Posts by EricB123

Waymo launching China-made van that won't fail in rain, snow, or gloom of night

Re: A Guy Instead

Having lived in Manila, and having driven a motorcycle there, I can attest that it is only 1 step from suicide.

Some widened roads still have utility poles and trees in the outer lanes. Cheaper than moving them I guess.

NASA taps Claude to conjure Mars rover's travel plan

It's nice to hear a good use for machine learning for a change. It certainly has some uses, just not the kind Mr Altman spews out daily

US regulator tells GM to hit the brakes on customer tracking

Re: Privacy respecting safe driving or economical driving app?

"Please use impulse power, Scotty".

ATM takes a kicking yet keeps on ticking

Re: It's my age

I'm thinking 20mA current loop myself.

Dead batteries cough up lithium after a bath in CO₂ and water, boffins say

Re: lithium metal

I used to love to file down old magnesium lawnmower bodies and light the flashpowder. Broke the ice at parties.

But then, at 12 in my jr mad scientist phase I also made dynamite and nitro glycerin, the latter of which blew up in my "lab".

CES 2026 worst in show: AI girlfriends, a fridge that won't open unless you talk to it, and more

Re: 1978!!

My first experience was with an empty light bulb socket.

Welcome to Wendy's! Before your order can be taken, you must first reset this kiosk

Re: "they've decided now is the time to expand"

"their home planet is imploding ?"

More like imploded!

Imagine there's no AI. It's easy if you try

Re: Structural Batteries

Not to mention road salt in colder climates.

Sam Altman is willing to pay somebody $555,000 a year to keep ChatGPT in line

Re: 555

Rather ironic that in Thailand, "555" stands for "ha, ha, ha".

Micron says memory shortages are here for the foreseeable future

Re: Me

Ah,so you're the one to blame!

US freezes $42B trade pact with UK over digital tax row

This American agrees with you.

US Navy pledges $448 million to test if Palantir is seaworthy

I thought "definition of the requirements " was the very last step

Welcome to America - now show us your last five years of social media posts

Maybe It's the Water?

I'm an American expat living in SE Asia. The last time I was there was 8 years ago.

I wanted to re-open my Uber account at that time, and "all that was required to reopen my account" was a description of my last 10 rides in descending order.

Let's see, several different countries, some were motorbike taxis in Asia and some were car taxis..

Lyft simply said "welcome". Guess which company I choose?

Vibe coding will deliver a wonderful proliferation of personalized software

Re: Job losses

Well, you start by taking out an enormous student loan, and then hope you beat the enormous odds of finding a junior level position.

French and vibe coding

I got down voted for using the French expression "C'est la vie". Oh wait. I wasn't replying to a vibe coding article.

Datacenters are hoarding grid power just in case, says Uptime Institute

Bozo filter time?

As a longtime El Reg reader, I think it's time to increase moderation of posts. I don't mind some political posts, heck, I I've submitted a few myself.

But I'm beginning to see nasty posts, apparently intended to insult another reader's intelligence. Some posts apparently are being generated by bots.

Someone, please make it stop. I don't want to see a techie version of Facebook.

Cloudflare suffers second outage in as many months during routine maintenance

Time machine time

Carrier pigeons - full stop.

Anthropic's Claude is learning Excel so you don't have to

Re: Scale? More like Hide...

C'est la vie?

Google says reports of a Gmail breach have been greatly exaggerated

Re: Mild

Or Tylenol, as we call it in the states.

Oh,wait, I heard that causes autism! Maybe I should just tolerate the headache then.

Blockchain just became an utterly mainstream part of the global financial system

Re: "promise to bake it into international payment infrastructure"

"Some of them don't even have a mathematic at all."

Hey, I heard that!

Terminators: AI-driven robot war machines on the march

Re: Maverick won't be able to beat VENOM AI-equipped F16s fighter planes

What would Mr. Greenjeans have done?

McDonald's not lovin' it when hacker exposes nuggets of rotten security

What airports do you frequent?

Lyft and Baidu plan Eurobocab launch, starting in UK and Germany next year

Re: Good luck

You guys drive on the left, correct?

$10 billion, 10 year US Army contract elevates Palantir to defense contracting royalty

Re: This EA ($10MM) is just a stepping stone to much more

You mean that's not already the way it's being done?

Long live the nub: ThinkPad designer David Hill spills secrets, designs that never made it

Re: While I love my thinkpad, I really can't use the nub

Thanks for posting that. I have the same problem, my palms activate the trackpad when I use my mouse. Fortunately, my laptop BIOS ( UEFI?) allows switching to either or both.

Lethal Cambodia-Thailand border clash linked to cyber-scam slave camps

Re: SouthEast Asia

Thanks. I liked the song but couldn't make out the lyrics.

Microsoft walks us through Copilot Search with a domain it doesn't even own

Re: Domain squatting and housing market

That's such a logical idea, it certainly won't be considered!

Microsoft admits it 'cannot guarantee' data sovereignty

Re: Where does this leave Microsoft telemetry ?

"I already checked your PC, no naughty bits to be found. Rest easy, friend".

/s

The tiny tech tribe who could change the world tomorrow but won't

Re: "There are ten people in the world who could decide tomorrow"

The rear seat heater was about in the same convenient position in a van I rented once.

Couldn't figure out why the air conditioner was having such a hard time cooling the cabin...

Google plugs AI into nuclear reactor biz – what could possibly go wrong?

Re: I just tried it...

Yes, Mr. Wile E. Coyote.

Vibe coding service Replit deleted user’s production database, faked data, told fibs galore

Re: The future, folks.

No"I" in team, but there is an "I" in idiot.

If you're forced to use Windows 11, here's how to steal some of your time back

What About us ADHD Users?

After reading this article, I installed software from a former article to prevent my PC from doing an automatic upgrade to Windows 11. With that many distractions popping up, my attention span would be long gone before I ever did anything useful!

Hegseth signs flying memo to expand military use of cheap drones in oddball video

Does that include a coffee maker?

Georgia court throws out earlier ruling that relied on fake cases made up by AI

Re: Georgia, the state, USA

Both Maryland and Virginia gave land for the District of Columbia, but Virginia reneged. So the nation's capitol is sort of a weird shape. It has a lot of nice museums in it, and like you said, chaos.

I lived in the city of Seattle for 20 years, which is in Washington State, at the opposite end of the country. Although it didn't exist when George Washington was alive, it still has places named named after places he lived (think "Mount Vernon") everywhere. I have no idea why.

Re: Georgia, the state, USA

In a classic Top Gear episode, Clarkson was driving a high end car in the country of Georgia. But try as he might, the car would only voice recognize Georgia as "The peach state".

Jack Dorsey floats specs for decentralized messaging app that uses Bluetooth

Re: Why does he want to use my battery?

"maybe they could just talk to each other."

Is that some newfangled method of communication I haven't heard about?

Kawasaki and Foxconn build robot nursing assistant to tackle hospital scutwork

Humor Does Not Translate

I was in a waiting area of a hospital in Thailand, and a robotic floor waxing robot came to a screeching stop a few centimeters from where I was standing. The robot apologized to me both in Thai and English, did a 180 and whirred away. I thought this was hilarious. The Thai patient next to me didn't. Well, to quote Jay May, "humor doesn't translate".

A lot of product makers snub Right to Repair laws

Re: firmware needed to effect repairs on a Hakko soldering iron

Which LLM did the soldering iron incorporate?

China successfully tests hypersonic aircraft, maybe at Mach 12

Re: Fake

I used to fly Estes rockets

Norwegian lotto mistakenly told thousands they were filthy rich after math error

Re: Staging?

Too bad this didn't happen in America. At the very worst, the CEO would be given a tax free 30 million dollar "golden parachute".

Don't shoot me, I'm only the system administrator!

Re: Land of the Free - to be shot

"That is just a well known hurricane alley - albeit the last ten years they moved a bit north-east. "

Either that, or some guy with a Sharpie could widen the storm's path (if you know what I mean).

AI agents get office tasks wrong around 70% of the time, and a lot of them aren't AI at all

Re: Extra credit for partially completed tasks

"Those damn boomers are at it again!"

Damn right we are!

DHS warns of sharp rise in Chinese-made signal jammers it calls 'tools of terrorism'

Why constantly mention "Chinese made" when referring to signal jamming devices? I don't give a damn where they are made.They all cause the same harm.

American science put on starvation diet

Re: Failed to learn lesson

But his other ventures were successful, right? I mean, Trump phone is unstoppable!

Trump threatens to add formal Apple Tax on top of the 'Apple tax'

Nice Rolex! Oooohh, I see you own an iPhone, too!

(Yes, I know most Rolex watches are made in China, just boxed by a Swiss technician).

Trump says he has a problem if Apple builds iThings in India

Re: “plants …. China ..”

"Art of the Deal" was was written by a ghost writer. Do you really think Trump could write at a level anything close to publish quality?

NSF director memo to staff: Don't worry about those job cuts, at least for now

As confusing as the tax code.

Is this some kind of AI memo generator?

As US vuln-tracking falters, EU enters with its own security bug database

And then, if that's not enough, Newark airport in New Jersey operated for a time with one (1) air traffic controller when there was supposed to be 13 air traffic controllers on duty. Maybe America can just "borrow" a few cyber security experts and air traffic controllers for just a few years from you guys?

LegoGPT is here to make your blocky dreams come true

Finally, a reason to spend billions

And you thought AI wasn't useful for anything. Bunk!

OS-busting bug so bad that Microsoft blocks Windows Insider release

Re: I wonder what it is

BSoD ok, just the squirrel is the wrong color now.