* Posts by davefb

184 publicly visible posts • joined 31 May 2007

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It's that most wonderful time of the year when tech cannot handle the date

davefb

Re: First they came for the leap seconds, then they came for the leap days...

Thanks for that clear explanation, I don't think I've ever understood what the difference is! I've read 'sidereal day' and just shrugged and wondered, but its obvious to me now!

Microsoft's AI Bing also factually wrong, fabricated text during launch demo

davefb

Re: The Heidelberg Conjecture

Are you sure it's not real, chatgpt writes a very convincing article about it :D

"Write a short article on the Heidelberg conjecture with emphasis on its links to Marx."

"The Heidelberg conjecture, also known as the "Heidelberg thesis," is a mathematical problem that has remained unsolved for over 70 years. The conjecture was proposed in 1945 by Emil Artin, a renowned mathematician who taught at the University of Heidelberg in Germany.

The Heidelberg conjecture states that any polynomial equation with integer coefficients, where the unknowns are restricted to integer values, has a solution if and only if it has a solution modulo every prime number. In other words, if a polynomial equation has a solution for every prime number, it has a solution for integers as well.

The Heidelberg conjecture has proven to be a difficult problem, and despite many attempts by mathematicians over the years, it remains unsolved. The conjecture has sparked a lot of interest in the mathematical community and has been the subject of numerous papers, conferences, and discussions.

One interesting aspect of the Heidelberg conjecture is its links to the Marxist philosophy. Emil Artin was a Marxist, and he believed that mathematics had the potential to be used as a tool for social change. Artin saw the Heidelberg conjecture as an example of how mathematics could be used to promote social justice.

According to Artin, the Heidelberg conjecture was a mathematical embodiment of the Marxist concept of "dialectical materialism." Dialectical materialism is a theory that posits that society is constantly evolving and changing, and that this evolution is driven by contradictions and conflicts. In a similar way, Artin believed that the Heidelberg conjecture represented a contradiction between the "local" solutions of a polynomial equation and the "global" solution, which is a solution for all integers.

While the links between the Heidelberg conjecture and Marxism are interesting, it's important to note that the conjecture is still an open problem in mathematics. Mathematicians continue to work on finding a solution, and it remains an active area of research."

If you fire someone, don't let them hang around a month to finish code

davefb

Re: Comments are bugs, too

"fix for issue 3244" can be useful.

Until some bright spark decides the bug database is too large, so we'll start deleting or another bright spark decides we should control access to the bugs, so you can't even see what the issue is...

New York Times outlays seven-figure sum for 1,900 lines of JavaScript – yes, we mean Wordle

davefb

What have they actually bought?

Since clearly wordle wasn't original. They only original bit was surely the 'one per day' and limiting to 5 letters?

That and the nice way it shares/spams the results.

How many Brits have deleted life-saving track and trace app from their phones? No idea, junior minister tells MPs

davefb

Re: Google Play Analytics

"no idea"

Ah, they old "if we dont ask, then we dont know" answer.

Yeah, they might not know the bluetooth info, though it surely is tracked and if not, why not? But to make the claim they somehow don't know the number of deletions is just remarkable for the sheer cheek of it.

NHS contact-tracing app is best in the world, says VMware CEO... whose company helped build it

davefb

Re: Wear the mask

You can also look at the self report data from kings college's app. Obviously its not as accurate wrt actual numbers, but the drop off is clear and yeah 1st april.

You can also report if you have had a test as well now.

Surely the government also has nhs 111 call data ?

https://covid.joinzoe.com/data#levels-over-time

Donald Trump jumps on anti-tech bandwagon, gets everything wrong

davefb

He's Jealous

Bozos is a reall billionaire, he's a billionaire from his own hands. Trump inherited his wealth and could have been richer just by investing in the stock market.

Thats where his anger comes from , that his main bragging rights are dwarfed by Bozos.

Alexa, why aren't you working? No – I didn't say twerking. I, oh God...

davefb

You think Dire Straights was bad..

"Alexa play I believe in father christmas by greg lake" ( think he'd just died..)

"playing... I believe in father christmas by susan boyle"

"OFF OFF OFF!!!"

Is Britain really worse at 4G than Peru?

davefb

Re: Who has 4G in Peru

Last time this story came out, I went onto open signals site and checked..

It was easy to make that analysis, but nobody seemed to do the same. Always worrynig when something so easy to check is copied without any thought. Worse, it seems authorities listen to the same flawed analysis.

Manchester college swaps out disk for rackful of hybrid flash

davefb

Re: could you not find a picture of bolton then?

It is. Well was. Its kinda looking across where the new interchange is being built .

Heaven forbid have a pic of the rather snazzy looking college though.

Huawei's P9 flagship: There's a lot to Leica

davefb

4g on huawei

"I wrote in 2014, prompting some derision. Fair enough: Huawei didn't even have a 4G phone at that time. " . Well that's confusing, my Ascend P4 was bought as '4g capable' on Three and worked perfectly well on 4g when they got round to upgrading the service.

Bought it june 2013.

Only just replaced it tbh.

Linus Torvalds fires off angry 'compiler-masturbation' rant

davefb

Re: Much better !!!

Not really, its clear who the individual is, because they're in the thread which the childish rant is from.

Following the thread, where the other coders speak like adults, it appears to have been part of code which was put in to be discussed after being looked at, but nobody bothered reviewing the changes.

"> Get rid of it. And I don't *ever* want to see that shit again.

No problem, I'll revert it all.

I asked Hannes to repost his patches to linux-kernel hoping someone

would review and say it stunk or not, give him some feedback, or

whatever, and nobody reviewed the changes at all..."

Apple may face $900m bill after A7 CPU in iPhones, iPads ripped off university's patent

davefb

Why not ARM?

Why apple and not arm ? Or have they really made large changes to the cpu ? Though in other articles it mentions apple quoted the patent in one of their patent so they must have realised something like this might happen ?

The initial intel case is pretty weird, intel appear to have paid for work and had the professors work with them only to find out they didn't get any patents ?

Angry devs hit out at JetBrains over shift to subscription pricing

davefb

Pay monthly?

Wish I could blag work into paying that price, because always loved jetbrains products, just not the prices. Monthly it might not seem quite so expensive..

Does your broadband feel faster? Akamai says it went up 20 per cent*

davefb

hmm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_in_Bulgaria

96 % on broadband ? Or . 15% ?

It's not you, it's Three. Mobe network goes titsup across UK

davefb

Pathetic

Three can't even get an outage correct..

So it was/is? just London then? It was working all day in t'north west as well..

Top Gear Tigers and Bingo Boilers: Farewell then, Phones4U

davefb

and?

If the other companies don't have almost exactly the same materials, then I'll eat my proverbial.

US Copyright Office rules that monkeys CAN'T claim copyright over their selfies

davefb

Who chose that photo though? I thought that was where the 'art' and copyrightable-ness came from?

Or are we saying the monkey not only pressed the shutter, but also picked which was the best images ?

Brit kids match 45-year-old fogies' tech skill level by the age of 6

davefb

Re: Did you take the quiz?

I was 'amused' by the google glasses and smartwatch question..

Does ofcom actually think google glasses are on general sale? For that and smartwatch , it didn't have "I know about these, but they're clearly not really suitable yet, so since I'm pretty tech savvy I'll let someone else alpha test the products"

Clearly the issue of self-selecting surveys doesnt crop up with journo's/ofcom.

Micro Men: The story of the syntax era

davefb

Re: A brief - and significant time

Forget the micros'. The main stupidity of the 'sell at all costs' was surely Inmos?

( Villa was in it ? Oh blimey, my nerd rating drops for not noticing him... )

'I don't understand why they feel like they own the word CANDY'

davefb

the app name was what now?

"All Candy Casino Slots – Jewels Craze Connect: Big Blast Mania Land"

Well actually that's an app store rejection without anything to do with candy, because the icon and real name isn't that.

It's gaming the app-store keywords and should never have been allowed by apple in the first place :)

Candy Crush dev stuffs EU 'candy' trademark down gob

davefb

what was that game again?

"Candy Casino Slots – Jewels Craze Connect: Big Blast Mania Land"

tbh the only surprise here is that there wasn't the words "Clash" or "Clans" in the name..

oh , gamasutra mentions this..

http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/JasPurewal/20140121/209020/Lets_talk_sense_about_game_trademarks_King_and_Candy_Crush.php

No need for any King.com 'candy' tm. that breaks Apples rules..

Chinese Moon rover, lander duo wake up after two-week snooze

davefb

It's not a rabbit..

It's a mouse shadow.

THOUSANDS of UK.gov Win XP PCs to face April hacker storm... including boxes at TAXMAN, NHS

davefb

Recently saw an example. OH was getting hearing aids and the app to set these up was on a windows xp machine.

Now, I'd assume the NHS is at the whim of the supplier and new software for something like that isn't going to be cheap. It certainly wasn't a very simple piece of software either.

And the pc it was running on, didn't look like it would run win7 anyway,so probably would have needed replacing as well.

Apple’s iOS 64-bit iUpgrade: Don't expect a 2x performance leap

davefb

So these A7's..

Would they run in servers? Or would they be totally unsuitable? Just thinking since the world+wife are slowly dipping the toes into arm-64 serverland have Apple built their own tech?

davefb

Re: One wonders

Yeah maybe..

Only yes, on ios7 if you have an app running in 32bit, then it calls 32bit os functions.. So, if you can have everything 64bit, then you only load the 64bit frameworks, hence use less ram.

You have read the docs haven't you?

Snowden journo's boyfriend 'had crypto key for thumb-drive files written down' - cops

davefb

So , why does the UK feel that NSA documents have anything to do with them anyway, surely they didn't look at them then told the NSA they'd been destroyed?

Let alone the fact repeating these comments just goes to show they even admit they didn't have any concerns about Miranda being a terrorist, so should have used the correct laws.

Apple: You thought Google dodged taxes? Get a load of THIS

davefb
WTF?

Re: re: Google and Microsoft have already done this

Didn't realise that m$ had $100billion offshore? Have they?

Brits on benefits: 'Dole office site only works on PCs over 10 YEARS OLD'

davefb
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still?

friend mentioned this a few weeks back. He was saying that the previous site had worked okay on his phone, but the new one they'd been telling him to use wouldn't work and yet was required in order for you to get your money.

Are we in a book by khafka ?

Elon Musk: 'Fudged' NYT article cost Tesla $100m

davefb

Has he looked at the telemetry he posted?

Because, apart from the speed issue, it was an exact correlation. Especially the huge drop in expected range overnight, it's there in the telemetry.

It's the sheer cheek , after all, NYT didn't ask to do this did they, Tesla approached them in order to publicise the new charging stations. Next time, keep the camera rolling.

Oracle wants another go at Google over Android Java copyrights

davefb
WTF?

copyright for code.

fwiw, decades ago doing 'archives' for some product, we would have to print out the first 100 pages of code, then have that in the archive. The understanding was that this was what you needed in order to 'prove' the copyright..

now obviously this is a while ago..

but it was far far from 'just the headings'. So god knows what Oracle think they're playing at.

Review finds Wikipedia UK board needs major leadership overhaul

davefb
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It's not even subtle

if you goto the archive of 'did you know'... I have to admit I didn't realise there were that many facts about Gibraltar.

Google Play privacy SNAFU sends app buyers' details to devs

davefb

merchant account.

Since it's the same system that google uses for actual physical stuff.

What do people expect?

Mind you, as john says, everyone pirates on android anyway. Gee thanks.

Tesla vs Media again as Model S craps out on journo - on the highway

davefb

In what way

Controversial? Obviously the must have been correct with the 55 miles, because in two court cases tesla couldnt' show otherwise. They only appear to have complained that people may have got confused , but the judge disagreed.

Crew push it, to show what you'd have to do. Not like you could walk up with a little tank of fuel is it?

Tennessee bloke quits job over satanic wage slip

davefb
Devil

But he got this number supposedly randomly, twice?

Maybe there's more to this... Needs more exorcism.

What’s a computer? Eat yourself fitter!

davefb
Thumb Up

glitter and van damme?

and the Mighty Fall it would seem.

E-reader demand slumps, slapped down by slates

davefb
Holmes

how many do people need ?

I mean, once you've got one, there's now "do i need another" ? most of the people I know who were thinking about one, have got one in the last couple of years..

'Brit Bill Gates' defends his honour in open letter to HP board

davefb
FAIL

obviously, it's not HP's fault

after all, they haven't paid massively over the odds for other companies, then have to write down the value very quickly is it..

Apart from EDS. Or Palm...

Apple, Spotify, Amazon: All your Cloud are belong to us, says firm

davefb
WTF?

how can this POSSIBLY

relate to spotify or itunes or whatever ?

It's a nice idea for err delivering cd-r's, but how can this relate to what digital music does ?

epic-patent-fail.

err herby, american football :)

BBC in secret trial to see if you care about thing you plainly don't

davefb
FAIL

sure you got the stations right?

says here merseyside was one.. and 600 people complained..

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/nov/09/bbc-criticised-closing-medium-wave-radio

Oh and , I'm with the DAB+ why are we bothering with stupid DAB tech camp.. People didn't need to get forced to watch colour tv, they didn't have to compromise with other issues ( except cost of new equipment), why do we have to have this issue with DAB?

I've tried rebroadcasting devices with my car radio, they're hopeless, so a DAB would effectively mean a new car, like that's going to happen.

Stob on Quatermass: Was this British TV's finest sci-fi hour?

davefb
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the film remake of the pit

Scared the utter bejeezus out of me when reshown in the 70s80's (?). I was probably about 10 or 12?

Utterly terrified and had problems sleeping for a few nights..

Great stuff!

oh and yeah chris, the goon version is brilliant as well :)

Pixar names HQ after Steve Jobs

davefb
Big Brother

and be a cube

made out of totally inappropriate materials, then start falling apart far too early..

British judge: Say you're sorry Apple... this time like you MEAN it

davefb
WTF?

according to groklaw post

The print advert was in the FT today..

funnily enough it didn't have the extra bits, it was just as the judge ordered.. Now, I reckon this means someone has decided to run two different ones. Now why would you do that if you were confident of one? If that decision has been made, then doesn't that mean they knew of a problem, yet still were cheeky on the website ?

As for 'takes 14 days', well frankly it shouldn't take 48hrs either... Note how the website has changed anyway ( though the ruling is the same) and on the US site theres a ( no problem with this) link to Hurricane Sandy appeal fund.. Obviously that hasn't taken 14 days to do...

BBC's Incurious George vows to 'calibrate systems' after Savile affair

davefb

why has this taken so long ?

the information that newsnight's story was spiked , was a story in at least january 2012.. This was noted in last nights Panorama and can be confirmed with a bit of google.

So it's pretty sad for other media outlets to complain about "why didn't the bbc do anything" when they also did nothing this year until the itv documentary came out, which mainly was the same interviews initially taken in the newsnight investigation.

Obviously a bit of beeb bashing is much more fun than investigating Savile.

Microsoft: Welcome back to PCs, ARM. Sorry about the 1990s

davefb

Re: 30000 transistors, roughly the same as 6502

wrong cpu to compare with

the idea is to compare transistor count of z80 or 68000 . 6502 was 'riscy' in itself..

Bit confusing to make the claim that 'risc takes more instructions' by talking about loading and storing, when ARM has far more registers so doesn't need to be moving in and out of memory all the time.

In fact, looking at most code, ARM is often shorter than x86.

Virgin Media's 'bye-bye to buffering' ad nuked by watchdog - AGAIN

davefb
Meh

Re: As punishment

Yeah, the truth..

We will throttle you to a speed still far faster than the maximum any local competitor can be bothered to supply.

Unthrottled you can have speeds far in excess of what any local competitor can even dream about..

And that's on the "it was 10, its now 30" tarriff, let alone 100..

Time to fix Sky's "unlimited", it is limited, by the relatively lame connection speed and BT's "well , great, but even though you've supposedly upgraded the local box, you won't accept connections" network..

Mind you that router is only functionally competent as a modem..

UK to hold public consultation on social-media troll prosecutions

davefb
Meh

So if .

john terry had said what he allegedly said ( or is it fact now, not sure) on a tweet, it would have been okay?

It has to be the 'pub test', if tom daley walked past and you shouted what was tweeted in front of people, would that be acceptable?

Virgin Media STILL working on fix for SuperHub corrupt downloads glitch

davefb
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same as a lot of people on here

Got the new superhub as they upgraded me from 10mb to 30mb ( YAY!).

After ages talking to someone( about an hour after 20mins on hold), eventually have to decide wifi just doesn't "work", so after trying to put up with reboots and messing about with settings, flicked it to modem only and used my "old" belkin N router..

I'd initially assumed the connection wasn't working, but my connection was, it was just the wifi that was hopeless. ( hopeless on a laptop, on my pc with wifi adapter and on two phones that previously worked.)..

God knows why, but there were loads of 'reasons' on the forums. Like I want to be beta testing hardware at home.

Apple pounces on Samsung doc as proof of 'slavish copy' claims

davefb
Thumb Down

Re: Madness!

No, it's the rank hypocrisy. Apple took all the best bits of other phones , then did their own. None of the bits in the first phones was unique, they'd all been done in other phones, but apple did them 'a bit better'.

A lot more expensive as well..

But to think anything in that first phone was innovative is bizarre. In fact it was way behind in a lot of areas.

FWIW, Apple have already admitted they also too other peoples phones to sort of technical issues. That's what ( as a coder involved with ui design) that Apple can patent " a colour", but just rip off technical patents and avoid frand.

What Samsung have done, which is worrying Apple, isn't to copy anything specific APART from finally paying some attention to detail, something Nokia should have done years ago.

If Hotmail was a person it could have kids now. But it would be a crime

davefb
Thumb Up

still use hotmail

Yes I get spam, but it's survived longer than any of the stupid email accounts.

gmail gets just too much spam.. my ISP one was forced to change address and it became 'web only' and not as good as hotmail interface... so yeah, hotmail it is..

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