* Posts by JDX

6847 publicly visible posts • joined 28 May 2010

Big Falcon Namechange for Musk's rocket: BFR becomes Starship

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Re: Starship

The drone-barge ships are engineer-y things not linked to customers' billion-dollar satellites or squishy organs.

OnePlus 6T: Tasteful, powerful – and much cheaper than a flagship

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Huawei alternative?

I was thinking about upgrading recently from my 1+3 due to various problems (not sure if the hardware or Android or OxygenOS). Offers on various Huawei devices on Amazon caught my eye, around the £300 mark. The one consistent negative I see is the UI, not sure I can cope with that!

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Re: Dumb dumb dumb

I disparage the people who rail about SD support and removable batteries but I just don't get the demise of 3.5mm. It's a ubiquitous standard that works incredibly well and has done since the Walkman (and before). We know that voluntary use of wireless 'phones has not gone mainstream - they aren't removing the socket because everyone has stopped using 3.5mm, everyone stops using 3.5mm because it's removed.

I use multiple devices (phone, iPad, other tablet, PC) with my earphones and while some of these support BlueTooth, not all do... and in my experience BlueTooth accessories HATE being shared between devices. So I'll have to dick about pairing/unpairing devices and continually find my earphones aren't working because they decided to pair with my iPad instead of my phone, etc.

FYI NASA just lobbed its Parker probe around the Sun in closest flyby yet: A nerve-racking 15M miles from the surface

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Re: Talk about the gates of Hell !

So is the number of fly-bys fuel-limited even if everything works?

I wonder if it's set to just drive straight into the sun if all goes well? Or maybe they are 100% sure it will burn up/fail in one of the last orbits and 20 is already several more than it could realistically achieve.

Macs to Linux fans: Stop right there, Penguinista scum, that's not macOS. Go on, git outta here

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Re: Sure why not antagonize a community

How big is the Linux community who wants to dual boot Linux on a Mac? Probably pretty small. I doubt Apple care about antagonizing them, or the wider Linux community who have no interest in their products.

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Re: it really isn't your hardware

"I disagree.

There is a full OS running on a hidden chip inside the processor. I have no access to that OS.

There are plenty of secure or "not owned by me" processes, devices, etc running in my device.

Apple can decide to lock me out with an update because it does not detect the correct signature in the screen or the battery, etc.

Would you say your house is your house if you could not go to the basement or the attic? I wouldn't.

You are not legally allowed to do several things in your house, depending where you live. You own your gas plumbing but you have to get someone certified to work on it. You own your house but you can't arbitrarily modify it without permission. You own your garden but you may not build structures in it freely. You own your trees but you might not be legally allowed to fell them or work on them due to preservation orders or ecological requirements. If your attic has asbestos then you might (not sure) legally be forbidden to enter it.

More closely related to your argument... do you own a car? In your car there is a full OS running in a locked-down fashion with secure processes and devices. I'm pretty sure hacking into it would invalidate your warranty and insurance which might make your vehicle non road-legal(?)

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I don't get why Linux people would want to buy Apple products anyway if they have that opinion of them being vastly overpriced. Certainly not why they would want to dual-boot Linux rather than run it in a VM.

Even Windows users are generally advised to use VM since the tech is so good these days, BootCAmp being for games and other specialist resource-hungry applications.

Is there a good use-case for this?

Samsung 'reveals' what looks like a tablet that folds into a phone, but otherwise we're quite literally left in the dark

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a solution looking for a problem?

I think that's harsh. There are lots of very neat uses, the reason we haven't had them is it's really difficult to build not that they can't think what to use it in. In fact they've had years to plan uses while the tech is proved (a mate was working in this field out of uni, 15+ years ago).

Tablets are way better than phones for a lot of things, but they can't replace phones and you don't really want to carry a tablet 24/7, let alone a tablet AND a phone. The trend in ever-bigger phones/phablets shows there is a desire for a convenient, large-screen device.

A phone that can actually fold out into a tablet, without weighing a ton, would be great. I can't really see how they solve the battery or weight problem though even if the screen is market-ready.

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Jeez ASAC I bet they never thought of that. They definitely wouldn't destruct test this very aspect of the device knowing it was really difficult to build, and something people would be concerned about. It's not like the entire reason these devices are taking so long to develop is because of that very issue.

I expect they'll want to head-hunt you for more cutting-edge insight.

Woke Linus Torvalds rolls his first 4.20, mulls Linux 5.0 effort for 2019

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Re: Bring back the old Linus

Yes it's a privilege to work for free writing code. Like how people often tell aspiring artists they should work for free as an opportunity.

People working on Linux could be working on another OS and getting paid (the good ones anyway). We owe a huge thankyou to those who are willing to put their time into FOSS projects, WE are privileged that they do so and allow us to benefit from their labour.

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Re: Bring back the old Linus

>There was absolutely nothing wrong about the way he conducted himself

WHAT A F***INF STUPID THING TO SAY YOU ****ING ****. YOU DON'T KNOW ****-ALL ABOUT IT.

Sorry but you are just wrong. If you can't manage people without tearing them a new one, you're not very good at it. Strong != bullying or abusive.

Old Linus (Linus Classic?) is the poster-child for everything that is wrong in the Linux/GPU world. A spoiled child in a position of power teaching a whole ecosystem that "RTFM" is a good way to answer people asking beginner questions.

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“I'm considering trying to make that a more explicit rule that I will literally stop taking new pull requests some time during the second week unless you have a good reason for why it was delayed.”

Or as old Linus would say

"WHAT THE F*** ARE YOU F***ING ****S DOING SUBMITTING ALL THESE F***ING PULL REQUESTS SO F***ING LATE?! DON'T YOU REALISE I'M TRYING TO GET THE F***ING RELEASE DONE?!"

Chuck this on expenses: £2k iPad paints Apple as the premium fondleslab specialist – as planned

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Re: 2000 quid? So they could watch movies on it.

Um, no. You buy the basic iPad for £300 for that, or the 10" Pro for £600.

The £2000 clearly has a LOT more to it which most of us don't need. But for those who do, I guess it's worth the price.

The MS Surface is a far better use for your £2k though in my view, if you really want/need a powerful, ultraportable device. That's a small but significant market for people who spend their time out in the field or travelling.

Mourning Apple's war against sockets? The 2018 Mac mini should be your first port of call

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If you spec a similar micro-PC or whatever the form factor is called, how much does it cost?

Personally I love that I could take the MM with me easily if I travel though I acknowledge this is probably not a common scenario.

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>As I proved recently on another forum, for the same price (of all the models available) I can get a PC that out-performs the Mac for a-half-to-a-third of the price - and that usually a laptop with an HD screen to boot!

Does the one you build fit in the same size box as the Apple one and weigh the same? Or are you saying a Skoda is the same as an Audi because they both fit 4 passengers and do the same mpg? Packaging is important to some people, even if not to you.

And of course, some people will prefer to pay extra for MacOS because they prefer it.

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Re: Tempting...

Yeah didn't they prevent (easy) upgrades in the 2014 model? I rushed to get a 2012 before the stock was used up after 2014 was released!

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Never a budget option?

I am typing this on my late 2012 unibody MacMini. I bought it just before they refreshed the line in 2014 and made it far worse... no quad-core option, less upgradability.

It cost less than £500 for an i7 with 8Gb RAM (which I upgraded). That was a bargain really for a Mac.

So what does the new one get me for all the extra cash? 1Tb SSD as standard? Proper GPU? And can I still upgrade the disk and RAM or have they dropped that feature? Mine is a little erratic and I have thought about replacing it so this is good timing - but for "comfortably over £1000" maybe I might as well get a MacBook or iMac?

Apple's launch confirms one thing: It's determined to kill off the laptop for iPads

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I've not tried an iPad Pro but I would love to. Although in that format I'd probably prefer the MS Surface because it is basically the same thing, at the same price, but it DOES run regular app.

I do think of all their products, the iPad is the one Apple does best objectively i.e. I don't buy into Apple ecosystem but if I want a decent tablet I would only buy iPad (if I don't want a decent one I'll get a Fire HD)

With the 6T, OnePlus hopes to shed 'cheeky upstart' tag and launch assault on flagships

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Re: why all the fuss over a headphone socket?

>Most people I know use bluetooth headsets

Most people I know, don't.

So much for small sample data eh?

I think it's a bold move for a disruptive company to make. They could've kept it and gone conservative. And since they haven't bothered to go waterproof (darn, I was hoping for that) why bother removing the hole? 1+ is not really a company selling lots of peripheries so I doubt they expect to make a load of cash from wireless phones, and they include a wired USBC set in the box anyway.

Should a robo-car run over a kid or a grandad? Healthy or ill person? Let's get millions of folks to decide for AI...

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Re: cats fare worse than criminals

It was a morality quiz, not a technical design

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Re: Important 'cause...

Yes a computer can do many of those things. Your reaction time is measured in tenths of seconds. Not to mention, the car will ALREADY be tracking every person/object in view so it doesn't have an "Oh ****" moment.

I do sort of agree though. A human doesn't try to decide who to hit so for this tiny edge case SHOULD the aI be making these decisions? It should probably work out who it can hit in the least damaging fashion and how many people to take out, nothing more.

Memo to Microsoft: Windows 10 is broken, and the fixes can't wait

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Re: I stopped right here...

According to the article they have kept QA for real-world end-user testing but dropped automated testing in favour of crowd-sourced testing... WTF?

You can't replace automated tests - unit tests and so on - with human tests because some of these things are not directly testable at user level. Surely, crowd-sourced testing should (if should is the right word) replace some of the end-user testing instead?

F***=off, Google tells its staff: Any mention of nookie now banned from internal files, URLs

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Re: With that amount of censorship internally, just imagine how Google Search will end up.

I would hardly call it censorship to insist you don't use profanity on WORK documents. It's called professionalism. Let coders swear in the coffee-room or when they're "pair programming" (that's a circle jerk anyway so it's apt) but I'd rather not sit in a meeting or one cubicle along from a co-worker who is turning the air blue.

If you want to swear at work, get a job as a white van man.

Apple to dump Intel CPUs from Macs for Arm – yup, the rumor that just won't die is back

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Re: Rosetta-a-like is absolutely necessary

What about legacy apps? Are we suggesting nobody uses them on Mac?

Microsoft's elderly .NET Framework shakes stick at whippersnapper Core while Visual Studio drops another preview

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Re: there can be multiple versions of .NET Core , .NET Framework is not so fortunate

Thanks for clarifying

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there can be multiple versions of .NET Core , .NET Framework is not so fortunate

>While there can be multiple versions of .NET Core on one computer, .NET Framework is not so fortunate, and Redmond knows it.

Unless things changed recently, different versions of .NET framework ARE very much separate for exactly this reason, that .NET can introduce breaking changes. Certainly when I was last working on .NET you'd commonly see different frameworks installed side by side. If you needed 2.0 then your 4.0 installation wouldn't (IIRC) work?

Watch Series 4: What price 'freedom'? About as much as you'd expect from an Apple product

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Re: Kinda nice

Any normal company would be delighted to have the 'small' sales Apple TV/Watch garner. It's not just about the total sales anyway, but the brand awareness and tie-in.

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Kinda nice

It is quite amazing how Apple have turned this dog around, after most people wrote the Watch off.

I'm not an iPhone user but if I was, I think I'd be strongly tempted hearing reviews of Gen3/4.

RIP Paul Allen: Microsoft cofounder billionaire dies at 65 after facing third bout with cancer

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Re: If there is any afterlife

Bill was famously involved in the Windows source code even after Windows was a huge deal. Big Bill reviews or whatever they were called.

Microsoft resurfaces Surface kit alongside Windows 10 update

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Re: Redmond's techno ear muffs will set you back $350

You must have somehow missed the words "noise cancelling" and "headphones".

Laser-sharp research sees three top boffins win the Nobel Prize in physics

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Re: Especially glad to see a 96 year old get the prize

I heard he was very pleased to receive the prize, especially after they told him what it was he'd done.

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Re: Newspapers making big deal of 1st woman for over 50 years

>I suspect we’re going to start seeing more and more backlash against gender equality as time goes on and people (ok, men) start feeling they are getting a bad deal

Yeah it's really tough being a man. I assume this 'backlash' will be coming from men angry that after 1000 years of women being 2nd-class citizens, men have allegedly been slightly penalised for about a decade due to an overcorrection. How terrible for us, that we might face minor inconvenience once in a while.

Facebook: Up to 90 million addicts' accounts slurped by hackers, no thanks to crappy code

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Re: I don't...

I thought Zuck was a proper nerd who would be bored by all the business stuff and would sell out. But then Bill Gates was a proper nerd and he stayed for decades.

It's easy to ascribe power hunger but I don't know either got into IT for that purpose. Perhaps they both share the same sense of genuinely caring and thinking what their companies do is important. Gates always seemed pretty passionate.

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Imagine being the one who figures it out

Facebook spotted the hole after it noted a suspicious "spike" in user activity on Tuesday. The attack was "fairly large scale," it admitted, and when it investigated the cause, it discovered hackers were using the site's API to automate the process of grabbing users' profile information.

I'm sure many of us have had on a much smaller scale has an "oh crap" moment (formatting the wrong drive, etc, etc). But the process from seeing that spike to figuring out what is happening must involve a pretty substantial sinking feeling!

Microsoft liberates ancient MS-DOS source from the museum and sticks it in GitHub

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Later versions?

Have MS opened the source of later MS-DOS version as well? I wonder which version they moved to C from raw ASM... 3?

Spoiler alert: Google's would-be iPhone killer Pixel 3 – so many leaks

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How wonderful it is to know an AC considers SD so important. This will shock the world of phone makers.

"value for money" is entirely subjective.

Contractors slam UK taxman's 'aggressive' IR35 tax reforms

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Re: In general you're right but:

Um, no - I am a contractor working via a Ltd so I'm familiar with all this.

Your contract CANNOT normally be terminated without notice. You generally have a 1-month notice period, or quite often there IS no notice period meaning you cannot give notice.

BUT an IR35-compliant (if they still exist) contract often has a clause that they don't have to provide work and you don't have to do it. So in effect they can give your company 30 days notice but say "don't come in after today there's no work". And, typical contractors have a contract with their company, to supply them as a named individual.

So that's why I say "EFFECTIVELY a 0-hours contract".

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Re: Do the right thing

When they suddenly increase taxes drastically and you don't get anything more to show for it, that doesn't seem great.

"IR35-caught" broadly means you are not only taxed as an employee, but worse. You have to pay the employer's NI as well as employee NI, for instance. And you don't get sick/holiday pay plus can be dismissed without notice (in real terms, you're often on what is effectively a 0-hour contract).

Android Phones are 10: For once, Google won fair and square

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And because of the walled garden and interface lock down

No no no. The vast vast majority of normal people do not care about this. In fact they like things that work consistently.

You're making the common mistake of thinking others think like you do. They don't. If you ask random people in the street, you will struggle to find anyone who knows what a "walled garden is".

Let's look at e-readers... Kindle is the iPhone of this market in areas you mention, but it has the lion's share of the market like Android does on phones.

Android devices are cheaper for those who don't want a top-of-the-line device, work as well as iPhones and have as good a range of apps, for the average punter. That's all it takes. The things we care about like walled gardens, removable batteries, and ability to customise our OS, are simply not factors for 99% of consumers.

Flying to Mars will be so rad, dude: Year-long trip may dump 60% lifetime dose of radiation on you

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Re: All aboard

He doesn't have a b-Ark. I think a lot of IT workers would be on it if he did.

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more than half the maximum dose for an astronaut's entire career

So don't do it more than once. Great.

Revealed: The billionaire baron who’ll ride Elon’s thrusting erection to the Moon and back

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Re: B-Ark?

Artists and creative types didn't go in the B-Ark. Anyone who thinks the world would be better without creative types should.

Microsoft gives Windows 10 a name, throws folks a bone

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re:ii, jj, kk if you must.

>That way you can search and replace.

If your loop is big enough you need to search-replace that's probably a code-smell in a language which supports subroutines/methods/functions.

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Re: What's this Silverlight thing?

I'm talking as someone who was full-time developing for Flex at the time and did some work with SL.

SL was unpopular IIRC partly because it had strong DRM built in, and most El Reg users dislike anything that makes stealing other's work harder, citing "freedom".

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Re: What's this Silverlight thing?

Silverlight was like a better version of Flash that arrived as everyone was starting to decide Flash was a bad idea. As a developer it was pretty neat because you could write .Net code that got run in the browser and get more code re-use client/server, as a user it was one more plugin to install.

Netflix used to use it because I think it had more security than Flash, when Netflix dumped browser plugins that was probably about the end for SL.

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It's the standard loop increment var surely. i, j, k is very widely used. Perhaps choose a different font or rely on the tool to tell you it's not valid (no idea what options their tool has)

Guys, you need to sit down and have a chat: Skype rolls out SMS a week after Microsoft

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Sounds similar to the WhatsApp web-client https://web.whatsapp.com/ which is really useful but so annoyingly lacks voice support.

Official: Google Chrome 69 kills off the World Wide Web (in URLs)

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Are they keeping HTTP(s)?

From my days of setting up a website, I'm sure http://www.<mydomain> and http://<mydomain> are technically different - I recall cases where one would work and not the other though please someone feel free to explain why?

Software dev-turned-councillor launches rubbish* chatbot

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Re: Fly-tipping is a problem created entirely by the local councils

>Fly-tipping is a problem created entirely by the local councils. Simply restore weekly bin collections, and allow unlimited trips to the council tip, and fly-tipping will go away again. Yes, I understand some people have concerns over environmentalism, but if its first dumped in the street / nearby field, then taken to the council tip anyway, what is really being achieved?

FT is caused by councils in the same way illegal heroin use is caused by laws making heroin illegal. Sure, if you could throw all the stuff you wanted away for free it might be substantially reduced - it won't be eliminated because people are lazy - but that stuff is expensive. In a world where councils face cuts, they will have to reduce some services which used to be free.

Scandinavia has far higher tax levels, vastly reduced population density and a different culture than the UK.

Don't see the problem with this use of messenger. Our council has an online tool for this which looks like it was made in 1999 by an untrained graduate and probably cost £10k (and the rest) to do the same thing, worse.

Game over, machines: Humans defeat OpenAI bots once again at video games Olympics

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>If the AI is not learning itself from its defeat, then surely it is programmed intelligence rather than artificial?

It is learning from its play.