to that concept, unless it fell foul of battery tech problems.

The seven deadly sins of the 2010s: No, not pride, sloth, etc. The seven UI 'dark patterns' that trick you into buying stuff

Works on me

"Urgency - Imposing a deadline on a sale or deal, thereby accelerating user decision-making and purchases."

Sad to say, I'm very well aware this works on me. I mostly blame a childhood where there wasn't as much money available as the other people in my local friends group, and usually the translation of "we'll go away and think about it" was a polite fiction for "we can't afford it, so we'll make our excuses and leave." The over-use of that particular euphemism left me heavily susceptible to "if you wait, you'll never get it."

Amazon boss snubs 'expensive', 'sub-optimal' relational databases. Here's looking at you, Larry

Alexa, Listen very carefully, I shall say this only once...

Uncle Sam charges Julian Assange with conspiracy to commit computer intrusion

Re: Is this the best that the USA can come up with ?

I'm seeing noise that Assange's cat was rehomed some time ago (presumably to a shelter initially)

College student with 'visions of writing super-cool scripts' almost wipes out faculty's entire system

Re: SQL

and of course, for readability on very long lines, your WHERE clause is on the next line.

SQL

The classic "Forgotten your WHERE clause" is something that I have done at least once.

Bonus points for fully intending to type it, thinking about typing it, but executing on autopilot

All good, leave it with you...? Chap is roped into tech support role for clueless customer

The Bane of Tier 2 and above

Is when you've just finished fixing something tricky and long-winded for a customer, and they respond with "oh, while I've got you, I've got this other problem...."

Neatly bypassing all that First Line investigation, all the stuff that's designed to filter out crap, and all the stuff that shares jobs around amongst the team on a fair and impartial basis, so you're basically stuck with looking at whatever it is they've been forgetting to tll anyone about for three months.

Silent Merc, holy e-car... What is that terrible sound?

I must admit I'm slightly more worried over running over some poor animal that hasn't heard my car rather than some person who should know they are on a road.

This may make me an awful human being.

I'm just not sure the computer works here – the energy is all wrong

Re: Mythbusters

Or in his case, an uncontrolled glaswegian proudly putting the boot in. I suspect being on fire just added to the indignity.

Microsoft polishes up Chromium as EdgeHTML peers into the abyss

The problem with edge has never really been the rendering engine itself. It's always been the UI and ancillary bullshit.

As a prime example, for the longest time (I haven't used Edge in yonks so I don't know if they finally changed it) there was this "feature" in edge and IE that would turn phone numbers into clickable links so you could skype people from a web page (or presumably on a winphone, just dial them). You could turn it off in IE's internet options if you didn't want to to do that. Edge, however, didn't listen to those settings, and just did that bit of formatting, whether you liked it or not.