Posts by Jeffrey Nonken

Re: Where's the Elon Musk Attack Brigade today?

The reality is that an aircraft autopilot is FAR stupider than Tesla's autopilot. It's really only good for flying in straight lines, moving the plane up and down, and turning to follow radio beacons.

Before the election, we had a dingo in charge, not a bozo.

Seriously, the FCC changed leaders. You can't just assert that this is all about anti-Trump sentiment.

Re: Improbable

P=EI. When you down-convert the voltage, you get a proportional increase in amperage to maintain conservation. Minus conversion inefficiencies, ofc.

Re: New???

The Android has to be unlocked but doesn't require a separate unlock action to allow payment. AFAIK. I usually have to unlock it anyway.

And I'm assuming a lot here, I've never used Apple Pay.

Re: Obviously the solution is....

"It never rains in southern California."

It pours, man it pours.

"Nope. It's just Google."

Oh, this type of mistake is certainly not uniquely Google.

Re: get stuffed FBI

I want a bullet that only hurts bad guys.

And that's the problem with this. Somebody will reverse engineer it or the police will leak the Sekret Key* or probably both. Insecure is insecure is insecure no matter HOW many people you trust with the key to your house.

Or to abuse another analogy, having slightly compromised encryption is like being slightly pregnant.

*It only takes ONE LEAK. There are MILLIONS OF POLICE. Do you trust all of them? And that's just the police.

Re: Surely unidirectional wireless is an incredibly inefficient approach to transmitting energy?

My Nexus 7's charge port gets damaged a lot in use. Something about the amount of force applied to a port that's installed on the short side, and leverage, I don't know. I can fix it (not everybody can) but I worry about accumulating fatigue on the parts.

So I've invested in several qi chargers that double as stands. Fiddly, but it works.

I pointed to this as a solution to someone on the forums who was experiencing the same problem, but lacked my repair skills. I also pointed to ifixit, who sells parts and gives away instructions. Google suggested he $hip it back for repair$. He liked the qi solution best, thanked me enthusiastically, and ignored Google.

All because I'm too lazy to plug it in next to my phone, yes?

Re: athlon

"I use GWX Control Panel to prevent the update of Windows 7 to Windows 10. Works very well."

I used it for a while, but Microsoft has stopped trying to sneak in the upgrade. I uninstalled the utility from all my Windows 7 systems long ago and haven't had a problem.

It's OK to come up for air now.

Up to you, of course.

Re: Fascinating

Then you'll love the clue-by-four upgrade I was going to suggest.

Re: It's not wall clock time that's being timed

I suspect he meant the clock speed, not the RTC. Extra points for giving a patronizing reply.

"Can you tell the difference between your aunt and a recording of your aunt?"

Hah hah. OK, I have to tell this story. When my voice was changing -- yes, I passed puberty, far too many years ago in fact -- for a while I sounded like Mom. So her friends would call to talk to her, and start chatting away... and when they stopped for a breath I'd say, "Hold on, I'll get Mom."

Poor ladies were mortified, because they knew how sensitive boys could be about such things. Me? I thought it was funny.

Anyway, one day I answer the phone and it's my grandmother. Of course SHE could tell it wasn't Mom's voice, but it was still close enough that she said, "Jo?! What are you doing there?!" She thought it was my aunt Johanne, and wondered why Mom's sister was visiting and nobody had told Grandma... it must be a family emergency?

"Hi Grandma! Hold on, I'll get Mom."

Re: Bah!

I've had to fix a few of those over the years. However, no burly longshoremen were harmed during the process.

Re: Who cares

Pot, kettle.

Also, thinking of yourself is not necessarily the same as thinking ONLY of yourself.

Also, EE is in England. I'd never heard of them until I started reading El Reg. Don't know what us Yanks have to do with this.

I like reading El Reg. It gives me a view into another culture. ...Thinking only of myself, of course.

Re: At Adam 1...

"My screen reader merely reads everything as if it were plain text, no embellishments..."

Ah. That explains why you're typing out the word "at" instead of using the @ symbol (shift-2 on most U.S. QWERTY keyboards) when addressing a person. Your reader simply says "at" with no distinction.

Re: 'gloves were forbidden'

"This is when I learned that liquid nitrogen is cheap..."

My boss used to say that it cost about the same as milk.

Re: Black arm bands for everyone

"His response was to invent the Strowger Automatic Telephone Exchange."

Interesting, but I believe you're dangerously close to invoking the Broken Window Fallacy.

Re: Progress?

Kids.

My first modem was a 300 bps acoustic coupler.

"Sounds like you might want to invest in a passive reflector..."

...or maybe something like one of these. https://www.mobilesignalboosters.co.uk/

Disclaimer: I don't know much about them, just that they are a thing.

Re: Love the Hendrix reference

"I didn't want the headache of explaining the lyric to either side's PR people."

Oh come now. Corporate lawyers are known for their senses of humor!

Re: As a childless curmudgeon.

Uphill both ways, barefoot, in the snow, carrying my sister.

Re: What about my 5 year old Android?

My friend has an iPhone 5. Nothing wrong with the phone, but he's hoping to upgrade soon -- it's been running kind of slowly lately.

Re: USB mice are fun...

I recently had some keyboard problems on my home PC where both the mouse and keyboard functions wouldn't work as expected. For example, I'd click on something, the menu would pop up as expected, then immediately cancel... I was swearing at my (wireless) keyboard, swapping batteries, rebooting the computer...

Then I remembered the wired keyboard I'd plugged in some time ago and set on the desk above the keyboard drawer (the theory being I could type without repositioning my wireless, which I use for gaming, and not the WASD layout everybody else uses)... which got slowly shoved back and buried in papers and junk. I performed a nice series of facepalms and headdesks when I remembered this and cured the problem by simply unplugging the extra.

Re: Matryoshka dolls

It's turtles all the way down.

Re: Android One

"Whether the prospect of the PLA listening in to you telling the wife you'll be late home matters is up to you."

What a cynically dismissive summary of security and privacy controversy that was.

Re: Fools and their money...

"I have absolutely no desire to have an iPhone (or any other smartphone, for that matter)."

Uh, good for you. Your point?

It's hotter than the sun!

Re: After near 2 years

A number of flawed literary styles are considered permissible if intended for emphasis.

Re: Hardly a surprise...

Water kills, that is a fact.

http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs347/en/

Go peddle yer papers.

Re: Lots of criminals in here

"I have nothing to hide, unlike the angry teenage edgelords on the other side of this argument."

How about us tired sexagenarian cynics?

And I don't believe you have nothing to hide.

Re: Ahn Lab coming first ...

Are you saying the aardvark is NOT the best animal?!

That's nonsense! Aardvarks are aawesome!

Re: Geoblock is evil and dishonest

Should be easy enough to rip your DVDs. DVD drives allow up to 5 region changes before locking in. I tried to buy an obscure movie on DVD once that was only available in region 2, so I bought the DVD just for ripping and designated one of my older drives to be a region 2-only drive.

...Not saying it's not stupid. Just the opposite, in fact. There's no reason Short Time should be limited to UK distribution. Just suggesting an alternative to downloading. Or a supplement.

I also have Short Time on laserdisc. Now THERE is an obsolete format. I can't just buy a drive and rip it!

Re: singing while non white? @anothercynic

But you can use other types of brackets within parentheses. Nesting parenthesized phrases is permitted.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bracket

Re: In Range

"AFAICT, one does not have to be "in range" personally."

Agreed. I've thought that one way to avoid being spotted suspiciously hanging around a hotspot would be to suitably provision a cheap smartphone, drop it into the bushes, then control it from a remote location at your leisure.