Posts by Mark192

DRAM-as-cache is too expensive for even Facebook – Zuck now blending it with NVM SSD drives

I interpret your comment as ".. When NVM works as fast as DRAM"

Presumably the downvoter wishes to go back to the greater speed and reliability of clay tablets or papyrus.

Senators urge US trade watchdog to look into whether Tesla may just be over-egging its Autopilot, FSD pudding

I am kind of surprised...

I am kind of surprised we don't have infrastructure designed to aid driving aids:

- roads could tell the cars the speed limit and they'd not drift over it (but deliberate acceleration would override it). The system could be as simple as a machine-readable bit of paint on the road instead of complicated AI trying to spot speed limit signs and work out if it's for you or the junction you're going past etc.

This would allow people to concentrate on potential hazards rather than keep checking the speed (or keep adjusting the manual speed limiter, or drive inappropriately on cruise control)

- Car makers required/incentivised to fit adaptive cruise control as standard. Stops vehicles getting too close and hard breaking, adaptive part reduces slow overtakes (because car just reduces speed by that 0.25mph speed differential). Users free to ignore the feature. Cost to users & companies is small - cruise control is cheap to add (though at present, not cheap for the consumer when selecting the options)

There are probably other relatively inexpensive ways to increase safety and improve traffic flow that are relatively low tech and cost effective but we seem to be leaving it to individual companies who then have to focused on a high - tech approach as the infrastructure doesn't allow for a more reliable low - tech solution.

Bitcoin doomed as a payment system and its novelty will fade, says Federal Reserve Board of Governors member

Re: It's the usefulness

Hmmm, 41 thumbs down to my comment. Every critical response missed the point.

Bitcoin is not a novelty. Paying 10,000 for a pizza was a novelty. Now it is genuinely useful.

It's not useful to me. Probably not useful to you. That's not relevant.

One responder said I was describing the black economy.

Yes. I was.

Is the black economy a novelty? One that'll wear off as people grow bored of it?

It's the usefulness

"Federal Reserve Board of Governors member says Bitcoin is doomed once the novelty wears off."

It's the usefulness, not the novelty, that makes bitcoin successful.

Make a better tax free, secure (& secure from the taxman), reliable and quick way to move value around and it'll become worthless.

Make something with the above that can also handle low value payments at sufficient scale and we'll have something that'll be sufficiently useful that it'll start to replace currencies.

Vivo X60 Pro: Branding was plastered all over the Euros, but does the phone perform better than the English team?

Re: Wireless charging

The irony on a tech news site... :-D

I assume you use the smallest monitor size currently available, so as to minimise power used?

Re: Excellent.

Andy The Hat asked "does this mean we are finally at the point of selling cameras with a phone attached?"

Sort of.

We're at the point where the call quality (mics, suppressing background noise etc) is near enough the same such that specialist equipment would be needed to spot differences, and those differences would be dwarfed by the butchering to sound quality that happens when we make a call (thanks to compression or whatever).

The provided software for managing contacts, calls etc can be handled by your app of choice, should you not like the included software.

Florida Man sues Facebook, Twitter, YouTube for account ban

Re: It's the plot of 'The Producers'.

Kinda tempting to hope FB et al don't seek to get this thrown out, so that the mounting legal bills exceed the donations.

Xiaomi touts Hypercharge 200W charging tech, claims 4,000mAh battery goes from 0 to full in 480 seconds

Re: stupid examples

DS999 whined: "stupid examples

Those places won't have some random company's proprietary 200 watt charger available"

Sigh, it's a technology demonstration, not a product about to be released.

I don't use the fast charging on my phone but I can think of reasons a faster charging battery would be useful, especially in conjunction with battery improvements that reduce the disadvantages.

You and the other people saying it's pointless are just an example of the "I don't need it so no one else does" crowd.

Re: Is this really useful for anyone?

"What's the actual use case here?"

Serious?

Examples:

Airport, phone low on battery, charged to full while grabbing a cup of tea.

Festival, phone charged at a (paid for) charging station at a fraction of the cost it would normally cost the customer because it took a fraction of the time. Business happy because they're getting 4-6 times as many customers.

Public transport, phones charged while waiting for (or on) bus/train and passengers happy because they can read el Reg rather than buy one of those uninformed, inferior newspapers.

Essentially, this is attractive to people that use their phone sufficient to run out of battery and don't have the ability to charge it for a few hours.

Tesla Autopilot is a lot dumber than CEO Musk claims, says Cali DMV after speaking to the software's boss

Re: Fully Automatic my arse!

Version 1.0 said: ""Everywhere" ? Really? How does the automatic driving software work on the roads in Wales?"

I see enough in my part of Wales that they no longer stand out. Your comment makes me think you may have mistaken them for purely self-driving cars?

China claims it has stolen a march on 6G with colossal patent portfolio

Re: Face it, we're lagging

"But they can't possibly have invented 6G ahead of us.

How many really first class MBA / PPE graduates do they have running their industry?"

This is dripping with sarcasm in the same way that Niagara Falls is dripping with water :-D

As Linux 5.12 released, Linus Torvalds warns next version will probably be rather large

The reason for N64 support...

Some people asked why it's got N64 support.

The reason for N64 support is that some talented people decided they wanted it and then bloody went and did it.

Given the inevitable heat death of the universe, it is as much a good use of their time as anything else they gain satisfaction from.

I'm kinda jealous, because I don't have an ounce of the talent that those people have. I'm also in awe of them and all the other people that contribute to Linux being what it is.

What bloody amazing people they all are.

Seeing a robot dog tagging along with NYPD officers after an arrest stuns New Yorkers

Re: Dogs are smarter than people

"Why was a round in the gun and not on safety if he wasn’t using it?"

It reads like you're trying to say he shouldn't have left the gun like that but don't have the courage to say so.

He would have already known that he shouldn't do that, even before he got shot!

Scientists stumped by strange X-rays from Uranus

It's not just the sun that shines out of Uranus

"although the main source of radiation does indeed come from the Sun, there’s a little extra light coming from somewhere else."

So...

It's not just the sun that shines out of Uranus.

Turns out humans are leading AI systems astray because we can't agree on labeling

My local Tesco occasionally has the bananas mislabelled as "small, off-duty Czechoslovakian traffic wardens".

Serves them right for leaving the label maker out ;)

Director, deputy director, CTO of Free Software Foundation quit after Stallman installation

Something stinks

I'd be sacked for behaving as he's done. What does he bring that their willing to install him in a leadership position?

'Agile' F-35 fighter software dev techniques failed to speed up supersonic jet deliveries

Non-coders?

Guarantee that the cause of this is poor coding not being punished because it's quick, and good coding being punished because it /looks/ slow.

Root cause? Non-coders managing coders, because management is the profession, right?

My managers used to look 'key performance indicators' as if they were targets because they didn't have enough knowledge to evaluate the actual work.

Result?

- People that should have been re-trained or sacked were lauded as high performers.

- Big problems went unfixed because junior management were hounded by senior managers to get their team hitting the 'targets'. Work snowballed because short-termism ruled.

Google and Microsoft's public squabble over who's the worst is giving us life right now, not gonna lie

I found El Reg...

I found El Reg through a Google News thingy.

Microsoft's GitHub under fire after disappearing proof-of-concept exploit for critical Microsoft Exchange vuln

Error by MS?

“Other PoC code for the same CVE was still available on GitHub"

Given the documentation was in Vietnamese, could it be that they didn't realise it was just a PoC like the others they'd left up?

Jailed Samsung boss accused of abusing Propofol aka ‘the milk of amnesia’ or 'the drug that killed Michael Jackson'

"... undramatically titled..."

:-D

US newspaper's 'Biden will hack Russia' claim: A good way to reassure Putin you'll leave him alone

Re: Perception

"These days though, foreign governments seem to be ahead of the US with actual hacking."

The USA hacks for political information. Probably very successfully.

Certain other countries hack also for industrial & technological information that they can pass onto national champions.

In all cases, we generally only hear about it when something has gone wrong.

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

Re: Who knew data centres were tinder boxes?

In the olden days it was /your/ data you were protecting.

Hardware is cheap and the data isn't theirs.

Customers look at price and tickboxes. For many, IT has been outsourced for that long there's no one in charge who even knows what questions to ask.

"Customers told to activate DR plans"

Customer has an emergency board meeting:

'But...but... we're paying them to look after our data so data recovery is their responsibility!' screams an about-to-be-sacked exec.

Another customer: 'We outsourced all our IT. The backup schedule wasn't defined so our single backup dates to the start of the contract. Responsibility for restoring the backups wasn't defined and so they won't do it. We don't have anyone who even /knows/ how to do it. We're doomed'.

Valheim: How the heck has more 'indie shovelware with PS2 graphics' sold 4 million copies in a matter of weeks?

Re: A bit like OMORI and 20XX

"A point I made to a friend just recently."

Hope you got the chance to hammer your point home?

[sniggers]

Indian Railways suffers unspecified security 'breaches in various IT applications'

Re: Indian Railways

"Travelling 1st class on railways in the UK is quite nice too."

I'm guessing your downvote was from someone who travels on one of the UK trains where the only difference between first class is the colour of the seats (really!) :/

Huawei's new Mate X2 foldable phone costs almost $2,800

It says something about the maturity of the tech sector that there's a sizeable group who decry the new, cutting edge stuff because it's expensive and they don't need it.

Were they once enthusiastically following new and emerging technology? What changed?

NurseryCam hacked, company shuts down IoT camera service

Security is expensive

I guess security is hard when you, and no one you've hired, knows what security looks like.

Security is expensive. I wonder how that compares to the business-ending crunch they now find themselves in?

Mobile World Congress to run this year's Barcelona event in June with 50,000 attendees. We're speechless

Re: "it's just like flu"

@ Michael Wojcik

You said it much more concisely than I did - thanks!

"it's just like flu"

People keep saying it's just like flu.

Unsure if they realise what flu would be like in populations starting with no herd immunity and no annual vaccination campaign.

It would be very bad (understatement).

The current virus is "only" a few times worse than that.

Let's at least wait until we've got everyone vaccinated before even considering 50,000 people super-spreader events eh?

Re: Already bought a ticket

"the numbers in Barcelona do not justify eternal lockdown."

You know your argument is weak so you've created fake reasoning to contrast against.

No one is arguing for eternal lockdown.

Sensible people are arguing that a 50,000 people super-spreader event should not take place this soon.

Hope that helps.

Ex-American football player attempts to breathe life into failed lawsuit claiming Gears of War used his likeness

'the differences were enough to satisfy the Transformative Use standard." and concerns of "a First Amendment right to place the image of the Dalai Lama or the Pope in a violent shoot-em-up game against their wishes."

Quite! /A/ Pope is fine, using /the/ Pope should need his permission.

Probably the sort of complaint a normal person could resolve with a glance at a couple of pictures.

Now lawyers are involved, years.

:rollseyes:

UK Supreme Court declares Uber drivers are workers, not self-employed: Ride biz's legal battle ends in a crash

I'm confused...

The Government keeps poking its nose into my business, so why isn't it poking its nose, proactively, into Uber's business?

Hero to Jezero: Perseverance, NASA's most advanced geologist rover, lands on Mars, beams back first pics

Re: What a Conundrum

The wide spread of intelligence Vs lack of in our species fascinates me.

My current theory is that there has been a significant advantage to having a large number of the population made up of stupid.

Eg A war of extermination against their neighbors is something I reckon stupid people could be enthusiastic about, even if it comes at considerable cost to them and their own society and enriches only their own corrupt leaders.

Re: Repulsive!

"Especially when it's not written in a way that makes it crystal clear that it's not really what the author thinks."

That *was* crystal clear sarcasm!

(that said, I always tag mine because autism).

Nvidia cripples Ethereum mining on GeForce RTX 3060 to deter crypto bods from nabbing all the kit at launch

"This is a stupid idea on Nvidia's part. Their heart might be in the right place, but it's not going to work."

- grabs some nice headlines, helps generate brand loyalty

- helps with availability of cards at launch and maybe for a few weeks (days?) after

Nvidia have a massive incentive to push miners into needing the easier, quicker and cheaper to produce mining cards so there's a chance this isn't just firmware level.

"Ugh. Sounds like a new cat and mouse game with video drivers."

Yes, but if the miners take a few weeks or months to get around the restrictions, then the cards will not be bought up by miners at launch.

If they succeed in making the cards unattractive to miners in the long term, they can sell more of the cheaper-to-produce but higher margin mining cards AND when those cards get retired from mining they don't lower the price of second hand gaming cards.

Google calls in Women in Technology Hall of Famer to lead new Responsible AI group amid internal strife

Is "ethical" AI impossible?

- Design a system that uses correlation, rather than causation, to predict results.

- Feed in data from an unequal society.

- Have it processed in a black box.

- Get unethical results fed out.

Is this a reasonable summary of his it works? (genuine question)

President Biden to issue executive order on chip shortages as under-pressure silicon world begs for help

mark I 2 asked "Why should US tax payers money be spent on aiding [etc]"

It is not about the jobs created directly, it's about building up an industry where choosing America becomes the logical choice for other manufacturers, because they've got the skilled and trained workforce and myriad other companies supporting the supply chain and providing all the widgets and doodads needed to set up and support a production line.

Salesforce: Forget the ping-pong and snacks, the 9-to-5 working day is just so 2019, it's over and done with

The future is Choice

As posters above have said, the future is employees free to choose when and where they work as they see fit and the company being flexible and helpful in meeting the changing needs and desires of individual employees.

Home working does make outsourcing a lot easier though...

ThinkPad T14s AMD Gen 1: Workhorse that does the business – and dares you to push that red button

Re: Red pointy thing

Norman reminisced: "I saw an interesting approach on an old keyboard: a rotating bar that could slide from side to side on its axle."

These are brilliant! The one I used did mouse clicks if you pressed it. Very intuitive and easy to use as well as similar speed and accuracy to a mouse.

They were part of the arsenal of weird and wonderful contraptions given to colleagues when normal kit was unsuitable and it's the only 'alternative' product that I got on with as well as the normal tech it replaced.

The killing of CentOS Linux: 'The CentOS board doesn't get to decide what Red Hat engineering teams do'

Re: I don't get it....

Mlupo asked: "If you truly want a reproducible repo, you snapshot CentOS - whether it is Stream or not - into a dedicated on-site repo. So how is Stream any different than regular CentOS?"

I'm guessing that they want it to be easy for someone else, long after the event, to be able to easily use exactly the exact same version of the OS.

UK on track to miss even its slashed full-fibre gigabit coverage goals, warn MPs

Free market?

Give it a couple of years and people in the UK will likely be able to pay around £100 a month for a Starlink service.

Unaffordable for many but would mean the economic case for expensive tax-payer funded rollouts becomes harder to make.

China's clouds boom but they're collectively earning less than Azure alone

But what about tomorrow?

"China's clouds boom but they're collectively earning less than Azure alone"

65% increase... in a quarter?

The US services won't compete on price and they can't guarantee no US government snooping.

China's cloud services, taking advantage of a huge domestic market, domestic CPU and component supply, government encouragement and incentives will inevitably take a massive share of the market... and quickly.

But what about tomorrow?

"China's clouds boom but they're collectively earning less than Azure alone"

We can expect China's cloud services to continue to expand massively.

How long before they're dominant?

Imagine things are bad enough that you need a payday loan. Then imagine flaws in systems of loan lead generators leave your records in the open... for years

Re: To give some credit

+1. He certainly contrasts favourably with the second lot, who sought to minimise the issue.

How the US attacked Huawei: Former CEO of DocuSign and Ariba turned diplomat Keith Krach tells his tale

"advancing a theory that the criticism legitimized Clean Networks because the USA is trusted and Huawei is not."

I trust both of them to spy. Does that count?

As nearly everyone stays home for the pandemic, plunge in overseas charges dents Vodafone's revenues

You meant "Telco giggled while roam burned"?

The Register buried, in a small corner of the article:

"...profits were up. Vodafone's bottom line swelled to €1.56bn".

I salute The Register's efforts to feed our schadenfreude, while still providing accurate reporting :-)

China compromised F-35 subcontractor and forced expensive software system rewrite, academic tells MPs

How fortuitous..

How fortuitous that the only successful attempt to infiltrate the F-35 program was detected - what are the chances!?

(this post may contain sarcasm)

Swiss spies knew about Crypto AG compromise – and kept it from govt overseers for nearly 30 years

Re: Necessary Costs

Claver house said "A Secret Service informing politicians, government departments, and parliaments of such things would find them leaked before breakfast"

This.

HP: That print-free-for-life deal we promised you? Well, now it's pay-per-month to continue using your printer ink

HP the nasty company?

I don't even consider HP any more - every time I read about HP, or use their products, I encounter examples of them being dicks about stuff.