* Posts by Khaptain

4041 publicly visible posts • joined 4 May 2008

It's raining drones, but just one specimen: DJI's Matrice 200 quadcopter

Khaptain Silver badge

Re: Damn batteries ...

Could be someone having some "fun" with a drone jammer such as one of these :

https://www.jammer-store.com/drone-jammers/

Drones would normally use 2.4 or 5.8 Ghz which is not 4g but it is easy to understand how they are often confused... simply because they are wireless is enough for some...

Khaptain Silver badge

Re: Raises an interesting question

What about a small canister full of compressed helium, which could inflate a balloon, thinking along the lines of airbag tech. Might not stop the impact but at least if it would slow down the descent.

A couple of jagged edge kilos dropping suddenly from 50m or so must be quite deadly.... so almost any idea would be better than none.

Apple breathes new life into MacBook Air with overhauled 2018 model

Khaptain Silver badge

Re: What's 2.7 lbs in real money?

"(Ah, 1.22 kg, or so my phone tells me… That's pretty impressively light!)"

Nah not so lite , the Lenovo X1 Carbon is only 1,13 Kgs and with a slightly better config ( 14" IPS Screen, same shitty 8gb ram, better disk capacity 256Gb SSD ), it is more expensive though.

Khaptain Silver badge

Retina Grade Density

And what is the actual resolution, on their site they don't appear to actually give a resolution outside of the fact that there are 4 million pixels ? confusing ....

@Gordon : It appears as though there are 2 (sic) "Thunderbolt 3(USB-C)" ports..

Microsoft to staff: We remain locked and loaded with US military – and will keep adding voice to AI ethics debate

Khaptain Silver badge

"August 29, 2019 : All Americans are now Chinese citizens"

Once could argue that that is almost the case at the moment...Trump is trying to regain some control with his import taxes kerfuffle but I am not sure that he will win in a war of attrition..

Khaptain Silver badge

Solid Defense

Presonally I am not convinced that relying on MS to "defend" an entire country is the most appropriate option.

They are a shitload of talented people out there that could probably do far better than MS for this kind of contract...

AI - Artificial Intelligence is just that, it is artificial.... Why not use the real world, grey cell matter version to pick of targets...

I can't think of anything more frightening than allowing a computer algorithm the "right" to select it's victims. What happens when the algorithm is hacked and the targets suddenly become local rather the distant....

IT and AI have their place, but choice of target is just damned scary...

Techie was bigged up by boss… only to cause mass Microsoft Exchange outage

Khaptain Silver badge

Re: RE: Then came the Linux crowd where there were no such applications

@K

You do know that modern PowerShell is actually available and actually worlks... and that headless MS servers do indeed exist...

Zip it! 3 more reasons to be glad you didn't jump on Windows 10 1809

Khaptain Silver badge

Probably the same numtpy that is goading us towards 0365 online only version....

A complete bastard.

FYI: Faking court orders to take down Google reviews is super illegal

Khaptain Silver badge

Re: How long before the courts move into the modern world?

I work with lots of hospitals that absolutely refuse certain communications unless they are sent by fax... And I work in what's called a very modern society...

Insects with farts that smell like coriander assist in covering up Paris's aroma d'urine

Khaptain Silver badge

They don't outdo the lingering odour of old piss

I'm currently in Paris and can assure those who are afraid of the punaises thatbthey don't have to worry as the odeur d'urine largely covers up the coriander...

Even amongst the high risers of La Defense it doesnt get any better....

Vive la France

Samsung: Swanky hardware alone won't save a phone maker

Khaptain Silver badge

Re: Make anything more than a plain vanilla Android completely optional

There's really very little bloatware in the Huaweis, nothing ever seems intrusive or annoying.. The updates arrive frequently so I am very happy.

Khaptain Silver badge

Re: Make anything more than a plain vanilla Android completely optional

This is exactly the reason that I switched to Huawei, Samsung Bloatware drove me crazy.

Samsung want control over the users but they are not Ms, Google or Apple.

Samsung indeed have become a steaming pile on nuisance.

Haven't looked back since and my colleagues are now moving over as well. Samsung have gone down the wrong path and they will soon start feeling the pain. I give Samsung 2 more years before they will have no other choice than to make huge changes in what they are currently doing..

I just wish that a European manufacturer came back into the mobile market.. Come back Nokia...

Indiegogo pulls handheld airport pervscanners off crowdfunding platform

Khaptain Silver badge

Creepier thought

Making this kind is device is creepy, but those who buy them are even creepier.

Punkt: A minimalist Android for the paranoid

Khaptain Silver badge

Re: Calls and Email

"If anyone wants to talk to me, they can give me a call. Other forms of communication, for example email or social media, are available when I choose to use them – and via a linked device that allows me to use them more effectively.”"

I must admit that I might not have fully understood what they mean by "via a linked device".. If it can talk to a 3rd party device to ask for email then why not do it directly to a mail server ??

Khaptain Silver badge

Calls and Email

If it can do calls and Email ( preferably integration with an Exchange server), then I want one.

12 days of autonomy, yes please.

Also, will it phone home to Google or not ?

Edit. Just had a quick look at their site, it does do email :-)

https://www.punkt.ch/en/products/mp02-4g-mobile-phone/

I'm gonna get me one, it's got all that I need for work phone...

Microsoft resurfaces Surface kit alongside Windows 10 update

Khaptain Silver badge

Re: I have to admit

They are actually nice machines to use, if you forgive their lack of physical connectivity. They are quite light, they fold small and carry easily. The screens are bright and clear, with enough memory and I7s inside they are powerful. As I mentioned above it has been my workhorse for almost 2 years.

They are far better than they are given credit for, except for the lack of ports.

The albeit expensive docking station allows to run a further 2 screens effortlessly. which is cool. It was my situation when in in the office.

We have about 10 of them in the company and we have had no failure on any of them so far. I replaced my keyboard after a little beer accident.

I have never seen anyone use the pen though.. And it's not very often that anyone uses the touch screen except for some minor Web scrolling.

I even played fortnits on mine but I wouldn't recommend that to anyone. The graphics card is really not great for gaming. It can handle Blender without a problem for the basic stuff.

I even bought my wife one, a SP3, she loved it. It was handy around the house, far better than a tablet due to it using a full OS.

Khaptain Silver badge

Re: Going back to Thinkpad

@Waseem

Et voila, I learned something new today , for any Regtards to lazy to read the link that Waseem linked to , the DOS command is

powercfg /energy

It produces a very detailed html report, interesting,

Waseem here are the results for my battery

Battery:Battery Information

Battery ID 27926DYNX9xxxxx

Manufacturer DYN

Serial Number 27xxx

Chemistry LION

Long Term 1

Sealed 0

Cycle Count 453

Design Capacity 38152

It seems that you have already a lot of cycles, and yet we have similar battery life, not looking good for me should I arrive at the 900ish mark...

Khaptain Silver badge

Re: Going back to Thinkpad

@Phil

"I suspect you may not be the target market then. "

These are expensive machines so I would have expected that the target market is either top line execs or IT Pros. ( I am the latter).

The problem relating to lack of connectivity is also to be found on many other "professional" laptops.. We have several at work, Dell, HP which also do not possess Ethernet or Multiple USB ports.

We are trying to convince managaement to move to Thinkpads for the next refresh.. Personally I am hoping got a T480s ( i7 and 16gb should be fine)..

Khaptain Silver badge

Re: Going back to Thinkpad

@Waseem Alkurdi

Waseem Alkurdi

Waseem Alkurdi

Waseem Alkurdi

@Waseem

"Interesting! Can you tell me how many cycles is on that battery and how much it used to last new, for reference"

I have no idea how many cycles it has, but I can tell you that I have used it almost every day for the last 2 years.

In the office I plug it in to it's docking station, at home I use the standard charger. I travel twice a week on the train which represents about 4 hours of battery only usage.

I also use it a lot at the weekends, sometimes for gaming, work, web.. The battery is fully depleted/charged every 2 or 3 days, sometime I forget to plug it in at home or I forget to turn it off etc...

I don't have it with me at this moment but I can check tonight if you want. Is it actually possible to know the number of cycles, if so by which means.

I am more than happy to share the details.

Khaptain Silver badge

Re: Underwelmed

Agreed , no USB-C on a bleeding edge machine is just pathetic.

Khaptain Silver badge

Going back to Thinkpad

I have enjoyed a Surface Pro for the last 2 years. Its a powerful and capable machine but..... It also severely lacks connectivity.

The machine is nice and slim it I am forced to carry round a USB hub and a USB to Ethernet cable.. Which is a reak pain when you forget either..

On top of that you need a real tabletop for it to rest on, using it on your lap is the equivalent of juggling milk bottles with your nose...

Another annoying factor is the bloody screen resolution which can wreck havoc with some apps, especially remote desktop. There are solutions but it's a pain nonetheless.

Even after 2 years I still have about 4.5 hours of battery which is not to bad.. I have the I7 which is very comfortable, it can easily run a couple of VMs..

On the whole, I love the Surface Pro but it's the little things that let it down...

Wi-Fi Alliance ditches 802.11 spec codes for consumer-friendly naming scheme

Khaptain Silver badge

Is that the Apple only version ?

Manchester nuisance-call biz fined £150k after ignoring opt-out list

Khaptain Silver badge

Re: ICO information in reports

"Because they could be withholding their CLI or sending fake CLI data."

Which means that the Telco is allowing them to do this......

Swedish ISP spanked for sexist 'distracted boyfriend' advert for developer jobs

Khaptain Silver badge

Negative towards who?

The photographer put the guy into focus, he is the object, the light is on him and he is being portrayed dishonest.

I would therefore consider this image as a negative portrayal of men.

The woman in red is not even in focus, for all it matters she could have been completely out of the picture.

Building your own PC for AI is 10x cheaper than renting out GPUs on cloud, apparently

Khaptain Silver badge
Trollface

Much cheaper alternative

A second hand laptop, anything that can run putty/etc with a 4g connection to the web.

Learn some hacking theory, practice your skills and then hack your local university, or any other large institution with reasonable processing power and backbone connection.

Fumble away as all and many might do. Create the next Skynet AI, call it a religion, rewrite history as you see fit, buy an island, protected by the eponymous laser equipped sharks , and Bob's your auntie.

Cost of the operation , a small farthing or two. You've got to be a little bit crazy, but that hasn't stopped other world leaders.

Alternatively, forget AI, it's media hype for - we have got a lot of data but we have not yet found any other use than a new kind of snake oil.

Sometimes I think that "we" are already "Artificially Intelligent": think about it ......

Cisco sneaks hardcoded secret root backdoor into vid surveillance kit

Khaptain Silver badge

3 Letters

"someone created the “secret” account during product development, and forgot about it".

Maybe it was that nice government agent guy that came in to do an audit ? These things happen you know, on a surprisingly frequent basis.

And this is professional gear, imagine how many "absent-minded" mistakes will remain when all that IOT shit hits the mass market.... ( On saying that, some of it is already there)

Garbage collection – in SPAAACE: Net snaffles junk in first step to clean up Earth's orbiting litter

Khaptain Silver badge

Getting good at littering

The Earth is already a nightmare, now space too is becoming a problem..

Aren't there some lessons to be learned somewhere.... We are only in the beginnings of space travel and we have alreay created a mess..

Facepalm at the idea that with all our intelligence we keep repeating the same errors.

Trump pulls trigger in US-China tit-for-tat tariff tiff: 10% slapped on $200bn of imported kit

Khaptain Silver badge

Just as long as that doesn't include i-pods.....

The grand-plus iPhone is the new normal – this is no place for paupers

Khaptain Silver badge

Re: Typical Apple

If you keep you Rolex serviced it might last for several generations and probably gain in value.

Rolexs are hand crafted mechanical devices, Iphone are just chinese mass produced consumables.. You can't compare them.

If you know anything about watches you would also realise that Rolex are actually a top notch manufacturer, their service is first class and they produce watches using top quality materials, many of which are in house made, including their usage of their own perfected steel.. It's anything but tat.

Microsoft sharpens its claws to cut Outlook UI excess, snip Ribbon

Khaptain Silver badge

"Only now am I starting to get used to that piffle of a ribbon."

And the surprising part is that is actually quite good.....

I've seen the future of consumer AI, and it doesn't have one

Khaptain Silver badge

Re: A but not I

I see it as follows :

We are born with instinct, like most other animals whereas we develop our intellect ( some people don't manage to go very far though).

Instinct tells you that you have to eat.

Intelligence will eventually tell you how to eat better by making fire, how to cut up the bones to make sharp objects and eventually learn to sew, make clothes that protect you from the environment and eventually build/furnish a cave which you can then rent to the lesser intellects for more food that it is really worth.

Khaptain Silver badge

A but not I

Intelligence : In my book it relates to the capacity to autonomously and continually adapt to ones surroundings. It is first and foremost a skill that helps us continue to survive. Intelligence is the thing that kicks in when instinct has reached its limits.

Since none of these objects are anything but Pseudo Code wrapped up with a synthetic voice, it appears as though the intelligence part has been completely forgotten. In reality they are nothing more than the equivalent of "Multi-Mixers" pretending that the chore of cooking will completely disappear thanks to the wonderful technology inside. Pure and utter bullshit.

These machines are really nothing more than household appliances performing an extremely small and minor task. I would give more credit to the inventor of the spoon.

What's more worrying is the quantity of people who actually believe in this nonsense.

Huawei elbows aside Apple to claim number-two phone maker spot

Khaptain Silver badge

Re: There may be trouble ahead ....

For the moment their handsets are relatively cheap, much cheaper than Samsung, their quality is pretty good, ( we've stopped buying Samsung at work because of the price) and they are snappy.

We've got P9s, P10s et even P20s, no complaints whatsover. ( Don't know about their cheaper versions)

As for rooting telephones, I used to do it, now I can't be bothered as it causes more pain than anything else. There is always something that doesn't work correctly afterwards...

Now I just use Blokada in order to make an "attempt" at blocking Ads and to try and reduce/limit the Google Slurp...

You want how much?! Israel opts not to renew its Office 365 vows

Khaptain Silver badge

Re: Now *there's* an EU initiative ....

Unfortunately there is no initiative to do so because the greedy bastards of this world won't make any money.

It's official – satellite spots water ice at the Moon's chilly poles

Khaptain Silver badge

"You get a lot of UV on the surface of the Moon, so a lot of the plastic will break down relatively quickly."

That could be an excellent solution to the problems on Earth, increase the UV by breaking don the Ozone layer..... oh wait ......haven't we already made an attempt at that.

Khaptain Silver badge

Excellent

Now all we have to do is learn how to breath on the moon........

Big Tech turns saboteur to cripple new California privacy law in private

Khaptain Silver badge

Re: Private Piracy, Arrr

Ironic that Silicon Valley is in California. I wonder if that means that several companies would reimplant to other states where they are slightly less eco-friendly and far more open to large backhanders.

Aren't there any companies in Silicon Valley capable of producing a non-advertising based search engine. Something that doesn't use Google as the back end?

Self-driving cars will be safe, we're testing them in a massive AI Sim

Khaptain Silver badge

"You're assuming that AI doesn't also bring downsides equivalent or greater to than the more obvious human failings."

The difference being the AI will improve and retain it's "intelligence".

Khaptain Silver badge

"but literally decades before any car can drive itself around Cairo or the arc de triomphe"

A lot of people can't actually manage to do those things in a safe manner without putting others into danger. At least AVs would not be influenced by emotions, stress or fatique, thereby creating a safer environment..

Khaptain Silver badge

Mundanity

Outside of drving a sports car on a circuit, or a good 4*4 in the desert etc I can't think of anything more mundane than driving..

Personally I wish that AVs would arrive tommorrow on a large scale. The less meatbags that are behind the wheel the better.

I would hazard a guess that most accidents, and therefore road jams etc are caused by meatbags making bad decisions. And since driving laws are becoming more drastic, speed cams, speed bumps, radar, red light cams etc it's making less sense to actually drive ourselves..

There was a time when owning a car gave us a sense of freedom, nowadays it's almost a constraint..

Vive the coming of the AV..

Windows 10 Linux Distribution Overload? We have just the thing

Khaptain Silver badge

Re: Don't feed the penguins. They're doing fine without your MSguided help.

Or alternatively,

2 SSDS with the possibility to switch between both, suspend the activity of one , resume the other, just like VMs

Lo and behold, Earth's special chemical cocktail for life seems to be pretty common

Khaptain Silver badge

Re: Alternative life forms

"Venturing elsewhere is how you go about cleaning up where you are now. It's a lot easier to clean a house when it's not being lived in, think about it.

Moving off world and expanding usable space, reduces our demands on the earth's natural resources, giving its ecosystems time and space to recover."

Oh, so you mean that we can take our actual bad habits and continue to deploy them elsewhere ? Using even more resources and poluting something else.

We have to tidy up our own backyard first before we can start to imagine moving elsewhere.. We have successfully put a lot of things in the atmosphere and some of it is already in the "junk" status.

http://www.businessinsider.fr/us/space-debris-garbage-statistics-country-list-2017-10

Khaptain Silver badge

Alternative life forms

The universe is probably teeming with life but in forms that we do not recognize or understand or are capable of understanding from a chemical/physical point of view.

I know that I am a pressimist and as much as I can understand the desire to search elsewhere I always feel that there is far more need to take care and improve whats already here..

If we were to discover an alternative lifeform I am sure that they would be disgusted at what we are doing with the planet that we already have..

Before venturing elsewhere we need to take care of GAIA before se decide to take care of us... Then we should begin our ventures elsewhere.

Boss regrets pointing finger at chilled out techie who finished upgrade early

Khaptain Silver badge

Porn Fest

I was developing CTI interfaces quite a few years ago and as such was using the companies phones lines to do testing.

Boss came into the office and told me to stop testing as the latest invoice was extremely high.. As my testing was aony a few phone calls using local numbers I was a little dubious at being the cause of the high amounts.

As anyone would do I then inspected the bill and call up our provider in order to have further details..

Reality hit : The expenses were in fact associated with a mobile number within the company that was using SMS texts to pay for Porn..

Guess who's mobile phone was being used, oh yes it was our favorite Pointy Haired Boss...

I confonted him with the fact the someone was using SMS to pay for Porn access without mentioning the number that was being used. He quietly dismissed me from his office and said he would investigate himself as to who was using the companies resources in a such a manner.

I also had the logs from our Firewall which left no doubt about the time spent browsing Porn from his office machine.. ( I didn't tell him about that though)

I was allowed to continue my testing and next months bills were already back to normal....

( I don't now if SMS are still used to make payments because that was several years ago, about 12 and thing have moved on since, thankfully)

Google risks mega-fine in EU over location 'stalking'

Khaptain Silver badge

Confusopoly

Google, Apple et al know only too well what they are doing, by intentionally confusing everything to a point where even hardened IT Pros have difficulties understanding how to setup things up.

It's simple really, Google will do everything in it's power to stop you having control over "their" data...

http://dilbert.com/strip/2010-11-21

When's a backdoor not a backdoor? When the Oz government says it isn't

Khaptain Silver badge

Welcome to China

Jdnnazhfnmioelanbucuidjebgazucifje.

(Decrypted version by means of me being a good cop)

All your Kangaroos are us.

Prank 'Give me a raise!' email nearly lands sysadmin with dismissal

Khaptain Silver badge

Australia on the cusp of showing the world how to break encryption

Khaptain Silver badge

Re: No ... think bigger!

@Mc Nobby

I presume that that was a reference to the IT Crowd... Brings up some sunshine to this cloudy morning.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDbyYGrswtg

and it's follow up

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vywf48Dhyns

Khaptain Silver badge

Fortunately it's no longer the case.

So maybe, the Ozzies should reconsider if their master plan will really have any impact.

First we had the great barrier reef.

Then we had the great Aussi Firewall.

The we had the amazing Aussi Full Decryption laws.

Then we had a scandal because one of the ministers got caught doing something naughty, one/all of his adversaries could now read the hidden stuff.

Then the great firewall, decryption process was removed as it wasn't in public interest...

What goes around, comes around...

Need a facial recognition auto-doxxx tool? Social Mapper has you covered

Khaptain Silver badge

Re: Go for it

Australian, living in one of Sydney's affluent suburbs.

Worked on IBMs, knows AS400s probably from within a Banking environment, in or around the early 80s, we can quickly surmise that at least 48 years old, although I would hazard a guess are around 62. ( forty odd years in IT).

Learned assembler on Macs in an Australian university.

Likes to make/eat Cheese. Previously owned a BMW 740il

What's the betting that it would not take too long for someone with but a little more information than El Reg posts too fully determine the real name of our probably Scottish or Irish descendancy poster......

So were moving along quickly with this rather un-anonymous Aussi...lol.

[Oengus, don't take it too seriously, I just wanted to see what kind of profile I could quickly develop just reading through El Reg posts] Anyone that thinks that El Reg is not a social media website, think again...