Posts by Neil Barnes

Remove the case from your phone.

And how long before the first court case because somebody puts the phone in with the case?

I'm not an astrophysicist

But shouldn't we normally expect to see very young galaxies like this one (10e6 years old?) right out at the edge of observable space and not a mere half a billion light years away? Did I miss something important in the article, or just read it wrong?

Can we get some masks printed

With a QR code along the lines of 'drop table images --' ?

Shouldn't take an AI long to work out how a QR code works...

Dear NASA, please find enclosed...

Plans for 1 (one) space-ready fission generator. It meets your weight and serviceability requirements, and includes 1 (one) service technician and accommodation.

Don't worry: he's part of the package. And he's not an astronaut, per se, just a technician, so he won't be hogging the glory. As an added incentive, should any other technical or maintenance tasks be required, his services will be available at very reasonable rates, to be negotiated.

I wonder how much Google earns per search user?

$160B with maybe 4B users across all its services? $40 a year/person? I'd pay that just to avoid the tracking and other crap...

the much-vaunted Eye Contact feature

What on earth is the point of such a thing?

If you want to be seen gazing at the camera, gaze at the camera. If you want the camera to pretend you're gazing at it, gaze at it, take a snap, and send that picture instead. It's telling no-one anything, just pointing out the uselessness of a live camera for many video conference situations.

Or is it just an aid to making bosses feel happy? Oh look, all of them watching me with dog-like devotion?

Either way, it's one more thing buggering up the real world...

a camera capable of two-metre resolution from a height of 400kms

One has to hope that when they get there, that either Curiosity or, preferably, the Martians, have drawn a great big willy in the sand.

Yabbut...

Why would the twitterati even care? We show them end-to-end encryption, and they don't use it. They splatter their images all over the web without care or consideration as to what, how, where, or why they might be used; they utter their largely vacuous ramblings the same way. They ignore adverts and tracking scripts and use mail systems that cheerfully read their mail for them (focussed mail my arse) and they live in a network of continual visual noise.

I'd suggest - based on purely anecdotal evidence - that 90% of internet users don't think of anything more than 'look at me!'. Of the 10% that do, 90% don't do anything about it. Of the 10% of those, 90% don't have the ability to change it. While the remaining few take care not to post except to specialist interest groups; don't splatter their faces all over the web; don't expose themselves to unknown scripts and trackers.

Here's the problem: for the vast majority of people, it isn't one.

(Oh, and can we please find another name for AI? Artificial it may be, but I have difficulty accepting 'intelligence' in something that doesn't have sentience. Statistics, maybe?)

Probably...

a bit late to worry about putting my hat on, then.

MS is not the only culprit...

Unable to take a picture for reasons which I hope are obvious: a couple of days ago in a motorway service station in Germany, on each urinal was a small screen presumably to throw adverts at the users thereof (at least I hope so; I can't imaging they were giving instructions for use).

Sadly, each of them displayed the same window: "Android is waiting to start".

Amazing... finally the weather cleared up enough to see it

Having tried - and failed - to see it in Berlin[1] on Friday night (I wanted to show granddaughter, who was highly excited at the prospect but fell asleep around half past ten) managed to see it last night (Sunday) from Hemel in the UK. There's a convenient gap in the houses and the council have recently fitted LED streetlamps (though one of my neighbours insists on an outside spotlight that triggers on every passing snail)...

But even at eleven, it's so close to setting that there is still significant light from the sun. Once found, it's a barely visible naked eye object from here, but binoculars show it clearly. It should be higher in the sky tonight, and the forecast is clear, so I'll drag the 6" celestron out and maybe stick a camera with a long lens...

[1] we were hoping for the triple of the ISS, the comet, and maybe an early Perseid meteor... I suppose one out of three ain't bad!

I would like to deeply apologize to the Chan family.

Which of course makes it all right, then?

Don't act that way in the first place, and there is both no hurt caused and no need to apologise. If you are prone to such outbursts when drunk, don't get drunk - it's really not difficult.

I suppose I _should_ be shocked

But somehow, I'm not.

There are parasites in every ecosystem, but a healthy ecosystem has mechanisms to treat them.

popcorn.com

We're going to need lots of popcorn.

Why simulate the TCAS?

Can one not purchase a commercial TCAS unit and lie to it about where it is and how it's moving? (Ignoring the cost of such devices, of course).

It would seem that if one has the heavy lifting done by the unit, needing only to control its inputs should be a much simpler proposition.

Hmm. Worst case, I suppose, is a unit on an actual in-flight aircraft, either piloted or not, that sends signals that translate as 'crash on me' instead of 'run away, run away'.