* Posts by werdsmith

7096 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Feb 2011

ReMarkable emits Type Folio keyboard cover for e-paper tablet

werdsmith Silver badge

Re: Good reasons, or just reasons

Sailfish developed out of Meego which was Nokia and Intel development of Maemo linux. Its'a linux kernel but one some devices, including Gemini, it uses libhybris to adapt to hardware where only android drivers exist..

werdsmith Silver badge

Re: Good reasons, or just reasons

Sailfish by Jolla on the Gemini’s still fully supported and has the two updates this year alone.

Sailfish is extremely good on the Gemini, i am still using one today. It does have a Linux shell and an active repository. I can write and compile with GCC and g++. I can write Python on it.

I disposed of Android immediately and went with Sailfish, this wasn’t available for the follow up devices Cosmo and the disastrous Astro slide so I stuck with Gemini thankfully. Gemini was peak Planet.

They are now attempting to fund the outstanding Astro production with a campaign for a mini Linux desktop with ARM SOC which is neither price nor performance complétive with the M1/2 Mac Mini.

It’s not going well.

werdsmith Silver badge

Re: I have a Remarkable 2

Yes, it is tempting to chew the top.

The Noris pencil stylus uses points that are soft and wear down. It comes with three spares. I’ve lost my spares!

I use one with the Onyx Boox 13. This is a bit clumsy in e reader mode but comes into its own with pdfs of academic papers.

Then it really excels on nice summer days when I want to sit outside and work because it has a hdmi input and doubles as a monitor.

It also has Bluetooth so any BT keyboard and mouse can drive the Android OS directly.

Distraction free is great but I need the web at hand for research. I drive it with a Raspberry Pi 4, it’s as close as I can get to my ideal e-paper or e- ink laptop.

I am going to check out the remarkable again though, keyboard entry is making it interesting.

Capital crunch: Virgin Orbit confirms all ops on pause until Tuesday

werdsmith Silver badge

Re: Thoughts

It's a US rocket that attempted to begin its journey to orbit from a UK runway.

In other words, launching the zero stage from Cornwall was just a stunt.

Black Arrow was a British rocket that achieved orbit from an Australian launch site. That was a genuine effort by Westland and others.

Enter Tinker: Asus pulls out RISC-V board it hopes trumps Raspberry PI

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Re: where some high speed SRAM is located

It’s early days yet, these things are for early adopters to mess about with. These things will feedback and improve the real implementations that will come in the future.

werdsmith Silver badge

Re: Wrong

Bit of wishful thinking there perhaps?

Why? Foundation are an education charity. They do education including computing, not necessarily on Raspberry Pi. They are platform agnostic. They are funded by a number of supporting orgnaisations, including Raspberry Pi Limited.

They don't develop, make or sell Raspberry Pi hardware.

werdsmith Silver badge

Re: Look up StarFive 2

I have Starfive 2 8GB . It’s just slightly faster than à Pi 3 but the OS and software for it is all dogshit so far.

Here's a fun idea: Try to unlock and drive away in someone else's Tesla

werdsmith Silver badge

Re: But physical keys can be hacked

But here, the driver broke in the wrong Tesla without intending to, without even noticing. It's a whole new level of crap lock.

Nothing new about it. I recounted this event right here on Register comments not too long ago. I drove several metres before I realised the interior trim on my car had changed colour. Decades ago, my first company car. I had got into another Ford the same colour and drove it away. Using the good old fashioned key, which nobody ever lost, or bent. In a good old fashioned lock that nobody ever turned using a screwdriver blade, or half a tennis ball.

Tough luck, Brits: Binance suspends UK deposits and withdrawals

werdsmith Silver badge

Re: too challenging

Indeed, I wanted to see what the fuss was about, so I set uo a little miner whirring away in my garage and forgot about for over a year.

Then the bitcoin surge happened and I eventually remembered the thing when a fan bearing wore out and it started to rattle, discovered I had many thousands worth of the bitcoin. Which I promptly

flogged and am now laughing at myself for being one of those fools that the people that missed the boat like to bang on about

China debuts bonkers hybrid electric trolley-truck

werdsmith Silver badge

Trolleybus in towns are not even unusual, there are dozens of examples. Small local areas like town centres and bigger industrial campuses can be served nicely if the vehicle doesn’t need to be too flexible on its exact path.

If nations were to install overhead cables on motorways to allow HGVs to do the major parts of their journey and charge a battery at the same time, it might go some of the way towards solving EV freight trunking.The battery could cover the vehicle power for unelectrified end sectors, which the trains can’t do.

Yes, Samsung 'fakes' its smartphone Moon photos – who cares?

werdsmith Silver badge

Re: Who cares?

Those that muck about with astrophotography use a few tricks too. Stacking for one.

werdsmith Silver badge

Re: Who cares?

Clangers and Soup Dragon for sure.

British industry calls for regulation of autonomous vehicles

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Re: Autonomous trains

That one at Stansted that has to take a run up to get up a slope.

Silicon Valley Bank's UK arm bought by HSBC for 1 British pound in rescue deal

werdsmith Silver badge

Do you have a problem with the name? HSBC owned by HSBC Holdings which is a British bank with a British HQ.

The most important thing was that the businesses beheld to the bank were not strangled.Not some misplaced nationalism.

BOFH: I care a lot ... about onion bhajis

werdsmith Silver badge

Re: Bhajis?

You would despise anyone who covered you in yellow mint yogurt.

werdsmith Silver badge

Bhajis?

Given the headline I’m a bit disappointed to find so little content about bhajis.

Welcome to Muskville: Where the workers never leave

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Re: The Quakers knew how to build decent company towns

The railway companies in the 19th Century Britain also built housing, provided parks and sports/leisure facilities.

Silicon Valley Bank seized by officials after imploding: How this happened and why

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USA has these failures but it also has the successes. More risks taken, more are going to pay off.

UK Prime Minister wants £800M to spend on big British iron

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Re: It's all relative

It will use spending back to a future Labour government.

The next announcement will be to run the London to Birmingham section through Hemel Hempstead, Milton Keynes and Rugby. Using an Italian reworking of the APT.

werdsmith Silver badge

Don’t trigger codejunky, he will be all over this, foaming at the mouth as usual trying and abjectly failing to defend the indefensible.

werdsmith Silver badge

Re: It'll be like the Crick Institute won't it.

What do you mean it doesn't have to be in Central London?

The Met Office one which is supposed to cost over a billion quid is to be in Exeter. Because cider.

The Moon or bust, says NASA, after successful SLS/Orion test flight

werdsmith Silver badge

Re: Feeling stressed

Solid rocket motors don’t have throttles. You light them up and they blow out hot gas until they burn out.

werdsmith Silver badge

Re: Genuine Question.

Yes, there is a fundamental part of humanity that drives people to push envelopes, go beyond and explore. It’s apparent that some don’t have it so they don’t get it, but thank goodness enough people do.

Cop warrant orders Ring to cough up footage from inside this guy's home

werdsmith Silver badge

Re: Video on Ring's servers is the problem

The other difference is the owner gets their home invaded by big booted cops sniffing everywhere and removing stuff from the home.

But that’s ok because they saw the warrant.

werdsmith Silver badge

Re: Home-brew to the rescue?

There are already alternatives available.

Humanoid robot takes a retail job, but not one any store clerk wants to do

werdsmith Silver badge

Marks and Spencer have robots that roams round at night looking at physical stock levels for items on display using the RFID tags. It doesn't look like a humanoid though, it looks like a plank. It's called Robin.

Boeing signs off design of anti-jamming tech that keeps satellites online

werdsmith Silver badge

Re: Yes but...

”we have a method of preventing disruption to our satellite communications, here is how we do it. Hope you find this information useful in your work to develop a new jamming method to get round it”

Ex-Tweep mocked by Musk for asking if he'd actually been fired

werdsmith Silver badge

Existing NASA tech?

Landing a booster upright on a precise target that might be a floating barge somewhere mid ocean?

NASA might get there in 50 years.

We can admire the achievements of engineers at SpaceX knowing that there is no direct involvement of Musk. If he is responsible for any of the impetus of SpaceX I have no idea.

The Great Graph Database Debate: Relational can't do everything

werdsmith Silver badge

Re: I don't understand the motion

I would expect it to be faster across multiple tables than a single table.

Can we interest you in a $10 pocket calculator powered by Android 9?

werdsmith Silver badge

What is your post trying to state? And what does it have to be with Android calculators?

Did you read the article? Let me help you, about 1/4 of the way into the article there is a one liner.

werdsmith Silver badge

Re: it just doesn’t add up.

Ooh a free upvote. How exciting.

werdsmith Silver badge

Loads of tomatoes on Sainsburys along with all the other salad food. All normal price too.

Grown in Morocco.

UK space faces cash freeze unless watchdogs step up

werdsmith Silver badge

AMSAT-UK registered their cubesat AO-73 (funcube-1) through the Netherlands because UK was just too much hassle / money.

Sort it out.

FBI boss says COVID-19 'most likely' escaped from lab

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Re: The dangers of certainty

Its as if we unlearnt decades of 'Keep Britain Tidy' overnight.

Errrmmm…..

Who writes Linux and open source software?

werdsmith Silver badge

It is very amusing to read articles like this and see the Microsoft haters foaming at the mouth in the comments.

Rich source of comedy!

European Commission bans TikTok from staff gadgets

werdsmith Silver badge

Re: Why were they ever able to install it?

My company phone is 90% for two factor authentication codes.

werdsmith Silver badge

Re: Why were they ever able to install it?

Many people use their work phones for personal activity. It is quite normal for MDM tools to partition the phone between work and personal apps. It is how mine is done, there are two separate screens, the work one is locked down, the personal one is more open.

Workday sued over its AI job screening tool, candidate claims discrimination

werdsmith Silver badge

Re: Why is he putting his DOB on his resume?

This is the problem. You can have as many rules as you like telling employers they have to consider everyone. But at the end of the process they decide who they offer the job to. So forcing employers to interview people they don’t intend to recruit is just a waste of time and expense for the employer and the prospect.

Might as well have under 35 years old as a requirement on the job spec, rather than trying to hide the same requirement with such words as “to join our young dynamic team”.

If you’ve no intention of employing people 40 years old plus, don’t waste my time and money with your stupid rules.

Results are in for biggest 4-day work week trial ever: 92% sticking with it

werdsmith Silver badge

Re: Nope

I simply would never consider a job requiring a 2-4 hour commute. That sounds absolutely ridiculous.

I once reluctantly took a job that required a 50 minute commute. I think I did well to stick it out for 10 months.

systemd 253: You're looking at the future of enterprise Linux boot processes

werdsmith Silver badge

Re: One wonders what is going to happen ...

Like with Windows, that vast majority of desktop users don’t care. The major distro makers don’t care so it’s hard to see how the tide can be turned.

Hyundai and Kia issue software upgrades to thwart killer TikTok car theft hack

werdsmith Silver badge

Re: stuff kept vibrating loose in the engine

I had a car with worn teeth on the flywheel and the starter motor, and they would meet tooth to tooth and jam in place.

I had to get put the car in gear, and push it to dislodge it, if that didn't work it was time to get underneath with the socket and loosen off the starter motor bolts.

werdsmith Silver badge

In the last century before Ford started using the cylindrical keys, I opened the door of my company Ford Escort in a car park in Milton Keynes and drove some metres before I spotted the interior trim had changed colour.

werdsmith Silver badge

Re: Wait.... they did not have that?

Maybe its territory, the Elantra, Sonata Venue are not currently part of the range on sale in UK, unless it uses a different name. I’ve never heard of or seen a Venue.

Factory fitted immobilisers have been compulsory for all new cars sold in UK since 1998.

Core-JS chief complains open source is broken, no one will pay for it

werdsmith Silver badge

Re: "Free open source software"

You propose your code freely for all and then you're surprised that people take it without paying

There are processes for rewarding people for their contribution to profits. A consequence of choosing not to do so is what this article is about.

werdsmith Silver badge

Re: Read this yesterday

I've always felt that if you take somebody else's work and use that person's effort to make money then you owe that person some of that money. Open source software would then improve considerably, even the stuff that is already good.

There are some software vendors who sell licenses for software that cost more than the software helps to contribute.

ChromeOS now runs on top of Linux and, er, Zephyr ...

werdsmith Silver badge

Re: Who knows? Maybe we'll see a RISC-V-powered Chromebook

But there’s something good about doing things a bit different.

werdsmith Silver badge

Re: Google believes in building secure products

Obsolete was the important word. I wanted a lightweight laptop with a reasonable battery life so I bought on old Toshiba Chromebook and put Linux on it. It cost £80.

Chipmakers threaten to defect to US, EU if UK doesn't get its semiconductor plans sorted

werdsmith Silver badge

“reached out” …. Vomit.

Unless you are one of the Four Tops, this always sounds ridiculous.

werdsmith Silver badge

Re: @Potemkine!

Shouldnt think so as chips are a global business.

But the UK is not a member of the GU, Global Union single trading bloc. It’s a member of itself only since it decided to sit in the corner on its own.

When will you face up to it?

Arm China lays off staff amid chip war and licensing concerns

werdsmith Silver badge

Restricting access to designs will only drive them sooner towards semiconductor autonomy, a real boost for RISC V. Then it is only a matter of time before Chinese processor tech overtakes the Western designs.

Unless the development gets proprietary and fragmented.