* Posts by Francis Boyle

2735 publicly visible posts • joined 29 Jul 2007

Oh chute. Doubts cast on ExoMars lander's 2020 red planet jaunt after another failed test

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Re: International cooperation

Covered by the AC above. The American approach to any problem is to throw more resources at it, hence redundant chutes. ESA doesn't have that luxury so American chutes probably won't work.

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Of course

that's aim of every article here. (With the possible exception of the ones about Kubernetes – I have no idea what going on there.)

I could throttle you right about now: US Navy to ditch touchscreens after kit blamed for collision

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Re: Glass breaks.

"Of course materials technology can also be applied to physical controls. It's possible engineer a throttle stick that bends if someone falls against it and then springs back to its normal shape."

I think they might be able to track down a few companies with expertise in that area though they may have to disable their internet filter to do it.

Bit of a time-saver: LibreOffice emits 6.3 with new features, loading and UI boosts

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Re: not been reading the release notes then

I like RTF for that too, despite it being Microsoft proprietary. At least with RTF you know that the formatting is more or less intended. Unfortunately, people won't use it for the same reason they persist with bad formatting – they have no clue about "all this technical stuff". (Even when it's supposed to be a part of their job.)

It's 2019 – and you can completely pwn millions of Qualcomm-powered Androids over the air

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Re: Can Google do something...think of the users!

Just stick your hand into your pants. No one could possibly misinterpret that.

Storied veteran Spitfire slapped with chrome paint job takes off on round-the-world jaunt

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Re: NO!

Geekporn at its finest1

Lyft pulls its e-bike fleet from San Francisco Bay Area after exploding batteries make them the hottest seat in town

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Re: Looks like the technology hasn't been properly studied

There are millions of e-bikes across the world and they're not spontaneously turning into testicle barbeques. The OP is right, this is pure cost cutting. These things are treated as disposable. That's simply incompatible with safety.

Will someone plz dump our shizz on the Moon, NASA begs as one of the space biz vendors drops out

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Re: Shizz?

That's fo shiz – short for foamed shiz. This will just be ordinary old American cheese.

Meet ELIoT – the EU project that wants to commercialize Internet-over-lightbulb

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Re: 'Unlightly' to happen.

Not if you live in a one of these. For some reason they're big in japan.

Huawei is planning to inject $436m into Arm-based server silicon

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"Eric Xu, Huawei's rotating chairman"

That must make meetings interesting. I suppose it keeps the underlings on their feet.

GM Cruise holds off on self-driving taxis for this year, says it needs more testing time to be safe

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Re: Still waiting for...

Well it's not that it can't be done because the Docklands Light Railway has been doing it since freaking 1987. More like the fact that saving the cost of a one driver per several hundred passengers just doesn't make up for cost of the infrastructure changes (which would be massive). Not that this has anything to do with the case for or against driverless cars. Trains are not driven by sight so the problems are quite different.

Revealed: Milky Way's shocking cannibalistic dark past – it gobbled a whole dwarf eons ago

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Re: The image - that's Andromeda (M31), not the Milky Way...

Surely a physicist would have an infinitely long perfectly rigid rod lying around somewhere. I suspose the problem would be cutting it down to size.

Too hot to handle? Raspberry Pi 4 fans left wondering if kit should come with a heatsink

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Re: 3D printed heat sinks

The company I used for all my 3d printing does a variety of metals*. It's not cheap but it's affordable unless you do something silly like going for the 18K gold option.

*Via the lost wax process mostly, I think.

Apollo 11 @ 50: The long shadow of the flag

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Re: The most expensive dick swinging contest in history

In that case where's my cheque. And why the hell don't I look like Hugh Jackman or Heath Ledger.

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Exactly

People thought that Columbus was crazy sailing out into the vast unknown that was the Atlantic ocean when you could get to India perfectly adequately by the traditional coast-hugging method. That they were perhaps overly cautious doesn't mean they were afraid of falling off the edge of the world – the dangers of the open ocean are very real even today.

Turning it off and on again IN SPAAACE! ISS animal-tracker kit needs oldest trick in the book

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Re: Unfortunate name choice

Icarus is the poster child for not reading the user manual. I expect astronauts to be a little better trained.

Tesla’s Autopilot losing track of devs crashing out of 'leccy car maker

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Re: Autonomous driving is months, years, or decades away

"Secondly, most people try to avoid accidents"

Unfortunately, that tends to be at about the time they realise an accident is going to happen.

Microsoft: 2TB or not 2... OK, OK! 2TB. OneDrive dragged kicking and screaming into selling more storage

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Re: Backups...

Asus Webstorage has that limitation too. Doesn't bother me as I just symlink anything I want backed up.

Go fourth and multi-Pi: Raspberry Pi 4 lands today with quad 1.5GHz Arm Cortex-A72 CPU cores, up to 4GB RAM...

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Re: Gone is the full-sized HDMI

Good news. Now I can use the ultra thin HDMI cable I bought for use with my camera (gimbal stabilisers don't like thick cables) and the Pi will stay where I put it instead of leaping about like a demented frog every time I nudge the cable.

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Re: Sata

Sata? Don't you mean NVMe? Only half-joking. It'd be overkill but with the Pi overkill is the name of the game based on some of the projects I've seen out there.

Hot desk hell: Staff spend two weeks a year looking for seats in open-plan offices

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Stiff penalty: Prenda Law copyright troll gets 14 years of hard time for blue view 'n sue scam

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Re: Scaper?

Not a caper. There's no way this guys ever going to be played by George Clooney.

The European Space Agency is going to visit a new comet in 2028. Which one? We haven't discovered it yet

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Re: For AIState Side Prime Orderly Orders .... into Exercising AIMaster Cog Keys*

Nah, but there be pirates – space pirates – and they be after Spanish gold. (Well, Spain is a member of the ESA and spacecraft are traditionally covered in gold foil.)

Kids can be so crurl: Lead dev unchuffed with Google's plan to remake curl in its own image

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I GET it but I won't PUT up with it.

Must watch: GE's smart light bulb reset process is a masterpiece... of modern techno-insanity

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Re: Well, yes.

If it doesn't turn on* when I say "computer lights" it's not really smart.

*Or not because I don't actually want every bloody light in the room to turn on.

Flight Simulator 2020: Exciting new ride or a doomed tailspin in a crowded market?

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Re: Microsoft Train Simulator

As mentioned above Microsoft Train Simulator has been continuously updated since MS abandoned. And it is still being updated by its current owner Dovetail Games despite Dovetail having brought out Train Sim World which boasts all the glossiness you'd expect from a contemporary title. For the same reason they keep FSX going – huge developer support and a massive back library of addons. Glossiness doesn't mean much if the depth isn't there as I suspect MS will find out.

Please be aliens, please be aliens, please be aliens... Boffins discover mystery mass beneath Moon's biggest crater

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Dammit!

Kubrick missed a trick by not including rounded corners.

Praise the lard! Police hook up with Microsoft to school us on National Phish and Chip Day

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Shame!

Anything less than industrial grade acetic acid is anathema.

New twist in underworld of alleged code, data theft: Two, er, boffins accused of trying to steal, uh, a river model

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Why did they bother

There's one right here just waiting to be taken. Might need to hire a few trucks though.

Wholesome: Waste heat from coal power station turned data centre to help grow veggies

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Re: dumping heat into the lake is not so great

The former power station burnt coal but thankfully they're not planning on reusing the boilers. Sometimes reuse just isn't that good an idea.

Amazon Alexa: 'Pre-wakeword' patent application suggests plans to process more of your speech

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Unfortunately

this doesn't actually work.

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Hopefully

that will only break apple.com and not the entire internet.

Bad news from science land: Fast-charging li-ion batteries may be quick to top up, but they're also quick to die

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You'd know

when the car stops moving. Sure, that would only happen if you take long trips but if you're not taking long trips you're probably not fast charging anyway.

LibreOffice 6.3 hits beta, with built-in redaction tool for sharing those █████ documents

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Re: The World's Dirtiest Limerick

That's fucking ████!

Das geeks hit crowdfunding target: IBM mainframes are coming home

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2+2

The company had the contract to distribute Porsche parts worldwide*. I bet there was a fair bit of dosh in that. Enough, at least, to tide them over until the savings from sacking an army of pen pushers comes on line.

*Pure speculation, but the principle is sound.

Oh, the massive sky dong? Contrails from 'standard' F-35 training, US Air Force insists

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A hand

doing the tiny gesture, surely.

Planes, fails and automobiles: Overseas callout saved by gentle thrust of server CD tray

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Nonsense

I'm sure he really likes Snivelling Little Rat-Faced.

There's a scarily good 'deepfakes' YouTube channel that's quietly growing – and it's freaking everyone out

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Re: The sky is not falling

Well, I was being a tad sarcastic there. Of course, people will believe the pee-pee tape if it surfaces. Or not according to their pre-existing beliefs. (I don't count myself as an exception to that.) And yes, there's a growing contempt for facts in politics. But a commitment to facts has never been about believing photographs. The camera doesn't lie but it always deceives – it has always been potentially a tool of of propaganda. So really we have lost nothing.

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The sky is not falling

It's just means that videos of unknown provenance can't be trusted (as has be the case with photographs for years now) so no one will believe the pee-pee tape when Putin finally releases it.

Uber JUMPs at chance to dump load of electric bikes across Islington

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Re: Canal fodder

Let this nice* man introduce them to you.

*likable but extremely geeky

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Re: I was born in Islington

I believe it's the former but it's such a gloriously improbable name that you could be forgiven for thinking it was the latter.

AI can now animate the Mona Lisa's face or any other portrait you give it. We're not sure we're happy with this reality

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No

It just means Andy Serkis will have all the money.

NASA boffins may just carve your name on a chip and send it to Mars if you ask nicely

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If amanfrommars is involved you won't even understand what they're offering.

Backup your files with CrashPlan! Except this file type. No, not that one either. Try again...

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Pint

Upvoted you for the title

so have one of these for the content.

SpaceX takes a leaf from the Microsoft playbook and stands down Starlink for an update

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Headmaster

"Once in orbit, Musk boasted that the power generated by the satellites will generate more power than the arrays of the International Space Station"

Musk's in orbit. He must be happy. Okay, I've added the appropriate icon.

Long-distance dildo devotee deploys ding-dong over data deceit

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Re: Medice, cura te ipsum

I briefly considered that she might have the same initial as Captain Kirk but of course that shouldn't apply in this case.

Your FREE end-of-the-world guide: What happens when a sun like ours runs out of fuel

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I don't

anything on What If matters. Doesn't stop it being interesting though.

Japan's mission to mine Mars' moon is cleared – now they've filled out the right paperwork on alien world contamination

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Well

Elon would be pretty pissed to finally make it to Mars only to have to deal with a bunch of gangster microbes.

Rocket Lab picks up the pace while SpaceX sends a Dragon to the Space Station

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Or because

weirdly a flooded cave is a more hostile environment than the vacuum of space. In space you only have to worry about catastrophic failures, in the cave every failure can be catastrophic.