* Posts by Dave 126

10643 publicly visible posts • joined 21 Jul 2010

0ops. 1,OOO-plus parking fine refunds ordered after drivers typed 'O' instead of '0'

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: And this ladies and gentlemen...

https://www.autoexpress.co.uk/car-news/96260/uk-car-number-plates-explained-rules-history-and-what-they-mean

States that O isn't used, but Wikipedia says that O is used for Oxford area. There was a change around 2001. Five minutes of digging hasn't brpught up anything definitive - perhaps you guys can do better.

Ultimately, the whole damned point of a licence plate is that someone can report that a "red car, TF20 something something possibly a P" has just sped off after running over their dog - and understandably they won't have the best view of the plate or the best state of mind to remember it. The first part of the plate is the area code on the grounds that witnesses are more likely to read it, and knowing the area makes searching for 'red car's easier - especially in the days when different areas had different databases.

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: And this ladies and gentlemen...

Exactly. It's a problem that was clearly foreseen - and averted - by the designers of the UK number plate system.

Also worthy of respect: the husband and wife team who design the font for UK highways. Birmingham is more immediately readable than BIRMINGHAM (as it would be in Alabama).

Howdy, er, neighbor – mind if we join you? Potential sign of life spotted in Venus's atmosphere

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: Just thinking of Iain Banks

Or Arthur C Clarke.

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: Dragonriders?

I've not read the books, but I've seen the Rick and Morty summary.

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: I'm sorry, but what exactly does this mean?

I can't raise my hands and type. I think.

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: Life

> the idea of panspermia is correct. There is no way life arose on Earth by chance

That's just kicking the question down the line. The one thing that we do know is that life arose *somewhere*. Most scientists would be surprised if they were able to to replicate in a lab millions of years of chemical reactions across millions of square kilometres.

Brit MPs to Apple CEO: Please stop ignoring our questions about repairability and the environment

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: Ban the un- or barely repairable?

Twenty years ago the EU started making noises about the manufacturer being made responsible for end-of-life recycling for their products. The idea is that then products wouldn't only be designed to be easily manufacturable, but also easily to dismantle into constituent parts.

This is partly why devices are glued together - devices *can* be passed through an oven and easily pulled apart. This is far less labour intensive than employing someone to unscrew dozens of fasteners.

Another reasons is durability and weight, which is why car companies are using glue instead if screws. Screw bosses create stress risers, whereas glue can distribute a load along the whole length of a structural component.

Just because an amateur finds something difficult to do, it doesn't mean that a company with the correct tools and equipment finds it difficult to do.

That long-awaited, super-hyped Apple launch: Watches, iPads... and one more thing. Oh, actually that's it

Dave 126 Silver badge

I imagine an altimeter is more useful for a cyclist in California than for, well, most people in Norfolk. Hey, chill out, that was a observation about geography, not genetics, so don't drop a dead cow on me alright?!

[For the benefit of American cousins, Norfolk is a part of the UK that is fairly flat, which may be why the car chase scenes from Bullitt were not filmed there. The practice of dropping a dead cow on prejudiced television presenters could worthy of adoption]

Dave 126 Silver badge

> It’s hard to take [ Apple's environmental efforts] seriously, though, given Apple’s computer line up... ...is largely designed to be impossible to repair and maintain.

You can't analyse the environmental impact of a product range based upon how difficult it is (for an amateur to) repair alone - you would need consider reliability figures before you could arrive at any worthwhile conclusion.

Your impact assessment should also include end-of-life issues, such as ease of dismantling for recycling, and the materials it is made from. This is much easier (read cheaper, therefore economically viable) if the device is glued rather than screwed, because glued devices can be passed through an oven and dismantled quickly. Lots of units of the same model also increases ease of recycling - like mass production in reverse.

There are also other factors that I have no doubt neglected, such as repair by the manufacturer / vendor, ease of access to vendor's repair network, useful life of a fully functional product, etc etc.

I don't have the necessary figures to make a meaningful assessment, so I won't try. But then neither does the author of this article.

Who cares what Apple's about to announce? It owes us a macOS x86 virtual appliance for non-Mac computers

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: gamers

> Those morons are going to kill the Macs

History suggests that Apple's traditional 'meh' attidute to gamers doesn't hurt them. Gamers will always want the fastest hardware over any other consideration - this plays far more to the strengths of commodity hardware slingers than it does Apple's strengths of creating integrated systems and then charging a premium for things not expressible in GHz.

Apple also know that gamers haven't always enjoyed the best image in the wider public perception. As Apple wants to sell computers to lawyers, dentists and doctors - in short, grown up professionals with money - keeping a bit of distance from gamers can only helps Apple's image in the eyes of people with money. It doesn't hurt that Apple computers are associated with artists and musicians, either.

I know plenty of Mac owners who play video games, but they do so on a Playstation or Nintendo like a normal person.

The idea of using a work machine to play games stems from the 1980s when all computers were pricey. Today, anyone in the market for a Mac for work can easily afford a console on the side.

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: Vendors

You've got the main on the head. This entire article is predicated upon some hypothetical software not being maintained or updated in the next few years, and said software then not running satisfactorily in emulation upon whatever the hell ARM chips is shipping in a few years time.

A valid concern, but premature perhaps.

Go Huawei, Android: Chinese telco biz claims it will spread Harmony OS for smartphone to devs come December

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: Maybe

It's a common family of logical fallacy, often referred to as 'What-about-ism' or false equivalence. Causing people to believe that 'they're all as bad as each other' because they've confused cynicism with critical thinking actually results in a dynamic in which only the bad players prosper, since there is then no incentive for people to be good (or less bad, at least)

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: Plan 'B' for everyone

> What would really be new is a phone environment that is designed to be decentralised rather than under centralised control.

Remember the Ubuntu phone? Yeah. And I don't think it was the only effort to focus on web-based apps that could be platform agnostic.

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: Symbian and Windows Mobile weren't dismal

They were both based on older hardware paradigms, low RAM, no GPUs etc, stylus driven resistive touchscreens or no touchscreen at all. They were fundamentally unsuitable for the tasks modern smartphones are now put.

Even Symbian's chief proponent Nokia knew this, and was developing a Linux-based OS to replace it (or rather, it was developing several Linux-based OSs and tripped over its own shoelaces under the supervision of brought-in middle managers)

Edit: the fruits of some of Nokia's efforts live on in Samsung's Tizen, but that's only on things like Snartwatches. Samsung kept Tizen in the wings for years as a hedge against Google.

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: Essential?

>my daughter's not given to paraoia but she mentioned that people have noticed that some things they talk about have been turning up in adverts.)

I've felt that too. However, I don't believe my phone is eavesdropping on me (yet) because there are more plausible (if not intuitive) explanations for the phenomenon. Especially if you've done any reading about how the brain works.

It is very likely that there are unconscious (or forgotten) links between things I've searched for and the conversations I've had. It's this sort of cognitive gap that the likes of Darren Brown exploit.

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: The biggest problem

> There will almost certainly be some form of ABI for running Android apps

Isn't that what the QNX-based BB10 OS attempted to do? I seemed to recall reports that it did a fair job of it, though really BB10 was doomed for the reason the article highlights.

Anyway, you shouldn't give a new mobile OS a name - you'll only grow attached.

QNX is also a realtime microkernel OS, and has a far smaller footprint than any Unix-derived OS, making it suitable for IoT thingies upwards. It also has a rock solid 30 year history in mission critical industrial settings.

There is actually a microkernel OS family running on billions of phones - Qualcomm use L4 in their modems, and Apple use the formally verified seL4 in their A series chips' secure enclaves.

Desperately seeking regolith: NASA seeks proposals for collecting Moon dirt

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: Confused

Some of the terms used in the solicitation document appear to terms of art from the international shipping world. "FOB Destination", for example, which means that the ownership of goods is transferred from the seller to the buyer when they reach the buyer's dock.

It seems likely that a reader versed in accountancy, international commercial contracts or shipping will have an easier time deciphering it than many of the Reg's other readers might.

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: Sounds like a job for Super Elon

Yowsers, PR fluff isn't normally written to resemble this document's bureaucratic contractual legal speak.

Example, document states:

'Delivery is FOB Destination'

Which meant nothing to me, but apparently is a common term. From an accountancy website:

'FOB destination is a contraction of the term "Free on Board Destination." The term means that the buyer takes delivery of goods being shipped to it by a supplier once the goods arrive at the buyer's receiving dock.'

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: I'm not getting it

The exercise is more about developing the technology required to take samples from the moon and Mars in future. And in the future, taking small samples from many areas gives you information that one big sample from one area cannot.

I can 'proceed without you', judge tells Julian Assange after courtroom outburst

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: Assange

The Espionage Act was always a political tool, created to silence socialists and pacifists. That's the point.

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: The London One

Assange isn't gagged, but he is attending the hearings in a glass box which makes it difficult for him to communicate.

Dave 126 Silver badge

> When someone changes their name, it is customary for references to that person's historical actions to be retrospectively attributed to their current form of identification

Indeed. This convention extends to honorific titles too. Eg "Sir David Attenborough, who presented the series Life On Earth...", even though at the time he made the series he was just Mr Attenborough, not Sir David.

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: Assange

He could be quite possibly looking at a sentence of 100 years plus, which would amount to a death sentence.

The UK can also refuse, should also refuse, to extradite people for politically motivated charges. Which these are.

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: Meanwhile when the boot is on the other foot...

The argument given is that she had diplomatic immunity, and that waiving it in one circumstance would set a precedent, which would not be good given the sort of countries in which the US and GB have embassies. Not my argument, just what has been discussed.

Yet Assange was an accredited journalist, not an American, wasn't in the US, published material, not protected under any free speech principal. Prosecuting him sets a bad precedent too.

It's odd how many folk who once espoused his values are now indifferent to his fate... whilst it is very possible that he is jerk, it's also plausible that this is an effective long-term smear campaign. It's also possible that Trump offered him amnesty if he testified that Russia didn't know Trump.

Assange is a friend of Philip Adams, and I'm inclined to listen to Mr Adams - in fact I do, four days a week on ABC.net.au Late Night Live. He produced the film Barry McKenzie and has been sacked by Murdoch twice. Listen to him chatting to a huge number of prominent statesmen, economists, historians, comedians and others over the last twenty five years.

Adobe Illustrator's open source rival Inkscape delivers v1.0.1 - with experimental Scribus PDF export

Dave 126 Silver badge

Hehe,

I've just remembered that I once downloaded Inkscape for an Android phone... heck, I'd forgotten that experience!

Naturally I found it close to unable, but that was due to the inappropriate screen size, so I can't level any criticism at Inkscape itself!

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: Shooting themselves in the foot to save their hand

> However mimicking the market leader is not always good

Indeed. I would often use Picasa for some things I would have previously used Photoshop for - Picasa would let you straighten and crop photos very quickly.

Of course Picasa and Photoshop are two different things (an organiser and an editor, respectively), but where there was a little overlap, Picasa's UI was often better in some ways.

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: Shooting themselves in the foot to save their hand

At least one can guess the function of Inkscape from its name, which is a good start for ease of use. This obvious kind of user friendliness isn't a given in the GNU world.

Similarly, one can guess the sort of thing Photoshop does from its name, but one can't from the short name of GIMP.

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: I need some pointers

I remember that Illustrator took me a while to get on with, but that was likely due to my inexperience with vector graphics ( unless you count the sketch tools in CAD suites, which share some concepts), so it might be possible that you'll find Inkscape similar: a concept might suddenly 'click' with you and you'll find things straightforward. Or, it might just be it has a poor UI.

Illustrator UI is not perfect. Chief example on my mind is that the scroll wheel cannot be set to zoom in / out without a modifier key. This behaviour is at odds with Photoshop and most CAD software, and is frustrating. It becomes something I have to constantly remind myself of when I wish to be concentrating on the work.

Illustrator can also throw up little hurdles that can interrupt your workflow until you've Googled a solution - eg, objects stubbornly remaining grey after you've assigned I've assigned a colour to them. Oh, right, I need to convert the object manually to RGB, even though it's in an RGB document and I've assigned it an RGB colour - surely my intent is obvious? Theres a little zoo of such behaviours that can slow you down until you've learnt their ways.

Putting the B's in bargain basement, Xiaomi staggers into sunlight clutching Poco X3

Dave 126 Silver badge

Formaldehyde-free mattresses - or 'mattresses' as we call them in countries with more robust consumer protection regulation. Still, even some foam mattresses sold in the UK advise buyers to unroll a mattress and leave it to air in a spare room for a few days before sleeping on it.

Xiaomi's reference boast of being formaldehyde-free is likely just an effort to differentiate themselves from more unscrupulous mattress vendors in their home territory.

One button to mute them all: PowerToys brings forth kill button for the conferencing generation

Dave 126 Silver badge

Purest blackness

Oh, Edmund, can it be true, that I hold here in my mortal hand a nugget of purest green?

The Honor MagicBook Pro looks nice, runs like a dream, and isn't too expensive either. What more could you want?

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: "What more could you want?"

I really don't believe there isn't a website somewhere tests - or least collects users' experiences of - laptops for Linux as their raisin d'etre... so I'm always confused when poor penguins pitch their questions here and not there.

For sure, occasionally the Reg will take a stab at installing Linux, but it isn't their MO to go super in-depth on any machine on any OS.

Dave 126 Silver badge

People's preference for 16:9 over 16:10 or 3:2 is up to them. Huawei offer 3:2 screens on their Matebook series.

A second charge-capable USB C socket would be nice, since it adds reduncy should one fail (though I get the impression USBC sockets are more reliable than some laptops' barrel connectors).

Being AMD, I don't suppose it supports Thunderbolt, though for many people that's no big deal. Being able to use an external GPU is a nice concept, but it still appears to be niche.

China launches and lands its first re-usable spacecraft

Dave 126 Silver badge

> But don't underestimate their capabilities or will or consistency of budget. Nobody expected most of China's space advances

Like Clarke's 2010: Odyssey 2 then

Dave 126 Silver badge

Read it again. "Won't be shy about it" refers speculatively about using this craft to send crew to China's planned space station. A good PR move, peace in space etc

The mission it has just completed (or possibly not, I'll grant you) might, as the article suggests, be for purposes akin to that of the USA's military space plane - the purpose of which has been secret.

You're right that it's plausible that China's space plane may not have performed as well as expected, but there are also other plausible reasons for keeping details secret - as the USA effort illustrates.

Amiga Fast File System makes minor comeback in new Linux kernel

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: My life is now complete...

Wasn't it the Atari ST that had the built in MIDI ports?

A lot of Amiga games came to the ST, but usually afterwards. A great time in British games publishing, making us poor PC owners a bit jealous. ST was more commonly seen in music studios. Amiga

There's a battery-free Game Boy that runs solely on the power of sunlight and the speed of your button-mashing

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: Zero point energy. That's the answer.

> There is no such thing as zero point energy.

We know. We also know that even so-called 'hard' science fiction is allowed one mumbo-jumbo concept every so often for artistic licence. Such mumbo jumbo concepts can serve as place holders for things that are not only stranger than we do imagine, but stranger than we can imagine.

By 'hard' sci Fi, I mean a lot of Clarke, but not Stargate :)

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: The market has moved beyond basic handheld consoles, ...

I'm just thinking of the stationary bicycles with dynamos connected to a 60W bulb that used to be at festivals... as a young teen I struggled to get the bulb very bright.

With the usual caveats about dynamo efficiency etc, my intuition is that a cyclist would struggle to power an older Xbox (they ran hot), but might have a chance with a handheld console (with battery just used to even out the dynamo's output)

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: Powerball!

That Hackaday was from 2010. Naturally some other bugger is now trying to make a commercialised version on Kickstarter:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/handenergy/handenergy-your-pocket-electricity-generator

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: Zero point energy. That's the answer.

Zero Point Energy. "How many supernovae were actually industrial accidents?" asked Arthur C Clarke

Dave 126 Silver badge

Powerball!

This concept made me think of other ways of powering a Gameboy using the player's muscles. I remembered those naff dynamo flashlights which resembled naff grip-strength exercisers... and in turn Powerballs - gyroscopic balls that are used to treat RSI and build forearm strength in musicians and rock climbers.

Of course some clever bugger has already fitted a dynamo to one:

https://hackaday.com/2010/11/22/ridiculous-exerciser-become-useful-as-a-charger/

Note: Powerballs are not ridiculous. Since the gyroscopic effect keeps your wrist straight it keeps your tendons happy. Recommended to those with RSI. Consult your doctor etc

Dave 126 Silver badge

There was a Gameboy Advance game which used a photometric sensor in that cartridge, to encourage the player to spend time outside. By playing outside, the player could 'charge' up their 'solar powered' weapons in their role as a vampire hunter.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boktai:_The_Sun_Is_in_Your_Hand

Digital pregnancy testing sticks turn out to have very analogue internals when it comes to getting results

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: This device is far less unreasonable than it seems.

> FWIW I've had a little input into developing LFDs for other uses, and they can be a challenge for everyone to read

Is there any inherent reason why a smartphone camera and flash can't be used for determine the colour of the test strip?

The test strip can be printed with colour calibration swatches, which an app can interpret.

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: Wastful - but unfortunaltly not uncommon

> What is annoying is that the electronics are single use.

Especially when the vast majority of users already own an optical reader - in the shape of a smartphone. Printing some coloured calbribration swatches along the edge of each paper test strip would give the interpreting app enough data to accurately determine the colour of the strip.

If the user doesn't have a waterproof phone so feels wary of cleaning it water, then the test pack can include some sachets of isopropyl alcohol for sanitising the handset afterwards.

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: Low tech is too old tech

Without coming down on the rights and wrongs of having more children, let's look at the actual levers:

Top-down control of birth rates doesn't work very effectively (see India), it can have unintended consequences such as more boys being born than girls (see China), and in any case it would politically unworkable in many countries

So, what does decrease birth rates?

Better sanitation (which minimises disease and thus infant mortality), better health care (ditto), higher female education, female access to contraception and a culture in which women feel able to use it.

Of course these points are themselves complex interrelated to resource consumption, but there's smart ways of doing things.

For starters, let's not use an expensive, single-use lump of plastic and microcircuitry instead of a strip of paper. If all medical tests were performed so inefficiently, there would be no hope of bringing the healthcare of developing nations up to par.

TCL's latest e-ink tech looks good on paper, but Chinese giant will have to back up extraordinary claims

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: Wake Me When It's Rugged

Shouldn't too tricky to fix. My Kindle has a few small dead areas where it has evidently met hard objects in a bag, but I always figured it was because it has a soft plastic screen, a material likely chosen for reasons of low weight, low cost, and low light reflectivity.

A textured glass or thicker, stiffer plastic screen should be feasible.

For the board game setup discussed above, a toughned glass would likely be required due to the size of it - and people being sure to place beer bottles on it. This thicker glass might cause parallax issues, but probably tolerably so for the use case.

Dave 126 Silver badge

Digital board games

A digital 'board' for playing chess outside would be nice. Whilst it would never have tactility of a real chess board, the advantages it could offer are:

- a huge range of other games would be available, Go, Civilisation, - anything 'turn based'

- human Vs computer play, human Vs human over internet

- you can't lose the physical pieces

- when playing Scrabble against other humans, the board can be instantly rotated 90 degrees

Note: some games such as Scrabble would require each player to use their phone view their letters without revealing them to other players... unless this this digital game board had a lenticular section on each edge that was only visible to a player sat there.

What the world needs now is socially-distant robots, says Japan

Dave 126 Silver badge

I was just wondering what the current state of the art of bipedal robots is... I have't heard much for a while, and don't know what the current technological hurdles are. Navigation? Control? Battery power density?

The following from, this year, is being sold to.connercial customers, but as a dev kit for future applications. It's certainly advanced than Honda's discontinued Asimo. I don't know what Japanese companies have in the pipeline.

https://www.theverge.com/2020/1/6/21050322/bipedal-robot-digit-agility-robotics-on-sale-delivery-inspection-ces-2020#comments

It looks alright, but I don't think it would be too hard to fit some retractable wheels to its feet for when it is on flat, level ground - it sounds like someone has left half a horse walking around the office.

Dave 126 Silver badge

You're thinking of Teleoperation and Telepresence, where a human is in control of a remote - like an existing bomb disposal waldo or military drone. Japan is thinking of standards that would allow autonomous robots to work alongside humans safely in various situations, such as in hospitals, factories, etc

I didn't downvote you, but hey, it seems there's a film critic here.

Intel screams Tiger Lake is 'world's best processor' (then quietly into its sleeve: for thin Windows, ChromeOS laptops)

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: What's wrong with "times"?

The only times that I say Ex out loud is when referring to XXXL T-shirts, pronounced "Triple Ex El Fat Bastard".

... But that's an abbreviation of Extra, not Times, sorry, coffee hasn't kicked I yet.

COVID-19 tracing without an app? There's an iOS and Android update for that

Dave 126 Silver badge

Re: They should have done this from the start

The reasoning behind just providing an API and not a full app was that a method of entering confirmed cases is required - just letting people say "I've got Covid!" opens the door for all sorts of idiotic mischief. Artificial false positives just for the lols, for starters. So, the idea is that health authorities build an app atop the APIs and they are the arbiters of whether an individual has Covid, hopefully based on good testing. And that goes for the authorities accrediting private sector testing companies, if required.

Google and Apple assumed that competent health authorities exist.