* Posts by Tromos

1188 publicly visible posts • joined 23 Sep 2013

DIYers rejoice: Hitting stuff to make it work even works in space

Tromos

Because management types tend to frown on expensive kit being lifted up and dropped, the maintenance logs at work had this practice entered as: "Controlled squarewave deceleration test".

TSB meltdown latest: Facepalming reaches critical mass as Brits get strangers' bank letters

Tromos

Has anybody tried...

...switching the bank off, then switching it on again?

Doctor, doctor! My NHS Patient Access app has gone TITSUP*

Tromos

I just tried the Patient Access app on my tablet. It tells me an update is required and to get it via the Play Store. Play Store tells me my device isn't compatible with this version.

Can I get a prescription for a new tablet on the NHS?

Open justice FTW! El Reg fought the law – and El Reg won

Tromos

Re: "Truth! Justice! Freedom! Reasonably Priced Love! And a Hard-Boiled Egg!"

"...unlimited rice pudding!"

But you may be subject to throttling if you have more than 10 spoonfuls.

German IKEA trip fracas assembles over trolley right of way

Tromos

Re: Ikea trip rules...

I've managed to get a bedside cabinet flatpack in under 15 minutes total. Checked stock and location beforehand. The huge timesaver though was entering the shop via the exit doors. Miss all the displays, go straight to where the goods are.

Yay, you've won your Fitbit lawsuit, folks. But, lawyers, about those filet mignon expenses...

Tromos

625 million claimants?

Even taking the lawyers demand from the 33 million awarded, it would still leave 25 million dollars, which makes 625 million lots of 4 cents. Sounds an awful lot to me.

Anyway, there must be a better way to deal with distribution of large awards when the individual shares are too small to economically handle. Why not have a lottery with, say, a hundred thousand prizes of 250 dollars? This way at least a few claimants would benefit from the win.

Bloke fruit flies enjoy ejaculating, turn to booze when starved of sexy times

Tromos

Re: As always...

Or, more precisely...

"Further research funding is needed..."

Tromos
Joke

I hear the fruit fly police are planning a raid on the red-light district.

Nominet drains mug of tea, leans back, calmly explains how to make Whois GDPR-compliant

Tromos

"the IP lawyers ain't gonna be happy"

Sounds good to me

Cryptocoin investors sue Chase Bank for sky-high credit card charges

Tromos

Case dismissed

Just this once I'm siding with the bank. Maybe they should have made it clear that buying cryptocurrency follows the same rules as buying any other form of currency or placing a bet (which is probably a closer match). This should have been clear from the outset, and I suspect the reason he got away with it initially was that the purchases were just treated as a transaction with some firm called 'Coinbase'. When Chase discovered that this was a cryptocurrency transaction the cash advance rules were applied. This explains Chase blaming Coinbase. Deceptively? I don't think so.

Boffins pull off quantum leap in true random number generation

Tromos
Joke

882

You're welcome. If you ever need another one, just give me a call.

How do you get drones talking to air traffic controllers? Pretty easily, says Brit startup

Tromos
Joke

Bugger!

I thought I had a rich uncle. But he's only got a two-seat Cessna.

Facebook admits: Apps were given users' permission to go into their inboxes

Tromos

@fnusnu

You might be fine with making your contacts list public and it being shared, but how about all the people listed on it? Or photographs - do you ask permission from everybody included in the picture before sharing? I have never used facebook, but I know from friends who do use it that my phone number, email address and several photographs that include me are there. When you add in the likes of Apple, Google and all the rest, I suspect that the number of people who have my contact details is mainly made up of people I don't know.

$0.75 – about how much Cambridge Analytica paid per voter in bid to micro-target their minds, internal docs reveal

Tromos
Joke

Re: "...psychological profiles...from roughly 75 cents to $5 apiece..."

I object to the use of firing squads.

Nothing to do with being undemocratic. I just think they wouldn't be very efficient at scale.

Brit Lords start peer-to-peer wrangling over regulating the internet

Tromos

"...the effect Brexit will have on internet regulation"

The inquiry should not waste any time on this when the answer should be blindingly obvious with about two seconds thought.

EU internet regulations need not apply.

10Mbps for world+dog, hoots UK.gov, and here is how we're doing it

Tromos
Joke

Re: And best of all...

"...it has a 100GB download allowance!"

Not too shabby.

Provided that's the daily allowance.

Software gremlin robs Formula 1 world champ of season's first win

Tromos

Re: Why not ban pit stops when the safety car is out.

They have to allow pitting as pointed out, but they could restrict the entry and exit speed to that of the virtual safety car and reduce the pit lane speed to maintain the time cost of pitting.

Tromos

What robbed Hamilton was the decision to use virtual safety car rather than deploy the real safety car which they had to do anyway. Most of the time the virtual safety car is useless as cars are spread out all over the track and don't allow easy and safe access. The real safety car bunches up the field and gives a window of a couple of minutes after the last car has passed until they come round again.

This would have been to Hamilton's advantage as he would then have closed up on Vettel who would then drop behind by around 23 seconds when he pitted. As it stood the virtual safety car cut the pit time loss to around 10 seconds as the car in the pit lane entry and exit could go faster than the ones on track, and although limited in the pit lane itself, the cars on track are going much slower than normal.

I just long for the days when the lead changed hands on track rather than via the pit lane, currently all the excitement tends to be for the single digit points places where there is some racing rather than a procession.

Corking story: Idiotic smart wine bottle idea falls over, passes out

Tromos

My solution

As someone who occasionally would like just one or two glasses of wine, I maintain a reasonable stock of half (350ml) and quarter (175ml) bottles of various wines. Purchasing in bulk (I usually order 60 bottles at a time), the discount eliminates the price premium that the smaller bottles would otherwise carry. Also works nicely when making up a packed lunch as a small bottle adds little weight but provides a civilized touch to the meal.

Cheers.

UK watchdog finally gets search warrant for Cambridge Analytica's totally not empty offices

Tromos
Joke

Re: Given the time it's take to get the warrant...

...more than enough to even take all the screws out from the door hinges so that no real damage is done when they get kicked down.

Mozilla pulls ads from Facebook after spat over privacy controls

Tromos

Re: If you want privacy...

I've never had a Facebook account either. And yet, Facebook has my name, address, phone number, photograph and a whole load of other data. If you have friends who are on Facebook, their contact lists and snaps are all slurped up by the likes of Facebook and Google despite the lack of consent from the third parties involved. Short of becoming a total recluse, I don't really see a way round this.

Cambridge Analytica CEO suspended – and that's not even the worst news for them today

Tromos

Insider Trading?

Is anyone looking into Zuckerberg's sale of shares prior to the price drop he knew was coming? People have been jailed for profiting by less than a hundredth of the amount he picked up.

Nest reveals the first truly connected home

Tromos

What could possibly go wrong?

Damn near everything!

One in three Android Wear owners also uses ... an iPhone

Tromos

"...users aren’t buying into the whole Android ecosystem"

How many of these are users who already had an iPhone and decided against the Apple watch? It might just be that it is the Apple ecosystem that is losing out.

FYI: There's a cop tool called GrayKey that force unlocks iPhones. Let's hope it doesn't fall into the wrong hands!

Tromos

If the police have got one...

...it has already fallen into the wrong hands.

Fun fact of the day: Voice recognition tech is naturally sexist

Tromos

Quieter???

Whoever came up with the idea that female voices are quieter has obviously never been on a bus with a dozen or so schoolgirls.

Sneaky satellite launch raises risk of Gravity-style space collision

Tromos

Just make them retrieve the errant four before they're allowed to put any more up. If their space team is as good as its cracked up to be, shouldn't be much of a problem for them.

We need baby Googles, say search specialists… and one surprising VC

Tromos

"a golden age of television"

Bring back the stone age!

Desktop PC shipments dip below 100m/year

Tromos

Since the days of the original IBM PC, I have regularly renewed desktops every 3 years or so until recently. The current desktop and laptop have made it past 5 years and I see no reason to upgrade as long as they still function. The desktop has had a couple of HDDs added, but is otherwise unchanged, the laptop battery isn't capable of more than about an hour of usage, but it's very rare that I need mobile access that can't be catered for by a lower powered device.

Show me a compelling reason to upgrade similar to the step from a 386 to a 486 CPU and I'll consider a new machine soon. Otherwise, barring a major failure the current setup will be maintained for at least a couple more years.

Got that itchy GandCrab feeling? Ransomware decryptor offers relief

Tromos

All that's needed now is to round up some of the perps and stick them in a cell with a 16-digit combination lock and tell them they're free to go as soon as they can get out.

Ubuntu wants to slurp PCs' vital statistics – even location – with new desktop installs

Tromos

Ongoing telemetry

To those saying it is just a one-off at install time. Did you fail to spot "the data-recorder would also install Popcon, to spot trends in package usage..."?

I would have no problem with a one-off install time hardware/configuration report if it was placed in a text file that I could examine/edit at leisure and then decide if it could be sent.

Happy Mint user here. Should I get unhappy, Ubuntu is now even further down the list of distros I'd consider switching to.

Stop us if you've heard this one before: Tokyo crypto-cash exchange 'hacked' for half a billion bucks

Tromos

Re: Convenient notes for criminals.

The 500 Euro note has not been withdrawn. There are still plenty around and they are still accepted and will continue to be accepted for the foreseeable future according to the European Central Bank.

What has happened is that no new ones are being printed and banks are no longer handing them out like they used to.

Crypto-cash exchange BitConnect pulls plug amid Bitcoin bloodbath

Tromos
Joke

Lost a packet of cryptocurrency?

You're not hodling it right.

NASA is pretty pleased with its pulsar-sniffing intergalactic GPS tech

Tromos
Joke

Intergalactic satnav

"In 500 parsecs...turn left"

Game of Thrones author's space horror Nightflyers hitting telly

Tromos

Re: Bah!

Mostly agree with that list. Would like to append:

The Lankhmar novels of Fritz Leiber

The Dumarest Saga by E.C.Tubb

Battle Circle trilogy by Piers Anthony

Cities in Flight quadrilogy by James Blish

Plenty of scope in the first three of the above for the fighting and bonking that attracts many to GoT, backed up by some good SF.

Now that's sticker shock: Sticky labels make image-recog AI go bananas for toasters

Tromos

Re: Great

You might not be so happy when another machine comes along and tries to insert the bread!

Oh good. Transport for London gives Capita £80m for WAN, LAN and Wi-Fi

Tromos

Get the priorities right FFS.

If there's any infrastructure spending to be done it needs to be on the points and signals whose regular failures bring yet more misery to vast numbers of commuters.

Get ready for laptop-tab-smartphone threesomes from Microsoft, Lenovo, HP, Asus, Qualcomm

Tromos

$10/month data plan

Should just about be enough to handle the monthly critical patches.

Huawei Mate 10 Pro: The unfashionable estate car wants to go to town

Tromos
Joke

18:9 displays are 10 a penny these days...

...I'm holding on for 36:18.

Report: Underwater net cables are prime targets for terrorists and Russia

Tromos

Easy answer

Trained patrol sharks. Yes, of course they'll have frikkin' lasers.

Ads watchdog to BT: We say your itsy bitsy, teeny weeny Ts&Cs too small for screeny

Tromos

Useless toothless ASA

Yet again an advertising campaign that finished months ago is banned from being repeated in the same form. BT (and the rest of them) just move on to the next crock of shit in the next campaign.

Ban them from all advertising for 3 months initially, doubling the length for each infraction thereafter.

UK.gov told to tread carefully with transfer of data sets to NHS Digital

Tromos

Insufficient anonymization

I will not grant consent for any of my medical data to be shared while a full postcode is part of the data. I understand location is useful for certain things such as tracing spread of infection, but a postal sector (postcode without last two characters) is more than sufficient for this. Given full postcode, gender and age decade, anonimity has largely gone down the plughole.

Fresh bit o' Linux to spruce up that ancient Windows Vista box? Why not, we say...

Tromos

I'll give it a go

I will dig out my venerable Acer netbook this evening and give Q4OS a spin. The netbook has been gathering dust for a while as it had W10 installed for me to try out and make decisions on future OS direction. The decision arrived at was to maintain W7 on all systems and slowly move to dual-boot with Mint, with a view to totally moving across before end of life for W7. Q4OS sounds like it may prove to be another contender especially on some of the older hardware (this is why the netbook is such a good testbed, W10 was struggling, if Q4OS runs reasonably well on this, it should be fine on anything else that I haven't chucked out).

Credit insurance tightens for geek shack Maplin Electronics

Tromos

Re: Electronics Today International (ETI)

The Henrys catalogue was a gem. Costing 7shillings and six pence and containing five 2 shilling vouchers each redeemable when spending a pound. I remember going into the Edgware road shop and asking for an Akai 4000DS tape deck and 18 catalogues, which would have got me just over two pounds discount (and a lot of couponless catalogues to give away outside the shop). In the end I was given a fiver off and just the one catalogue. To put that in perspective, that fiver would then have (and probably did!) purchased more than 25 pints of beer.

HMRC's switch to AWS killed a small UK cloud business

Tromos
Flame

£9 million funding

I don't care about the vulture capitalist, but I'm incensed (see icon) to hear that local authority money is going into things like this. What right have they to gamble with ratepayer's cash while reducing refuse collections, closing libraries and generally not providing the services they're meant to?

Sick burn, yo: Google's latest Pixel 2 XL suffers old-skool screen singe

Tromos
Joke

Re: Back in the way?

Of course, I did it my day.

Google and Intel cook AI chips, neural network exchanges – and more

Tromos

Don't tell me, let me guess.

"The Partnership of AI, which includes Amazon, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, DeepMind, and Apple and several other companies"

Would AI be Advertising Industry?

Vodafone, EE and Three overcharging customers after contracts expire

Tromos

Vermin Media

While chatting with an elderly neighbour, she told me that she had come to the end of her contract with Virgin Media and worried about being cut off she went to a shopping centre where she knew they usually set up a stand. She didn't want a new phone, it had taken her most of the contract period to learn how to use the one she had. She came away re-assured and grateful that all she had to do was to carry on paying and she would be allowed to continue using the old phone and would keep the same number.

Next time she goes to that shopping centre I've offered to go with her and I reckon I can get twenty quid a month off for her. Either that or a PAC to switch to a fiver a month GiffGaff which would be more than adequate for her requirements.

SpaceX gives free ride to replacement for Facebook's fried satellite

Tromos
Joke

As Robert Heinlein once (nearly) said...

...There's no such thing as a free launch

Phab-u-lous, Mate: Huawei's business phabs go upmarket

Tromos
FAIL

"crunching 16-bit floating point numbers"

16 bits is inadequate for integers in many cases. For floating point it is laughable.