* Posts by LybsterRoy

1352 publicly visible posts • joined 6 Oct 2020

Page:

Chinese smartphone brand Xiaomi adds electric vehicle to its mobility offerings

LybsterRoy Silver badge

Re: If Xiaomi want to be taken seriously

I'm old enough to remember the quality of the first Japanese products that hit (often with a great big splat) the UK market. Quality did improve rapidly to the point where it was better than the indigenous product. China seems to be taking the same route to some degree.

LybsterRoy Silver badge

Re: If Xiaomi want to be taken seriously

We used to do the same (horizontal & vertical integration along with conglomerates) until the consultants told us we should concentrate on core competencies. Not sure it was good advice.

European Commission broke its own data privacy law with Microsoft 365 use

LybsterRoy Silver badge

Re: Kicking!

When I read the headline my thought was will the EU fine an EU organisation with the payment coming from public funds - just like in the UK?

How do you lot feel about Pay or say OK to ads model, asks ICO

LybsterRoy Silver badge

Re: Success story?

Would a statutory opt in policy require a popup on every web page asking if I opted in? Every page just in case I changed my mind in the last 5 seconds?

If it comes about I just hope the "I don't care about cookies" man is still alive and well and working on an extension to click the popup for me because I'm either lazy or would end up throwing the laptop at the nearest brick wall.

LybsterRoy Silver badge

Re: Great Idea!

-- you automatically exclude those who can't afford to pay. --

If they can't afford to pay what's the point in advertising to them?

UK and US lack regulation to protect space tourists from cosmic ray dangers

LybsterRoy Silver badge

Re: Who gives a sh**

I'm just wondering if our local star reads government rules & regulations.

UK finance minister promises NHS £3.4B IT investment to unlock £35B savings

LybsterRoy Silver badge

Thank you, reading the comments this far I thought I would have to post about NPfIT

Spam crusade lands charity in hot water with data watchdog

LybsterRoy Silver badge

Re: just stop it

-- If a cause is good enough it ought to be paid for out of general taxation --

I have only one objection to this. Inefficient as most charities seem to be I'm positive the gubermint can do "better"

YouTube workers laid off mid-plea at city hall meeting

LybsterRoy Silver badge

Re: These were CONTRACTORS on the Day their Contracts Expired.

Dunno.

Can you answer the question - were they originally employed by Google and transferred to Cognizant or did they apply to Cognizant?

Tiny Core Linux 15 stuffs modern computing in a nutshell

LybsterRoy Silver badge

Re: investigating whether it can turn some geriatric laptops into useful tools once again.

"Or I could buy a laptop from a few years ago with 16Gb RAM and a hugely faster processor for under £200."

Hate to tell you but that is an old slow machine these days

LybsterRoy Silver badge

Re: investigating whether it can turn some geriatric laptops into useful tools once again.

"efficiency gains" - I suppose you're referring to use of electricity in which case you need to compare the full lifecycle and manufacturing cost not just the operational usage.

Legal eagles demand $6B in Tesla stock after overturning Musk's mega pay package

LybsterRoy Silver badge

Re: US lawyers

"it's not quite as bad as it seems at first blush" WRONG

LybsterRoy Silver badge

Re: Prediction

OK I'll bite - what were their actual costs - excluding fees?

AI to fix UK Civil Service's bureaucratic bungling, deputy PM bets

LybsterRoy Silver badge

Re: Time wasting form filling ..

will the AI assistant be prettier?

LybsterRoy Silver badge

Re: They never learn...

Why pick on "the average Conservative politician" - it applies to all politicians.

LybsterRoy Silver badge

My first thought was this is an ideal application for the current level of AI - after all bureaucrats and politicians mainly produce waffle.

BUT

I have a simple question - will the output be vetted for comprehensibility or will it be the standard bureaucratic / politician double speak. If the latter we may as well keep the current cohort employed.

Meta kills Facebook News in the US and Australia

LybsterRoy Silver badge

Re: /reports/ of facts

Have you read much "reporting" recently. Often very creative ie "let's just ignore the facts"

Odysseus probe moonwalking on the edge of battery life after landing on its side

LybsterRoy Silver badge

Re: Failure is an option

Just remember RobotWars - lots of self righting mechanisms there - some even worked!

Rice isn't nice for drying your iPhone, according to Apple

LybsterRoy Silver badge

Re: Refrigeration

Clever, seal the moisture in with it?

Persistent memory to replace DRAM, but it could take a decade

LybsterRoy Silver badge

Re: Its gonna be hard to supplant DRAM

-- That is the sort of speed increases we could potentially see. --

Brilliant, but, how many people is that really relevant to?

Cutting kids off from the dark web – the solution can only ever be social

LybsterRoy Silver badge

Re: Root causes?

-- It's been pretty conclusively shown that young people are blessed with brains able to distinguish real violence from fictional violence --

They still banned Tom & Jerry!

LybsterRoy Silver badge

Re: Root causes?

-- after forty minutes of magical computers --

Upvoted for this alone. (my wife thinks NCIS is a good show)

LybsterRoy Silver badge

Re: The law is not everything

-- My concern is what my dad might do if I were caught doing something bad. --

Here's the upvotes I can't register +1000

The other point is that if an adult came to my parents and said "he's done X" and I said I hadn't - guess who got believed. Slightly different today.

European Court of Human Rights declares backdoored encryption is illegal

LybsterRoy Silver badge

Re: Well good thing the UK had Brexit

-- "if you want to know how civilised somewhere is, look at how it treats the poor". --

and then look at how it treats those who pay for the poor, and remember Spock "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few".

LybsterRoy Silver badge

Re: Puzzling indeed.

Let me check the decision tree:

branch 1 - stop in country where I have to learn a language in addition to my broken English

branch 2 - cross some often dangerous water where many have died

guess my choice

LybsterRoy Silver badge

Re: Well good thing the UK had Brexit

-- directly to their port of departure --

or anywhere else until the lawyer's fees run out.

LybsterRoy Silver badge

Re: Well good thing the UK had Brexit

Hi there anonymous. I just opened your link and it doesn't disbunk "should seek refuge in the first safe country they come to." it says " Refugees can legitimately make a claim for asylum in the UK after passing through other “safe” countries."

LybsterRoy Silver badge

Re: Well good thing the UK had Brexit

-- Perhaps the only real crime in international politics is not being strong enough to protect yourself. --

Whilst I agree with that sentiment I think the real crime is constantly kicking yourself in the fork (to paraphrase Nobby Knobs), however, so many seem determined to continue to do so.

Air Canada must pay damages after chatbot lies to grieving passenger about discount

LybsterRoy Silver badge

Re: Chatbot vs Human

I well remember phoning HMRC to ask if they could send me a "replacement" tax form since the one sent hadn't arrived (my wife's had but not mine) and having to go through the security process before I was allowed to ask them to send the form. The word "jobsworth" was floating in front of my eyes during the conversation.

LybsterRoy Silver badge

-- These days he'd probably have to prove he was human first! --

Not at all - he's a minority (hopefully of one) so should automagically be treated better than any majority.

Moving to Windows 11 is so easy! You just need to buy a PC that supports it!

LybsterRoy Silver badge

Re: Windows 11 Start Menu Changes Nothing

For the programs I use all the time they're on the taskbar, reasonably frequent stuff on the desktop. Some stuff (like Notepad - Alt-Q) is on AutoHotkey. Why would I want to waste time searching?

LybsterRoy Silver badge

Re: cool beans!

Ignoring the fact that you're wasting electricity (woooo climate change) you're leaving whatever mess the OS and programs have decided to bung into memory. Power off does a nice clean up. Mind you with the frequency with which an update requires a reboot you're probably OK.

LybsterRoy Silver badge

Re: It is easy

Let's assume that we are talking simple end users, and for the sake of the discussion let's say all they use is Word. You know the sort of person when asked what version of Windows they're on they'll reply "I use Word"

Right - turn on machine, click the Word icon on the desktop and all's well and good.

Unless they're your W95 user who isn't used to the ribbon - I had to help a couple of secretaries at a large consultancy firm who's IT department didn't seem to understand that moving from the old menu structure where the secretaries had set up lots of shortcuts for themselves to the ribbon wasn't a seamless experience.

A W95 user would (probably) be used to point and click so as far as that goes "they'd have little difficulty making the transition", however, doing something productive might take a bit longer.

Unit4 software's budget bungle leaves schools counting the cost

LybsterRoy Silver badge

Re: Really?

Yes but at the time this was specced it would have had to be the RPi4 - so you'd need two.

Drowning in code: The ever-growing problem of ever-growing codebases

LybsterRoy Silver badge

Re: “Everybody and their dog is coding”

I've upvoted you but I think the word "program" in your first sentence should be replaced by "think"

Amazon overcharges shoppers with Buy Box algorithm, fresh lawsuit claims

LybsterRoy Silver badge

Re: Amazon

https://www.ofcom.org.uk/phones-telecoms-and-internet/information-for-industry/numbering/numbers-for-drama

LybsterRoy Silver badge

Re: Amazon

-- but now they refuse to let me log in unless I give them my phone number, --

I had something similar. A number of accounts set up over the years and generally used when I HAVE to give an email account to enable me to give some company my money (just in case and we won't tell anyone else honest). These accounts have been accessed by Thunderbird since the advent of Oauth2 and one day I couldn't open one of the accounts, either via Thunderbird or online. I disabled checking it on Thunderbird and just left it to fester. Couple of months later I'm allowed to access via Thunderbird again.

Its happened to one of the other accounts. Same process.

So if you can be without the account for a while just stop trying and let it fester and Google may, after a while, decide its OK to use it again. No idea why though.

Ford pulls the plug on EV strategy as losses pile up

LybsterRoy Silver badge

Re: Purchase cost is one thing

You seem unaware of how the lease costs will be set.

LybsterRoy Silver badge

Re: re: EV fuelling speed - Poor

So the charger has your credit card details and your smartphone details (I don't imagine it would deign to accept an old feature phone). I wonder how good their security is?

LybsterRoy Silver badge

Re: Once upon a time....

-- Sure, but this is exactly the same thing as forgetting to refuel an ICE. If you're a person who's prone to doing that sort of thing, the car being stuck is going to happen regardless of what kind of car it is. --

I keep a can of diesel in my boot, part of my "just in case" kit. Only used it once when it went into someone else's car to help them out (can an EV carge an EV?) but then refilled. If I sold the diesel at today's prices I'd make a bit of a profit.

LybsterRoy Silver badge

Re: Once upon a time....

-- Even if you restrict it to private driveways, you're still talking over 60%, --

Where the hell are you getting your numbers from?

LybsterRoy Silver badge

Re: Once upon a time....

-- A car that runs on petrol or diesel needs to have a fairly long range or you'd be stopping to fill up too often which would mean there would need to be many more petrol stations and it would be inconvenient. --

Why does this statement not also apply to EVs? I know you then mention plugging in at home but if I need to drive to Inverness and back that's c200 miles. Let's say both ICE & EV cars do 180 miles to a full top up. I have to stop once for each of them. With the ICE car that's < 5 minutes. Probably the same for the EV just to get the 20 miles range to get me home but would I want to risk it?

AI models just love escalating conflict to all-out nuclear war

LybsterRoy Silver badge

<< Hence this entire exercise is simply a waste of everybody's fucking time. >>

Nah - the writers of the paper got paid, the author of this article got paid, and we got a few minutes of pleasure (or pain) reading the article and these comments. What more can you want?

LybsterRoy Silver badge

Sorry, both are important. You can feed the same data to two different people (or algorithms) and get two totally different results. It depends on the interpretation of the data.

Ransomware payment rates drop to new low – now 'only 29% of victims' fork over cash

LybsterRoy Silver badge

The only thing I can come up with that would stop ransomware is some magical technology that would track the crime back to the individuals involved and make sure they don't benefit from it or better still suffer for it.

Out of curiosity how many ransomware attacks do you think the mafia and equivalent organisations are inflicted with?

LybsterRoy Silver badge

Re: Time to ban paying!

-- still seeing nearly 30% of victims paying --

As far as we know - could be a lot more (or possibly less)

Cory Doctorow has a plan to wipe away the enshittification of tech

LybsterRoy Silver badge

Re: It's everywhere

What are you doing on here? You are far to sensible - have an upvote.

LybsterRoy Silver badge

Re: Root Cause

There was a report many years ago in response to moaning about how much MDs (we didn't have CEOs back then) were paid that said that MDs should have their rewards more closely aligned with the shareholders so they started being given share options. Worked out well didn't it?

LybsterRoy Silver badge

Re: Bog Zech?????

My initial thought was to upvote you. Before I did my mind changed to I should downvote you.

The point you are missing is that skill sets may be different but may still exist. If you doubt this spend 8 hours as a cleaner. Society has chosen to reward one set of skills in a different way to another but both are valuable. Looking at the output of some computer programmers I am led to believe that they would be better off as a cleaner. Mainly on the basis of they wouldn't be able to make my life so miserable with their wonderful efforts.

ps: I'm not a lefty

LybsterRoy Silver badge

Re: Deliberation

You really want to screw Google up its easy - just make it a government department. Job done!

Page: