Posts by button pusher

India's Chandrayaan-2 and Vikram lander split amicably above Moon, SpaceX hops over Texas

Apogee & Perigee?

(Furthest distance from surface/nearest distance from surface in irregular orbit)

Are US border cops secretly secreting GPS trackers on vehicles without a warrant? EFF lawyers want to know

Hank Schrader would be proud...

But in BB the GPS worked under steel barrels and apparently inside them too...

Buying a Chromebook? Don't forget to check that best-before date

YES BUT

I use chromebooks for out of office work, and so do other family members. The difference between my chromebook that has just expired and 'modern' chromebooks is the spec - CBs bought 5 years ago use old processors and only have small SSDs, meaning that they can't run modern CROS features such as linux. That being said, Google does support the Asus Flip C100PA which has been around longer than my old CB, with worse specs, presumably because more users still login with it. Higher spec CBs are likely to remain useful for longer, which means that there are options for installing another OS afterwards

I have since bought several other CBs for self & family, always checking the auto update expiry date before purchasing. I still have the PCs/Mac for 'serious' work, but wouldn't take them to a coffee shop...

Age verification biz claims no-payment model for 40% of Brits ahead of July pr0n ban

Complete in precis...

"With the British government seemingly hellbent on forcing Britons to compromise their privacy and personal data"

Rocket Lab picks up the pace while SpaceX sends a Dragon to the Space Station

Back to the future...

The Smithsonian has about 280 old suits kept in cold store, unlike the Hg/Gemini silver suits (basically Dan Dare style rubber suits) the Apollo suit base layers were more akin to medieval armour with rubber seals at shoulders/elbows/knees.

New suits may be more comfortable to wear but possibly not tougher...

Owner of Smuggler's Inn B&B ordered to put up a sign warning guests not to cross into Canada

Suitable signage...

The business can still call itself Smugglers Inn but have a (second) double-sided sign just inside the fence boundary "WARNING - MINEFIELD". I doubt that the Border Police on either side would object...

Hey, US taxpayers. Filed your taxes? Good, good. $500m of it is going on an Intel-Cray exascale boffinry supercomputer

Serious use of tax $s

The IRS could use a hardware upgrade, if they can't have an exascale computer how about a cast-off supercomputer?

Boeing big cheese repeats pledge of 737 Max software updates following fatal crashes

Re: Want to try to reprogram it so it feels and drives like an F1?

Also the F-16 (the first relaxed stability manned aircraft?).

UK libraries dumped 11% of computers since 2010-11... everybody has one anyway, right?

Re: Problem?

Admittedly it's a while since I visited a branch library but the PCs were all used by truants playing computer games (loudly). Conversely my main library allows access to online texts/media/reservations via the net.

Techie finds himself telling caller there is no safe depth of water for operating computers

BROKEN BY DESIGN

I worked in a building where the IT department was on the floors below the staff swimming pool - described as planning for disaster